Vote totals:
Yes:
67%
No:
33%
Neutral:
0%
DEBATE: VEGETARIANISM CAN SAVE THE WORLD FROM GLOBAL WARMING AND POVERTY
VEGETARIANISM CAN SAVE THE WORLD FROM GLOBAL WARMING AND POVERTY
Cut CO2 emissions
18 percent of CO2 equivalent green house gas emissions are generated by the livestock sector: that is more than how much cars emit.
The livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 emissions derived from human related activities, but this produces an even larger share of more harmful greenhouse gasses. It generates 65 percent of human related nitrous oxide which has 296 times the global warming potential of CO2: most of the CO2 potential comes from manure
VEGETARIANISM CAN SAVE THE WORLD FROM GLOBAL WARMING AND POVERTY
Land degradation
This happens on many farms when dealing with livestock. It can occur when land is over grazed, which applies to 20 percent of pastures that are used by livestock. This figure rises if you take into account land which is subjected to desertification when policies are not followed and livestock are overgrazed on drylands.
The likelihood of the land being restored to a useable state where it is able to support crops is small. It takes years to get back the nutrients which have been leeched from the soil. Compaction and erosion also need to be taken into account as cattle will destroy land/soil just by walking on it. Over long periods of time this process destroys aggregates, the land becomes unusable, and desertification is inevitable. Erosion speaks for itself; it can make land unusable for years or even decades.
VEGETARIANISM CAN SAVE THE WORLD FROM GLOBAL WARMING AND POVERTY
Water Pollution
Livestock runoff accounts for huge amounts of water pollution: be it waste from tanneries, fertilizers, pesticides, hormones or manure. If we did not use land for keeping cattle but purely for crops we would cut the pollutants going into the water systems by over half. In the South China Sea livestock is the main contributor to the phosphorous and nitrogen contamination of the inland waters. If this is allowed to continue without the government stepping in to put policies in place, water pollution will continue and the biodiversity of water systems will be beyond repair.
VEGETARIANISM CAN SAVE THE WORLD FROM GLOBAL WARMING AND POVERTY
Rediculous
This can’t be true because plants ABSORB CO2 from the air, so essentially eating more plants is allowing more CO2 to go into the ozone. Plus meat is essential to human stability providing necessary protein and calories which a vegitarian diet can’t provide.
VEGETARIANISM CAN SAVE THE WORLD FROM GLOBAL WARMING AND POVERTY
Meat is an essential part of a balanced diet
In this day and age westerners don’t need to eat meat. We can get our protein from other sources such as tofu, which contains more protein than any meat source. Also pulses, nuts, seeds and grains offer plenty of protein to keep a diet balanced. The first man did not eat meat and only had teeth for grazing on vegetable matter with the odd insect thrown in. It was only as man learnt to hunt that they realised they could get other food sources and we slowly evolved to have teeth that where made for eating meat: before this we had grinding molars. Now we do not need to hunt to survive and we have other options to eat, therefore there is no need to eat meat. I strongly believe that if you can’t kill it you should not eat it. What gives someone the right to think, ‘okay, I will just go and get my meat from the shop and not give a thought about the process by which it came to be on the supermarket shelf’? We do not even consider how it has affected the land on which it grazed and how much tonnage of vegetation (which could have been used for human consumption on a much smaller scale) was used to feed one animal. We don’t NEED to eat meat to survive. If everyone cut back or gave up we would be saving the planet and helping to end poverty.
Meat provides protein and has formed a fundamental part of the human diet since the very first humans. We need it to survive.
As a conservation student and not being a meat eater for 12 years it is something that i agree strongly about and even my farm lecturer agreed that if everyone became vegetarian a lot of the worlds problems would end, unfortunatly it is just not viable as people don't think that eating a bit of meat is going to have any effect on the planet unfortunatly it does.