You aren't looking at the whole picture. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/we-could-be-heroes/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/we

You aren't looking at the whole picture. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/we-could-be-heroes/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/we-could-be-... >It takes 100 times more water (up to 2,500 gallons) to produce a pound of grain-fed beef than it does to produce a pound of wheat. We’re also running out of land: somewhere around 45 percent of the world’s land is either directly or indirectly involved in livestock production http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-greenhouse-hamburger/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-greenhouse-ham... >the meat [in our diets] cause more greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and the like to spew into the atmosphere than either transportation or industry. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.htm... >Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests. >Just this week, the president of Brazil announced emergency measures to halt the burning and cutting of the country’s rain forests for crop and grazing land. In the last five months alone, the government says, 1,250 square miles were lost.