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Did you know?
1/3 of natural resources have been consumed.
80% of the forests around the world are gone.
75% of global fisheries are now being fished at or beyond capacity.
By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean, that’s if we even have fish left to harvest, depending on our continuation of overfishing.
40% of waterways have become undrinkable.
Here in the US we have 5% of the world’s population but use 30% of the world’s resources and create 30% of the world’s waste. If everyone was consuming at our rates here in the US, we would need 3-5 planets, yet we only have one.
Each of us in the US makes 4 ½ pounds of garbage each day, that’s double the amount we made 30 years ago. All of this garbage, or stuff that we buy, either gets dumped in a landfill, which is just a big hole in the ground, or it gets burned in an incinerator and then dumped in a landfill. Either way, both pollute the air, land, water and change the climate.
250 years ago, the industrial era began and since then temperatures, tides, and carbon dioxide levels have been on the rise. This is mostly due to the increased burning of fossil fuels. First coal and then oil and natural gas. The burning releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases make up 3% of the gases in the earth’s atmosphere and help warm the planet. Emissions from fossil fuel burning have raised carbon dioxide concentrations 35% higher than in the past millions of years. This increase is an unintended consequence of the improved standard of living brought about by the industrial era and increase of fossil fuel burning. Dry regions are becoming drier and wet ones wetter. Wildfires have increased threefold, hurricanes more violent, floods setting record heights, glaciers melting, and sea levels rising. Parts of Earth are increasingly uninhabitable.
At present, our Arctic is half melted. Sea levels are presently rising at the rate of one foot per century, this is 4 times faster than in 1900. The rate of sea level rise is increasing as reflecting snow is replaced by sunlight-absorbing water and land. The sea level rise is from the melting of Greenland, Antarctica, mountain glaciers, and thermal expansion of the oceans.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is absorbed by our oceans. It then becomes carbonic acid. Our ocean is now 30% more acidic than before the beginning of the industrial era. The oceans present rate of acid increase is a hundred times faster than in the last twenty million years. The acidification will more than double in the next forty years. At this rate of increase, it is unlikely sea life will be able to adapt. The acidification is dissolving carbonate shells of sea creatures like oysters and clams. Oyster farms are having to use chemicals to reduce the acidity so that the oysters can form their shells. Phytoplankton, who are at the bottom of the food chain, also have a carbonate shell and if the plankton population dies off, the whole ocean food chain will collapse.
Since 1980, weather extremes have more than doubled. The California drought from 2011 to 2017 is the longest one on record. Wet areas are becoming wetter from the fact that the atmosphere holds more moisture at higher temperatures. When it does rain, there is more of it. Hundred‐year‐floods are happening more frequently. The rainfall from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 set a record of fifty‐two inches in Houston, Texas, for the most rain in a single storm in the United States.
There has also been a huge increase is forest fires. In May 2016, an out‐of‐control wildfire forced the evacuation of 80,000 people from Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. This is the center of the tar sands oil region, which requires heat from fossil fuel burning to melt the oil tar, so it can flow for processing and refining. This is the most carbon‐dioxide emitting type of oil. Could the forest fire be “environmental justice” in the sense that the tar sands emissions are increasing global warming? Could Nature be “crying out?”
Also, from personal experience the fires burning all around the North West this summer made Seattle have the worst air quality in the world out of all the cities. Going outside for just one hour and breathing was equivalent to smoking 9 cigarettes.
Over the centuries, humans have tried to change the weather. People have prayed, danced, and used other strategies to get more rain, to stop the rain, to decrease heat, and to warm things up a bit. But rarely have we deliberately tried to change the climate. Climate is the average weather conditions over an extended period of time. Whereas weather refers to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity; the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, or clear or cloudy. But we have unintentionally changed climate historically and we continue to change it today.
Global climate change is a major societal issue that many citizens do not understand, do not take seriously, and do not consider to be a major public policy concern. Many have said climate change is “a marginal concern for them… if a concern at all.” Yet the scientific community, with a few exceptions, sees climate as one of the major challenges facing society in the next decades. Most scientists share the opinion that climate change is real, serious, and to an important extent, human-induced. The environmental and social impacts are, and will be unevenly distributed, even within countries. So, it is not uncommon that people living in different regions of a country differ in their views of what, if anything is going on, and what if anything needs to be done. But all people, plants, animals, crops, and the natural environment, are affected by climate change. The big question is; how such changes may affect us, our children, and our grandchildren, globally and locally.
Check out “The Story of Stuff” video and campaign that helps aim to teach people where things come from and where they go, plus the impact that all our consumerism is having on our planet and within our very own bodies. https://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/
Written by Caroline Ross, Office of Sustainability Social Media Intern, Fall 2018
Synergies Blog Posts: Text
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As the population continues to grow exponentially, the collective impact of humans on this planet continues to carry a heavier weight every day. Many people think emissions from cars or transportation is the leading cause within climate change, when really animal agriculture is the number 1 factor. The UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization released a report titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow”. In this report Animal Agriculture is linked not only to Greenhouse Gas emissions but also to deforestation and biodiversity loss. Forests are cleared to grow crops that will eventually feed the livestock that we will then eat. 470 million hectares of arable land is dedicated to animal feed production. Emissions within feed production are racked up from this land-use change, the manufacturing and production of fertilizers used, and on-site fossil fuel use, such as the machines used to cut the crops or process the meat, and the planes used to spray the fertilizers. Carbon Dioxide is also released from the soil where the trees from the forests that are now gone, used to breathe in and turn into oxygen. This land-use change includes 2.4 million hectares a year, turning forests to pastures and .5 million hectares each year are turned from forests to feed crops. As these forests are turned into agricultural plots, biodiversity is lost, resulting in livestock being one of the threats to 1,699 endangered species on The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list. Loss of biodiversity comes from deforestation, pollution, desertification and intense agriculture itself. Emissions released by livestock include nitrous oxide from plants and methane from animal manure, fermentation, or gas release. Emissions also source from livestock processing, refrigeration and transportation. All together about 2.7 billion tons of CO2 is released, contributing to 9% of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Anthropogenic referring to environmental pollution or pollutants originating from human activity. Overall methane (CH4) emissions from Animal Agriculture account for 37% of the total anthropogenic CH4 emissions.
Along with these factors animal agriculture also uses massive amounts of our fresh water resources and pollute our streams and rivers at the same rate, having a major effect on the water cycle while also creating dead zones in our oceans. Livestock accounts for 8% of all water use and 90% of that water is used in feed production for the livestock to consume. Pollution is substantial at feed production, animal production, and processing levels including nutrients, organic matter, antibiotics, and pesticides. All having major impacts on the water cycle pertaining to pollution.
The increase in animal agriculture over the years is due to population rise and increased urbanization. Animal Agriculture used to be family farms with land for the animals to grow and graze on. Buying your meat used to be from the people who raised those animals on a farm, like we see today in farm to table restaurants, a resurgence in caring how your food got to your plate, local and naturally grown. Have you ever thought about the path your food takes before you buy it in a store and take it home to eat? Today that piece of meat was manufactured in a factory farm. Eating meat has become the staple or norm for every meal, and the 5 major agribusinesses that run this industry turned farms into factories to produce huge amounts of cheap meat at an astonishing rate. These 5 controlling conglomerates include Tyson, JBS, Cargill, Smithfield, and Perdue.
There are both pros and cons when talking about Factory farming. One major pro is how cheaply meat and dairy products can now be produced and processed. Factory farms also turn out a huge profit. When treatment and proper care of animals has been allowed to be overlooked, the cost of raising animals is reduced. The locations that these factories are built in also provide the factories with cheap labor, many slaughter houses are operated by undocumented workers who will work for the bare minimum and cannot form unions, so they must work for what they are offered because a job is a job after all. Factory farming also creates lots of jobs and opportunities to people who need work, the factories are huge operations and therefore need a lot of employees to run smoothly and operate in a timely manner. Factory farms offer a wide variety of jobs and provide economic stimulation to areas in the world that would otherwise be hurting.
The cons of factory farming start with animal cruelty. The animals within factory farming live in cruel conditions and are victims to very sad lives. Many don’t ever see the sunlight until they are being transported to the slaughter houses. Factory farms pack animals such as chickens, cows, turkeys, and pigs into incredibly small areas and are then fed additives to fatten them up. They are also forced to wade through their own feces and other dead animals that didn’t make it. This is the only life they know until they are killed to be processed. They are never given a chance to live as animals, they are pieces of meat and profit right when they are born. The health and wellbeing of us consumers should be looked at too. There are many health concerns including disease and illness within these animals due to their living conditions. This translates into contaminated and dangerous meat. There are major recalls that happen all over our country from cases of people falling sick or even dying from eating beef or a burger and then contracting E. coli. Meat has become so hazardous that the FDA has raised the temperature at which the inside of a burger should be cooked to from 140F to 155F, a 15F increase due to health concerns, and risks if undercooked. Burning off the diseases that are in our food to make them consumable. Factory farms also have nearly wiped out farming communities in the U.S due to factory farm operations that can produce products so much more quickly and cheaper than traditional farming, making factory farming the obvious choice for business and large-scale companies. I have already mentioned extensively the degradation of the environment factory farms have and continue to impact our climate and its change. Due to the immense overcrowding, these factory farms cannot handle the amount of waste that the animals produce and create manure lagoons that attribute to land, water, and air pollution in the surrounding areas.
Policy intervention is needed to balance livestock in the ecosystem. This calls for intensification of production without the concentration. Moving the animals back into grassy fields and pastures, adapting back to a grazing system which in turn would reduce animal cruelty and disease that are both major components in today’s animal agriculture production. Adapting more sustainable practices will mitigate the major impacts the industry has contributed to climate change today. Just improving the diets and adding balanced feed would reduce methane emissions and lower the nitrogen content produced. Some options include improved water use efficiency and enhanced waste management, both contributing to pollution reduction and water resource management. Land management would also play a key role in distributing the farms and returning these animals to the pastures to graze on grass, improving the livestock distribution and returning the animals to humane habitats. Since the release of the UN’s report, some stakeholders acknowledge industrial animal agriculture’s contribution to global climate change but for the most part, the problematization of animal agriculture has not increased.
Written by Caroline Ross, Office of Sustainability Intern, Fall 2018
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