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A staggering 60% of the Earth’s mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have been lost since 1970 according to the recently released 2018 Living Planet report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).* Over that same period, our human population more than doubled — from 3.7 billion to 7.6 billion today. We can’t ignore the increased pressure our growing human population has on the environment and other species. But, the fact that most humans also consume animal foods, the production of which has an enormously unsustainable footprint and is wrecking immense ecological havoc, makes the entire situation substantially more dire. Animal agriculture is (BY FAR) the largest anthropogenic user of land on the planet, which results in it also being the major driver of deforestation. Animal agriculture uses a staggering 45% of the land surface of the planet, per the International Livestock Research Institute. This, in turn, results in many species losing their habitats, further driving the current rapid loss of biodiversity (with our time already being labeled by scientists as the “Sixth Mass Extinction”). In addition to considering the benefits of smaller families, please recognize that being vegan is easy, healthy and one of the most urgently needed actions you can take as an individual to protect the environment and other species (both wild animals and the billions of other animals who are needless killed every year for foods we do not need). *WWF’s 2018 Living Planet Report available here. |