Energy Balance

Our ecosystems have limited capacity to accommodate this concentrated and contaminated waste. Regardless of the regulations for handling such waste, more cows necessarily mean more waste -- and consequently, excess toxins, which the planet is running out of ways to absorb. Rather than establishing more regulations on how to handle the waste, a more proactive stance would be to not produce it in the first place. To come up with 100, you are going to have to list things like learning to ride a bike, singing a solo in the school play, getting your first summer job, getting your first hit in Little League, getting your grandfather's old car to run again, making the cheerleading squad, getting your driver's license, writing an article for your school newspaper, getting an A in Mrs. Bennett's history class, bringing up a C to a B in Mr. Carter's biology class, learning to swim or surf, winning a ribbon at the county fair, and so on. If you need to, it's okay to resort to writing down passed first grade, passed second grade, passed third grade. These are victories, too! The goal is simply to get to 100. Can you do it? There's no doubt about it--life moves so fast! It's easy to lose perspective. For example, if somebody hasn't seen you in a little while, he might say, You've really grown up. Don't stop. Don't get caught up in granular fights and that dastardly fear-guilt-anger-despair-overwhelm cycle. Don't worry how others are doing their everything. Just keep doing yours and then doing some more. This a beautiful, private journey we are taking. But we must be the change we want to see. And then others may board our bus.

As I flag in that dot-pointed list of climate change factlets, we must all do everything we can all at once - at the individual consumer level and at the activist level - with no one thing being right, but also nothing being wrong. And keep going. For action begets action. If Americans were as well educated about the health risks associated with dairy consumption as they are about which celebrities have milk mustaches, perhaps there would no longer be a need for these megadairies and the environmental degradation they bring. Cows and Methane Gas Many people will be surprised to learn methane gas is twenty-three times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Methane is the gas released by the flatulence and belches of beef and dairy cattle. According to Michael Abberton of the British Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, an average dairy cow will release between one and two hundred liters of methane a day. Cows in the United States produce an estimated hundred million tons of methane gas annually, which represents about 20 percent of the country's total annual emissions of the gas. The more cows we raise for milk and beef, the more flatulence, and therefore the more methane gas emitted into the atmosphere. Lost Resources Despite the fact that humans have no need for the milk of a cow, and would be far healthier if we were to eliminate cow's milk from our diets completely, huge quantities of resources are consumed to enable cows to produce the milk demanded by Americans. The average dairy cow today must consume approximately eighty pounds of food a day to keep producing so much milk. Meanwhile, you're thinking, I have? I don't feel any different. Sometimes it's difficult to measure the progress of our own lives because we're so immersed in them. We have so much going on that we don't always see the big picture. We're always growing. Six months from now, we won't be the same person because we've experienced new things and learned new important life lessons. But if we don't acknowledge our progress, our growth, and the success we have each day, then it won't have the same positive impact it could have.

To keep stacking up those poker chips, try keeping a written journal of your successes--both big and small, as Stacy explained earlier in this article. It can be a simple list in a spiral notearticle, a document on your computer, or a leather-bound diary--it's up to you. It's a fact: What we see in our environment influences our moods, our attitudes, and our behavior--and that means our overall performance is affected as well. And from little things big things grow. The Grose Valley hike, the Blue Mountains, Australia One Boxing Day, I was dark and stuck, so I borrowed a friend's car and escaped the post-Christmas food coma and wrestling competitions with my siblings to go wild camping. I drove up the back route to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, a region I've always found spooky. Perhaps it's the blue haze from the eucalyptus oil that hangs like a veil over the UNESCO-listed range (providing its name), or the cold valleys created by the uplifted basalt dating back 300 million years. Or just the many stories of people going missing in the dense bush up there. More recently, of course, it's been the scene of mass destruction - 80 per cent of it was burnt in the 2020 fires. I also lost a cousin to suicide in these mountains when I was in my late teens. He was fifteen and jumped from a waterfall in one of the valleys; And yet, I've hiked almost every track in the park over the years. This includes grass, sorghum, hay, grain, corn, and more. To grow the sheer tonnage to meet the needs of these cows requires huge expanses of agricultural land -- land that could be growing truly healthful food for the world's population. All this food for cows soaks up water, to the tune of 45 gallons a day per cow. The estimated one million dairy cows in California alone, a state that often faces serious droughts, use up 45 million gallons of water every single day of the year. The California Farm Bureau Federation reported that when all dairy farming and milk processing water needs are taken into consideration, 48. The Drug-Resistance Connection We have all heard about drug-resistant bacteria.

In article Five, we reviewed how the antibiotic drugs used to help humans fight illness are now often impotent against microbial invaders. Experts are pointing the finger at the widespread abuse of antibiotics in factory farms. Many are calling for an immediate ban on farm use of such mainstays of human treatment as penicillin, tetracycline, and erythromycin. But here's an even more important fact: We have almost complete control of our environment. We get to choose what pictures to hang, what quotes to tape I to our bathroom mirror and our locker door, and what rewards, certificates, and trophies we place on our desk and shelves. It may sound a little ridiculous, but putting evidence of our success on display (awards, certificates, trophies, photographs, letters, medals, etc) psychologically reinforces our willingness to focus and work hard. Because we're reminded of the rewards and benefits we received in the past. When we constantly see things that remind us of our past success, we become programmed to see ourselves as a winner--someone who has consistent success in life! Not only does this build confidence in yourself, it also causes other people to put their confidence in you as well. Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence. Head coach who led the Green Bay Packers Have you ever noticed how some people accomplish remarkable feats--like breaking a sports record, starting a successful business, H writing a article, or graduating top of their class--but still remain unsatisfied? I passed through Oberon, a town where the only sign of its bygone grandeur is the wide main street. I stop for a milky cup of tea in the one cafe that's open. I have stuff on my mind. For the past year I've been wrestling with what the hell I was going to do with the I Quit Sugar business I'd built up over six years. It was successful by all measures and had grown fast. I had twenty-three staff, we'd published eleven articles, I had a range of supermarket products, and millions around the world had completed the eight-week program we ran. But my soul had been calling me to an appointment with life.

You see, to continue running the business I had to scale it up. And to scale meant prioritising the making of money. Which felt inordinately compromising. Drug resistance develops because not all bacteria are susceptible to a given drug. A certain percentage of bacteria may survive the drug, due to their genetic makeup. Once the weaker bacteria are killed, these stronger bacteria flourish. When the same drug is used against these resistant bacteria, they shrug it off and continue to multiply. Some bacteria are particularly troublesome when they develop resistance to a second or third drug. The New England Journal of Medicine has reported that there is now a strain of salmonella bacteria that resists the effects of five different antibiotics. Within a span of six years, drug resistance in the Campylobacter bacterium rose to 13 percent from no previous resistance at all. Antibiotics were originally used to treat sick animals in the same way they were used with humans. These antibiotics have been incorporated into animal feed as a matter of routine, whether animals are sick or not. Much of the misuse of antibiotics on factory farms is due to the peculiar fact that they make the animals grow faster and put on more weight -- which offers great financial advantage to farmers. These people often think they're pushing themselves beyond their real capabilities to reach a higher level of performance, but the truth is, they're cheating themselves of the confidence and fulfillment they could be experiencing (the very confidence and happiness they could use to accomplish even more). In reality, we'll never be successful if we don't feel successful. It's nice when people appreciate our accomplishments and our efforts, but the true rewards come from within ourselves. We determine whether or not we feel unsatisfied or successful. Relying on our next accomplishment or on other people to make us feel good about ourselves only sets us up for disappointment. How good are you at sports, academics, hobbies? How do you measure your performance?