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Originally Posted by Hummer Aficionado_VT
I think someone posted on here before about this situation and they blamed it on beef cattle in the rainforest or something like that...
I ate steak for dinner...   |
Brazil has currently lost 38% of it's rainforest for the purposes of cattle grazing. You wouldn't think this to be funny if you knew the dynamic of this systems and how they benefit us and how we actually require that they remain in tact for a multitude of reasons. A quarter of our medicines are derived from plants that reside in rainforests and only something like 1% of these plants have been tested for such purposes. Also, rainforests act to regulate weather patterns. They help to prohibit drought, desertification and act as carbon sinks.
The cattle industry is one of the most destructive forms of our consumption as the raising of beef clears an abundance of land (as you can see in the above paragraph). Cattle raising also requires an immense amount of water irrigation (2,500 gallons of water to raise 1 pound of meat). How we manage this industry is not very sustainable. Here's a link.
http://www.duke.edu/web/planv/realities.html
For Ken's benefit, I can see why I may be considered a troll but I voted for my Republican Congressman twice. One doesn't have to be a liberal to understand the necessity of our environment and how it relates to the requirements of our very existence.