On October 11th, Rowan Jacobsen wrote a touching obituary mourning the supposedly dead Great Barrier Reef after 25 million years. I say "supposedly" because it isn't quite dead, yet. Do not take that sentence lightly, because it's happening as we speak. His obituary was shared wildly among social media in the last week, and posed questions as to how the GBR could die, and if we could've done more as humans. However, this is not a sign to "give up". I could write novels upon novels on what is causing our oceans to be polluted, our ice caps to melt, our bees to die and it still wouldn't stop it from happening. The only ones who can save our earth, are the ones who are killing it. We do not live in an "egosystem" where all plants, animals, reptiles, and insects live below humans. We coexist in an "ecosystem", symbiotically and systematically with all inhabitants of the earth. Forget childless Uncle Joe who "doesn't care" because he will only "live on this planet for so little years". If you are leaving behind a legacy, if you care about the air you breath, if you love the home who keeps you warm, or believe that a higher power created this beautiful planet for you to live on, then why would you ever treat her as anything less than a god given miracle. Pay attention.
To quickly summarize, "Global Warming" is the increase of temperature due to the effect of greenhouse gases, from acts like carbon emissions, animal agriculture, or deforestation. In even simpler terms, the earth is getting warmer because we drive cars, because factories pollute the air, because we eat meat and dairy products, and because we cut down forests for grazing fields or new communities. Those gases are trapped in our ozone layer, creating a greenhouse effect and infecting our air.
Why should we care? Because humans were put on this earth for a reason. Maybe it's God, maybe it's Buddha, maybe it's a combination between good energy and karma. But don't you believe that in any of those cases, we are just visitors? If God put us on the earth He created, why would you leave it any worse than you found it? What does that tell Him? Or if Mother Nature Herself created this home for us to stay in for a few thousand years, would you thank Her by trashing Her home?
Global warming exists because of two reasons: we are consumers, and we are lazy. Thanks to us, we now populate a world where a 25 million year old creature is dying; a creature that has been home to of other creatures millions of years before we arrived, and will still stand after we leave, dead or alive.
What if I told you the answer to helping our earth heal could be narrowed down to our eating habits? What if by feeding your body exactly what it should be eating, you can in turn help save her, and help your health too. By eating a plant-based diet, not only are you cutting out unhealthy, processed food, but also moving away from meat injected with growth hormones, and dairy products which was originally meant to feed baby calves. Our bodies were not meant to kill cows for food, or to milk cows for drink. If we were, it would be a more sustainable industry. Animal agriculture is causing a larger percent of global warming than carbon emissions from cars. It boils down to four main reasons: water usage, land occupancy, world hunger, and cow farts. The amount of water it takes to upkeep animal agriculture is about 80-90% of US consumption. Due to our growing population, we are tearing down more forests for grazing zones. The amount of grain used to feed cows alone could end world hunger, and the methane released from cow farts is more deadly to our air than burning fossil fuels. I could go deeper, but most people would stop reading. All of my facts were from Leonardo DiCaprio's 131min documentary "Cowspiracy".
It is as simple as cutting out meat and dairy from your diet. Yes, turn off your lights when you can, share showers, recycle, but if you are looking to completely erase your carbon footprint on this earth, watch Cowspiracy. Feed your body what it deserves.
