Art Of Living – part 2

We were given a bit of homework the previous day – reasons for environmental pollution and what can we do about it as individuals.

Most of us did our homework and came up with the regular causes and the measures anyone would suggest namely,
•Carpool to decrease usage of petrol
•Turn off appliances when you are not using them
•Follow the 3 R’s : Reduce, Reuse and Recycle
•Avoid plastic whenever possible and reuse whatever you have already started using
•Avoid some non vegetarian products (my uncle told me this) such as chicken. Know why? What non vegetarians around the world eat are broiler chickens, which are grown only for the purpose of consumption and are on a continuous process of fattening. This process involves excess amount of feed and a number of different hormones to make them “tender and juicy”. For crying out loud, that’s so many hormones which finally enter water! They pollute the eco-system more effectively than anything else can simply because they are proteins, so hydrophobic and cannot dissolve. They cause unforeseen and horrible mutations in aquatic animals and anyone who consumes them.

Bawa stressed on this last point and stated categorically that this is the biggest polluter of the environment today. Apart from the many points I have already mentioned, he unearthed some more shocking facts:
•A chicken cannot feed more than 2 people at a time right? Let us assume, you cook it into a soup. Even then, it will not feed more than 10 people. Let us analyse what goes into this chicken apart from all the hormones. A single chicken eats, in its lifetime before consumption, at least 150 kg of grains. This is sufficient to feed 200 people for a day.
I’m not saying chickens are not living beings and that they don’t deserve our attention. But just think, a regular chicken that will not be someone’s dinner someday does not eat so much but still manages to survive! Why should so many around the world be deprived of food for a single man’s (ok 2) greed and taste?
•A cow that is grown only for its beef consumes water in its lifetime that is enough to support a giant naval ship. You know the kind? The ones on which aeroplanes land in the middle of the sea. I do not know the terminology but I do know the size and I do know the wastage of water involved. People around the world are dying because they have no water and we find out that this is a reason?

These 2 examples that I have put forward are only a hint of the destruction posed by non-vegetarianism to the environment. According to the latest reports from environmental agencies around the world, non-vegetarianism contributes to 27% of the global warming! If only 10% of Americans stop meat consumption, this situation can be completely turned around.

To many, non-vegetarianism is a way of life. How can they live without it they ask? Here’s a website http://vegforlife.org/earth.htm that gives you fabulous insights on how to make vegetarian food taste just like non-vegetarian food. What about all the proteins and health benefits that you get from it? Here’s a website that gives conclusive evidence to the contrary: http://www.celestialhealing.net/physicalveg3.htm

Other reasons for global warming and pollution?

It’s common knowledge that there are more people on the planet than there are trees. So the obvious thing to do is to plant more of them! We were all given complementary saplings at the end of the session to plant in our houses. I got a drumstick sapling! Here’s a website where you can talk about your tree as your own family member, friend etc. and talk about how much it means to you www.itsmytree.net join the website and in the campaign to promote growth of trees around the world. Encourage people you know to join it too, spread the word.

The global population right now is around 6 billion. The Earth, if allowed to flourish properly and is not tampered with, can support 100 times this number. Let us not allow this to be just another number on this page.