I use a variety of excuses when people ask me why I am vegetarian. Actually, I mostly got asked why I was a vegetarian this past summer when I was in the PRC. One excuse that I used was that it doesn’t make sense environmentally or (macro)economically to eat meat. But when I used this excuse, I noticed that people (primarily omnivores) tend to get upset.
They quote historical references and religious texts that show that people have always eaten meat. And, humans evolved from animals, and animals eat meat. So it’s only right that we should too. (Does that mean that humans are done evolving?)
TreeHugger has a guide to vegetarian living out that has some good resources. It pointed to a Cornell study that might reach more people in an era of apparent climate change.
U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat, Cornell ecologist advises animal scientists. Future water and energy shortages predicted to change face of American agriculture.
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…Or, if those grains were exported, it would boost the U.S. trade balance by $80 billion a year, Pimentel estimated.
…I could hit you up with more and more of these, but, I won’t be a jerk about it. Ok, just one more!
Animal protein production requires more than eight times as much fossil-fuel energy than production of plant protein while yielding animal protein that is only 1.4 times more nutritious for humans than the comparable amount of plant protein, according to the Cornell ecologist’s analysis.
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