Eating Meat Harms the Planet

According to the United Nations, Raising animals for food is “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.”  If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is stop eating meat.

Here are 3 of the negative effects of raising animals for consumption:

Global Warming

According to a recent United Nations report, the meat industry causes more global warming(through emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) than all the cars, trucks, SUVs, lanes, and ships in the world combined. Researchers at the University of Chicago determined that switching to a vegan diet is 50 percent more effective than switching from a regular car to a hybrid in reducing your impact on global warming.

Water Resources

More than half of all the water consumed in the U.S. is used to raise animals for food.  A totally vegetarian diet requires 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-based diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day.

Pollution

Farmed animals produce about 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population of the United States.  According to the environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the run-off from factory farms pollutes our rivers and lakes more than all other industrial sources combined.

Take from “Vegetarian Starter Kit” provided by PETA.