04/22/07 Fight Global Warming With Diet Change
On the occasion of Earth Day Animal Friends invites other environmental organizations to cooperate
Due to our action our planet warms up at a disturbing level with possibly catastrophic consequences. The year 2005 was the warmest year ever measured. Just imagine an overheated car or overcooked lunch. Now try to imagine this in the planetary sense. In Al Gore's film and book An Inconvenient Truth the anticipations of estimated scientists regarding the melting of the polar ice caps, rising of the sea level, floods, draughts and ever stronger storms and hurricanes are clearly presented.
In November 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published a report stating that the cattle breeding industry generates more greenhouse gases - 18 percent - than all the cars and trucks together. Only one calorie of animal protein demands over ten times higher amount of fossil fuel - what means ten times higher carbon dioxide emission - than one calorie of plant protein. Billions of animals cramped in factory farms produce enormous amounts of methane every year. Rainforests are rapidly destroyed and transferred into pastures and fields for grain production used to produce food for animal (lifestock). Factory farming along with enormous spending of natural resources and ecological damages directly causes global warming.
Animal Friends sent a letter to all Croatian environmental and ecological organizations
asking them to jointly call all citizens to make a change to their diet which would result in
decreasing of global warming, that is, decrease of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission, deforestation of rainforests, usage of pesticides, air, water and land pollution, and generally cutting down of enormous consumption of natural resources. It is necessary to educate people about the direct relation between meat consumption on one side and global warming and environmental destruction on the other.
On the occasion of Earth Day, Animal Friends will take part in "Eko-plac" organized by Green Action (Zelena Akcija) that will take place on April 21-22, 2007, on Petar Preradovic Square. On the info stall citizens can receive information on the relationship between one's diet and global warming and get leaflets made especially for this occasion. There will also be a projection of the film "Devour the Earth" that speaks about the ecological aspects of vegetarianism.
Greenpeace in cooperation with other environmental organizations started off a program "The
Ecological Footprint" in order to show that vegetarianism is the simplest and the most effective way to decrease global warming and to protect the environment.
Everyone who wants to protect the environment must have information about great and direct relation between one's diet and planet destruction. As Paul McCartney said, "Anybody who wants to save the planet must stop eating meat. It is the most important thing an individual can do."