Where’s The Beef?

People know about global warming and climate change so why aren't most of us doing anything about it? Global Warming and climate change are serious problems and most of us are just bystanders and tend to avoid taking action. Oyster Adams 8th graders and I will participate in the Do One Thing (DOT) project for a month to take action to help our environment and become more sustainable.

The DOT project is where for 28 days you have to change some action from your lifestyle in order to help the environment/become more sustainable. Some examples are becoming vegan or vegetarian, taking shorter showers, riding a bike instead of using a car, etc. Many people think this is too hard to do but the reality is that it’s not. For 28 days I will be going vegetarian and COWS are the reason why.

Believe it or not cows are one of the top reasons for global warming and climate change. Unlike humans, cows produce methane, a type of greenhouse gas. Methane is 30 times more harmful or potent as a heat-trapping gas than CO2. The cattle growing business is just growing and growing. In the USA 41% of its land is used for livestock production. Its not just cows producing methane, they are also using a lot of our resources. It takes more than 2000 gallons of water for just ONE pound of beef. Let’s not forget the water to feed the actual cows. ONE cow needs 3 to 30 gallons of water a day. Just in the US there are 94.4 million cattle. Imagine the rest of the world!

After learning all of this by watching Cowspiracy on Netflix, I really wanted to do something so becoming vegetarian was my option. A shift in diet can lower greenhouse gas emissions much more quickly than shifts away from the fossil fuel burning technologies that emit carbon dioxide if we all just contribute a little bit. However, we all don’t have to become vegetarian or vegan to become more sustainable. There are plenty more things to do as well. You might think it’s hard to do these things but you can take control of your actions to do something better. Being vegetarian was something I could do. If you can, I encourage you to do so too.

Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something. ― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals