Bye bye, bacon sandwiches; (for one day at least)

Bye bye, bacon sandwiches; (for one day at least)

Ignorance is NOT attractive!

Sometimes, solutions to the world's biggest problems are right in front of us. The following statistics are eye-opening, to say the least.

Here is what would happen if everyone stopped eating meat at least for one day.

The meteoric rise of meat consumption globally over the last 50 years is no coincidence. As the socioeconomic status of communities has risen and the transportation of meat has become easier, more and more people have started eating large quantities of meat. In fact, over the last 10 years alone, total global meat consumption has grown by 20%.

All this extra meat comes at an extreme cost to our planet. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that the meat industry generates nearly one-fifth of the man-made greenhouse gas emissions that are accelerating climate change worldwide – more than the entire transportation sector!

To make matters worse, producing meat also requires a huge amount of water. An estimated 1,800 to 2,500 gallons of water go into a single pound of beef. By comparison, soy tofu produced in California requires only 220 gallons of water per pound.

Amazingly, the livestock industry also uses almost 50% of the corn produced in the United States as feed for the animals.

Imagine how much carbon and resources we could save if we ate less meat. Even just eating meat one less day a year would make a difference.

For instance, if over the course of a year you:

Ate one less burger a week, it would be the equivalent of taking your car off the road for 320 miles.
Skip meat and cheese one day a week with your family, it would be the equivalent of taking your car off the road for five weeks – or reducing everyone’s daily showers by 3 minutes.
Skip steak once a week with your family, it would be the equivalent of taking your car off the road for nearly three months.
And if the entire U.S. did not eat meat or cheese for just one day a week, it would be the equivalent of not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million cars off the road.
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.

It will help you to cut out potentially dangerous processed meats
It could help prevent heart disease
You'll be getting more nutrients, minerals and fibre in your diet
You're doing your bit to save the planet
You'd be helping to fight world hunger
You can eat some seriously delicious food

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.

Can One Person Really Make a Difference?
Let me ask you a question, and I want you to answer honestly: do you really think you can make a difference in the world? If you're like most people, your answer was no.

Well, guess what? You're probably wrong. Not only can you make a difference, you've probably had a far greater impact on way more people than you realize.

Think about it. When one person influences a few others, there are two major effects:

A ripple effect that, over time, can actually impact thousands over generations.
A broadening effect since one person influences many, like multiplying tree branches.
Here's an exercise for you. Think about all the people you may have had an impact on in your life. Employees, coworkers, bosses, vendors, customers, family, friends. Lots and lots of people. And they're just part of the equation. You may have influenced dozens of others without even realizing it.

Not that anybody really is special. I've learned from experience that we're all just flesh and blood men and women. Nevertheless, we can do great things, if only for a brief time. And most importantly, the impact of those actions - what we say and do - can reach far beyond our mortal selves.