Animal Agriculture : An Examination of Animal Agriculture and What it's Doing to our Planet

Animal Agriculture : An Examination of Animal Agriculture and What it's Doing to our Planet

Our climate change  has been a huge problem for humans over the recent years causing our world to drastically change from the raising of CO2 emissions to more and more severe natural disasters. .The question is why is this happening? Now most people believe the main reason our climate has been changing is from CO2 emissions being so high from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal,oil and natural gas to create electricity and fuel our vehicles but that's not the case the leading cause for climate change is actually animal agriculture.Throughout this essay these images will help demonstrate a better understanding to as why animal agriculture is such as big issue that needs to be addressed.

There are many reasons animal agriculture plays a huge role in climate change one being deforestation.Animal agriculture not only clears 1-2 acres of rain forest every minute but is also responsible for 91% of Amazon rain forest deforestation.In the image below it shows deforestation of the Amazon rain forest so that wheat can be grown for animal livestock.Deforestation of trees so that we can grow more food for animals is a huge contributor to climate change because we are cutting down tree’s which take away CO2 and help keep our air clean.Deforestation is not the only thing animal agriculture does to our earth and climate.

Animal agriculture is also responsible for a huge amount of water consumption , eating one burger is equivalent to the average person's amount of showers for 2 months. California is an a great example of the effects animal agriculture is having on our fresh water supply.The picture below shows Lake Oroville in California the lake has severely dried up, If you look at the tan looking sediment beside the water that's how high the water used to be, ..Animal agriculture has taken a huge toll on our fresh water supply using 29% of our fresh water worldwide and 47% of California’s water supply creating a severe issue for our environment.California is just an example of the effects animal agriculture has put on our water supply.

To continue animal agriculture also plays a huge role in our greenhouse emissions a recent study showed animal agriculture is responsible for 51% of the world's CO2 emissions. The next image shows people at Al Gore’s Live Earth event protesting about the greenhouse gas emissions our livestock partakes in.The cow has writing on it that says “I am full of green house gas, do you have a steak in it?”. By saying this it's using a pun by saying do you have a “steak” in it like the food and challenging people’s ideology’s by asking if they are supporting the effects livestock has on our climate.  

Lastly in order to stop this dangerous trend of mass production of animal agriculture we must limit our consumption of animals before it's too late. The image above shows what our world is gonna be like when we look at “ego’” vs “eco” and “we the people” vs “we are one”, symbolizing our ego towards animals and what the world will look like if we keep thinking about just human needs instead of all beings as one. l. We must separate ourselves from the ideology that we are better and more important than other living things and lose our ego and be mindful of our ecosystem before it's too late.When we aren’t doing this we are destroying our world slowly, so we must try to be more compassionate towards animals and our world we live on.

In conclusion the effects of animal agriculture has on our climate and world  is very bad and must need to be addressed.The effects it has go from deforestation to massive amounts of fresh water consumption, to higher CO2 emissions and increase in greenhouse gasses.In summation animal agriculture has caused our climate to drastically change and we must lower our consumption of animals and animal by products in order to help reduce the crippling affects animal agriculture has on our planet.

Citations
Image 1: http://kids.britannica.com/elementary/art-164745/Trees-have-been-cleared-from-a-large-area-in-the
Image 2: http://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/lake-oroville-photos-show-california-drought-crisis/
Image 3: http://theirturn.net/2015/05/20/al-gore-serves-animals-at-climate-change-concerts/
Image 4: http://shiftethos.com/2014/12/24/state-of-the-planet-report/