Billions and billions of animals are raised and killed for food in the U.S. every year.  This animal agriculture has a huge impact on our planet.

You probably have no idea that animal agriculture produces more greenhouse gases than automobiles. Cows, especially, emit massive amounts of methane and nitrous oxide. Animal agriculture produces 100 million tons of methane per year; about 85% of this is caused by the animals themselves and an additional 15% of emissions are released from the massive cesspools used to store untreated farm waste.   Methane is responsible for almost half of the global warming impacting our planet and nitrous oxide has over 300 times more impact on global warming than that per mass of carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide can remain in the air for more than a century, while methane gas cycles out of the atmosphere in just 8 years.  This means lower temperatures in as little as 8 years if there is a significant decrease in methane emissions now.  Since animal agriculture is the biggest culprit for methane gas emissions, it is clear that transitioning to a vegan diet will have a profound effect on global warming.

Also contributing to global warming is the fact that deforestation is destroying forests to make grazing land for cattle and for the planting of crops to feed the cattle.  Aside from the negative impact this has on the environment, the effect of deforestation on global warming is two-fold: there are more cattle and cattle waste to emit greenhouse gases and there are fewer trees to remove them from the atmosphere.  It takes a lot of land to raise animals for food and even more to raise crops to feed those animals.  Unless we decrease our consumption, deforestation will only get worse and more widespread.

In the U.S., most of the grain harvested is used to fatten up farm animals.  If this grain went to feed humans instead, world hunger wouldn’t exist.  Instead, forests are cut down to make more land to be exploited by animal agriculture.  Planting crops which become animal feed pollutes soil and water with agro-chemical waste.  About 10 BILLION pounds per year of nitrogen fertilizer alone is dumped into fields.

Animal agriculture does more than pollute our land.  Runoff from cesspools of untreated farm waste (the ones that emit huge amounts of methane gas) is the number one cause of water pollution in the U.S.  To put it in perspective, one dairy farm of 2,500 cows produces as much waste as a city of 411,000 people.  The waste from these farms is collected in huge cesspools.  In fact, 60% of America’s fresh water sources are considered to be “impaired” largely due to contamination from animal agriculture.  Not only does it pollute the our water, but it is extremely waste of the water that isn’t impaired when you consider that over half of the water used in the U.S. today goes to animal agriculture.  It takes 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef, while it only takes 180 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of whole wheat flour.

You’re probably thinking that you, one person, going vegan has no significant impact. According to research done by PETA, by going vegan for one month, you save:

• 8,000 gallons of water
• a quarter acre of land
• a quarter ton of soil erosion
• a half ton of polluting animal manure
• the carbon dioxide equivalent of 270 pounds of greenhouse gases
• the energy equivalent of burning 7 gallons of gas
• 160 pounds of crops wasted on farmed animals

The impact is greater than you think.  If going vegan is too much, even decreasing your meat consumption would have a huge impact.  If we don’t do something soon, we won’t have a planet to live on.