If you're still eating meat going into 2020, you're literally killing the Earth.
Did you know scientists have confirmed that we are currently in the sixth mass extinction on Earth? Well, we are. Because of human overpopulation and overconsumption, billions of species are disappearing from the face of the Earth.
Human beings account for only 0.01 percent of all living things on Earth and yet we have been the direct cause of the loss of 83 percent of all wild mammals as well as around 50 percent of plants.
On top of that, "The Guardian" reports that a new study published in February of 2019 showed that "while meat and dairy provide just 18 percent of calories and 37 percent of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83 percent – of farmland and produces 60 percent of agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions."
According to NatureResearch Journal, between the years of 2010 and 2050, where population is expected to have a major increase by 2.2 billion more people by 2050, and income levels are also expected to rise, the effects of our food system on our environment will increase anywhere from 50-90 percent.
All this is to say that our eating habits are having a disastrous effect on our environment right now and will only continue to annihilate our precious ecosystem as the years tick on because more people are going to be birthed into, a participate in, a system that is already crushing our Earth.
Think about it this way: the reason we exist on Earth is because of all the species of animals and plants around us that create a stable environment for our life to thrive. We live in a vast and complex system that needs every part within it. If you start taking away parts, kind of like a game of Jenga, the whole structure is at danger of collapsing and probably will with time. And the more people who join the game (i.e. the more people born into this system) the easier it becomes for the structure to collapse.
Add more than 2 billion more people into the game and you can only guess how quickly the structure will collapse if we don't take proactive measures right now.
We are living in a time when just by simply relinquishing meat from our diets once, twice a week, or more, will have a tremendous impact on if we are able to hand down a healthy Earth to our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren.
That McDonald's burger you eat for lunch three times a week is causing massive devastation to our climate. You may not think so because you are one in 7.6 billion people on Earth, but when you actually comprehend that the impact on our environment is coming from similar odds, you begin to see that your actions mean a whole lot to the survival of our Earth.
So today, on National Vegan Day, stop hiding from facts and make a pledge to help save our environment. You don't need to go totally vegan or vegetarian, but cutting out meat and dairy from your life once a week could be the difference in our species surviving or going totally extinct.
At the end of the day, the choice is yours.
