My Carbon Footprint:
If you haven't heard it before, I became vegan for environmental reasons. Watching Food Inc and finding out about why E.coli spread (through dirty cattle farming shit rivers that got sprayed onto my favorite leafy green, spinach). Finding out that factory farming is the leading cause in rainforest deforestation. Plus all the carbon emissions made from our radical consumption of animal by-products was enough to scare me into my final plunge in becoming vegan. As a part of the class we had to research our ecological footprint and I was 100% shocked. If everyone was a vegan, lived in the US, took a bus to work, and lived in shitty apartment building we'd need 3.9 Earths to survive. That's insane because I feel that I'm so conscious of my actions and remaining "green". Fun fact, because I live in the US I require at least 1 more Earth than those living in Europe based purely off of our military spending and military based emissions.
Deforestation:
Long ago in my German for foreigners class in Bochum, my teacher told me that industrial pig farming was destroying the rain forest. I laughed at her. I recently found my course that it's actually SOY farming. Once again, being vegan and thinking it's enough that you don't eat anything involved with animals isn't enough. It doesn't help that I'm drinking a soy tea latte as I read the article and felt the guilt build. (article link) I even found out that if we stopped deforestation of the Amazon we could reduce emissions by 5%. That's a huge change for one thing to cause!
Ocean Acidification:
This is something I wasn't even thinking about when I got into this course. I had been so focused on the land use that I hadn't thought about our oceans. This is something I was surprised by because I live next to the Puget Sound and I love the beach.
The United States in All of This:
The hardest thing in all of this is knowing that the US and China are the largest problem makers and we just don't care. Well we care about the money and power. Polls say over and over again that if it changes our lifestyle and "comfort" we just don't want to change. Politicians are run swayed by big oil companies and dirty energy and dirty farming have their hands in all the pots and specifically in positions of power. It's enough to make me hopeless. Then I'm given hope because communities do care! I mean, Seattle just made it against the law to NOT compost! That's a step in the best direction but with all govt policies it's going to be hard to push it especially with minimal education programs on how to make this an accessible thing in ALL households.
Ultimately this course has really opened by eyes to global scaled of things and I'm more driven than ever to get involved and create change. Maybe one day I'll even be one of the hands in the pots of farming but on the side of non-GMO, organic, small farms. It's only fair we get to fight, even if the other side fights in so dirty it's like tar pit.
Deforestation:
Long ago in my German for foreigners class in Bochum, my teacher told me that industrial pig farming was destroying the rain forest. I laughed at her. I recently found my course that it's actually SOY farming. Once again, being vegan and thinking it's enough that you don't eat anything involved with animals isn't enough. It doesn't help that I'm drinking a soy tea latte as I read the article and felt the guilt build. (article link) I even found out that if we stopped deforestation of the Amazon we could reduce emissions by 5%. That's a huge change for one thing to cause!
Ocean Acidification:
This is something I wasn't even thinking about when I got into this course. I had been so focused on the land use that I hadn't thought about our oceans. This is something I was surprised by because I live next to the Puget Sound and I love the beach.
The United States in All of This:
The hardest thing in all of this is knowing that the US and China are the largest problem makers and we just don't care. Well we care about the money and power. Polls say over and over again that if it changes our lifestyle and "comfort" we just don't want to change. Politicians are run swayed by big oil companies and dirty energy and dirty farming have their hands in all the pots and specifically in positions of power. It's enough to make me hopeless. Then I'm given hope because communities do care! I mean, Seattle just made it against the law to NOT compost! That's a step in the best direction but with all govt policies it's going to be hard to push it especially with minimal education programs on how to make this an accessible thing in ALL households.
Ultimately this course has really opened by eyes to global scaled of things and I'm more driven than ever to get involved and create change. Maybe one day I'll even be one of the hands in the pots of farming but on the side of non-GMO, organic, small farms. It's only fair we get to fight, even if the other side fights in so dirty it's like tar pit.