Creating Change is Like Gardening

It was a sad day for me. I discovered yesterday morning how difficult it is to change a norm, even if it's a simple change (with not much sacrifice attached to it) and even when making the change would be a gift to the children and their future.

For almost a year, I've been a member of a group of teachers who are interested in social justice issues. I sit on the sub-committee that deals with environmental justice issues, so it's normal that we would bring forward environmentally related issues. 

Yesterday I presented a simple motion that we transition to meatless meals at our meetings (which would amount to a couple of lunches, the three times per year when we meet). The supporting statement explained that eating lower on the food chain (note no use of the V word) has many benefits.

My rationale was that this would lower our carbon footprint and set an example to other educationally-focused groups. It truly is the easiest way we can reduce our personal and collective greenhouse gas emissions. 

Industrial livestock processing (veganspeak: the inhumane torture and slaughter of almost 30 billion animals every year in the USA alone -- but I didn't use that language, because it's often considered inflammatory) (imagine how it feels to the animals, then compare that to the "pain" we feel when we "feel their pain" -- we're such wimps at times, eh?) is one of the most carbon-intensive and environmentally damaging human activities on the planet, polluting water, degrading land, and spewing carbon, nitrous oxide and 35-40% of anthropogenic methane emissions. 

It took me three meetings to get up the nerve to put forward this resolution. I guess I already knew what the reaction would be. And I was right. To be fair, I was encouraged by how many people spoke in favour. But we use a consensus model and that means that one person holding up a red card can scuttle a motion. Four or five people held up red cards. One person tearfully admitted she's not ready to give up meat yet. (For six lunches per year?) Another said she didn't want to lose her freedom of choice. (Forget that billions of people are losing their freedom to choose to live on a habitable planet.) 

The motion was defeated. I was defeated. Afterwards, I got some advice and had some helpful discussions. I'll rework and reword my motion and present it again the next time we meet. But the bittersweet ending came during our farewell go-round. One of the no-voters thanked the group for opening her up to new ideas that haven't been within her realm of consciousness. "I might even start eating less meat," she said. "But not quite yet."

What do I take from this experience? Creating change is more like gardening than building. We have to plant our seeds (the earlier the better) and then be patient. A lot of the process is outside of our control ... though definitely within our circle of influence. Time for me to tend those seedlings.

p.s. Speaking of food growing, the news from drought-afflicted California grows ever more terrifying!

From 7 States Running Out Of Water: "At [the current] usage rate, California has less than two years of water remaining."

And this, from Cows, Rice Fields and Big Agriculture Consume Well Over 90% of California's Water: "Agriculture uses 93% of California's water and almost half of that is devoted to growing alfalfa for shipment to the Far East, mainly China, to feed their cows. California is, in effect, shipping almost half its precious water to China."

"The Death Orientation that Stares at Us from Our Plates"

I'm going to be attending and emceeing a presentation tonight by Dr. Will Tuttle on his bestselling book, The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony. I think what I'm really looking forward to is a sort of "darshan"— being in the presence of one who is enlightened. Never has a book taken me on such a voyage of discovery and on such a roller coaster ride of emotions! This former Zen Buddhist monk has articulately synthesized ideas I've been wondering about for years.

• Why is there so much cruelty and violence in our human world?
• Where does "man's inhumanity to man" — and to nonhuman animals — come from?
• Why do we think we're so much better than other animals?
• Why can people (in our society) love their pets so much but then slap a hunk of a lamb, a pig, a chicken or a steer on their plates and eat it without ever making (seeing, feeling) the connection?
• Beyond the greenhouse gas toll of industrialized meat processing, what (and who) else suffers because of our meat-based diet?

Dr. Tuttle explains all that and more. I'm not going to tell you too much because I wouldn't do it justice and I want you to buy (or borrow) the book and read it. Really take it in. And, every chapter or two, slam the book shut and sob and sob and sob at the unspeakable atrocities committed (at least in our society) so that people can have their hunk of flesh and eat it too.

But let me leave you with a couple of "big ideas" from Will Tuttle. 

The first is that the move to the herding of large mammals about 10,000 years ago was the start of it all, including the beginnings of raging capitalism (which is bringing not just the natural world but human civilization to its knees):

"In fact, our word 'capital' derives from capita, Latin for 'head,' as in head of cattle or sheep. The first capitalists were the herders who fought each other for land and capital and created the first kingdoms, complete with slavery, regular warfare, and power concentrated in the hands of a wealthy cattle-owning elite.... By commodifying and enslaving large, powerful animals, the ancient progenitors of Western culture established a basic mythos and worldview that still lives today at the heart of our culture." (pp. 18-19)

The second point is something that is making people laugh when I share it with them. And sometimes laughter creates a beeline to the heart and soul, so that people can really hear something their mind doesn't want to listen to. 

Hmmm, I just found the passage back on pp. 67-68 and it's rather graphic to quote here for you. Anyway, here's the gist: Lots of people think that we're "meant" to eat the flesh and secretions of other animals, that it's perfectly natural for us to eat meat and "dairy" products. So here's a question: Could you, using no implements, just your body (with your tiny mouth, dull teeth, delicate skin and no claws) hunt down a deer? Kill it with your teeth, rip it apart and eat it? 

Okay, here's another question: If we were meant to drink the milk designed for calves, then shouldn't we be able to walk past the bull, kick that calf out of the way, and then slide underneath the cow to suckle at her teat without getting kicked or stomped on?

For 30 years I was a vegetarian who considered cheese and eggs to be "gifts" from the animals. But gifts are freely given. Choosing a vegan diet three years ago (for environmental reasons, but also because all my talk of compassion was no longer squaring with my diet) has allowed me to truly see what's going on in this world. Otherwise, I would still be stuck in my own herder mentality. 

May the "spiritual health" and "social harmony" of Dr. Will Tuttle's book, The World Peace Diet, come true in time for compassion to save the future for the children ... of all species.

Is anyone else weirded out by the fact
that our culture eats
the children of other animals?

The Nitty Gritty of Locavorism - Backyard Chickens

The permaculture chicken

The term "locavore" officially entered the English lexicon in 2007, when it made it into the New Oxford American Dictionary. I read that just a few days after receiving a copy of The 100 Mile Diet, a book I loved when I read it back in 2007. And I received that book just before attending a Poultry Raising workshop in my community, put on by our Transition group.

When I was vegetarian, I considered cheese and eggs to be gifts from the animals who gave them. It took me 30 years to acknowledge something important: "Gifts" taken, indeed stolen, are not gifts at all. My husband and I switched to a vegan diet when we finally clued in that the horrendous ways we treat animals in our industrialized food system - even those we don't kill - made a mockery of our denial. 

I was happily vegan for a few months until a sweet student of mine who lovingly raises chickens very proudly gifted me with a dozen of her eggs. I took those eggs home and told my hubby we were eating them. We still eat eggs very rarely, but if we've met the chickens and know their human, we're open to accepting their eggs as a gift. (So I can't really say I'm vegan, can I? But the label keeps me from eating milk chocolate, which is a good thing.)

Zorah's "Mom with Chicks"

That's why I attended the Poultry Raising workshop yesterday. What I discovered is why a vegan friend of ours in the city fought against her municipality's move to allow backyard chickens. These animals take a lot of care! Raising them is not a lark, it's hard work! I've decided to never again look a gift egg in the mouth.

I thought I'd share with you some of what I learned:

• There are about 100 poultry diseases. Vigilance is necessary at every step. You can never put new chicks in with an older flock, and you've got to dedicate one pair of boots just for the chicken coop.

• I was in my 50s before I realized that chickens don't naturally lay eggs all year. (Obviously a city girl.) Without artificial light to fool them, hens go into "molt" during the shortest days of the year and stop laying. The rest of the time, they're churning out about one egg per day, although one speaker said they go in cycles, laying for about 14 days, then taking a few days off. Heritage breeds aren't as productive as hybrid birds, but they'll lay for a longer period.


• Chickens know what they need in their diet and, if allowed to roam freely, will go out and get it. (Chickens are sometimes used to help baby turkeys learn how to feed.) Their food of "mash" or pellets can be supplemented with sprouts and insects. One of the speakers is developing a mealworm farm!

• Chickens also need grit and calcium (crushed oyster shells or something similar).

• Broodiness (the inclination to sit on eggs until they hatch) has been bred out of many chicken breeds, but if a hen does become broody, it's important to give it a nice nest of straw or hay (so her eggs won't roll out). You can keep hens from becoming broody by collecting their eggs often.

• Keeping a rooster is a good idea if you're going to let your chickens range freely. He'll act as the flock's protector, sometimes losing tail feathers (or worse) in very brave encounters with birds of prey.

• Turkeys like to sleep in trees - and they LOVE to eat walnuts and blackberries!

• You should always act as though your poultry has salmonella. For example, eggs must be washed in water slightly warmer than the egg. Washing them in cold water sucks bacteria into the shell.

• If pecking at each other becomes a problem, simply paint red dots on a piece of wood and nail it up on the outside of their coop. They'll start pecking at the red dots, hurt their beaks - and stop! (If only people learned that easily.)

Chickens are smart, fun and loving animals, I learned. Like dogs, they seem to have domesticated us humans thousands of years ago. What role can they now play in helping us assure their - and our own - survival in a world of climate chaos?

Apathy and Climate Change? Fake It Till You Make It

Bill Mollison, the godfather of permaculture, once said "I think it's pointless asking questions like 'Will humanity survive?' It's purely up to people – if they want to, they can, if they don’t want to, they won't."

I just learned about that quote and it's got me thinking "What's the use?" again. Because it sure seems that people "don't want to."

Oh sure, they themselves want to survive. Very few of us actually want to die. And we don't want our kids to die. But in our culture, we've lost any attachment to the goal of being good ancestors. And we have little or no sense of "humanity" – no consciousness of humans as a species. (That would make us too much like animals, wouldn't it?)

So we are apathetic toward the need to fight for the survival of our own species in the face of the climate disruption threat. We talk about endangered species, but we always mean (other) animals or plants. No scientific organization has listed human beings as an endangered, or even threatened or vulnerable, species because we're viewed as too numerous and too wily. To wit:

"Look up Homo sapiens in the IUCN's 'Red List' of threatened species, and you will read: 'Listed as Least Concern as the species is very widely distributed, adaptable, currently increasing, and there are no major threats resulting in an overall population decline."

— New Scientist special issue on The Deep Future: A Guide to Humanity's Next 100,000 Years

I guess those new scientists don't understand how exponential change works or the story of the pond scum. (I'm sure I've said it here before, but the big problem with so many scientists is that they are reductionists by training, and therefore by training are not able to see the connections between say, increasing global average temperature and losing our food security. You know, those two tiny threats we face.)

Someone I know only through a listserve keeps lamenting those of us who claim public apathy. "In the absence of any depth perspective, we continue to focus on the outer-most appearance of things, what we call 'behavior.' Rarely do we take the time, resources or creativity to explore what the heck may actually be going on."

I try so hard to be patient, and rarely do I respond, but the point isn't why our behaviour (or lack thereof) appears to be apathetic. (It does, no matter what inner machinations are at work.) The point is that our lack of action on the climate change emergency, even if it's not actually due to apathy, is foreclosing on the future of our species and most life on Earth.

So, here's a reminder of things we can all do, even if we are feeling apathetic. Let's fake it till we make it, so that once the climate change sh!t hits the fan in our own regions, we won't have to add guilt to the list of "what the heck may actually be going on."

1. Talk about the climate crisis with others. Get it out there. Talk can be a form of action! Bring it up at dinner parties. Let's stop being afraid or embarrassed to care.

2. Eat less meat. Or no meat. (Watch the videos of the 2012 Conscious Eating conference.) Learn how our food security is threatened by global warming. (Check out Climate Change - Food Security.)

3. If you read or hear a denier or skeptic, take enough time online to learn enough of the science they're disputing to be able to respond. You don't have to respond (those people aren't eating less meat, so they could well eat you up and spit you out, they're so well practised and rehearsed in their denial and skepticism!), but this way you will feel more confident in your caring. Remember, this is about life and kids and survival and their future. Who the hell would be against all that? Question their motives (and follow the money).

4. Create political will. Write, phone, fax and/or email your elected (and unelected) officials. Tell them you'd like them to help ensure a future for the children of all species.

5. Hold compassion in your heart for the least vulnerable everywhere. They are already losing their loved ones and livelihoods, their food security and water sources, their homes and entire homelands.

Great image from Sanitaryum.

Clinton Wasn't Completely Right - It's the Food, Stupid

I know, I know. I talk about this a LOT. But today is Blog Action Day, and the theme this year is food! So how could I not talk about the relationship between food security and the climate change emergency?

There. Maybe I've said it all already. Climate change is threatening our food security. Bam. Done.

Okay, I'll keep going. While pundits are still — if they talk about global warming and climate change at all — drawing our attention to rising sea level and the plight of polar bears, the biggest, gravest, fastest growing and most urgent threat to all human beings on the planet (with tens of millions already impacted) is drought and wild fires, which lead to crop failure, which leads to food shortages, with ensuing famine (and then the violence).

I know that we in the developed part of the world feel immune. Our grocery store shelves are stocked with provisions, and our home pantries are full of pasta and canned peaches. What do we possibly have to worry about?

Well, as the summer Arctic sea ice extent continues to decrease (summer of 2011 was the second lowest in satellite history), our Northern Hemisphere growing seasons will become hotter and drier = loss of crops. Witness Russia 2010. If we get a few bad summers in a row, food prices will go through the roof and food shortages could lead to violence, even here "at home." (Remember, our grocery stores only hold about three days' worth of food!)

If that sounds ominous, then get serious about solutions that create local community resilience:

• grow as much food as possible at your own home (lawn = food, porch = food, apartment balcony = food, sunny window sill = food)
• work with others to start as many community gardens as possible
• start a program whereby people without land tend the gardens of people who can't
• talk to others about food security (supermarkets have lulled us into forgetting that our species now depends on a stable climate and successful agriculture)
• create a community kitchen, where people teach each other how to prepare food that is locally grown
• eat lower on the food chain (I see lots of grazing land around my community that could, with some work, grow food for humans instead)

And while you're at it, help to create the political will that will lead to serious international action on the climate change emergency at the next climate negotiations, coming up this December in Durban, South Africa. Help your elected officials and your local, regional and federal governments see that climate change is a threat to our food security.

p.s. As the worst famine in many, many decades continues to ravage the Horn of Africa, can anyone tell me where the "militants" (do they even know what they're fighting for anymore?) of Al Shabab are getting their food from?

By the way, it's never just one thing, is it? But in this case, the famine has been exacerbated by global warming and climate change — and the violence makes it even more tragic.

Climate Change Activism, Love and Loneliness

So, here's to a happier 2011 for all those who have been or will be impacted by climate change. Wait, that's everybody! Well then, happier new year, everyone! I'm longing for a year of good news on the climate front outweighing bad news — a new kind of tipping point. ;-)

I have a story to share. The advice columnist for my favourite environmental news listserve gave (in my humble but opinionated opinion) bullshit advice to a woman whose hubby isn't on the same green path. This woman says she "woke up to the destructive nature" of their "consumer lifestyle" five years ago and is "wrestling" with their "vastly different levels of commitment to changing" this lifestyle. She goes on:

I'm tired of compromising my values. He's tired of compromising the conveniences and luxuries he feels he's "earned" at his corporate job. I feel trapped; he feels judged. Do we keep compromising, or do we divorce and find more like-minded mates?

Along the lines of "listen to him more, don't judge him, take him on a green holiday, get massages at an eco-friendly day spa" (somehow, in my books, "spa" and "eco-friendly" seem oxymoronic if not just downright decadent in an age when so many people still don't have clean drinking water), I thought the advice was more an advertisement for green consumerism.

To shorten a long story ... I submitted a comment that suggested she dump him, because life's too short to spend it with a partner who has terminal entitlement issues. Okay, I'll just give you the whole thing:

I say dump him (and if the roles were reversed, I'd say dump her). He's coming from a world view of entitlement, in a world where billions of people don't have food and water security! Dump him now, and find a like-minded and, more importantly, like-hearted mate you can share your commitment with. He feels judged? He should feel judged! His lifestyle is progenycidal. If you were to have children with this man, his lifestyle would be killing your kids!

As someone who has found a soulmate who spends practically every waking moment fighting the good fight against the climate change emergency, I can tell you now that if your hubby doesn't embrace the notion of sacrificing now for the sake of the future of all children, you will not be happy in your marriage. Get out now, before the future becomes a thing of the past!

(Sorry to disagree with you, [Advice Column Person], but life is short — getting shorter all the time — and simply greening her consumption to try to bring her hubby around will not allow [this woman] to gift her time, energy and money to creating the best possible future for all life on Earth.)

Now, here's the funny part. In a follow-up comment, a troll (someone who trawls the internet looking for opportunities to interject with stupid / irrelevant / untrue / mean-spirited remarks) called this "environmental fascism." Hmm, now there's a person who hasn't learned their history. (Or were they simply suggesting that I'm intolerant of people who are killing the future?)

But the follow-up comment to that follow-up comment is what I want to share.

@GreenHearted, you risk finding yourself stuck in a narrow social isthmus.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry! Of course I'm stuck in a narrow social isthmus. I know too much about what we're doing to the planet to be able to hang out with people who don't give a flying leap. Let me tell you, if a wide social network is your goal in life, do NOT study the causes and impacts of global warming and climate change. You become a bore at parties and who the hell wants to invite climate change-fighting vegans to dinner? (We're actually fascinating people and excellent conversationalists, but people don't seem to enjoy our favourite topics of discussion. ;-)

So sure, sometimes we feel a little lonely on a Saturday night, but know this. The rest of the time, we are both eternally grateful that we've found a kindred spirit in each other, that we share our deepest values and concerns, that we work together on behalf of future generations, of all species.

Having a soul mate and a few wonderful friends who are on the same good green path (thank you, Cory and Glenn and Nadia and B) — that's more important to us than all the dinner parties in the world. Sure, it's lonely at times on our "narrow social isthmus" but there's room out here for anyone who would like to join us.

[Isthmus Avenue photo by Modest and Jill]

On Climate Change, Old Friends and Fun

In between goals is a thing called life that has to be lived and enjoyed.

— Sid Caesar

I just spent a wonderful week with my best friend from my childhood and her husband. It was a vacation week for me, and it was both fun and delicious.

These friends are meat eaters from beef country who decided "when in Rome, do as the Romans do." After several days of vegan fare, they admitted that vegan food is actually — and surprisingly — quite delicious. They lost weight this week, feel lighter and look better. They're talking about going vegetarian one day a week. We haven't converted them to a fully veg diet (and weren't trying to), but they're going home much more open-minded about it.

Another neat part of the visit was morning walks with my friend's husband, who works for an oil company. Our conversations were a study in finding common ground. Asking him about peak oil led to a discussion about the fact that the Stone Age didn't end when they ran out of stones. He's all for energy conservation and making the transition to renewable energy technology — recognizing, as I do, that we're going to need today's fossil fuels to gear up for tomorrow's Solar Age. (What I mean is, there's only one company that I've heard of that is using solar energy to manufacture solar panels.) He went from thinking climate change is probably due to natural cycles to understanding that the rate of change is unprecedented — and our inability to adapt rapidly enough to this kind of disruption in the climate system is the problem.

And you know what else? We had fun. We laughed. We told jokes and recounted funny old memories. We caught up on family news. We showed them our favourite nearby places. We walked and talked and broke bread together. We sat around the table and chatted for hours. We watched two movies together, a favourite of theirs and a favourite of ours; one made us cry, one made us laugh.

All that reminded me that, well, there's still life to live while I'm living. I love this life so much that I want to spend the rest of mine safeguarding all life, for all living things. But I want to enjoy it, too.

So here's to remembering that we can have fun along the way, whether it's a bit of fun each day or a fun vacation every once in a while. Saving the world is serious business, but it needn't be totally serious.

Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.

— Dr. Seuss

It's Official Again — It's Time for the World to Go Veg!

Early in June 2010, the United Nations Environment Program (Division of Technology, Industry, and Economics - Sustainable Consumption and Production Branch) released a study entitled Assessing Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production: Priority Products and Materials [pdf]. The online introduction lists the following key findings of this assessment report:

• Agriculture and food consumption are identified as one of the most important drivers of environmental pressures, especially habitat change, climate change, water use and toxic emissions.
• The use of fossil energy carriers for heating, transportation, metal refining and the production of manufactured goods is of comparable importance, causing the depletion of fossil energy resources, climate change, and a wide range of emissions-related impacts.
• The impacts related to these activities are unlikely to be reduced, but rather enhanced, in a business as usual scenario. This study showed that CO2 emissions are highly correlated with income. Population and economic growth will hence lead to higher impacts, unless patterns of production and consumption can be changed.
• Furthermore, there are certain interlinkages between problems that may aggravate them in the future. For example, many proposed sustainable technologies for energy supply and mobility rely for a large part on the use of metals (e.g. in batteries, fuel cells and solar cells). Metal refining usually is energy intensive. The production of such novel infrastructure may hence be energy-intensive, and create scarcity of certain materials, issues not yet investigated sufficiently. There is hence a need for analysis to evaluate trends, develop scenarios and identify sometimes complicated trade-offs. 

In the online description, they use the terms "agriculture and food consumption." But listen to what they have to say in this video, mostly filmed at the launch of the report. Please share this with your friends and climate change adversaries alike (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQlekfaPyaA). 

Veganism Is No Fad, But a Vital — and Compassionate — Solution

It's fascinating to be a vegetarian-almost-vegan in a country like Bolivia, which is a real pollo y carne (chicken and meat) culture. Peter and I (and the wonderful owner of the hotel we're staying in) have been talking about this a lot. We suspect they're not doing feedlots and factory farming like we do back home, but we've also talked about the fact that an animal like a cow is insurance for poor families in poor countries (with no government subsidies) against drought and crop failure.

Anyway, we're not here to judge this culture, but I do have the right to judge my own — and our meat-eating habit is an inhumane and unnecessary one.

Here's why this came up.... An opinion column in a back-home "news"paper published a column insisting that vegans are illogical lemmings just following a fad. I tore it out and brought it along, and thought I'd share my response (in a letter to the editor) with you here. You won't need to read the original column (or even be veg) in order to understand the ridiculous things the columnist wrote.

*******

Dear Editor,

I'm hoping that Mr. S will be as open to changing his conviction about meat as he wants us "veggies" to be. Let me tell you why.

The reason vegans are no longer silent about their diet is that it is now the only diet that provides any hope of safeguarding the future from the ravages of climate change. The livestock industry is so overwhelmingly implicated in global warming and the emission of the top three greenhouse gases that an immediate global switch to eating lower on the food chain is the only strategy that could buy us some time to implement a zero-carbon economy.

If we average the UN FAO's statistics (18 percent) with those from the Worldwatch Institute (51 percent), the global industrial livestock industry has contributed to 35 percent of global warming. As one example, industrialized meat (especially beef) production is responsible for 40 percent of anthropogenic methane emissions, and methane is over 70 times stronger than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. But factory-farmed meat also emits unconscionable amounts of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide (which is almost 300 times stronger than CO2 in the atmosphere), and is responsible for 80 percent of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest (the lungs of the Earth).

So right now, vegans aren't asking you to become vegetarian, they're asking you to refrain from eating meat for the sake of all the children in the world. (And to those who wonder about eating locally raised meat, I'll leave it to you to decide.)

Mr. S passes on a few misconceptions about the veg diet that I would like to dispel. First, humans did not evolve to be carnivores. Our digestive tract is 12-14 times our shoulder-to-hip trunk length, like that of other fruit eating animals. (Carnivores have very short digestive tracts.) Apes (our closest kin) are primarily fruit eaters, and only very rarely eat meat. We evolved to be omnivores, and there are very few cultures where the diet is almost all meat (Inuit comes to mind). Even the paleolithic diet consisted of nuts, vegetables, fruits, berries and eggs in addition to "caveman" meat, fowl and fish.

Next, vegetarians and vegans don't eat just vegetables. Beans, nuts, seeds, grains and legumes can be stored all winter long, and provide all the protein we need. If these were grown on our island, for example, in the big fields where a few cattle and sheep now graze, I wonder how many people we could feed during our winters -- without all that transportation technology Mr. S speaks of (which also trucks animals long distances to slaughter and then to grocery stores).

Did you know that we sacrifice tens of billions of animals around the world every year for what Mahatma Gandhi called "the meat superstition"? And we do this while nearly 30,000 human children die each day from hunger! (Nearly 40 percent of world grain is fed to livestock instead of humans.)

Mr. S seems to make fun of people who become vegan out of compassion for other animals, and all the children of all species. However, we vegetarians/vegans don't make fun of "carnivores" ... we are sad for you! Sure, compassion for all life is a chosen worldview, but it's one that allows us to see (and respect) our connection to all other living beings. I wonder if Mr. S has ever researched what happens to his meat before it reaches his plate. Today's livestock industry is unspeakably cruel. John Robbins says, "The cruelties of modern factory farming are so severe that you don't have to be a vegetarian or an animal rights activist to find the conditions to be intolerable, and a violation of the human-animal bond." (See Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals.)

And finally, Mr. S is incorrect when he says that the vegan diet does not provide a healthier lifestyle. In fact, all studies show that it does. A vegetarian (especially vegan) diet is far easier on the body (we didn't evolve to be meat eaters, but meat "tolerators"), and meat-eating contributes to a host of health problems such as heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes -- the top killers in North America.

I do hope Mr. S will enjoy a delicious nut burger with us sometime. [His last line was "Enjoy a juicy, delicious hamburger now and then, as God has intended our lives to be." I didn't realize that God's last name was McDonald!] According to Genesis 1:29 (if we're going to bring God into the discussion), human beings were told "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food." In Genesis 3:11, God told Adam and Eve to "eat the plants of the field" (vegetables). Is it not Mr. S, then, who is the "illogical lemming" following the meat fad?

*******

By the way, we're getting lots of lovely veg meals here. The fresh veggies are absolutely delicious and fresh flavour makes a light tomato salad quite fulfilling. The hotel owner is even trying out new vegetarian recipes on us! La comida esta muy buena.

A New Kind of Judgement Day?

There's a button out there that says Less Judgement, More Tolerance. This is a great slogan when you're encouraging intercultural understanding and things like that. But is there not a place and time for judgement in our fight to safeguard the future for our children?

As I listened to a panel of inspirational vegan speakers the other day, I noticed that they all either spoke directly about or alluded to the notion of not judging others.

They spoke of leading by example, serving as inspiration, not making others defensive — by not judging.

As I sat and listened, I thought to myself, "If we judge people who murder other people, and murdering animals is now directly related to murdering fellow humans through the impacts of global warming and climate disruption, then is it not time to judge those who murder animals for meat?"

(The chemical-intensive agri-business livestock industry causes an inordinate yet unnecessary percentage of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, particularly the very powerful heat forcers, methane and nitrous oxide — not to mention the water wastage, water pollution, land degradation, and world hunger caused by our meat habit.)

I got up the nerve to pose my question aloud, but I think it was considered a bit, hmm, over the top. Most of us still don't really think of other animals as our kin, and most of us still can't conceive of faceless future generations and what we're doing to them (progenycide). Over and above that, most of us don't think in terms of systems, so we view solutions as changes that individuals make, rather than as full system overhauls.

So, let's look at it this way. We have (at least here in North America) managed to demonize smoking (if not the smokers themselves), and smoking is no longer allowed in any public buildings in most places. If we can go that far because of the personal health impacts of secondhand smoke, can we not go even further when meat eating is contributing so much to the climate change emergency (40% of human-caused methane emissions, for example), which could see life on this precious planet disappear? A global switch to a vegan diet would buy us some time for implementing all the other solutions that already exist (like renewable energy technologies).

I guess what I'm saying is this: When someone asks, "Why are you a vegetarian?" the response should be "Why aren't you one?"

If you need some inspiration for hanging up your meat habit, becoming a healthy vegetarian or vegan, and being kinder to the planet, the future and the children of all species, check out the resources at BeautifulEarth. org.

When Something Smells Funny, Follow the Money

Sometimes I miss juicy controversies completely! For example, I only had an inkling that there was another paper "out there" about the connection between the livestock industry and global warming and climate change. Didn't know anything about it at all — until I received a message yesterday morning from a new online friend, Don LePan, author of Animals, a book I'm currently reading.

That's when I got some details. Apparently Frank Mitloehner is an academic who presented a paper entitled Clearing the Air: Livestock's Contributions to Climate Change* at a conference of the American Chemical Society "in which he questioned the Food and Agriculture Organization's 2008 estimate that our meat-eating ways are responsible for a higher percentage of the world's carbon emissions (they estimated 18%) than is the entire transportation category (an estimated 15%)."

Don continues:

Apparently the statistics deserve to be questioned; the UN has admitted flaws in the FAO's calculations, and arguments over what the true percentages are will doubtless continue for some time. [My note: The percentage is likely higher, as it appears the FAO paper left the slaughter industry out of the calculations.] The interesting thing about Mitloehner's paper, though, is that he doesn't stop at querying meat-eating's percentage contribution to global warming. He takes a big leap beyond that to broad prescriptions for world agricultural policy: "Producing less meat and milk will only mean more hunger in poor countries....The developed world's efforts should focus not on reducing meat and milk consumption," says Mitloehner, “but rather on increasing efficient meat production in developing countries, where growing populations need more nutritious food.” Far from shutting down the factory farms, in other words, he wants to expand them.

Note that Mitloehner says nothing about dangers to human health from such things as the overuse of antibiotics, nothing about the damage to our water supply from the run-off of excrement from factory farms, and (of course) nothing about the issue of cruelty to animals. Even if we accepted the suggestion that our meat-eating habits in no way contribute to global warming, in other words, there are many, many reasons to oppose factory farming. Instead, Mitloehner endorses a call for "replacing current suboptimal production with advanced production methods — at every step from feed production, through livestock production and processing, to distribution and marketing."

Don then goes on to explain something that the media didn't, quoting The Outlook Series. The paper "is a synthesis of research.... Writing the synthesis was supported by a $26,000 research grant from the Beef Checkoff Program, which funds research and other activities, including promotion and consumer education, through fees on beef producers in the U.S."

Apparently, Mitloehner "has received $5 million in research funding, with 5 percent of the total from agricultural commodities groups, such as beef producers." As Don says, "that 5% may sound small — until one remembers that 5% of $5 million is still a hefty $250,000."

Now, before someone says, "Yeah, but climate scientists get funding, too," let me remind everyone that there is no lobby group out there paying scientists to make sure we keep climate change going, because anyone who understands climate change doesn't want it to keep going. Even the fossil fuel lobby groups — and the scientists they fund — if pressed (I'm sure of it!), would admit they don't want droughts and floods and famines and the end of life on Earth, they just want the fossil-fuelled economy — and their profits — to continue.

One of the points Mitloehner makes is that the FAO paper, Livestock's Long Shadow, adds up "farm to table" emissions for meat, but doesn't add up "well to wheel" emissions for transportation. Point taken. The only problem with this complaint is that it doesn't detract from the fact that the industrial livestock industry accounts for more anthropogenic methane emissions than any other source — leaving our switch to a veg diet as the fastest — and dammit, easiest — way for us to make a dent in greenhouse gas emissions.

You know, this blog is about compassionate climate action. So I encourage compassion for all the people who are going to have to retire early or transition to new careers because they're working in carbon intensive fields. I feel for them. I do. But governments can and should pave the way — maybe some of the $300 per ton carbon tax we'll soon see the need to charge could cover the costs of retraining! And we all need to be dreaming big, envisioning a new golden age of compassion towards all living things, and renewable and perpetual energy that ends all wars over fossil fuels.

p.s. I should also point out that Mitloehner is an associate professor and livestock air quality specialist in the department of animal science at the University of California in Davis. You know, that Upton Sinclair thing: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding."

* The paper's co-authors are UC Davis researchers Maurice Piteskey and Kimberly Stackhouse, and it was published in October 2009 in the peer-reviewed journal Advances in Agronomy.

*****

Okay, I'm sorry, but I can't let this one go without a challenge. When Mitloehner says: "The developed world's efforts should focus not on reducing meat and milk consumption but rather on increasing efficient meat production in developing countries, where growing populations need more nutritious food," he forgets that these growing populations in developing countries could probably fend for themselves just fine without our skewed and lopsided globalized economic system. Plus, imagine trying to tell half a billion vegetarian Hindus in India that they have to increase the efficiency of their meat production! Dude, you just don't get it.

A Lesson in the Hazards of Making Assumptions!

We presented yesterday at a Green Living seminar, and not only did it seem like not very many showed up, but several left within the first hour. Only a fraction of the number registered actually attended.

It was still a nice crowd, and the people who remained to the end were very committed to learning about the connection between what we eat and the climate change emergency — and going veg/vegan as an important part of the solution. They heard about the health impacts of our addiction to meat, the environmental impacts of the chemical-intensive livestock industry, economic alternatives to livestock farming, and lots of different tips for how to be a healthy veg/vegan. Check these out at Beautiful Earth.org.

But all through the seminar, I found myself wondering why so few people had come, and why such a large handful had left early on. Were they bothered by the "bad news"? Were we saying things they didn't want to hear?

Alas, folks, never make assumptions. It turns out that the host university was charging $18 for an afternoon of parking — and that's why so many people decided not to come, or to leave early. Several of them phoned one of the organizers to let him know!

So, the lesson for me is to "be here now" with the participants who can and do attend! The people who don't come — or who leave early — could have a hundred different reasons.

9 Days to Copenhagen - Are We Ready to Make Sacrifices for the Sake of Our Children?

Quite invisibly to the public eye, psychologists from around the world — especially those who specialize in conservation psychology and/or ecopsychology — are wrestling with the question of how to help people move towards behaviours and lifestyles that will lead to sustainability.

As an educator, I get to sit on the sidelines of these listserves and listen in. Sometimes I contribute a thought or two. Recently, some of the discussion focused on "framing" our messages so that people will listen and take them to heart.

In this discussion, a dichotomy seemed to be set up between what's called "motivational framing" (which, according to some research, increased "perceived competence") and "sacrificial framing" (which apparently decreased perceived competence to take action and make changes) (Louise Comeau, Royal Roads University). Put another way, "encouraging competence is more effective than emphasizing sacrifice" (Robert Gifford, University of Victoria).

While not wanting to argue with anyone about their research findings (I figure "competence" will be moot if the governments don't get off their butts and legislate the necessary changes — but who is going to ask their governments to do this?), my heart was telling me something else, so I chimed in:

Have we (as a society) actually done much asking of people to sacrifice? Sacrifice as in "the act of giving up something valued for the sake of something regarded as more important or worthy"? Or, in our research, are we just asking people how they would feel if we asked them to give something up?

The word "sacrifice" comes from the Latin sacer, meaning "holy," which reminds me of a point my husband and I have been discussing recently. Does behaviour change come more easily to people who hold the Earth and life as sacred? And are those people more willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the greater good?

I ask because I have a hunch that asking people to make sacrifices for the sake of their children's future well-being in a carbon-constrained and climate-wracked world might actually work. If we appealed to their sense of love and compassion and "ancestorhood" (I suppose as a way to "frame" what we're asking for), we might be surprised (in either direction) by the reaction and results.

Another problem, perhaps, is that we've done an extremely poor job of educating the public about the impending impacts on their children's future lives — not making the impacts visual/graphic enough for people, for example, or not personalizing/localizing them. Since North Americans and Europeans are, generally, living in the most comfortable age and circumstances ever for human beings, it's hard to get them to see what climate chaos will do to their children's chances for similar comforts, or even survival. (And this is before we throw in the all the misinformation of deniers / skeptics / ignorers / delayers.)

This last idea came to me accidentally, several years ago, when I showed An Inconvenient Truth to three social studies classes in a secondary school and asked the students to write down the one thing that struck them most from the movie. The vast majority of these bright kids said it was the visualization of sea level rises.

That's when I realized that people have to be able to "see," in their mind's eye, what's going to happen to their children if we don't halt the carbon emissions. But when you do that, you are accused of presenting doom and gloom, of being a doom monger or an alarmist. Man, are our kids ever going to be pissed off with us when they realize what we didn't do because we were oh so afraid of being labelled "alarmist."

So, my question stands. Are we actually asking people to sacrifice today for the sake of their children's tomorrow? Sacrifice as in "the act of giving up something valued for the sake of something regarded as more important or worthy"?

If EuroAmericans truly love their meat and their cars and their money more than their kids, let's find that out now.