Ask me anything, and I'll answer truthfully.

(:

I recently finished the ecology unit in my biology 101 class. And to be honest, it scared the hell out of me. There are so many things that are going drastically wrong with the environment right now.  For one, we are in the midst of the world's sixth mass extinction. There have been five mass extinctions in the history of the earth, the last one being the cretaceous extinction (where a meteor hit the earth and dinosaurs went extinct.) Well at this very moment, the world's sixth mass extinction is occurring- the sixth in 4.5 billion years. Species are disappearing at 1,000-10,000 times their natural rate. It is estimated that more than half of earth's species will be extinct by the end of the century- and experts estimate that 37 percent of the animal species on the planet will disappear by 2050, and 1 MILLION plant and animal species will have disappeared by the same time. 30% of all amphibian species, 23% of all mammal species, and 12% of all bird species are expected to go extinct by 2050.  We are currently in the cenezoic era- the age of mammals. One scientist coined the term, "The eremezoic era", meaning in latin, the age of loneliness, and said that it would follow the age of mammals. With earth's biodiversity declining this rapidly, it is going to be humans and the species we need to survive left on the planet. Which is rather depressing, in my opinion. And once one species go extinct, you have no idea what effect it's going to have on species we need. Say, for example, a keystone species that pollinates plants goes extinct. We need angiosperms (flowering plants) to live. If we spent all our time pollinating plants to eat, all music, literature, art, etc. would come to a crashing halt.

 I'm 17 and a sophmore in college, at a small private liberal arts college in the fourth largest city in Illinois. I'm getting a BS in biology, a minor in studio artand a minor in French if all goes right. I'm an artist (see under my pictures). I also have a passion for science, particularly biology and biochemistry.  French, as well as most foreign languages, intrigues me, and I speak it often enough to make you uncomfortable. I'm thinking about going to med school. When people compliment me, especially my artwork, I blush and put my hands over my eyes, making this really strange face. I have an obsession with Prismacolor colored pencils and Lyra skin tone pencils- they are my favorite medium to work in.  My biggest fear is the people I love dying or leaving me. I have one biological sister (age 15) and 4 half siblings- Arianna, age 9, Ben, age 7, Sophia, age 6, and Sam, age 5. Ben and Sam, and my sister, Gabi, live with my mother and dad (technically step-dad), where I live when I'm not living in my dorm. I drink inane amounts of tea- my favorite teas are cinnamon and chai. I am happily taken, for, as far as I know, the rest of my life. People hitting on me makes me uncomfortable and I wish they would refrain from doing so. I'm finally becoming somewhat satisfied with my life and the choices I'm making. I am a vegetarian, and have never eaten meat before- yes, that means ever, no, I do not eat fish or chicken (some people think that chicken and fish are vegetables, I have found). I have a lot of scars. Being called "stupid" or a "dumb blonde" bothers me to a great degree. I'm the opposite of every stereotype that comes along with my appearance. If you think I'm a "slut" or "dumb" or "superficial," get to know me, and I would love to prove you wrong. I'm an INFJ personality type, what are you? I'm an evolutionist, pro-gay marriage (quite obviously), pro-choice, and yet, Christian. Condemn me to hell all you want, but I can tell you that you're not saving yourself by doing it. MMORPG language makes me giggle. I have about 25 different kinds of laughs, depending on what I'm laughing at, and how amused I am. I am pansexual, and I would put that for my orientation, but unfortunately, myspace does not have that as a choice for orientation. I'm never quite satisfied with my personality or my appearance. I'm more of an east coast person than a Midwest person, but I'm stuck here, probably for a long while. I love oceans, they remind me of my childhood. I am a bit young for my grade, but I believe that most people can't tell. When people guess my age, I get anywhere from 18 to 24. Receiving good grades is rather important to me. If I had anything under a 3.6, I'm not sure what I would do. I love driving with the car windows down in summer with music blasting and singing along. I am 5'6" and about 110 pounds, and I'm trying to stay around there (as in not lose any weight). 29-23-31 are my measurements, haha. I love dark wash skinny jeans, I have two pair and I wear them out. I'm perfectionistic and masochistic. I get slightly bothered when I don't fit a 0 in a particular brand. I believe my favorite artist would have to be René Magritte. I love, love, love going to art museums, and have been to a large number in the past 5 years. I'm one of the most complex people you will ever meet. I like just talking with people, for hours on end. If you can make me laugh, you will have my heart for the rest of my life. It makes me uncomfortable to go out without makeup on; I feel rather naked. I can read people very well, for the most part, and I can usually tell what other people are feeling. There are exceptions, of course, but this is one of the reasons that psychology interests me. I rarely watch TV. I'm not one to turn it on, ever, but my roommate or family members do occasionally. I have a huge fear of people sticking needles in me. I think that car blinkers should be made to be in sync, so that the car in front of your car's lights are in sync with the sound of your blinker. (I'm not really this OCD). If you know what C₆H₁₂O₆ is, and what function it serves in animalia, you should talk to me. That is all I want to disclose, for now.

If I added some ridiculous adjective to the end of my name? Tori Terrific or other such nonsense?
If I wore fake eyelashes and more eyeliner than I know what to do with?
If I used enough hairpray to put a hole in the ozone layer?
If I listened to screamo?
If I acted like a dumb blonde?
If I was Br00t4l? (what in god's name does that even mean?)
If I wore ribs/razor necklaces made out of cheap plastic?
If I was obsessed with hello kitty?
If I put pictures of people having their intestines ripped out of them on my profile page?
If I didn't have opinions about the world today?

Would you like me more then?

I'm not scene.
I'm not average.
And I'm not like the rest of you.

Should I apologize for that?

From the Chicago Tribune-

WHAT? 18% of 1,000 american adults believe that evolution is definitely true? And 39% of american adults believe that CREATIONISM is defintely true? This is saying  that the earth was created in the last 10,000 years (it is commonly believed by creationists that the earth is 6,000 years old), when the VAST MAJORITY of scientists believe that the earth is 4.5 billion years old? Oh, only off by 4,499,994,000 years.. I mean honestly, can america get any more ignorant? I would like any of the 66% of americans (oh my god, that's 2/3 of america) that believes that creationism is or probably is true to explain to me the meaning of the embryonic, anatomic, and molecular homology between all mammals (or even all living things)! How can 66% of people think that they know more than 99% of scientists out there? It's absolutely ridiculous. And they can also explain to me why, when they believe that man was created IN its present form, there are many species of human-like skulls dating back from thousands to millions of years ago (going back to that the earth is not 6,000 years old), that evolve, in the literal sense, into our present day anatomy?  Where did those come from, if not created by the evolution of the homo and other human-like genuses!

And on another interesting note, 68% of republican candidates believe that evolution is NOT true, and only 3 out of 8 republican presidential candidates believe that evolution is true. And these five other people are running to be the president of the united states of america? "Sorry, we don't really rely on FACT, it tends to get in the way of what we believe". Dear god help us.

from: news/local/chi-070612darwin,1,4288470.story?coll=chi-news-hed

By the way, I wrote this blog this summer, but I really like it so i'm posting it on this account.

It's easier than you think.

Meat- mostly livestock- production is one of the major causes of the world's most urgent environmental problems, including air and water pollution, deforestation, global warming, and loss of biodiversity. Methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide are the three predominant gases responsible for global warming. Cattle account for nine percent of carbon dioxide released into the air by human activity, but they produce much greater amounts of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of nitrous oxide generated by human activity, which captures 296 times the solar energy of carbon dioxide ("Livestock a major threat to environment" 6). They also produce 37 percent of all human-induced methane and 64 percent of ammonia, a major contributor to acid rain (7). Not many people know this, but modern agriculture is the number one cause of global warming- even more than cars. About 70 percent of all grazing land in dry areas is considered degraded, mostly because of overgrazing, compaction and erosion attributable to livestock activity. Erosion of topsoil is a major problem caused by the land that is used for cattle. Getting rid of all cattle isn't a possibility, but the amount of cattle we extensively breed each year can change according to the number of cattle the world consumes.

            Manure farm animals produce is also a major water and land pollutant. In the United States alone, farm animals produce 2 billion pounds of waste per year, which is ten times the amount of the human population (Singer 168). This manure has to go somewhere, and more often that not it goes into lakes, streams, and oceans, killing millions of fish and obliterating marine ecosystems in one fell swoop. Water is becoming increasingly scarce, and meat production is not helping- "To produce a single pound of meat takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water- as much as a typical family uses for all its combined household purposes in a month" (Robbins 367). Consuming this amount of water has serious ecological effects, but economic ones as well, although the consumer doesn't see this because of the government's subsidization of meat at every step in the process. If the "cost of water were not subsidized, the cheapest hamburger meat would cost more than thirty five dollars a pound" (Robbins 367). It is also common knowledge that fossil fuels are being depleted, but what is not common knowledge is that meat is a major contributor to this problem, with the United States being a major culprit. According to the American scientist David Pimental, "if the whole world were to eat according to U.S. agricultural practices, the planet's entire petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 13 years" (Robbins 375). The fossil fuel energy put into raising and distributing meat is astounding- feedlot-raised cattle use 33 calories of fossil fuels for every one calorie of beef provided (Robbins 356).
            Even world hunger, which affects 850 million people globally ("Hunger Facts" 1), can be attributed to meat production and consumption. "While the average vegetarian consumes between 300 and 400 pounds of grain per year, the average meat-eater consumes over 2000. Of course, eighty percent of the meat eater's total is first digested by cows, pigs, and chickens" (Robbins 145). The amount of grain used to feed the animals that one person consumes could feed seven people if they ate the grain instead of the meat. Seventy percent of the United State's grain goes to feeding livestock, and much of that grain could be used for battling world hunger.

            Every minute, more and more forests are being cleared to both produce feed for livestock and create space to raise them. Many people attribute deforestation to urban growth, however, "for each acre of American forest that is cleared to make room for parking lots, roads, houses, shopping centers, etc., seven acres of forest are converted into land for grazing livestock and/or growing livestock feed" (Robbins 361). The situation is worse "in Latin America where… some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing" ("Livestock a major threat to environment" 8). This percentage has significantly increased from 1990- "Over the past 25 years, nearly half of Central America's tropical rainforests have been destroyed, largely to provide beef to North America" (Singer 169). Destroying rainforests such as these, where an estimated ninety percent of the world's plant and animal species live, not only drives species to extinction, but also contribute to global warming. In Costa Rica alone, where a third of its rainforests have been converted for cattle-raising, the remainder of the tiny country "still houses more bird species than all of the United States combined" (Robbins 364). Many plant and animal species are concentrated in the rainforests. Forests are vital sources of oxygen that prevent erosion, regulate climates, and deforestation both emits carbon into the air in the form of carbon dioxide, and intensifies the greenhouse effect, by releasing carbon into the air. Forests convert the carbon dioxide we exhale into oxygen that we can breathe, and destroying the forests means that the carbon dioxide we breathe can't be converted into oxygen. Species are disappearing faster than at the time of the dinosaur's mass extinction, and the majority of scientists believe we are facing the world's sixth mass extinction. Conservationists estimated in 2000 that "the current extinction rate is 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than it should be under natural conditions" ("11,000 Species Said to Face Extinction, With Pace Quickening" 5). It is also estimated that "In the next thirty years, over one million species will become extinct… and the current rate of extinction is 1,000 species a year" (Robbins 365). The rate of extinction is rising rapidly, mostly because of the destruction of rainforests in the tropics. The clearing of land in order for cattle to be raised and graze is the number one cause of deforestation in tropical rainforests.

             If we fail to take action, within the next fifty years, global warming will cause worldwide droughts, the extinction of innumerable species, the raising of sea level due to the melting of polar ice caps which will flood countless nations. Island nations in the Pacific are one example where the sea level rising only 5 meters could put the entire island underwater.  The livestock business is depleting the world's increasingly scarce water resources. It also pollutes the waters with animal wastes, chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics. By eating the amount of meat that we do, we are risking the fate of our planet- for the sake of hamburgers. Global meat production "is projected to more than double from 229 million tons in 1999/2001 to 465 million tons in 2050" ("Livestock a major threat to environment" 3). If something isn't done about our meat production and consumption, and if meat consumption and production continue to increase at the rate they are, the problems that are just starting to show will become disastrous. Urgent action is needed to fix the problems to the environment that meat production and consumption is causing.

            Many people argue that just one person limiting meat consumption couldn't change any part of the world. However, "The annual beef consumption of an average American family of four requires more than 260 gallons of fuel. The result is 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, or about as much as the average car over a six month period" ("Beyond Beef" 7). If one family of four would stop eating just red meat for a year, they would save 2.5 tons of CO₂ from being released into the atmosphere. "It has been estimated that for every quarter-pound fast-food hamburger made from Central American beef, 55 square feet of tropical forest -- including 165 pounds of unique species of plants and animals -- is destroyed" ("Beyond Beef" 4). One hamburger doesn't seem like it could make much of a difference- but it does. Every hamburger eaten destroys a vital part of the earth's ecosystem. A study done by Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council in 1984 estimated that "if Americans were to reduce their meat consumption by only 10 percent one year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption- or enough to feed 60 million people" (Singer 166). Ten percent of meat consumed by one person is a minute amount. If every American were to do just that, a huge difference could be made on the world hunger front. And perhaps if the United States took a stand, other countries would be willing to follow in its footsteps. Similarly, if we cut the population of the United State's livestock in half, it would make enough available food to "make up the calorie deficit of the nonsocialist underdeveloped nations nearly four times over" (166). One person can make a difference.

            Knowing this, you can't call yourself an environmentalist and eat meat the way most Americans do. According to the USDA, "In 2005, total meat consumption (red meat, poultry, and fish) amounted to 200 pounds per person, 22 pounds above the level in 1970" ("Food Consumption" 1). In the last fifty years, meat consumption has skyrocketed, and if we don't do something soon, earth's future could be destroyed. With the fate of the world at stake, why take any chances?  Limit your meat consumption, a few steps at a time- or better yet, Go Veg.

Citations-

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Consumption (USDA research service)

http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Fast Food Nation

Diet for a New America

Animal Liberation

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/29/science/29EXTI.html?ex=1195016400&en=71b9d4d5ebef2b71&ei=5070 (NY Times on species extinctions)

http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/reports/beyond.html3 ("Beyond Beef")

and yes, I wrote this.