Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays. In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.
A
number of readers have asked me for an "elevator speech" that describes
how I think our civilization will collapse by the end of this century.
Being more of a "picture" person I decided to try to answer that
question graphically. The result is shown above.
There seems to be a growing consensus among those who have studied the
history of civilizations, past and present, and who are informed about
the current state of our economic, political, social and ecological
systems, that we are headed for a wall -- a series of cascading crises
that we will not be able to prevent, mitigate, or adapt ourselves to.
These crises will be principally of three types (listed in the order in
which the systems underlying them will collapse):
Economic and Political
Crises: We are already weathering the early signs of these, though I
don't think the real economic or political crises have yet really
begun. Because our economic and political systems, predicated on
accelerating and endless growth, are unsustainable, we are starting to
see evidence of great volatility in the industrial growth markets as
awareness of this unsustainability mounts. This will produce a crisis
of confidence as unemployment soars, wages collapse, and citizens lose
the capacity to buy, which will precipitate market collapse and a
chronic great depression -- a "Long Emergency" -- that will steadily
worsen over the next 20 years and peak in the 2030s.
Energy Crises: Our
economy is based utterly on the availability of unlimited inexpensive
energy. As the economy collapses for the reasons noted above,
investment to seek new sources of cheap energy will evaporate, and an
energy crisis will compound and accelerate the economic crises. As all
the economic engines -- employment, inexpensive energy, inexpensive
resources, and inexpensive capital -- all dry up, the economy will
crash, leading to increasing regional and then global political
turmoil, and finally, as the energy crisis peaks in the 2050s, the
beginnings of civilizational collapse. Civil chaos, compounding the
collapse of the fragile global economic system on which almost all
humans depend for their very life, will lead to the quick collapse of
national and regional governments, and power will devolve by
default to local communities. Death will come not from massive war or
bioterror (though there will be some, perhaps lots of that) but from
the familiar killers of humans throughout civilization -- famine and
disease.
Ecological Crises: The
excesses of our economic system have already unleashed irreversable
climate change, which is just beginning to show up in extreme weather
events and accelerating glacial melting and temperature rise, and will
soon produce ecological system collapses that will exacerbate the
economic and energy crises. By the 2060s, human civilization will be in
rapid descent as the ecological crises ascend. We will lose the last of
our forests, crops will be devastated, pandemics will kill humans,
their food crops and farm animals, our oceans will become devoid of
life, fresh clean water will become desperately scarce, and deserts,
droughts and floods will become commonplace.
Underlying all of these crises are the industrial growth society,
economy, and civilization we have built up, over the past thirty
millennia but especially over the past three centuries. This
civilization was both enabled and required by the discovery of tools
(arrowheads, fire, and catastrophic monoculture agriculture) that in
turn enabled us to expand outside our natural rainforest habitat,
become carnivores, become settlers, eliminate natural predators, and
hence expand exponentially our species' numbers and consumption of
resources. To try to sustain this, we created a fragile economic and
political system that depended on the exhaustion of natural ecosystems,
the extermination of alternative cultures and all species not required
for human food, and the ruthless repression of all forms of diversity
and dissent. The discovery of fossil fuels allowed us to replace human
labour with that created mechanically by the burning of these
hydrocarbons -- hundreds of millennia worth of stored energy consumed
in just a century or two. This allowed us to completely pillage the
planet, just as quickly, to the point that we now have nothing left for
other species or for future generations, and this has precipitated the
sixth great extinction of life on Earth, and the destruction, in the
blink of an eye, of an ecological balance that was co-created and
sustained collectively by all-life-on-Earth for millions of years.
Reg Morrison, in Spirit of the Gene, tells us what to expect after that:
If
the human plague is really as normal as it looks, then the collapse
curve should mirror the growth curve. This means the bulk of the
collapse will not take much longer than 100 years, and by 2150 the
biosphere should be safely back to its preplague population of Homo
Sapiens -- somewhere between a half and one billion.
BLOG The
Environmentalist's Dilemma: No Point in Arguing
The
last two days in Ithaca at the (extraordinarily well organized --
thanks Sarah & Emily!) Net
Impact seminar were an
eye-opener for me. On the one hand, I really got the sense that the
largely-young crowd of 2400 attendees was pretty naive about how much
of an impact their actions will and can have on the social and
environmental behaviours and actions of the corporations they work for
(or hope to work for -- most are still students and few of them have
entrepreneurial aspirations). The sponsors of the event, after all,
included ExxonMobil, Dow
Chemical, GE, WalMart, Coca-Cola, P&G -- a rogues gallery
of corporate malfeasance and greenwashing if there ever was
one. The best hope, I think, is that they will flood into the
government and public sector jobs that the stimulus programs have (we
hope) opened up, and that those jobs will last long enough and be
effective enough to produce some real change -- not in regulations as
much as in government-funded NPO programs -- social service, health,
information and education programs. Making life a little better in
their communities for a few people, for now.
On the other hand, I felt embarrassed that I was so jaundiced about
what they were doing, yet at the same time I could not really be
bothered to debate with them, to explain why this "try to change these
organizations from within" effort was at best futile and at worst a
dangerous distraction from the work we need to do to prepare now for
economic, energy, environmental and, finally, civilizational collapse.
Everything I know and have learned suggests we're long past the point
of solving these problems or even significantly mitigating them, and
that it's time to focus on transition and adaptation. But these young
idealists, with few exceptions, are technophiles (believers that
technology, ingenuity and innovation can address the coming crises),
unwavering believers in the political and economic system (they mostly
think that Obama has a plan for all this, and he just needs more time),
and most seem unaware of even what the Long Emergency, peak oil, the
growing debt crisis, the transition movement and permaculture are all
about.
So to some extent it was like spending two days speaking a foreign
language. These energetic believers' whole worldview is so different
from mine that what I say to them, without the benefit of the context
that, for example, my Save
the World Reading List provides,
makes absolutely no sense to them. It sounds crazy
to them. And I've been so immersed in conversations with people who
really have come to understand what is happening to our world, and what
needs to be done, now, that when I encounter this sea of incredulity I
am startled, exasperated, and dismayed.
Daniel Quinn has said (in Beyond Civilization):
People
will listen when they're ready to listen and not before. Probably, once
upon a time, you weren't ready to listen to an idea than now seems to
you obvious, even urgent. Let people come to it in their own time.
Nagging or bullying will only alienate them. Don't preach. Don't waste
time with people who want to argue. They'll keep you immobilized
forever. Look for people who are already open to something new.
Well, these young people are
open to something new, but not to the message I
have for them. They do
want to argue with me, and they are
willing to listen. The problem is me.
I have neither the patience nor the energy to provide them with an
ocean of information, reading and rhetoric to get them to understand
what, at this point, they find unfathomable, and would probably find
unbearable even if they did appreciate it.
So what's the point? Invest hundreds of hours in order to show a few
people how they've been misinformed and propagandized and deceived and
unexposed to the terrible truth of our civilization's cost, its
unsustainability and inevitable and ghastly demise? So they can be
depressed and paralyzed, as I was when I first began to come to grip
with this knowledge? What will that gain us?
I don't think it's possble to provide a seminar or short conference
that would allow the audience to learn everything they would need to
overcome their acceptance of the prevailing orthodoxy of thought. I'm
not sure even a whole course or university program would suffice. In
addition to being exposed to a lot of new and challenging information, people need time to
digest it, and, more importantly, to discuss it with others.
Joanna Macy runs a program
that focuses instead on reconnecting with Gaia, with one's emotions and
instincts, and letting one's heart be broken and opening oneself up,
with others, to an awareness of the grief for all-life-on-Earth that we
all feel, must feel, if we do begin to reconnect. This is the basis for
the 9-step "What
You Can Do" program that I have
been writing about, which is illustrated above.
Likewise, Derrick Jensen suggests (in A Language Older Than
Words) that we listen to the
land, and in time it will tell us just what we need to do.
I am trying to believe this, but I'm not sure I do. As Quinn says, you
need to be ready
to listen, to reconnect. Although I don't much like the analogy, it's a
lot like being ready for a religious conversion. I understand that most
people are indoctrinated into their religious beliefs from a very early
age, but many still need some event to trigger a true
realization of that belief. And others who come to religion later in
their lives do so because they're ready -- some combination of events
and support from other believers is sufficient to take them past a
tipping point, and bring about a major worldview change. A heavy dose
of propaganda needs to be applied at just the right time, by more than
one person, in the context of the convert's own community and
situation. This is not easy stuff.
Organized religions do this very effectively. They provide the tools
for evangelism, and the infrastructure to keep the flock in the fold.
Whereas some of them are con-men and criminals, others are generous and
sincere. Gladwell has described
the "cellular" organization that enables many evangelical churches to
convert and retain members, using a bottom-up outreach and support
process coordinated by a top-down hierarchy that supplies the tools of
conversion and retention.
Perhaps the Transition
movement and the Permaculture
movement, both community-based networks, are the analogue of the local
cells of religious groups. Perhaps these are the networks that we can
use, instead of debates, conferences and books, to do the same thing to
organize those who are, as Quinn and Jensen say, ready to listen, to
reconnect, and to start to do the much more radical work that will be
needed to:
learn a better way to
live and make a living,
disrupt and bring down
our industrial growth economy and the civilization that depends on it,
and
create new models to
replace them that are healthy and sustainable.
Yet I'm troubled by this. If we create cellular networks to organize
the work of reconnection, learning, action and creation needed to
enable a better world, could these not easily become, as so many
religious networks are, vehicles for indoctrination and exploitation?
Will we end up with sects who think that better world can and should be
built now, in the shadow of our teetering civilization, and others who
think we should focus on undermining existing civilization and that
nothing very useful can be accomplished until that work is done? I can
see myself agreeing with both viewpoints.
I am at heart not a political person. I don't like to debate (so
Quinn's words naturally appeal to me). When I speak with climate
scientists they tell me that they don't dare say what they really think
is happening to our world, and that they don't dare share their extreme
pessimism about whether it can be "fixed", for fear that politicians
and others will just stop listening to them ("we don't want to know,
then"). So we've reached the stage where the people who really know are
now afraid to say what they know. And so many of us who see evidence
all around us that something is very wrong keep quiet, keep doing what
they're doing, and conclude, uncomfortably, it must be "just them" that
feels this way.
I kind of expect that, faced with evidence, most people will come
around (eventually, and almost assuredly too late) to believe what I
believe, and that they will then be ready to listen and to "get with
the program" that my graphic above illustrates, or some program like
it. In that I am, I think, an optimist -- I believe that in our hearts
we all want to do the right thing, for everyone.
But I don't know. We are who we are and, learning and programs and
propaganda notwithstanding, we will do what we will do. As Pollard's
Law states, we do what we must, then we do what's easy, and then we do
what's fun. We will "get with the program" only reluctantly, because we
don't like change, and this program will never be easy, or fun. Most of
us will only begin when there is absolutely no doubt left
that our existing civilization is doomed.
No wonder most people don't want to know, and are so willing to believe
that the system doesn't need to change, that we can continue to grow
forever, that we can change the system from within, or that technology
or ingenuity or the Rapture will save us, in time.
Do not buy or eat any
industrial meat – period. Grain-fed meat raises the
price of commodities in the poor world. Either give up meat
or eat only grass-fed meat.
Do not support biofuel
production from foodstuffs or on land that is suitable for growing
human crops.
Purchase high value,
dry shipped luxury goods like spices, coffee, tea, etc…
*only* when certified fair trade and grown in responsible ways (ie,
shade grown coffee, etc…)
Don’t buy
imported produce. Shift your diet to eat what’s
available in your locality. Remember, flying produce around
the world is using planes to transport water, effectively.
That’s nuts on a whole host of levels.
Begin shifting your
“shadow acres” of imported foods, resources and
goods to your own locality – buy local when possible, even if
it means buying less. If you can’t produce
something in your area, look for substitutes and work to establish
local manufacture and production.
The
trouble with self-delusion, either in a person or a society, is that
reality doesn't care what anybody believes, or what story they put
out. Reality doesn't "spin." Reality does not have a
self-image problem. Reality does not yield its workings to
self-esteem management. These days, Americans don't like reality very
much because it won't let them push it around. Reality is an implacable
force and the only question for human beings in the face of it is: what
will you do? In other words, it's not really possible to
manage reality, but you can certainly choose to manage your affairs
within reality. We won't do that because it's too difficult.
This harsh situation leaves the public increasingly with little more
than bad feelings of discouragement and persecution.
Freakonomics
Duo Freak Out: The authors of
Freakonomics,
which was an entertaining and informative study of statistical
correlations in complex systems, have been taking their success too
seriously. As Elizabeth Kolbert explains, they've written a
sequel that proposes utterly ludicrous geoengineering solutions to
climate change (neither author
is a scientist of any kind). Wrong, guys, just wrong, on all counts.
American
Dietetic Association Advocates Vegetarianism:
This summer the ADA
put to rest the many myths and concerns about vegetarian diets,
and stated that, for everyone,
a vegetarian diet (including a vegan diet) is much better than a meat
diet. Thanks to Prad for the link.
From a tweet by bakedin:
"The simplest, fastest way to make an entire organization smarter is
for every member to know what is going on."
From Susan B. Anthony (thanks to Cheryl
for the link): "Cautious, careful people always casting about to
preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about
reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or
nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in
season and out, avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their
advocates, and bear the consequences."
From
Wendell Berry:
THE
REAL WORK
It may be that when
we no longer know what to do
we have come to our
real work,
and that when we no
longer know which way to go
we have come to our
real journey.
BLOG Comments on November
4, 2009 post "Do We Really Want to Know?" not yet posted
Because Radio Userland is
capping comments at 50 per article, and because I wanted to capture
these comments for posterity anyway, and
because some people wanted to post more comments, I'm reposting my
article from November 4, 2009, with the first 50 comments embedded at
the end of the article, so there should be room for lots more now!
-- Dave
_______________________________________________________________________
BLOG Do We Really
Want to
Know the Truth?
There's
an interesting article
by Elizabeth Kolbert in this week's New Yorker on vegetarianism,
and specifically on the disconnect between our adoration of pets and
our tolerance for the horrific, lifelong suffering of the animals we
eat. It's really about human nature, Kolbert argues, and specifically
that we just don't want to know about atrocities and suffering we don't
feel we have any control over.
This was the subject of JM Coetzee's book Elizabeth Costello,
that I reviewed six years ago. Here's an excerpt from the book:
Seven
o'clock, the sun just rising, and John [animal welfare activist
Elizabeth Costello's son] and
his mother are on the way to the airport.
'I'm sorry about my wife', he says. 'She has been under a lot of
strain. I don't think she is in a position to sympathize. Perhaps one
could say the same for me. It's been such a short visit, and I haven't
had time to make sense of why you have become so intense about this animal
business.'
She watches the wipers wagging back and forth. 'A better explanation',
she says, is that I have not told you why, or dare not tell you. When I
think of the words, they seem so outrageous that they are best spoken
into a pillow or into a hole in the ground, like King Midas.'
'I don't follow. What is it you can't say?'
'It's that I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly
easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is
it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime
of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet
every day I see the evidence. The very people I suspect produce the
evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses
that they have bought for money. It's as if I were to visit friends,and
to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living room, and
they were to say "Yes it's nice isn't it? Human skin it's made of, we
find that's best, the skins of young virgins." And then I go to the
bathroom and the soap wrapper says "100% human stearate". Am I
dreaming, I say to myself. What kind of house is this? Yet I'm not
dreaming. I look into your eyes, into your wife's, into the children's,
and I see only kindness, human kindness. Calm down, I tell myself, you
are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else
comes to terms with it, why can't you? Why can't you?'
She turns on him a tearful face. What
does she want, he thinks?
Does
she want me to answer her question for her?
In my review of the book, I asked:
Is
there a point in
rubbing our faces in it, in forcing people to face up to the horror of
concentration camps, slaughterhouses, factory farms, chemical weaponry,
mental illness, sexual assault and torture, bullying, spousal and child
abuse, animal testing laboratories, political interrogations, what
happens behind prison walls, the agony of those in continuous pain not
allowed to die and without access to relief, the children whose entire
lives are consumed in deprivation and brutality, the suffering of crack
babies?
Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals,
the book that prompted Kolbert's article, draws obvious
parallels between the way we treat farmed animals and the way prisoners
were treated in the second world war by the Axis powers. Kolbert
explains:
Foer’s
position is
that all such arguments [those justifying 'humane' eating of animals
put forth by Michael Pollan, Temple Grandin et al.] are, finally,
bogus. We eat meat because we like to, and we devise justifications
afterward. “Almost always, when I told someone I was writing
a
book about ‘eating animals,’ they assumed, even
without
knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for
vegetarianism,” he says. “It’s a telling
assumption,
one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal
agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know
that to be the
case.” What we know
about eating animals is that we
don’t want to know.
Although he never explicitly equates “concentrated animal
feeding
operations” with the Final Solution, the German model of at
once
seeing and not seeing clearly informs Foer’s thinking. The
book
is framed by tales of his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor.
Reading the article, I thought about the program of practices I have
designed for myself once I retire in a couple of months, whose purpose
in part is to reconnect me with my instincts, my emotions, my senses
and all-life-on-Earth. When I discuss this with people who don't know
me well, they tend to ask me either "How and why do you think you
became disconnected?"
or "Why
would you want to subject yourself to
that anguish?". These are both questions born, I think, out of
subconscious grief
-- the first is a denial that the life most of us live is in any way
emotionally suppressed, tacitly cruel or unnatural, while the second is
dismay that we
could ever hope to handle that much terrible reality.
It intrigues me that the people who sign up for courses and workshops
on emotional reconnection (judging by the research I have done, and on
the Joanna Macy workshop videos I've watched) seem to be overwhelmingly
female and over 30. Why is that adult women are more willing than
males, or young people, to "let their hearts be broken"?
This is important, because one of the tenets of social democracy, and
activism, is that if a majority of people feel strongly about some
facet of the status quo, that this will inevitably produce change. The
ending of slavery, women's rights, and other instances are offered as
justifications for political awareness, discourse and activism being
necessary and sufficient preconditions for bringing about important
change.
But are they? As Foer says, the majority already know that factory
farming is an ugly business. But they don't want to know. They quietly
ignore it, turn away from it, satisfy themselves somehow that it's not
that bad or that nothing can change it anyway -- it's an inevitable
part of civilization. It's "natural". The rationalizations of Pollan
and Grandin are music to their ears.
The same is true for what we're doing to the Earth, and to the
struggling nations of the Earth. We know it's awful, unsustainable,
just not right. But we don't want to know. We rationalize that it's not
really that bad (hence the popularity of the wing-nut Lomborgian
climate change deniers, and corporatists who assert that struggling
nations benefit from globalization and that "a rising tide lifts all
boats"). We tell ourselves we can't do anything anyway, we do what we
can, it's up to the experts and politicians.
The problem is, these rationalizations are just untrue, and like the
nonsense of technophiles in groups like WorldChanging, the religious
loonies who believe in the Rapture, and the "humanist" cults that
preach about a coming "global human consciousness raising" it is
magical thinking, stuff that we tell ourselves because we really, really don't
want to know the
truth.
Regular readers are probably tired of me reciting Pollard's Law of
human behaviour, but until it has been effectively refuted I'll keep
saying it: We
do what we must, then
we do what's easy, and then we do what's fun.
We have no time or
energy left to do what's merely right. It is not in our nature.
Let's look at slavery. Of course the social movements against slavery
were important. But I would argue they were not enough. The US civil
war was not fought over slavery, it was fought over the right of one
region to declare independence (this is the cause of many wars, which
are almost always about power, money, control, and land). Slavery of
both blacks and whites (called "indentured servitude") was legal for
many years throughout the US because it was the only way to make
passage of workers economically feasible. They did what they had to.
Later as
travel costs fell, most people could afford their own passage to the
"new world", and slavery was then only essential to agriculture,
particularly labour-intensive tobacco, cotton and sugar beet farming.
Technology (like the cotton gin) increased manufacturing productivity
and hence actually increased
the need for more slaves on the farms to feed the new post-harvest
automation. Slave owners acknowledged that slavery was (in the
words of Robert E Lee) "a moral evil" but rationalized that the slaves
were "better off here than in Africa". You know, like how Aghanis and
Iraqis are better off now than they were under the Taliban and Saddam.
After the civil war, slavery was abolished, but, after the brief but
disastrous Reconstruction and a severe economic depression, white
supremacy was restored in the former slave states in the Compromise of
1877 as Union forces finally withdrew and left the former slave states
to sort things out for themselves. Slavery was replaced by
sharecropping, blacks were re-disenfranchised, and for most of
the
following century suffered under brutal, overtly
racist, repressive white-controlled governments. Slavery was
allowed for prisoners, judicial and police systems treated blacks no
differently than they had during the slave era, and segregation of all
institutions meant that life for most African-Americans was only
marginally better than it had been.
What changed, finally? The decline in the importance of agriculture
overall in the US. Access to cheap foreign labour. The Industrial
Revolution. As a result, social slavery was no longer necessary.
Economic slavery was just as useful, without the blatant "moral evil"
that characterized social slavery. Slavery ended ultimately not
because of social activism
(though that was absolutely necessary), but because it was easier
to automate
harvesting, import foreign workers (or offshore the whole process to
countries unconcerned with "moral evils"), or use the land for
something more profitable and less labour-intensive.
Has all this social activism brought an end to racism? Not on your
life. Wait until the economic debt crisis hits in the next decade or so
and you'll see that nothing's changed. Has it really brought an end to
slavery? Talk to the Mexican workers in the American fields, or the
children working in the blood diamond mines in Africa, or chained to
machines in the factories in China, and you'll get your answer. But we
don't want to know.
I could make an analogous argument for what has happened with women's
rights, but you get the idea. It was easy and profitable to get women
into the workforce, for low wages, caught in the Two
Income
Trap, buying all those things a
two-worker family needs that a
one-worker family didn't. And giving women the right to vote didn't
cost anyone anything, nor did it produce any significant power shifts. It was easy.
Did women have to
fight hard for it anyway, and should we salute them for doing so? Of
course. Do women in most of the world still face horrific prejudice and
oppression? Damned right. Will they too, with enough decades and
centuries of struggle, achieve some reasonable equality in their
societies? As long as it's easy, and doesn't cost anyone anything, sure.
Now apply this to factory farming. Ending it is not easy.
It cannot be made easy.
Like combatting the causes of climate change, or coping with the End of
Oil and the End of Water, it is a hugely complex problem. The necessary
change would be staggeringly expensive, and massively unpopular. Do we
need activists to do the "holding actions" to mitigate some of the
damage and to increase public awareness and affect public opinion on
the need for change in these areas? Absolutely. Will that work, in and
of itself, bring about sufficient change in these hugely difficult
areas? Not
a chance.
We will change when there is absolutely no choice (we do what we must)
or when it is
dead easy to change. Give us compact fluorescent lightbulbs that cost
the same per kilowatt-hour as incandescents and reduce energy
consumption by 2/3, and it's easy -- you can then make incandescents
illegal and no one will care. Same thing happened with getting rid of
the CFCs in refrigerants. No problem.
But reducing CO2
emissions to zero in two decades (necessary
to get us down to 350ppm and avert climate catastrophe) will never be
easy. Reducing oil and petrochemical consumption by 90% in three
decades (necessary to avert The Long Emergency) is unfathomably
difficult, if not impossible. Drastically reducing debts, waste, and
consumption (necessary to avert a ghastly depression that will make the
Great Depression look mild) is unimaginable, even with magical thinking
-- the cure might be as bad as the disease. And likewise an end to
factory farming would require the nationalization and breakup of
industrial agriculture, an end to the $150B annual agriculture
subsidies to some mighty powerful oligopoly lobbies, and a total,
mostly involuntary, change to the way we eat, that would make food much
more expensive and its preparation much more time-consuming. This is
the antithesis
of easy.
These are wicked problems because it will never be easy to solve them.
So no politician is going to impose change on the voters, because it
would be political suicide. These problems will be solved politically
or socially only when there is no other choice. And by then, as every
previous civilization has discovered, it will be too late.
Is there a technology fix? The magical thinkers are hard at work.
They're planning on blasting $30B of tiny reflective metal into the
stratosphere to deflect the sun's rays, to combat global warming. It's
called geoengineering.
They have no idea what they're doing, but when things get desperate
enough they'll do it anyway. After all, it's easy. Oh, and they're also
going to put all the carbon dioxide back into the Earth in a way that
it won't leak out again. That's called carbon
sequestration, and the
technology doesn't exist (the engineers I've
spoken to say it never will), but, hey, when you're magical thinking,
go for it. Obama's giving them millions to invent it. Just make it easy
for us, please. Whatever the problems, we just don't want to know.
And the magical thinkers are going to give us high-efficiency wind and
solar and geothermal and biomass and "clean coal" and "safe nuclear" to
get us off our addiction to oil. No matter that even all of these
together barely scratch the surface of what we would need just to keep
consuming at current levels (China's energy use is growing 20%/year and
they're building a new coal-fired power plant every four days). Hey,
what happened to cold fusion? In the meantime, we'll stave off the
problem for 4-5 years by turning an area of Alberta the size of Florida
into a lunar landscape peppered with thousands of massive toxic tailing
ponds. The kids will forgive us, right? We don't want to know.
The magical thinkers haven't even put their minds to dealing with the
coming economic collapse, or the obscenity of factory farming, because
they're not even acknowledged as problems, let alone wicked ones. We
don't want to know.
Well, I
want to know. And
apparently a few others, mostly adult women, want to know too. Even if
it means letting my heart be broken. Even if it means looking at a
photo like the one above, which is offensive. I've been inside a
slaughterhouse. I'm a vegetarian, but still not a vegan, so I'm
complicit in what goes on in factory farms and slaughterhouses. I drive
a car and fly too often, so I'm complicit in the Alberta Tar Sands
holocaust. I know better, or at least I should. What's the matter with
me, with us?
What's the matter is that we're human. These things that don't change
don't hit close enough. They're not personal enough. Slaughterhouses
and factory farms and Tar Sands developments are private property, and
they don't want you to know what goes on there. And what would you do,
anyway?
Well, perhaps you'd do whatever it took to shut them down. And perhaps,
if you got together with enough other people with the same intention,
you might come up with some ingenious ways to shut them down. Maybe
even as ingenious as the ideas that got these "innovations" started in
the first place.
Do we really want to know the truth? I don't know. We're a curious
species, we humans. If something can reasonably be done to make
something better, or less awful, a lot of us seem to want to know what
the problem is, and how we might do that.
All I know is that, after a lifetime of turning away, of not wanting to
know, I've now reached the point where I can't help knowing, and I
can't turn away, and I have to do something more than the very worthy
and necessary but insufficient things that activists do so valiantly
and often at great personal risk and sacrifice.
I have to stop these things. How? Don't know yet. Work with me, and
we'll figure it out.
Last words to Ms Kolbert, a much better writer than I:
“Eating
Animals” closes with a turkey-less Thanksgiving. As a
holiday, it
doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. But this is Foer’s
point.
We are, he suggests, defined not just by what we do; we are defined by
what we are willing to do without. Vegetarianism requires the
renunciation of real and irreplaceable pleasures. To Foer’s
credit, he is not embarrassed to ask this of us.
But is even veganism really enough? The cost that consumer society
imposes on the planet’s fifteen or so million non-human
species
goes way beyond either meat or eggs. Bananas, bluejeans, soy lattes,
the paper used to print this magazine, the computer screen you may be
reading it on—death and destruction are embedded in them all.
It
is hard to think at all rigorously about our impact on other organisms
without being sickened.
in friendship, prad
prad • 11/4/09; 3:32:31 AM #
----------------------------------------
Hey Dave --
The problem isn't really eating meat, you know. It's billions of humans
on the planet consuming more and more every year.
So the solution isn't vegetarianism or veganism, its complete cultural
change with depopulation. Horrific and yet... nothing less will stop us
from killing the planet. The good news -- if you can call it that -- is
that the planet is quickly going to take our choices away. We've pushed
to hard, too far, and now we have to face the consequences of that.
But moving with this change is hard... harder than anything ever,
because for those that want to save the world, the path is
unintuitive... while for those that just want better lives, it can be
endlessly satisfying -- once they stop being afraid and just start.
Janene
Janene • 11/4/09; 8:08:30 AM #
----------------------------------------
I agree with Janene. I strongly recommend the book *The* *Vegetarian*
*Myth* by Lierre Keith, who is no apologist for the evils of factory
farming. I hope you don't become a vegan, because if you do, it will
drive you insane and destroy your body.
Loveandlight • 11/4/09; 10:11:32 AM #
the comment by loveandlight drives home the point of this article in
excellent fashion! also, janene's depopulation is a good idea - the
fewer people, the fewer indenial.
prad • 11/4/09; 4:53:51 PM #
thanks for a great write dave. loveandlight epitomizes the essence of
your article; denial is not a river in africa. funny how someone can
read something so thought provoking and miss the entire point,
especially someone with a handle such as loveandlight. light on -no one
home.
tricia glynn • 11/4/09; 5:17:34 PM #
----------------------------------------
Tricia, a putdown is not an argument. I agree with Loveandlight... best
human diet is the paleolithic diet, and high grain diets are destroying
people's health as well as the planet. Let's convert grain fields to
pastures! Short of Wes Jackson's dream of perennial grains, it's really
the only way to stop the erosion and damage grain growing causes. Is
one pound of bread worth 7 pounds of lost soil?!
vera • 11/4/09; 7:31:24 PM #
----------------------------------------
Sorry Dave. I got carried away, before I read your post. I just bought
a goat share, and I hope never to support big commercial dairies with
their overheated, substandard, medicated pseudomilk and poorly treated
cows again. And hey, it was easy. Finding the farm and getting
motivated to go was the only hard part.
CAFOs... keep us posted. You picked a worthy challenge...
vera • 11/4/09; 7:58:57 PM #
----------------------------------------
I wanna know too, Dave.
Mike • 11/5/09; 9:35:35 AM #
----------------------------------------
Daniel Draffen writes:
We are vegetarians - no meat, fish, eggs or foul. It's not that hard,
in fact, in many ways it's simpler than omnivore diet. Certainly
healthier. We've been vegetarian for a very long time and will be
indefinitely. The solution is from the grass roots level, the family
level, the individual level. If most families went vegetarian that
would FORCE the Powers-That-Be to adapt and shift away from factory
farming of animals - the demand would not be there. The market speaks
loudly and the Powers-That-Be listen, even the powerful lobbies.
Probably shoes and belts are the hardest part - finding a suitable
substitute for leather that is acceptable to wear to office and formal
gatherings. Haven't quite conquered that yet - fortunately these items
last a long time and don't have to be replaced frequently.
Dave Pollard • 11/5/09; 9:59:40 AM #
----------------------------------------
Thanks everyone. Although vegetarianism wasn't really the point of my
article, I appreciate the comments on that. The real challenge is, if
we give up waiting for most people to want to know, and to act, what
can we do to make behaviour that is less destructive (a) mandatory (by
removing more destructive options) or, more likely (b) easy, e.g. by
inventing some kind of non-animal based protein food (without
artificial chemicals or GMO components) that tastes just like meat
& dairy?
Dave Pollard • 11/5/09; 10:05:57 AM #
----------------------------------------
Vera, If the truth is a put down then so be it. Fact is it takes 5,000
gallons of water to produce one pound of meat and 25 gallons to produce
a pound of wheat. I am in my sixties and have never been sick not even
with a mild cold or flu and I have been vegan for most of my life. My
siblings who eat meat are on many medications for high blood pressure,
diabetes, cholesterol and many other illnesses. This speaks volumes to
me. The proof is in the pudding. I am vegan for the animals, my good
health is an asset that comes with my lifestyle.
tricia glynn • 11/5/09; 10:39:49 AM #
----------------------------------------
Daniel, My husband and I have found great pleather belts and shoes and
pleather is becoming more and more accessible. Vegan essentials is on
line store where you can get the products.
Dave, While I tend to stay away from vegan meats, there are some great
tasting beef and chicken entrees, especially pure vegetarian brand that
i serve when we have carnivore guests. soy ice cream, milk, whipping
cream, and butter is as tasty as real dairy products without all the
antibiotics and suffering.
tricia glynn • 11/5/09; 10:47:33 AM #
----------------------------------------
Tricia, in what world are insults "the truth"? If you feel you have to
insult others who think other than you, what example are you setting
for your way of looking at things?
It does not take 5000 gallons of water to produce a pound of rabbit or
chicken or fish. As for wheat, if most people switched to grain based
foods, soil erosion would be even more insane than it already is. Have
you checked the numbers on how much soil is lost to feed you? And there
are plenty of very healthy omnivores... and some very sickly vegans.
The fact that there has never been a fully vegetarian tribe speaks for
itself.
At least read Lierre Keith, so that you know what the other side argues.
vera • 11/5/09; 10:54:54 AM #
----------------------------------------
Hey --
Obviously, if that's the goal your option (b) is the more likely and
also prefered one.
But Dave... to make those meat alternatives, how much invested energy
do you think might be involved? Talk about gallons of water all you
want sure, it is as important as any other factor if not more)... but
at the end of the day, total energy investment is the only way to
compare apples and oranges (or fungus and beef)
Janene
Janene • 11/5/09; 10:55:30 AM #
----------------------------------------
"Regular readers are probably tired of me reciting Pollard's Law of
human behaviour, but until it has been effectively refuted I'll keep
saying it: We do what we must, then we do what's easy, and then we do
what's fun. We have no time or energy left to do what's merely right.
It is not in our nature."
Certainly the most remarkable and surprising world event in our
lifetime was the fall of the Berlin wall and subsequent events in the
communist bloc and Germany. Predicted by no Certified Smart Persons
anywhere, because they believe principles not much different from
Pollard's Law, that popular opinion means next to nothing, that
totalitarian powers cannot be opposed by their citizens, that citizens
are indifferent and don't want to know.
I think you might be less despairing if your view of historical and
current events was less dogmatic and oversimplifying. Perhaps studying
how so positive and yet "impossible" an event as the fall of the Berlin
wall nevertheless happened would be a help.
Bob Watson • 11/5/09; 1:34:57 PM #
----------------------------------------
vera and janene:
you are ignoring an important reality. it takes far more grain (energy,
resources etc) to produce meat to feed people than to just feed people
the grain to beginning with. i'm also surprised that neither of you
acknowledge the ethical issue - sentient beings don't like to be
imprisoned, exploited, abused and murdered. there really isn't anyway
around this.
and vera, you're being a bit unfair by saying tricia is engaging in
insults. exactly what did she say that was insulting and to whom? your
statement "high grain diets are destroying people's health as well as
the planet" is dramatic, but erroneous since the people in the 1st
world consume a high meat-based diet and that is what is destroying
their health and the planet. lierre keith makes a reasonable argument,
but she is not the "other side" as you imply. a veg myth merely negates
itself (if proven to be a myth) - it by no means negates vegetarianism
(as some opponents want you to think).
again, i refer back to janene's original thesis - the big problem is
big population. until this species learns to control its hedonistic,
anthropocentric urges, it will live by the glands, not the brain, and
certainly not the heart.
prad • 11/5/09; 2:03:28 PM #
----------------------------------------
Prad, I was referring to above: "loveandlight. light on -no one home".
Key points: it does not take any grains to feed cows. In fact, they
sicken on it. Goats and sheep do well on grass & browse. And
grass
protects the soil. The only critters that need some grains are
chickens... but not much if they are free ranging.
I am not arguing for a high meat diet. Neither do I accept the argument
for a high grain diet.
The way the planet is, sentient beings serve as food for others, one
way or another. You and I will serve others some day too. We are
predators, we eat some. If we treat them right, and kill them gently, I
am at peace with it. You may want to argue with God on that one. But if
you want to argue that it's better for the earth that I eat processed
grain from Alberta rather than the rabbit on my porch, I will have a
hard time taking you seriously.
Population is of course a problem; less food, less humans. I am against
all the propaganda aiming to increase the yields which are already
plunderous, unnecessary, and destructive to the planet.
vera • 11/5/09; 3:29:19 PM #
----------------------------------------
vera,
tricia's statement was just a play on words. if you want to seek
something that is a more suitable insult candidate look at
loveandlight's assertion that becoming vegan "will drive you insane and
destroy your body".
we seem to be in agreement on at least some of the important matters -
high yields come with an even higher price. as the saying goes, "no
gain, no pain"!
however, peace comes to you a bit too easily. the choice is not between
your eating grain or eating the rabbit, but that you do have a choice
not to eat the rabbit. you don't have to eat the grain either, because
just like your cows and goats and sheep, you don't need that stuff. so
let's not get distracted from what the real choice at hand here is and
if that seems difficult, talk to the rabbit and it'll be cleared up
really quickly.
now you might feel fine treating this rabbit right and then killing
gently (which isn't treating the poor fellow right, btw), but i somehow
don't think the rabbit would feel too fine. in fact, if the rabbit were
not just a casual visitor on your porch, but were your pet, you might
not feel too good killing this being that you have been treating right.
in fact, when you really treat a sentient being right, vera, killing
just doesn't come that easily.
your 'sentient beings serving as food' argument is interesting. on one
hand, it's the old "a wolf eats rabbits so why can't i?". this is the
someone else does i so it must be ok effort, though i hesitate to
extend the approach and hold up flies as paragons to justify culinery
behaviors. on the other hand, you have rather generously offered up
both of us as food to "serve others some day too". i'm not sure what
you are encouraging here - is it cannibalism? who are these others that
will devour us?
possibly you have thought out the ethics of this offering and are at
peace with being devoured, but i, like the rabbit, am not too pleased
with your idea. i don't mean to desert you, but really i do object! :D
prad • 11/5/09; 5:36:58 PM #
----------------------------------------
Hey Prad --
If don't know what angle vera approaches this issue from -- although I
expect it is not totally dissimilair from my own -- but the simple fact
is that we have evolved to be omnivores... so from a simple biological
standpoint, the most healthy diet for human animals involves
vegetables, fruit, nuts... and meats.
Morally, I don't see any need to justify living the way we evolved to
live... any more than a lion or wolf or bacteria needs justification
for the way they live. Everything living eventually dies -- we are all
part of the cycle of life -- we all feed on something (or someone)
else. One way or another other.
Derrick Jensen made an interesting observation in A Language Older than
Words. He suggested that in every predator-prey interaction there is a
conversation that takes place... the prey, if it is to be dinner,
acknowledges that it is "thier time," if you will. This suggests to me
that our disconnect with food is more spiritual (not the right word,
but I'm struggling a little) than it is materialistic. I'm interested
in bring that "spirit" back to our interactions more than I am
interested in disconnecting entirely......
:-) No, Prad, killing does not come easily. But fields of grain do not
come without killing. Plowing kills critters, harvesters kill critters,
runoff kills (the rivers and seas), the transportation kills (animals
on the road) and so on... We do not have the choice not to kill.
As for eating neither grain nor meat...have you tried such a thing? I
came close with the SCDiet, and it was pretty gruesome to stick with. I
evolved as an omnivore, and I intend to stay an omnivore. And I believe
that an omnivorous diet is the best for saving soil, too.
Cannibalism? Heh. Nah. I have a grievous chronic disease that may kill
me some day, and I have thought that the best death would be just to
walk out onto the prairie and let the coyotes have me, and the
vultures. It would be an honor, really. Failing that, I would like to
be composted, as food for the critters that show up. The whole earth is
one cycle of service... the grasshopper feeds the chicken, the chicken
feeds me, and I feed the coyotes or the worms & tiny soil
organisms. As they in turn will serve others, as long as life continues.
vera • 11/5/09; 10:42:51 PM #
----------------------------------------
to suggest that the most healthy diet for humans should include corpse
fare in 2009, is really ignoring the work done by even mainstream
health professionals. four decades ago, the statement might have been
reasonable, but even the american dietetic association now acknowledges
the health benefits of veg (just as the highbrow medical journal the
lancet grudgingly did about 15 yrs ago, interestingly enough).
what you can say is that humans are omnivores by practice - but that is
not an evolutionary imperative. it is simply a lifestyle that some
people decide to adopt.
now if you truly believe that there isn't "any need to justify living
the way we evolved to live", you also must see you have just opened the
door to any sort of behavior that humans engage in (genocide, murder,
oppression, etc). however, there has been an evolution in conscience,
since these days a greater percentage of people recognize that
justifications are necessary. this is an important component of
civilized society.
mystical mumblings of this marvellous communication (a la jensen)
between predator and prey really have no relevance in civilized society
and just because 'we all feed on something', doesn't prevent us from
being more discerning and aware of the sentient beings whose existence
we are terminating. if you really communicate, you'll hear your prey
saying "i want to live". however, you can't engage in this
communication too easily through the cellophane wrapper with the slab
of corpse that once was a part of a living being.
the problem with this sort of hands-off approach to existence is that
again it ignores the progress that has been made ethically over the
centuries. some people still get away with murder, but these days in
more and more places they are being held accountable for it.
so many of us not only see the need to justify various human behaviors,
we also work towards making sure that certain human behaviors are
relegated to the darkest pages of history.
i do agree with you regarding the planet taking our choices away, but
it hasn't happened yet. so we do have the choice not to participate in
the oppression of sentient beings and while being veg isn't going to
solve all the problems, it's a really necessary component. we also have
the choice to research things so we work with actual facts rather than
fantasies trying to maintain status quo.
and finally, we have the choice to want to know which is the point of
dave's article.
prad • 11/6/09; 3:58:55 AM #
----------------------------------------
hi again vera!
i'm not surprised to hear you say that "killing doesn't come easily". i
don't think it ever could for a kind person. the human psyche really
isn't designed for it. as an example, consider that rabbit on your
porch - do you think it is cute, or do you start salivating?
now let's deal with this grain drain. your argument is that grain
production kills so we're not any better off than meat production which
also kills. however, do you not see that the former is not a mechanism
for directed killing of sentient beings, whereas the latter is? so
let's get the two very differing situations out from under the same
blanket.
for instance, your grain transport truck may run over a couple of deer,
but your chicken transport truck is bringing hundreds to their deaths.
so you most definitely do have the choice not to kill - you can make
the choice not to kill hundreds of birds and train the truck operator
to drive carefully.
vera it's easy to eat without grain or meat and you don't have to scd
it. there is an abundance of veggies and fruits that your body will
process efficiently. you can even go frugivore (which is the most
likely evolutionary alignment for primates) - here's one such place:
http://arawconnection.ning.com/ - they are pretty helpful to newbies -
i hang out there so if you show up you'd be most welcome.
you haven't evolved as an omnivore because biologically you have
nothing in common. check out dr milton mill's comparative anatomy
(posted to janene) and you'll see that you don't have the teeth, oral
cavity, stomach fluid acidity, intestinal tract etc that an omnivore
has. what you are doing is being an omnivore by choice which has
nothing to do with evolution.
you may think that practising omnivorism is best for the soil, but you
must realize that the unfortunate creatures which are imprisoned,
exploited, abused and murdered, still have to be fattened up! this is
not going to happen on grass - it's going to happen with grain. so
while your grass idea appears sound, commercial production will ensure
that more and more grains are used as feed - far more than if it were
fed directly to humans (eg 70-80% of grain produced in US goes to
fatten livestock). so the omnivore approach will destroy the soil with
far greater effectiveness as it has been doing over the past 5 decades.
i'm glad you aren't preaching cannibalism, vera! i was getting
concerned for my own safety for a while :D
your cycle of life sounds equitable, but if you inspect it you'll see
that it really isn't so much a circle as a rather distorted hyperbola.
the vast majority of chickens don't get to eat grasshopper - they get
to feast on cheap gmo grains, pesticides, antibiotics, excrement and
even raw chicken parts. humans who eat them, don't nobly offer
themselves to coyotes or worms, as you are doing, but wind up in
caskets and are buried or cremated.
so again, what it comes down to is the point of dave's article. do you
want to just keep doing the same thing and creating rationalization to
maintain your present status quo or do you really want to know?
prad • 11/6/09; 4:02:58 AM #
----------------------------------------
Hey Prad --
I cannot get any of the vegsource links to open, so I cannot comment on
what they have to say. However, evolutionary theory is one of my...
hobbies, let's say, so I expect that I would have some rather extensive
counter arguments to offer... I'll try to get in there again, later.
And "mainstream health professionals" are high on my list of bunco
artists. The modern health establishment is more about politics than it
is about health.
I am absolutely NOT condoning war or genocide or ecocide or any of the
other atrocities that civilizations engage in... but that is the point.
Civilizations engage in these activities, not humans in general. It is
a function of hierarchy, social stratification and over-population.
Especially over population in that you will see other animals engage in
"wicked" behavior when populations get too high, or range-space becomes
too constricted (did you read anything about the elephants exhibiting
signs of PTSD?)
Civilized society is the LAST thing I want any part of, as a result.
YES, I WANT to know, and I want to do something different but that
involves actually doing something differently, not just trying to claim
the moral high ground. So I will continue to pursue my alternatives
outside of civilized society as much as possible, until civilized
society goes the way of the dodo bird so that we can ALL breathe easy
once more.
Janene
(One quick aside, on health. I switched to a semi-strict paleo diet
some years back. I had a doctor insist on giving me a cholesterol test
as I rarely seek medical attention... he knew that, but not about my
diet. The results... the healthiest test he had seen in years.
Meanwhile, I have lost most of the excess weight I have carried my
entire life, I am more active, more energetic and younger looking than
I was before that... overall, my health has increased ten fold.)
Janene • 11/6/09; 9:27:45 AM #
----------------------------------------
Hey prad, it's difficult to discuss this because you keep refuting
ideas I do not hold. A bit of straw man there, perhaps? ;-) I do not
support trucking chickens to the slaughterhouses. Neither do I support
factory farming with artifical fattening of animals on a sea of corn.
Duh!
I don't have the time to investigate the claims we are fruitivores.
Perhaps so. But I very much doubt it. Chimps eat meat when they can get
it. Even gorillas eat meat sometimes... And the javelins found 400,000
years ago where not likely made to spear fruit! We evolved our brains
on a meat/fish diet.
You know, Sister Wendy lives on 2 glasses milk a day, and an occasional
salad. Apparently, in God all things are possible. So I wish you well
on your own journey.
I hope that you can recognize that systemic killing is not something
where you are off the hook. The animals killed via grain production are
not killed because people are careless. They are killed because that is
how the system works. Some 25,000 (or whatever), more or less, people
die annually on the roads of the US. The killing is systemic. If you
accept cars and roads the way it's all designed, then you bear part of
the responsibility for the deaths. We all do. What I really really
REALLY dislike about people with extreme diets is that they turn it all
into this holier than thou thing. Refusing to see their own indirect
killing, but rubbing our nose in the direct ones. Maybe I should start
insulting your food too the way you do mine... calling grains (and
veggies grown without mulch and manures) the soildestroyer foods, or
something.
Soil needs manures. Grains (and many veggies) drain and deplete soil.
Plowing of large areas destroys the soil structure and life. On the
other hand, animals live on grass, no need to plow it, and feed the
soil with their manure. There is simply no way to get around this
simple fact. How many animals died in the production and transportation
of fertilizers to your fields? Indirect killing is still killing, even
though you remain oh so pure of the gore. I'd rather be honest with
myself.
The only sustainable ag system is a largely local system. People
growing nearby what is eaten. Anything else kills: it kills the soil,
it kills lots of critters one way or another, and it even kills humans
when food and resources are displaced from their area.
Your soil argument depends on doing more of what I am opposed to. So?
No point pursuing it, is there. Do I want to keep doing the same thing?
No. If I did why would I be hanging with Dave? :-)!
When you say that my argument is a mere rationalization, I feel upset,
because I am wanting respect. I am not hanging here because I am an
as*hole hypocrite who is dead set on maintaining the status quo. Would
you be willing to to skip judgmental language when we talk?
vera • 11/6/09; 9:42:21 AM #
----------------------------------------
hi janene!
i can't get the vegsource link to work either - my apologies, i should
have tested it before posting it. it'll probably be back sometime.
meanwhile, i've found another place which has the article:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/94656/The-Comparative-Anatomy-of-Eating (i've
heard it's on youtube too, though i don't quite see how that is)
i look forward to seeing your counter-arguments since evolutionary
theory is something i've dabbled in a bit as well.
you have my total support and agreement regarding the medical
establishment. we never use it and we never get sick either (there is
likely a direct correlation :D)
i never said you were condoning any of the atrocities. here's what i
wrote:
======= now if you truly believe that there isn't "any need to justify
living the way we evolved to live", you also must see you have just
opened the door to any sort of behavior that humans engage. =======
what i am saying is that if you don't justify the way you live, you can
get away with anything. this is what some people (not civilizations,
btw) engage in. it is people who do this when they have a choice not
to, so saying that it is the civilization that does it is incorrect.
civilizations aren't ever homogeneous and don't act in unison - in
fact, the entity doesn't even act, individuals within it do. for
instance, you can have a civilization which advocates human sacrifice
(because it is in the law let's say), but it will be specific
individuals who will oppose the law based on their conscience (and
sometimes) courage.
the point is that we do need to justify our way of living. this means
1) we need to set suitable ethical standards 2) we need to measure
actions against these standards 3) we need to have mechanisms for
dealing with violators of these standards (which hopefully will not
violate the standards themselves)
the fact that you write "I am absolutely NOT condoning war or genocide
or ecocide or any of the other atrocities" demonstrates that you are
engaged in a process of justification and that your sense of ethics
reject wicked behavior.
it should be no surprise to find that beings of other species exhibit
wicked behaviors. all these beings are individuals. the error people
make is to think that because a being is a cat, the cat will behave the
way they think cats behave. the application of such generalizations is
not valid as anyone who has cats in the house can attest to. there are
some commonalities, but each cat has a unique personality and
therefore, appropriate actions.
under stressful situations (eg overpop), non-human animals behave much
in the way that humans do. for instance, check out a refugee camp and
you'll find that the greedy forcefully take food from the weak (even
their own families sometimes) - you'll find animals do the same in
similar situations. however, there are within that refugee camp many
individuals who have a different sense of ethics, who strive towards
compassion and altruistism. you find the same with animals. some
animals are selfish and oppressive, some are nurturing, some are even
heroically self-sacrificing.
these traits were demonstrated in a barbaric experiment done with
monkeys some years back (i can look up the reference if you want),
where the food dispenser was hooked up to deliver a painful electric
shock to a victim monkey whenever one of them took food. some took the
food with full knowledge of what was happening to their companion, but
some wouldn't and went hungry for days.
now let's not be too hard on civilized society, janene. after all, when
gandhi was asked what he thought of western civilization he replied, "i
think it would be a good idea" :D :D
what you are really objecting to is the commercialization of society, i
think and again i'm in full agreement with you on this. corporatization
and economic oppression fueled by a brainwashed, i-want-it-now consumer
base is not civilization - in fact, it is really no different than
brutish behavior displayed throughout much of recorded human history
(and even earlier).
however, the moral high ground is important. one cannot deny that much
good has come as a result of civilization, such as an attempt at a
society where the strong don't oppress the weak, where those in need
are not left to perish, where internal (and imho, very natural) moral
qualities such as honesty, sincerity, compassion and co-operation are
encouraged and instilled in progeny.
a civilized society is an inevitable result of moral evolution.
prad • 11/6/09; 4:07:00 PM #
----------------------------------------
vera,
let's be clear on a few things:
1. i have plenty of respect for you - i wouldn't be taking the time to
make these enormous posts if i thought otherwise. (btw, i do appreciate
that you and janene read through my volume of verbosity) 2. if i
thought you were "an as*hole hypocrite", i would say so. i don't think
anything of the sort which is one reason i invited you to the frugivore
site (i think you'll find some good friends there) 3. i have not setup
a single strawman because nowhere have i claimed that you uphold
chicken transport, slaughterhouses etc. when i write "you" and "your",
i am merely using it as a colloquial expression - it doesn't mean i'm
referring to you yourself. if that weren't evident to begin with, it is
now. 4. when i say "the omnivore approach will destroy the soil with
far greater effectiveness", i am not saying you are destroying the
soil. however, the omnivorous diet that is widespread is destroying the
planet and i have taken pains to differentiate it from your
rabbit-on-a-porch via "commercial production" and the "hyperbola"
paragraphs. 5. we have agreement in the localized ag system. 6. i'm not
insulting your food - far worse has been done to its source than a mere
insult. 7. chimpanzees do occasionally eat meat and even other
primates, but we are not chimps. 8. the human brain didn't evolve as a
result of a meat/fish diet. a study in 1994 by leonard and robertson
showed: "Even in human populations where meat consumption is low, DQ is
still much higher than in other large-bodied primates because grains
are much more calorically dense than foliage." william calvin on the
otherhand attributes this development to the ice age and climate
changes while engel's has a most interesting 'marxist' take to it
creating a "masterpiece of the dialectical method" attributing it to
the labor.
now, with no disrespect at all, here's why i say you are rationalizing.
1. your killing argument is essentially that no matter what we do, we
kill: "We do not have the choice not to kill", therefore, it makes
little difference whether we kill animals in a slaughterhouse vs
animals via systemic consequences of grain production.
with this rationale, you try to offset the slaughter of billions of
sentient beings against killing of some creatures by a grain producing
ag system.
well here is the difference again:
killing as a result of grain production is not killing in a deliberate
and organized fashion (except with pesticides, of course). the process
doesn't involve the planned imprisionment, exploitation, abuse and
murder of sentient beings. the process doesn't come close to matching
the numerical toll (see animals slaughtered here
http://www.adaptt.org/). furthermore, since the majority of grains are
fed to fatten animals, it stands to reason that if we stopped eating
animals, we would reduce the grain production and thereby reduce the
amount of incidental killing.
to argue against these facts with something like 'we all kill,
therefore, there is no point in focussing on animals killed for meat',
is rationalization.
2. the holier than thou effort is also a rationalization - specifically
a deflection. the idea here isn't that you disagree with the concept of
not killing sentient beings for food production (because i think you do
agree by virtue of your acknowledgement "killing does not come
easily"), but that you don't like it when i bring the ethical component
in - specifically, that sentient being really don't like to be
imprisoned, exploited, abused and murdered, and that those who support
or engage in such practices are acting unethically.
now please understand that i am not saying you imprison, exploit, abuse
and murder any sentient being - no strawman here - in fact, most people
couldn't bear engaging in such activity which is why they pay someone
else to do the dirty work. however, your holier than thou statement is
an attempt to take the focus away from what is done do these animals
and the behavior that some people engage in or support. in other words,
paint prad as a holier than thou, and let's not deal with the issue at
hand.
i'm not saying you are doing this out of malice, btw. it tends to be
one of the common reactions by some people in discussions of this sort.
nor do i deny being holier than thou. in fact, i am happy to be
acknowledged as such :D for my lifestyle choice (vegan) means i don't
eat sentient beings, i don't take the mammarian secretions which are
intended for their offspring, i don't consume their menstrual
excretions (forgive the poetic license on that one), i don't steal
their fur or skin or silk, i don't use them as entertainment etc etc.
(i have little doubt that you don't do many of these things either, so
i welcome you as a fellow holier than thouer).
however, the effort is still a rationalization.
here's what it really boils down to i think. you don't like sentient
beings to be imprisoned, exploited, abused and murdered any more than i
do. however, you have it in your head (due to your past experiences, i
guess) that you have to eat some meat and therefore you cannot
presently accept the idea of not killing animals for food. hence, you
maintain through various rationalizations (eg humans are omnivores,
chimps eat meat, grain production also kills animals and depletes soil,
even prad is a holier than thou) that killing animals for food is
really not unethical.
i think though that hanging out with dave is a good idea - i certainly
spread many of his works - and once again, if you do come to that
frugivore place, you would be most welcomed.
prad • 11/6/09; 4:08:17 PM #
----------------------------------------
Prad, you keep arguing not against me, but against a system that
imprisons etc animals. Since I don’t support that system, I
am
not sure why.
I have examined these issues in great detail, and have decided on the
side of omnivory. Unlike you, I am not arguing that veg choice is
rationalization, although I could, because you seem to worry more about
fluffy bunnies (of which there is no dearth) than you do about healthy
soil, which we are running out of. But I am not interested in putdowns,
and so I will simply say that I think the veg argument is sorely
lacking in this area.
I am not interested in trying to convert you. I do not wish to create
the impression that I like being hit on by vegans any more than I want
to be hit on by Jehovah’s Witnesses or any others out to
convert.
But it’s been fun to argue with you, and I thank you for
sharing.
The point I want to make is this: we have a lot of problems on this
earth. One of them is factory farming, both animal and vegetable. I
vote with my feet and start walking over to where people have stopped
arguing with each other which way of eating is purer, and are ready to
unite against the evils that face us all. If we are to deal with CAFOs,
and mass produced crap-foods, and GM stuff and the rest of the ick, we
have to be together on this and turn ourselves into a hammer of God on
top of the people who run this system and profit from it. I hope I will
see you there.
vera • 11/6/09; 4:49:32 PM #
----------------------------------------
vera,
you are correct in saying that i am arguing against a system that
imprisons, exploits, abuses and murders sentient beings. i am also
arguing against omnivorism because that is also part of that system
since you can't get around the murder though you can possibly minimize
some of the other stuff. i know you don't support "the system" and i
acknowledged it.
i would like to see you argue that veg choice is rationalization. why
don't you try it? just because i show concern for the fluffy bunnies
doesn't mean that i don't have a concern for healthy soil. one isn't
antagonistic to the other and you can have fluffy bunnies living
happily on healthy soil co-existing with humans who aren't about to
devour them. the only reason you think "the veg argument is sorely
lacking in this area" is because you framed the veg argument as being
strictly tied to ag grain production which it isn't. as stated before,
you can be veg without grains.
i never thought you were trying to convert me and i'm certainly not
hitting on you towards veganism. i have no idea why you would even
think that. i'm only interested in showing that the omnivore arguments
are inaccurate and invalid. for the record, your diet is of no concern
at all to me, but what your diet 'represents' and 'advocates' is.
this isn't a matter of purer eating. it is a matter of not eating
sentient beings. those who have trouble seeing this, can simply
substitute a human for one of your fluffy rabbits on the porch. make
sure the human is from a 'disadvantaged' group that most people don't
care much about and has little ability to speak out for itself. even
though you have already acknowledged you aren't an advocate for
cannibalism, you might ask yourself why you wouldn't eat this human on
your porch. well why wouldn't you? wouldn't eating this way also
promote healthy soil just as eating the rabbit supposedly would? what
makes the fluffy rabbit expendable, but not the human so easily? is it
a matter of good taste? :D
i have enjoyed our discussion too because i think you are sincere and
courteous. i am ready to continue this one if you wish to or perhaps
look forward to seeing you on a different topic. perhaps we'll be on
the same side of the argumen in the future.
as for 'seeing me there', i've been 'there' for a few decades and i
imagine you have as well - we just haven't run into each other i guess
:D
prad • 11/6/09; 5:29:46 PM #
----------------------------------------
i realized that point #8 in my reply to vera (11/6/09; 4:08:17 PM)
regarding human brain development was cut short partly because it was a
minor matter and is a bit incomprehensible. however, some may be
interested in the details behind it which is posted below. in summary,
human brain development is hypothesized to have progressed because of
the DQ (diet quality) which has nothing to do with meat. there are some
other theories presented as well.
since i can't edit here, the entire content from 2 past forum
discussions is copied below:
======== the meat => bigger brains theory is not valid at all.
the important factor is that caloric density allowed more leisure time
and therefore more time to flex the brain 'muscle' (use it or lose it
as a neurobiologist friend of mine confirmed in a forum discussion
several years ago). caloric density can come from grains likely more
easily than meat anyway.
i'm not sure i agree with mario's comment that "Most carnivorous
animals are very stupid and emotional creatures" beyond my experiences
with one species where i can confirm he's right on the button. :D
there are several theories as to brain development so you may be
interested in this post from about five years ago quoted below. it
deals with caloric density, ice age, and even a marxist perspective.
in friendship, prad
=============== Gavin,
I agree with you that the idea of large brain development being a
result of the free hours for creative thought which became available as
a result of the high caloric intake that meat supposedly provided is at
best speculation.
However, the rationale behind some of this is perhaps interesting at
least.
Essentially, the correlation between DQ (diet quality specifically the
caloric intake) and brain size led to the hypothesis that in order to
get all this energy, we needed to eat meat otherwise our brains
wouldn't have ever developed. In fact, Leonard and Robertson claim that
What made meat an important resource to exploit was not its high
protein content, rather, its high caloric return ... the early
hunting-gathering life-way associated with H. erectus was a more
efficient way of getting food which supported a 35-55% increase in
caloric needs (relative to australopithecines)...
(If you recall, I mentioned the 2 human 'strains' earlier in the thread)
Their entire thrust appears based on dense caloric intake (as opposed
to just meat) for later they write (Leonard and Robertson 1994, p. 79)
Even in human populations where meat consumption is low, DQ is still
much higher than in other large-bodied primates because grains are much
more calorically dense than foliage.
Having said all this, they conclude:
These results imply that changes in diet quality during hominid
evolution were linked with the evolution of brain size. The shift to a
more calorically dense diet was probably needed in order to
substantially increase the amount of metabolic energy being used by the
hominid brain. Thus, while nutritional factors alone are not sufficient
to explain the evolution of our large brains, it seems clear that
certain dietary changes were necessary for substantial brain evolution
to take place.
Notice that they say that nutritional factors alone are not sufficient
to explain brain development.
There are of course other theories such as the idea that kyngi put
forth about "increased synaptic efficiency and greater interconnections
among neurons" which came about because more efficient tools resulted
in more time to think more about more efficient tools. This is
certainly a more plausible idea, in my mind, than more efficient tools
giving us more free time so we could sit around being creative or that
high caloric intake alone caused an enlargement of the brain - because
were these ideas true, the shopping malls would be flooded with
geniuses by now.
It seems to me that the brain is somewhat like a muscle in that the
more you exercise it, the better it functions within reason though in
evolutionary terms it may not boil down to simply doing brain teasers
or even playing chess.
Challenge may have had a lot to do with brain development. A very
interesting theory proposed by William Calvin in the Ascent of Man
deals with the ice ages and how human intelligence evolved as a result
of having to deal with resulting challenges:
Three things apparently started 2.5 million years ago: the ice ages,
toolmaking, growth in brain size.
Indeed, switches in climate may promote a jack-of-all-trades set of
capabilities under some conditions. The rapidity of the climate change
would appear to be more important than its magnitude. Climate
Instability and Hominid Brain Evolution
http://www.williamcalvin.com/1990s/1998AGU.htm
He talks about other factors as well like tool usage dexterity, but
stresses the effect of climate:
It may be that something else from that bookshelf of plausible
suggestions will prove to run the evolutionary ratchet more quickly
than my combination of grass, throwing, and cooperation. But if we are
to ever give an explanation for how an ape can turn into a human, we
will likely have to address the profound challenges and unusual
opportunities given our ancestors by the fickle climate. Pumping Up
Intelligence
http://www.williamcalvin.com/1990s/1999intelligence-chapter.htm
Also extremely interesting (though dated), are Engels' ideas on the
importance of labor on human brain development, developed with minimal
fossil evidence, but still "a masterpiece of the dialectical method":
His pamphlet explained that in early man the upright posture and
bipedalism had freed the hands for the manipulation and manufacture of
tools. The making of tools and their use led to a further refinement
and development of the hand so that the hand was both the "organ" and
the "product" of labour ...
But the use and manufacturing of tools, Engels explained, also
increases the usefulness and purposefulness of joint activity, of
social labour. Both tool production - and social labour raised the
question of language and speech.
"First comes labour, after it and side by side with it, articulate
speech. These were the two most essential stimuli under the influence
of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man."
The further development of the brain, of course, would interact with
labour processes and social intercourse to develop greater capacity for
language, for reflection, judgement and abstract thought. The
accumulated effects of these interacting processes led to human
evolution. Engels and Human Development by John Pickard
http://www.marxist.com/scienceandtech/HumanDevelopment.html
So this is kind of neat, because it is theorizing that the hand came
first and allowed labor leading to the social interactions which
resulted in the increase in brain size.
prad • 11/6/09; 7:17:56 PM #
----------------------------------------
Ain't the calories, it's the fatty acids! :-)
vera • 11/6/09; 7:32:53 PM #
----------------------------------------
Hey Prad --
I'm gonna do my best to keep this *relatively* short... I'm feeling a
bit guilty about hijacking Dave's thread :-P
On "The Comparative Anatomy of Eating" -- the first thing that struck
me was actually at the end of the piece: there is a graphic comparing
Carnivores, Herbivores, Omnivores and Humans... but I noted that with
only two very minor exceptions Carnivore traits and Omnivore traits
were identical. That seems highly disingenious as even in the article
they noted that omnivores *should* show a blending of traits.
On further analysis, most of the traits they discussed were very much
simplified, misleading and generally *designed* to prove thier point...
for example, the morphology of the human gut is all but unique, so to
simply claim it as being herbivorous is, again, disingenious. Likewise,
although carnivores came first, that does not mean that *we* evolved
directly from carnivores... and in fact, early primates were
insectivores (and modern primates, also, include nutritionally
significant amounts of insects and sometimes other mammals in thier
diets) and thus had little of the traits of lions or tigers or bears.
I've spent the last hour, or so reading
http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-1a.shtml ...
the same site your friend linked to in your last comment... but it is
far too extensive for me to attempt to add all of that information to
this comment. It does seem to be an exceptionally well researched and
presented(within the context of the 'web) discussion of "veg*" claims.
Now, of greater interest to me... I repeat, vociferously...
civilizations engage in atrocities. Yes, individual persons make
choices and perform actions, but it is the nature of civilization to
create a prisoner's dilemma environment. You can choose to NOT
participate, but it is absolutely guaranteed that someone else will
chose to do so. Without the basic nature of civilization to create the
system where these things not only *CAN* happen, but in fact, MUST
happen, atrocities would *almost* never occur.
I am not simply objecting to commercialization, nor to a modern or
western version of civilization... I am objecting, strongly, to a
system that is *designed* to do nothing more than propogate itself at
the expense of everything else. People, animals, plants, soil, wind,
water et al. Again... I'm not going to try to express the full
"arguement" on this one either... it is too big, too far reaching...
but I will make it clear that I *DO* deny that much good has come as
civilization.
The more critically I look at the world and the systems currently in
action, the more I find that nothing good has come from civilization,
and those things that I might have once pointed to do not, in fact,
require civilization at all. The things you mention... the strong not
oppressing the weak, those in need not being left to perish... these
are *defining* characteristics of un-civilized cultures. Moral
qualities... would you actually claim the Kung! to be immoral in any
sense of the word? (Or aboriginal australians, or the Mbutu and so on?)
Why would you think that?
Now.... I want to hit on aO few things you wrote to Vera as well.... I
think one of the points that she was attempting to get across to you
was that agriculture, by its very nature, kills by the billions. Not,
"some" as you suggest Destroyed habitats, murdered
predators/competitors, pollution, far *more* than slaughterhouses could
*conceive* -- can you say coral reef, or Gulf of Mexico etc? Now, you
have made it clear that you are not defending petro-agriculture, just
as she and I have made it clear that we do not defending factory
farming... but just the same, you are presenting a false dicotomy.
These are our only choices so which is more moral? Neither is "moral".
I prefer to look for a true alternative... because my intention is to
live within the community of life, feeding off some, feeding others,
participating in life... and that leaves no room for systems that
destroy that community. Call it moral, call it practical, call it both
at once, I don't care.
One last comment. You quote leonard/robertson on DQ... what you missed,
is that brain size has dropped 8% since the advent of agriculture --
ie, since grains became a significant portion of our diet --
(correlary, not conclusive) as has height/weight/longevity and overall
health. So we *can* replace meat with grains, but it's not healthy. So
how *else* would you propose to maintain DQ?
I hope no one minds that I join in on this discussion. I have a
question for lovelight, vera, janene, or anyone for that matter: what
nutrients essential to human health and survival are to be found in
meat, fish, eggs or dairy that cannot be found in plant foods, or
cannot be produced by our own body?
B • 11/6/09; 8:39:27 PM #
----------------------------------------
nice to hear from you again, janene!
it's my pleasure to spend this friday evening responding to your post.
thank you for examining the links and presenting your arguments. if
dave feels we should stop this discussion, i'm sure he'd say so.
besides, i think we are moving into different territory now as a result
of your assertions regarding civilization.
first though, the reason omnivores don't show more of a blending of
traits is because the handling of animal proteins is much more severe
on the system than plant-based materials. in other words, it is easier
for an omnivore to handle plant material than animal material,
therefore, you'd expect an omnivore to be closer aligned with a
carnivore than a herbivore. you will note that dogs and bears look much
more like cats than cows. or consider the panda which is classified as
a carnivore by taxonomy, yet lives almost entirely on leaves.
additionally, you can see why it is necessary for omnivores to be more
like carnivores anyway - they need the tools to hunt prey. if omnivores
were built more like humans, they wouldn't catch much (humans make
pretty lousy hunter material) and would have to spend their time in
supermarkets chasing down wrapped corpse pieces.
the beyondveg link wasn't put there by my friend, it was put there by
me (that entire post mine though not from the same time period). i
sometimes get info from there because some of the stuff is useful, but
by no means authoritative. tom generally does a good job getting info
together, but has some issues against veg, having tried and 'failed' at
it - particularly the raw bit. in any case, that is not relevant for
this present discussion.
your attack on grain production is not unjustified, but to claim that
it kills far more than slaughterhouses isn't remotely correct since
these slaughterhouses are the major reason for the grain production. i
also don't understand why you accuse me of presenting a false
dichotomy. i never said you and vera were advocates of factory farming
- i said that the omnivorous lifestyle is detrimental to the planet.
once again, if we stopped the corpse industries (meat, dairy, eggs),
you would cut your grain production by about 80% since about that much
grain goes to fatten the animals (at least in the us).
possibly what you and vera are getting at is that small, local
operations with cows in pastures etc will relieve the problem and it
may to a large extent, but so would small, local operations with grain
in the pastures without the cows. so just what is this false dichotomy
if small, local operations are agreed upon in both cases? of course,
this will manage the environmental issue, but not the health and
certainly not the ethical.
while i think it admirable, your and vera's intentions of 'feeding
others', i rather doubt you will do it as willingly as you say in a
posting. you really aren't going to give yourselves up to the coyotes
and say eat me, anymore than the rabbit or chicken would. in fact, when
the coyotes come after you, i think you'll run and struggle for your
lives with as much fearful enthusiasm as any rabbit or chicken would
who do not have the benefit of philosophy or the leisure of writing.
i quoted leonard/robertson not as gospel, but as one explanation and
presented 2 others on this brain development thing (because of vera's
meat/fish claim), so i don't know what you are getting at by saying i
"missed" the 8% decrease since the advent of agriculture since that had
nothing to do with my point. furthermore, tom's claim that animal food
consumption has dropped from 50 to 10% of the diet isn't referenced.
his intended conclusion, of course, is to claim that human brain size
has fallen 11% over the past 35000 years and it's the fault of grains
being substituted for meat. it's amusing that omnivores pick up on this
matter, just as frugivores do since they don't like grains either.
now it's nice to make these assertions (ignoring whether they are
correct or not or even what brain size has to do with intelligence),
but exactly what is the point? were humans smarter 35000 years ago
because they had a larger encephalization quotient presumably? are
vegfolk stupid? have the heaviest meat eaters developed the highest
intelligence? it would seem not, at least according to this 2006 report
which links high iq to being veg:
http://www.britishmeat.com/low-intelligence.htmli'm sure it would upset
tom, but us vegfolk can go around yelling "we told you so" ... at least
until someone publishes a contrary report. :D
now let's deal with your "civilizations engage in atrocities". your
argument is that a civilization creates the aura so that even if some
people don't carry out the atrocity, others will: "it is absolutely
guaranteed that someone else will chose to do so". here are the
problems with that argument:
1) there is no such thing as a civilization. the term is merely a
categorizing convenience. hence, we say things like that the early
roman civilization existed for 2800 years because some historians have
decided to make it so by collating certain bits of evidence. there are
no clear-cut boundaries as to when or even what a civilization is,
because we are talking in very vague generalities for the sake of
making it easier to reference. i too will use the word 'civilization'
below for convenience in this discussion.
2) civilizations are not homogenous. within any labelled civilization,
you will find an immense variety of beliefs, activities and blending of
cultures. thus the roman 'civilization' also partially included the
greek civilization and the persian civilization and whatever else. it
even changed its nature over the years.
3) civilizations are not self-directed. individuals determine the
course of a civilization by their philosophy, their choice of ethics
(or lack thereof) and by their actions. for instance, there is
considerable "anti-american" sentiment. this makes it sound like
america is bad when in actual fact, it is only certain americans who do
the bad things and even violate the principles upon which the country
was founded. this is not the country's doing - it is the work of
certain individuals within the country.
4) civilizations don't create anything. people create the system where
you say things can happen and assume that they must happen. then some
historian wraps it all up in a neat package and calls it the x
civilization.
the problem with this form of presentation is that it really hides the
trees for the forest. just as you can't have a forest without trees,
you can't blame the forest for what the trees do.
now consider one variation of civilization, the idea of an intentional
community sometimes referred to as anarchy. such societies will likely
function in more equitable ways not because they are not a
civilization, but because they are smaller 'small is beautiful'. of
course, this isn't by any means always the case because again it
depends who directs the society with what philosophies, ethics and
actions. so even if you go small, you'd better have a decent set of
philosophies, ethics and actions.
your objection to civilization being a system designed to propagate
itself is significant, but incorrect. if it were otherwise,
civilizations wouldn't fall. what is correct is that a group of
individuals (power-mongers, elitists, oligarchs, apathetic public
whatever) are interested in propagating themselves at the expense of
the rest of the community which includes the environment and non-human
inhabitants.
un-civilized cultures do not have a monopoly on morality. some are as
immoral and oppressive as many of the politicians and power-barons we
have around here. some such cultures have honed the oppression of
animals, women, children to a fine art. again it depends not upon the
civilization, but those doing the stuff in there.
we can of course blame civilization, but i think it would be more
practical and moral to go after those responsible for making it into a
mockery. as vera said, to turn ourselves into a "hammer of God on top
of the people who run this system and profit from it".
prad • 11/7/09; 12:39:40 AM #
----------------------------------------
Hey Prad --
I'm gonna drop the discussion of meat for now.... we are not getting
anywhere with it and I don;t think either of us are honestly trying to
convert, so let it lie ;-)
On civilization... we have a semantic issue at play here... I'm not
talking about x civ or y civ as distinct entities... I am talking about
a very specific *type* of social organization that has existed,
unbroken, for ten thousand years. Civilization in the anthropological
sense. So let me define what that is.
Civilization is a social/economic system dependant on agriculture (not
"growing food", but specifically growing food with a system that
requires more inputs than it returns in output -- right now, modern
agriculture runs at 10:1), with populations concentrated into urban
centers, social stratification, dominance structures and intense
division of labor.
The very nature of civilization requires large populations to
"succeed", but at the same time success is defined by constant
growth... constant growth inevitably (so long as we live in a finite
world) will always run into boundaries... for the Romans it was
firewood... which will lead to increased oppression, famine, plague etc
until the system collapses. Our current version of civilization is not
"american" -- it is global. Although politically we still have
divisions, our economic systems (including food production) are so
intertwined that we cannot speak of it any other way.
If you are really interested, I suggest you read Jarod Diamond's
Collapse to understand why individual civilizations fall... and if you
want to go deeper, his Guns Germs and Steel explains how they rise.....
I would *really* love to hear an example from you of non-civilized
cultures that have been as immoral and oppressive as civilized peoples.
Really. I have heard of many with traditions that I would not want to
be a part of, but none that fit that description.
Just one more thing... smaller IS better... not for any moral or
ethical reason but because it is functional... see "the monkeysphere"
or "Dunbar's Number", also written about in Malcolm Gladwell's The
Tipping Point.
Janene
Janene • 11/7/09; 8:54:38 AM #
----------------------------------------
Nene, B showed up! Hey B. Good to have you here. As far as I know, it's
mostly the B12 vitamin and certain fatty acids. I think biotin too,
though. (At least I know they used to feed biotin-deficient people
liver.)
vera • 11/7/09; 12:26:12 PM #
----------------------------------------
Hi Vera, thanks for the welcome! Hi to Janene as well. Thanks to Prad
for inviting me.
Vera: very good answer. It is true, the fatty acids EPA and DHA are
extremely hard to come by in the plant kingdom, with only a handful of
exceptions including the weed purslane (contains EPA) and certain sea
algaes. However they can both be synthesized by the human body given
sufficient quantities of the essential fatty acid ALA, about a couple
grams a day on average. 1 gram of ALA is supplied by consuming about
1000 calories of fresh fruit, or a pound of tender leafy greens. It is
true that krill and cold water fish are rich in EPA and DHA. However,
while the human body can synthesize these nutrients, fish cannot and
they must obtain them from algae.
And again you are correct, B12 is not known to be synthesized by
plants, with the exception of certain sea algaes. Given that neither
chicken, cow, nor rabbit voluntarily consumes meat or seaweed for that
matter, would you be able to tell me where they get their B12 from?
From what I understand it is true that biotin is found in liver in high
quantities, but it is also found in plant foods, including a variety of
vegetables, beans and legumes.
B • 11/7/09; 2:25:03 PM #
----------------------------------------
Wow. What a terrific discussion! Thank you all for the tremendous work
and effort you have put into making this the most extensive and
fascinating comments thread ever on this blog. I will be sure to save
all this when I convert this blog from Radio to Wordpress next month
(since otherwise these wonderful comments will be lost forever in
Radio's comments server). And thanks as well for your patience with the
Radio comments server, which is very fickle.
I don't have much to add to the discussion, except to note that we need
to be very careful, in looking at complex system changes, to presume to
know what is cause and what is effect, because when things co-evolve
with hundreds of other system elements there is NO cause or effect.
Some evolutions have been accidents, unintended consequences of
something evolved for some other purpose (e.g. birds' feathers evolved
for warmth and mate attraction, and only much later were they
'discovered' to enable flight).
The anthropological jury is out on brain development, but there is one
relatively recent theory that makes intuitive sense to me, so for now I
choose to believe it:
1. Homo sapiens has had three very distinct evolutionary diets. For
most of our time on Earth, we lived in forests and were purely
vegetarian. Look at our pathetic 'claws' and teeth and you will see
that we are just not built to be carnivores. When we left the forest to
the savannas and beyond, we could not survive as vegetarians and in
fact became almost entirely carnivores. Then, when we discovered
catastrophic agriculture (i.e. monoculture) we became omnivores. Our
digestive systems have more-or-less developed to accommodate these
changes, but our teeth and claws remain those of a vegetarian species.
2. We developed brains (like the corvids) because to survive as
carnivores we needed to become cooperative scavengers and/or develop
tools (like arrowheads, spears, and guns) to allow us to catch and kill
our prey. Small-brained homo sapiens outside the Eden of the rainforest
perished; big-brained ones flourished, so that's what's left. What
enabled us to develop big brains was, according to the newest theory, a
seafood diet -- seafood has exactly what is needed to build big brains,
and it was plentiful for most of our time on Earth. When Mom said
seafood makes you smart, she was right. It was the seashore-living
humans who probably grew big brains first, and then migrated inland and
used these brains to get the fatty acids and other ingredients from
land animals. Even today humans have this powerful intuitive urge to
live by the sea, and most of us do.
3. A grain-based diet has always been a poor diet. They had to build
the Great Wall to keep malnourished rice paddy farmers from fleeing
back to nomadic life, and grains and their sugars (especially corn)
have all sorts of negative side effects on our physiology (e.g. they
rot our teeth, which in prehistoric days were generally much healthier
and disease-free than civilized humans').
4. I've been vegetarian for several years and have never been
healthier, physically and mentally. I'm moving cautiously to vegan,
starting by buying only small-farm organic, free-range, non-grain-fed,
cruelty-free dairy and eggs, and then giving up dairy and eggs
entirely. I will continue to consume a significant amount of fish-oil
(part of my anti-colitis diet) and will try to find non-animal
substitutes for that. And at the same time, I will work with others to
find some healthy, non GMO, non-animal foods that provide the nutrition
you cannot get from vegetables, fruits and nuts. Since my ancestors
lived very healthy lives for a million years as vegetarians, that
shouldn't be so hard.
Dave Pollard • 11/7/09; 6:40:59 PM #
----------------------------------------
B --
Just quick and off hand... in response to your last question about
B12... very few animals are totally carniverous or herbivorous...
certainly chicken eat insects and cows probably take some in while
grazing. Assumably the same could be said of most/all primarily
herbivorous species.
B, every animal species synthesizes vitamins differently. Janene,
Greenpa recently said on Astyk's blog he's seen movies or red deer
killing and consuming small animals... Things are far more interesting
than reductionist science makes them appear.
Biotin, well some people are unable to utilize it normally, and must
supplement with VERY high levels from 40mg and upwards, some as high as
200mg per day. Mg, not mcg. I challenge anyone to tell me how to get
this much biotin from plants.
Dave, I subscribe to the theory that we evolved partly in shallow seas,
so there is more sea food in the distant past. And the savannah theory
is dead. Unlikely we were that heavily carnivorous... but still, much
more than formerly in the trees when we were likely in part
scavengerous, and occasionally snatching a lizard or baby bird or egg,
and insect eating (yum, those fat larvae!), as are many of our other
relatives.
I think how people feel on different diets depends heavily on fairly
recent genetics... northern Europeans tend to need meat, but not so
much grain, are much more gluten intolerant than Near East descendants.
And so on. Myself, I do better on low grain, skip the gluten, and stick
with goat milk. Who knew? I had gut problems on from childhood, and
it's finally improving.
vera • 11/7/09; 7:39:37 PM #
----------------------------------------
Janene: good point, carnivore and herbivore are fluid not rigid
categories.
It is true that any predominantly herbivorous animal may be regularly
consuming insects, wittingly or not. Presuming that the animal's body,
whether it be chicken or goat, does not produce B12, where then does a
fruit fly or a lady bug get its B12?
B • 11/7/09; 7:50:51 PM #
----------------------------------------
Janene: Let me cut to the chase then regarding the vitamins and other
nutrients I mentioned. B12 is not produced by any animal found in land,
air or sea. According to current scientific understanding it can be
synthesized by nearly 20 different types of bacteria exclusively. These
bacteria are found, amongst other places, in soil and in the bodies of
various animals, including our own gut. Grain fed livestock happen to
be particularly rich in B12... because their feed is fortified with the
supplemental form of it.
So it doesn't seem practical or logical to consume the body of another
animal, whether it be cow or ant, to obtain a nutrient that their
bodies do not produce, yet can be found in abundance in our own bodies
given ideal circumstances. Cases of human B12 deficiency do of course
exist. Most often this is due to an absorption issue, not inadequate
dietary intake. It is not just vegans who get B12 shots on a regular
basis for 'energy', as you may have noticed. It would seem odd that a
true 'ominvore' would be suffering from inadequate B12 intake if
everything from their breakfast cereal to their twinkies is fortified
with it. And yet it still happens. So if you happened to want to give
up eating steak and eggs but you were worried that you would become
deficient in B12 and suffer the associated deficiency symptoms, which
can be very severe as you may know, you could consume some brewers
yeast, or take a B12 supplement, or B12 shot, or eat a bowl of Wheaties
with some rice milk for that matter. Or just eat some veggies from your
own garden. I personally don't like rice milk or Wheaties :b Regardless
a vegan source of B12 always exists.
Given that we can supply our bodies with sufficient ALA, which is
impossible NOT to find in fresh fruits and vegetables, which allows our
bodies to produce sufficient EPA and DHA for its needs, it seems odd
that we would rely on fish or krill to supply these nutrients when they
cannot even produce them themselves. In the case of individuals that
cannot seem to produce adequate amounts of these long chain omega 3s,
and it is known that excess consumption of arachadonic acid, which meat
is rich in, can hinder this process, EPA and DHA can be obtained from
the same source that the krill and fish get it: sea algae. Or you could
just eat less meat and more fruit and leafy greens. Either way is a
viable vegan option.
In cases of extreme biotin deficiency, it is unlikely the underlying
cause is insufficient liver consumption. I would also wonder what
lifestyle habits would contribute to extreme biotin deficiency, I doubt
being a vegan would be one of them, but this is merely speculation. I'm
sure a vegan form of vitamin supplement could be synthesized without
too much difficulty relatively speaking. I'm not sure if acute biotin
deficiency can be fatal, but if so you may be able to argue that in the
short term eating some liver would save a life. This would seem to be a
humane action, liver after all grows itself back. However, it could
fairly be asked how many cow livers is the life of one person worth? I
would consider it tragic if someone were to neglect their health in not
consuming enough easily available plant foods known to be rich in
biotin, including oatmeal, almonds, swiss chard, tomatoes, romaine
lettuce, raspberries etc., and would then resort to consuming the vital
organs of dozens or more other creatures in order to merely save
his/her own life. There certainly may be causes for acute biotin
deficiency in an individual due to no fault of their own, but these
cases I would guess are not common enough to recommend that all humans
should being eating liver and onions every sunday night to avoid death
by biotin deficiency.
My overarching point here is there are no essential human nutrients to
be found in animal derived foods that cannot be obtained in more than
adequate quantities from plant sources or produced by our own body.
Given sufficient supplies of plant foods, which can be easily obtained
in the first world these days by a single trip to a farmer's market or
grocery store produce section, the consumption of any form of animal
product by humans in our position would appear to be entirely optional.
It may be that other animals that would otherwise be classified as
herbivores do on occasion eat the flesh of another animal. It may be
that we can eat small to moderate quantities of meat, fish, dairy and
eggs and appear to suffer no health consequences, at least in the short
term. But since there's nothing in the body of another animal that we
can't get plenty of from plants, we don't have to eat them. Ask me
where does a vegan get his or her protein, and I will ask you to show
me how many whole plant foods do NOT contain all 8 essential amino
acids. I assure you there are not too many. Ask me where does a vegan
get his omega 3s if not from fish oil, then tell me where does a cow or
gorilla or elephant get its omega 3s? Ask me where does a vegan get his
or her iron, and I'll ask you 'have you ever tried strawberries? or
spinach?'. I could go on.
Given all this, the ground for the 'ethical' justification of consuming
any animal, whether factory produced beef or the rabbit by your front
porch, becomes a bit shaky, don't you think?
It would be one thing if we were living in the wild and plant sources
of food were scarce. But that is not the case for too many of us living
in first world nations these days. As for the rest of the world, meat
is rich people's food, right? The farmers too busy harvesting grain to
feed the chickens and cows and pigs that feed the wealthy to have time
to savor the prime-rib at a five star restaurant, never mind having the
gold mastercard.
In exceptional circumstances it could be argued that a human life,
either one's own or perhaps a loved one, is more important than the
life of a lesser mammal like a deer or rabbit. I hope I would never
find myself in a situation where I would have to choose between my own
life and another animal. For some however, at least in the short term,
considering a human life being worth considerably more than a bunny's
may seem like a fair rationalization, oops, i mean assessment. But
again the question occurs: how many deer/rabbits/frogs/ants is the life
of a single human being worth? And how did we put ourselves in a
situation where we had to make such a choice?
If you choose to eat another animal, well that's your choice. To say
you do it because your survival depends on it, well, when was the last
time you were stranded on antarctica and ran out of rations? You may
not require such extreme circumstances to attempt that sort of
justification, but without extreme circumstances it would just be a
plain rationalization as far as i am concerned.
You may argue that, well, perhaps meat or any other form of animal
product is not NECESSARY for human survival, but it is the OPTIMAL food
source, and given our superior evolutionary position relative to the
rest of the species on the planet, this would seem to justify eating
what we choose, plant or animal. Especially if eating the animals is
what makes us so damn smart in the first place. As for that... well
lets hear from someone else now on why eating animals makes us into
uber-mensches and uber-fraus :D
B • 11/7/09; 11:07:45 PM #
----------------------------------------
on the contrary, janene! i think we've made great progress. i really
don't see why you (and vera earlier) see these exchanges as
opportunities to "convert" or "convince". discussions of this sort are
primarily for information exchange. we've done plenty of that, so we
definitely have 'gotten somewhere'.
regarding the meat issue here's what our triumvirate have covered so
far:
1. you started the whole thing by saying that veg isn't the solution.
however, i elaborated on the idea that veg is a necessary part of the
solution.
2. it was suggested that there's been a grain brain drain over the past
35000 yrs as a result of decreased animal consumption. however, it was
referenced with much glee that vegfolk have iq levels 5 points higher
than the others.
3. it was suggested that grain production is a huge problem. however,
it was observed that since the vast majority of grain goes to fattening
unfortunate animals for food, the end of eating meat would also end the
vast majority of grain production.
4. it was suggested that the choice was between eating grain and eating
rabbits. however, it seems that the more significant choice is whether
to eat the rabbit or not to eat the rabbit and has absolutely nothing
to do with grain.
5. it was suggested that prey acknowledge that it is "their time" when
it is dinner time for the predator through some meaningful conversation
between the two. however, it was pointed out that such conversations
really don't take place when our human predators go shopping for corpse
parts at the supermarket.
6. it was suggested that as part of the great cycle of life certain
humans who eat other beings would themselves somehow make themselves
available for the purpose of "feeding others". however, it was put
forth that these humans would likely never make themselves available to
even worms because they'd wind up in a casket or be cremated.
7. it was suggested that this discussion centers around notions of
"purer eating". however, it was emphasized that the issue at hand is
really about not eating sentient beings who have as much reason to
enjoy the lives they have been given as we do.
8. it was suggested that prad may be a holier than thou. however, uh
... hmmm ...
9. it was suggested that we weren't getting anywhere with this
discussion. however, it is evident that much information was exchanged
... specifically ... (just a little bit of recursive humor :D)
in any case, i've enjoyed this exchange with you and vera. as i said
earlier, i appreciate both your sincerity, courteousness and stamina! i
fully understand that you want to drop this part of our discussion, but
if you should ever change your mind, i won't disappoint you!
so now let's get on to your civilization issue.
i accept that we were wrapped around semantics, but that applies to
what i said earlier about the good stuff which comes from civilization
too. we are talking about somewhat different things, so let's work with
your description of a social/economic system dependant on agriculture
because i think it is excellent!
what i would like to know is if you have an internet source for this
10:1 ratio - geez, even combustion engines are more efficient :D
i absolutely agree about the constant growth part (and in pretty well
every area). we just saw that with the economic crisis in the us - it
wasn't enough that there was a collapse, we had to get the motor
running again right away even though the engine is broken.
i do think though that the current version of civilization in europe
while similar is generally a bit smarter than the american one, may be
because they've had more time to screw it up. i seem to recall that
europe showed the greatest projection for pop decline than any other
continent.
here's a question for you. how do you deal with people (usually
libertarians and natural lawists) who keep saying there is no pop
crisis and think that god said to go forth and exponentiate (even
though it clearly says multiply)? what info or stats do you provide
them with?
i agree smaller is generally better for the reason of functionality.
it's a bit like sorting book in a library (or names with a computer
algorithm). it is more efficient to 'divide and conqueror' and then put
the pieces back together.
as for non-civilized cultures displaying immorality here are a few:
the visigoths (they really made a mess of rome)
the jivaro (they not only took heads but shrunk them)
american indians (certain tribes eg iroquois tortured their prisoners)
makah (like to kill whales for the hell of it)
huaorani (seemed to live in endless violence - even killed for mates)
additionally, many of these and other cultures practiced slavery
(slaves were what the cree called one of their neighbors), animal and
human sacrifice, and at least one south american tribe (in brazil i
think) taught their children to torture young birds (to get acquianted
with nature i guess - it was an article in the toronto star back in the
90s).
note that none of the above non-civilized cultures fit your idea of
modern civilization (hence they are non-civilized). the immorality is
obviously not comparable to large civilization in quantity, but
certainly is in quality.
also, understand that the immoral actions are not committed by the
culture, but certain members within the culture which is in alignment
with my statements about not blaming the 'civilization' but its members.
so despite your vociferous "civilizations engage in atrocities" and the
acceptance of the notion that members are programmed automatons within
this evil structure, if we are to do anything (since we are all past
the point of 'really wanting to know' here), we need to stop
complaining about an intangible, nebulous idea (yes it is still a
concept even in your excellent description) and go after the actual
culprits who are destroying this planet and inhabitants.
prad • 11/7/09; 11:28:39 PM #
----------------------------------------
Wow Prad & B you really do know your stuff! Thanks for bringing
so
much logic to the table. Whatever way we look at it, a vegan diet is
kinder to ourselves, the planet & our beauty-full animal
friends.
Lovefreelee
freelee • 11/8/09; 1:31:46 AM #
----------------------------------------
on the contrary, janene! i think we've made great progress. i really
don't see why you (and vera earlier) see these exchanges as
opportunities to "convert" or "convince". discussions of this sort are
primarily for information exchange. we've done plenty of that, so we
definitely have 'gotten somewhere'.
See .. blog comments sections CAN actually stimulate and sustain useful
'conversations".
;-)
Jon Husband • 11/8/09; 11:29:08 AM #
----------------------------------------
dave,
from all of us participating here, thank you for your kind comments
regarding this discussion. i'm sure we all are glad to put something
back considering how much we have gotten from you through your blogs
over the years!
you make a really key point here: "we need to be very careful, in
looking at complex system changes, to presume to know what is cause and
what is effect"
causality is a tricky business.
one of the problems with making predictions is that they are usually
done with the assumption that we know the initial conditions, the laws
at work (or relevant equations), and any other influences. in closed
systems (usually the hard sciences), this is often the case and hence
the predictions generally work out well. in more open systems
(unfortunately the soft sciences utilizing the same tools as the hard
sciences to appear more 'scientific'), the predictive success isn't as
high - sometimes of course because the mathematics just don't exist to
handle the situation, or the computer analysis is 'too difficult' for
the computer, or we just don't have enough info or knowledge to frame
an accurate model.
still, we can make some use of statistical data and glean a reasonable
degree of reliability. for instance, when someone goes into cardiac
arrest you're pretty likely to find animal fat accumulation in the
arteries - but as dr klaper puts it "we never, ever find pieces of
broccoli or tofu" :D
prad • 11/8/09; 1:11:45 PM #
----------------------------------------
Prad: enough of sneaking in the meat talk, we're trying to have a
discussion about serious issues here ;D
Dave: I wanted to echo Prad's thanks for your
acknowledgment/participation in this discussion, and for your very
thoughtful blog post as well.
Regarding colitis, I thought you might be interested in learning about
how the hygienic doctor David Klein uses an entirely plant based diet
as a treatment protocol for colitis. He claims that his methods have a
99% success rate. It is fair to be skeptical of that bold a claim, but
since you are heading in the direction of veganism it may at the very
least be worth ruling out as a possibility. If you find that there may
be some truth to his claims then you may become more assured that a
vegan lifestyle can be both feasible and desireable:
Oh, I wasn't saying that there was not some usefulness to the
conversation... merely that I felt that we were starting to stop making
progress...
On the ten to one ratio... I got it from an old anthropolgy textbook...
but I did find something for you:
"In their refined study, Giampietro and Pimentel found that 10 kcal of
exosomatic energy are required to produce 1 kcal of food delivered to
the consumer in the U.S. food system. This includes packaging and all
delivery expenses, but excludes household cooking" from
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/281
ummm... you wrote "here's a question for you. how do you deal with
people (usually libertarians and natural lawists) who keep saying there
is no pop crisis and think that god said to go forth and exponentiate
(even though it clearly says multiply)? what info or stats do you
provide them with?
I'm a bit confused. I've never heard such a thing from a libertarian
(I'm closer to anti-corporate libertarians than any other political
group)... and I'm not entirely sure who you refer to with "natural
lawists"... nor have I heard a claim that god told us to
"exponentiate"... but assuming that I did hear such a thing from
someone, I probably wouldn't bother with stats or anything else. People
only hear what they want to hear. So for those that see a world
completely alien to my eyes, I choose to not waste my time.
But maybe there is something else you were getting at or trying to get
from me?
Samller is better... but I abhor the thought of "divide and conquer and
then put it back together." No, absolutely not. smaller, permenantly,
period. Did you look at Dunbar's number or are you already familiar? If
not,m I would highly recommend familiarizing yourself with the way that
works. It really allows for amazing insights into the nature of humans.
the Visigoths were complex cheifdoms. Just one tiny step away from full
on civilization... and one of the most unstable typs of society. I
should have discussed these before, but I am comparing "primitive" or
band society with civilization and disregarding the variations in
between for simplicities sake. They were an agricultural people with
kings and nobles and wars and all the rest. Cities, not so much, but
they did have concentrated settlements.
The jivaro... so are saying that because they shrunk heads they are
bad? Or, are you saying that they are bad because there was conflict
within thier culture that sometimes led to death? Even intertribal
"warfare" (quotes because intertribal warfare is not truly war, but
rather physical conflict... far more comparable to strategies employed
by non-humans than to civilized warfare)
Again, the Iroquos are a marginal example... they do fit all of the
descriptions of "civilized" except that they employed horticulture
rather than full blown agriculture. It was, however, intensive
horticulture and only thru permaculture type techniques was it,
probably, sustainable.
The makah hunt whale. Its a traditional food source for them. So what?
The huaorani? All I see is that occasionally they would kill, man to
man, over a woman. and they had a strong sense of in-group identity. So
again, what?
As to slavery, sacrifice and so forth... I think we would find every
valid example of these things to come from civilized groups. And there
were plenty of those in North America... the Maya, Inca, Aztecs,
Toltecs etc... the Mississippians. The anasazi. And there were also
plenty of cheifdoms, simple and complex, as well as transitionary and
unique stuctures in the americas.
So... just to make sure that I have this right... hunting whales,
shrinking heads and fighting over women (even with terminal results)
are of the same immoral caliber as genocide? Sure you want to even
kinda imply that?
Now... that last statement of yours... that's where I get tweaked. We
are ALL the actual culprits who are destroying this planet. Every day
when you got to work, when you buy food, when you pay your taxes (or
when you DON'T pay your taxes), when you use electric lights, or burn a
piece of firewood, you are participating in the system that is
detroying the planet. That MUST continue to destroy the planet. This is
not something that you should feel guilty about each moment... that
would be useless. And simply changing to energy efficient lightbulbs
and organic food is a tiny drop in the bucket... even if ALL of us did
it, the juggernaut would continue. And when have ALL humans ever done
anything? However, once we understand that these are systemic problems,
then we can begin looking for a way to treat the problem at the source.
Stop worrying about symptoms and deal with causes.
I had to go searching for your comment... you must have posted it while
I was writing one of my own the other day... couldn't figure out what
the heck Prad and B were talking about ;-) yep... sometimes I'm a dork
:-)
The theory you have outlined pretty well fits with how I understand
it... with the exception that I believe it is unlikely we, alone in the
animal kingdom, were "vegetarians" (in the way you are now), but that
rather we ate mostly plant products with small amounts of insects (or
even not-so-small amounts), perhaps eggs and other easy to catch/eat
animal food sources. Likewise, once on the savannah we certainly
continued to supplement our diet with plant products, but the ratio may
well have significantly dropped.
Thanks everyone. This has been amazing. I'm capturing these 50 comments
for posterity, and will post them as a separate article with a link
back to this post once my new blog platform is up and running. You are
welcome to continue the discussion, but additional comments may be lost
in Radio's comments server when I make the transition to Wordpress.
Cheers,
Dave
Dave Pollard • 11/8/09; 6:49:49 PM #
----------------------------------------
good evening janene!
thx muchly for that link. it's a great start supplying data i can use
to do my own calculations!
libertarians are anti-corporate for sure, but the ones i've encountered
as well as the natural lawists like this silly idea of absolute freedom
to do pretty well anything you want. some of them deny there is a pop
explosion and claim it is a propaganda conspiracy by the oligarchs. as
a result, they don't think any effort should be made to control pop -
in fact, one of them said to me that he hopes to have a great many
children provided he can find someone to have them with. they also deny
global warming - again it's a conspiracy.
the exponentiate was a little mathematical joke twisted out of the
bible, because god told us to go forth and multiply. god didn't say go
forth and exponentiate.
regarding your primitive cultures, it seems i didn't pick them
sufficiently primitive for you. so if you want, give me some others who
you think are primitive and i'll see what i can find.
i am not implying that hunting whales, shrinking heads (btw it's not
the shrinking that the problem), fighting over women (that really is
primitive you know) is immoral - i am stating it loud and clear. is it
on the same caliber as genocide? quantitatively no, qualitatively yes.
you see it doesn't really matter much to someone or some whale that
there was a holocaust of jews or chickens (as there is now) - what
matters is what is happening to that individual. you don't need to
deprive a whale of life, you don't need to cut off someone's head, you
don't need to kill your neighbor because you covet his wife. these are
acts of wanton greed and savagery - and always have been. it's just
that it's taken us a few centuries to start acknowledging them as being
such publically.
now the part where you get tweaked is really excessive. again, you give
no consideration to sustainability or even the 3 r's. we may all be
culpable to some extent, but by that reasoning so are my primitives,
your primitives, the animals, the plants, the bacteria and gaia herself
(erosion, earthquakes, hurricanes). what i find weird is i've just used
a typical diehard right-wing absurdity to counter the argument of a
sensible, rational person who has for some unknown reason taken upon
herself to paint a picture of existence with only the blackest of
paints ... and spilled what wouldn't fit on the canvas all over the
floor.
janene, you know that after the now-not-so-primitive visigoths
ransacked rome, it wasn't rebuilt in a day. to rebuild we need to
identify the 'culprits' of wind, rain, storm. we need to understand
stress, gravity and strength of materials and build our defenses
against the culprits. we don't need to view it topsy-turvey and say the
building's existence is the cause of its own destruction because it
invites wind, rain, storm (ie civilization is the cause and it has made
us all the culprits).
here is a consoling thought from jurassic park (the book not the
movie). towards the end of it john hammond was babbling on about saving
the earth or something and ian malcolm (a mathematician of course!)
told him that all this was pure ego: we're not going to destroy the
earth; we're not going to save the earth; but what we can do is save
ourselves.
if we want to do that, we'd better go after those who are responsible
without getting too wrapped up in lightbulbs and organic foods - though
that's a pretty good start for some.
prad • 11/8/09; 7:46:55 PM #
----------------------------------------
One
of the projects I'm proposing to undertake over the next few months is
facilitating the organization of opponents to the Alberta Tar Sands and
holding Open Space brainstorming sessions to identify creative, clever
ways to disrupt and ultimately close down the Tar Sands without anyone
getting hurt or arrested. This will take a lot of ingenuity, and I
think I can contribute to that, but I also thought it might be useful
to use a combination of Donella Meadows' "ways to intervene in a
system", and business process analysis and risk assessment
methodologies, to list some of the vulnerabilities of the Tar Sands,
that we might be able to exploit.
The chart below lists all of the resources that (to my knowledge) the
Tar Sands need to stay in operation. Beside each I've tried to identify
vulnerabilities using the 14 major business risk categories:
business
interruption (interr)
reputation/market
share challenges (rep)
financial/fraud
losses (fin)
new
regulatory/legal issues (reg)
insurance
problems (ins)
compliance
failures (compl)
competitive
threats (compet)
governance
failures (gov)
physical/system
security threats (phys)
economic
threats (econ)
political
problems (pol)
environmental
threats (env)
social/human
resource threats (soc)
technological
threats (tech)
Here's a quick list of about 50 obvious vulnerabilities, in either
obtaining, using, maintaining or managing resources essential to Tar
Sands operations. A combination of a few unfortuitous (for the Tar
Sands operators) economic or other uncontrollable events, and a few
ingenious interventions to exploit other vulnerabilities, would be
enough to stop operations. Prolonged and frequent
stoppages would quickly have investors, lenders, major customers and
politicians bailing out. The
recent greed-induced financial and liquidity collapse was almost enough
to do it all by itself (the resultant depressed oil prices made Tar
Sands development economically non-viable, even with the massive
subsidies they're receiving from taxpayers).
interest
rate spike (econ)
liquidity squeeze (econ)
currency instability (econ) low
energy price (recession)(econ) very
high energy price (growing
shortages of cheap oil)(econ)
investigative reporting on subsidies (pol)
Land
&
Mineral Rights
first
nations treaties and opposition (pol, soc)
environmental laws and challenges (pol, rep)
new government philosophy (pol)
property security (phys)
cost (econ)
Assays
uncertainties
of value (econ)
recoverability questions (phys, econ)
cost
(econ)
technology development (tech) security
(phys)
Equipment
-
Distribution (vehicles, pumps, pipes and roads)
cost
(econ)
technology development (tech) security
(phys)
Workers
-
Operating, Management, Sales
lack
of
skilled people (soc) unwillingness
to do work (conditions,
dangers, fears, conscience) (soc) absenteeism
(individual, collective, illness, emergency) (soc, env, phys)
cost (econ)
Energy
-
Natural Gas, Nuclear, Electrical
cost
(econ) energy
project approvals (pol)
availability (econ, phys) reliability
of supply (econ, phys)
product
quality/grade (tech)
alternative sources (tech)
proximity to customers (phys, econ)
Customer
Payment
state of economy, liquidity
(econ)
interest rates (econ)
price (fin)
Information
and Communication Systems
infrastructure stability
(phys, tech) information
security (phys, tech)
Activists usually focus on trying to change customer behaviour
(boycotts) or regulator behaviour (fines) towards
irresponsible and destructive corporations. While these are worthy
holding actions, I have seen few cases where this type of action has
been sustainably effective, beyond a brief flurry of PR. Just
as photos of factory farms and slaughterhouses ("we don't want to
know") haven't changed customer behaviour (most people eat meat
anyway), photos of the Tar Sands holocaust are shrugged off by
customers at the gas pumps. And politicians get huge campaign
contributions from oil companies (just like they get them from factory
farm agribusiness), and aren't willing to discourage consumption
through taxes for fear of voter retribution.
If we really want to stop the Tar Sands, then, political and
customer-driven (reputational) solutions will not be enough, and
demonstrations and sit-ins will likely only have temporary effect. We
cannot rely on politicians, customers or the media. We need cleverer,
more direct actions, actions that can be measured in immediate and
absolute terms in reduced carbon emissions.
I've marked some of the vulnerabilities that I think have particular
possibilities in bold above. Imagine this:
the US dollar finally
and inevitably collapses, bringing about a Great Depression and
requiring all energy products to be redenominated in a new gold-backed
non-fiat currency
economic studies
showed that oil price of under $80/bbl would be insufficient to justify
the huge cost of Tar Sands development, and oil price over $120/bbl
would cause prolonged recession and reduce demand to the point Tar
Sands development was not needed, so the viability of the entire
project depends on long-term price stability in this narrow price band
the courts decree that
the massive use of water by the Tar Sands is a threat to Canada's water
security and sovereignty, and ration it
leaked security
reports confirm that securing the length of arctic gas pipelines to the
Tar Sands is impossible, and that any systematic sabotage of the pipe
could prevent prevent a single cubic foot of gas from ever flowing;
insurance companies bail
construction equipment
is constantly gummed up with sugar or other contaminants in fuel and
oil tanks
there are enough
plausible but fictitious threats to the health of Tar Sands workers
(contamination of water supply from the toxic Tar Sands wastewater
'tailing' ponds, industrial disease, viruses) that the workers refuse
to show up for work
the US Congress,
politically grandstanding to "protect domestic markets and discourage
foreign dirty oil", passes protectionist legislation
prohibiting import of Tar Sands oil
commodity markets (oil
prices, interest rates, $CAD/USD exchange rates) are whipsawed so much
by speculators that lenders refuse to advance development funds
until/unless they stabilize
production goes
offline so often due to inexplicable electrical and telecom
infrastructure outages that profits are affected and investors start
selling off holdings, starving the operations of cash
information systems
are hacked with such precision and regularity that essential reporting
and processing functions (filings, payroll) become seriously delinquent
and reports become wildly unreliable
the Yes Men
make a film/TV show ridiculing Tar Sands companies and affiliated
governments that is so successful that the euphemism "oil sands"
becomes a standing joke across the continent, and no one is willing to
publicly admit they are associated with bitumen sludge mining (Tar
Sands) operations
These are just ideas off the top of my head. I'm sure that a
substantial group of bright people, dedicated to the safe but immediate
stoppage of Tar Sands operations, could come up with a lot more ideas,
and ideas with more finesse than this list. And of course I'm not
advocating anything illegal. I'm just imagining possibilities. Yours
are welcome too.
That's what I'm thinking so far, anyway. When I talk to business
executives, even in polluting industries, even in Alberta, they're
aware of and really unhappy with the free ride Big Oil is getting and
the horrific destruction the Tar Sands are causing. This atrocity has
few real supporters -- just a small, tight group of huge oil companies,
corruptible
politicians, and resigned citizens.
It wouldn't take much to end this. And if we can end this, imagine what
we could do in other areas to stop the excesses of the industrial
growth economy.
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