Meat the Truth
When we think of Global Warming, our thoughts might turn to emissions produced by cars and other vehicles, factory plants, how we use our gas and electric supplies at home, even right down to the small things like how many times we boil a kettle in a day.
These are some of the common answers that we give when asked: What are the main causes of Global Warming? However, most of us are unaware of one of the biggest causes of this increasing problem: the meat industry.
Below is a must-see video for mind-blowing facts about how the consumption of meat not only causes extreme animal suffering, but also incredibly dangerous and potentially irreversible damage to our planet. When you watch the video, you just won’t believe the level of ignorance we are guilty of when it comes to the problems we cause to our environment.
The video, “Meat the Truth” reveals to us that, while cars and other vehicles are responsible for 13% of the harmful emissions that harm our planet, the meat industry is responsible for an enormous 18% of emissions! If you think of every car, every train, ship and airplane that operates in the world, the combined damage they cause to the environment is LESS than the damage caused by the desire to temporarily satisfy our taste buds.
To put these numbers into perspective, it is said that if every American replaced just ONE meal containing meat per week with a non-meat substitute, it would be the equivalent of taking 500 cars off the road in terms of pollution. How incredible!
In fact, in the USA, factory farming uses up ONE THIRD of the ENTIRE supply of fossil fuel in order to satisfy our eating habits. When you consider that this use of energy is completely unnecessary, it really brings it home just how selfish we can be when we freely put our very existence in danger for the sake of something that amounts to nothing more than temporary pleasure.
One of the main contributing factors to the Global Warming process is the release of methane gas into the environment, which traps radiation from the Earth. This causes the rise in atmospheric temperature that in turn causes our planet to incur devastating damage.
Methane gas is produced by cows and this production is increased due to factory farming, which feeds animals way beyond their natural needs. For example, a dairy cow that produces 8,000-10,000 liters of milk in one year will produce 500-700 liters of methane gas PER DAY! Over one year, this amounts up to over 250,000 liters of methane gas produced by EACH individual dairy cow.
What’s more, in order to feed animals way beyond their natural needs, they need to be fed huge amounts of corn, hay, soy bean, and barley – crops that are continually planted at an alarming rate. To make way for these crops, vast tracts of rainforest have to be torn down, causing even further environmental damage. So as we can see, the meat industry doesn’t stop at causing great suffering to animals, it actually causes widespread suffering to a number of beings who live in natural habitats, as well as irreversible damage to the natural environment itself, which provides essential support in keeping the Earth’s environment stable.
The really sad part is that, all the while we have been conditioned and convinced to believe that meat and dairy products are essential parts to our diet, they are actually not as necessary as we have come to believe. Human beings are perfectly capable of living healthy lives without the consumption of meat and dairy products. In fact, while dairy cows individually produce 8,000-10,000 liters of milk per year, the milk is really only of any use to calves. Humans are the only species that continue to consume milk beyond infancy.
There is not one nutrient contained in meat or dairy products that cannot be found in natural sources of food – not a single one. Therefore, in terms of a healthy diet, we really don’t need animals at all to produce anything at the expense of their suffering or their lives; this is done purely to satiate our own greed and desire. On top of this, we are also faced with the hard truths that reveal our greed and desire to consume meat and dairy lie at the very heart of the problem that is slowly destroying our planet!
Please watch the video provided. What you have read here doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the problem. The information you will hear and the images you will see are nothing less than jaw-dropping. And even if you are not a vegetarian or vegan, you will find it impossible to ignore the concrete evidence that proves there is a direct link between Global Warming and the unnecessary choices we make.
Tsem Rinpoche
Or view the video on the server at:
https://video.tsemtulku.com/videos/GlobalWarming_MEATTHETRUTH.mp4
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Global warming is the long-term heating of Earth’s climate system , due to human activities. Warmer temperatures over time are changing weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature. All these poses many risks to human beings and all other forms of life on Earth. There are many causes of global warming such as farming, waste, consumerism, industrialization and so forth. The increased of heat, drought and insect outbreaks, all linked. The quickest ways we can lower our collective greenhouse gas emissions is to eat less meat. Reducing meat consumption may improve human health, curb environmental damage and greenhouse gas emissions and so forth. The consumption of meat not only causes extreme animal suffering. Livestock farming has a vast environmental footprint. It contributes to land and water degradation, and deforestation. Animals are sentient creatures like us , we do not cause them to suffer unnecessarily. Give them a chance, do not harm them in away for our menu.
Thank you Rinpoche for this sharing.
After reading this post ,i realised the planet is warming and human activity is not the primary cause ,but the main concerned seen to be eating meat .To me its the clearing of forest for comercial used , farming ,vehicles on the road and so forth are the cupits .Its not that case,killing and eating meat is.Thank you Rinpoche for highlighted this post which i then only know.Hope more people are aware of it and be a vegetarian.
Being Vegetarian is not just for religion purposes but actually for our mother earth especially with the global warming effects now.
It is also becoming the trend now to be vegetarian for a lot of reasons such as environmental, love animals, healthy living, etc etc.
I started from being vegetarian for 1-day/Week a few years ago and I have been vegetarian for 5 years now!
Just make a choice for being vegetarian 1 day per week and we can help in saving our mother earth for ourselves and our future generation.
Dear Rinpoche,
Thank you for sharing one more reason for us to go vegetarian. Global warming is a very dangerous phenomena which will end up killing all living beings on earth when the earth’s temperature rise up uncontrollably. Even small changes as small as 1 degree Celsius will make a huge different in the whole ecosystem. Green house gases such as methane is responsible for trapping the heat within the atmosphere.
The meat industry contributes to global warming by cutting down forest lands to built large scale farm and factory farming. They are removing forest that are natural counter to global warming and increasing the release of green house gases unnecessarily into the atmosphere. They are torturing the animals in factory farming and killing the planet in their pursuit of meat. By taking out meat from our diet, we will stop contributing to their evil doings. We have to protect the animals and environment and we can just do that by just refraining from taking meat.
Humbly,
chris
Now am so glad that am no longer contributing that much to global warming through my eating habits. Thank you for this educational post, Rinpoche. I hope that more people will realise how detrimental eating meat is and will resolve to change for the better.
Eating meat is sick enough, but i never knew it affected the planet! People are so cruel think of them not your taste buds, the solution is vegetarianism.Thank you for sharing Rinpoche
I once met a girl who was vegetarian for political and environmental reasons, which I found quite fascinating at the time. She explained that the amount of money that a country like the united states invested into ‘farming’ these animals (which involves using acres and acres and acres of land for cows to graze off of) can go towards feeding so many more millions of people in the world. The amount of land that is used for breeding animals for their meat could potentially be used to farm so many more vegetables and plants that could feed so so so many more people throughout the world. In other words, just for a few people’s privileged pleasure of eating steaks and hamburgers, huge percentages of the world’s population are denied the most basic meals and nutrition. Interesting?
So it looks like by eating meat, we damage not just the environment and the animals – we damage our own fellow human beings too.
How many of think that the greatest contributor to global warming is due to vehicles ? This is farther from the truth, the greatest contributor of the activity is the farming animals for meat. when we farm animals, land that could be rainforests are converted into farm land, and less rainforests will reduce the absorption of methane and CO2 from the environment. On top of that ruminant animals will generate a lot of methane gases that further global warming