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Before seeking further education into how the eating of animal products is causing an irreversible global catastrophe, the following needs to be understood:

 

Climate Change

The slightest of changes in global weather conditions and atmospheric temperatures, causes massive alterations to ecosystems, biomes and biodiversity; potentially resulting in extinction of all life on earth. 

 

Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Heightened levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere create climate change. 

 

Deforestation 

Trees utilize carbon dioxide and release oxygen when they photosynthesize. Trees are the Earth’s lungs, without then there would be insufficient oxygen production to sustain any human life on Earth.

 

Biodiversity 

Our planet Earth can only function on a mutually symbiotic  relationship between a vast diversity of life forms.  When a single life form becomes extinct, it has a detrimental, knock-on affect upon every other form of life. 

Download a copy of the Karuna Unity education course: "Veganism & The Environment" below:

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1 

We cut down 15 billion trees per year and the world’s rainforests have been reduced by 50 per cent.

 

Reference – David Attenborough ‘A Life on our Planet’ ISBN9781529108279 p97

 

 

2

Meat production is the leading cause of deforestation (three times greater than any other cause).

 

Reference – David Attenborough ‘A Life on our Planet’ ISBN9781529108279 p97

http://www.wwf.org.uk/riskybuisness

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3

The second leading cause of deforestation is the growing of soy, 70 per cent of which is used for meat production.

 

Reference – David Attenborough ‘A Life on our Planet’ ISBN9781529108279 p97

 

 

4

In 1937 carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million 

In 2020 carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 415 parts per million 

 

Reference – Mauna Loa observatory: https//www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/data.html

 

 

5

“We’re in the middle of the largest mass extinction of species in sixty-five million years.”

 

Eldridge Niles. “The Sixth Extinction.” Action Bioscience website . Accessed April 2015. http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/eldredge2.html;  Mass Extinction of Species Has Begun.” Macquarie University. Phys.org. February 23, 2006. Accessed April 2015. http://phys.org/news11151.html

 

 

6

In 1937 the remaining wilderness on our planet was 66 per cent 

In 2020 the remaining wilderness on our planet was 35 per cent 

 

Reference – Ellis E. et al (2010) Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000 (supplementary info Appendix 5), Global Ecology and Biogeography 19, 589 – 606.

 

 

 

7

In 2018  96 per cent of all animals alive on our planet were either humans or farmed animals awaiting slaughter for human consumption.  

All the other animals in the world represent only 4 per cent!

 

Reference – Bar-On, Y.M.,Phillips,R.and Milo, R. (2018) The Biomass distribution on Earth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists 115 (25) 6506-6511, https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2018/05/15/17118421115.full.pdf

 

 

 

8

Globally, we have reduced freshwater life by 80 per cent.

 

Reference – David Attenborough ‘A Life on our Planet’ ISBN9781529108279 p97

 

 

 

9

Seventy per cent of all birds alive on our planet are domesticated and almost all of them are chickens. The global consumption of chickens is 50 billion per year. 

 

 Reference – David Attenborough ‘A Life on our Planet’ ISBN9781529108279 p98

 

 

10

Researchers at the University of Oxford found that cutting meat and dairy products from your diet could reduce an individual's carbon footprint from food by up to 73 per cent.

If everyone stopped eating these foods, they found that global farmland use could be reduced by 75 per cent, an area equivalent to the size of the US, China, Australia and the EU combined.

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