Your Local Tree-Hugging Dirt Worshipper

If you are interested in learning more about the the benefits of a compassionate plant-based lifestyle, check out these great documentaries. Please share and spread the information!

For Animal Rights:

Earthlings (2005)

Vegucated (2011)

Blackfish (2013)

The Ghosts in Our Machine (2013)

The Cove (2009)

Live and Let Live (2013)

Speciesism: The Movie (2013)

Unity (2015)

Okja (2017) *fictional*

For the Environment:

The End of the Line (2009)

Cowspiracy (2014)

Food Inc. (2008)

Meat the Truth (2007)

Planeat (2010)

Chasing Coral (2017)

For Health:

Forks Over Knives (2011)

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead (2010)

What the Health (2017)

PlantPure Nation (2015)

Hungry for Change (2012)

Crazy Sexy Cancer (2007)

After reading and following along with this blog, you likely will have learned many unsettling facts about animal agriculture that anger you because of the lack of respect and compassions humans have for animals and the environment. If you want to help make the world a better place, for this generation and the many to come, reducing or especially eliminating your consumption of animal products is the best thing you can do to do your part. There is no such thing as a meat eating environmentalist, so if you care about this planet, be the change that you want to see in this world. It is easy to say that "someone should do something" but not quite so to say "I should do something". Climate change is not a problem we can solve by letting others act for us, it is a problem that we all hold the solution to in our kitchen. By choosing forks over knives, plants over animal products, we eliminate the suffering of animals, the environment, and our own bodies. Aldo Leopold once said, “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.” Realizing these truths, is the greatest thing you can do. The Earth is not a commodity, but a community to which we all belong, and must respect and cherish.

Although the animals directly victimized by animal agriculture are the ones being slaughtered and used for their bodies and products, the humans that live in areas around factory farms also suffer because of the poor environmental effects they have. Livestock in the U.S. produce approximately 500 million tons of fecal waste and urine every year which is way much more waste than factory farms could ever redistribute as fertilizer, so the majority of waste is left to sit and fester in massive, open-air lagoons adjacent to the farms. When these cesspools of feces and urine get full, factory farms will frequently avoid water pollution limits by spraying liquid manure into the air, which creates mists of pollutants carried away by the wind. This comes at a low cost to the industry, but a high one to the environment and local residents. Living with the putrid smell and harmful gases released by factory farm waste can ruin the health of a person and quality of life. Mental health deterioration and increased sensitization to smells can occur in people who live near factory farms according to studies. Unfortunately, many communities located near factory farms fall below the poverty level so the families living there do not have the option to relocate to a place with cleaner air, and instead fall victim to the pollutants.

A dangerous problem that comes along with storing excrement in massive lagoons is that the waste breaks down and forms ammonia gas which is released into the atmosphere. This then breeds bacteria, which combines with other pollutants in the air to form later dangerous nitric acid. When nitric acid builds up in the atmosphere, it then returns to the surface of the earth as acid rain, which harms soil, forest habitats, and water ecosystems. People also tend to suffer from respiratory irritation, bronchitis, lung inflammation, dust toxic syndrome, asthma, and even cardiac arrest if the pollution from local factory farms is bad enough. Ammonia emissions from waste pools can cause a variety of harmful health effects including dizziness, eye irritation, respiratory illness, and nausea. Releases of dangerous levels of hydrogen sulfide, another dangerous gas released from factory farmed animals, can cause sore throats, seizures, comas, and even death in rare cases. Asthma can also be a real concern, especially for younger children living near these farms. Children raised in communities near factory farms are more likely to develop asthma or bronchitis than children who are not directly impacted by the pollution in the air and water surrounding factory farms. Sadly, the unsanitary conditions on factory farms, poor quality of animal feed, and overuse of antibiotics in livestock have resulted in diseases including swine and avian flu that are spread by air and difficult to manage. Factory farms not only torment and kill millions of animals each year, they impact the health of the people living near them.

Source: http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/facts-about-animal-agriculture-and-air-pollution/

Photo: http://www.urbangreengirl.com/2010/11/02/10-reasons-why-youre-not-green/

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that livestock production is responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, while other organizations such as the Worldwatch Institute estimate it could be as much as 51 percent. Even the more modest 18 percent estimate accounts for more greenhouse gas production than all of the exhaust emitted through human transportation. A third of all raw materials and fossil fuels consumed in the U.S. are used in animal production, and specifically, livestock accounts for an estimated 9 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, 35 to 40 percent of global methane emissions, and 65 percent of dangerous nitrous oxide emissions.

Methane gas is one of the largest contributors to global warming and is capable of trapping up to 100 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a five-year period. Most of the methane comes from cows and pigs on factory farms that are fed low-quality grains such as corn that their bodies were not designed to digest, which later results in indigestion and flatulence and therefore greenhouse gas emissions. All of this gas then enters our atmosphere. In addition to the greenhouse gases directly emitted from the animals, meat and other animal products have a huge carbon footprint due to the deforestation in areas such as the Amazon rainforest needed to grow feed and graze animals, as well as all of the transportation involved in both feeding the animals and distributing the animal products to consumers. Animal agriculture has a dangerously high carbon footprint that cannot be ignored.

Source: http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/facts-about-animal-agriculture-and-air-pollution/

Graphic: http://treespiritproject.com/eatinganimals/

Animal agriculture, in addition to slaughtering billions of animals every year, also produces massive amounts of animal waste including urine and manure that emit a whopping 400 harmful gases into our planet's’ atmosphere. These gases can include nitrous oxide, ammonia, particulate matter, endotoxins, and hydrogen sulfide, and to worsen the impact of these gases, because thousands of animals are kept together in factory farms, the concentration of the gases produced can be extremely dangerous local humans and other animals. Roughly 80 percent of ammonia produced in the U.S. comes from animal waste, and this ammonia can lead to dead zones in water ecosystems. Also, when factory farm waste decomposes, it releases airborne debris along with the harmful gases.This debris can include dry manure, feathers, bits of feed, and animal dander which can travel through the air for miles and make the sky of the surrounding area appear hazy.

The antibiotics that livestock are fed regularly to promote unnatural growth in a filthy environment are also dangerous airborne matter. In an experiment, researchers from Texas Tech placed air samplers 10 to 30 yards both upwind and downwind from beef and dairy feedlots within the fall and winter months. A startling 100 percent of the samples tested positive for Monensin, an antibiotic commonly used in human medicinal practices. While this antibiotic is not thought to promote bacterial resistance, tetracycline antibiotics, that do contribute to bacterial resistance, were found in 60 percent of the downwind samples and 30 percent of the upwind. Tetracycline antibiotics are used to treat pink eye and urinary tract infections in humans, both of which are becoming more difficult to treat as bacteria develop resistance because of overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture.

Source: http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/facts-about-animal-agriculture-and-air-pollution/

Photo: http://archive.onearth.org/articles/2014/02/factory-farms-are-poisoning-iowa-water

Photo: https://www.meatfreemondays.com/world-must-act-on-antibiotics-in-meat-says-report/

A wise man knows that everything that we do to the sea will one day come back to haunt us. Everything that we do on land affects the sea when rivers and streams, and even our urban drainage systems, all lead to the ocean eventually. Industrial animal agriculture has dangerous and serious effects on our water systems and bodies, but this is a hidden fact to most of the public who do not actively seek out the information. Factory farming and animal agriculture have ghastly effects for both the animals being slaughtered and the environment around them. Farm waste doesn’t stay on farms, as it is carried by runoff from normal and storm-level precipitation, and when animals are fed an endless stream of antibiotics and hormones, these are excreted and ultimately end up in our waterways and ocean. These manmade chemicals finding their way into the water is bad enough, but even if the manure were from a strict grass-fed diet with no antibiotics or hormones, the scale on which factory farms produce animal waste creates nitrogen shocks to the environment. These shocks encourage disease outbreak and destructive algae blooms which lead to loss of marine life in our rivers and oceans.

Huge open-air waste lagoons, often the size of several football fields, are prone to leaks and spills, especially in areas struck by hurricanes. In 1995 an eight-acre pig waste lagoon in North Carolina burst, and this spilled 25 million gallons of manure into the New River; the spill killed about 10 million fish and closed 364,000 acres of coastal wetlands to shellfishing. Runoff of chicken and hog waste from factory farms in Maryland and North Carolina is believed to have contributed to the local outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida, which are killing millions of fish and causing skin irritation, short-term memory loss and other cognitive problems in local swimmers. The nutrients in animal waste cause algal blooms, which use up oxygen in the water, contributing to the “dead zone” effect in the Gulf of Mexico where there is not enough oxygen to support aquatic life. The dead zone grows in size each year, and it was reported to have extended 8,500 square miles during the summer of 2002 and over 7,700 square miles during the summer of 2010. On top of the local waterway effects, ammonia, a toxic form of nitrogen released in gas form during waste disposal, can be carried more than 300 miles through the air before sinking back down into the water or onto land, where it can cause algal blooms and kill marine life.

Industrial animal agriculture also contributes directly to sea temperature rise and ocean acidification. Animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all transportation combined. The rising atmospheric temperature is raising global ocean temperatures which has led to widespread coral bleaching. Bleaching slows coral growth, makes them at a higher risk for disease, and leads to large-scale reef die-off. In addition, a greater concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is increasing the acidity of the global ocean, which in turn is harming the marine life reliant on finding or building shells, as the higher acidity in the water weakens calcium shells.

Source: https://mission-blue.org/2015/02/whats-the-role-of-mass-animal-agriculture-in-ocean-degradation/

Photo: https://theleft.co/what-causes-ocean-dead-zones/

Fishing vessels operating off the coasts of Florida and California and in the Gulf of Mexico routinely dump more fish overboard than they bring to shore, and about half of all the killed and dumped marine life can be traced to just nine fisheries which operate off the coasts of Alaska, Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and the the north-east United States. The fisheries also kill and injure hundreds of thousands of sharks, sea turtles, and dolphins every year, and all of this bycatch (unwanted fish or marine life that get caught up in trawlers, gillnets and longlines) is endangering the health of marine ecosystems all over the globe. Commercial fishing is an unsustainable industry prioritizing profits over environmental concerns, and fishless oceans are a possibility if we do not collectively work together to fix this issue. The oceans are a global resource, and a resource we must protect. About half of the world’s oxygen production comes from tiny organisms called phytoplankton, and with the health of the ocean diminishing, they are also in danger of declining in population.

Fisheries also continue to use equipment that imposes destructive side-effects on the ocean and marine life, including but not limited to 160 foot wide nets that are dragged along the seafloor or through the water scooping up everything in their path, and 50-mile fishing lines gleaming with thousands of baited hooks. These giant trawling nets that are dragged along the bottom of the ocean have detrimental effects on the environment as they can tear up and destroy underwater ecosystems occurring in places with coral reefs and kelp forests.The commercial fishing industry is also extremely wasteful while committing these crimes against the environment. As much as 40%, or 63 billion pounds, of the 160 billion pounds of fish caught globally every year are discarded overboard as they are not seen fit for human consumption, or are lost accidentally. Scientists also estimate as many as 650,000 whales, dolphins and seals are also killed every year by fishing vessels through vessel strikes and by-catch. It is also estimated that for every pound of fish that is marketed, about five pounds of bycatch species were also killed. Unless we desire to see fishless oceans, we must allow these stocks to recover and not cull them and bycatch species to extinction.

Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/20/americas-nine-most-wasteful-fisheries-named and

Photo: http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/en/what-we-do/oceans/no-super-trawlers/

  In the years from 1941 to 2011 the world’s population has tripled, and freshwater consumption has quadrupled, which leaves forty percent of the world’s population predicted to be facing difficulties securing access to fresh water by the year 2020. Fresh water supply is not an issue of the future, it is a current one, that worsens each year that the problems worsening the issue are ignored. Even though scientists urge people to conserve water through things such as shorter showers, the problem lies in other ways water is managed. For example, about half of U.S. annual fresh water usage goes toward raising livestock, and about less than one percent is actually used by humans for drinking water. Fresh water constitutes just 2.5% of all water on earth, and in many ways it is not fully renewable in our lifetime, and it is certainly not an infinite supply. Many aquifers are being exploited at rates as high as 250 times their ability to recollect freshwater. Deep groundwater aquifers that took tens of thousands of years to form are eagerly being drained in many agricultural areas of the United States, such as California, and as much as 75% of the water withdrawn is drank by livestock or used to water crops grown to livestock.

    Worldwide, we raise and kill an estimated 70 billion animals for food each year, all of whom require water to survive. A few billion of these animals need forty or more gallons per day to stay hydrated properly, which leads the meat and dairy industries to account for 29% of all the fresh water used in the world today. According to the EPA, the average household of three in the U.S. consumes about 50,000 gallons of water per year for indoor use, however, this estimate does not include the water required for food production, which uses much more water than taking showers and flushing toilets, especially when not following a plant-based diet. The food used to mean the caloric, protein, and fat requirements of a plant-based diet are much less intensive in water and land use than the animal-based alternatives. The chart below illustrates the water use of many plant and animal products. If you want to save water and help the environment, it is much more effective to stop eating meat than it is to shorten your showers.

Sources: https://www.forksoverknives.com/freshwater-abuse-and-loss-where-is-it-all-going/#gs.u15WUT4 and http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/

Photo: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2469732/The-world-high-Stunning-aerial-photographs-Americas-fascinating-natural-man-landscapes.html