Below are several useful videos, and articles on the meat industry and it's impact:
Cowspiracy (documentary based on the meat industry corruption):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfds5ZLJQ6Q

Supersize me (documentary explaining the meat industry, and the health and environmental effects of it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAnCOHCVjyU

Meat Industry Scientific Study:
http://science.time.com/2013/12/16/the-triple-whopper-environmental-impact-of-global-meat-production/

"Shocking facts About the Meat Industry":
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/11/25/shocking-facts-meat-industry.aspx

What can you do?
Although many of the man-made impacts on the environment is irreversible, there are several ways we can lessen the future effects to create a better environment for the future.

• Going vegetarian/vegan has a direct positive impact on the environment and has proven to decrease the global demand for meat by over 20% in some countries.

• If going vegetarian/vegan is too extreme, you can simply slow down on you meat consumption. Every meat-less diet day is actually statistically beneficial to the environment, regardless if you aren't strictly vegan or vegetarian.

• Shopping locally is always environmentally beneficial. It saves transportation (less gas emitted into the atmosphere), and preserves land.

Greenhouse gases are a group of compounds that can trap heat in the atmosphere. If the amount of greenhouse gases increase it will cause the greenhouse effect in simpler words it will cause global warming. Our planet’s climate has been rapidly shifting these past couple of decades. The inventions of cars, trains and planes created a new industry of gas. The demand of fossil fuels and coal and charcoal created this notion for people to believe that this was our main problem for creating greenhouse gas emissions. Those fraudulent ideas created the meat industry to get away with being the biggest industry to cause this environmental constrain. Each year animals and their byproducts make 51% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. As global warming on the rise the world will completely alter, the Arctic will melt, desertification will occur, cold regions will have warmer climate.

* The above images shows the impacts livestock has on ecosystems *

Not only does the meat industry detriment our forests, it also has a negative effect on our water sources. It has become evident that we are running out of freshwater sources, this has been a byproduct of many man-made induced environmental issues, such as overexploitation. However, the meat industry is another detriment to our freshwater sources and are also diminishing our finite resources.

*The crops we plant to feed the livestock consume 56% of the water in the US, and 30-33% of all freshwater is consumed by animal agriculture.*

The above picture shows the impact of the overexploitation of our freshwater sources. This impact is evident in places such as California. Many corporations are constantly pumping ground water to support the agriculture and livestock globally, thus, leading to deforestation. Deforestation is detrimental to an ecosystem as it completely dries up the ecosystem, killing several species, and is an irreversible impact. Globalization intensifies the impacts on the environment at an astounding rate. Because we've become such a technological and borderless world, we are continuously importing and exporting goods to different regions of the world; this inevitably worsens the situation.

One of the main agents that cause the enormous drain on crucial environmental resources is the meat industry. In order to sustain such a high level industry it requires huge quantities of land and water to grow grains to feed the animals. The industrialized livestock agricultural business takes up 30% of the globally ice free terrestrial land. Raising, feeding and slaughtering the livestock cause 8% of global freshwater to be consumed. Global demand for meat in general causes this influx industry to feed on limited sources

 *This blog was created to shine light on the negative environmental impacts the meat industry is having on our ecosystems. *

Above is an image of the amazon rain forest. It is evident that deforestation has taken a toll on the ecosystem within the rain forest, in fact in the last 40 years approximately 20% of the forest has been cut down, and it predicted that in just 2 more decades an additional 20% will be deforested as well. 70% of all deforestation in the rain forest is due to the global demand on the meat industry.