silent but deadly.....

There is sooo much talk about methane (aka cow farts) polluting the ozone. This sort of coincides with a debate over eating meat. In the previous post I talked about buying more products that were not tested on animals but since I eat meat am I still a total bastard? PETA would say "hell yeah you are you piece of crap" but oh well. I like chicken, I like fish, I sometimes like beef. Humans are a species that were designed and built to be omnivores. I can't deny what makes me human (which is chicken, definitely chicken makes me human). I tried to not eat meat for six months a long time ago and it was not pretty. I was a mess, I was not doing it correctly for sure, but still. Not a good scene for me. So in part of being green and what not, I have been trying to buy organic food. There are lots of options for meat nowadays. I can buy free-range organic chickens. Can you feel the warm fuzzies? I only murder happy chickens thank you very much.

Well I think beef is a different beast (obviously) but seriously. Our beef craving is pretty extreme. We eat to damn much. We could each make an impact if we made an effort to eat less of it. Yes, I'm asking you to step away from the BigMac ( sorry, you know I love you, but you make my but big and are a polluting the ozone more than our transportation emissions). The United Nations thinks cows are one of the greatest threats to the environment. BURN!!! Cows release mass amounts of methane, require lots of water for milk production and are a major source of deforestation. Check out the article from 2006. So I thought I might get off easy just lessening the amount of beef I eat, but damn it, now dairy!!! I will scream for ice cream!!! I live on dairy.

All is not lost however. There are several emerging technologies that are trying to combat cows from destroying the world, while still providing us with tasty steaks and treats. My favorite is a cow fart suction cup :) I can just see all the shenanigans that will arise from the cows getting all entangled with each other. Another, more sustainable practice is for cattle producers to operate more organically. This mean no fertilizers, pesticides and hormones. This will decrease the likely hood of these chemicals making it into our water supplies and lessen the occurrence of acid rain. This now leads us back to my "Garbage Island" post. There are other dead zones popping up all over the ocean. 146 of them. A big one is right next door to me in the Gulf of Mexico. The main cause of this one, fertilizers and pesticides from cattle farms making their way from the farm, down the Mississippi and into the Gulf.

The good news, we can cut these fertilizers from reaching the Gulf by doing a better job of either not using them or measuring them more precisely to the crop. That way they will get fully absorbed by the soil instead of running off as waste. Holy gloom and doom batman, I apologize, just ranting :)