Justice for all

Do you call yourself an environmentalist? If so - or even if you care about the environment - perhaps one of the best things to do is become a vegetarian.

I’ve been a vegetarian for the majority of my life. Although my family is vegetarian, they felt that I should be allowed to eat meat after we moved to the U.S. - so at a young age, I did eat chicken for a couple of years, but soon after gave it up - mainly due to a love for animals and ethical reasoning on my part. But I’m not here to give you a radical left-wing tree-hugger lecture. Being vegetarian shouldn’t be simply the requisite of the hippie animal-lover and biological conservationist - it should be plausible for all those who love humanity itself. At the end of the day, the environmental implications of becoming vegetarian are so significant that by going veg - you contribute as much to the preservation of future generations, as to animal life itself.

The implications of eating meat are truly astounding. According to a 2006 UN Food & Agriculture Organization report, “The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.” Raising animals for food is one of the main causes of global warming, among other problems such as land degradation, air pollution and water pollution. The report states that the livestock sector contributes to 18% of greenhouse gas emissions - more emissions than all the world’s transportation combined, which make up about 13%!

What’s more, feeding animals for meat, dairy & egg production requires growing about ten times as much crops as it would take to simply…grow crops for direct consumption. There are significant costs that go into meat production to the extent that producing one calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuels as does a calorie of plant protein. At the end of the day, switching to a vegetarian diet has as much, or more impact on reducing global warming than switching to a hybrid car.

Moreover, animal agriculture takes up about 70% of all agricultural land - and growing these farm animals is a huge cause of burning the world’s forests. About 70% of former Amazon rainforest is now used for pastureland. Getting rid of the remaining forests on our planet not only reduces the rich biodiversity in these ecosystems, but also reduces vast areas where trees once used to absorb carbon dioxide. The reduction of forests contributes to carbon dioxide accumulation, as a result accelerating global warming.

And, furthermore — animals (especially animal waste) contribute greatly to other greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, which are even worse than CO2. In fact, nitrous oxide has 296 times the warming power of carbon dioxide! As a result, while animal agriculture results in about 9% of CO2 emissions, it results in 37% of methane and 65% of nitrous oxide emissions!

Another study, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, finds that the costs of factory farming include — “human illnesses caused by drug-resistant bacteria associated with the rampant use of antibiotics on feedlots and the degradation of land, water and air quality caused by animal waste too intensely concentrated to be neutralized by natural processes.”

The environmental movement has made a flaw by ignoring vegetarianism. True - “going green” does involve everyday actions such as turning off the lights, walking and taking public transport when possible, and switching to hybrid cars that reduce vehicle emissions. But why is “going veg” - one of the most important everyday actions - ignored? Likely because campaigning to become vegetarian is fraught with ethical and moral concerns, and intrudes into one’s privacy. It’s not something we can regulate, really. Environmental & climate change advocates don’t necessarily want to get caught up in the mess of animal rights. But at the end of the day, people have to realize how important vegetarianism is going to be in the years to come. Not for animals, but for our own future generations.

When it comes down to it, I’m not talking about your compassion for chickens or trying to appeal to your inner hippie self. Instead I’m asking you to take a good hard look at global warming, and to look at these statistics. This is reality, not morality. Before any great movement, the status quo was accepted. Years ago, we all know that slavery was considered normal and that humans were treated like animals. Well, eating animals is now the status quo - and you might protest against it - but the truth is, the facts are arguing for a change. If history has taught us anything, it’s that the status quo can never be implicitly accepted. There is always something to question. So question it.

You can read more here (picture credit from the same site).

This Friday I wanted to highlight an amazing project which recently won the 2009 Echoing Green Fellowship. Accountability Counsel is an organization aiming to partner with communities harmed by international finance and development projects in order to hold international institutions and corporations accountable, and develop new accountability systems where none exist.

Communities around the world have been harmed by multinational corporations, which have displaced people and taken their land, dumped toxic chemicals and waste in bodies of water, and threatened those who have dared to challenge such injustices. This is nothing new. However what surprised me most is that no other organization existed to assist communities - that often lack the resources to pursue their cases through the legal system - in seeking justice for the wrongs they have experienced.

Accountability Counsel conducts trainings at the grassroots level regarding accountability tools and helps communities implement these tools, including litigation. The organization helps communities seek redress for the harm they have experienced at the hands of international corporations.

The project is spearheaded by Natalie Bridgeman, an inspiring young attorney who has worked on environmental and human rights issues, with a focus on development accountability. She is a graduate of Cornell University where she was a Udall Scholar, and of UCLA School of Law’s Program in Public Interest Law and Policy where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs. She has work experience with NGOs on advocacy campaigns, as a litigator at a large law firm, and as an accountability consultant.

About her inspiration, she says:

“While there, I traveled to the BioBio River where the indigenous Mapuche were protesting the illegal construction of a large series of hydroelectric dams on the River, which were displacing their villages and inundating their land. I stood a few feet away while the police tear gassed the eighty-year-old Mapuche women who were fighting for their land. I learned that the project was financed by an institution that used US taxpayer money – that my country was funding this injustice. They implored me to help. There was no turning back from development accountability work after that.”

Read more about Natalie’s project here!