I’d like to recommend you immediately watch “Eating Our Way to Extinction”, available on Amazon Prime Video, voiced by Kate Winslet. Who is telling us this alarming information? (I’m chiming in, agreeing with notables like Tony Robbins, Sir Richard Branson and the various presenters. See clarifying comments below, please.)

First of all, it’s NOT a hit piece, more like Upton Sinclair’s exposure of the Chicago meat-packing industry pre-USDA, etc. (“The Jungle”). Responsibly raised food differs entirely from how Big Food does it. Water and trees are under threat, but not due to raising animals and crops the old-fashioned way. Rather, the threat of modern animal agriculture arises from growing feed, on formerly forested land, with pesticides and flown-on fertilizer to intensively farm beef/pork/chicken/fish, using corn and soya in place of open range land, releasing huge quantities of methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. Industrial pollution has far less effect, yet blame focuses there.
Using massive water quantities to grow our desired foods, water tables are being depleted, and run-off winds up in the oceans, leaving dead zones releasing even more of these “greenhouse gases” warming the globe. Rainfall cannot make up freshwater’s deficit. Changing weather patterns demonstrate, nature is no longer in balance.

Concurrently, fishing nets and equipment lost and discarded account for 80% of micro-plastics polluting the entire global fisheries, killing marine animals indiscriminately. Drinking straws and used water bottles form only a small part of this problem! From the tiniest marine organisms, up through the food change, micro-plastics find their way into seafood we put into our own bodies. This can’t be positive.

It hurt my heart to find out Norway and Scotland are farming fish in terrible conditions, requiring the same intense level of chemical and anti-biotic use as animal agriculture on land. Mercury and harmful fish oil/fats, from ocean-sourced feed stripped from nature, accumulates in confined salmon and trout, fed upon intensely by sea lice that have to be chemically cleansed with hydrogen peroxide and formalin before processing. Intensive aquaculture produces more greenhouse gases than similar land-based farming practices! Add toxic pesticides accumulating in fish flesh, and people sicken trying to eat healthy!

Secondly, I hunt, eat meat and fish myself. Vegetables rate high with me as well, though vegetarian/vegan diets seem not to fill me up. Way too much starch!

Finally, the guy asking you to watch “Eating Our Way to Extinction” (me) is –

A Wildlife & Fisheries guy, with a BS Degree in Aquaculture and some practical experience at a Texas fish farm, specializing in multi-species fingerling production for stocking privately held waters, sportfishing and brooding lakes maintenance. We did not focus on food fish production.

A Texas deer hunter, with limited African safari experiences in South Africa.
A tree hugger, but only to determine which way to safely “fall” a tree.

A practicing Christian, viewing Earth as “My Father’s World”, like the hymn says, in a way that is global and not exclusively North American.

I am not a “Save the Whales”, “Meat is Murder”, “COEXIST” type at all. (More likely to have a bumper sticker saying, “Imagine Whirled Peas” than “Ban All Nukes!”) I want to protect wildlife and fisheries, preserving the oceans and forests just like you. As a hunter and fisherperson, I know that habitat loss to the plow and agricultural poisoning of waterways are our mutual enemies. Further loss means nobody survives.

Along with stripped rain forests, habitat loss now includes new, massive hydroelectric dams planned in Africa. The GERD in Ethiopia, just filled, means electric power for much of East Africa. It may actually serve to conserve water. Yay! The Greater Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, though able to hold the entire Blue Nile annual rainfall reaching Lake Tana, will extend the life of downstream dams in Egypt and Sudan by silting in at higher level, reducing evaporation loss. Much of that annual component will continue towards the White Nile as in the past.

And, Tanzania wants to build a dam that will take over half the Selous, the largest game reserve in Africa. Millions more people want what Europe and the Americas already enjoy, using previously deforested land. Ethiopia has approaching 100 million humans within her borders! Guess who wants a steady supply of meat, fish, eggs and dairy, too? China already built their own massive dams years ago.

Whales are great! Do you know sperm whales supplement the open ocean’s iron content? Prior to diving miles down to feed on iron-rich giant squid each night, they evacuate their bowels from the previous day, in spectacular fashion. Gives new meaning to the phrase; “Well that blows!” (Maybe you’ve seen a great white shark do it on YouTube? Imagine what it is like when a blue whale “blows”!!! God is great!) I agree, they do need saving. And, that information is courtesy of Hugh Ross. See pp.66-68 in “Hidden Treasure in the Book of Job” (Baker Books 2011.)

We love good venison/game meat and appreciate responsibly raised food. Nobody knows meat like South Africans. Okay, maybe we better include Argentinians. Blesbok backstrap braai’d by Gerald at Blkz, Mama Trinette’s venison pie, gemsbok stroganoff and eland smothered steak rank with a Killan’s wet-aged New York strip steak. No, better! Cowboys preferred to eat longhorn steers fed on open range grasses and brush. Livestock raised in confined space, often in darkness cannot taste as good!

Fruit likewise tastes better if allowed to ripen in sunlight, instead of being picked green and shipped to storage in containers under nitrogen. Ever eat non-store peaches, hand-picked in Fredericksburg? Awesome! Jaffa oranges from Israel? Oy, vey!

Land requires value to preserve it, which ethical sportsmen and women bring via hunting and fishing dollars/Euros/etc. My spouse, Pamela, is an enthusiastic huntress! Want to save the planet? Get off the back of sportsmen and women paying the way. If the forests, lakes, streams and oceans go due to animal agriculture, the planet dies.

This is new information in “Extinction”, not Greenpeace, PETA or the ASPCA pleading for funds. We’re not talking about the UN taxing cow farts to stop global warming. America isn’t singled out for blame, nor is industrial air pollution assigned the worst role as media often portrays it. Rather, the reason whales, fish and our forests and oceans are doomed is due to the way foods demanded by a growing urban population are being grown globally. Please consider watching the program.
Perhaps a switch to plant-based agriculture solves the problems animal agriculture causes, but I think most people prefer affordable meat, dairy and eggs.

There has been talk of doom for so long.

I really could not care less what happens to the world once I am gone!

Reading a bit of history, there was mention of global warming 5000 years BC.

And apparently whole cities north of Alexandria in Egypt got under water.

I wonder who were the environmentalists were then?

i mowed my lawn yesterday and carried the clippings to a Whole Foods Store and gave em to the vegans. fukkin ingrates refused to eat em!! they'll eat something out of a chickens ass but not something grown in the sunlight from fertile mother earth! go figure.

I agree with you all but the pics of the farm raised salmon did gross me out.

Early September Utah peaches from Grandpa V's Garage. Hot damn...

My latest read.

https://www.jbmackinnon.com/th...world-stops-shopping

Grizz

There are now more than EIGHT BILLION human beings on earth.

And we wonder why this shit happens?