Living the Mission - Care for the Earth
One-fifth of all vertebrates and one-third of all sharks and rays are on the brink of extinction, according to a new survey assessing nearly 26,000 species across the globe. The survey was conducted by 174 researchers in 38 countries. Among the many reasons: we’ve transformed a third of the Earth’s habitable land for food production. It is not possible to remove that much habitat without threatening the species that previously inhabited it. ~ Conservation International, reported Oct 27, 2010, Wall Street Journal (www.conservationInternational.com).
And on the subject of converting land to food production, consider the amount of land needed to sustain different eating habits: “A typical U.S. omnivore needs 3.5 acres of cropland per year to sustain himself or herself. An ovo-lacto vegetarian needs 1/2 an acre, while a vegan needs 1/6 of an acre. The land needed to feed one average omnivore would feed twenty-one vegans. There is an urgent need for more food as our population climbs upward from the 6 billion mark. Every five to ten days, hunger kills as many people as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.” ~Evelyn B. Pluhar, “The Right Not to Be Eaten,” in Food for Thought: The Debate Over Eating Meat
“One of the biggest wastes of energy in America could be the food in your garbage can . . . calories that were never consumed. And the energy that went into growing the food, processing it, packaging it, and transporting it. According to new research from the University of Texas, American food waste represents the energy equivalent of 350 million barrels of oil. That’s enough to power the whole country for a week—just sitting in the trash can rotting.” ~Hugh Collins, AOL News
“My only real fear is that the reality described in this book [Eaarth], and increasingly evident in the world around us, will be for some an excuse to give up. We need just the opposite: increased engagement. Some of that engagement will be local: building the kind of communities and economies that can withstand what's coming. And some of it must be global: we must step up the fight to keep climate change from getting even more powerfully out of control.
“But damage is always relative. So far we've increased global temperatures about a degree, and it's caused massive change. That's not going to go away. But if we don't stop pouring more carbon into the atmosphere, the temperature will simply keep rising, right past the point where any kind of adaptation will prove impossible. . . .So we will keep battling. We have no other choice.” ~Bill McKibben, Eaarth: A Guide to Living on a Fundamentally Altered Planet
350 parts per million (ppm) is considered the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If there are more than 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, we couldn’t have a planet “similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.” We are now at 390 ppm—and rising 2 ppm per year. ~NASA
Fact: One tree can absorb the amount of CO2 released by an average car that’s been driven for 4,000 miles. BUT: Every two seconds, a forest the size of a football field is destroyed.
Check things out at www.stopglobalwarming.org
