The benefits of a Vegetarian Diet

Vegetarianism has long since promoted good health. One-third of all cancers is related to a diet of meat eating. The risk of having cardio-vascular diseases and/or stopping the progression of coronary artery diseases is greatly reduced with a lean vegetarian diet.
Vegetarian food has more fiber in it and has very little animal fat. This helps in keeping a person's weight down. The average animal product can clog arteries with fat and make the person sluggish and slow down his immune system. Meat eaters also undergo accelerated cognitive and sexual dysfunction at a younger age and their life span is reduced remarkably.

Recent reports have indicated that there is a large amount of mercury in sea produce.High levels of mercury can lead to a wide range of physical ills, including kidney and neurological damage, and can cause fatigue, vision problems and tremors. According to the National Wildlife Federation,nearly every aspect of our food web has been contaminated with mercury and its difficult to find an ecosystem that's not contaminated, whether it's ocean or forest or coastal waters or wetlands.The primary sources of mercury in the water system include coal-burning power plants, wastewater treatment plants and waste incinerators.

The fiber in vegetarian meal cleanses the internal system and makes our digestive and excretary organs work more efficiently in disposing off the waste. People who eat lower on the food chain tend to have fewer instances of constipation and hemorrhoids.

Billion of animals are slaughtered for human consumption each year.Animals are mostly factory farmed. This means cramming them into tightly spaced cages where they can barely move and fed with a diet tainted with pesticides and antibiotics to fatten them up and keep them off from infection.It is inhuman to help propagate the miseries of these animals which are forced to spend their entire lives in crates and stalls so small that they can't even turn around.Many animals get so fattened up due to the fatty diet that they are fed and the lack of exercise and free movement that their legs cannot support their weight due to their abnormally heavy bodies and are in constant pain and susceptible to infectious diseases and cancer till they are mercifully killed.

Chicken in hatcheries suffer untold agonies and are made,artificially, to lay more eggs.Each chicken is given less than half a square foot of space. Shortly after hatching, chickens have the ends of their beaks cut off. These mutilations are performed without anesthesia, ostensibly to reduce injuries that result when stressed birds are driven to fighting.Today's "broiler"(meat)chickens have been genetically altered to grow twice as fast than before and being pushed beyond their biological limits, hundreds of millions of chickens die every year before reaching slaughter weight at 6 weeks of age. Laying more than their share of eggs,the hens' bodies are severely taxed. They suffer from "fatty liver syndrome" when their liver cells, which work overtime to produce the fat and protein for egg yolks, accumulate extra fat. After one year in egg production, the birds are sent off to slaughter and end up usually in soups,or similar low-grade chicken meat products in which their bodies can be shredded to hide the bruises.In many cases, these 'spent hens' are ground up alive in huge grinders to be used as animal feed! Is there no end to human cruelty?

Lastly,it takes a lot of grain to feed animals raised for slaughter. Also,chemical and animal waste runoff from factory farms is responsible for miles of polluted rivers and streams which greatly threaten water quality.It may seem puerile, but cows belch and burp and an incredible amount of methane is let out every day, and when added to the flatulent excesses of other farm animals, they represent the single largest source of methane in the atmosphere.Belching and farting adds up to a massive 26 per cent of all emissions.A UN report found that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined. This is due to the manure the animals produce, and the synthetic fertilisers for farming and growing the animals for slaughter.

With all these negatives, isnt it time we shifted to a vegetarian diet which is healthy for us and the environment? Check out the video(which is bit long)here to see the inhuman suffering of animals brought in for slaughter.

Blog Action Day - Environment theme

Today is Blog Action Day, organised by Blogactionday,a non-profit organisation. The theme of environment chosen for this year is one of the best memes I have come across as the deed is noble in thought and spirit.More than 16000 blogs are participating in this action day.This blog is also one in the lengthy list. My contributory post to this is about the harmful effects of coal burn and carbon sequestration as a viable option in mitigating the harmful effects of coal carbon emissions.

Coal is a relatively cheap and abundant commodity and is an excellent source of energy. But it comes at a significant cost to the environment. Coal emissions lead to acid rain, smog and toxic mercury content in the atmosphere and groundwater,and global warming. Coal is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. More and more countries however are building coal fired power plants and using coal in a variety of other applications.

The Environmental Protection Agency of the United States is striving to find a way to cut coal emissions. Its plan is to regulate the way carbon is stored in the ground. This is called carbon sequestration. Sequestering is the capture and burying of carbon from coal. It aims to strip carbon before coal is burned, capture it and bury it deep under the ground in geological formations that wont release it into the atmosphere.By storing carbon dioxide underground,atleast 90% of the carbon emissions from the coal fired plants can be contained from being let out into the atmosphere.
Waste carbon dioxide can be pumped into oil fields to boost production.This clean energy technique will reduce greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Clean coal technology, if successfully operated,would reaffirm coal as the king of the energy landscape in the US with the added benefit of the technology being environmentally sound.

Can we reduce our aviation carbon footprint

With people getting more and more mobile and air connectivity getting better and in many cases,cheaper, we are all jumping onto aircrafts more than ever before.
Consider the following facts:

Global air passenger traffic will double by 2025.

Over the next 20 years, more than 27,000 new aircrafts will be delivered to various airlines globally.

Airplane emissions are extremely harmful to the environment due to the altitude at which they are released. In additon to carbon dioxide, aircraft engines also spit out nitrogen oxide which creates ozone high in the atmosphere.

Aviation industry’s share of global CO2 production is forecast to rise from 2-3% now to 5-6%.

Air travel is a big way of leaving our carbon footprint on our earth.Even if we cannot reduce our air travels, we can try to lighten the environmental load that air travelling causes.

Here are few ways to go about it:

Check to see if the airline you are travelling in is flying the latest models of jets.Newer aircrafts are more energy efficient than the older ones. Today's jets guzzle 70% less fuel than their older, fuel-guzzling predecessors.This is due to better aerodynamic designs which reduce drag and the energy efficiency of the engines themselves. The latest models of Boeing,the 787 Dreamliners burn 27 per cent less fuel than the Airbus A340s.

Where possible, try to fly non stop to a destination. Arrival and departure of aircrafts guzzle up lot of fuel.

It is better to stick by airlines which have a discipline for timed travel and are not constantly running late. This reduces their wait time,if any, in arrival and take off queues on runways and circling in air due to lack of permit to land.

Check whether the airlines offers carbon offsets. By volunteering to donate to the carbon neutral schemes you can mitigate the climatic impacts of the flights though ofcourse this is not a decidedly perfect solution to the problem.

End to the era of paper airline tickets

Airline paper tickets have been around for as long as we can remember. Reams of paper must be used up all over the world for air tickets . Thankfully, they will be a thing of the past and become a collector’s item as the Global airlines body IATA (International Air Transport Association)has officiated that its accredited members will fully upgrade to electronic paper-free ticketing from June 1st next year.The organisation, which has used etickets for three years said it had placed its last order for paper tickets.

The move will save an untold numbers of trees and apparently $9 per passenger though there is no word on whether we'll see that $9. The e-ticket system actually provides a better and faster service to travellers and travel agents can serve customers remotely.

Toyota Prius, the Green Machine

Toyota Prius has been adjudged as the "Green Machine" of the year by the judges at evecars.com. The female judges also picked the Volkswagen Eos as the 2007 Car of The Year in what evecars says is the "first ever women's car awards judged by women for women." Via
Apple co-founder Steve "the Woz" Wozniak got a $700 ticket for going 105 MPH in a Prius back on March 28th. This breaks the myth that hybrids are not speed-worthy :))

Masdar - Carbon free city

The world's first carbon-free city will be built in Abu Dhabi,the capital and the oil-rich emirate of the UAE.

By 2009, Abu Dhabi hopes to complete the construction of Masdar, a 3.7 mile enclosed city devoid of carbon and cars. To produce energy, the city will rely on a combination of wind, solar and geothermal energy.

According to their website, Masdar is “a global cooperative platform for open engagement in the search for solutions to some of mankind's most pressing issues: energy security, climate change and truly sustainable human development.”