The Amazon Is Still Burning. Here’s What You Can Do To Save The Forest (And the ?…)
PETA hits Yale University for it’s well renowned environmental science/studies campaign that shows a cow attacking a scarlet macaw blazoned against a fiery background with the words, “EATING MEAT KILLS MORE ANIMALS THAN YOU THINK.” The ad explains, “Ranchers set fires in the Amazon rainforest to graze cattle and crops to feed them. GO VEGAN.”
PETA will also run the ad designed for PETA Germany by fisherAppelt – in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles (the sister cities of Brasilia and Salvador, Brazil, respectively and elsewhere. vgp
Gaia’s Eye — Gaia • is • IFollowSep 11 · 5 min read
The Amazon Rainforest is still on fire. In what can be described as potentially the most destructive act of mass-scale arson in human history, over 90,000 fires have been set inside the Earth’s left lung.
Despite a supposed moratorium put in place by ultra-right wing Brazilian President Bolsonaro, almost 4,000 new fires have been set in recent days. The 60-day moratorium on new fires is also seen by scientists as an extremely ineffective gesture, because Bolsonaro has gutted the Brazilian Environment Ministry’s ability to enforce any forest protections, and because farmers are still being allowed to chainsaw and bulldoze the Amazon during that time, and those that choose to follow the law will simply wait 60 days to start new fires to clear deforested land.
If all of this news leaves you feeling powerless (Bolsonaro will remain the President of Brazil until 2022 unless he is impeached), we need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture: If we want to understand how to effectively protect the Amazon we need to understand the reasons why it is being destroyed.
The cause of the vast majority of the destruction of the Amazon (not just by fire, but also by chainsaw and bulldozer) can be summarized in 4 words: because people eat animals.
91% of the destruction of the Brazilian Amazon in recent decades has been caused by cattle farming alone. But if we take a further step back and look at the global picture, it is not just the survival of the Amazon that is at stake, and not just the consumption of cows that poses a threat to the global biosphere.
On a planetary scale, the consumption of animals and their bodily fluids is the #1 cause of habitat destruction that is causing the “Sixth Great Mass Extinction” of life on Earth, is the #1 cause of water consumption, is the #1 cause of water contamination, it’s the #1 cause of ocean dead zones, and it is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions that are destroying the Earth’s climate then all of the world’s cars trucks planes and ships in the world combined.
So if you want to do something to actually prevent the Amazon, and life as we know it on this planet from being destroyed in the years to come then the solution is clear: switch to plant-based meat and other alternatives and stop eating animals. It’s that simple.
And by the way, if you think that you could just boycott Brazilian cow products and #EatLocal, and you’ll become a part of solution then take a look at this map of America:
41% of all the land in the continental United States, or 800,000,000 acres is being used to raise animals to slaughter for human consumption. This includes both the 1% of animals who live outdoors before slaughter, and the land used to grow crops to feed the 99% of animals caged inside the torture facilities known factory farms.
Now that’s the bad news. The good news is that if humans were to switch from an animal to a plant-based diet it would free up 75 percent of all the land currently being taken up by the human race right now,not to mention ending our assault on the world’s oceans, which are also rapidly dying as we speak, another threat to the very existence of the human race and life as we know it on Earth.
75% of all the land currently being taken up by the human race for context is the equivalent to the land area of the United States, China, the European Union and the Continent of Australia combined.
That’s a total of 3,700,000,000 acres of land that couldThat’s a total of 3,700,000,000 acres of land that could regenerate into natural rainforests, savannahs, grasslands, and marshes. All allowed to grow back and become a habitat for endangered species that are currently on the brink of extinction. That’s the miracle that the human race and the animal kingdom needs to survive the climate emergency, and it relies on humans eating plant-based instead of corpse-based meat.
But what about soy? Aren’t they cutting down the Amazon to grow soy beans for all those vegan burgers and sausages too?
When we look at the causes of Amazon destruction outside of the 91% that is caused by the consumption of cows, soy is absolutely an important factor. And if we’re going to survive this escalating climate emergency, not only is zero deforestation an imperative, but reforesting the Earth, including razed parts of the former Amazon, is also crucial for avoiding the collapse of the Earth’s biosphere and human civilization along with it. But when it comes to soy and the Amazon consider two factors:
- Approximately 80% of the global soy crop is fed to farm animals, rather than people. Approximately 14% is processed into soy oil, which is not just consumed by vegans, and not necessarily even consumed at all by humans, as that oil has various industrial uses, including biodiesel fuel (another reason it is imperative to switch to electric-powered vehicles ASAP). Only about 6% of the global soy crop is consumed by humans.
2. As was discussed above, if the world were to switch to plant-based meats, milk, ice cream (and yes, there are even delicious vegan eggs now,) the total land area being taken up by the human race for agriculture would be reduced by 75%, a new Continent’s worth of unused land that could be left alone to regenerate into wilderness. This is simply due to the inherent inefficiency of feeding plants to animals in order to eat animal flesh, rather than simply making our burgers directly from those plant-based ingredients. In addition to this, rainforest soils are inherently poorly suited for agriculture — plant or animal-based, due to the fragility of those soils once the trees that used to anchor them in place are removed. This means that a vegan planet would likely have absolutely no need for rainforest land to grow crops, and economic realities alone would instead mean that most crops like soy that can grow in temperate environments would exclusively be grown in temperate environments for purely monetary reasons.
For more on what you can do to protect the Amazon:
STUDIES: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/research/slaughtering-the-amazon/
https://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/amazon/land-use/cattle-ranching
https://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/amazon/land-use/soy
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Gaia’s Eye — Gaia • is • I
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