Buy Organic -- Grow Your Own Food -- Reduce Global Warming!

Growing some of your own food, and buying organic, are some ways to significantly reduce your contribution to global warming.

Did you know that conventional agricultural fertilizers add a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, to the atmosphere? In a lifecycle analysis of conventional orange juice, the nitrogen fertilizers were the primary contributor to global warming - not running the factory or transporting the juice containers.
http://www.huffington...

Organic agriculture actually removes greenhouse gases from the atmosphere: about 3,500 pounds of carbon dioxide per acre-foot per year are sequestered.
http://www.organiccon...

Although buying local does help the local economy, our food security, and more, it doesn't always have the lowest carbon footprint!
http://www.nytimes.co...

But having an organic, biointensive veggie garden does, and uses much less water, produces more vegetables in a small space, and builds topsoil instead of causing the rampant erosion often seen in commercial agriculture. Freshly picked produce tastes great! And has more nutrition.
http://growbiointensi...
http://www.johnjeavon...

If you don't have a yard, try growing vegetables, mushrooms, and herbs in containers!
http://aggie-horticul...
http://life.gaiam.com...
http://www.fungi.com/...

Some containers are even self-watering! You can buy or make them.
http://planetgreen.di...
http://planetgreen.di...
http://www.insideurba...
http://www.gardeners....

Another way to reduce your environmental impact is to stop wasting so much food and watching your portion sizes. The University of Arizona in Tucson estimated that the US wastes as much as half of its food supply. Fast food restaurants have increased portion sizes two to five times over when they were first introduced, according to the Journal of Public Health Policy.
http://www.foodnaviga...
http://www.treehugger...
http://www.soundvisio...
http://dsc.discovery....
http://www.ers.usda.g...

There is evidence that if we don't take action within the next 7 years to stop climate change, there may be a self-feeding cycle in place, at which point there may be nothing we can do to stop it.
http://greenupgrader....


Less Animal Product Consumption = Less Global Warming!

One of the easiest ways to dramatically reduce your carbon footprint is through the food choices you make everyday. The fact is, if enough people made significant cuts to their animal product consumption, like Al Gore has done, that could be enough to stop climate change!

According to a UN report released in 2006, raising animals for meat is the cause of 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all forms of transport put together (13%). Even if you simply reduce your meat consumption, it can have a big impact on reducing your carbon footprint.
http://www.un.org/app...
http://www.fao.org/do...

According to a World Bank report, livestock are responsible for 51% of greenhouse gas emissions. They factored in the CO2 from respiration.
http://www.worldwatch...

Al Gore: "It's absolutely correct that the growing meat intensity of diets around the world is one of the issues connected to this global crisis - not only because of the CO2 involved, but also because of the water consumed in the process."
http://news.theage.co...

By changing your diet, you can save the following amount of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide) per year as compared to the average American, approximately:
Vegan: 2 tons
Vegetarian: 1 ton
Weekday Vegan: 1.4 tons
Weekday Vegetarian: 0.7 tons
Switch 1 meal per day to animal-free: 0.67 tons
Switch 1 meal per day to vegetarian: 0.33 tons

http://planetgreen.di...
http://www.edf.org/ar...
http://www.treehugger...
http://planetgreen.di...

Did you know that the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius?
http://www.huffington...

Walking actually uses more fossil energy than driving, if you get your calories for walking from red meat.
http://bicycleunivers...

Further, a vegetarian diet could cut climate change mitigation costs by 70%, if enough of us made the switch.
http://www.treehugger...

Meat uses vastly more land and water to feed people than does plant food. Compared to soy, meat production took more land (6 to 17 times as much), water (4.4 to 26 times), fossil fuels (6 to 20 times), and biocides (6 times as much of pesticides and chemicals used for processing). Compared to producing pasta, red meat used 20 times the land, generated 3 times the greenhouse-gas emissions, 17 times the water pollution caused by soil and biological matter, and 5 times the toxic water pollution. (Based on Union for Concerned Scientists study.)
http://www.grist.org/...

In general, the amount of meat that can be raised on a piece of land is about one-tenth that of the amount of plant matter that can be grown on the same land. On average, an acre of land can grow about 1,200 calories per day of meat or about 6,000 calories per day of grain and vegetables. This corresponds to almost 30 million acres of land that must be used for agriculture that could be used for other purposes or allowed to remain wild. Wild land can be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
http://esa21.kennesaw...
http://www.idrc.ca/en...
http://www.ciwf.org.u...


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