First off, have you ever been a vegetarian or have you ever known anyone who is a vegetarian? If yes, what was your reasoning or the other persons reasoning? One of the top five reasons vegetarians list for forgoing meat is the environmental argument. A general assumption among those not educated on the true implications of vegetarianism is that forgoing meat must be more environmentally friendly, as the lives and potential services that livestock can provide are being conserved. Along with this, conserving the amount of meat produced reduces the amount of domestic livestock such as cattle, which contribute to global warming simply by being alive. They produce a gaseous compound called methane during fermentation to break down plant cellulose that contributes 2% to the total carbon in the environment and thus depletes the ozone layer. The assumption is that by removing this meat source, the environment is being spared; however, the elimination of this major food group puts unnecessary strain on other food sources. This removal of meat as a food source presents a problem for those who are not educated on how to “do vegetarianism” properly. Most people that jump into vegetarianism without doing proper research lean too heavily on grains as a food source because they are filling. This promotes over production of grains and in an effort to produce mass amounts of the food group as efficiently as possible, things like GMO’s as main food sources is becoming more prevalent. This in turn leads to mass fertilization and run off of pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus. This run off is damaging to the environment in many ways, the most prevalent and well known being algal blooms in nearby water collections. This can cause mass amounts of dead zones and in turn, add to the total carbon emission in the environment as well. What is your take on vegetarianism being environmentally friendly? What types of alternative diets would you recommend? What other issues do you see with vegetarianism?
Christina Winters, Noon Clas