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It takes 50,000 liters of water to produce one kilo of beef. 1 billion people today are hungry. 20 million people will die from malnutrition. Cutting meat by only 10% will feed 100 million people. Eliminating meat will end starvation forever.
If everyone ate a Western diet, we would need 2 Planet Earths to feed them. We only have one. And she is dying.
Greenhouse gas from livestock is 50% more than transport...planes, trains, trucks, cars, and ships. Poor countries sell their grain to the West while their own children starve in their arms. And we feed it to livestock. So we can eat a steak? Am I the only one who sees this as a crime? Every morsel of meat we eat is slapping the tearstained face of a starving child. When I look into her eyes, should I be silent?
The earth can produce enough for everyone's need; But not enough for everyone's greed. We are facing the perfect storm. If any nation had developed weapons that could wreak such havoc on the planet, we would launch a pre-emptive military strike and bomb it into the Bronze Age. But it is not a rogue state. It is an industry. The good news is we don't have to bomb it. We can just stop buying it. George Bush was wrong. The Axis of Evil doesn't run through Iraq, or Iran or North Korea. It runs through our dining tables. Weapons of Mass Destruction are our knives and forks. This is the Swiss Army Knife of the future – it solves our environmental, water, health problems and ends cruelty forever.
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An Ahimsa Crisis: You Decide