Depressing News Item of the Day

Watched Cowspiracy.

I knew that animal gas/poo was a big contributor to greenhouse gases and climate change - but more than all worldwide transportation easily? Wow. Water use, land use, amazon deforestation, hunger - all of it can be traced to our agribusiness, or Big Meat. That's all kind of common knowledge I guess.

The tougher part is that the big environmental non-profits - from Greenpeace to Al Gore to the Sierra Club - wouldn't confront that issue on camera. They want everyone to worry about using less water and power and gas, when the biggest threat to our surviving on this planet is our intense meat-eating habit.

5 tons of animal waste is produced per American, annually.

I don't eat red meat at all, and beef is a rare thing for me (maybe a burger two/three times a month, that's it). I gave up shrimp two years ago. We went for meatless mondays, and now I'm adding thursdays as well…but it's not enough. I am thinking about removing beef entirely from the diet - per the documentary, a full Vegan diet is 1.8 tons in terms of savings, while just eliminated beef is 1.4 (vegetarian is 1.6). I can survive pretty easily without beef.

I also convinced the wife to do 2 weeks of vegetarian diet after Thanksgiving. Let's give it a try - i will keep dairy and eggs in the picture, and see if veggies, breads, and fruits will do it for us.

If the rest of the world ate like the US does - meat all the time - we'd need like 10+ earths to support all the livestock. We have to change our diet radically…I have a few friends that are vegetarian, and I really wish I could snap my fingers and do it. For the species and the earth, but also for my own gut.