Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret Page #3

that 1 pound of beef...

...2500 gallons of water.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Eggs are 477 gallons of water.

And cheese, almost 900 gallons.

I mean, why isn't it on Save Our Water?

It's kind of like if you went

to someone's house...

...and my neighbour has a faucet,

you know, dripping.

And then you see

this giant hose turned full-blast...

...until 660 gallons of water

are shooting out into the street...

...flooding the entire street.

I think I would say,

"Hey, you know, turn that off, please."

Seems like it's a huge thing

that we could be doing...

...by far more than anything else.

Just, like, if that is really the case.

I think that the water footprint...

...of animal husbandry is greater

than other activities.

There's no ifs, ands or buts about it.

That would be really powerful.

Rather than waiting till we're in a drought,

what do you think about starting now?

And say to whoever's in charge

of Save Our Water:

"Hey, let's start encouraging people

to eat less meat now...

...because these studies

are coming out"?

- I don't think that'll happen.

- Why?

- I don't think that'll happen.

- Why?

Because of the way government

is set up here.

That's interesting, though.

Why, though?

One is water management

and the other is behavior change.

Behavior of taking showers...

...and not watering your lawn

and doing all that, that's behavior.

Yeah.

Clearly the government did not want

to talk about this issue.

Their inability to answer...

...along with the organization's silence

on the topic of animal agriculture...

...made it seem

something more was going on.

I did more investigating

on the impacts of livestock...

I did more investigating

on the impacts of livestock...

...and found out the situation

was actually worse than I'd thought.

In 2009, two advisors

from the World Bank released...

...an analysis on human-induced

greenhouse gases...

...finding that animal agriculture

was responsible not for 18 percent...

...as the U.N. stated, but was actually

51 percent of all greenhouse gases.

Fifty-one percent.

Yet all we hear about

is burning fossil fuels.

This devastating figure is due

to clear-cutting rainforests for grazing...

...respiration, and all the waste

animals produced.

This makes animal agriculture

the number one contributor...

...to human-caused climate change.

But not only that, I found out

raising animals for food consumes...

...a third of all the

planet's freshwater...

...occupies up to 45 percent

of the Earth's land...

...is responsible for up to 91 percent

of Amazon destruction...

...is a leading cause

of species extinction...

...ocean "dead zones"...

...and habitat destruction.

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