By DAVID STEELE, Ph.D.

Go see Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth. It may well be the most important film of the year. Al Gore guides us through a fact-filled, highly persuasive exposition on global warming. He  convincingly argues that a tremendous crisis is upon us, one that  threatens our civilization and our entire planet. It is a crisis of  our own making. If we're going to avert global disaster, each and  every one of us must take decisive action. We must become active and  effective environmentalists. 

Within this inconvenient truth is another, equally inconvenient  truth. Perhaps Al Gore missed it. Perhaps not. His movie fails to  mention it, in any case. That truth is, if we're truly going to be  effective environmentalists, if we're really going to attenuate climate change -- if we're going to put the brakes on the tremendous  destruction that we're wreaking on this planet -- we're going to have to give up eating meat. In the modern world, it is impossible to reconcile a carnivorous diet with environmental responsibility. 

When you munch on a burger, bite into a drumstick or chew on a pork chop you're having tremendous deleterious effects on the environment.  Our hunger for meat is the biggest single contributor to planetary  degradation. Be it global warming, fossil fuel depletion, water  pollution or desertification, meat consumption is a prime contributor  to the problem. 

In April, researchers at the University of Chicago showed that a  person eating an average American diet contributes the equivalent of  about 1 1/2 tonnes more CO2 to the atmosphere each year than does a  person on a vegan diet. That's more than the difference between  driving a Hummer H3 and a Toyota Prius 5,000 kilometers in the city. Startlingly, fully a third of the raw materials consumed in North  America are used in meat 'production.' Half- to three-quarters of all  grain grown in North America is used for this purpose. So is some 15%  of fossil fuels. The livestock industry is responsible to an  astounding degree for the pollution of our air, lands and waterways. 

Nearly three quarters of North American ammonia emissions are due  directly or indirectly to animal farming. According to the Worldwatch Institute, farm animals around the world generate 130 times as much  bodily waste as the entire human population. 

The raising of livestock and the soybeans to feed them is easily the  number one contributor to rainforest destruction. More than two acres  of tropical rainforest is being cleared per second to graze or feed  farm animals. Around the world, topsoil to the tune of tens of  billions of tons are lost each year to cultivation of animal feed  crops. Raising animals is an incredibly inefficient process. 

Depending on the animal, it takes 2 to 10 lbs of grain to get one  pound of meat. Think how much less destruction would attend a human  world devoted to feeding itself directly with plant foods! 

Some think that we can do our part by choosing to eat only free range  animals. But even free range animal agriculture does serious damage  to our environment. Free range cattle actually emit slightly more  methane per animal than do their grain-fed relatives. And the soil  loss associated with free range is significant, too. When raised on  semi-arid land (as is common in BC and Alberta beef country), damage to the environment can be particularly severe. Several studies have  shown a strong correlation between the use of semi-arid land for beef  production and desertification. 

What about fish? Well, the University of Chicago study showed that  eating fish is as big a contributor to global warming as is beef.  Most fish eaten in our culture requires energy-intensive long  distance voyages for harvest. Even farmed fish require this sort of  input; raising salmon, for example, requires some 3 lbs of ocean-caught fish for every pound of salmon produced. 

Hunting? Sorry, it's a no brainer. If everyone suddenly chose to hunt  for their meat, how long do you think there'd be any animals other  than humans left? 

There are no two ways about it. Eating meat, dairy and fish is just plain incompatible with sustainability. If this planet is going to be  saved, we must change our eating habits. Go see Al Gore's movie. Do what he suggests. And give up animal products. It's not very hard.  Certainly not compared to trying to survive in a roiling, boiling  wasteland. If we don't do the right thing, that roiling, boiling wasteland is the world we'll all too soon be living in.