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rainforest in any of your retirement funds. Let’s go back to that burger you ate at lunch—or any other meat that you have eaten over the course of your lifetime. Where did it come from?
    Over 70 percent of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed—lost forever—due to cattle ranching. The United States is the single largest consumer of Central and South American beef. 26 A startling 95 percent of Brazil’s Atlantic coast rainforest has been slashed and burned, the vast majority of it to raise cattle. 27 Although it is not commonly known, approximately 34 million acres of rainforest on earth are lost each year. 28
    Consider this: When fires occur in California, it is broadcast on the news. During October 2007, for example, when approximately 190,000 acres in California were lost, there was seemingly non-stop news coverage. That same year, over
30 million
acres were lost in the rainforests, with no news coverage whatsoever. Is one circumstance really less devastating than the other? In fact, over 30 million acres of rainforests per year have been lost
every year
since the 1970s. Although some of this rainforest land is logged, most is slashed and burned, then used to either raise cattle or to raise crops to feed to cattle. As much as 80 percent of all global rainforest loss is turned into grazing for cattle or crops for livestock, and the process is extremely land-intensive. It requires fifty-five square feet of rainforest to produce just one quarter-pound burger. The crops grown on cleared rainforest are used to feed not only cattle but also chickens, turkeys, and pigs. In one crop season alone, 2004–2005, more than 2.9 million acresof rainforest were destroyed, primarily to grow crops for chickens used by Kentucky Fried Chicken. 29
    Another crop that is grown is soy, but not for direct human use. Soy used directly for veggie burgers, tofu, and soy milk in America is almost exclusively grown in the United States, but 80 percent of the entire world’s soy crop is produced and fed to farmed animals. Most of this soy is now grown on rainforest-cleared land. 30
    You may say, “Big deal—what good are rainforests? They’re just some trees somewhere else in the world that I will never see. I would rather have my meat.” First and foremost, the rainforests produce more than 20 percent of the world’s oxygen supply. They provide an environmentally essential task of continuously recycling the air and pulling CO 2 out of the atmosphere, while putting O 2 back into it. So with every acre of rainforest lost to support the meat industry, the earth loses part of its lungs and the ability to breathe and produce a fresh supply of oxygen—fourteen tons of oxygen per acre per year—while taking out tons of global-warming CO 2 31
    Fifty years ago, 15 percent of our planet was composed of rainforest; today, this has been reduced to less than 2 percent. Despite this loss, almost 50 percent of all types of living things (equaling five million species of plants, animals, and insects) reside in rainforests. Although numerous species have yet to be discovered, scientists estimate that at least one hundred species per day are lost when the forest is cut down. In Brazil’s Atlantic coast rainforest, of which less than 5 percent remains today, 70 percent of its plants and twenty primate species are endemic (they are found nowhere else in the world). The enormous biodiversity of the rainforest implores respect and the need to preserve it, notto destroy it. Less than 1 percent of its millions of species have ever been studied by scientists. One pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than are found in all of Europe’s rivers. Just a two-acre area of rainforest may contain over 750 types of trees (more than the total tree diversity of North America) and 1,500 species of plants. The demand for meat and the subsequent loss of rainforests has been responsible for the disappearance