When people talk about greening the community, their subconscious instantaneously associates the Toyota Prius, the rebuilding of trees and other stereotypical “tree-hugging” activities. The United States has come to accept these as conventional means of improving the environment.

The United States, one of the wealthiest nations, has grown accustomed to fixing problems without compromising with their own personal lifestyles. This has worked to a certain extent in the environment by increasing the energy efficiency in appliances and motor vehicles, recycling, and renewable energy. Although these are definitely significant positive advancements in the field of green technology, they just temporarily restrain the problem and promote further usage of energy, which in turn regenerates the problem.

The real solution lies in the central, driving force of the problem: Lifestyle. If everybody had little desire for big houses, fancy cars, and an abundance of materialistic things, the environmental problem would be greatly reduced. Unfortunately, it is human nature to fulfill your desires, and it would be almost a force against nature to modify these desires.

However, there is a rational reason for a lifestyle change. By lowering your meat intake, you are improving your health and the ecological community. An excess of red meat can result in high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart complications.

Ecologically, the United States’ agriculture industry is a gigantic hoarder in energy consumption, using 87% of freshwater and 1,166,028 square miles (area of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana). One kilogram of animal protein alone is produced from consuming six kilograms of plant protein. This is why the seven billion livestock animals in the U.S. alone consume about five times as much grain as is consumed directly by the human population. So, by reducing your meat intake you are lowering demand for meat production and all the wasted land, energy, water, and food consumption used to produce agriculturally raised beef.

Why don’t Americans want to change their lifestyle for the better?
Source: http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Aug97/livestock.hrs.html