Skinny Bitch_ Ultimate Everyday Cookbook - Kim Barnouin [6]
2. WATER SUPPLY AND POLLUTION
We have gotten a little greedy as a culture, and forgotten the concept of give-and-take when it comes to our valuable water resources. A little mistake never hurt anyone, right? Yeah, not so much. Thanks to global warming, we’re experiencing record droughts, lakes are shrinking, reservoirs are dropping to all-time lows, and polar ice caps are melting quicker than it takes your nails to dry. At the same time, there is a scarcity of usable water due to water pollution. Yet, human demand is higher than ever. Seems there is a big gap.
Again, livestock production is hard at work here. In fact, it’s the largest contributor of water pollutants. Our water is quickly turning into a strange brew, with traces of animal waste, fertilizers, antibiotics, hormones, and pesticides eroding from nearby farm pastures.13 Let’s open the history books for a minute. In 1995, an eight-acre hog waste lagoon in North Carolina ruptured, spilling 25 million gallons of manure into the New River—an incident that until the BP Oil Spill remained the largest environmental disaster of its kind. Actually, twice as big as the MacDaddy of all spills six years earlier, Exxon-Valdez. And we didn’t hear a peep. The spill wiped out acres of coastal wetlands and ten to fourteen million fish.14 The vast body of water that all this shit spilled into is called our ocean, sweetheart. How special.
Aside from polluting our rivers and ground water, what do you think consumes nearly 8 percent of global water? Yup, it goes to hydrating animals and irrigating crops.15 Suddenly, I feel parched.
3. DEFORESTATION
I’ve got a new problem for you to put in your pipe, Smokey. It’s not a forest fire but, hell, it might as well be. Forget chopping down trees to make paper and pencils. We’ve gotten so much better at tearing down forest canopies to make room for more factory farms. Each year, we clear more than six million acres of Amazon rainforest to make more space for livestock to burp, crap, and meet their maker.16 This has led to the second leading cause of climate change—deforestation.17 Currently, livestock covers 30 percent of the Earth’s entire surface, while 260 million acres of forest have been cleared for the meat-based diet.18,19 Because we can’t magically create new land, developers are tapping into our most beautiful natural resources, yelling “ Timber,”—and up goes another factory farm. But, it looks like there is some solace for those on a green diet. A low-fat vegetarian diet requires less than half an acre per person to produce that food. Compare that to 2.1 acres per person for the meat eater.20
Looks like the grass isn’t so green on the other side after all.
4. LACK OF BIODIVERSITY
Moooove over, wildlife. We need to make more room for livestock. Nope, not enough. Still not enough. Why don’t we just take over Africa, and call it a day?
As we take down the trees, we are clearing and destroying land that is home to our wild animals for the use of livestock. Our need for more, more, more, at a pace of now, now, now, is causing serious loss of our natural habitats. Unlike humans, much of the planet’s wildlife can only survive in specific regions. So when we chop, flatten, and crush their homes to construct another factory farm, they don’t adapt well. They can’t find food. They get sick. And they die.
Physical space for livestock is the bulk of the problem. However, we also have to account for land used to grow grain crops to feed the farm animals. Remember, we are talking a huge chunk of land. Today, 80 percent of corn, 95 percent of oats, and 56 percent of all U.S. farmland is dedicated just to beef production.