Welcome back to Enlightening Entertainment. The following article by Dr. Will Tuddle was originally published in Good Karma Magazine in its October 2009 edition. It is titled A Convenient Truth. A Convenient Truth. Victor Hugo was credited with saying that nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. There is mounting evidence that global climate change may well bring an inconceivable catastrophe to humanity and to the earth within the next century. Scientists estimate that if the mean temperature of the earth rises six degrees Celsius, this could mean the probable extinction of most species, including humans. It turns out that the main driving force behind global climate change is also behind human disease, environmental pollution, massive animal cruelty, and the whole range of dilemmas we are attempting to solve. How convenient. What is this driving force behind so many of our dilemmas? It is the routine confinement and slaughter of millions of animals every day for food. And catastrophic it is, for example, unpredictably, the most powerful and most forcibly ignored cause of global warming is eating meat and dairy products. Consider even that all forms of transportation worldwide by car, truck, bus, boat, train, and plane. The science on this is unequivocal, and in addition, eating animals requires massive amounts of fossil fuel inputs directly pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In the United States, we are transporting over 70% of our corn, soybeans, oats, and other grains to animals, pumping water to irrigate these fields, manufacturing millions of pounds of fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides, and housing and slaughtering billions of animals yearly. The end result of all this is that while it takes only two calories of fossil fuel to produce one calorie of protein from soybeans and three calories for wheat and corn, it takes 54 calories of fossil fuel to produce one calorie of protein from beef. The primary driving force behind deforestation is cattle grazing and clearing land to grow soybeans and other grains to feed factory farm chickens, pigs, and fish. This is a further major contributor to global warming. In addition, 60% of our fish are now factory-formed, causing severe water pollution and genetic damage to wild fish populations. Our limitless demand for fish that are used for feeding factory-formed fish, birds, and mammals has brought our oceans to the brink of collapse. Dairy cows, for example, consume huge quantities of fish, added to enrich their feed to increase milk and fat output. It takes three to five pounds of caught fish to make one pound of farmed salmon. We have decimated fish, turtle, and sea mammal populations so completely that jellyfish are now taking over the oceans and fishing vessels have to go out so far that they use unsustainable amounts of diesel fuel. Our recent study published in the prestigious Lancet Medical Journal concluded that the only way to effectively reduce greenhouse gases is to significantly reduce human consumption of animal foods. This has been increasingly emphasized in recent months as journalists and experts begin to connect the dots for the public. The Patari Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, himself of vegetarian, has been repeatedly recommending that people eat less meat and dairy products and local governments are beginning to take action as well. GENT Belgium has designated every Thursday as Veggie Day and Cincinnati has recently encouraged residents to reduce meat consumption as part of its green initiative. Get an Eshel, a geographer at the University of Chicago concluded based on his 2006 research that however close you can be to a vegan diet and further from the mean American diet, the better you are for the planet. Current research has also revealed that buying locally grown meat, dairy and eggs is not significant in its impact on one's carbon footprint. In the Locavore myth, James McWilliams explains that since transportation is only 11% of foods carbon footprint overall, economies of scale and other factors often outweigh transportation factors. In addition, research reveals that in many cases eating free range and organic meat, dairy and eggs does not substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions because free range cattle, for example, are not fat and just quickly as feedlot cattle, so the reductions in carbon dioxide equivalents in foregoing chemical fertilizers and pesticides are nearly offset by these factors. According to a University of Chicago study, the various energy inputs and livestock emissions involved in meat production for an average American pump an extra 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide into the air over the course of the year, which would be avoided by a vegetarian diet. Vegan diet without any dairy or eggs reduces the greenhouse gas footprint much further, and 17 vegans eating organic foods have the carbon footprint of one person eating the standard American diet. To their credit, more and more meat eating journalists are coming forth, encouraging people to reduce meat and dairy consumption to save the earth from climate breakdown. Let's amplify their call. The situation is critical. As the World Watch Institute has bluntly concluded, quote, it has become apparent that the human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future. End quote. Al Gore called global warming an inconvenient truth because it seemed to him that solving it would require painful and economically disastrous cutbacks and changes in our lifestyle. When we look more deeply, we can see that if instead we approach the solution by dramatically reducing animal food consumption and production, it is indeed a most convenient truth. As the UN and many others have pointed out, the fundamental driving force behind the devastation of tropical rainforests and of ocean ecosystems and of genetic diversity is directly related to eating animal-sourced foods. Add in water and air pollution, soil erosion, and world hunger, as well as the devastating diseases caused by eating animal foods such as obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer, heart disease, and kidney disease. And we can see that we stand on the brink of an enormous opportunity. Going vegan becomes easier as more of us do it, and there is nothing more important that any of us can do to help solve global warming and our other dilemmas. Ultimately, going vegan is the most convenient thing we can do.