I would like to write my argumentative paper on how a person’s diet influences and can contribute to the decline of the environment and the atmosphere. I will focus on two major contributing factors to do so: overconsumption of meat and dairy & eating locally grown, in season fruits and vegetables. I am also considering discussing the health benefits of these practices as well depending on how much information I can find on the environmental destruction.
I took advanced placement environmental studies my senior year of high school and I am a vegetarian (I was vegan for a year and still try to eat as close to vegan as possible while eating in the dining hall) so I believe I have both the knowledge and the passion for this topic. Something like 70 percent of the United States soil is used for agriculture and 45 percent is used specifically for cow which produce high amounts of methane both during their lives and in the production of milk and beef. People like to argue that you need 10 gallons of water to produce one almond, but almond milk still uses 23 percent less water than dairy milk. These are just a few statistics that I know off the top of my head.
I have began looking at articles on the Meriam Library website and plan to dig up some of my old, shorter papers for high school that I wrote on similar topics to look as the sources I used then.
Dara Williams (English 130) 