The Bigger Reasons

In case adding years to our lives isn't enough

There are bigger reasons to shift to an all-plant diet than just our health. Granted, we can add 8 to 10 years to our life expectancy, and dramatically reduce our risk and even reverse or mitigate heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, lupus, and multiple cancers, among other things.

There are bigger purposes out there than our own well-being, however. There are bigger causes than our own health.

And one of them is the planet.

The Planet by the Numbers

Right now, HALF of the world’s habitable land (land suitable for humans to live on) is used for agriculture. 77% of that is used for livestock while providing only 17% of the world’s calories.

Now, if the world switched to plants only, we could reduce the amount of land needed to grow our food by 75%. In addition, producing food directly from plants uses a whole lot less water, space, resources, and emits far fewer greenhouse gasses.

And get this, from an article by Steve Disla:

“The land that would be freed by such a dietary transition presents an extraordinary opportunity. A landmark study published in Science, “The Global Tree Restoration Potential,” estimates that reforesting 0.9 billion hectares globally could store up to 200 gigatons of carbon, or roughly 25 percent of the atmospheric carbon pool. Remarkably, this area is equivalent to about one-fourth of the land currently used for livestock production.” How our Food Choices Could Help Reforest the Planet, Steve Disla, Center for Nutrition Studies

Only 1/4th of the land currently used to raise animals for us to eat, reforested, would absorb and store 25% of the atmospheric carbon pool. Meaning, if we reforested it will 4/4ths of that land, all the land used to raise “meat,” that would take care of 100% of the CO2 in our atmosphere. Just. Like. That.

Also, without all the cattle breathing out methane, that too would dissipate from our atmosphere. Methane is a far more powerful warming gas, but it begins to dissipate in 1/10th the time as CO2.

For the Animals

Besides, reforesting wouldn’t just help the atmosphere, and keep our air clean and our temperatures within the range for human survival, it would also restore biodiversity, save endangered species, and prevent extinction.

Some of the animals we’re currently in the process of wiping out, really on the brink of extinction, are chimpanzees, orangutans, mountain gorillas, Sumatran rhinos, giant pandas, pygmy sloths, monarch butterflies, pygmy elephants, lions, tigers, jaguars, and leopards. All due to loss of habitat, because we won’t stop clearing the forests to raise animals for meat and grow crops to feed them. We’re not just slaughtering the cows and pigs and chickens—we’re also slaughtering the animals who relied on the forests we cleared to raise the cows and pigs and chickens.

We can save the primates and elephants and big cats and butterflies in exactly the same way we can save the cows and pigs and chickens. By eating plants.

The Big Shift

There was a time when humans and their animals (pets and those we eat or use for transportation and work and so many things) represented 1% of animal life on earth, while wild animals represented the other 99%. Now those numbers have reversed.

The way we’re living is not sustainable. Each year we slaughter 8 billion-with-a-B chickens, 214 million turkeys, 124 million pigs, 36 million cows, 23 million ducks, 7.5 million sheep, almost 4 billion-with-a-b fish, and 43 billion shellfish — THIS IS NOT SUSTAINABLE.

That’s just the ones we eat. I don’t think anyone has counted the numbers we kill as collateral damage. All the dolphins and sea turtles caught as bycatch in fishing nets, the millions of male baby chicks dropped alive into maceration machines because they will never lay eggs, the countless animals that die due to diseases caused by the crowded, filthy conditions in which they’re raised.

It’s also unspeakably cruel to the animals. And it seems even more cruel when we accept that we no longer have to eat them.

It’s one thing to eat meat to survive. It’s another to choose it over countless, healthier, cheaper alternatives.

The Emotion Quotient

There’s a fog that clears from the mind and the heart when the consumption of meat stops. It doesn’t take long, a couple of weeks, if that. I’ve discussed this phenomenon with countless vegans, and it seems to be a universal experience among all of us. It’s as if there was cotton batting between our emotions and our food. We never felt a thing about eating a burger or a chicken leg.

But after the change, that insulation thins and vanishes, and that disassociation falls away. Suddenly there’s no way to look at a steak and not see the big brown eyes of the animal it used to be, or to feel her pain and fear, or to understand that any creature who wants to live feels pain and fear when being killed.

There’s no such thing as humane meat. You cannot humanely take a life from a being who wants to live.

Feel Good About The Change!

Let’s do what’s right for an even greater reason than getting off our prescriptions or living longer, and better. Let’s do it for our mother, Gaia, the Earth, and for all our siblings who dwell here. And in turn, we’ll be doing it for our kids, and our grandkids, and our greats, and their children, so they’ll still have a functioning atmosphere, clean air, clean water, and a beautiful, thriving Earth.

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