but, in reality...
yeah, i used to have a shirt that said that, so that proves it. anyway, what are you doing to celebrate?! i challenge you to cut out animal products (meat, dairy, eggs) for the day. seriously, did you know:
-animal agri-business (factory farming) is the number 1 contributor to global warming. carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide together cause the vast majority of global warming. raising animals for food is one of the largest sources of carbon dioxide and the single largest source of both methane and nitrous oxide emissions. the official handbook for Live Earth, the anti-global warming concerts that Al Gore helped organize, says that not eating meat is the 'single most effective thing you can do' to reduce your climate change impact.
-20 vegetarians could live off the land that only 1 omnivore could.
-half of the world's fresh water is used for agriculture. some is used to grow grain for us, but most of it is used for the animals. it takes around 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. that's 6 months of showers! by comparison, it only takes 33 gallons of water to grow a pound of carrots. (pregnant cows for dairy drink 50 gallons of water per day -- that's a bathtub full! humans drink about a half gallon a day.)
-we are polluting our water -- it is estimated that more than 335 million tons of waste (that is filled with antibiotics and growth hormones) are produced annually on farms in the united states, and residues of antibiotics used only in animals are showing up in rivers and soil samples far from the original sites, even getting into drinking water supplies.
-half of the corn grown in the US is used to feed cattle (by the way, cattle weren't meant to eat corn-- it makes them sick and subsequently we get e. coli by eating these sick cows). this is food that could be going towards feeding the hungry -- if americans would reduce meat consumption by just 10%, enough grain would be saved to feed the 60,000,000 people who die of hunger each year.
-we're killing the rain forests. our love of cheap burgers is creating so much demand for beef that south and central american cattle industries are clearing the rain forests to make room for cattle pasture. cattle grazing is the number 1 factor in the destruction of the rain forests, and we're losing 2.4 acres of it per second. that's 144 acres per minute.
-on that note, it is estimated that global rain forests produce 40% of the oxygen we breathe, so by cutting them down we are literally choking ourselves.
how's that for celebrating mother earth?
*(most of this information retrieved from alicia silverstone's book, the kind diet, and some was looked up online.)
