A Key to Reducing Global Warming and Resource Depletion

减缓全球暖化与地球资源耗竭之钥


By the Florida News Group, USA (Originally in English)


The current problems of global warming and the reduction of Earth’s natural resources such as fossil fuels, fresh water and topsoil are the most difficult challenges humankind has ever faced. Scientists have concluded that reducing the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) will lessen global warming; so in 1997 181 governments signed the Kyoto Protocol to reduce their emissions of the chemical along with five other “greenhouse gases.” Although this measure is a positive step, in the July 2005 issue of the scientific journal Physics World, British physicist Alan Calverd proposes a simpler way to eliminate global warming—stop eating meat. His article “A Radical Approach to Kyoto” has spread rapidly across the Internet and is being heatedly discussed by scientists.


目前全球暖化现象以及诸如石油、水源与表土等自然资源的耗竭，已成为人类有史以来所面临最棘手的难题。世界各地的科学家们一致认为只要减少二氧化碳的排放量，即可减缓全球暖化的现象。因此1997年，181个国家政府联合签署了《京都议定书》，以减少石化废气，以及其它五种「温室效应气体」的排放。这虽然是肯定的一步，但是英国物理学家艾伦．卡佛特（Alan Calverd）在今年7月份的《物理世界》（Physics World）科学期刊中发表一篇名为〈解决京都议题的根本之道〉的文章，他在文中提出一个解决全球暖化问题的更简单的方法，那就是停止荤食。这篇文章迅速在网络上流传开来，并引起科学界广泛的讨论。


Although Calverd is not a vegetarian he recognized the great waste of natural resources and energy caused by the raising of animals for food. So he calculated the various forms of CO2-producing power use, such as the burning of fossil fuels and human and livestock metabolism, and found that 21% of such power consumption involves keeping farm animals alive. Similar to automobile fuel exhaust, the livestock’s breathing generates an enormous amount of CO2, and remarkably, this agent of global warming is not included under the category of manmade emissions by climate scientists and politicians because they consider it a non-human phenomenon that can not be altered.



这篇文章的作者卡佛特本身并非素食者，但他却了解到人类饲养动物来作为食物，是生物资源与能源的一大浪费。他将人类所使用的各种会产生二氧化碳的能源，像是石化燃料及人体和家畜的新陈代谢，简单地加以计算，结果发现这些与人类有关的能源使用中，有21﹪是用来饲养家畜。就像汽车燃料会排放废气一般，即使家畜简单的呼吸也会产生巨量的二氧化碳，很明显地，这就是造成全球暖化的原因之一。不过气象学家与政治人物却把它视为无法改变的非人为现象，而没有将它列入人为废气的范围内。


Further, Calverd’s figure of 21% does not include indirect sources of carbon dioxide emissions, such as feed production, mechanized slaughtering, evisceration, packaging, transport and refrigeration.


此外，卡佛特所算出的21﹪中，尚不包括那些会间接排放二氧化碳的过程，譬如：饲料生产、机械化屠宰、清除内脏、包装、运输与冷藏等过程。

A more complete calculation of the energy cost of meat production has been done by Cornell University’s Dr. David Pimentel, an agricultural scientist, who is not involved with the vegetarian movement, but has been tracking the energy cost of ‘growing’ meat for decades and written 560 scientific papers and 23 books on the subject. Dr. Pimentel has also held numerous governmental posts overseeing the meat industry and repeatedly tells his fellow meat scientists, “I’m not making any moral judgments. I’m just giving you data.”


康乃尔大学的戴维．比门铁尔博士（Dr. David Pimentel）则对肉食所消耗的能源进行更完整的计算。比门铁尔是一位农业科学家，他本身并不参与任何素食活动，不过却花费数十年的时间追踪肉品制造所消耗的能量。光是探讨这个主题，他已先后撰写了560篇科学论文，并著有23本书。他在政府机构中拥有数个监督肉品业的职位，并一再地告诉那些吃荤的科学家同事说：「我并非在进行道德批判，而只是提供数据给你们。」


In his 2004 paper “Livestock Production and Energy Use,” Pimentel estimated that in the US the amount of gasoline required to sustain the average meat-based diet is an astonishing 401 gallons per year, versus 219 gallons for a vegetarian diet. These numbers increase dramatically the more meat one eats. Pimentel also calculated that if the entire world ate the way people in the US do, Earth’s petroleum reserves would be exhausted in just thirteen years.


比门铁尔在2004年所发表的一篇论文〈饲养家畜与能源使用〉中估计：在美国地区，为了供应一个吃荤的人平均所需的饮食，每年必须消耗401加仑的汽油，这个数字实在令人吃惊；但如果是素食者的话，则只需219加仑。而且肉类吃得越多，则消耗的能源更是大幅增加。比门铁尔并估计，假如世人的饮食方式都像美国人一样的话，那么全球的石油将在短短13年内全部耗尽。


Most remarkable is the following observation:Even driving many gas-guzzling luxury cars can conserve energy over walking; that is, when the calories you burn walking come from the standard American diet! This is because the energy needed to produce the food you would burn in walking a given distance is greater than the energy needed to fuel your car to travel the same distance, assuming that the car gets 24 miles per gallon or better.


比门铁尔所提出的观察报告中，最值得大众省思的是：「假如你步行所燃烧的卡路里是来自一般的美式饮食，那么即使你以非常耗油的豪华轿车代步，还是比步行更节省能源！这是由于为了生产你在步行时所燃烧的食物热量而必须耗费的能源，远超过汽车行驶相同距离所需的能源（假设每加仑油汽油至少可跑24哩）。」此外，http://www.bicycleuniverse.info 的网站上也提供类似的信息：一个吃荤的人骑脚踏车所消耗的能源，相当于开车所消耗的石化燃料！

In addition, a similar calculation on bicycle riding from the websitehttp://www.bicycleuniverse.info/ reveals that cycling on a meat diet requires as much fossil-fuel consumption as driving a car.Another meat related emission that is often forgotten is methane, a product of anaerobic digestion generated when a cow exhales. A National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) study published in the February 2005 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters reveals that due to its effects on atmospheric ozone methane causes twice the amount of global warming previously estimated (10%), and meat-eating is responsible for a full third of all biological methane emissions.

另一种与肉食有关却常被忽略的废气是，牛放屁时所排放的厌氧消化产物--甲烷。2005年2月，美国太空总署（NASA）在《地球物理研究通讯》（Geophysical Research Letters）期刊上所发表的一篇研究报告显示：由于甲烷会对大气中的臭氧层产生影响，因此它所造成的全球暖化效应为先前估计的两倍（先前估计值为10﹪），而肉食所造成的甲烷排放量更是占了生物性甲烷排放量的三分之一！


Another surprising statistic is that the nine billion head of livestock kept in the US consume seven times the grain eaten by the country’s human population, and the percentage of grain fed to livestock is also skyrocketing in developing countries such as China, Egypt and Mexico. Furthermore, according to the Worldwatch Institute, each pound of grain-fed steak results in 35 pounds of eroded topsoil, and sustaining a meat-eater’s diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water daily versus 300 for vegetarians.


另一项令人震撼的统计结果是，美国地区饲养的90亿只家畜所消耗的谷物，是美国人食用量的7倍。在中国大陆、埃及与墨西哥等开发中国家，其饲养家畜所消耗的谷物百分比也大幅攀升。此外，根据世界观察协会（Worldwatch Institute）的报告，每生产一磅以谷类饲养的牛排肉，就会造成35磅的表土遭到侵蚀。另外，为了生产一位肉食者的三餐饮食，每天需用掉4000多加仑的水，而素食者则只需300加仑。

According to the renowned ecologist Mathis Wackernagel, our animal-based diet is a major reason that humans are consuming the planet’s long term bio-capacity at an unsustainable rate. Thus, many scientists such as Wackernagel and Calverd have scientifically verified that meat consumption is draining Earth’s resources, but there are other unquantifiable but significant issues that need to be considered as well, such as animal welfare and the moral impact of mass animal slaughter on human consciousness.


根据知名生态学家马希斯．威克那格（Mathis Wackernagel）的研究，人类正以这个星球所无法承受的速度消耗它的长期生态承载力（即生态系统自我维持及自我调节的能力），而荤食正是造成这种现象的主要原因。如今，像威克那格、卡佛特等许多科学家，已经能够用科学的方式证实吃肉就是在耗尽地球的资源。除此之外，还有一些无法量化但深具意义的议题，更值得世人深思，像是动物福利及大量屠杀动物对人类意识所造成的影响。