Eating Animals in an Era of Climate Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a leading group of researchers under the aegis of the UN, issued a new report detailing the timeline of stopping direct climate change and issuing a call to action. This call to action would require extreme personal and governmental changes to be enacted during a political moment in the United States when environmental regulations are being slashed and government subsidies and tax cuts are being handed out to animal agribusiness. This preferential treatment of corporations, including agribusinesses, is a leading driver of climate change and environmental degradation.
The world is rapidly heating up and we have a very short time frame to alter that course before we’ve reached a 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit global increase above pre-industrial levels (circa the 1850s). A rise of global temps above that point is seen as the point of catastrophic no return. Oceans will rise, cities like Mumbai and New York City will flood, entire ecosystems will be altered and most species will go extinct, coral reefs will die off as will sections of the ocean, and the most vulnerable global human populations will face scarcity and death.
There is no waiting for tomorrow on this report. At Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, we are calling for people to eliminate animal consumption and boycott animal agribusiness. Farmed animals are living beings who are mass produced, exploited, and tortured as if they were objects on an assembly line. Eating them is not only unethical but it’s also an environmental disaster due to deforestation, land use, water pollution, and carbon emissions.
“Food production already causes great damage to the environment, via greenhouse gases from livestock, deforestation and water shortages from farming, and vast ocean dead zones from agricultural pollution. But without action, its impact will get far worse as the world population rises by 2.3 billion people by 2050 and global income triples, enabling more people to eat meat-rich western diets.” (The Guardian, Oct 10 2018)
Choosing to support animal agribusiness when you have access to alternatives is violence against both human and nonhuman animals.
Eating animals when you have access to alternatives is violence against the planet.
At this point in history, eating animals when you have access to alternatives is climate change denial.
We must stop corporations from causing this outright harm…and we must stop our governments from bolstering industries like nonrenewable energy and animal agribusiness with lax policies, subsidies, and lack of oversight and regulation.
Join us in boycotting animal agribusiness and holding our government accountable by compelling immediate and lasting change for animals, humans, and the planet.
For the animals,
Rachel McCrystal
Executive Director