QuoteUp to 20,000 delegates from 192 countries are due to attend the UN Climate Change Conference in the Danish capital from December 7 to December 18. Its aim is to forge a deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to prevent an increase in global temperatures of more than 2 degrees centigrade. Any increase above this level is expected to trigger runaway climate change, threatening the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
Lord Stern said that Copenhagen presented a unique opportunity for the world to break free from its catastrophic current trajectory. He said that the world needed to agree to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to 25 gigatonnes a year from the current level of 50 gigatonnes.
UN figures suggest that meat production is responsible for about 18 per cent of global carbon emissions, including the destruction of forest land for cattle ranching and the production of animal feeds such as soy.
Lord Stern, who said that he was not a strict vegetarian himself, was speaking on the eve of an all-parliamentary debate on climate change. His remarks provoked anger from the meat industry.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6891362.ece
QuoteROMANS: Global warming, some say, is due in large part to the way we eat. Yes, not the way we drive, the way we eat. So could reversing the global climate crisis simply be a matter of making better choices about what's on the other end of your fork? Annia Lappe is author of the fourth coming book "Diet for a hot Planet" and co- founder of the Small Planet Institute. Fascinated by this. Last week, one of the authors of "Superfreak Nomices" came by and said you should eat kangaroo and not beef. What's on your plate makes a difference for your own carbon footprints? Is it true? ANNA LAPPE, CO-FOUNDER, THE SMALL PLANET INSTITUTE: It really is. And as you say I think it's not something a lot of people have thought a lot about. But the livestock sector alone is responsible for 18 percent of the global warming effect. Just to give you some sense of how important it is, it's 5 percent more than transportation.
ROMANS: Wow, more than what we drive.
LAPPE: More than what we drive, more than what we fly.
ROMANS: What's interesting in that is as middle classes grow in a very popular countries like China and like India, and other places. More and more people reach for meat as they get more wealthy as a society. Which would suggest to me that's one of the reasons why you're going to see this continue to be a problem.
LAPPE: That's true. One of the things we can do as Americans is look at what it is that we are eating here. We eat, on average, four times as much meat and dairy as the rest of the world.
ROMANS: When you are with the shopping cart and you are going down the aisle, think about meat and dairy.
LAPPE: So it is about really thinking about what are some green choices to make for your plate. We know what those are and happily those green choices are also healthier choices. So it is things like choosing fruits and vegetables, cutting back like I said on meat and dairy. If you eat meat at every meal, maybe cutting back one meal.
ROMANS: I'm not sure that is not popular with the meat and dairy lobby. So you are not saying give it up, you are saying be responsible with your purchases.
LAPPE: And it's not just about what we do in our supermarket as you said, it's also what we do as citizens. It's about what kind of policies that we support and what kinds of things we want our elected officials to do. So as we talk about a green energy policy we can also be talking about a green food policy.
ROMANS: What about the buy local movement, sustainability, organic. You see all these labels when you are going to shop and the marketing makes it sound like it's a good thing for your health. How do you know?
LAPPE: Good question. I think it can be overwhelming. All of these things are aligning. So that choosing local and sustainable like I said is also good for the climate. One of the best things that I suggest for people to do is go to the heart of local and organic and climate friendly foods to like your farmers market is a great place to go. Everything you can get there is good for you and good for the climate.
ROMANS: You have seven principles. I want to go through these seven principles because I think they are really great. Reach for real food. You say steer clear of processed foods. Put plants on your plate that is going green, finding green. Don't panic, go organic. Lean toward local, finish your pees, what does that mean?
LAPPE: That one is big one; you know we waste so much food. The average American wastes $600 of food a year. So personally if you are cutting back on how much food you waste and you are really trying to eat all those peas on your plate, you are going to do a lot for the climate, too.
ROMANS: Send packaging packing. Bring your own bag to the store and this is something we all do. I do this when I remember, bring your own packaging.
LAPPE: Sure, and also think about do you need bottled water, when it comes out of your faucet for free.
ROMANS: We have seen this a lot. Millions of gardens planted and people want control over their food. Anne Lappe the book is called "Diet for a Hot Planet" and it comes out in April 2010. So you know maybe get on a waiting list now. Thank you so much.
LAPPE: Thank you.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0910/31/cnnitm.01.html
Yup. Everyone's getting into a frenzy over "Meatless Monday"...try "Meatless Last 4 Years."
Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.
That reminds me... Good god I had the most awesome ribeye steak the other night. An inch thick, bone in, perfectly marbled. Got the charcoal going... seasoned and seared it on both sides enough to create a perfect rare doneness. Grilled some zuchinis too... MMmmmmmmmmmmmmm :)
I knew that Ruth's Chris was too good not to be evil.
If nature hadn't meant us to eat meat, it wouldn't have made them oh so tasty! ;D
You can eat meat without harsh impact. You just have to raise it, slaughter it, and cure it yourself. However, you still have the digestive tract of an herbivore.
Industrial agriculture is kind of the devil. That's what Faye's getting at.
Thanks Kelly... I do that also. I hunt and harvest wild game. I skin, gut, then eat them. I have been villified for this practice also. I also harvest fish from our lakes, rivers, and oceans. Once caught they are skinned, or scaled, gutted and filleted. The same folks telling me I should be a vegetarian are the same ones who do not want me to hunt and fish for food.
Additionally... we humans do not have the digestive tract of herbivores. We are omnivores. Always have been.
I was just wondering if anyone have thought of the impact of the near extinction of the American bison and the extinction of the passenger pigeons. If meat production is a bad thing then the people that almost killed off the bison and the ones that killed off the passenger pigeons are ecological hero's and what about whales I'm sure they produse all kinds of green house gases.
Bison and passenger pigeons weren't industrially "farmed" like livestock today. And it's not just the methane from flatulent cattle that we find so detrimental, although methane does wreak more havoc than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (but there is much less of it and it stays in the air much shorter than CO2). Industrial agriculture is by far unsustainable--for packing in so many bodies into such a small amount of "land", "farmers" have to import a lot of fodder, and deal (or not, as is often the case) with a lot of fecal matter.
They often aren't importing what cows are meant to eat (which is grass, not grain)--just what's the cheapest, most abundant product. Which happens to be corn. Cows can eat the leafy parts of corn stalks just fine, but once they start eating the grains, and cobs, they start having health problems. Enter the antibiotics. By the way, corn production relies on noxious petrochemicals that contaminate the groundwater and, if Monsanto GMO-corn is being produced, relies on even more nefarious chemicals to kill everything not genetically resistant to Round-Up.
BT, while I support the way you sustain yourself, you should definitely research into the health risks around methylmercury contamination in the water--happens around coal plants. I suppose I should have said our omnivorous tracts resemble herbivorous animals' tracts more than they resemble carnivorous tracts. Even though I currently choose not to eat meat, I would be actively involved in raising or hunting my own if I did. My father is a hunter, so I'm not shy around blood and guts.
It seems to me the only real solution to the problems being solicited by enviro-veegans is to reduce the population dramatically and rapidly.
Let' s do this?
Quote from: BridgeTroll on November 02, 2009, 01:00:03 PM
Thanks Kelly... I do that also. I hunt and harvest wild game. I skin, gut, then eat them. I have been villified for this practice also. I also harvest fish from our lakes, rivers, and oceans. Once caught they are skinned, or scaled, gutted and filleted. The same folks telling me I should be a vegetarian are the same ones who do not want me to hunt and fish for food.
Additionally... we humans do not have the digestive tract of herbivores. We are omnivores. Always have been.
Make you own bacon Bridgetroll, they'll take my bacon from my cold cold hands!
Why are you making this us vs. them? It's one planet that we all share. We all have to deal with whatever comes to us.
Buckethead, it's a shame that that's the only solution you can see being proffered. Eating as close to home, eating mostly plants, and wasting as little as possible without over-eating, with as little packaging and fuel usage as possible is one of the best ways to make amends for all the missteps of the past. This is only in terms of eating--there are lots of other things you can do.
If you're out to vilify "enviro-vegans", I suggest you let that mentality go.
It is not my intent to villify anyone. Nor do I intend to partake in a crusade.
Thank you for the suggestion.
Quote from: kellypope on November 02, 2009, 08:53:12 PM
Why are you making this us vs. them? It's one planet that we all share. We all have to deal with whatever comes to us.
I'm not making it a us versus them. To be quite blunt I'm mocking the 376 or so post of faye that the world is coming to an end ;)
QuoteI would be actively involved in raising or hunting my own if I did. My father is a hunter, so I'm not shy around blood and guts.
I commend you for this stance. Everyone would be better off if they were involved in and had to actually process the food they eat. Growing food... whether it is plant or animal is hard work. The world has long since passed the point of an agrarian locally grown or raised society. Mass production is not only reality... it is necessity. Can better methods be employed? You betcha.
It is very easy to a vegetarian here in Florida or California. Fresh fruits and veggies are available year around. Not quite so easy in Wisconsin, Maine, and North Dakota. In the winter fresh produce is trucked in from the southern states and now even South America. I enjoy fresh grapes and asparagus from Chile year round and have absolutely no intention of giving them up because they are not grown locally.
You mention Mercury in the water and mercury tainted fish. Limit your consumption of oily type fish. Predatory fish like tuna and salmon build up mercury by consuming prey fish that have minute amounts of mercury. "White" fish... Flounder, cod , etc... have low mercury content due to their diet.
A well balanced diet reduces all of these risks.
I'm in Chicago right now--we go to farmer's markets while they're up (they aren't, now) and get a lot of produce and cheese. When I'll finally have some soil to call my own, I'll plant lot of root veggies, so that as we move into fall and winter, we can take advantage of root time. Also, build a little hoop house so we can get some leafy greens in the dead of winter (my roommates and I love our kale). We buy local fruit preserves and pickles. A woman I know (who is also veggie) has a cider press and grows a lot of beans, and she forages for pears and apples, and makes tons of cider/juice from them. With her beans she makes a lot of chili, of course. She had 8 birds, chicken and quail, that she would have fresh eggs from. She makes her own butter, cheese, and yogurt, using milk from some people she knows with cows. She forages for a lot of food, utilizing a lot wild (not cultivated) plants. So, not that's it's really much harder to be veggie in the Midwest, you just have to know how to make your food last, or how to get nutrient-dense food at any time.
Although, if we start talking about food miles--as you mentioned with Chile, which is 5,000+ miles away (from me, at least)--you get into the same boat as meat production. Which wouldn't be a necessity if people weren't so staunch about their eating habits. It isn't necessary to eat enough meat for two people at every meal, but some people behave like it is. Demand is the problem--that's why it's so appealing for ranchers in the equatorial nations to plow their rain forests (causing a HUGE spike in carbon emissions--look at Borneo, Brazil) for cattle production.
Thats great Kelly. Clearly all xx milliion folks in Chicago cannot do that. Luckily for you... the Vaaaasssst majority of people buy mass produced food at the super market. Most do not have the time to "forage". Most do not have the space for a hoop house. Most cannot raise chickens, quail, rabbits nor make their own butter and cheese.
It is great that you can... I would hope that someday I can do the same. But is niether realistic nor possible for me or the huge majority of us to live as you and some of your friends are.
Be truthful now Kelly... you stop by the supermarket and pick up veggies that you cannot find via foraging or at the farmers market.
It's true, I'm not going to deny that a lot my vegetables are coming from who knows where. But I don't agree with you that I can't find them around me. I go for kale, cabbage, cauliflower, potatoes, beans, carrots, zucchini, parsnip. All can and do grow in Cook county. For some reason, the city has decided to put lacinato kale and red cabbage in the planters along State St and Michigan Ave. A lot of things you can forage you won't find at supermarkets or farmer's markets--lamb's quarters, evening primrose, peppergrass, highbush cranberry, burdock, yellow dock, chickweed, cattail.
But I know that I am capable of doing it differently. I know that where I currently live--13 floors up with very little light, and so temporarily I can't commit to rigging some container veggies--I can't be sustaining myself. I know that when I get the opportunity to move--to a place with soil--I will be building raised beds, and a coop and a run, and planning my medicinal garden, and walking around my neighborhood to see where public fruit and nuts will be. I will be actively composting.
Making your own butter, cheese, and yogurt is so easy it's embarrassing. You can make yogurt in your sleep--literally.
The upper midwest is an awesome place to farm and garden. I am originally from Wisconsin. I also know that from now until March you will not plant or grow anything. Unless you plan on subsisting on canned or preserved local fruit and veggies you will have to buy these things fresh that have been shipped from afar. The early settlers in the area (and even into the early 1900's)where you live were ravaged by scurvy and other such maladies associated with lack of fresh fruit and vegetables and they lived off the land.
Modern transportation and farming makes fresh fruit and veggies possible for everyone... all the time. This is a good thing. (I love asparagus and can eat it year round now) What and how you eat is a very personal choice and no one should be telling anyone what and how... they should nourish themselves.
Quote from: kellypope on November 02, 2009, 09:59:39 AM...........However, you still have the digestive tract of an herbivore. .......................
Contrary to popular belief we do not have two stomachs or gullets.
"What and how you eat is a very personal choice and no one should be telling anyone what and how..."
In a way I agree, but I also disagree. If you know that someone is eating something that is proven time and again by one study after another that it is going to mutate their DNA and cause them to have some form of cancer--would you let them know? There is a way to be tactful, to speak softly, and not in a way that the person you are talking to is likely to become defensive.
Also, I'm making time to learn about ways to store food. When I return to Jax in the summer, I'm going to try my hand at making fruit leather from the blueberries in the backyard, and blackberries I forage. Drying leaves, having cold storage, cidering, making fruit vinegar, making preserves and pickles are also methods I'm trying to learn more about. Weck is a company that makes reusable canning jars (unlike the Mason seal, which you can only trust once), and Grolsch sponsors galleries here--once you rinse out the abundant unwanted bottles, you can reuse it.
Modern transportation...I wouldn't say that it's entirely a good thing. How far food travels is a huge issue and contributes to the pollution and climate change this thread is about. While it's good to have a sources for nutrients, it's better for the planet to know your alternatives to contemporary ways of "hunting and gathering."
PS--You'll like this. The native peoples of Alaska didn't get scurvy, even though they weren't eating citrus. How? Raw meat still contains vitamin C enough for humans to be able to live without scurvy. Scurvy will start to kick in after about 3 months without some C. But if you cook the meat, you risk losing the C.
Quote from: Overstreet on November 03, 2009, 04:18:26 PM
Quote from: kellypope on November 02, 2009, 09:59:39 AM...........However, you still have the digestive tract of an herbivore. .......................
Contrary to popular belief we do not have two stomachs or gullets.
Come now, there's more to it than that!
Our stomach acid, hydrochloric acid, is much weaker than a carnivore's. A carnivore needs the highly acidic stomach acid to break down raw flesh as well as to kill of potentially harmful bacteria.
Also, the length of our intestines is much more like an herbivore's. A carnivore's intestines are very short, so as to pass the digested meat quickly before it has a chance to rot. Longer intestines allow for more time to break down plant fibers and absorb nutrients.
Our facial muscles are not capable of allowing us to break off large chunks of flesh--like an herbivore, we have well-developed masticating muscles.
Our teeth have more similarity to herbivores, our jaw motion and need to chew is more like an herbivore's, even the enzyme composition of our saliva is different from a carnivore's.
I feel like an omnivore; you feel like an herbivore.
QuoteIf you know that someone is eating something that is proven time and again by one study after another that it is going to mutate their DNA
I have to agree with you here. It has been proven time and again that our diet is better now than it ever has been. We live significantly longer, healthier, taller, and stronger than our ancestors hundreds of years ago when they lived off the land, grew, hunted and foraged for local foods.
I am happy for you and your lifestyle choice. It simply is not a choice many of us could or can make. Imagine how many blackberries would be available for you to forage if ALL of us were doing so. I predict blackberry shortages. People in an urban setting simply cannot forage nor grow or raise their food.
You contradicted yourself regarding eating raw meat btw. In one paragragh you extol the virtues of eating raw meat to avoid scurvy... then in another paragraph explain why eating raw meat is not good for humans.
Quote from: kellypope on November 03, 2009, 04:40:12 PM........Our stomach acid, hydrochloric acid, is much weaker than a carnivore's. ...........
Maybe, but Nexium makes money off of me. A good steak or burger makes it feel better. Besides tearing chunks of raw meat off a carcuss is over rated any way. I'd rather use tools and cook it. We are really not designed to process leafs and twigs off the tree either.
I grow a few veggies in my back yard, but for the most part, my diet is around 50% protein (mostly red meat).
I might be a few pounds overweight, but I have low cholesterol, great blood pressure. I even eat 3-4 times the daily recommended intake of sodium.
Point being, everyone is different. Many humans can survive on plants alone, some can survive on meat/fish alone. Most survive on a combination of the two.
Its funny, that jaw structure was mentioned, primates with large canines are usually herbivores, the canines are for show and defense.
I actually like what this vegetarian site writes:
http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/omni.htm
QuoteHumans are classic examples of omnivores in all relevant anatomical traits. There is no basis in anatomy or physiology for the assumption that humans are pre-adapted to the vegetarian diet. For that reason, the best arguments in support of a meat-free diet remain ecological, ethical, and health concerns.
I suggest reading Adventures in Diet by By Vilhjalmur Stefansson.
http://www.biblelife.org/stefansson1.htm
He chronicles the 11 years he lived as an Eskimo and ate a meat only diet and what it did to his body.
http://www.biblelife.org/stefansson1.htm
While the nutrition argument is interesting, and worthy of discussion, why don't we get back to the point of carbon emissions? How about over-development (paving and empty lots, real estate development in a failing market without buyers, "clearing the land", etc.) eliminating the amount of land available for wild, edible food to grow?
If you want to keep giving Nexium your money, that's cool with me. That's not my problem. You decide what to do with your money.
We're not designed to process leaves off the tree? Granted, I can't think of any trees whose leaves I'm eating, but certainly chard, lettuce, dandelions, plants in the cabbage family we can eat right off the plant. Some things might be a little too bitter for our tastes, but that's entirely a matter of what you're used to purely in terms of how it tastes. Water tastes bad to someone who only drinks soda.
QuoteWhile the nutrition argument is interesting, and worthy of discussion, why don't we get back to the point of carbon emissions? How about over-development (paving and empty lots, real estate development in a failing market without buyers, "clearing the land", etc.) eliminating the amount of land available for wild, edible food to grow?
The nutrition argument is more than interesting... it is a big part of the issue. I... and 95% of the population have absolutely no desire to limit our diet based on where we happen to live. We all cannot skip through the meadow foraging nuts berries and edible plants. The sheer mass of humanity would kill the meadow... and we would quickly starve. If I live in Wisconsin I am not giving up Orange juice because of the carbon emissions. If I live in Iowa I am not giving up Cod or shrimp because of carbon emissions.
Your foraging, make your own, grow your own lifestyle choice is just that. A choice. Let me ask you Kelly... are you single? Have a family to support and feed? Going to school? Working?
The reason I ask is I suppose I could feed myself through hunting, foraging, growing my own if I was alone, living in a cabin on a mountainside in North Georgia. As a matter of fact... that is my ultimate goal. Leave the urban, suburban and move to a completely rural and idyllic setting.