How does being a vegan help the enviorment?!

My understanding is that vegans believe if enough people eat their way, then the animals won't be mistreated and end up on the grocery shelf or in your kitchen. It's kind of like a boycott or protest.

Being a vegan, especially Western based vegans, does not help the environment at all. Seventy five percent of the world's pollutants come from major cities and urban centers where most Western vegans live. Vegans eat food that when farmed is as damaging to the environment as intensive animal farming does. Crop farms use chemical fertilizers, pesticides and are often planted in areas not only are they a foreign species, natural wild life habitat has been destroyed to make room for the farm. To be sure omnivores are also consumers of fruits, vegetables and grain. However, omnivores do not even come close to being sanctimonious about the "righteousness" and other miraculous consequences of their diet like many vegans are. A single family, planting their own crops and raising their own animals, never consuming more than what they need helps the environment more than any group of city dwelling vegans any day.

Most vegans still use electricity, drive cars, buy things that were manufactured, live in homes, buy food. I would say they are not helping the environment at all.

what the hell does the enviroment has to do with being vegan?

You do realise that the animal was alive before it was dead? While it was alive it had to be fed and provided with water. The feed is made from plants and had to be grown. According to the United Nations, half the crops grown in the world are used to feed animals, but farmed animals provide us with less than 10% of the global human diet. These crops could be used for other things, if not as food for humans then in producing biofuels which are carbon neutral energy sources.

The influence on livestock on the environment is well documented. The first major study was published in 2004, called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report. This was the first time biologists from around the world got together to compile everything that is known about the world's environments in a single document. After this, the United Nations have released two more reports which built on the MEAR- the FAO report "Livestock's Long Shadow" in 2006 and last year's "Priority Products and Materials" from the UN Environment Program. These reports clearly show how the production of livestock and fisheries are dramatically affecting the world's biodiversity through direct effects as well as greenhouse gas emissions.

"Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which hosts the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, said: The Panel have reviewed all the available science and conclude that two broad areas are currently having a disproportionately high impact on people and the planet's life support systems-these are energy in the form of fossil fuels and agriculture, especially the raising of livestock for meat and dairy products." (source: http://tinyurl.com/38g9gme )

The driving force behind these problems is human population growth, which is projected to reach 9 billion by 2050 and will require 70-100% increase in food production. So as the population continues to grow, these problems can do nothing but get worse; hence we must reduce our impacts as best we can. One area which is set to be a major issue is water availability. The production of meats requires vastly more water than those of plants as livestock must be fed plants as well as being watered themselves. Even the most water intensive crops like rice still require much less water: It takes 15500 litres of water per kg of beef, 4800 litres of water for 1 kg of pork, 3900 litres for 1 kg of chicken and 200 litres of water for one egg; whereas it takes 3400 litres for 1 kg of rice, 1800 litres of water for 1 kg of soybeans 900 litres for 1 kg of maize and 70 litres for one apple. What is most shocking is that it takes 1000 litres of water to produce 1 litre of milk. All this water must be taken from the environment in order to produce these products, meaning less is available for the ecosystems if you consume the animal products as well as the plant products.

So going vegan eliminates these elements of environmental harm, but not every element. If you are like me and your main concern is for the environment, it is not good enough to just quit animal products, we must also make efforts to buy locally produced foods and reduce our consumption in every area of our lives. But the evidence indicates the average vegan's diet will have less influence on biodiversity loss and eutrophication than the average meat eater.

But don't take my word for it. Examine the science and see for yourself:

MEAR- http://www.maweb.org/en/index.aspx
UNFAO- http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a07…
UNEP- http://www.unep.org/resourcepanel/
Water use data- http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=file… for more details

vegan biologist

It doesn't. Being a vegan is an ethical choice some people make about not eating flesh from killed/slaughtered animals.

Farm equipment used to mass harvest soy, whey and other crop consumes a gigantic amount of diesel, gas and ethanol every year, even more so than cattle raising.

Vegetarianism has little to do with environmentalism and more to do with choosing not to eat meat.