I've written extensively on the consequences of eating meat -- on our health, our sense of "right living", and on the environment. It is one of those daily practices that has such a broad and deep effect that I think it merits looking at over and over again, from all the different perspectives. Sometimes, solutions to the world's biggest problems are right in front of us. The following statistics are eye-opening, to say the least.
If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:
● 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;
● 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;
● 70 million gallons of gas -- enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;
● 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;
● 33 tons of antibiotics.
If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:
● Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;
● 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages;
● 4.5 million tons of animal excrement;
● Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.
My favorite statistic is this: According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads. See how easy it is to make an impact?
Other points:
Globally, we feed 756 million tons of grain to farmed animals. As Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer notes in his new book, if we fed that grain to the 1.4 billion people who are living in abject poverty, each of them would be provided more than half a ton of grain, or about 3 pounds of grain/day -- that's twice the grain they would need to survive. And that doesn't even include the 225 million tons of soy that are produced every year, almost all of which is fed to farmed animals. He writes, "The world is not running out of food. The problem is that we -- the relatively affluent -- have found a way to consume four or five times as much food as would be possible, if we were to eat the crops we grow directly."
A recent United Nations report titled Livestock's Long Shadow concluded that the meat industry causes almost 40% more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world's transportation systems -- that's all the cars, trucks, SUVs, planes and ships in the world combined. The report also concluded that factory farming is one of the biggest contributors to the most serious environmental problems at every level -- local and global.
Researchers at the University of Chicago concluded that switching from standard American diet to a vegan diet is more effective in the fight against global warming than switching from a standard American car to a hybrid.
In its report, the U.N. found that the meat industry causes local and global environmental problems even beyond global warming. It said that the meat industry should be a main focus in every discussion of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortages and pollution, and loss of biodiversity.
Unattributed statistics were calculated from scientific reports by Noam Mohr, a physicist with the New York University Polytechnic Institute.
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我曾广泛报道过吃肉的后果—对我们健康的影响，我们“正确生活”的观念，以及对于环境的影响。吃肉是我们日常实践中有着如此广泛深入影响的活动之一，我认为有必要从所有不同角度对其再三审视。有时候，世界所面临的最大问题的解决方案就摆在我们面前。下面这些统计数字，最起码说，也能让人大开眼界吧。
如果（美国）每个人都当一天素食者，美国将会节省：
● 1000亿加仑的水，足够供应新英格兰地区所有家庭4个月所需；
● 15亿磅喂养牲畜的粮食，足够供应整个新墨西哥州人口一年有余；
● 7千万加仑的燃气—足够供应加拿大和墨西哥两国全部小汽车加在一起还绰绰有余；
● 3百万公顷土地，面积比两个特拉华州还大；
● 33吨抗生素。
如果（美国）每个人都当一天素食者，美国将会防止产生：
● 等值于120万吨二氧化碳的温室气体排放，相当于整个法国的排放量；
● 300万吨的土壤流失和随之而来的7千万美元的经济损失。
● 450万吨动物粪便；
● 差不多7吨的氨气排放，而氨气是一种主要的空气污染物。
我本人最喜欢的统计数字则是这个：根据环境防卫组织（Environmental Defense）的数据，如果每个美国人每周省掉吃一餐鸡而替之以素食，所能节省的二氧化碳排放量将等同于不让多过50万辆的小汽车上路。你看到了多么容易能造成好的环境冲击了吧？
其它：
在全球范围内，（每年）我们给圈养动物喂养7亿5千6百万吨粮食饲料。如普林斯顿的生物伦理学家彼得.辛格(Peter Singer)在他的新书里所言，如果我们把那些粮食用于14亿生活在绝对贫困中的人口，他们每个人可以平均分得半吨多粮食，也即每天大约3磅的粮食—那是他们得以生存所需量的两倍。而这还不包括每年生产的2亿2千5百万吨的大豆，几乎所有这些大豆都被当做饲料喂给了圈养动物。他写道：“这个世界并不缺乏食物。问题出在我们--这些相对富裕的人—找到了一种消费方式，吃掉了是我们直接吃谷物粮食所能吃掉的四到五倍的粮食。”
最近联合国一份标题为“畜牧业的长长的阴影”的报告结论是肉类产业所导致的温室气体排放比全世界的交通运输业全加起来—这包括所有的小轿车，卡车，运动型跑车，飞机和轮船全部加起来--还要多几乎40%。该报告的结论也指出工厂化的农场运作是在本地和全球各个层面导致最严重的环境问题最大的因素之一。
芝加哥大学研究人员的研究结论是在与全球变暖作战中从标准的美国食谱转变成素食食谱比从标准的美国小轿车转变到混合动力小轿车要有效得多。
那份联合国报告里发现肉类产业所产生的本地和全球环境问题问题甚至不仅限于全球变暖。该报告称肉类产业应该成为所有有关土地退化、气候变化和空气污染，水资源缺乏和污染，以及生物多样性丧失的讨论中的一个主要焦点。
本文章中没有指明出处的统计数据由纽约大学理工学院的物理学家诺姆.莫尔(Noam Mohr)从科学报告中计算得来。 |
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