Food Choices and Climate Change

...... or why eating plant based can significantly help save our World.

The following links were my primary sources of information for my Oct 28 presentation on Food Choices and Climate Change at Dorothy Greets’ class for Osher Lifelong Learning.

National Academy of Sciences report:
Land, irrigation water, greenhouse gas, and reactive nitrogen burdens of meat, eggs, and dairy production in the United States
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/33/11996.abstract

The Environmental Working Groups, Meat Eater’s Guide:
http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/a-meat-eaters-guide-to-climate-change-health-what-you-eat-matters/reducing-your-footprint/

NASA Global Climate Change - Vital Signs of the Planet:
http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

J. Morris Hicks web site: Tearing Down the Single Biggest Road Block to Sustainability
http://hpjmh.com/2014/10/23/tearing-down-the-single-biggest-roadblock-to-sustainability/?utm

Meat is the new tobacco!!!

Sound weird?

It is solid science, if and when you get through the Industry filters.

Trust me, and MANY doctors whom I will provide links to soon, but in the meantime:

http://www.pcrm.org/pdfs/health/meat_new_tobacco_chart.pdf

Off to a vegan stir fry dinner,

Herbivore Bill

Crops, Livestock, and Sustainability

Happy New Year to All, and to all less beef. Less beef is better for you, and for our Earth.

The following links are very detailed, but I think also very worthwhile, thought provoking, and good references for future study.

First from Dr. McDougall re what we eat, and why Al Gore just made a huge statement with his change to becoming a vegan.

So then I checked out the detailed link from the UN about the Livestock's Long Shadow. (This is a big link, but do try to read the executive summary).

Now since the UN paper was from 2006, I did some additional research of my own, and found a very recent and thorough study by the International Livestock Institute and 2 others titled "......hoofprints".

In a nutshell, if you care about our Earth and still want to eat animal protein, eat chickens.......or go fishing.

HOME - "It's not what's gone, it's what remains that is important."

HOME is a very inspiring video on YouTube about Our Planet and how we have exploited it...... AND, how we can help save it. It is an hour an a half long, but well worth your time to watch all of it.  I do plan to show a few segments in our climate class. Most climate change segments appear after 1:00 hr.

BTW, the photography is also awesome.

Food Waste Greenhouse Gas Emmissions - 3rd Largest Emitter behind China and US

I am only posting this NBC link because the reported magnitude of the problem is so large. From what I have read, the emissions include all energy used to grow and process the wasted food, as well as the CO2 and methane emitted by the disposal of the wasted food. That seems fair, but also a complicated series of calculations.

What also seems so very unfortunate and unnecessary, is wasting this vast quantity of food with so many people on Earth needy and starving.

Bill

PS - Our class agenda for "Predicting Climate Change", Oct 23 through Nov 20 at Osher Lifelong Learning in Lewes DE, will be posted very soon. I am looking forward to an educationally stimulating and interesting fall.

Agriculture's response to climate change

The technology of selective breeding crop plants and ranch animals is being used to make both more tolerant of hotter, dryer conditions. The lead sentences from a USA Today article:

"Across American agriculture, farmers and crop scientists have concluded that it's too late to fight climate change. They are trying to adapt to it with new generations of hardier animals and plants specially engineered to survive, and even thrive, in intense heat, with little rain."

Unlike trying to reduce carbon emissions, this adaption process faces few challenges, and those using it come out ahead pretty much as they do it. Switch from coal to solar power generation, and you generally become less competitive with those who remain on coal. Were fossil fuel power generation to pay for its total costs, environmental degradation included, renewable energy would definitely be competitive.

Flatulence, Climate and Dinosaurs

Methane released by cattle, and other ruminants accounts for 50 to 100 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year, and methane is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming our planet. This knowledge prompted some British scientists to hypothesize what large herbivorous dinosaurs might have released. Their calculations came up with about 520 million tons of methane per year, a quantity large enough that it could have accounted for the earth's relatively warm temperatures back in the age of dinosaurs 140 million years ago.

This news has been widely publicized, so maybe it is not new to you. What surprised me is that after reading about it from 4 or 5 different sources, I found by far the best and most accurate summary in the Wall Street Journal article, Dinosaur Gas Emissions May Have Warmed Air.

Climate and Veganism - a major opportunity

Why is being a vegan good for our planet? It is actually very simple. Our foods growing energy comes from the sun. Plants (including phytoplankton in the sea) contain the largest amount of food energy per unit of solar energy delivered to Earth. Farm animals fed on plants we grow loose a large amount of the initial solar energy delivered to Earth due to conversion inefficiencies...and adding to climate woes, animal wastes release large amounts of methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide, all potent greenhouse gases.

Want to pursue further? Start with Marc Guenther's vegan posts. There are a multitude of issues eating less meat addresses, your health probably being #1.

Am I a vegan? Almost, and my wife Sally is a full vegan. My deviation from being a full vegan is because I still consume some fish, preferably caught by me on hook-and-line, but also some commercially caught in the wild, like sardines and wild Pacific Salmon. My consumption of hoofed animals and poultry and dairy is zero.

Sustainable Agriculture

The title link is to the NY Times Blog by Andrew Revkin which contains a link to the excellent video, "The Other Inconvenient Truth", featuring Jonathan Foley.

Some other links used in today's class are:
Skeptic Talking Points Melt Away
NASA On-line Videos
Agriculture and population maps of the world
Nationmaster map and statistics source for countries of the world