If Cows Could Fly

CAFOs come in all species.

In Maryland, how to handle the 650 million pounds of chicken manure produced in the state each year has sparked a fierce debate between environmentalists and the state’s powerful poultry industry. State officials hope to bring Maryland in line with most other states next month by enacting new rules for where, how and how long chicken farmers can spread the manure on their fields or store it in outdoor piles.

“We don’t let hog or dairy farms spread their waste unregulated, and we wouldn’t let a town of 25,000 people dump human manure untreated on open lands,” said Gerald W. Winegrad, a public policy professor at the University of Maryland who is a former state senator. “So why should we allow a farm with 150,000 chickens do it?”

As the amount of cropland in Maryland has shrunk and the number of chickens raised has grown to 570 million, these mountains of manure have become a liability because the excess is washing into the Chesapeake Bay, one of the nation’s most polluted estuaries, and further worsening the plight of the fishermen who ply its waters.

Would you like a little manure runoff with your crabs or oysters? Oh, wait a minute, there are hardly any crabs and oysters left in the Chesapeake. And that's not BS, or whatever the equivalent of chicken poop might be. It's the result of pollution runoff from rivers and streams, no different than the giant dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico or off the coast in the Pacific Northwest.

Read the rest of the story. In Maryland, Focus on Poultry Industry Pollution

Meat just doesn't cut it in today's environment

The Georgia Straight (Vancouver)
January 21, 2009

By Dave Steele

There's little doubt about it. Humans evolved as omnivores. The shapes of our teeth, the lengths of our intestines, and a wealth of fossil evidence (arrowheads, butchered animal bones, et cetera) all point to an omnivorous past.

Natural selection favoured meat eating because it allowed our ancestors to survive where edible plant supplies were in short supply. Our forebears could flourish on fruits and grains and berries when those were plentiful and switch to meat when edible plants were scarce. Had early humans not led omnivorous lives, they almost certainly would have died out.

But that was then. This is now.

In the past, humans were few and far between. The pressure we exerted on the world around us was slight. Today, with our population approaching seven billion, the pressures we exert are enormous. No longer a boon to humanity, our hunger for meat has become the single biggest contributor to planetary degradation. Be it global warming, fossil-fuel depletion, water depletion or desertification, meat consumption is a prime factor in the problem. And meat takes food out of the mouths of the hungry.

On today's factory farms, it takes 2.4 pounds of dry corn, soy, and oats to produce a pound of chicken; eight to 10 pounds of similar feed is required for every pound of beef. According to Cornell University's David Pimentel, nearly 800 million people could fill their stomachs for a year on the grain fed to U.S. animals alone. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

According to Pimentel's careful reckoning, modern western diets could not exist at all were it not for the enormous amount of fossil fuels we pour into them. Just getting nitrogen into our fertilizers takes the equivalent of nearly one million barrels of oil each day. Add in the other components-the pesticides, the herbicides, the combines, the tractors, and all the rest-and the numbers become astronomical. As Pimentel shows, the way we raise meat, it takes some 28 calories of fossil fuel input to generate one calorie of food value. Even modern lacto-ovo vegetarian diets, he warns, can't be maintained in our world without excessive amounts of oil and gas.

Meat production accelerates global warming, too. All those burned fossil fuels have to go somewhere. Worse, our cows and sheep and other ruminants emit methane as they digest their feed. Together, Canada's 10 million cows release the methane equivalent of a half ton of CO2 for every man, woman, and child in the country. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, animal agriculture is responsible for a bigger share of global warming than all of the cars and trucks and ships and planes in the world combined!

And animal agriculture emits other pollutants, too. Nearly three-quarters of North American ammonia emissions are due directly or indirectly to animal farming. Manure contaminates our ground water. The Worldwatch Institute reports that farm animals in the United States generate 130 times more bodily waste than humans.

Animal agriculture destroys land and habitat, too. Raising livestock and the soybeans to feed them is easily the biggest contributor to rainforest destruction. More than two acres of tropical rainforest are cleared per second to graze or feed farm animals. Around the world, tens of billions of tons of topsoil are lost each year to cultivation of animal feed crops.

Fish are no solution either. We've mined the oceans so badly that almost all of the world's fisheries are in serious decline. Hunting? Sorry. All of North America's wildlife would be wiped out were we to satisfy our current hunger for meat that way.

In the past, the meat eating was a boon to us. But today, the opposite is true. Natural selection operates on the here and now. If we don't curtail our consumption of meat and eggs and milk and cheese, natural selection will eventually work in the strongest way against our meat-eating habits.

But we're lucky. We evolved as omnivores. We can choose what we eat. Plants or animals.
Choose plants. There's an awful lot at stake.

Dave Steele is the vice president of Earthsave Canada http://www.earthsave.ca/

The Word for the Day is Incredulity

The word for the day is incredulity – this is a great word meaning “I just don’t buy what you are talking about.” That is as in our website ByeByeBeef.com.

When first mentioned to friends who haven’t followed the epistles or diatribes against the proliferation of feed lot fed animals, they ask with a quizzical look on their faces: Why do you want people to buy beef?

I politely explain the English language is tricky and sometimes the same pronunciation of two different and uniquely spelled words is confusing. I explain that I do not encourage the purchase of meat, actually in these hard economic times, there is another incentive, besides the environmental and health reasons not to buy beef. The food budget can be modified greatly by the choices we make at the market. Meat is expensive!

Therefore, we want to say good-bye to a habit strongly lobbied for by fast food outlets, grocery stores, ranchers and primarily the big fellows who control agriculture in America – ads are everywhere; advertising trying to convince us to buy beef, and we say good-bye to feedlot operations; at least this is a good place to begin, so this is where we begin, yet…..

This is not an easy task.

Quoting from a Cargill advertisement I am astounded by the hubris of the copy writers and the company who state in bold letters:

“WE ARE BRINGING RANCH QUALITY BEEF TO GROCERY STORES.”

Then in smaller type:

“Supermarkets know that shoppers will judge the quality of an entire store with what they see in the fresh meat department. So savvy grocery chains have turned to Cargill’s branded beef programs to provide their fresh meat departments with products that bring back customers. This is how Cargill works with customers. – collaborate – create – succeed.”

First a personal aside: I judge the quality of the entire store by how much organic produce I can buy on a regular basis.

And….This is how we work with customers. We encourage you to come to http://www.byebyebeef.com/ on a regular basis and read the blog, on a regular basis, and the poetry of the above pile of words will be drowned out with facts and figures.

Subscribe to our blog feed.

Read the 10 top reasons for giving up beef and the carefully crafted Cargill pile of words will make you laugh. However, they are Goliath and we are David. It may take awhile for us to find the magic rock to go in our sling, but we begin with http://www.byebyebeef.com/. Join us. Take the pledge. Make a difference.

You Are What You Eat?

So are CAFO cows.

Read all about it:

They Eat What? The Reality of Feed at Animal Factories

from the Union of Concerned Scientists

and more details here in PDF

What Do We Feed to Food-Production Animals? A Review of Animal Feed
Ingredients and Their Potential Impacts on Human Health

Antibiotic Manure Contaminates Veggies

January 08, 2009 08:57 AM

by Isabel Cowles

Crops fertilized with manure from livestock treated with antibiotics absorbed trace amounts of the drugs, sparking health concerns about increased antibiotic resistance.

Something Extra in the Vegetables

Vegetables fertilized with manure are absorbing more than just nutrients, researchers say. While meat and dairy eaters have long been susceptible to ingesting antibiotics via animal products, vegetarians may also be at risk for unwittingly consuming these drugs. 

Scientists at the University of Minnesota analyzed corn, green onions, cabbage and corn in 2005 and corn, lettuce and potatoes in 2007; in both studies, they determined that crops fertilized with manure from livestock treated with antibiotics also absorbed the chemicals. 

Livestock farmers have typically fed animals antibiotics to promote growth and prevent infection. Holly Dolliver, a member of the Minnesota research group explained that about 90 percent of the antibiotics given to animals are excreted as urine or manure. “A vast majority of that manure is then used as an important input for 9.2 million hectares of (U.S.) agricultural land,” she said.

Although the scientists determined that crops absorbed less than 0.1 percent of antibiotics in the soil, concern remains over the accumulated ingestion of such trace amounts. Even organic produce is at risk of absorbing antibiotics, as organic farmers often use manure for fertilizer. In addition, rain and runoff from fields can introduce antibiotics into water systems.

Livestock who have consistently been given antibiotics have shown resistance to the drugs, which has prompted researchers to question the possible effects on humans. For example, if a person consumes pork with a strain of resistant bacteria and becomes ill, it is theoretically possible that treatment could be much more difficult.

Despite the potential risks, many farmers assert that eliminating antibiotic use in livestock could have damaging effects on food safety. For now, it appears the FDA is in agreement; in 2007, the agency overruled a warning about cattle antibiotic cefquinome and put the highly potent antibiotic on track for approval, despite concern by health groups.  

The levels of antibiotics in fertilizer can be decreased, however, if manure is treated properly. In a 2007 study funded by the USDA Agricultural Experiment Station and the National Science Foundation, researchers at the University of Colorado saw a decrease in manure that was managed by adding leaves and alfalfa, watered and turned.

Florida Couple Raising Healthier Beef

Bradford County Telegraph, Florida
Bradford County news
January 08, 2009

BY CLAIRE WORTHINGTON
Special to the Telegraph

At Cognito Farm, no pesticides are sprayed onto the cattle's pasture, no hormones are implanted in the cows' ears and no antibiotics are given to the cows to ward off diseases. But their owners say the cows are healthier than the meat most people eat.

Cognito Farm harvests what many call "clean food," and it is much different from what you will find at your nearest supermarket. All of their cows are grass fed. Grass-fed meat is becoming a larger trend, as people become more health conscious and focused on issues regarding the environment.

Grass-fed beef and feedlot beef are different in the type of foods the animals eat. Feedlot beef's diet is mostly grain, corn and soy because it fattens the cow up in a shorter amount of time.

"Cows are not designed to eat seeds," said Jerry Williams, co-owner of Cognito Farm. "They are meant to eat grass."

When cows are fed grain they become ill, he said. Ultimately, corn weakens a cow's immune system.

"If you were eating only ice cream in a crowded dorm standing in your own feces, would you be healthy?" asked Cognitio Farm co-owner, Sam Williams, Jerry's wife. "That's why they feed the cows antibiotics."

A diet of corn for a cow is not healthy. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists Web site, 70 percent of our countries antibiotics are used in animal food for that reason. Jerry Williams said that when you feed cows antibiotics, certain bacteria become immune to them and cause outbreaks like the strain of E. coli that has been causing problems recently.

"Normal E. coli dies when it hits our stomachs because our stomachs are more acidic than cows'," he said. "

Super E. coli doesn't, and that is because of what the cows eat and because of its immunity to the antibiotics given to the cows."Grass-fed cows are healthier to eat because they have more conjugated linoleic acids (CLA) in their system. CLA has been shown to prevent certain types of cancer, diabetes and body fat accumulation.

"Pastured beef has higher levels [of CLA] in their meat and milk," said Sam Williams. "They have natural nutrients in their meat."Feedlot cows are given growth hormones to make them grow fast and to make them produce more milk. They also get many kinds of injections. "

All we give our cows is a vaccination," Sam Williams said. Yvonne McClellan, a student and consumer of grass-fed beef, said she could tell a difference in the way she feels after eating grass-fed beef as compared to feedlot meat.

"I feel better," McClellan said. "I feel physically better."

McClellan said she does not like that the major companies that raise cows use so many chemicals.

The harvesting process of grass-fed beef and feedlot beef is also different. "We are nice to the cows, and we give them preferential treatment," Jerry Williams said. "The environment for the cows at feedlots is stressful."

The health benefits of eating grass-fed beef are numerous, but grass-fed beef is also good for the environment.

Industrial farming is dependent on oil, Sam Williams said. It uses artificial fertilizers that are made from oil, large amounts of pesticides that are made from oil, and oil is used to provide energy for food production and transporting animals.

"There is an average of half a gallon of crude oil per pound of beef," Jerry Williams said. "The average cow travels 3,000 miles before it is in the grocery store.

"Grass-fed beef on the other hand does not use fertilizers for the grass, large equipment or pesticides to keep insects from eating the grass. Jerry and Sam Williams said that they use the animals in the land and do not use big equipment to haul food to the cows.

"We don't bring the food the animals," Sam Williams said. "They walk to their food."On farms where cows and other animals are grass fed there is not a dependency upon oil. "

Our beef is born here and only travels 60 miles to the butcher and back," Sam Williams said.

"Jerry cuts hay, but that doesn't use nearly as much oil as an industrial farm.

Sam Williams said that because industrial farms are so dependent upon oil, there will be problems just like there have been in many countries around the world.

"There will be a food crisis when we run out of oil," Sam Williams said. "There have been about 30 countries with food riots."

Sam and Jerry Williams said the problem is industrial farms are dependent upon oil and when the price of oil goes up the price of food increases. "It's always important to know what goes into your food," Jerry Williams said.

"It's good to buy your food from someone you know and have researched."

###

Clair Worthington is a University of Florida student and a neighbor of Jerry and Sam Williams.

Scientists Are Divided: No They're Not

Foreign Policy
January 5, 2009

Think Again: Climate Change

Act now, we're told, if we want to save the planet from a climate catastrophe. Trouble is, it might be too late. The science is settled, and the damage has already begun. The only question now is whether we will stop playing political games and embrace the few imperfect options we have left.

by Bill McKibben

"Scientists Are Divided"

No, they're not. In the early years of the global warming debate, there was great controversy over whether the planet was warming, whether humans were the cause, and whether it would be a significant problem. That debate is long since over. Although the details of future forecasts remain unclear, there's no serious question about the general shape of what's to come.

Every national academy of science, long lists of Nobel laureates, and in recent years even the science advisors of President George W. Bush have agreed that we are heating the planet. Indeed, there is a more thorough scientific process here than on almost any other issue: Two decades ago, the United Nations formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and charged its scientists with synthesizing the peer-reviewed science and developing broad-based conclusions. The reports have found since 1995 that warming is dangerous and caused by humans. The panel's most recent report, in November 2007, found it is "very likely" (defined as more than 90 percent certain, or about as certain as science gets) that heat-trapping emissions from human activities have caused "most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century."

If anything, many scientists now think that the IPCC has been too conservative-both because member countries must sign off on the conclusions and because there's a time lag. Its last report synthesized data from the early part of the decade, not the latest scary results, such as what we're now seeing in the Arctic.

In the summer of 2007, ice in the Arctic Ocean melted. It melts a little every summer, of course, but this time was different-by late September, there was 25 percent less ice than ever measured before. And it wasn't a one-time accident. By the end of the summer season in 2008, so much ice had melted that both the Northwest and Northeast passages were open. In other words, you could circumnavigate the Arctic on open water. The computer models, which are just a few years old, said this shouldn't have happened until sometime late in the 21st century. Even skeptics can't dispute such alarming events.

"We Have Time"

Wrong. Time might be the toughest part of the equation. That melting Arctic ice is unsettling not only because it proves the planet is warming rapidly, but also because it will help speed up the warming. That old white ice reflected 80 percent of incoming solar radiation back to space; the new blue water left behind absorbs 80 percent of that sunshine. The process amps up. And there are many other such feedback loops. Another occurs as northern permafrost thaws. Huge amounts of methane long trapped below the ice begin to escape into the atmosphere; methane is an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Such examples are the biggest reason why many experts are now fast-forwarding their estimates of how quickly we must shift away from fossil fuel. Indian economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize alongside Al Gore on behalf of the IPCC, said recently that we must begin to make fundamental reforms by 2012 or watch the climate system spin out of control; NASA scientist James Hansen, who was the first to blow the whistle on climate change in the late 1980s, has said that we must stop burning coal by 2030. Period.

All of which makes the Copenhagen climate change talks that are set to take place in December 2009 more urgent than they appeared a few years ago. At issue is a seemingly small number: the level of carbon dioxide in the air. Hansen argues that 350 parts per million is the highest level we can maintain "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted." But because we're already past that mark-the air outside is currently about 387 parts per million and growing by about 2 parts annually-global warming suddenly feels less like a huge problem, and more like an Oh-My-God Emergency.

"Climate Change Will Help as Many Places as It Hurts"

Wishful thinking. For a long time, the winners-and-losers calculus was pretty standard: Though climate change will cause some parts of the planet to flood or shrivel up, other frigid, rainy regions would at least get some warmer days every year. Or so the thinking went. But more recently, models have begun to show that after a certain point almost everyone on the planet will suffer. Crops might be easier to grow in some places for a few decades as the danger of frost recedes, but over time the threat of heat stress and drought will almost certainly be stronger.

A 2003 report commissioned by the Pentagon forecasts the possibility of violent storms across Europe, megadroughts across the Southwest United States and Mexico, and unpredictable monsoons causing food shortages in China. "Envision Pakistan, India, and China-all armed with nuclear weapons-skirmishing at their borders over refugees, access to shared rivers, and arable land," the report warned. Or Spain and Portugal "fighting over fishing rights-leading to conflicts at sea."

Of course, there are a few places we used to think of as possible winners-mostly the far north, where Canada and Russia could theoretically produce more grain with longer growing seasons, or perhaps explore for oil beneath the newly melted Arctic ice cap. But even those places will have to deal with expensive consequences-a real military race across the high Arctic, for instance.

Want more bad news? Here's how that Pentagon report's scenario played out: As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies would reemerge. The report refers to the work of Harvard archaeologist Steven LeBlanc, who notes that wars over resources were the norm until about three centuries ago. When such conflicts broke out, 25 percent of a population's adult males usually died. As abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define human life. Set against that bleak backdrop, the potential upside of a few longer growing seasons in Vladivostok doesn't seem like an even trade.

"It's China's Fault"

Not so much. China is an easy target to blame for the climate crisis. In the midst of its industrial revolution, China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest carbon dioxide producer. And everyone has read about the one-a-week pace of power plant construction there. But those numbers are misleading, and not just because a lot of that carbon dioxide was emitted to build products for the West to consume. Rather, it's because China has four times the population of the United States, and per capita is really the only way to think about these emissions. And by that standard, each Chinese person now emits just over a quarter of the carbon dioxide that each American does. Not only that, but carbon dioxide lives in the atmosphere for more than a century. China has been at it in a big way less than 20 years, so it will be many, many years before the Chinese are as responsible for global warming as Americans.

What's more, unlike many of their counterparts in the United States, Chinese officials have begun a concerted effort to reduce emissions in the midst of their country's staggering growth. China now leads the world in the deployment of renewable energy, and there's barely a car made in the United States that can meet China's much tougher fuel-economy standards.

For its part, the United States must develop a plan to cut emissions-something that has eluded Americans for the entire two-decade history of the problem. Although the U.S. Senate voted down the last such attempt, Barack Obama has promised that it will be a priority in his administration. He favors some variation of a "cap and trade" plan that would limit the total amount of carbon dioxide the United States could release, thus putting a price on what has until now been free.

Despite the rapid industrialization of countries such as China and India, and the careless neglect of rich ones such as the United States, climate change is neither any one country's fault, nor any one country's responsibility. It will require sacrifice from everyone. Just as the Chinese might have to use somewhat more expensive power to protect the global environment, Americans will have to pay some of the difference in price, even if just in technology. Call it a Marshall Plan for the environment. Such a plan makes eminent moral and practical sense and could probably be structured so as to bolster emerging green energy industries in the West. But asking Americans to pay to put up windmills in China will be a hard political sell in a country that already thinks China is prospering at its expense. It could be the biggest test of the country's political maturity in many years.

"Climate Change Is an Environmental Problem"

Not really. Environmentalists were the first to sound the alarm. But carbon dioxide is not like traditional pollution. There's no Clean Air Act that can solve it. We must make a fundamental transformation in the most important part of our economies, shifting away from fossil fuels and on to something else. That means, for the United States, it's at least as much a problem for the Commerce and Treasury departments as it is for the Environmental Protection Agency.

And because every country on Earth will have to coordinate, it's far and away the biggest foreign-policy issue we face. (You were thinking terrorism? It's hard to figure out a scenario in which Osama bin Laden destroys Western civilization. It's easy to figure out how it happens with a rising sea level and a wrecked hydrological cycle.)Expecting the environmental movement to lead this fight is like asking the USDA to wage the war in Iraq. It's not equipped for this kind of battle. It may be ready to save Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is a noble undertaking but on a far smaller scale. Unless climate change is quickly de-ghettoized, the chances of making a real difference are small.

"Solving It Will Be Painful"

It depends. What's your definition of painful? On the one hand, you're talking about transforming the backbone of the world's industrial and consumer system. That's certainly expensive. On the other hand, say you manage to convert a lot of it to solar or wind power-think of the money you'd save on fuel.

And then there's the growing realization that we don't have many other possible sources for the economic growth we'll need to pull ourselves out of our current economic crisis. Luckily, green energy should be bigger than IT and biotech combined.

Almost from the moment scientists began studying the problem of climate change, people have been trying to estimate the costs of solving it. The real answer, though, is that it's such a huge transformation that no one really knows for sure. The bottom line is, the growth rate in energy use worldwide could be cut in half during the next 15 years and the steps would, net, save more money than they cost. The IPCC included a cost estimate in its latest five-year update on climate change and looked a little further into the future. It found that an attempt to keep carbon levels below about 500 parts per million would shave a little bit off the world's economic growth-but only a little. As in, the world would have to wait until Thanksgiving 2030 to be as rich as it would have been on January 1 of that year. And in return, it would have a much-transformed energy system.

Unfortunately though, those estimates are probably too optimistic. For one thing, in the years since they were published, the science has grown darker. Deeper and quicker cuts now seem mandatory.

But so far we've just been counting the costs of fixing the system. What about the cost of doing nothing? Nicholas Stern, a renowned economist commissioned by the British government to study the question, concluded that the costs of climate change could eventually reach the combined costs of both world wars and the Great Depression. In 2003, Swiss Re, the world's biggest reinsurance company, and Harvard Medical School explained why global warming would be so expensive. It's not just the infrastructure, such as sea walls against rising oceans, for example. It's also that the increased costs of natural disasters begin to compound. The diminishing time between monster storms in places such as the U.S. Gulf Coast could eventually mean that parts of "developed countries would experience developing nation conditions for prolonged periods." Quite simply, we've already done too much damage and waited too long to have any easy options left.

"We Can Reverse Climate Change"

If only. Solving this crisis is no longer an option. Human beings have already raised the temperature of the planet about a degree Fahrenheit. When people first began to focus on global warming (which is, remember, only 20 years ago), the general consensus was that at this point we'd just be standing on the threshold of realizing its consequences-that the big changes would be a degree or two and hence several decades down the road. But scientists seem to have systematically underestimated just how delicate the balance of the planet's physical systems really is.

The warming is happening faster than we expected, and the results are more widespread and more disturbing. Even that rise of 1 degree has seriously perturbed hydrological cycles: Because warm air holds more water vapor than cold air does, both droughts and floods are increasing dramatically. Just look at the record levels of insurance payouts, for instance. Mosquitoes, able to survive in new places, are spreading more malaria and dengue. Coral reefs are dying, and so are vast stretches of forest.

None of that is going to stop, even if we do everything right from here on out. Given the time lag between when we emit carbon and when the air heats up, we're already guaranteed at least another degree of warming.

The only question now is whether we're going to hold off catastrophe. It won't be easy, because the scientific consensus calls for roughly 5 degrees more warming this century unless we do just about everything right. And if our behavior up until now is any indication, we won't.

© 2009 Foreign Policy

Bill McKibben is the author of many books, including his latest: Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future [1].

McKibben is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, and cofounder of http://www.350.org [2].

The Low-Carbon Diet

Change your light bulbs? Or your car? If you want to fight global warming, it's time to consider a different diet.

By Mike Tidwell

Full disclosure: I love to eat meat. I was born in Memphis, the barbecue capital of the Milky Way Galaxy. I worship slow-cooked, hickory-smoked pig meat served on a bun with extra sauce and cole slaw spooned on top.

My carnivore's lust goes beyond the DNA level. It's in my soul. Even the cruelty of factory farming doesn't temper my desire, I'll admit. Like most Americans, I can somehow keep at bay all thoughts of what happened to the meat prior to the plate.

So why in the world am I a dedicated vegetarian? Why is meat, including sumptuous pork, a complete stranger to my fork at home and away? The answer is simple: I have an 11-year-old son whose future - like yours and mine - is rapidly unraveling due to global warming. And what we put on our plates can directly accelerate or decelerate the heating trend.

That giant chunk of an Antarctic ice sheet, the one that disintegrated in a matter of hours, the one the size of seven Manhattans - did you hear about it? It shattered barely a year ago "like a hammer on glass," scientists say, and is now melting away in the Southern Ocean. This is just a preview, of course, of the sort of ecological collapse coming everywhere on earth, experts say, unless we hit the brakes soon on climate change. If the entire West Antarctic ice sheet melts, for example, global sea-level rise could reach 20 feet.

Since the twin phenomena of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gore, most Americans have a basic literacy on the issue of climate change. It's getting worse, we know, and greenhouse gases-emitted when we burn fossil fuels-are driving it. Less accepted, it seems, is the role food-specifically our consumption of meat-is playing in this matter. The typical American diet now weighs in at more than 3,700 calories per day, reports the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and is dominated by meat and animal products. As a result, what we put in our mouths now ranks up there with our driving habits and our use of coal-fired electricity in terms of how it affects climate change.

Simply put, raising beef, pigs, sheep, chicken, and eggs is very, very energy intensive. More than half of all the grains grown in America actually go to feed animals, not people, says the World Resources Institute. That means a huge fraction of the petroleum-based herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers applied to grains, plus staggering percentages of all agricultural land and water use, are put in the service of livestock. Stop eating animals and you use dramatically less fossil fuels, as much as 250 gallons less oil per year for vegans, says Cornell University's David Pimentel, and 160 gallons less for egg-and-cheese-eating vegetarians.

But fossil fuel combustion is just part of the climate-diet equation. Ruminants-cows and sheep-generate a powerful greenhouse gas through their normal digestive processes (think burping and emissions at the other end). What comes out is methane (23 times more powerful at trapping heat than CO2) and nitrous oxide (296 times more powerful).

Indeed, accounting for all factors, livestock production worldwide is responsible for a whopping 18 percent of the world's total greenhouse gases, reports the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. That's more than the emissions of all the world's cars, buses, planes, and trains combined.

So why do we so rarely talk about meat consumption when discussing global warming in America? Compact fluorescent bulbs? Biking to work? Buying wind power? We hear it nonstop. But even the super-liberal, Prius-driving, Green Party activist in America typically eats chicken wings and morning bacon like everyone else. While the climate impacts of meat consumption might be new to many people, the knowledge of meat's general ecological harm is not at all novel. So what gives?

Roughly three percent of all Americans are vegetarians, according to the Vegetarian Resource Group, a nonprofit that educates people on the benefits of a meat-free diet. Part of the reason, I know, is the unfortunate belief that vegetarianism is a really tough lifestyle change, much harder than simply changing bulbs or buying a better car. But as a meat lover at heart, I've been a vegetarian (no fish, minimal eggs and cheese) for seven years, and trust me: It's easy, satisfying, and of course super healthy. With the advent of savory tofu, faux meats, and the explosion of local farmers' markets, a life without meat is many times easier today than when Ovid and Thoreau and Gandhi and Einstein did it. True, many meat substitutes are made from soybeans, a mono crop with its own environmental issues. But most soy production today is actually devoted to livestock feed. Only 1 percent of U.S. soybeans become tofu, for example.

One day I get carryout veggie Pad Thai. The next I cook stir-fried veggies at home with soy-based sausage patties so good they fool even the most discriminating meat connoisseurs. Bottom line: Of the most difficult things I've ever done in my life, vegetarianism doesn't even make the chart.

Some folks, I realize, have a deep-down, gut-level (so to speak) reaction to vegetarianism as "unnatural." We humans have canine teeth, after all. We evolved to include meat in our diets. To abandon such food is to break thousands of years of tradition and, in some cases, ritual behavior bordering on the sacred.

All true. But we also evolved as people who defecated indiscriminately in the woods and who didn't brush our teeth. Somehow we've moved to a higher level on those counts. Now, with potentially catastrophic climate change hovering around the corner and with our briskets and London broil helping to drive the process, it's time to evolve some more.

A compromise in recent years, of course, has been the idea of animals raised locally and organically. Becoming a "locavore" who eats regional fruits and vegetables in season as much as possible makes abundant sense, of course. And animals from your area can lower the environmental impacts of your diet in many ways while simultaneously saving cherished local farmland and progressive farm families.

But with global warming, here's the inconvenient truth about meat and dairy products: If you eat them, regardless of their origin and how they were produced, you significantly contribute to climate change. Period. If your beef is from New Zealand or your own backyard, if your lamb is organic free-range or factory farmed, it still has a negative impact on global warming.

This is true for several reasons. Again, the biological reality of ruminant digestion is that methane is released. The feed can be local and organic, but the methane is the same, escaping into the atmosphere and trapping heat with impressive efficiency. Second, no matter the farming method, livestock makes manure that produces nitrous oxide, an even more awesomely impressive heat trapper. Livestock in the United States generates a billion tons of manure per year, accounting for 65 percent of the planet's anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions.

Even poultry, while less harmful, also contributes. Ironically, data released in 2007 by Adrian Williams of Cranfield University in England show that when all factors are considered, organic, free-range chickens have a 20 percent greater impact on global warming than conventionally raised broiler birds. That's because"sustainable" chickens take longer to raise, and eat more feed. Worse, organic eggs have a 14 percent higher impact on the climate than eggs from caged chickens, according to Williams.

"If we want to fight global warming through the food we buy, then one thing's clear: We have to drastically reduce the meat we consume,"says Tara Garnett of London's Food Climate Research Network.

So while some of us Americans fashionably fret over our food's travel budget and organic content, Garnett says the real question is, "Did it come from an animal or did it not come from an animal?"

Which brings us back to vegetarianism and why I live a meat-free life. The facts speak for themselves. If we really want to fight climate change, we should change our light bulbs and purchase hybrid cars and, above all, vote for politicians committed to a clean energy future. But we should also eat less meat, a lot less, or none at all.

I believe consumer habits are starting to change similarly to the way they've shifted with compact fluorescent bulbs. Ten years ago people complained about the harsh quality of light from fluorescents and the hassle of switching them out. But the bulbs are now made to produce a much warmer quality of light and the price has come down. What's more, in seven years of using only CFLs at my home, I've never had a guest make a single comment.

In the near future, as we increasingly discuss the climate "facts" of meat consumption, and as veggie cuisine gets still easier at home and at restaurants, we'll see more and more people changing their diets in the same way they're switching to CFLs in droves now. Of this I'm sure.

But when it comes to food, the facts are not enough for many people. Of this I'm also sure. A holistic nutritionist in my neighborhood says one's ideas about food reside in the same part of the brain that houses our ideas and beliefs about religion. It's not all rational, in other words. Facts abound about the harm of fatty, sugary foods, yet the obesity epidemic grows. And I can't count the number of environmental conferences I've attended where meat was served in abundance. Even Michael Pollan's 2006 bestseller The Omnivore's Dilemma, wherein he dissects with encyclopedic thoroughness the eco-hazards and animal cruelty issues surrounding meat and egg production-even this book astonishingly mentions the words global warming only two times and climate change not at all. In 464 pages.That's highly unreasonable, in my view.

All of which is to say that for people to care, the climate-food discussion must be about more than just facts, more than pounds of greenhouse gases per units of food. It's got to be about morality, about right versus wrong. And I don't mean the usual morality of environmental "stewardship." Or even the issue of cruelty to farm animals. I'm talking here about cruelty to people, about the explicit harm to humans that results from meat consumption and its role as a driving force in climate change. Knowingly eating food that makes you fat or harms your local fish and birds is one thing. Knowingly eating food that makes children across much of the world hungry is another.

I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the mid-1980s, living in a tiny rural village where the staple crop was hand-tilled corn. It was harvested twice a year, in May and December. This meant the two annual "rainy seasons" had to begin right on time, in January and September, and continue for several months afterward. Any deviation from this rainfall pattern virtually guaranteed a lower corn harvest. And given the total absence of grocery stores, community granaries, or the money to buy extra food even if it existed, this meant hunger.

A signature impact of global warming, of course, is a dramatic shift in precipitation patterns worldwide, including longer and more severe droughts as well as extreme rainstorms and flooding in non-drought areas. Many scientists believe these impacts are already being felt by farmers worldwide and could spell future disaster, especially for subsistence farmers like those I lived with in Africa. Global wheat prices have jumped about 100 percent in the past year in part because a record drought in Australia-made worse by global warming-has devastated farmers across the continent. Food production in China alone could drop 10 percent as early as 2030, United Nations scientists warn.

The people I lived with in Africa contribute almost nothing to the problem of global warming, through their diet or otherwise. Coal-fired electricity versus wind power? They don't have electricity. SUVs versus hybrid cars? They don't have cars-none at all, or roads for that matter. And meat consumption? Tiny, tiny portions maybe twice a week.

If we in the West don't alter course in the coming years, if we allow extreme global warming to become reality, an impact on the U.S. diet could very well be a great reduction in the amount of meat on our tables-a reduction imposed on us by nature instead of achieved by us through enlightened lifestyle changes. The wide and guaranteed availability of agriculturally productive land may simply cease. The crop yields we see now could shrink significantly, thanks to everything from weird weather to pest invasions. But it's a safe guess to say we'll have space for a national diet of plant-based foods (some crops are expected to benefit from global warming), just not the option of consuming all those animals.

But in the Congo and other poor countries, in places like Bangladesh and Peru and Vietnam, where meat consumption is already low, severe climate change means food off the table. It means hungry children. It means the rains don't come on time or at all in tiny villages like the one I lived in. It means, in the end, cruelty to people.

Are we clear now on the raw facts and urgent morality of our present meat consumption in America?

We need much more than just a few magazine readers to voluntarily stop eating meat, of course. It's a good start, but what we really need are national policies that encourage lower meat consumption by everyone. This could be achieved using fees or other market mechanisms that properly price greenhouse-gas emissions according to the harm they cause. The bad news, I suppose, is that the cost of meat could rise. The good news is we would finally have a fair and honest way to judge its danger, and thus more incentives to do the right thing, more incentives to switch to a healthy and convenient vegetarian diet of the sort I've joyfully embraced for years, despite my great appreciation for the taste of meat.

We could also, as a nation, just eat a lot less meat as an alternative to full vegetarianism. Anthony McMichael, a leading Australia-based expert on climate change and health issues, has crunched the numbers. He estimates that per capita daily meat consumption would need to drop from about 12 ounces per day in America to 3.1 ounces (with less than half of it red meat) in order to protect the climate.

I suppose I could measure out 3.1 ounces of meat per day, cook it, eat it, and still feel morally okay. But frankly I'd rather just go without. I'd rather be a vegetarian. It's easier to explain. It's easier to defend. And I just plain like it.

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- Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, is the author of The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas,and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities (Free Press).

Alexandra Paul: We Choose What We Eat

There is not a lot we feel we have control over in this world, but one thing we do have control of is what we choose to eat.

I admit that sometimes it feels like there is a devil on my shoulder making me crave that chocolate confection, but ultimately I know that it is I who lifts my hand and puts the utensil in my mouth. I have the craving, but I forgo because I know there is a greater good in not eating that Rich Chocolate Melt in Your Mouth Dessert. In this case the greater good is Vanity, not gaining 5 pounds.

In the case of meat, the greater good is even greater, and good-er: the well being of the whole dang planet and millions of innocent cows who currently lead lives of dirty desperation, crammed into feedlots and then slaughtered so we can eat them. If that depresses you and makes you run for a yummy dessert, fine. At least you aren't propping up greedy, heartless agricultural corporations and killing the planet in the process.

I still nosh on chocolate, but I quit eating meat 31 years ago, when I was 14, after reading Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe, which discussed the pollution caused by the cattle industry, the unhealthiness of red meat and the cruelty to the animals when they are raised for food. That convinced me to give up eating meat forever.

In the last 3 decades, the reasons to give up meat have become more acute. Millions more cows are being slaughtered each year after being raised in inhumane conditions (see http://www.farmsanctuary.org/mediacenter/assets/reports/beef.pdf to learn about the short, tortured life of beef cattle). With more cattle, more cattle waste is streaming into rivers and seeping into aquifers. A cow can produce 120 lbs of wet manure daily! More steroids and antibiotics are being used to stem the spread of disease as the "Confined Animal Feeding Operations" (CAFOs), the feedlots in which cows are kept, stuff more and more animals into smaller spaces. The animals are fed cheap corn, which is as unnatural to a cow as you and I eating sawdust (actually, some of this cow "food" also has sawdust added as filler). Already a farting machine, their unhealthy forced diet just exacerbates this and cows emits 100 million tons of methane a year, a potent greenhouse gas.

Nothing worthwhile is easy. For many, it will be difficult to give up meat. You will face cravings for fast food hamburgers, and raised eyebrows from dubious friends who will think you are having a midlife crisis or just going through "a phase". When you feel your resolve failing, go to websites like http://www.byebyebeef.com/ and http://www.farmsanctuary.org/, or books like John Robbins's Diet For a New America. You will be reminded of all the good you are doing by this one decision, and you can reward yourself with an extra large Toblerone.

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Alexandra Paul is co-host of www.earthtalktoday.tv. A 30 minute video interview with Frances Moore Lappe is online at http://www.earthtalktoday.tv/video-media/earthtalk-online-videos.html