Category: Blog

Published on Saturday, January 20, 2007 T
The Huffington Post

Vegetarian is the New Prius

by Kathy Freston

President Herbert Hoover promised "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." With warnings about global warming reaching feverish levels, many are having second thoughts about all those cars. It seems they should instead be worrying about the chickens.

Last month, the United Nations published a report on livestock and the environment with a stunning conclusion: "The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." It turns out that raising animals for food is a primary cause of land degradation, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and not least of all, global warming.

That's right, global warming. You've probably heard the story: emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are changing our climate, and scientists warn of more extreme weather, coastal flooding, spreading disease, and mass extinctions. It seems that when you step outside and wonder what happened to winter, you might want to think about what you had for dinner last night. The U.N. report says almost a fifth of global warming emissions come from livestock (i.e., those chickens Hoover was talking about, plus pigs, cattle, and others)–that's more emissions than from all of the world's transportation combined.

For a decade now, the image of Leonardo DiCaprio cruising in his hybrid Toyota Prius has defined the gold standard for environmentalism. These gas-sipping vehicles became a veritable symbol of the consumers' power to strike a blow against global warming. Just think: a car that could cut your vehicle emissions in half – in a country responsible for 25% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions. Federal fuel economy standards languished in Congress, and average vehicle mileage dropped to its lowest level in decades, but the Prius showed people that another way is possible. Toyota could not import the cars fast enough to meet demand.

Last year researchers at the University of Chicago took the Prius down a peg when they turned their attention to another gas guzzling consumer purchase. They noted that feeding animals for meat, dairy, and egg production requires growing some ten times as much crops as we'd need if we just ate pasta primavera, faux chicken nuggets, and other plant foods. On top of that, we have to transport the animals to slaughterhouses, slaughter them, refrigerate their carcasses, and distribute their flesh all across the country. Producing a calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuels–and spewing more than ten times as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide–as does a calorie of plant protein. The researchers found that, when it's all added up, the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius.

According to the UN report, it gets even worse when we include the vast quantities of land needed to give us our steak and pork chops. Animal agriculture takes up an incredible 70% of all agricultural land, and 30% of the total land surface of the planet. As a result, farmed animals are probably the biggest cause of slashing and burning the world's forests. Today, 70% of former Amazon rainforest is used for pastureland, and feed crops cover much of the remainder. These forests serve as "sinks," absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, and burning these forests releases all the stored carbon dioxide, quantities that exceed by far the fossil fuel emission of animal agriculture.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the real kicker comes when looking at gases besides carbon dioxide–gases like methane and nitrous oxide, enormously effective greenhouse gases with 23 and 296 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, respectively. If carbon dioxide is responsible for about one-half of human-related greenhouse gas warming since the industrial revolution, methane and nitrous oxide are responsible for another one-third. These super-strong gases come primarily from farmed animals' digestive processes, and from their manure. In fact, while animal agriculture accounts for 9% of our carbon dioxide emissions, it emits 37% of our methane, and a whopping 65% of our nitrous oxide.

It's a little hard to take in when thinking of a small chick hatching from her fragile egg. How can an animal, so seemingly insignificant against the vastness of the earth, give off so much greenhouse gas as to change the global climate? The answer is in their sheer numbers. The United States alone slaughters more than 10 billion land animals every year, all to sustain a meat-ravenous culture that can barely conceive of a time not long ago when "a chicken in every pot" was considered a luxury. Land animals raised for food make up a staggering 20% of the entire land animal biomass of the earth. We are eating our planet to death.

What we're seeing is just the beginning, too. Meat consumption has increased five-fold in the past fifty years, and is expected to double again in the next fifty.

It sounds like a lot of bad news, but in fact it's quite the opposite. It means we have a powerful new weapon to use in addressing the most serious environmental crisis ever to face humanity. The Prius was an important step forward, but how often are people in the market for a new car? Now that we know a greener diet is even more effective than a greener car, we can make a difference at every single meal, simply by leaving the animals off of our plates. Who would have thought: what's good for our health is also good for the health of the planet!

Going veg provides more bang for your buck than driving a Prius. Plus, that bang comes a lot faster. The Prius cuts emissions of carbon dioxide, which spreads its warming effect slowly over a century. A big chunk of the problem with farmed animals, on the other hand, is methane, a gas which cycles out of the atmosphere in just a decade. That means less meat consumption quickly translates into a cooler planet.

Not just a cooler planet, also a cleaner one. Animal agriculture accounts for most of the water consumed in this country, emits two-thirds of the world's acid-rain-causing ammonia, and it the world's largest source of water pollution–killing entire river and marine ecosystems, destroying coral reefs, and of course, making people sick. Try to imagine the prodigious volumes of manure churned out by modern American farms: 5 million tons a day, more than a hundred times that of the human population, and far more than our land can possibly absorb. The acres and acres of cesspools stretching over much of our countryside, polluting the air and contaminating our water, make the Exxon Valdez oil spill look minor in comparison. All of which we can fix surprisingly easily, just by putting down our chicken wings and reaching for a veggie burger.

Doing so has never been easier. Recent years have seen an explosion of environmentally-friendly vegetarian foods. Even chains like Ruby Tuesday, Johnny Rockets, and Burger King offer delicious veggie burgers and supermarket refrigerators are lined with heart-healthy creamy soymilk and tasty veggie deli slices. Vegetarian foods have become staples at environmental gatherings, and garnered celebrity advocates like Bill Maher, Alec Baldwin, Paul McCartney, and of course Leonardo DiCaprio. Just as the Prius showed us that we each have in our hands the power to make a difference against a problem that endangers the future of humanity, going vegetarian gives us a new way to dramatically reduce our dangerous emissions that is even more effective, easier to do, more accessible to everyone and certainly goes better with french fries.

Ever-rising temperatures, melting ice caps, spreading tropical diseases, stronger hurricanes… So, what are you do doing for dinner tonight? Check out www.VegCooking.com for great ideas, free recipes, meal plans, and more! Check out the environmental section of www.GoVeg.com for a lot more information about the harmful effect of meat-eating on the environment.

Kathy Freston is a self-help author and personal growth and spirituality counselor. She is the author of Expect a Miracle: Seven Spiritual Steps to Finding the Right Relationship. Her CDs offering guided meditation have been featured in W, Self, and Mode. Kathy and her husband, Tom Freston, divide their time between New York and Los Angeles.

© 2007 The Huffington Post

"The choice is not between wind power and unspoiled nature. The choice is between wind power and the destruction of the world's biology."
– Bill McKibben

Confessions of a Bat Lover:
Wind farms can help save America's bat populations from a huge crash, probable mass extinctions

By Mike Tidwell
Director, Chesapeake Climate Action Network
Audubon Naturalist Society 'Conservation' award winner, 2003

First the good news: A year ago, a very small but very vocal group of wind power critics were repeatedly asserting that proposed wind farms in western Maryland and across Appalachia would put -millions- of migratory birds at risk for collision deaths. Thankfully, a growing body of scientific data continues to show that these projections have been fantastically untrue. It now appears that properly sited wind farms will have zero-that's right, zero – impact on resident and migratory bird populations across Appalachia. (Visit www.nationalwind.org/publications/avian.htm for national and regional statistics).

But now legitimate concerns have been raised about a new and unexpected development at some Appalachian wind farms: bat fatalities. But before critics of wind power plunge forward with new assertions about a coming holocaust for these friendly flying mammals, it's important to get the story straight from the start this time. There is growing optimism among environmentalists and wind industry officials that the phenomenon of bat fatalities at wind farms may soon be fully understood and can be quickly and successfully addressed using readily feasible technological responses.

The point I want to make is this: The lives of all of us — bats, humans, all living creatures — are at dramatic risk in the coming decades from the rising crisis of global warming. The effects of this warming are already painfully present in our region, from sea-level rise on the Chesapeake Bay to the spread of infectious diseases to the near-total destruction of the maple syrup industry in Maryland and Virginia (www.chesapeakeclimate.org).

What's more, our only avenue of escape from this gathering threat is a very rapid switch to clean energy, especially wind power. And we will only make that transition if we maintain a faith in our ability as a society to bring creativity and positive solutions, not temporary obstacles and a rejectionist mentality, to the clean energy revolution at every step.

So What's Up With the Bats?

Many of you may have seen a front page story in the Washington Post on January 1st about the unexpected bat fatalities at three Appalachian wind farms, including the 'Mountaineer' wind farm in Tucker County, West Virginia, closest to D.C. While bird mortality at this wind farm has been extremely low — just 200 or so avian deaths in 2003 from all 44 wind mills combined — bat fatalities appear to be a full magnitude higher.

Thankfully, no endangered bats have been killed and there's no data showing that the impacts from existing or proposed wind farms will cause biologically significant impacts on resident or migratory bat populations. But this issue must be addressed. Bats are not only great biological wonders of the world, they serve ecosystems and human communities by consuming insects harmful to forests, human health and agriculture.

Frankly, researchers are not quite sure why the bats are hitting the windmills. Their echo-location capacity appears to shut down at certain times around these clean-energy structures. But the good news is that the collisions appear to be "episodic" in nature, meaning they happen in bursts. At the Mountaineer farm, for example, there are very few fatalities for much of the year, but the period from July-September brings spikes in bat collisions within very narrow windows of time. These spikes, moreover, appear to happen just before and after storms and on really warm nights when there's little wind.

Optimism about solutions

The fact that the moments of greatest risk seem clearly related to predictable weather changes is a source of growing optimism. Wind farms, for example, could choose to shut down completely prior to potential spikes associated with summer storms or warm, low-wind evenings. Also, the modern windmill blades can be 'feathered,' i.e. the blades turned sideways so that their rotation is slowed dramatically, a procedure which some initial observations show might greatly reduce bat strikes.

There's also the possibility of using some sort of acoustic deterrence to warn bats away from the windmills. Researchers say it might be possible to broadcast a high-frequency sound inaudible to most humans — perhaps in the 15 kilohertz range — from each windmill, triggering the bats- echo-location sensors and steering them away. Or perhaps a combination of these techniques – periodic windmill cessation with simultaneous acoustic deterrence – could dramatically reduce bat mortality, if not virtually eliminate it.

There's absolutely no reason, in other words, to declare clean-energy wind power a new menace to the environment, as a very few critics continue to do. We Americans are an industrious, problem-solving people. We can fix things and make good things happen when we make up our minds. Meanwhile, we desperately need clean energy. We need it in a hurry. We need it on a big scale. So the idea that we cannot quickly address this unexpected bat challenge in Appalachia to the satisfaction of both man and nature just doesn't fit reality or history's inexorable push toward clean, sustainable energy systems.

So here's my prediction: five years from now wind farms will be a familiar, reassuring sight in several parts of Appalachia and across the farmlands of Maryland's Eastern Shore and perhaps even out in the Atlantic Ocean like the current offshore projects in Denmark, Germany, England and Ireland. And bat and bird fatalities? They'll be something we no longer talk about. Why? Because the numbers will be so remarkably small and the environmental benefits of wind power so dramatically large.

The real threat to bats: coal and global warming

In the last dozen years alone, 490,000 acres of prime Appalachian mountain forest land has been turned into an utter moonscape by a process called 'mountaintop removal' to mine coal. It used to be that humans took the coal out of the mountains. Now we simply take the mountains off the coal, with truly unspeakable results. This is
happening in Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, but especially in nearby West Virginia. How many Appalachian bats were exterminated in the last dozen years as part of this process? Who knows? But almost surely itâ's in the millions. And at least 244 species of birds have been affected. Appalachian children and entire human communities are dying too. (See www.crmw.net).

Unbelievably, thanks to regulatory help from the Bush Administration, another 326,000 acres of prime Appalachian land are scheduled for mountaintop removal in the next eight years. That makes a total area of land from 1992-2012 equivalent to blowing up and leveling virtually the entire panhandle of western Maryland! Thatâ's right: Garrett County completely gone. Allegany County turned into a desolate wasteland. Half of Washington County made into a parking lot. It truly strains credibility to think that some wind critics believe a few hundred windmills in western Maryland pose a threat on par with turning the equivalent of ALL of western Maryland into a desolate moonscape.

And these coal impacts happen even before we actually burn the stuff to create more than half of Maryland and Virginia's electricity. After the combustion phase we get the acid rain and the code-red smog days. We get the skyrocketing childhood asthma and the suffocating nitrogen flows into the Chesapeake Bay. We get the soot and the mercury poisoning of pregnant women. And we get lots and lots of global warming. The climate threat is particularly unsettling. Left unchecked, global warming is expected to cause the extinction of one quarter of all land-based plant and animal species on Earth by 2050! (see www.chesapeakeclimate.org/Nature%20Jan%208%202004%20article.pdf) That would include, of course, lots of bats and lots of birds and perhaps lots of us!

Wind or coal: It's time to choose

Some critics say wind power actually does nothing to alter coal consumption. This is absolutely, totally false. There is already firm evidence that existing wind farms in Pennsylvania and West Virginia are reducing the amount of coal that would otherwise be burned to power our regional grid. But more importantly, the Maryland Public Service Commission projects that the state will need a staggering 11 million megawatt hours of new electricity capacity by 2010. Virginia will need about the same. Where is this electricity going to come from? Natural gas? Hardly. Natural gas prices are so high that new gas-fired power plants are no longer being built and there's little chance this will change for several years.

That leaves wind power and coal power as the only two sources investors are now willing to sink capital into. Wind or coal. If we go really slow with wind farm development or shut the industry down completely along the east coast by fixating on a ceaseless series of temporary, resolvable obstacles that are laughable compared to coal's impacts, then that's what we'll get: coal. Lots and lots of coal.

I think Appalachia's bats deserve better. I think our children deserve better. It's abundantly clear to me and growing number of Americans that the future of our world truly lies in clean, renewable wind power. And the faster we get there, the better.

Radar Studies Show Proposed Wind Farms Unlikely to Impact Migratory Bird Populations

A long-awaited study on bats and windmills will also be released soon. Some scientists and wind industry officials have expressed optimism in recent months that the issue of bats being attracted to certain windmills might be mitigated through the use of a high-frequency acoustic deterrence at the wind farms.

Monday evening at St. Mary’s College of MD, and the usual suspects are gathering to discuss global warming solutions at an open forum, sponsored by the St. Mary’s Student Environmental Action Coalition and the Center for the Study of Democracy. Students and community members mingled and helped set up chairs while Continue reading

“Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with an its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.” Continue reading

On Wednesday night, I attended the Town Hall Meeting in Greenbelt (mainly organized by our amazing local chapter!), which featured, among others, atmospheric scientist Chris Barnet, Ph.D, who gave a great talk about the science of global warming. After going through the standard science-speak introduction, he brought up an analogy for global warming pollution that everyone could easily visualize: charcoal briquettes. He challenged the audience to visualize throwing a certain number of briquettes into their backyard (or out their car window while driving on the beltway) for each activity they did, to symbolically demonstrate the amount of pollution their energy use was producing.

Audience members listen to the speakers.

Other speakers included Mayor Davis of Greenbelt, State Senator Paul Pinsky, and Brad Heavner, the Director of Environment Maryland. The evening closed with a panel of scientists joining the speakers to take questions from the audience.

The distinguished panel takes questions.

And as this was one of the month of action events, that means it’s time for an update on how we’re doing on our goals!

Want to help us reach our goals? Get involved in the month of action!