Fall in Love with God !

Meat the Truth 面對肉類的真相

荷蘭影片: 揭示畜牧業是氣候變遷的元凶
尼可拉斯．皮爾森基金會網址：http://www.partijvoordedieren.nl/content/view/129
影片網址（英文）：http://www.meatthetruth.nl/

我們會要求工廠廢水、電子電氣產品的製造材料與過程符合環保、綠色標準，卻忽略了「肉」這個商品是否也符合環保標準？「肉品」也是商品不是嗎？牧場不就是另一種工廠，不是嗎？

荷蘭「愛護動物黨」的自然科學事務處，又名「尼可拉斯‧皮爾森基金會」（Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation），即將在今年春天發行一部關於氣候變遷的紀錄片，名為 《面對肉類的真相》（Meat the Truth）。該基金會希望這部影片被視為「不願面對的真相」續集，因為艾爾‧高爾（Al Gore）的影片雖然說明了全球暖化所產生的問題，但卻沒有提到造成全球暖化的最大元凶﹣畜牧業。

《面對肉類的真相》明白揭露，畜牧業和酪農業對全球暖化的影響，更甚於全世界所有交通工具排放的溫室氣體所帶來的影響。荷蘭知名的演員、作家和政壇人士都在影片中現身說法，與觀眾分享他們對吃素的觀點。影片中也引用聯合國糧農組織（FAO）所提出的科學證據，以及畜牧業對氣候和環境造成巨大影響的相關佐證資料。
 
這部影片所提到的一些事實如下：

■每頭牛一年所排放的二氧化碳，相當於一輛汽車跑七萬公里的排放量。

■素食者即使開Hummer休旅車，也比肉食者騎腳踏車還要環保。

■所有荷蘭人如果每週一天不吃肉，就可達到荷蘭政府希望家家戶戶一年所減少的二氧化碳排放量目標。
我們有「light Out Day夏至關燈」，為什麼沒有「Vegetable Day素食日」？

■南美洲約有四億公頃的黃豆作物是種給牛吃的；如果是提供給人類食用，則只需兩千五百萬公頃就可以滿足全世界所需。

阿姆斯特丹自由大學（Vrije University）的科學家們在影片拍攝過程中，也提供專業知識給製片與導演。這部影片的片尾，還向觀眾提出建言，告訴人們該如何協助減緩氣候變遷的衝擊。

這部紀錄片計劃以荷蘭語和英語發行，並已引起全球廣泛的關注。我們預祝《面對肉類的真相》能大放異彩，並受到世人的珍視，讓人們了解到在設法化解全球暖化危機，拯救我們美麗星球上的眾生時，素食是其中一項必要的途徑。

新聞來源：http://www2.godsdirectcontact.org.tw/ch/news/194/index.htm

For decades, Arlington County’s development has been consciously clustered around its subway line. There is abundant open space to plant thousands of trees. Residents also seem eager to cut back on their own energy use.

Jose R. Fernandez, who moved here last year and works at the nearby national headquarters of the National Guard, chose to settle in Arlington because he does not need a car. “I can go anywhere on the bus,” Mr. Fernandez said, “or I can ride my bike anywhere.”

But even in Arlington, county officials are reckoning with the fact that though green is the dream, the shade of civic achievement is closer to olive drab. Constraints on budgets, legal restrictions by states, and people’s unwillingness to change sometimes put brakes on ambitious plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Emissions are stubborn things. In Arlington, emissions per capita are now 15 tons annually and rising. In Sonoma County, Calif., the figure is close to nine tons. Arlington is not alone in bumping up against obstacles.

“We have been doing things like filling potholes and reducing crime since cities began,” said David N. Cicilline, the mayor of Providence, R.I., but energy efficiency requires “a whole new infrastructure to evaluate and measure.”

When Providence officials pushed for new police cars with four cylinders instead of six, to save gasoline, there was pushback — unsuccessful — from police officers who preferred more powerful engines to pursue speeders or criminals. Cleveland’s plans to retrofit a local hot-water plant, produce new electricity and save tons of greenhouse gas emissions, molder in a file. It would cost $200 million, and there is no money — the tax base, left ragged by the loss of population and industry over the last two decades, has been hit hard again by the subprime mortgage crisis.

Nearly 1,200 miles away, in Austin, Tex., — a city that ranks high on any list of green strivers — some residents want to help but do not feel they can afford it. DeVonna Garcia’s family won an award for its beautiful outdoor display of Christmas lights — but she stayed with her old-fashioned incandescent bulbs, hearing that a friend paid $600 for energy-efficient lights.

Ann Hancock, the executive director of the Climate Protection Campaign, a nonprofit based in Sonoma County, a wine-growing area north of San Francisco, said that the county and its nine municipalities signed climate-protection agreements with enthusiasm more than five years ago, committing to bringing down greenhouse-gas emissions. Then they tried to figure out how.

“It’s really hard,” Ms. Hancock said. “It’s like the dark night of the soul.” All the big items in the inventory of emissions — from tailpipes, from the energy needed to supply drinking water and treat waste water, from heating and cooling buildings — are the product of residents’ and businesses’ individual decisions about how and where to live and drive and shop.

“They’ve seen the Al Gore movie, but they still have their lifestyle to contend with,” she said.

“We need to get people out of their cars, and we can’t under the present circumstances,” because of the limited alternative in public transportation, Ms. Hancock said. And the county’s many older homes are not very good at keeping in the cool air in the summer or the warm air in winter. “How do you go back and retrofit all of those?” she asked.

County governments are also finding that homeowners’ associations can be troublesome. Carbondale, Colo., would welcome people like Adam and Rachel Connor, who bought a lot in a subdivision outside town and made plans for a house with solar panels. But the homeowners’ association vetoed the proposal on aesthetic grounds. Such associations have rejected solar projects from Southern California to the Chicago suburbs to Phoenix, prompting at least two states to pass laws prohibiting such vetoes.

“Unrealistic and unreasonable expectations,” Ms. Connor said, “should not stand in the way of us taking climate change seriously and taking control of energy security with our own hands.”

Arlington, Providence and more than 300 other communities in the United States are members of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, which has developed software to help them determine the quantity of greenhouse gases their municipalities emit. They are still trying to figure it all out. Reductions and remedies are harder still.

Regional politics render ideas that are embraced in some cities unthinkable in others. In Burlington, Vt., and Berkeley, Calif., there are local laws requiring that people who are selling their homes upgrade the energy efficiency to meet current standards, whether by adding thicker insulation to the pipes, replacing the windows or putting in an energy-saving water heater. (The maximum amount to be spent is determined by the selling price of the house.)

Would the idea fly in, say, Cleveland? On a statewide level, “politically, it would be a non-starter,” said Andrew Watterson, the program director of Cleveland’s office of sustainability. “Legally, I’m not sure if we could do it” because of state limits on local taxing powers, Mr. Watterson said.

But Cleveland’s mayor, Frank G. Jackson, has backed the redevelopment of three old city neighborhoods in accordance with blueprints established by the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program (for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.) Mr. Watterson said he hoped this sort of project would encourage a reverse migration of families who seek livable, walkable communities.

Arlington County is not having a problem attracting residents who are partial to the idea of a green revolution. But in the outer sections of Arlington, the problem is aging houses with inadequate insulation and inefficient appliances.

“We have an old house,” said Kevin Clark, who is 41 and a professor of instructional technology at George Mason University. “We got double-paned glass. We could feel the air coming in through those nice wood frames.”

Between the $13,000 cost of that repair and the money for a new refrigerator and other appliances, energy efficiencies have cost Mr. Clark and his family about $18,000. Though they have cut monthly electric bills, he is not sure how much he is saving.

Among the county’s biggest roadblocks in its effort to reduce emissions are the strict legal limits on Arlington officials. The state government in Richmond has the final authority in setting building codes, for instance. Like Cleveland, Arlington cannot require a house’s energy systems be upgraded when the house is sold. And Arlington cannot require commercial builders to install more insulation and more efficient heating, cooling and lighting systems than the state does.

As J. Walter Tejada, the chairman of Arlington County’s governing board, said, “Sometimes I think that even when you’re sneezing you need to ask the Legislature for permission.”

Laura Fiffick, the director of the office of environmental quality in Dallas — one vehicle in four is a pickup truck in Texas — said, “How do you reach an individual citizen and tell them: Everybody makes a difference.”

She added: “A lot of cities have said, ‘We’re going to be carbon-neutral by 2020.’ To me, the idea is to figure out what emissions we are going to go after and what we can do and then set the goal. When you set the bar too high, it becomes demotivating.”