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The Scoop

Edustat

Methane is 23 times more powerful in global warming potential than carbon dioxide (Center for Science in the Public Interest, 6 Arguments for a Greener Diet) and a vegan diet results in eliminating 1.5 tons of CO2 emissions annually.

Veg Wisdom

The way that we breed animals for food is a threat to the planet. It pollutes our environment while consuming huge amounts of water, grain, petroleum, pesticides and drugs. The results are disastrous. - David Brubaker, PhD, Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins University

Veg Wisdom

I had been vegetarian for a number of years and then one day my son came home and said he was vegan [to curtail the abuse of the planet]...and it was kind of a shock to me because I had never pushed him... And that actually really inspired me! - Michael Franti on being vegan

Veg Wisdom

We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. - David Brower, environmental champion (1912-2000)

Veg Wisdom

In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations. - Iroquois Nation maxim

Veg Wisdom

Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us. - Henrik Tikkanen, Finnish writer (1924 - 1984)

Veg Wisdom

If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That's the single most important thing you could do. It's staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. - Paul McCartney

Veg Wisdom

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. - Chief Seattle, 1855

Veg Wisdom

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. - John Muir, Scottish-born American naturalist, author, advocate (1838 - 1914)

Veg Wisdom

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future. - Marya Mannes, More in Anger, 1958 (1904 - 1990)

Veg Wisdom

Our modern industrial economy takes a mountain covered with trees, lakes, running streams and transforms it into a mountain of junk, garbage, slime pits, and debris. - Edward Abbey, American Author and Essayist (1927 - 1989)

Veg Wisdom

There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of themselves, that heartfelt knowledge that we are caretakers of this planet. - Brooke Medicine Eagle, Native American Earthkeeper

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Veg Wisdom

The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. - Chief Luther Standing Bear (1868 - 1939)

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Veg Spotlight

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I pledge allegiance to the world, to cherish every living thing, to care for earth and sea and air, with peace and freedom everywhere. - Lillian Gensler, Pledge to the Planet

Veg Wisdom

They took all the trees---and put them in a tree museum---Then they charged all the people---a dollar-and-a-half to see them.---They paved paradise---and put up a parking lot. - Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi

Veg Wisdom

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. - Elwyn Brooks White, Essays of E.B. White (1899 - 1985)

Veg Wisdom

To speak of environmentalism as separate from the spirit of peace is counterintuitive, for the spirit of peaceful evolution is the most natural environment. - Brian Bogart, MS, Peace Studies, University of Oregon

Veg Wisdom

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. - Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (1887 - 1948)

Veg Wisdom

Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children. - Ancient Native American Proverb

Veg Wisdom

Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We're not the brain, we are a cancer on nature. - Dave Foreman, Harper's, April 1990

Veg Wisdom

The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives. - Buddhist Proverb

Veg Wisdom

We're finally going to get the bill for the Industrial Age. If the projections are right, it's going to be a big one: the ecological collapse of the planet. - Jeremy Rifkin, World Press Review, 30 December 1989
(1945 -)

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Veg Wisdom

So bleak is the picture... that the bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century. - Philip Shabecoff, New York Times Magazine, 4 June 1978

The Scoop > Articles > Environment

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature---the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.
   - Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder, 1965

Must Read Articles

Climate Change and Meat Consumption

A recent authoritative report published by the World Watch institute, authors Goodland and Anhang concluded that over 51% of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions come from Livestock.

In the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate change summit, it is vital the following information be disseminated to the public as well as to our political leaders.

A widely cited 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock's Long Shadow, estimates that 18 percent of annual worldwide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are attributable to livestock...however recent analysis by Goodland and Anhang co-authors of "Livestock and Climate Change"

in the latest issue of World Watch magazine found that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions! >> MORE

Meat and the Environment
7 Clear-Cut Reasons Why Meat is Bad for the Environment
You often hear of people going vegetarian or vegan out of concern for animal rights, or for their health, both respectable reasons to cut out meat. But today a growing number of people are shunning meat because of its impact on the planet.

Raising animals for food requires massive amounts of land, food, energy, and water and contributes to animal suffering.
Meat Production Wastes Natural Resources

Veg for Life - A Farm Sanctuary Campaign, Protecting the Earth One Bite at a Time
Ruin on the Range

Eating meat threatens animal welfare, personal health, societal safety, food security, biodiversity, and environmental sustainability. The best way for us to personally protect our world and our health is to go vegetarian. That's >>
Eco-Eating!

Veg for Life - A Farm Sanctuary Campaign, Protecting the Earth One Bite at a Time
Factory Farming Links/Enviro

Meat and other animal products are a serious environmental issue... However, free-range, organic or local meats are not the solution to the environmental destruction of animal agribusiness.
How Does Animal Agriculture Impact the Environment?

America's meat addiction is steadily poisoning and depleting our land, water, and air.
Meat and the Environment

There has never been a better time for environmentalists to become vegetarians. Evidence of the environmental impacts of a meat-based diet is piling up at the same time its health effects are becoming better known.
The Case Against Meat

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.              - Upton Sinclair

Dioxin is a general term that describes a group of hundreds of chemicals that are highly persistent in the environment....According to the EPA report, not only does there appear to be no "safe" level of exposure to dioxin, but levels of dioxin and dioxin-like chemicals have been found in the general US population that are "at or near levels associated with adverse health effects."
Dioxin Homepage

I always knew that becoming a vegetarian would help prevent cruelty to animals but I was not aware of the environmental consequences of a meat-eating diet. by Lillie Ogden
The Environmental Impact of a Meat-Based Diet

Becoming vegetarian is one of the most important and effective actions you can take to ease the strain on our Earth's limited resources, protect the planet from pollution, prevent global warming, and save countless species from extinction.
http://www.chooseveg.com/environment.asp

Environmental Destruction, Climate Change, Water, Land Degradation, Biodiversity
http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/environment.html

Veganism for the Environment by Vegan Action
http://www.vegan.org/about_veganism/environment.html

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Eating meat is not sustainable!


Eating meat contributes to global poverty

Chief Seattle's Letter

"The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people. We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins.

We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.

As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.

One thing we know - there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all."

December 1854

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