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St. Andrews Presbyterian College 6 The Lance The Myth Of The Meat- Eating Environmentalist Willow By Ruth Cook An environmentalist still can not eat meat. The reason for today 's column is energy ineffi ciency. The term energy inefti ciency covers a broad spectrum of enviroimiental issues. The spec trum includes such issues as fos sil fuel abuse, which destroys the areas in which the fuel is mined and releases greenhouse gases which may greatly alter the Earth, to the wasting of high level en ergy, which the meat industry and a meat diet greatly affect. (For those of you who are reading this column for the first time or have forgotten due to my inactivity at the paper, I shall refresh you on the definition of an environmen talist I am using for the purposes of my argument). An environ mentalist is a person who is not merely philosophically, but ac tively concerned about the posi tive welfare of and the negative effects of human activity on the environment and acts upon these concerns as much as feasibly pos sible. While our dependency on fos sil fuel would not end with the termination of meat production and consumption, a nationwide switch to vegetarianism could cut oil imports by 60%, if there was a world wide switch (all other fac tors being equal) “the current oil reserves would last 260 years in stead of 40-80 years” (Miller 567). Because of the negative ef fects caused by the use of fossil fuels, it is the duty of the envi ronmentalist to cut such uses to the smallest number possible. Energy equivalent to 50 gal lons of gasoline is required for the production of meat and poultry consumed each year by the typi cal American; that is two-thirds more energy than required to nourish a vegetarian (Durning ’’6'' i)ue to the context from which diese facts are derived, 1 believe the quoted energy require ments represent only the energy needed to actually raise the ani mals and are not inclusive of the total energy required to make a hamburger out of a cow. There are many more steps (which use high-quality energy) in the con version of an animal into a pro- cessed-ready-to-eat meal than in the production and delivery of a com cob, and thus the gap be tween the energy needed to sus tain a meat-based diet and a veg etarian diet should be broader than the statistics stated above imply. To understand the implica tions of wasting high-quality en ergy, one must know the Laws of Thermodynamics. The first: “En ergy cannot be created or de stroyed; it can only be changed firom one form to another.” The second: “In any conversion of energy from one form to another, high-quality, useful energy is al ways degraded to lower-quality 2^^rg)Wtt8a^^f give high-quality energy; we can’t [even] break even in terms of en- gfgy equality.” Each step in the food chain represents a conver sion of energy, consequently with each step a greater amount of high-quality energy is converted into low-quality energy. Thus when humans eat low on the food chain (skipping the meat) they are capable of receiving and preserv ing greater amounts of high-qual ity energy with less consumption. The Laws of Thermodynamics also apply to the steps needed to make “bringing home the bacon” possible. Each step represents a point in which high-quality en ergy, fossil fuel, is needed to pro duce an increasingly lower-qual- ity product. This fact offends the principle of energy efficiency, which in turn should offend the environmentalist who realizes while there is a guaranteed quan tity of energy, there is an ever decreasing amount of high-qual ity energy which should be con served for more essential activi ties (meat consumption is not es sential to human health). The energy discussed above related primarily to the energy provided by fossil fuels. How ever, meat production also wastes another form of energy, the en ergy provided by organisms low on the food chain. One pound of beef is the equivalent of 16 pounds of grain and soy beans (Lappe 11)^ The average for all meat is seven pounds of grain and soy beans to the pound of meat (Lappe 13). If the grain used to produce livestock (40% of the world’s grain production and 70% of the United States’, according to USDA data) were instead con sumed directly by humans, five times as many people would be nourished (Durning 26). In an other twist of the implications of such a grain-meat equivalency, “supporting just the world’s cur rent population of 5,300,000,000 [humans] on a US-style diet would require two and one-half times as much grain as all the world’s farmers produce” (Durning 27). Thus if everyone were to eat in the manner of the current average American, energy waste would greatly be magni fied. While a meat diet is not the sole cause of energy inefficiency, the energy wasted on meat pro duction does have a notable nega tive impact on the environment. Thus, because the environmental ist must t t c actions to protect the environment from human induced negative impact, the environmen talist must refrain from the con sumption of meat. Otherwise, the environmentalist would be par ticipating in hypocritical actions by saying, “wasting energy is bad, but eating meat, which wastes much energy, is okay.” Work Cited Durning, Alen. “We Can’t Keep Eating the Way We Do.” USA Today (Magazinel. Nov 1992. Huge Spill of Hog Waste Fuels an Old Debate.” The NY Times. June30, 1995. , . Lappe, Francis Moore. Diet Small Planet. New York: Ballantine Books, 1975. ^ Logsdon, Gene. “A Slice of the U!) Manure Pile” BioCvcle. Oct 1 992. 63. Longacre, Doris. Mn^p-With-Less Cookbook. Scotdale, PA: Herald Press, 1976. 7. , Miller, G. Tyler, Jr. LiyinajaJK Environment. 9th ed. New Y o r k • Wadsworth F^lblishing Company, l^w. inside, back cover, 567. Robbins, John. DisLfflOJisa America. Walpol, NH: Stillpomt Publishing, 1987. 321-323. Smothers, Ronald. “SpiH Highlight on a Powerful Industry. The NY Times. June 24, 1995. Warrick, Joby, Pat Smith, me Power of Pork.” ObS£PSl. (Raleigh N.C)
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