Is It True that the Meat Industry Causes More Pollution Than Cars?

[mynamehere]

as a non practicing michigander, i too have seen my share of dead deer on the side of the road.

natural or not...i still dont think it wouldnt hurt to lower our comsumption of most things - especially food - which translates to meat. And as for the OP - yes, the meat industry is putting a hurtin on our lovely planet. which encircles the oceans and springs. but as long as we keep swingin thru McDonalds, BK, Wendy's, Chik-fil-a, Taco Bell, Arby's, etc on those road trips to dive sites....the demand will always be there. and so will the endless supply.

ever see the shirt that says 'i'm not fat! i'm American!'

 

[J.R.]

as a non practicing michigander, i too have seen my share of dead deer on the side of the road.

natural or not...i still dont think it wouldnt hurt to lower our comsumption of most things - especially food - which translates to meat. And as for the OP - yes, the meat industry is putting a hurtin on our lovely planet. which encircles the oceans and springs. but as long as we keep swingin thru McDonalds, BK, Wendy's, Chik-fil-a, Taco Bell, Arby's, etc on those road trips to dive sites....the demand will always be there. and so will the endless supply.

ever see the shirt that says 'i'm not fat! i'm American!'

Haven't seen that one... but I love it. Yea, I think we're in complete agreement on the above...

 

[WarmWaterDiver]

I looked and felt svelte on my recent Curacao trip - it all depends on the pool of other tourists at the beach / dive site. We were small fish in the pond. And we weren't even near where the cruise ships dock.

I am honestly curious how many Americans would readily give up their freedom to drive to the 24 hour grocery store / Wal-Mart or its analogue / late night fast food pickup window in favor of using public transportaion and living your lives around those schedules. Maybe it's just me since the longest I've spent in a 'big' city were about 8 consecutive weeks in Houston one time, although I spent about 50% of my last year there (but got to come home on weekend release). Seriously, I really value my freedom to travel where & when I want, with a minimum of documentation required, behind the wheel of my automobile across any of the lower 48. But I always enjoyed driving and used to mess with muscle cars too. Scuba is only one of the monomaniacal hobbies I've participated in thus far.

So, should we have a Scubaboard poll on who's thought this out and who is really ready to schedule their lives around the public transportation system? Maybe a lot of big city residents already do and I'm just not plugged in to it, but I remember interviewing for a job in the Chicago area when I finished college, and being advised most folks spent between 1 to 2 hours each way getting to & from work, and most of that was on public transportation. It just didn't seem to be my cup of tea spending that percentage of my waking life just getting to work and back, so I've never lived in such an area. Getting things like food shopping, going out to eat, having things like the riding lawnmower, refrigerator, freezer, bedding, etc. all delivered and paying the delivery fees instead of going with your own truck and trailer?

Using public transportation for you & your dive gear to get to the local dive site(s)?, if any? Even more of an issue for tech divers perhaps?

Up for a poll? I'm open even to unscientific answers / responses. I know what my own position is - I really value my personal privacy and freedom, and would make other adjustments if necessary to continue to have the freedom to own and drive my own vehicle, but allow others who choose differently to freely do so in my usual support for freedom of choice. I live out in the boonies, and think homeowners' associations are one of the most evil blendings of communism and capitalism yet devised (I would get to pay money to belong to a group who can tell me what I can and most importantly can't do on my own property? Preposterous for me, others choose differently, often citing resale value. Not right, not wrong, just different.).

So, who's willing to make those sacrifices, or is already doing so?

 

[lucybuykx]

Should Al Gore become a vegetarian? maybe we all should...

First the disclosure : Card carrying member of the Vegetarian Society of UK for over 20 years

Second the answer is another question : why does he continue to eat meat?

Nutritionally he has no need and the environmental effects are well documented. So there must be some other reason.

Meat production takes more energy than equivalent nutrition from plants. That is not hard to figure out because just like us, food animals need to eat in order to grow, and we want them to grow to produce muscle that we can eat. For that they need a lot more food than they produce (think of how many kg/lb of food you eat in a week that doesnt stay in your body as muscle or fat), and they need a lot of fresh water.

More contentious for some are the localised environment effects of meat production : the need to open up land to grow feed crops and the need to dispose of concentrated volumes of piss and solid waste (the word I used got censored!!) without contaminating local water systems.

We recognise in law that food animals should be treated well even up to their slaughter. This means that their final journey is in a truck that cannot be as efficiently packed as it could if the product were corn or soya so creates more enviromental cost. And again the $ cost is far higher than transporting similar kg/lb of plant matter.

Post slaughter meat is still environmentally worse - if it is not refridgerated then it starts to deteriorate, bacteria grow and it can cause huge human suffering, so we must use electricity to keep it safe.

Given that every step of the way meat is more environmentally demanding/ damaging than plant food, why would a self named environmentalist such as Al Gore still participate in the industry?

 

[Karibelle]

So, should we have a Scubaboard poll on who's thought this out and who is really ready to schedule their lives around the public transportation system?

Up for a poll? I'm open even to unscientific answers / responses.

So, who's willing to make those sacrifices, or is already doing so?

I'll bite.

I live in Canada, so my concept of "big city" is not the same as yours. However, I made a decision a few years ago to try and work from home, which I now do successfully full time, so no transportation to/from work. In the summer, I shop at the farmers' market each week, and from July to September, often ride my bike there (May and June involve a 15 km trip to the city to go to the farmers' market, rather than the local market in the 'burb where I live, which opens in July.) Occasionally, my husband and I walk to the grocery store, which is about 3 km away - this would be dependent upon what we are purchasing that day, and whether it will fit in two backpacks. We also sometimes ride our bikes. In summer, bikes get ridden to the beer store, or else no beer is purchased. We walk or ride our bike to the driving range near our house to hit some balls.

It's not perfect, and we certainly still drive our car, and do appreciate the freedom it offers, but are trying to cut down on what we see as "unnecessary driving."

We are trying to eat less meat. (Maybe it's just me, but we have a rule that if you didn't cook it, you don't get to complain about what it is - you just eat it!) That's not because I don't love a good steak - having grown up on a beef farm in Alberta I have eaten lots of beef in my lifetime, but rather because as I get older I am coming to understand that a world filled with beef (and other animal protein) eaters is simply not sustainable. Sigh. It's a hard realization.

Anyway, that is my decidedly unscientific response.
kari

 

[WarmWaterDiver]

Cool. I used to be one of those rail-thin people who couldn't gain weight if they wanted to - used to be. Now I'm in Weight Watchers, and losing weight by eating more fruits & vegetables. There's definitely a link. There's a documentary on the History Channel I'm watching on the history of breakfast cereals, and how it was in post-WWII USA where adding a LOT of sugar in the manufacturing process took off. Someone could probably superimpose that data curve on one of average citize BMI or some such. Ironically, I now live in sugar cane country - but use Splenda these days. Other artificial sweeteners are a significant migraine trigger for me, much like alcohol.

Once I finished college and made a job choice that let me NOT have to live in the Houston area, I rnted a house on 700 acres from an old retired ranching couple. It was 13 miles to work, and right around 15 minutes drive. Later, I moved into 'town', with the < 200 other esidents, when I bought a house and got married. I'm doing this similarly now, so maybe your perspective on 'big city' and mine flange up better than expected. However, our occupations don't lend themselves well to working from home, and also require significant business travel from time to time, but with high speed internet etc. avilable even in the boonies, we can arrange our schedules on occasion to work from home for a half day or a day on occasion. But all these options still require energy that wasn't required years ago, from cellular phones to broadband.

Well, time for me to make a 20 mile round trip to buy some Ponchatoula strawberries to eat instead of other junk - including more meat protein than I really need. Strawberry festival is next week, so they won't be around long, and there's no public transportation system out here, especially between Good Friday and Easter, to be able to access such things.

The 'Farmers market' depending on which one I select is anywhere from 20 to 45 miles from our house. My point is I just don't see mass transit as a feasible (or honestly desirable) alternative to owning & operating my own vehicle for me. And, our lives are hectic enough without adding unnecessary trips - the flip side of being in the boonies is trips to large shopping areas then equate to time demands folks in big cities experience in their daily commutes.

 

[shoupart]

You want to hear about pollution- check out the mass hog farms (called CAFO's) in states like North Carolina. There are thousands and thousands of pigs crammed into one small area, and each pig is a huge poop factory, about 10x what a human would generate.

Of course, there's no way to safely handle so much pig crap, and it gets out of hand, creates a huge stink, pollutes the waters, and introduces all sorts of pathogens and parasites into the local environment.

I don't know about other meat farms for cows and chickens, etc, but if it's anywhere near as bad as the pig ones, it's quite a mess.

Have a look: http://factoryfarm.org/resources/photos/#hogs

They actually create lagoons made entirely of crap.

 

[shoupart]

Good point you make about the energy consumption that the consumption of meat costs!
I think the thing about green politicians like Gore is that they're doing a good thing, even if it is small, at least it seems to be a step in the right direction.
I think we're going to face a future pretty soon where we will be forced to adjust our lives to fit the energy supply. We will probably have a society where cheap energy is no longer available, and it's going to cost more to transport things and to travel, unless we're going to use very mass/efficient sources, like trains, wind power, solar power, etc. That will probably result in societies where people are forced to focus more locally- relying on locally grown foods and using locally made products.

That, of course, doesn't really mesh with the current Ameircan way of life, but there will probably come a time where that's not going to be a point to argue upon- you can't diagree with reality and win. But I think the Green campaign is slowly getting us to face the facts of what we're creating for ourselves. There are probably a lot of conservation measures in use now that would have been laughed at a generation ago, and now we accept it. I think we'll become more and more focused on conservation and the process will be a long, slow one. People like Gore who are getting us to focus on thing first and get it accepted by the public can then move on to the next step towards a more green approach to living.
I think of it sort of like Ben Franklin's approach to self-improvement- not to change every single thing that's wrong with him in just one day, but to tackle one step at a time, so as not to be overwhelmed and face each aspect one at a time.

First the disclosure : Card carrying member of the Vegetarian Society of UK for over 20 years

Second the answer is another question : why does he continue to eat meat?

Nutritionally he has no need and the environmental effects are well documented. So there must be some other reason.

Meat production takes more energy than equivalent nutrition from plants. That is not hard to figure out because just like us, food animals need to eat in order to grow, and we want them to grow to produce muscle that we can eat. For that they need a lot more food than they produce (think of how many kg/lb of food you eat in a week that doesnt stay in your body as muscle or fat), and they need a lot of fresh water.

More contentious for some are the localised environment effects of meat production : the need to open up land to grow feed crops and the need to dispose of concentrated volumes of piss and solid waste (the word I used got censored!!) without contaminating local water systems.

We recognise in law that food animals should be treated well even up to their slaughter. This means that their final journey is in a truck that cannot be as efficiently packed as it could if the product were corn or soya so creates more enviromental cost. And again the $ cost is far higher than transporting similar kg/lb of plant matter.

Post slaughter meat is still environmentally worse - if it is not refridgerated then it starts to deteriorate, bacteria grow and it can cause huge human suffering, so we must use electricity to keep it safe.

Given that every step of the way meat is more environmentally demanding/ damaging than plant food, why would a self named environmentalist such as Al Gore still participate in the industry?

 

[WarmWaterDiver]

Agreed on the era of cheap energy in the USA, at least from fossil fuels, is likely gone for a while at minimum. When we went to dinner with our Dutch tourist neigbors on Curacao last week, I commented that the price of gasoline there was about US$4.00 a gallon (it was 1.801 NA guilders per liter), and so was almost twice as high as back home, even with an oil refinery on the island. Our Dutch dinner companions remarked on how they always enjoy lower gasoline prices when they visit Curacao - they indicated gasoline in the Netherlands was around US$6.00 a gallon currently.

 

[CalCola]

I have heard this a few times now.

Is it true? Should Al Gore become a vegetarian? maybe we all should...

Since Al Gore's campaign reaches so many people it will likely have a far more significant impact on reducing greenhouse gases than anything I would be willing to do.

I won't begrudge the man if he wants to eat a hamburger while driving back to his mansion in his SUV. He's still doing more about the problem than some bike riding vegetarian.