The Scoop
EVEN
Non-violence
Compassion
Sustainability
All Life is
Interconnected
Eugene Veg Education Network (EVEN) - serving as a vegan resource since 2005
Veg Wisdom
The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them. - Paul Hawken, Author, Lecturer, Environmentalist
Veg Wisdom
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Veg Spotlight
Replacement of all animal-based food products with plant-based alternatives is the clear immediate prescription for mitigating climate change. - Dr. Richard Oppenlander, Author, Comfortably Unaware.
Read more in EVEN's exclusive interview with Dr. Oppenlander HERE.
Veg Wisdom
Livestock account for 37% of human-related methane production. Methane is important because it is a much stronger greenhouse gas. In technical terms, it has a higher global warming potential. Source: A Well Fed World
Read EVEN's exclusive interview with A Well Fed World's Founding Director Dawn Moncrief HERE
Veg Wisdom
If we break it down, species by species, we find that the heaviest water use is by the animals we raise for meat. - Worldwatch Institute
Do you know how much water it takes to create the food you eat?
Click HERE
Veg Wisdom
Grassland covers more land area than any other ecosystem in North America; no other system has suffered such a massive loss of life. - Richard Manning, Worldwatch Institute
Veg Wisdom
Switching to a diet free of meat, dairy, and eggs saves more carbon emissions than driving a Prius. How much more? 50% more! - Mercy for Animals, A Veg Diet
Edu-Stat
Animal production consumes an amount of water roughly equivalent to all other uses of water in the United States combined. - EVOLVE! Campaigns
See infographic HERE.
Veg Wisdom
Meat-eating is not sustainable at any level. - Dr. Lori Marino, Neuroscientist, Founder and Executive Director of The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy
Edu-Stat
Methane is 23 times more powerful in global warming potential than carbon dioxide (Center for Science in the Public Interest, 6 Arguments for a Greener Diet) and a vegan diet results in eliminating 1.5 tons of CO2 emissions annually.
Veg Wisdom
The way that we breed animals for food is a threat to the planet. It pollutes our environment while consuming huge amounts of water, grain, petroleum, pesticides and drugs. The results are disastrous. - David Brubaker, PhD, Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins University
Veg Wisdom
I had been vegetarian for a number of years and then one day my son came home and said he was vegan [to curtail the abuse of the planet]...and it was kind of a shock to me because I had never pushed him... And that actually really inspired me! - Michael Franti on being vegan
Veg Wisdom
We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. - David Brower, environmental champion (1912-2000)
Veg Wisdom
In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations. - Iroquois Nation maxim
Veg Wisdom
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us. - Henrik Tikkanen, Finnish writer (1924 - 1984)
Veg Wisdom
This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. - Chief Seattle, 1855
Veg Wisdom
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. - John Muir, Scottish-born American naturalist, author, advocate (1838 - 1914)
Veg Wisdom
The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future. - Marya Mannes, More in Anger, 1958 (1904 - 1990)
Veg Wisdom
Our modern industrial economy takes a mountain covered with trees, lakes, running streams and transforms it into a mountain of junk, garbage, slime pits, and debris. - Edward Abbey, American Author and Essayist (1927 - 1989)
Veg Wisdom
There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of themselves, that heartfelt knowledge that we are caretakers of this planet. - Brooke Medicine Eagle, Native American Earthkeeper
Veg Wisdom
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. - Chief Luther Standing Bear (1868 - 1939)
EVEN Featured In:
~ Vegan Voices
(Beyond Joy)
~ Health Science Magazine (Member Spotlight)
~ Boomer News Interview (NW Boomer and Senior News)
~ 24 Carrot Award (Vegetarians in Paradise)
~ Vegan Awareness Year (Mayoral Proclamation, City of Eugene)
~ American Vegan Magazine (American Vegan Society)
~ Volunteer of the Year (United Way)
Become a Member
Veg Wisdom
Unless you are eating a plant-based (vegan) diet, large scale damage is being caused to the environment by the very food you are choosing to put into your mouth. - EVOLVE! Campaigns
Veg Wisdom
Every second per day, one football field of tropical rainforest is destroyed to produce 257 hamburgers. - Steve Boyan, PhD, University of Maryland (retired), Help Save the Environment
(Ed. Note: ...and the hamburgers are eaten in a millisecond, but the rainforest destruction is permanent.)
Veg Wisdom
Animal waste from massive feedlots and factory farms is a leading cause of pollution in our groundwater and rivers. - Peter Cheeke, Professor, Oregon State University
Veg Wisdom
Unless we change our food choices, nothing else matters. Because it is meat that is destroying most of our forests. It is meat that pollutes the waters. It is meat that is creating disease which leads to all our money being diverted to hospitals. So, it's the first choice for anybody who wants to save the Earth. - Maneka Gandhi, Indian Parliament Member, Vegan
Veg Spotlight
For me veganism is about looking at the whole picture always, doing research, constantly striving to learn more and incorporate that learning into my choices, and into the way I think, speak, and act. - Julia Butterfly Hill,
Read EVEN's exclusive interview with Julia HERE.
Veg Wisdom
Becoming vegetarian is one of the most important and effective actions you can take to ease the strain on our Earth's limited resources, protect the planet from pollution, prevent global warming, and save countless species from extinction. - Mercy for Animals
Veg Wisdom
On a personal basis, perhaps the most important thing you can do to stop climate change is change your diet to a more vegetarian diet. - Dr. James Hansen, World-Leading Climatologist and Chief of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, USA
I pledge allegiance to the world, to cherish every living thing, to care for earth and sea and air, with peace and freedom everywhere. - Lillian Gensler, Pledge to the Planet
Veg Wisdom
They took all the trees---and put them in a tree museum---Then they charged all the people---a dollar-and-a-half to see them.---They paved paradise---and put up a parking lot. - Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi
Veg Wisdom
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. - Elwyn Brooks White, Essays of E.B. White (1899 - 1985)
Veg Wisdom
To speak of environmentalism as separate from the spirit of peace is counterintuitive, for the spirit of peaceful evolution is the most natural environment. - Brian Bogart, MS, Peace Studies, University of Oregon
Veg Wisdom
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. - Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (1887 - 1948)
Veg Wisdom
Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children. - Ancient Native American Proverb
Veg Wisdom
Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We're not the brain, we are a cancer on nature. - Dave Foreman, Harper's, April 1990
Veg Wisdom
The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives. - Buddhist Proverb
Veg Wisdom
We're finally going to get the bill for the Industrial Age. If the projections are right, it's going to be a big one: the ecological collapse of the planet. - Jeremy Rifkin, World Press Review, 30 December 1989
(1945 -)
Veg Wisdom
So bleak is the picture... that the bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century. - Philip Shabecoff, New York Times Magazine, 4 June 1978
The Scoop > Articles > Environment
"It's up to us to save the world for tomorrow;
it's up to you and me."
- Jane Goodall
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature---the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.
- Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder, 1965
The Social Lives of Trees
Forests May Provide the Resilience We Need
to Combat Climate Change
by Dustin Rhodes
TREES TALK TO EACH OTHER
Most of us imagine communication as something very literal: talking. But in nature, especially among the vast animal kingdom, communication manifests itself in chirps, tweets, grunts, sound waves, gesticulations—the list goes on and on.
We're often guilty of assuming our intellectual superiority because our species appears to communicate in the most elaborate language. Does it blow your mind to know that trees "talk" to one another, too?
Most of us take trees at face value: the size and shape of their leaves and trunks. But what we can't see is far more fascinating. Underground are infinite pathways—roots, connected more intricately by fungi—that allow trees to communicate. This ability to communicate allows an entire forest to act as a single organism—an intelligence that we are only beginning to understand.
Canadian ecologist Suzanne Simard discovered tree communication almost two decades ago while researching her doctoral thesis. She found that trees communicate to one another via an elaborate system of latticed fungi beneath the ground.
The form of communication she discovered is so complex and highly attuned, trees are able to relay warnings to other trees about impending environmental damage; they are capable of searching for their kin, and perhaps most astonishingly, trees in forests possess the ability to save other trees by transferring nutrients.
She describes some trees special ability as "motherly." Indeed.
For more click >> HERE
Source: Friends of Animals
Must Read Articles
As our society becomes increasingly aware of how our individual choices and collective actions are contributing to global warming and causing massive environmental degradation, a growing number of people are searching for simple, yet effective, steps to live more sustainably. While we often hear about the importance of using energy-efficient light bulbs, installing low-flow toilets and showerheads, or switching to a hybrid care, did you know that perhaps the single most important action each of us can take to protect the planet is simply to choose vegetarian foods? >> Click HERE
Click to Enlarge
New Study Shows Major Environmental Impact
of Meat Consumption
KNOW THE CONSEQUENCE: Climate science shows that the growth of the meat industry affects the health of the whole planet. >>MORE
What we choose to eat is destroying our planet. Comfortably Unaware is a dire message of how we need to become aware of the impact our food choices have throughout the world and on our future. Perhaps the most critical timeline we face, regarding our survival as a species, is that of climate change. Every aspect of global depletion has a timeline. It's not really a question of if we will run out of certain vital resources or environment that sustains us... it's WHEN. COP 19 and Climate Change: The Path to Resolution
Why consumption of animal-sourced food products (even from grass-fed livestock) must be drastically reduced as part of any viable climate solution. Livestock & Climate Change
Unless you are eating a plant-based (vegan) diet, large scale damage is being caused to the environment by the very food you are choosing to put into your mouth. Read on to find out why...
• An estimated 50,000 species are disappearing from the wild each year as human-caused climate change and over-development severely impact their food sources and habitats.
• In factory farms and laboratories, animals suffer intense confinement and genetic manipulation. On poultry farms, chickens live short, brutal lives in overcrowded cages where they cannot even stand.
• Capture, imprisonment and trafficking to support zoos, circuses and marine theme parks harm the animals involved, and can have deadly consequences for the people working with them.
• Public health professionals see a growing threat from antibiotic resistant diseases that incubate at factory farms, where heavy and regular doses of drugs breed ever more intractable pathogens that can easily cross over into the human population.
The Kimmela Center is devoted to transforming our relationships with other animals from exploitation to respect by combining academic scholarship with animal advocacy. >> MORE
Climate Change and Meat Consumption
A recent authoritative report published by the World Watch institute, authors Goodland and Anhang concluded that over 51% of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions come from Livestock.
In the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate change summit, it is vital the following information be disseminated to the public as well as to our political leaders.
A widely cited 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock's Long Shadow, estimates that 18 percent of annual worldwide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are attributable to livestock...however recent analysis by Goodland and Anhang co-authors of "Livestock and Climate Change"
in the latest issue of World Watch magazine found that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions!
- The Worldwatch Institute, World Watch Magazine
Help Save the Environment
by Steve Boyan, PhD
Retired Political Science Professor, University of Maryland
How does eating meat harm the environment?
When land is used to raise animals instead of crops, it has a devastating effect on all aspects of our environment....the Union of Concerned Scientists lists meat-eating as one of the biggest environmental hazards facing the Earth... >>MORE
Raising animals for food requires massive amounts of land, food, energy, and water and contributes to animal suffering.
Meat Production Wastes Natural Resources
Why is Raising Animals for Food So Inefficient?
Veganism & The Environment: by the numbers (Source: Culinary Arts Schools)
Eating meat threatens animal welfare, personal health, societal safety, food security, biodiversity, and environmental sustainability. The best way for us to personally protect our world and our health is to go vegan.
Source: Sapoty Brook, Eco-Eating
How Eating Meat-Free Makes a Positive Impact on Animals (Farm Sanctuary)
Meat and other animal products are a serious environmental issue... However, free-range, organic or local meats are not the solution to the environmental destruction of animal agribusiness.
How Does Animal Agriculture Impact the Environment?
America's meat addiction is steadily poisoning and depleting our land, water, and air.
Meat and the Environment
There has never been a better time for environmentalists to become vegetarians. Evidence of the environmental impacts of a meat-based diet is piling up at the same time its health effects are becoming better known.
The Case Against Meat
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair
Dioxin is a general term that describes a group of hundreds of chemicals that are highly persistent in the environment....According to the EPA report, not only does there appear to be no "safe" level of exposure to dioxin, but levels of dioxin and dioxin-like chemicals have been found in the general US population that are "at or near levels associated with adverse health effects."
Dioxin Homepage
I always knew that becoming a vegetarian would help prevent cruelty to animals but I was not aware of the environmental consequences of a meat-eating diet. by Lillie Ogden
The Environmental Impact of a Meat-Based Diet
Is Eating Meat Bad for the Environment?
" Livestock produces more global warming and pollution than all the cars and trucks in the world combined."
While industrial animal production has been linked to countless diseases such as salmonellosis and E. coli 0157, researchers say the current way of raising animals for food is also disastrous for the environment.
According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Livestock's Long Shadow, livestock production is one of the major causes of the world's most pressing environmental problems, including global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.
Meat And Global Warming
According to the FAO report, livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport. Feed production (chemical fertilizer production, deforestation for pasture and feed crops, and pasture degradation), animal production (enteric fermentation and nitrous oxide emissions from manure) and the carbon dioxide emitted during processing and transportation of animal products contribute to the problem.
Air and Water Pollution
Animal agriculture is probably the largest source of water pollution, contributing to eutrophication, dead zones in coastal areas, degradation of coral reefs, human health problems, emergence of antibiotic drug resistance and many others, according to the UN report. The major sources of pollution are from animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and pesticides used for feedcrops, and sediments from eroded pastures. >>Is Eating Meat Bad for the Environment?
Eating meat is not sustainable!
Eating meat contributes to global poverty
Veganism for the Environment by Vegan Action
Animal agriculture takes a devastating toll on the earth!
Chief Seattle's Letter
"The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people. We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins.
We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.
The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.
The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.
If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.
Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.
This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.
Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.
When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?
We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.
As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.
One thing we know - there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all."
December 1854
