Foodie Eco Baron
I love this speech that New York Times “Minimalist” food writer Mark Bittman gave for TEDTalks a while back on “What’s wrong with what we eat,” which consists of a lively catalogue of the enviromental, climate change, and health devastation wrought by the typical American diet. Bittman, in calling for Americans to cut our meat consumption in half (just for starters), describes our diet as “a Holocaust of a different kind.” Definitely worth watching. A few highlights:
* After energy production, livestock (not cars and trucks) is the second largest contributor to greenhouse gases in the world.
* 70% of agricultural land is devoted to livestock – that’s 30% of the planet’s land surface.
* 1 billion Cokes a day are consumed worldwide.
* Between 1950 and 2000, world population doubled, but meat consumption increased five fold
* The maximum amount of meat for a healthy human diet: a ½ pound a week.
* The average American diet: a ½ pound of meat a day.
Hat tip to the GristMill blog for digging this video out of the archives.
This entry was posted on January 12, 2009 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Global Warming, environmental activism. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: Eco Barons, Mark Bittman, sustainable agriculture
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