The Warming Globe
and Us It’s More Than CO2
by Dan
Brook and Richard H. Schwartz / May 1st, 2007
Global warming goes
way beyond “an inconvenient truth”. We are overheating our planet to alarming
levels with potentially catastrophic consequences. 2006 was the hottest year
on record in the U.S. and the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since
1994. Think of an overheated car, an overcooked dinner, or being sick with a
fever. Now imagine that on a planetary scale.
Global warming is
perhaps the biggest social, political economic, and environmental problem
facing our planet and its inhabitants. People are becoming increasingly aware
of and concerned about global warming, despite ExxonMobil misinformation and
Bush Administration obfuscation, due to frequent reports regarding record
heat, wildfires, an increase in the number and severity of storms, droughts,
the melting of glaciers, permafrost, and polar ice caps, rising sea levels,
flooding, acidification of the oceans, changes in wind direction, endangered
species and accelerated species extinction, spreading diseases, shrinking
lakes, submerged islands, and environmental refugees. We may be standing at a
precipice.
At the close of 2006,
there were reports of at least three major events that dramatized the present
threat of global warming: (1) the Indian island of Lohachara had to be
evacuated before being submerged, creating over 10,000 refugees; (2) the
massive Ayles Ice Shelf broke off from the Canadian Arctic; and (3) the Bush
Administration, which has been resistant to addressing global warming, and
generally hostile toward the environment, agreed that polar bears are
“threatened”, as many polar bears are drowning and starving to death, mainly
due to melting ice caused by global warming, and moved to protect them under
the Endangered Species Act. Global warming is also threatening penguins,
seals, frogs, butterflies, African elephants, and many other animals.
All this comes on top
of other recent catastrophes: the collapse of ice shelves in Antarctica and
Greenland; unprecedented weather events around the world, such as Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita; killer heat waves, causing among other things, a bust of
the ski season in Europe and the deaths of 35,000-50,000 people in Europe in
the summer of 2003; the disappearing of glaciers from Glacier National Park
in Montana and elsewhere (about 80% of the world’s glaciers are shrinking);
and other ominous signs of disaster.
“Such a path is not
merely unsustainable”, according to Harvard Professor John P. Holdren,
president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “it is
a prescription for disaster.”
There is no doubt that
humanity is threatened as perhaps never before and major changes have to
occur to put our imperiled planet on a sustainable path — and soon. Even
though a small number of individuals argue against global warming, there is a
scientific and environmental consensus — among all major scientific and
environmental organizations, journals, and magazines, and all peer-reviewed
scholarly articles — that global warming is real, serious, worsening, and
caused or exacerbated by human activity. The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) released its Fourth Assessment Report in February 2007,
which was researched and written by about 2,500 climate scientists over six
years and vetted by over 130 governments.
The Report carefully
delineates clear trends and catastrophic consequences associated with climate
change, warning of the possibility of severe and irreversible change, unless
we make concerted efforts to counter global warming. The IPCC makes it plain
that the current and projected climate change is not simply “natural
variation”, but “very likely” (meaning at least 90%) the result of human
activity. Even Time magazine (and the Brookings Institution, among many
others) has declared the “case closed” on the problem of global warming, with
only the solutions to still debate.
Several leading
experts, including climatologist James Hansen of NASA and physicist Stephen
Hawking, perhaps the most famous living scientist, as well as Al Gore and
others, warn that global climate change may reach a ‘tipping point’ and
spiral out of control, with disastrous consequences, if current conditions
continue. A recent 700-page British government report, authored by a former
chief economist for the World Bank, projects losses of up to 20% of world
gross domestic product by 2050 unless 1% of current world domestic product is
devoted to combating global climate change. Other economic studies have
projected even worse scenarios. Whether for personal or public health, for a
personal crisis or a planetary one, prevention is far cheaper and easier than
trying to catch up and clean up after the catastrophe.
It therefore should
not be surprising that the Pentagon states that global warming is a larger
threat than even terrorism.
“Picture Japan,
suffering from flooding along its coastal cities and contamination of its
fresh water supply, eyeing Russia’s Sakhalin Island oil and gas reserves as
an energy source”, suggests a Pentagon memo on global warming. “Envision
Pakistan, India and China — all armed with nuclear weapons — skirmishing at
their borders over refugees, access to shared river and arable land.”
The new Secretary
General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, has said that climate change
needs to be taken as seriously as war and, further, that “changes in our
environment and the resulting upheavals from droughts to inundated coastal
areas to loss of arable land are likely to become a major driver of war and
conflict”. Fighting global warming may be one way to prevent future wars,
simultaneously increasing energy security and physical security.
Progressives have
additional cause for concern. The people most affected by global warming are
the socially disadvantaged — especially the poor, people of color including
the indigenous, women, children, the elderly, people with disabilities,
subsistence farmers, and those dependent on a single crop for their
livelihood or a few species for their nutritional needs — since they are
often in the weakest position to guard against environmental damages and will
likely suffer the most harm.
“It’s the poorest of
the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous
societies, who are going to be the worst hit,” said IPCC Chair Rajendra
Pachauri.
Further, increased
suffering and increasing numbers of environmental refugees, along with
greater anxiety over declining access to food, water, land, and housing, the
material essentials of life, often lead to unstable conditions that give rise
to anger, ethnic violence, fascism, and war, which all-too-often have been
targeted at minority communities and vulnerable people. In addition to
causing more famine and disease, the fallout from climate change may also
lead to more terrorism and violence, by impoverishing and radicalizing
people, and making them more desperate, according to some experts. Those who
needlessly degrade and destroy the environment to satisfy their own selfish
pleasures are like the pre-revolutionary Queen Marie-Antoinette, declaring
“Let them eat carbon dioxide”!
A collateral benefit
of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels to fight global warming is that it
will reduce air and water pollution. Such modern crises kill many more people
each year than terrorism, causing havoc in the present and creating a
distressful environmental debt for our descendants, instead of bequeathing a
healthy future. Energy independence and self-sufficiency, especially in the
form of decentralized renewable fuel sources, is an important step toward a
more sustainable world.
Yes, we need our
governments, corporations, schools, religious institutions, and other
organizations to get actively involved in fighting global warming. Yes, the
U.S. — the largest contributor to global warming — needs to join 169 others and
ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Yes, we need more fuel-efficient cars, appliances,
electronics, batteries, and light bulbs, and, yes, our society needs to
switch away from fossil fuels and toward renewable ones, such as solar, wind,
tidal, biomass, hydrogen, and others. But while we are struggling for these
important and positive large-scale social changes, we also need to say “yes!”
to personal changes.
A major study showing
how personal change can affect global warming is in the November 2006
390-page report of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), entitled
“Livestock’s Long Shadow.” It states that animal-based agriculture causes
approximately 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, which lead to global warming,
an amount greater than that caused by all forms of transportation on the
planet combined.
Cars are still
problematic, of course, but cows and other animals raised for human
consumption are contributing more to global warming, thereby causing more
damage to our existence. Therefore, what we eat is actually more important
than what we drive and the most important personal change we could make for
the environment, as well as for our health and the lives of animals, is to
switch to vegetarianism.
“If anyone wants to
save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat”, Paul
McCartney has said. “That’s the single most important thing you could
do.”
The world is feeding
over 50 billion farmed animals, while millions of people, disproportionately
children, starve to death each year. Over 70% of the major grains produced in
the U.S. (and about one-third produced worldwide) is inefficiently and
immorally diverted to feed farmed animals, to satisfy appetites for money and
meat, as it takes up to sixteen pounds of grain to produce a single pound of
feedlot beef for human consumption.
The FAO study reports
that the livestock industry, in total, uses and abuses roughly 30% of the
planet’s surface, thereby “entering into direct competition [with other
activities] for scarce land, water and other natural resources.” Further,
overuse of the land by livestock, leading to overuse of fuel and water, also
degrades the land and pollutes the water around it, contributing to
additional environmental and health problems.
An animal-based diet
also uses energy very inefficiently. It requires 78 calories of fossil fuel
for each calorie of protein obtained from feedlot-produced beef, but only 2
calories of fossil fuel to produce a calorie of protein from soybeans. Grains
and beans require only 2-5% as much fossil fuel as beef. The energy needed to
produce a pound of grain-fed beef is equivalent to one gallon of gasoline.
Reducing energy consumption is not only a better choice in terms of fighting
climate change, it is also a better choice in terms of being less dependent
on foreign oil and the vagaries of both markets and dictators. In the words
of Mahatma Gandhi, a vegetarian, “we must be the change we wish to see in
this world”.
Additionally, the
editors of World Watch (July/August 2004) concluded:
The human appetite for
animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of
environmental damage now threatening the human future — deforestation,
erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change,
biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities, and
the spread of disease.” Lee Hall, the legal director for Friends of Animals,
is more succinct: “Behind virtually every great environmental complaint
there’s milk and meat.
While growing concern
about global warming is welcome, the many connections between the
increasingly globalized Standard American Diet (SAD) and global warming have
generally been overlooked or marginalized.
The production of meat
contributes significantly to the emission of the three major gases associated
with global warming: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide
(N2O), as well as other eco-destructive gases such as ammonia, which
contributes to acid rain.
Indeed, according to
the United Nations Environment Programme, Unit on Climate Change, “There
is a strong link between human diet and methane emissions from livestock.”
The 2004 World Watch publication State of the World is more specific
regarding the link between animals raised for meat and global warming:
“Belching, flatulent livestock emit 16% of the world’s annual production of
methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.”
Likewise, with the
July 2005 issue of Physics World: “The animals we eat emit 21% of all the
carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity.” Eating meat and
other animal products directly contributes to the
environmentally-irresponsible industry and its devastating impact on the
environment, including the dire threat of global warming.
While carbon dioxide
is the most plentiful greenhouse gas, methane is 23 times more powerful, and
nitrous oxide is a whopping 296 times more potent, than carbon dioxide in
terms of global warming potential. With the livestock industry emitting such
a huge amount of methane and given that methane degrades relatively quickly
in the atmosphere (in approximately 12 years as compared to hundreds or even
thousands for carbon dioxide), a sharp decrease in animal consumption, and
therefore subsequent livestock production, would provide the necessary
near-term alleviation from global warming potentially “spinning out of
control”.
Further, changing from
the Standard American Diet to a vegetarian or, better yet, vegan diet,
according to geophysicists at the University of Chicago, does more to fight
global warming than switching from a gas-guzzling Hummer to a Camry or from a
Camry to a Prius.
It has been said that
“eating meat is like driving a huge SUV… a vegetarian diet is like driving a
[hybrid], and… a vegan diet is like riding a bicycle.” Shifting away from
SUVs, SUV lifestyles, and SUV-style diets, to energy-efficient,
life-affirming alternatives, is essential to fighting global warming.
Planetary sustainability and the well-being of humanity are greatly dependent
on a shift toward plant-based diets. One easy and effective way to fight
global warming every day is with our forks, knives, and chopsticks! We have
the opportunity and the responsibility to act against global warming.
Therefore, we need to take action. If we don’t, the “procrastination penalty”
will be painful. “How wonderful it is”, Anne Frank wrote in her diary, “that
nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
It is increasingly
clear that eliminating, or at least sharply reducing, the production and
consumption of meat and other animal products is imperative to help reduce
global warming and other grave environmental threats, in addition to
benefitting one’s physical and spiritual health. Mark Twain once quipped that
“Everybody talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about
it.”
Now we can. Now’s the
time.
Dan Brook, Ph.D., is
the co-author of Understanding Society (2007), author of Modern Revolution
(2005), and dozens of articles. He also maintains Eco-Eating, The Vegetarian
Mitzvah, No Smoking?, and can be contacted via Brook@california.com. Richard
H. Schwartz, Ph.D., is the author of Judaism and Vegetarianism, Judaism and
Global Survival, and over 150 articles located here. He is President of Jewish
Vegetarians of
Coordinator of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV), and
can be contacted via: President@JewishVeg.com. Read other articles by Dan, or
visit Dan’s website.
This article was
posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 at 3:00am and is filed under Environment.
ShareThis
Discussion about this post