Brazil Amazon Deforestation Soars
The Brazilian government has announced a huge rise in the rate of Amazon deforestation, months after celebrating its success in achieving a reduction. 
In the last five months of 2007, 3,235 sq km (1,250 sq miles) were lost.
Gilberto Camara, of INPE, an institute that provides satellite imaging of the area, said the rate of loss was unprecedented for the time of year.
Officials say rising commodity prices are encouraging farmers to clear more land to plant crops such as soya.
The monthly rate of deforestation saw a big rise from 243 sq km (94 sq miles) in August to 948 sq km (366 sq miles) in December.
“We’ve never before detected such a high deforestation rate at this time of year,” Mr Camara said.
His concern, outlined during a news conference in Brasilia on Wednesday, was echoed by Environment Minister Marina Silva.
Expensive soya
Ms Silva said rising prices of raw materials and commodities could be spurring the rate of forest clearing, as more and more farmers saw the Amazon as a source of cheap land.
“The economic reality of these states indicate that these activities impact, without a shadow of a doubt, on the forest,” she said.
The state of Mato Grosso was the worst affected, contributing more than half the total area of forest stripped, or 1,786 sq km (700 sq miles).
The states of Para and Rondonia were also badly affected, accounting for 17.8% and 16% of the total cleared respectively.
The situation may also be worse than reported, with the environment ministry saying the preliminary assessment of the amount of forest cleared could double as more detailed satellite images are analysed.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is due to attend an emergency meeting on Thursday to discuss new measures to tackle deforestation in the Amazon.
The latest figures will be an embarrassment for the Brazilian president, correspondents say.
Last year, President Lula said his government’s efforts to control illegal logging and introduce better certification of land ownership had helped reduce forest clearance significantly.
Even as he celebrated the success, though, environmentalists were warning that the rate was rising again.
© BBC MMVIII
You know it is worse than reported. Check the satellite photos.
Why can’t there be a world summit on this matter? Why can’t all the governments of the world get together and brain storm on a way to significantly reduce the loss of the rainforest? How can all the other countries in the world help Brazil? All the summits on climate and global warming should also be talking about the Amazon. You never hear about the amazon on the news, only about the melting of ice caps. You never hear about what is causing the ice caps to melt other than rising rates of CO2, and it is always about our personal use of energy at home, and our cars, but rarely about the distruction of rainforests or other forests. All you hear about in the media is how we all can help buy buying a better light bulb, insulating our homes better, and driving a hybrid car. You never hear about how we all can help by changing the way we eat or changing what we buy in general.
I’ve heard it’s not enough to stop eating soy or beef to save the rainforest. There is also the demand for the harwood and charcoal to make iron smelters. I suppose we could improve our individual efforts by not buying products that contain more hidden soy in the form of soy by-products, like soy oil, soy lecithin, soy protein, and others most of us don’t know about. But what else can we do? I’m no expert on the world economy and the economic structure of Brazil. So what can be done? Any ideas? Let’s have a peoples summit right here.
The problem isnt soy–its soy being used to feed livestock for meat eaters.
Its always meat eating.
Always.
Look at the lawsuit that came out of a coyote poison that is used to kill “pests.” Its dangerous to humans and non humans but ranchers support it.
What i dont understand is this–the Nature Conservancy hired hunters to kill off 2000 wild pigs who were dumped on an island off California in the 19th century. The Nature Conservancy thinks its ok to blame the victim for ecological destruction caused by human action.
Why arent they urging the military to bomb these “pests” in brazil who are risking the oxygen supply of the planet?
Apparently environmental destruction is only bad when its a non human contributing to it.
Its interesting how you point out what we hear about the ice caps melting. There isn’t a connection directly drawn to the individual. Rising CO2, I can’t be doing all of that.
There is a very good video on this, as well as many others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOjCcL1PN_Y
I’m afraid the planet is going to lose much more than anyone can imagine before any serious action occurs to stop the damage, much less reversing it.
“The problem isnt soy–its soy being used to feed livestock for meat eaters.
Its always meat eating.
Always.”
This is only partially correct. Most of the increase in Brazilian soy production is driven by market demands in China and Europe, where the grain is used for a variety of things including animal feed. These countries are increasingly turning to Brazil to buy soy because much of the US corn and oil seed production has been diverted to fuels. It’s a dilemma — use of grain for sustainable fuels means that less grain is available for direct or indirect consumption. Rapid increase of direct soyfood consumption in the US is likely also to be a major factor driving demand for soy, which given the diversion of the US production to these other uses, will probably need to be supplied from South America. To their credit, the Brazilians have made some efforts to curb the problem, but it’s important to understand that all of this is occurring in a remote and somewhat lawless area of the world.
It’s also important to remember that much of the deforestation throughout the tropics is being driven by timber demand, and this in fact is worse on the global O2 balance because crops are actually pretty good CO2 exchangers. So wood users may be just as culpable as meat eaters — I’m both, so I’m definitely headed to Rain Forest Hell :). Seriously, though, I think advocating bombing of people in the Amazon is pretty harsh. Most of the ones there are the poorest of the poor in Brazil, who chose (or in some cases, did not choose) to go to the frontier in order to have some semblance of a life. They are not wild pigs.
The Accelerated Growth Plan (PAC) was launched this year by the Lula administration. The indigenous peoples in responding to the Popes visit earlier this year said that the PAC is the single most threatening action they face. Now you see why. smelting
Yellow fever, malaria, state judicial systems freezing demarcation of indigenous lands, violence by ranchers, invaders, miners, loggers, assassinations, malnutrition. The rainforest rape is just the crest of the wave.
Sugar cane - a viable commodity for fuel - largely because of slave labor. The EU is developing an import scrutiny policy because the abuses are so rampant. MAJOR infrastructure project of hydroelectric dams, highways, railways… Lula is dismissing all proposals to replace the bongo projects with local small scale that HAD BEEN Promised before. The Rio Sao Francisco, despite a hunger strike by Bishop Luiz Cappio is to be re-routed the “transposition” project!!
Droughts in the Amazon in 2005, water levels so low in the siouth and southeast that the hydroelectric systems are 1.5 % above crisis stage this week.
Boycott all tropical wood products (buy bamboo floring and furnishings!; find out who grows local, organic and domestic soy producers are…
Transgenic seeds officially hit the Brazilian Marketthis past week. Monsanto, Bayer and the rest -
“Ms Silva said rising prices of raw materials and commodities could be spurring the rate of forest clearing, as more and more farmers saw the Amazon as a source of cheap land.”
Farmers see the Amazon as a source of cheap land?! NO wonder!!! The Amazon and other rainforests are anything but valueless. They are the most valuable ecosystems that exists. Their oxygen production and incredible diversity of life are inmeasurably valuable. Indeed–they may be the oxygen generateors for the Earth as a whole. They make awful farm land as well. If the people of the rainforest were respected, than their land would hold great monetary value as well. The Brazalian govt needs to send armies down there to keep illegal cutting from happening and they should make all forest clear-cutting illegal–immediately! This needs to be an absolute priority in their govt.
Paper production in China is another big push to the destruction that is going on. I heard from a printer recently that China has completely mowed down the rain forests in Indonesia. They no longer exists! That is horrible. It must be stopped!
We need to make hemp production legal here. Paper can easily be produced sustainably, but instead large commercial entities are murdering most life on Earth just to get this simple product in the most egregeous and least sustainable way possible–what an incredible shame!
Danna
We are much worse than wild pigs. Wild pigs live in harmony with nature unlike us humans. I have a theory that humans are the most unevolved species on the planet and I’ve yet to hear an argument that proves otherwise.
The photo points to loss of forests in part due to charcoal production. There is a two-word solution to that: coppice crop.
As I recall there was some sort of International meeting to try and solve the problem of deforestation in the Amazon-maybe 10 or 12 years ago (maybe more). The conclusion was that the Industrialized rich nations needed to subsidize the people that were doing the deforestation. If they can’t put food on the table or even have a table they could care less about an alien concept such as CO2 an O2 absorption and conservation. That was the last anyone ever heard of that meeting.
If we in the U.S. had a president with a brain, this would be the number one issue with the coming sea level rise from Greenland and Antarctica.
But we don’t, we instead have an illiterate monkey who thinks all this is just a game to steal more coconuts.
The crisis just in loss of property at the shoreline, would give any thinking president reason to declare war on emissions, including charcoal making activities which are now rampant worldwide since the high cost of LP gas is now prohibitive for most peasant families. These families still have to cook food, so they will burn anything they can get their hands on. Here in the Pacific Islands, are air quality went to zilch in tandem with the high cost of fuel. Most of these island are on fire where I live, and the trees are daily disappearing. They don’t have smelters here! The logs are burned right out in the open and the smoke is unbearable.
I don’t think the world will be survivable for many in 2050. The elite will traffic in oxygen bottles while the rest of us suffocate.
THe only conclusion I can draw is that most Americans hate their children and want them to slowly die in a hellish world.
“Deforestation and Hemp: How to Stop Global Warming”
http://www.chycho.com/?q=Deforestation_Hemp_Global_Warming
Does ANYBODY see a connection with overpopulation???
“Does ANYBODY see a connection with overpopulation???”
Yes — exactly. Population growth is the 800 lb gorilla of all the environmental problems. I remember it being discussed quite a lot on Earth Day 1, then religion and culture got into the mix and suddenly it was considered taboo (or even racist) to discuss population control. Garrett Hardin, where are you now that we need you?
“THe only conclusion I can draw is that most Americans hate their children and want them to slowly die in a hellish world.”
Not sure how this follows from an article on deforestation in Brazil, driven by demand in Europe and China (unless you are referring to America as a landmass, not as a country, in which case Brazilians are Americans, and I understand, but disagree, with your logic). The burning in your country is being done by your citizens, not ours. Does that mean that your countrymen and women hate their children? I doubt it. It means people are trying to survive and prosper, just like everywhere else, including America.
“The Brazalian govt needs to send armies down there to keep illegal cutting from happening and they should make all forest clear-cutting illegal–immediately! This needs to be an absolute priority in their govt.”
In many cases, it’s the Brazilian government that is facilitating the movement to the forest in order relieve overcrowding and poverty in the cities. It’s pretty hard to ask poor, hopeless people to give up their chance for some prosperity without offering something tangible in return. See BarnBurner’s post.
“We are much worse than wild pigs. Wild pigs live in harmony with nature unlike us humans. I have a theory that humans are the most unevolved species on the planet and I’ve yet to hear an argument that proves otherwise.”
I’ve been an ecologist for over twenty years, and I have yet to see a case where anything lived in harmony with nature. NAture is a mosaic of competition, cooperation, symbiosis, mutualism; all practised with the goal of passing along genes. Nothing more. Evolution is not hierarchical, either, it’s about fitness relative to conditions. Humans are an extraordinarily fit species, with the broadest niche space of any member of the animal kingdom, and high in the running for the broadest niche space, period. Self-flagellation may feel good, but it solves nothing.
Living in harmony with nature could mean being subject to the natural attrition that organisms undergo and which we avoid without otherwise controlling our population numbers humanely, consuming all available resources and polluting the environment to the detriment of other species and of our habitat. Too many elephants and jackasses in the ecosystem.
“I’ve been an ecologist for over twenty years, and I have yet to see a case where anything lived in harmony with nature. NAture is a mosaic of competition, cooperation, symbiosis, mutualism; all practised with the goal of passing along genes. Nothing more. Evolution is not hierarchical, either, it’s about fitness relative to conditions. Humans are an extraordinarily fit species, with the broadest niche space of any member of the animal kingdom, and high in the running for the broadest niche space, period. Self-flagellation may feel good, but it solves nothing.”
BALDERDASH!
You are no ecologist. You are not even aware of your own most fundamental ecological features.
A very primary and critical feature of human ecological design is that humans are herbivores. Without guessing the human dietary niche, it is no wonder we invent myriad ways to justify being out of synch… such as the mainstream nonsense quoted above.
Try again. Here, go to allinharmony dot com. There you will find all the scientific proof necessary to realize that you are steeped in nothing but ignorance. The very same that is responsible for torching the planet… decade after epoch after millennia.
Get in touch with the most basic facts. Then tell me about your ecological soul.
Also, practicing human herbivores require 1/16 of an acre of land to obtain a healthy diet. The average meatarian requires 50 TIMES that amount. Before worrying about overpopulation and more ways to justify this corporate military order’s genocidal programs, we should address the burgeoning problem of ignorance and its unrealistic tax on ALL life.
The murder and rape of the Amazon like all other natural things to obtain resourses, land for homes and farms and for easy money for the impovrished.This issue is unforunatly not going to be fixed until the politiacans decide to open their eyes and see that spending money on protecting the environment may slightly damage the economy, but if somthing isnt done fast there wont be an economy.
“…protecting the environment may slightly damage the economy, but if somthing isnt done fast there wont be an economy.”
There is no economy. There is a totalitarian military/corporate structure that is global. We just happen to be in a prime distribution center for goods collected from around the world. And one of the products is creating an illusion of a multi-faceted and robust economy. But, nothing could be further from the truth.
“This issue is unforunately not going to be fixed until the politicians decide to open their eyes…”
What changes occur will occur because those working in the corporate and military centers decide that what they are being asked to do is being dictated not by necessity but by vanity, incompetence, disinformation, etc. Politicians are a smoke screen who also work for the corporate interests. If you think otherwise, you need to break free of some very limiting misunderstandings about who directs our society, how they do it and why.
Try this; Hillary is actually a corporate executive for WalMart. Obama is an executive for military defense interests such as Haliburton. Corporate interests write political speeches to conceal their activities and in the same way, promote democratic illusions. Politicians conceal the facts, including upon whose interests they are personally focused. But, more than anything, politicians conceal the fact that government is not political but rather private (and they ALL know it) and controlled by powerful and interlocked international corporate interests.
“The murder and rape of the Amazon like all other natural things to obtain resourses, land for homes and farms and for easy money for the impoverished”
The impoverished are growing due to their habitats being burned. And this is happening all over the world. Indigenous habitats are destroyed so that independence from corporate police states becomes impossible. As far as farms, the farmers are huge land owners, not indigenous sustainable societies.
And the resources being plundered are being wasted just as those in California are. This society is about destruction of the natural environment. And the reason it is that way is rooted in the ancient temple societies and their early attempts to control surrounding peoples and lands, habitat destruction being a prime tool of genocide.
Those principles that enabled temple societies to rule and grow (such as habitat destruction) forced other societies and their members into servitude.
Natural environments are destroyed so that corporate interests can obtain control over the area, including any remaining humans. And that reason to destroy natural habitat has been continuous since the time of the Egyptians and quite possibly before. And, these policies are fundamental to dominator meat-eating society and can be traced to this departure from man’s ecological nature, herbivore.
Even today, in many cities of the US, communities could actually become sustainable. But, the means to do it is really no more than knowing the how-to. These problems can be solved so much easier than they can be maintained. And that is the greatest crime, that most heavily indoctrinated people (educated) can no longer see the forest for all the GMO trees.
It’s easy folks. The answers are simple. They really are. They are so simple it is almost pathetic to think how duped everyone has been and for how long. Humans are herbivores. The environment, your health and a robust economy actually rest on understanding that like all else on earth, humans do indeed have an ecological place and an ecological right.
We do NOT have a resource shortage, not at least in terms of human needs, (not even in this day of rapid environmental decline…many other species though have gone extinct due to the completely unnecessary plundering of their habitats)
We have a situation where ALL technology, ALL resources, ALL capital is controlled by a very few people (and their well-compensated gendarmerie) and they have every intention of gathering more and more unto themselves and it is this dynamic, the one of megalomaniacal insanity that is responsible for the burning of the rainforest and the police state oppposition tactics that prevent sustainable developments worldwide. The burning will stop when everyone stops pandering to the most ignorant, greedy, callous, arrogant and insane amongst us.
Do it for your children. Not everyone can survive in a world turned to toxic desert.
Is it about overpopulation?
Making Sense out of Nonsense
First, the non-sense:
“There are too many people and not enough resources.”
Second, making sense of it:
1) Remove indigenous peoples from ancestral lands, resources and lifestyles.
2) Put fences around them so that overcrowding occurs. Deny them access to anything outside the fenced area including food, water & shelter. Bring limited quantities of basic necessities to the fenced area. And then tell them:
a) This is a situation of overcrowding.
b) We do not have sufficient resources.
c) We must create some order (police state) to insure fair rationing.
d) And… a system to reward those most deserving (competition for ‘limited resources’ with valuations decided by elite self-interests).
There are many proofs that can amply demonstrate that this is the most basic two-step principle of elitist domination as well as how those dominated come to ‘understand’ their chances for personal ‘success.’
______________ Example _____________
The 12 Myths of Hunger
Why so much hunger? What can we do about it?
To answer these questions we must unlearn much of what we have been taught.
Only by freeing ourselves from the grip of widely held myths can we grasp the roots of hunger and see what we can do to end it.
Myth 1
Not Enough Food to Go Around
Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world’s food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,500 calories a day. That doesn’t even count many other commonly eaten foods - vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs-enough to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Even most “hungry countries” have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.
Myth 2
Nature’s to Blame for Famine
Reality: It’s too easy to blame nature. Human-made forces are making people increasingly vulnerable to nature’s vagaries. Food is always available for those who can afford it—starvation during hard times hits only the poorest. Millions live on the brink of disaster in south Asia, Africa and elsewhere, because they are deprived of land by a powerful few, trapped in the unremitting grip of debt, or miserably paid. Natural events rarely explain deaths; they are simply the final push over the brink. Human institutions and policies determine who eats and who starves during hard times. Likewise, in America many homeless die from the cold every winter, yet ultimate responsibility doesn’t lie with the weather. The real culprits are an economy that fails to offer everyone opportunities, and a society that places economic efficiency over compassion.
Myth 3
Too Many People
Reality: Birth rates are falling rapidly worldwide as remaining regions of the Third World begin the demographic transition—when birth rates drop in response to an earlier decline in death rates. Although rapid population growth remains a serious concern in many countries, nowhere does population density explain hunger. For every Bangladesh, a densely populated and hungry country, we find a Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia, where abundant food resources coexist with hunger. Costa Rica, with only half of Honduras’ cropped acres per person, boasts a life expectancy—one indicator of nutrition —11 years longer than that of Honduras and close to that of developed countries. Rapid population growth is not the root cause of hunger. Like hunger itself, it results from underlying inequities that deprive people, especially poor women, of economic opportunity and security. Rapid population growth and hunger are endemic to societies where land ownership, jobs, education, health care, and old age security are beyond the reach of most people. Those Third World societies with dramatically successful early and rapid reductions of population growth rates-China, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Cuba and the Indian state of Kerala-prove that the lives of the poor, especially poor women, must improve before they can choose to have fewer children.
Myth 4
The Environment vs. More Food?
Reality: We should be alarmed that an environmental crisis is undercutting our food-production resources, but a tradeoff between our environment and the world’s need for food is not inevitable. Efforts to feed the hungry are not causing the environmental crisis. Large corporations are mainly responsible for deforestation-creating and profiting from developed-country consumer demand for tropical hardwoods and exotic or out-of-season food items. Most pesticides used in the Third World are applied to export crops, playing little role in feeding the hungry, while in the U.S. they are used to give a blemish-free cosmetic appearance to produce, with no improvement in nutritional value.
Alternatives exist now and many more are possible. The success of organic farmers in the U.S. gives a glimpse of the possibilities. Cuba’s recent success in overcoming a food crisis through self-reliance and sustainable, virtually pesticide-free agriculture is another good example. Indeed, environmentally sound agricultural alternatives can be more productive than environmentally destructive ones.
Myth 5
The Green Revolution is the Answer
Reality: The production advances of the Green Revolution are no myth. Thanks to the new seeds, million of tons more grain a year are being harvested. But focusing narrowly on increasing production cannot alleviate hunger because it fails to alter the tightly concentrated distribution of economic power that determines who can buy the additional food. That’s why in several of the biggest Green Revolution successes—India, Mexico, and the Philippines—grain production and in some cases, exports, have climbed, while hunger has persisted and the long-term productive capacity of the soil is degraded. Now we must fight the prospect of a ‘New Green Revolution’ based on biotechnology, which threatens to further accentuate inequality.
Myth 6
We Need Large Farms
Reality: Large landowners who control most of the best land often leave much of it idle. Unjust farming systems leave farmland in the hands of the most inefficient producers. By contrast, small farmers typically achieve at least four to five times greater output per acre, in part because they work their land more intensively and use integrated, and often more sustainable, production systems. Without secure tenure, the many millions of tenant farmers in the Third World have little incentive to invest in land improvements, to rotate crops, or to leave land fallow for the sake of long-term soil fertility. Future food production is undermined. On the other hand, redistribution of land can favor production. Comprehensive land reform has markedly increased production in countries as diverse as Japan, Zimbabwe, and Taiwan. A World Bank study of northeast Brazil estimates that redistributing farmland into smaller holdings would raise output an astonishing 80 percent.
Myth 7
The Free Market Can End Hunger
Reality: Unfortunately, such a “market-is-good, government-is-bad” formula can never help address the causes of hunger. Such a dogmatic stance misleads us that a society can opt for one or the other, when in fact every economy on earth combines the market and government in allocating resources and distributing goods. The market’s marvelous efficiencies can only work to eliminate hunger, however, when purchasing power is widely dispersed.
So all those who believe in the usefulness of the market and the necessity of ending hunger must concentrate on promoting not the market, but the consumers! In this task, government has a vital role to play in countering the tendency toward economic concentration, through genuine tax, credit, and land reforms to disperse buying power toward the poor. Recent trends toward privatization and de-regulation are most definitely not the answer.
Myth 8
Free Trade is the Answer
Reality: The trade promotion formula has proven an abject failure at alleviating hunger. In most Third World countries exports have boomed while hunger has continued unabated or actually worsened. While soybean exports boomed in Brazil-to feed Japanese and European livestock-hunger spread from one-third to two-thirds of the population. Where the majority of people have been made too poor to buy the food grown on their own country’s soil, those who control productive resources will, not surprisingly, orient their production to more lucrative markets abroad. Export crop production squeezes out basic food production. Pro-trade policies like NAFTA and GATT pit working people in different countries against each other in a ‘race to the bottom,’ where the basis of competition is who will work for less, without adequate health coverage or minimum environmental standards. Mexico and the U.S. are a case in point: since NAFTA we have had a net loss of 250,000 jobs here, while Mexico has lost 2 million, and hunger is on the rise in both countries.
Myth 9
Too Hungry to Fight for Their Rights
Reality: Bombarded with images of poor people as weak and hungry, we lose sight of the obvious: for those with few resources, mere survival requires tremendous effort. If the poor were truly passive, few of them could even survive. Around the world, from the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, to the farmers’ movement in India, wherever people are suffering needlessly, movements for change are underway. People will feed themselves, if allowed to do so. It’s not our job to ’set things right’ for others. Our responsibility is to remove the obstacles in their paths, obstacles often created by large corporations and U.S. government, World Bank and IMF policies.
Myth 10
More U.S. Aid Will Help the Hungry
Reality: Most U.S. aid works directly against the hungry. Foreign aid can only reinforce, not change, the status quo. Where governments answer only to elites, our aid not only fails to reach hungry people, it shores up the very forces working against them. Our aid is used to impose free trade and free market policies, to promote exports at the expense of food production, and to provide the armaments that repressive governments use to stay in power. Even emergency, or humanitarian aid, which makes up only five percent of the total, often ends up enriching American grain companies while failing to reach the hungry, and it can dangerously undercut local food production in the recipient country. It would be better to use our foreign aid budget for unconditional debt relief, as it is the foreign debt burden that forces most Third World countries to cut back on basic health, education and anti-poverty programs.
Myth 11
We Benefit From Their Poverty
Reality: The biggest threat to the well-being of the vast majority of Americans is not the advancement but the continued deprivation of the hungry. Low wages-both abroad and in inner cities at home-may mean cheaper bananas, shirts, computers and fast food for most Americans, but in other ways we pay heavily for hunger and poverty. Enforced poverty in the Third World jeopardizes U.S. jobs, wages and working conditions as corporations seek cheaper labor abroad. In a global economy, what American workers have achieved in employment, wage levels, and working conditions can be protected only when working people in every country are freed from economic desperation.
Here at home, policies like welfare reform throw more people into the job market than can be absorbed-at below minimum wage levels in the case of ‘workfare’-which puts downward pressure on the wages of those on higher rungs of the employment ladder. The growing numbers of ‘working poor’ are those who have part- or full-time low wage jobs yet cannot afford adequate nutrition or housing for their families. Educating ourselves about the common interests most Americans share with the poor in the Third World and at home allows us to be compassionate without sliding into pity. In working to clear the way for the poor to free themselves from economic oppression, we free ourselves as well.
Myth 12
Curtail Freedom to End Hunger?
Reality: There is no theoretical or practical reason why freedom, taken to mean civil liberties, should be incompatible with ending hunger. Surveying the globe, we see no correlation between hunger and civil liberties. However, one narrow definition of freedom-the right to unlimited accumulation of wealth-producing property and the right to use that property however one sees fit-is in fundamental conflict with ending hunger. By contrast, a definition of freedom more consistent with our nation’s dominant founding vision holds that economic security for all is the guarantor of our liberty. Such an understanding of freedom is essential to ending hunger.
12 Myths About Hunger based on World Hunger: 12 Myths, 2nd Edition, by Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins and Peter Rosset, with Luis Esparza (fully revised and updated, Grove/Atlantic and Food First Books, Oct. 1998)
Institute for Food and Development Policy Backgrounder
Summer 1998, Vol.5, No. 3
12 Myths discussion was copied from(http://www.foodfirst.org/12myths)
****** And… The Greatest MYTH of ALL! ********
Myth: Humans are omnivore.
Reality: humans are herbivore. Human herbivores require approximately 1/16 of an acre to acquire their dietary needs. Current western style meatarian diets require over 50 TIMES that amount of land!
http://www.allinharmony.com
Not only greed affects the function of the brain - lack of oxygen too.
well dgoodlin,
I guess I wasn’t being clear, although, I was quite sure you could fill in the blanks here: The world carbon footprint is not just USA pollution emissions. Unstudied, undocumented slash and burn by peasants in remote regions is causing at least half of the CO2 puked up into the atmosphere. I get my figures from 20 years flying over these regions as an air line pilot and using my two eyeballs.
Nothing is said by anybody in the Western media about the massive slash and burn going on in the borneo island region right now that probably outstrips any smoke on the planet. The whole rain forest of Indonesia (the second biggest on the planet) has been on fire since 1987. The smoke is covering up whole neighboring countries and is referred to as “the haze” in Singaporean parlance. Your point is correct that the problem is the omission of exploding population. I maintain that most of my fellow countrymen know the poles are melting but are not interested in leaning on government to do something about it, Like: raising the MPG standards, or switching to alternative (low carbon footprint) energy.
But unless we want to be the next extinct species (ending the germ-line at our children) we have got to introduce world-wide mandatory human sterilization…. or we are cooked.
Casting blame on poor people, has nothing whatsoever to do with my post above. We are way beyond that now.
I put it to you: You must give up this notion of what is fair or right concerning mass populations of peasants moving into the Brazilian rain forest to clear property for farming.
The hour is much later than you suspect. I submit that “Titanic Earth” is already half submerged and that there are not enough lifeboats to go around. We are going to half to decide not what is fair, but who is to be saved. Making 70 million new babies every year is not helping our problem with the lifeboat situation.
We have but a few years before the Greenland Ice-cap breaks up according to new scientific estimates by a number of climatologists working there. This combined with Antarctica is going to inundate most costal areas at the confluence of new higher tide and low pressure weather in the area.
Multiple Katrina events are going to be commonplace.
There was a post here a few months about a Dutch fellow who purchased a large area of the reainforest and operates it as a preserve. Could foundations like Gates simply purchase huge areas and keep them pristine? Indigenous people would stay and live as always, but the “farmers” cutting and burning the forest… would not be allowed.
There was a recent article about a New Jersey resort town that decided to not us Amazon wood to rebuild part of its boardwalk. Its only synbolic in the face of this mess, but a nice gesture.
For bbr-001 & Myth who seem to be terribly concerned. Thos of us who have been this concerned for so many years have had this discussion like wolves howling at the moon. There have been university trust buy-backs for years, Google the idea. The ignorance of the worlds starving and poor knows little restraint. They have the western world model and globalization. That is the fundamental nightmare, the American dream. The stock market and your 401ks will drown the Earth and your children’s future.
The ignorance being expressed in some of these comments is so shocking.
Consider, did the Afghanis decide to become the poppy growers of the world? Or, did this occur after the society was repeatedly fragmented and this industry was suggested as the only choice supported by the international ruling elite?
The same transition is now going on in Iraq. Will we speak then in the future of the Iraqi problem and how to stop their poppy fields? After creating the very conditions that allow ONLY for that activity?
The world was NOT overpopulated when the Middle East was turned to desert.
Deserts are mostly manmade and that is due to temple-based (empire) lifestyles that intentionally create deserts and fracture and decimate other social groups including their viable economic activity.
This is the reason that the rainforest is Brazil is being burned. Many indigenous groups are being displaced and attempting to fight the destruction of this key habitat. And, they state unequivocally that the invaders have no regard for the land and treat them as ignorant sub-creatures when it is the invaders who are so ignorant as to not realize the importance of the ecosphere they are destroying.
The human dominant social forms (globally operative) are working against natural laws. Finally, it is the rich who live in the most ignorance and plunder the world and who also have destroyed sustainability around the globe as a means to wrest control and independence from those not yet under their control.
This is a dominator culture. That is key to understanding the destructions being wreaked upon the planet and to natural and healthy human society and those that were similarly wreaked in times past.
1 1/16 of an acre of land is required to feed a practicing human herbivore. Think about it. 50 times that amount is required just to feed an average meatarian. Meat-eating is the key to this problem as it was the key to similar destructions in times past.
There is NO need to depopulate. There is no truth to the overpopulation myth. Read Making Sense of Nonsense above. Stop parroting complete rubbish. This culture, like all cultures perpetuates itself upon its dominant myths. But myth is not truth. And these myths are radically opposed to the facts of ecology including human ecology. And yes, there is such a thing. It is inscribed in your very being and is NOT a matter of opinion.
“When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores.”
William C. Roberts, M.D., editor, American Journal of Cardiology
From “The Comparative Anatomy of Eating”, by Milton R. Mills, MD
Facial Muscles
CARNIVORE: Reduced to allow wide mouth gape
HERBIVORE: Well-developed
OMNIVORE: Reduced
HUMAN: Well-developed
Jaw Type
CARNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HERBIVORE: Expanded angle
OMNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HUMAN: Expanded angle
Jaw Joint Location
CARNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HERBIVORE: Above the plane of the molars
OMNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HUMAN: Above the plane of the molars
Jaw Motion
CARNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side motion
HERBIVORE: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
OMNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side
HUMAN: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
Major Jaw Muscles
CARNIVORE: Temporalis
HERBIVORE: Masseter and pterygoids
OMNIVORE: Temporalis
HUMAN: Masseter and pterygoids
Mouth Opening vs. Head Size
CARNIVORE: Large
HERBIVORE: Small
OMNIVORE: Large
HUMAN: Small
Teeth: Incisors
CARNIVORE: Short and pointed
HERBIVORE: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
OMNIVORE: Short and pointed
HUMAN: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
Teeth: Canines
CARNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HERBIVORE: Dull and short or long (for defense), or none
OMNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HUMAN: Short and blunted
Teeth: Molars
CARNIVORE: Sharp, jagged and blade shaped
HERBIVORE: Flattened with cusps vs complex surface
OMNIVORE: Sharp blades and/or flattened
HUMAN: Flattened with nodular cusps
Chewing
CARNIVORE: None; swallows food whole
HERBIVORE: Extensive chewing necessary
OMNIVORE: Swallows food whole and/or simple crushing
HUMAN: Extensive chewing necessary
Saliva
CARNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HERBIVORE: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
OMNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HUMAN: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
Stomach Type
CARNIVORE: Simple
HERBIVORE: Simple or multiple chambers
OMNIVORE: Simple
HUMAN: Simple
Stomach Acidity
CARNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HERBIVORE: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
OMNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HUMAN: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
Stomach Capacity
CARNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HERBIVORE: Less than 30% of total volume of digestive tract
OMNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HUMAN: 21% to 27% of total volume of digestive tract
Length of Small Intestine
CARNIVORE: 3 to 6 times body length
HERBIVORE: 10 to more than 12 times body length
OMNIVORE: 4 to 6 times body length
HUMAN: 10 to 11 times body length
Colon
CARNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HERBIVORE: Long, complex; may be sacculated
OMNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HUMAN: Long, sacculated
Liver
CARNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HERBIVORE: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
OMNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HUMAN: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
Kidney
CARNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HERBIVORE: Moderately concentrated urine
OMNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HUMAN: Moderately concentrated urine
Nails
CARNIVORE: Sharp claws
HERBIVORE: Flattened nails or blunt hooves
OMNIVORE: Sharp claws
HUMAN: Flattened nails
Maybe this site will help open everyone’s spirit and help us feel like we can make a difference in this troubled world:
http://www.pachamama.org/content/view/2/4/
The Pachamam Alliance has conducted symposiums all over the country as part of their education and awareness campaign, titled “Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream”. I highly recommend attending one of their symposiums if you can find one in your area.
For more info go to:
http://www.awakeningthedreamer.org/
Here is a quote from the site that explains what the symposium is about:
“The Symposium explores the link between three of humanity’s most critical concerns: environmental sustainability, social justice and spiritual fulfillment. Using video clips from some of the world’s most respected thinkers, along with inspiring short films, leading edge information and dynamic group interactions, the Symposium allows participants to gain a new insight into the very nature of our time, and the opportunity we have to shape and impact the direction of our world with our everyday choices and action.
The aim of the Symposium is not merely to learn more about the world, but to grapple and come to grips with the very assumptions that underlie the way we ourselves see the world and our place in it, and with what each of us can do - both individually and cooperatively - to move the world in this new direction.
If you are ready to be disturbed, inspired and moved to action, if you are ready to be introduced to a thriving community of like-hearted, deeply committed cohorts who are actively engaged in awakening from and changing the dream of our modern industrial culture, we invite you to come to the next Symposium. ”
If this really inspires you, you can also look into hosting a symposium in your area or even get training as a facilitator of a symposium.
If we cannot count on government and commercial institutions to come up with a solution. We must start at home and in our own communities. It it all we have.
BTW, the ‘hunter tradition’ is also a cultural myth.
The proof is simple and it goes something like this:
Q. When did the rabbit living on natural forage decide to forgo its natural diet of grass and leaves and take up eating mice instead?
A. It never did.
And that answer is the same for humans. Humans did not naturally depart from their ecological diet. Dietary satisfaction was EXTREMELY easy for early humans. On the other hand, humans clearly did develop very advanced civilizations prior to becoming meat-eaters and those civilizations were advanced enough to engage in all sorts of experimental programs including investigations into social engineering. In the case of meat-eating, this was introduced as part of a program to create violence-enabled and controllable (naturally disconnected) humans.
And, this process is continuous to this day. The same sort of artificially scripted trauma-based programming is being used in Uganda and elsewhere on children to induce them to commit murder and to desensitize them to the affects of their activities.
Wake up people, because the continuation of this myth based (meat-eating) dominator culture is ultimately the death and destruction of everyone. And the unnecessary suffering (and it is entirely unnecessary) occurring around the planet each day is much worse than any hell you have ever conceived.
We don’t need to ‘awaken the dreamer’! We need to exit the dream state and enter the reality of ecological truth.
Humans are herbivore. Start there. And, the final destruction of the planet’s remaining biospheres will be averted. And it really is that simple. This problem-ridden society can only exist by much orchestrated effort to keep it confused and problem ridden.
The solutions come about by working in accord with ones own nature… and the key to it is not airy fairy. It is simple, easily stated, fact based, verifiable and mandatory for everyone. And, it is also quite easy for honest individuals to understand.
You want peace? A world in harmony? The end of environmental decline? Then eat accordingly. The fact that diet is essential to peace and harmony will not change. And, it has been uttered by many famous people down through the ages including Tolstoy, etc.
Don’t you think it is finally time to stop the high-energy vain strokings and just do it?!
Get real: http://allinharmony.com
No meetings, no groups, just fact-based understanding that awakens you to your power to live fully and connect to and support all life.
Munch1,
I agree with most of your herbivore diatribe. You speak of facts but are not apparently aware of the carrion aspect of mammals of our linage.
We have a history too, as even some primates do, of eating opportunistic meat when it is available. I still agree with your premise that a switch to a vegan lifestyle is a win-win for us all. (Just don’t tell the neocon ranchers that!)
But how many humans on this small blue ball is enough? Eight Billion? Ten Billion? Twenty?
I fear that you were somehow absent the month the Yeast-in-the-sealed-bottle experiment was conducted in grade-school biology class.
Do you even know what I’m talking about? In all closed systems (and the Earth is one) there reaches a point where the activities of a colony of organisms will outstrip it’s resources if it cannot control it’s numbers. I submit we are already past that point, and I offer the melting of the poles due to CO2 and other greenhouse gasses as proof.
You cannot keep doubling the population of Earth (or a sealed bottle) and not die in your own waste products.
I fear you are, like most Americans are, in a hapless state of denial.
I think becoming a vegan or avoiding having too many babies are both real solutions. How do we inspire most cultures or peoples to move in this direction? We can’t just expect everyone to suddenly go against their culture or their tradition. It can help, but not by itself. It takes time for cultures to change. In the meantime there seems to be other ways that might be easier for people to embrace. Why not give it a try? Check out the sites I gave. I checked out yours. Keep working towards a vegan lifestyle and lowering the population, but also work on the other stuff too. I think overall you may get better results. Don’t be too quick to dismiss other people’s efforts, no matter how “airy fairy” it may seem to you. You both made good points, and I think I made good points too. The one thing that doesn’t seem to help is the on-going diatribe that ends up in endless argementive debating. In the case of this forum I think it causes many people to shut down and no longer listen. I’m still here, but it feels kind of lonely.
pacplyer,
Thanks for bringing up a counterpoint to munch1: he/she posted a lot, and at this particular time I won’t be able to dedicate the time required to structure an appropriate response, but despite his/her voluminous fact lists, I staunchly disagree with the characterization of humans as strict- or obligate-herbivores. Alas, as you pointed out as well, that is hardly the point here: eating meat is something we should stop doing.
For anyone still curious (and that means you, Munch1, because I’d really like to chat with you about this) I’m bookmarking this article and will have a more fleshed-out (please pardon the pun, I’m known for bad ones) response in a day or two when the rest of my life settles down.
*Munch1 (and other’s contributing to him/her)
The issue is not whether the rainforest is desiccating due to our dependence on animals as a food source. The rainforest is being depleted to improve profit margins of established economies who fill their stomachs with our approval through unsafe forms of energy. It’s this form of consumption which we need to be addressing as critical thinkers (although, I admit I have serious concern for the way we shape our diets and how this correlates to a loss or gain of energy).
A brazilian economy is not unlike our own. There are good reasons for this. The most important one is we created it. Some say it is from our involvement to train and supply the paramilitary forces of the 60’s (not too unlike our current training with Iraq), using the CIA to navigate against local resistances by issuing them as communistic… blah, blah, blah. This situation among others are all atrocities we’ve, “our gov’t: the corporate one”, committed in the united states to try and expand economic interests in this country (as well as any other we come into contact with).
Brazil knelt as one of the laboratories in developing the free market society. A free market society is an unfettered mobility for those who have the means to capitalize on the resources indigenous to the society. Someone mentioned before about holding sanctions on this matter. That simply is not possible in the free market world. Those forests sit as investments only. Until protecting them becomes more profitable than cutting them down there is no need to regard the issue.
I want to be able to say that stopping our carnivorous behavior will stop our immediate energy problems. But it is simply not so. If we eat flowers or flounders, its of no concern to this issue.
The only way to repair these devastations is to change our economy. Notice I don’t say the government. Anyone who is in touch with this situation knows the government serves to protect the free market interests, not to recreate or change the current one.
I can only propose the exchange of helpful information to economic plans which do not promote or abide by “the bottom line” of business. Business, as Hawken’s suggested, must redefine itself. People, as Quinn suggested, must become visionaries once more. A “Land Ethic” must replace “the business ethic” for any hope to the future. Go local in every way possible and react against the those who are holding the axe at our backs, in the name of corporate profit.
-my info is gathered from reading with Chomsky, Herman, Klein, Leopold, and others I can’t recall at this time
The above comment makes this excellent point:
“The only way to repair these devastations is to change our economy. Notice I don’t say the government. Anyone who is in touch with this situation knows the government serves to protect the free market interests, not to recreate or change the current one.”
But misses in every other regard.
Energy itself is ruled by corporate centralization dogmas. The key to better energy paradigms like healthier diets is decentralization and sustainability.
Finally, a note about “free market”. Markets are not free and not open. They are tightly controlled by international military/corporate interests and no one plays unless they play by the rules dictated by the world’s fully incorporated elite and for the tightening of their control.
note* You may need to consult other sources.
(Chomsky for instance is not always reliable: While publicly cultivating an anti-government, anti-CIA persona, he actually provides protection for many of their most outrageous activities including false flag terrorist operations such as 9/11).
Please forgive, this point is also excellent:
“Go local in every way possible and react against the those who are holding the axe at our backs, in the name of corporate profit.”
… though presently largely undoable and generally and violently opposed by interlocked interests including the active ‘protection’ services of the FBI:
Even a business as low key and healthy as vegan snack carts were black balled by cities and county agencies around Silicon Valley (where we were even told that there was concern because our carts might hurt the profitability of Starbucks). Furthermore, if the FBI requests assistance to prevent alternative businesses from operating, few if any will say ‘no’… the cost to ones own hide being too high.
I am an entrepreneur and I have developed numerous alternative business concepts and plans and I also have first-hand knowledge of the corrupt tactics used by FBI, local police, sheriff’s offices (and these include outrageous slander campaigns) and the reality of less than ethical community members who participate in their low intensity warfare on progressives.
Low intensity war is being practiced in communities all over the globe and in the US, is used to fleece ‘undesirables’ (non-military/corporate drones) of their properties (including intellectual properties), right to life, and their communities of the right to realize healthy and even life-saving benefit from their endeavors.
Overpopulation and Environmental Decline
Then as now:
What factors contributed to the logging of the redwood forests of California? the eradication of the buffalo herds of the American plains? the desertification of the American Southwest?
Indigenous peoples did not overpopulate in California, on the plains nor even in the Southwest. Quite the contrary though they did live in thousands of independent communities.
If one wishes to understand the factors involved, we may also look at another American empire, the Incan. The Inca elite had rivers dammed throughout South America and held many people captive and subservient to their desire for total dominance over human lives.
When the Spaniards replaced them, they did NOT see fit to free the people nor allow the rivers to flow undirected to the plains. Today as in the times of the Incas, much of Argentina (a vast alluvial plain by natural developments) is a wasteland.
All dominator cultures down through the ages have devastated environments and genocided other human settlements. This continues today. The unstated but actual reasons remain the same and this situation will ONLY change when everyone realizes that we are NOT struggling because of ‘TRADITION’ or Malthusian ‘principles’ but rather with an artificially scripted gestalt that was designed to engender a culture of violence for the production of defenders and warriors for a ‘temple’ elite.
This artificial culture also perpetuates itself with every form of social control and deception it can devise, advertisements being just one of them. Think. Where was McDonalds 50 years ago? Is this one of the ‘traditions’ that folks may find difficult to forgo? What is difficult today will only become less possible tomorrow.
One hundred years ago there were spies and such operating even amongst the privileged elite. Today, we can add electronic surveillance, psychotronics and any number of highly sophisticated stalking activities to the list of weapons wielded by our gendarmerie and social engineers.
Our entire elite ‘temple’ culture is built upon some pretty amazing fallacies, amazing in their audacity and also amazing in that few have perceived how absurd they are and how absolute the power they wield in defining the conditions of life on earth is.
Humans are like all creatures, ecologically defined.
Think of the problem of the two bears. One is a sophisticated bear whose birth was heralded by his future trainers and who received much attention, coaching and disciplinary actions to get him to the place of accomplishment he now holds as chief performing bear in the circus.
The other bear has recently wandered into the circus tent bewildered and hungry having lost his home to clear-cutting activities and ‘controlled’ wildfires. One bear is fed and comfortable, so to speak. The other is frightened and in a state of desperation. When he sees the circus performer, he tries to ask him where to get food. But the circus bear does not know his language nor understand his state of being hungry.
And, when the desperate bear sees the close relationship of the circus performer and his handlers, he is aghast; how could this bear behave so with those who are responsible for felling all the trees, genociding all the wildlife and destroying the miraculous habitats that can never be returned?
And the circus bear says, you really should learn some discipline. I wonder if it is possible. There is room for advanced creatures but the rest are really unnecessary, why should anyone be concerned about them?
Supremacism and Genocide… the actual (and ecologically errant) underpinnings of Euro/US/Global corporate culture.
Still think meat is not THE environmental problem?
Read the Common Drreams article quoted below http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1018-31.htm:
“Until 1990 Brazil produced only enough beef to feed itself. Since then its cattle herd has grown by some 50 million, and the country has become, according to some estimates, the world’s biggest exporter: it now sells 1.9m tons a year. The United Kingdom is its fourth-largest customer, after Russia, Egypt and Chile. One region is responsible for 80% of the growth in Brazilian beef production. It’s the Amazon.
The past three years have been the most destructive in the Brazilian Amazon’s history. In 2004 26,000 sq. km of rainforest were burned: the second-highest rate on record. This year could be worse. And most of it is driven by cattle ranching.
According to the Center for International Forestry Research, cattle pasture accounts for six times more cleared land in the Amazon than crop land: even the notorious soya farmers, who have plowed some 5m hectares of former rainforest, cover just one-tenth of the ground taken by the beef producers.”
Also, most soy is grown for feed not direct consumption.
We have a culture of centralized economics that REQUIRES environmental devastation to perpetuate itself.
“You are no ecologist. You are not even aware of your own most fundamental ecological features.
A very primary and critical feature of human ecological design is that humans are herbivores. Without guessing the human dietary niche, it is no wonder we invent myriad ways to justify being out of synch… such as the mainstream nonsense quoted above.”
Does this mean I have to give back my degree? Seriously, you may not be an omnivore, but I am. Further, I am evolutionarily descended from a whole line of omnivores. You want to eat nothing but vegetables? Fine. I’ll continue to eat my current diet.
You need to understand that your entire diatribe is based essentially, on the opinion of one of two people, who’s ideas are not just non-mainstream, they are demonstrably wrong. Comparative anatomy is a pretty tricky thing.
Pacplyer:
Sorry about the misunderstanding. You’re right. Most of my research concerns deforestation in the neotropics, but I am certainly aware of the situation in the pacific islands as well. I’m not sure S.S. Earth is actually sinking (understanding, of course that in the long term Earth, like everything else, will eventually be gone), but it’s certainly becoming a more uncomfortable place for an increasingly large number of people. Can we strain the system bad enough to crash it? Yes. Are we? Don’t know — and would prefer not to find out. This is why I monitor my personal carbon budget very closely. I might also add that I eat me twice a week and drive an SUV, and my annual CO2 output is still about 89% of the US individual average.
I work with and have spent considerable time among the people who live and work in the South American forests. Even though I disagree with what they are doing, they are still humans and worthy of dignified treatment. Someone suggested that they be murdered like animals (not you, I understand, but someone). Suggesting that any group of people should be subjected to this kind of treatment is hideous and makes me a bit tetchy.
“We have a culture of centralized economics that REQUIRES environmental devastation to perpetuate itself.”
In a sense, every culture requires environmental degradation/devastation. Thermodynamics cannot be escaped. The old joke says that three laws of TD mean “you can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t get out of the game.” Under those conditions, the only smart strategy is to lose as slowly as you can. This is what we need to learn to do, without emotional diatribes, without hand waving, and without a lot of drama. Just solve the damned problem.
“Does this mean I have to give back my degree? Seriously, you may not be an omnivore, but I am.”
I think you should dispense with this myth and also the incorrect use of the term “omnivore”. Omnivore is a biological classification, not a cultural one. You are descended from human herbivores, some of which were also apparently confused about their own ecological design. Here’s an excellent and short comic video by Piraro that will clarify this for you (http://youtube.com/watch?v=05zhL1YUd8Q).
As for giving back your degree, I wouldn’t waste any more time than you already have. Read Dr. Mills Comparative Anatomy of Eating chart above. If you can not understand it, try suing the university that took your money. That would make a better point.
“In a sense, every culture requires environmental degradation/devastation.”
This is not factual. Culture BTW, is not unique to humans. Cultures have existed that did not require environmental decline.
The reason that modern humans have trouble with this is that they have been raised inside an ecologically unworkable system where ALL processes violate natural laws as much as is technologically possible at the time. Our culture is built upon the absurd premise that to be enlightened is to be as far from the state of the “natural savage” as possible.
You eat meat, but your natural savage does not. You prefer same gender sex but your natural savage does not. The focus of this culture is to break with rather than indicate and facilitate natural cooperation (attunement).
Nature is a highly fecund system. The system works not by artificially scripted ‘work’ but rather by natural engagement that enlivens each element and draws from it what is required for the functioning of the whole. Humans are designed to fit within this natural fecundity.
These truths were known in early civilizations. These truths were withheld from those selected for specialized inculcation so that individuals capable of unnatural functions (murder, etc,) could be created and controlled.
This global culture of elite corporate domination by the use of disinformation scripts (deception, denial and secrecy) and genocide arises from the ancient creation of artificially scripted sub-cultures to produce a sub ‘warrior class’.
This warrior class ultimately seized power over ten thousand years ago and it is the artificial culture of the warrior class in which those committing genocide and environmental destruction have been raised.
For this reason, it is hard for you to accept that the facts don’t lie. Everyone wants to believe that that to which they have become accustomed has some basis in reality… but there is none… not if you want this living reality to continue.
Humans like squirrels and spiders, microbes and ants have an ecological role. And, they are not only not fulfilling it, they have not even guessed what it is. And don’t jump to that other conclusion… that natural man is a dolt that has no technological capability. But, do jump to the conclusion that natural technologies are not the same as those developed at Fort Detrick or by weapons manufacturers.
“Energy itself is ruled by corporate centralization dogmas. The key to better energy paradigms like healthier diets is decentralization and sustainability.”
Energy is capable of control through local manufacturers/distributors at this very moment. As a social entrepreneur, I’m willing to make the investment in a company who produces products of sustainable energy. But the products must adhere to a design limited or unique to the community in which they are planted. I do not want a hyrdro-turbine in the current strong waters of the lake I live with, but I’m ready to bring options of wave energy to replace the existing system of navigational buoys. And this is really what the local economies need to make happen (regardless of whether the CIA, FBI, or corporate para troop wants otherwise). If this REPLACEABILITY ignites there’s no reason to even have a 100% turnover of these markets. 60% or 40% would be enough to combat the corporate marketplace as long as the business working within the local 60-40 margins are adhering to direct purchases from regional manufacturer’s, or have in wait a plan to implement an industrial field of manufacturing to meet the needs of their business’s and local economies.
Now, I understand this is asking for more than human nature at this meat-driven moment is allowing to happen. Building a local living economy to replace a globally dependent one asks for people to pay attention to what surrounds them. I also understand the system as it plays out day to day asks for people to be distracted in every given moment as to not allow attention to what’s around them unless this attention is directed to the systems characteristics. Though, I’m trying offer solutions to manage the problems we’re all obsessed in discussing and wanting to fix. If there’s deforestation in the backyard of your property it ought to serve an immediate purpose of craft or utility, where afterward the energy spent to deforest is replenished (in the created crafts output, or contribution to another more purposeful project). (In this situation I can never see the purpose of deforesting a piece of land in order to have a better view of something beyond the forests density. This kind of practice is absurd, and deserves a mark of shame. If, and when, the act would occur, its wastefulness shall be punished by a fine high enough to cover the cost of energy potentially created out of the life lost. This practice is not unreal, as in Tucson citations are drawn up in the act of wasted water. These citations are easily enforced when a community is bound to the energy.)
I suggest using propaganda. A ‘rational-propaganda’ campaign (i.e. to rebuilding a positive denotation to the word), a term coined by Thomas Huxley, can allow the masses to begin a building block or weapon against the ‘Flak’, ‘irrational-propaganda’. It is important to begin by bringing the corporate brand-being to life somewhere to publicly stone it. In the best case a complete banishment/exile of these corporate identities, this can assure some kind of cultural identity will have to follow, and at this point I see a local free press propagating REPLACEABILITY with a local living economy (and I see it’s idealism, but it is possible. I.e., something has to happen…). People first need to see and act on taking the better option for themselves as with those around them, but you cannot react aggressive to someone’s character without them repelling. So reactionary advances in information will only prolong destructive establishments.
I don’t want to discredit anyone here (though Munch1’s “But misses in every other regard.” is asking for it), but a constructive discourse needs to be built beyond the referencing of info. We, as responsible individuals must DO something or try to before “they” throw the ‘VIOLENT RADICALIZATION & HOMEGROWN TERRORISM” onto our wrists. Since, realistically, I qualify to be it’s example.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?ref=science
*Above: “Rethinking the Meat Guzzler”. An article for Munch1, published in nytimes today
“I don’t want to discredit anyone here (though Munch1’s “But misses in every other regard.” is asking for it)…”
Actually, it was ‘not asking’. It was informing.
“…but a constructive discourse needs to be built beyond the referencing of info.”
Hmmm… and what is this? A attempt to discredit content valid and rich discussion? You are suggesting we have content-free discussions?
On another point, usury concepts for assigning valuations are at least a major part of the reason environmental destructions of all kinds are considered ‘responsible’.
But, I do like the manner in which you describe how to keep solutions relevant to local constraints and potentials. That at least gets us a little closer to at least recognizing that ‘place’ (ecology and its local expression) should be considered.
But, what I really want to share are a couple of extreme data points.
1) The real, everyday affects of widespread ignorance:
http://meat.org
2) And a recipe that could end violence.
Ingredients
Morningstar Vegan Grillers
Nayonaise
Organic Tomato (sliced)
Romaine Lettuce (coarse shredded)
Fresh Sourdough Bread or Foccacia
Follow Your Heart Cheddar Cheese (small amount sliced)
Small Onion (sliced)
Canola Oil
Salt and Pepper
Utensils
Knife for slicing
Cutting board
10 inch frying pan with lid
Spatula
Pour small amount of canola oil into frying pan and add onion.
Cook onion on medium heat until starting to brown. Add two vegan grillers and LIGHTLY sprinkle with salt and pepper. Increase heat to medium high.
Partially cover pan while frying. Allow grillers to cook until browned on one side.
Flip grillers and partially cover pan again. Allow grillers to cook until browned again. Remove pan but leave grillers in pan.
Place cheddar slices on vegan grillers and cover pan completely.
Toast bread or foccacia. Spread one side with Nayonaise. Place one griller (with melted cheese) on the bread and put some of the fried onions on top of the griller.
Abd a slice of tomato and then lettuce.
Spread top piece of bread with Nayonaise too.
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Since 1987 I have been trying to get such recipes into mainstream hands. I have been blocked at every juncture. But, to borrow a line from Alice’s Restaurant… if every one does it, we just might…
One vegan restaurant serving the best burger …. Imagine the possibilities… and that it could mean a future; for the forests, the remaining species not yet driven to extinction, our children and theirs… a biosphere that is allowed to continue operating.
Imagine the possibilities! Now, is that not the juiciest, tastiest, best burger you have eaten?! Told ya!
Tortoise,
That article is a good beginning.
The next step is for the major science centers to publicly acknowledge that humans are herbivores.
At that point, everyone can finally realize just how senseless these destructions truly are.
Thanks.
Munch1,
I believe we are herbivores. Though, in the situation of Inuits or cultures absolutely dependent on meat as the only source of their diet, is it for us to suggest their way of life is wrong? I can’t answer this definitively.
I’d be happy with my local community realizing herbivorous consumption as a concept. Or, the agricultural proprietor’s taking a stand to only create herbivorous crop cycles, forcing out grain fed cattle plantations (which, where I’m from saw sky rocketing profits with corn). If you know of communities acting upon these notions link it up for me.
Product links for those who are unfamiliar with the ingredients for BEST BURGER recipe above:
Nayonaise: http://www.nasoya.com/nasoya/nayonaise_original.html
(this is the BEST!) find at Wholefoods and other places.
Vegan Grillers: http://www.seeveggiesdifferently.com/product_detail.aspx?family=363&id=315 find this product at Trader Joe’s in California.
Follow Your Heart cheeses: http://www.followyourheart.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=fyh&Category_Code=GC can be found at Wholefoods and many other natural foods stores.
Vary this recipe with Tofurky’s Beerbrats (forget the others, this is the one!)http://www.followyourheart.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=fyh&Category_Code=GC but we’ll do the complete package for this sausage later:)
Inuit? Start with the big things that are urgent (don’t worry about those who may not yet be able to change easily, the 99% can make the change today and that alone can save billions of lives and our ecosphere). Inuit should be offered, like everyone, the info that they are not living according to their anatomical requirements and that is the reason that they have such outrageously high incidences of osteoporosis, heart disease, etc.
Something tells me that when better options are available (and better understanding not withheld), the Inuit, whose ancestors did not originate in their present environment, may consider many more locally grown greenhouse products.
What are the health costs to human herbivores who consume dairy (vegetarianism is not an environmental or healthy option)?
Here’s a lengthy excerpt from http://notmilk.com/deb/092098.html:
By Robert Cohen Executive Director
CALCIUM AND BONE DISEASE
Important UPDATE 1/2001:
A study published in the January, 2001 edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition examined the diets of 1,035 women, particularly focusing on the protein intake from animal and vegetable products. Deborah Sellmeyer, M.D., found:
ANIMAL PROTEIN INCREASES BONE LOSS
In her study, women with a high animal-to-vegetable protein ratio experienced an increased rate of femoral neck bone loss. A high animal-to-vegetable protein ratio was also associated with an increased risk of hip fracture.
WHY DOES ANIMAL PROTEIN CAUSE BONE LOSS?
I spoke with Dr. Sellmeyer, and here is her explaination:
“Sulphur-containing amino acids in protein-containing foods are metabolized to sulfuric acid. Animal foods provide predominantly acid precursors. Acidosis stimulates osteoclastic activity and inhibits osteoblast activity.”
MEAT EATERS HAVE MORE HIP FRACTURES
Sellmeyer’s remarkable publication reveals:
“Women with high animal-to-vegetable protein rations were heavier and had higher intake of total protein. These women had a significantly increased rate of bone loss than those who ate just vegetable protein. Women consuming higher rates of animal protein had higher rates of bone loss and hip fracture by a factor of four times.”
Milk has been called “liquid meat.” The average American eats five ounces of animal protein each day in the form of red meat and chicken. At the same time, the average American consumes nearly six times that amount (29.2 ounces) per day of milk and dairy products.
How ironic it is that the dairy industry continues to promote the cause of bone disease as the cure.
Deborah Sellmeyer’s brilliant work is supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Sellmeyer may be reached by EMAIL: dsellmeyer@psg.ucsf.edu
Original column:
Human breast milk is Mother Nature’s PERFECT FORMULA for baby humans. Even dairy industry scientists would not be foolish enough to debate this UNIVERSALLY ACCEPTED FACT. In her wisdom, Mother Nature included 33 milligrams of calcium in every 100 grams, or 3 1/2-ounce portion of human breast milk.
Adults do not drink human breast milk. At the end of this column is a list of calcium values in the foods we eat. Each food is compared to human breast milk as the standard. You might be surprised to learn how many foods naturally contain an abundance of calcium. One must wonder why Asians traditionally did not get bone-crippling osteoporosis…that is, until they adopted the “American Diet,” a diet of milk and dairy products.
Please go to http://notmilk.com/deb/092098.html. to read the full article.