A Bed of Red Roses
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the sunny, warm, pleasant island of Nantucket! Good to be with you on a Friday morning–the 18th day of September, 2015–wonderful as always to be with you on yet another great late summer day offered up by this sand bar created by the ‘Last Great Ice Age’ roughly 11,500 years ago. A blink of the cosmic eye if you will…
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Kip Andersen, a young film maker/documentary wizard, a true environmentalist, from the greater Los Angeles area, put together a film in the past year or so that will blow your socks off, one that many in the country have most likely not seen, but will someday soon. It tells the story of how this coming cataclysm called GLOBAL WARMING is only getting worse, addressing the chief causes of this human created folly.
For your review, are some environmental “fun facts”, plus disturbing quotes from this must SEA documentary entitled, “Cowspiracy; the sustainability secret”. Sea Cape Cod gives this work one two thumbs way up, way way up! (credit the late, great Roger Ebert).
“The world’s top climate scientists tell us that the highest level of safe emissions would be around 350 parts per million of green house gases into the atmosphere. We are already at 400. They tell us the safest rise in overall global temperatures (if WE are to stave of the worst effects of drought, famine, human conflict, major species extinction), would be 2 degrees Celsius. We are rapidly approaching that and with all the built in carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere, we are easily going to exceed that. So on our watch, we are facing the next major extinction of species on the Earth, something we have not seen since the days of the dinosaur.”
The Sierra Club
“The raising and killing of animals for human consumption produces more green house gases than all other forms of transportation combined.” UN
Methane is 86 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide and is produced en masse via the animals’ digestive processes. It is the leading cause of resource consumption and environmental degradation, a problem that is destroying the planet today. The nation’s leading environmental agencies, all businesses in their own right–350.org, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Climate Reality, Amazon Watch, Rain Forest Action Network, all of them–have been silent about the issue for decades..
Why the silence?
Natural gas and oil production, with ‘fracking’ being the new dirty kid on the block, due to water usage and contamination, have mostly been focused on by these groups over the years, completely ignoring the ELEPHANT staring at everybody inside the local Starbucks. Sure, fracking takes tons of water, in fact the U.S. uses over 100 billion gallons each year in this criminal behavior. But, when compared with animal agriculture, raising live stock in just the U.S. consumes 34 trillion gallons each year; Methane emissions being equal.
According to Kip, it takes 660 gallons of water to produce one quarter pound hamburger, equivalent to showering for two months…“I’m loving’ it!” Domestic use of water in the U.S. accounts for only 5 percent of overall consumption, whereas animal agriculture accounts for 55%, that’s because it takes 2500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef.
Animal agriculture produces 65% of of the world’s Nitrous Oxide emissions (296x more potent than Carbon), with the obvious question being, “why are we not also focused on other green house gases other than fossil fuels?” Energy related CO2 emissions are expected to increase 20 percent by the year 2040. Yet emissions from agriculture are expected to increase by 80% by the year 2050. This is mostly due to an increase in the world’s dairy and meat consumption. According to lead scientists at the World Bank, animal agriculture is responsible for 51% of human cause climate change. Raising animals for food is responsible for 30% of the world’s water consumption, occupies up to 45% of the Earth’s land, is responsible for 91% of Amazon Rain Forest deforestation, is the leading cause of ocean dead zones, habitat destruction and species extinction.
Dr. Richard Oppenlander–Author,”Comfortably Unaware”–environmental researcher, stated, “…so my calculations are, without using any gas, or oil, or fuel, ever again, from this day forward, that we would still exceed our maximum carbon equivalent greenhouse gas emissions (565 gigatons), by the year 2030 (without the electricity or energy sector factoring in to the equation). All, simply by raising and eating livestock.”
Kirk Smith, mPH, PhD, University of California, Berkeley; Professor of Global Environmental Health, made the remark, “…you reduce the amount of Methane emissions, the level in the atmosphere goes down fairly quickly, within decades. As opposed to CO2, where you don’t see a signal in the atmosphere for a hundred years or so…
Demosthenes Maratos, with “The Sustainability Institute”, at Malloy College, “…it’s an environmental disaster that is being ignored by the very people who should be championing. Deforestation, land use, water scarcity, the destabilization of communities, world hunger, the list does not stop…”
Dr. Will Tuttle–environmentalist, and ethics author–put it best when he said, “…10,000 years ago, free living animals made up 99% of the bio mass on Earth, with humans making up only 1%. Today, 10,000 years later, really, just a fraction of time, we human beings, and the animals we own as property, make up 99% of the bio mass, with free living animals making up 1%. We have basically stolen the EARTH from free living animals. The primary cause of the loss of species of Earth is due to overgrazing and livestock production on land and over fishing (fishing), in our oceans. We are in the middle of the largest mass extinctions of species in 65 million years. Rains forests being cut down at the rate of an acre a second, and the driving force behind this is animal agriculture. Cut down forests, graze animals, grow genetically engineered soy beans to feed cows, pigs, chickens and fish…
The EARTH now the environmental polar opposite of what it was 10,000 years ago; mankind forgetting from whence he came…
I wonder why that was not talked about on that ‘dang GOP debate the other night Marge?
EARTH is worth saving!
Have a great week end everybody!
PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
