Vegetarianism , WHY ?

Cruelty to Animals

More than 27 billion animals are killed for food every year in the U.S. alone. Animals in factory farms have no legal protection from cruelty that would be illegal if it were inflicted on dogs or cats, including neglect, mutilations, genetic manipulation, drug regimens that cause chronic pain and crippling, transport through all weather extremes, and gruesome and violent slaughter.

Amazing Animals

Farmed animals are no less intelligent or capable of feeling pain than are the dogs and cats we cherish as our companions. They are inquisitive, interesting individuals who value their lives, solve problems, experience fear and pain, and are capable of using tools. According to animal-behavior scientists, chickens begin learning from their mothers while they are still in their shells, pigs can play video games better than some primates can, and fish form social bonds and can remember things that they have learned for the human equivalent of 40 years.

Your Health

Vegetarian foods provide us with all the nutrients that we need, minus the saturated fat, cholesterol, and contaminants that are found in meat, eggs, and dairy products. Plant-based diets protect us against heart disease, diabetes, obesity, strokes, and several types of cancer. Vegetarians also have stronger immune systems and, on average, live 10 years longer than meat-eaters do.

The Environment

America's meat addiction is poisoning and depleting our potable water, arable land, and clean air. More than half the water used in the United States goes to animal agriculture, and since farmed animals produce 130 times more excrement than the human population does, the run-off from their waste greatly pollutes our waterways.

World Hunger

Raising animals for food is extremely inefficient—for every pound of food that they eat, only a fraction of the calories are returned in the form of edible flesh. If we stopped intensively breeding farmed animals and grew crops to feed humans instead, we would easily be able to feed every human on the planet with healthy and affordable vegetarian foods.

Worker Rights

Human Rights Watch has declared that slaughterhouse workers have "the most dangerous factory job in America." The industry has refused to do what's necessary to create safe working conditions for its employees, such as slowing down slaughter lines and supplying workers with appropriate safety gear, because these changes could cut into companies' bottom lines.

Poisoning Communities

Factory farms pollute the air and water for many miles in every direction, often spreading contamination and illness to the people who live and work nearby. Chronic sickness, brain damage, poisoned waterways, elevated cancer rates, and even death plague these communities, while the government does nothing to protect citizens or regulate the industry.

Government Negligence

Between 2000 and 2005, agribusinesses funneled more than $140 million to politicians, who more than earned their money by helping to ensure that laws that might protect consumers, animals, and the environment did not pass. The unfortunate truth is that the federal government does very little to protect human health, animal welfare, and our environment from the factory-farming industry's negligence and excess.

"Vegetarian Celebrities " Speak Out for farmed animals :

Alec Baldwin: "Every time we sit down to eat, we make a choice. Please choose vegetarianism. Do it for … animals. Do it for the environment, and do it for your health."

Alicia Silverstone: "Once people spend time with farm animals in a loving way ... a pig or cow or a little chicken or a turkey, they might find they relate with them the same way they relate with dogs and cats. People don't really think of them that way because they're on the plate. Why should they be food when other animals are pets? I would never eat my doggies."

Casey Affleck: "Imagine living in a cage in the dark, unable to move, day after day. The suffering of today's American farm animals is almost beyond belief. They don't have a choice, but you do, and their lives depend on it."

Pamela Anderson: "Chickens, pigs, and other animals—they are interesting individuals with personalities and intelligence. But if farmers did to dogs and cats what they do to animals they're raising for food, they could be prosecuted for animal abuse and locked up."

Sir Paul McCartney: "If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That's the single most important thing you could do. It's staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty."

Shania Twain: "I think there's something odd about eating another living anything."

Global temperatures will rise 6C this century

Surging global greenhouse gas emissions mean the world now faces likely temperature rises of up to 5-6C this century, according to the scientist leading the international Climate Congress in Copenhagen this week.

Professor Katharine Richardson, who chaired the scientific steering committee for the conference, said it was now almost impossible for the world to achieve the UN target of preventing global temperature rise exceeding 2C.

"We can forget about the 2C"," said Richardson in an interview. "We are now facing the situation where we have to avoid a 5-6C rise in temperature."

Richardson said her comments were based on sifting through hundreds of science research papers submitted to the congress. Details of the research are being presented to delegates this week and will be used in a report for the UN.

Her comments were not the only bad news to emerge on the first day of the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change (IPCC) in Copenhagen. Other researchers warned that sea levels are now rising 50% faster than suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 2007 report.

It means the world's oceans could rise by a metre or more over the next century and that low-lying coastal areas will be at risk of inundation with hundreds of millions of people displaced, especially in developing countries.

Some of those attending the Copenhagen meeting have dubbed it "the end of the world conference" because the latest research emerging on climate change is so alarming.

"There is not a lot, if any, good news," said Richardson of the emerging science. "What we know now is that we are we facing the worst case scenario."

The warnings on temperature rise are linked to the surge in greenhouse gas emissions over the last decade. Currently humanity generates the equivalent of about 50 billion tonnes of CO2 a year through burning fossil fuels, agriculture, deforestation and other processes.

In its last report the IPCC made over-cautious assumptions about how these emissions would rise in future – and concluded it would be possible to prevent a total global temperature rise of more than 2C compared with pre-industrial times.

It has since emerged that these assumptions were misplaced and that emissions have grown at around 3 % a year – about twice as fast as the IPCC's worst case scenario.

Dr R K Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who won a 2008 Nobel prize for his work on climate, said temperatures had already risen by about 0.7C, compared with pre-industrial times and would probably rise by a further 1.8 – 4C over the next century.

his would give a total potential temperature rise of 2.5C – 4.7C. There was even an outside chance of much greater warming, of around 7C, he said.

He said: "There is no room now to argue that the earth is warming. Sadly policy makers have shied away from such findings and that is why there is no concensus on where to stabilise global temperatures or how," he said. Even a minimal temperature change of 1C would put food security and water availability at risk."

Other scientists were equally gloomy on the impacts of rising sea level, warning that rising oceans would have major impacts around the world and were likely to hit low-lying countries, particularly hard. Countries like Bangladesh, China, the Mumbai region of India were especially at risk but even developed ones like Britain would be affected badly.

Dr John Church of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, told the conference, sea level rise by 2100 could be in the range of about one meter, or possibly more.

The warning comes from new research into the behaviour of glaciers and ice sheets, especially in Greenland. It had been thought the main effect of global warming was simply to melt them.

However, the new research shows that as water melts it sinks down to the bedrock under the glaciers and lubricates them, so that their movement to the sea accelerates sharply.

This has turned out to be a much more powerful effect than simple melting and means the IPCC, whose 2007 report projected a sea level rise of 18 - 59 cm by 2100, must once again revise its earlier findings.

Eric Rignot, Professor of Earth System Science at the University of California Irvine and Senior Research Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the finding had emerged from research conducted after the IPCC report was written.

He said: "As a result of the acceleration of outlet glaciers over large regions, the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are already contributing more and faster to sea level rise than anticipated. If this trend continues, we are likely to witness sea level rise one meter or more by year 2100."

The point of the Copenhagen meeting is to draw together all the latest science on climate change in preparation for the UN negotiations planned for this December at which politicians will try to draw up a replacement for the Kyoto treaty on reducing greenhouse gases, which expires in 2012.

However, John Ashton, a senior civil servant at the British Foreign Office, launched a startling attack – for a government official – on the ability of politicians to deal with climate change, or even understand it.

He said he believed politicians had still failed to grasp the seriousness of climate change – or were even prepared to bend scientific findings to purely political ends.

"Policymaking is not adapted to deal with the problem of climate change, " said Ashton. "Politiicans often see science as just another group and that opinions based on science are just another lobby. There are also plenty of people who due to ignorance or mischief are willing to confuse the issue."

Ashton did not name any particular politicians or issues but his comments come just weeks after the government gave its approval to the building of a third runway at Heathrow airport, an issue which is said to have left many of Britain's climate policy-makers seething.

From: Times Online

2010 World Cup - South Africa