"Habitat loss is one of the driving forces of extinctions world wide."
This is especially true in places like Brazil. Where the rainforest is being cut down and the water system is polluted by greedy land owners & squatters. A big driver in this destruction is soybeans, used to feed domestic animals and PEOPLE (ESP. VEGETARIANS). "Also well known - vegetarian diets can provide all the nutrients that normal people need." Communism works really good on paper too. "QED - a vegetarian diet would be better for the planet (and we would have much smaller problems with obesity!)." Because there are no obese vegetarians and crop production does not produce huge amounts of CO2, use huge amounts of disappearing/depleted topsoil, pollute fresh water systems/estuaries, and promote forest clearing, etc. Cheers, Benjamin PS: There is no magic bullet, but I would love to sell you some magic beans if you think being vegetarian is "the answer" to Earths problems. On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 11:58 AM, James J. Roper <[email protected]> wrote: > > A well-known statistic is that there are as many domestic animals bred for food for people as there are people in the world, or more. If we consider a 10% conversion of food to mass of the consumer, the logic is undeniable that if all ate lower on the food chain, we could use less land to do it with. Also, we could do it with less energy. Another detail is that more land is used to grow food for those animals than to grow food for people. Just switching the land to grow food for people instead of animals would mean that we could do this on much less land. Habitat loss is one of the driving forces of extinctions world wide. But also, pollution from high efficiency animal production is another huge issue (pigs and chickens). Not to mention land degradation due to grazing. > > Also well known - vegetarian diets can provide all the nutrients that normal people need. > > QED - a vegetarian diet would be better for the planet (and we would have much smaller problems with obesity!). > > Cheers, > > Jim > > malcolm McCallum wrote on 09-Sep-09 0:50: >> >> I tend to believe that any absolute answer that is declared an end all answer >> is probably not the answer. For example, I'm not convinced that everyone >> jumping into a vegetarian diet is going to suddenly or even slowly >> save the world. >> Especially, considering that some of these stats are based on unrealistic >> estimates. >> >> For example, suggesting that x acres of corn would feed x number of cows and >> that would feed x number of people whereas the x acres of corn would feed way >> more people is flawed. Humans cannot survive on a corn diet. Even if >> we expanded >> this to grains and soybeans, humans cannot survive on a corn-soybean diet. >> Why? because vegetables in general are low in two or three essential >> amino acids >> that humans must get in their diet. those amino acids are produced by animals >> and so you must ultimately get them from animals or artificially >> produced products. >>
