OMNI
VEGETARIAN ACTION
NEWSLETTER #25, January 13, 2016.
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice,
and Ecology.
(#4
Feb. 12, 2014; #5 March 12, 2014; #6 April 9, 2014; #7 May 14, 2014; #8, June
11, 2014; #9 July 9, 2014; #10, August 11, 2014; #11 September 10, 2014; #12
October 8, 2014; #13, November 12, 2014; #14, December 10, 2014; #15, January
14, 2015; #16, Feb. 11, 2015; #17, March 11, 2015; #18, April 8, 2015; #19,
June 10, 2015; #20, August 12, 2015; #21, September 9, 2015; #22, Oct. 14, 2015;
Dec. 9, 2015). Thank you Marc.
190331 pageviews - 1543 posts, as of Nov
6, 2015
Veggie and Vegan Potluck
Wed - 6:00 pm @ OMNI
A food-friendly event with delicious dishes every second
Wednesday.. We want to meet you, at a
place and time where you can talk with others not only about recipes, nutrition,
and health, but about the meat industry monopoly, care for other species, for
the environment, and the climate.
Hope to see you!
Wednesday, January 13, members
of OMNI350 and CCL are invited to
attend our potluck and enjoy vegetarian cuisine and consider our philosophy,
and we are invited to attend their meeting following, which concentrates on the
fee-dividend approach to reducing carbon in our atmosphere. This newsletter especially focuses on the significant connections of vegetarianism/veganism,
nutrition, animal rights, and climate change.
As in all of OMNI’s activities, we connect the dots.
Vegetarian Potluck starts at 6, and CCL at
7. Make a special sign or announcement
if your dish is vegan. If you wish, provide your recipe, or at
least its name and main ingredients.
Notice
how Vegetarian Action is increasingly
becoming interactive. Send your comment.
Contents Vegetarian Action #25, January 13, 2016
Nutrition and
Health
Zoe’s Kitchen,
New Fayetteville Restaurant
Michael Pollan’s
Book and Film, In Defense of Food
In Defense of Food, Google Search
The Herb Quarterly
Animal Rights
and Protection
VegNews and Dick’s
Letter
Dick: PBS, “Animal Odd Couples”
Morgan
MacDonald, Vegan Ethics
Deborah Bird,
Stop the Killing
Meat, CO2, Climate
Monbiot, Eating
Certain Meats Is About the Worst Thing You Can Do to the
Planet
Anderson, Meat’s
Devastating Environmental Effects
Halverson,
Paris Climate Summit and US Exceptionalism and Double Standard
Population Growth
OMNI’s Newsletters
Mogelgaard, Population Action International
NUTRITION AND
HEALTH
“Number of
chemicals the World Health Organization has evaluated for their carcinogenic
potential since 1971: 985. Number it has
found ‘probably not’ carcinogenic: 1.” “Harper’s
Index.” Harper’s Magazine (Jan. 2016), p. 9.
Zoe’s Kitchen
This new
restaurant near the anticipated Whole Foods offers fresh veggies, tasty
dressings, and reasonable prices. I had
Quinoa Salad for $7, and my friend a veggie pizza with side salad for
$8.50. ZK has several other veggie
salads, Veggie Kabobs, and veggie sides.
The menu is color coded for veg, vegan, and gluten-free. Tell the manager and all the employees about
OMNI’s Vegetarian Potluck.
Mother
Nature News, DECEMBER
31, 2015
Michael Pollan brings
'In Defense of Food' to PBS. The best-selling book is now a documentary
airing Dec. 30. By: Robin
Shreeves
December 29, 2015, 8:42 a.m.
After reading Michael
Pollan's groundbreaking book "The Omnivore's Dilemma," many people
asked the food activist what they should eat. He answered everyone at once with
his 2008 book "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto."
The book spent six weeks at the top of the New
York Times bestseller list, and his answer can be summed up in seven words:
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Now, "In Defense of Food" has been
turned into a documentary that "debunks the daily media barrage of
conflicting claims about nutrition." In the film, Pollan travels around
the world visiting supermarket aisles while continuing to answer the question,
"What should I eat to be healthy?"
The timing of this
documentary film is beneficial. Many of us have spent the holidays eating a whole lot of food and
chances are much of it was not plant-based. It will be a good reminder to
readjust our eating habits for the new year.
"In Defense of
Food" premiered on PBS Dec. 30.
Related on MNN:
Related topics: Books, Health & Well Being, Healthy
Eating, Michael Pollan, TV
Shows
Michael Pollan’s
Book In Defense of Food Now a Film on
PBS, Google Search, Dec. 31, 2015
In Defense of Food. Trailer. 1:35Aired:
11/22/15Rating: NR. Journalist Michael Pollan distills a career's worth of
reporting into a prescription for reversing the ...
Forget
Weight Watchers, Paleo, and Dry January: Let Michael Pollan and 'Bon Appetit'
Preach the Virtues of Eating ...The
Atlantic - 20 hours agoA new PBS documentary and Bon
Appetit's January issue espouse a radically moderate ...
www.kikim.com/xml/projects.php?projectId=88
December 15, 2015 -- Kikim Media is proud to announce that our
film In Defense of Food, based on the book by Michael Pollan, will premiere on PBS December ...
https://www.facebook.com/indefenseoffoodthemovie/
A new PBS documentary and Bon Appetit's January issue espouse a
radically moderate approach to ... Wednesday's TV Highlights: 'In Defense of Food' on PBS.
www.latimes.com/.../la-et-st-wednesday-s-tv-highlight...
Los Angeles Times
1 day ago - Nutritional Expert and
best-selling author Michael Pollan explores what to eat and what to avoid in
the new special "In Defense of Food" on ...
pbsinternational.org/programs/in-defense-of-food/
Based on Michael Pollan's best-selling book, In Defense of Food shows how a combination of uncertain and incomplete
science, politicians, and clever ...
www.herbquarterly.com/
In Our Store Direct from the Oregon Coast! Direct-from-the-farm
price!
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To Download HQ Media Kit with current
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Start your subscription to The Herb
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Reviled by some as a blight to the
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ANIMAL RIGHTS
AND PROTECTION
I am enjoying
my new subscription to VegNews, a bimonthly
for only $20 a year reporting nutrition and health vegan news “newsfoodplanettravelbuzz.” Here’s its home page:
http://vegnews.com/
VegNews is an
award-winning vegan magazine and website packed with recipes, travel, news,
food, reviews, and so much more.
Results from
vegnews.com:
November+
December 2015. http://vegnews.com/pages/page.do?pageId=3
National Pizza
Chain Now ...
National Pizza
Chain Now Offers Vegan Cheese. By Veronica ...
Subscribe http://vegnews.com/
VegNews Guide
to Vegan Gingerbread. Christmas is the ...
Vegan +
Vegetarian Jobs
Vegan Grill
Team Member / Los Angeles, CA ... Macro ...
Here’s some
contents from the Jan/Feb 2016 number:
The Politics of
Cheese, Veganism Saved My Life (five people whose plant-based diets improved
their health), The 300-Pound Vegan (the best protein comes from plants). Main focus on food, nutrition, and health but
its central principle—avoiding all animal products—includes compassion for
animals and for the planet’s atmosphere and soil. For example, see p. 20 on the men’s vegan
boutique in Brooklyn, “Brave GentleMan”; the vegan handbag company, Freedom of
Animals; and Whole Foods Market dropping rabbit meat.
Letter to VegNews’ “Your Say”
12-26-15
Although I am
glad to be a new subscriber to VegNews, but
your contents are disappointingly almost exclusively about nutrition and
health. That is why I dropped my
subscription to Vegetarian Times. In
your Nov.-Dec. number you did report briefly on favorite animal organizations
and the ethics of the chocolate industry, but the Jan.-Feb. 2016 number offers
even less. In VegNews I hoped to contact the full range of vegetarianism—from
nutrition and health, the harms of industrial food industry, the rights of and
protection of animals, to a sustainable, plant (and solar, wind)-based
civilization.
Dick Bennett
PBS, Nature, “Animal Odd Couples” (1-6-16)
Friendships
between a dog and a deer, duck and turtle, horse and goat and more. Animals have complex emotions and experience
not only individual but also group relationships that are like human, just less
complex. Large implications: all relationships are possible, and we should
not torture or kill animals.
“Meet the Odd
Couples” http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/animal-odd-couples-meet-the-odd-couples/8025/
Essay on Vegan
Ethics forwarded by Morgan MacDonald
Here's something to share with people who think "helping
people" takes priority over helping animals by not eating them:
http://kirschnerskorner.com/2012/06/28/why-dont-vegans-care-about-people/comment-page-1/
For a Peaceful
World: Stop Killing Animals by Deborah
Bird
Veggieness is
the single most important thing anyone can do to change the world.
Supporting any kind of violence, increases the vortex of violence from which
all violence receives its food. I once listened to an extremely scholarly
lecture given by a Hare Krishna Sanyasi, who a Harvard
educated linguist. He spoke in a scholarly manner, which was well
documented about how cow slaughter causes war. It was a long time ago, so
I can't remember the details. One of the primary examples he use is
India. The Hindu population of India is vegetarian. As a result, I
believe he said that India has never instigated a war. His name is
Hrydyannada; his website is: http://www.hdgoswami.com/. I am sure he would love it if
you contacted him and explained your interest. He will be able to explain
to you the vast and imposing non-physical impacts of people becoming vegetarians.
Deborah Bird 12-14-15 [On the importance of understanding the full,
numerous contexts of violence in US domestic and foreign policies and
practices, see my newsletters on Violence.
Here is the most recent: http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2015/12/us-violence-newsletter-10-dec-20-2015.html
--Dick]
VEGETARIANISM
AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Your Festive Meal Could Be More Damaging Than a Long-Haul Flight by George Monbiot, The Guardian, Dec. 25, 2015: One kilo of protein from either beef or lamb reared on a British hill farm causes more greenhouse gas emissions than a passenger flying from London to New York. We miscalculate environmental risk; eating certain meats is about the worst thing you can do to the planet.
Read the Article
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34177-your-festive-meal-could-be-more-damaging-than-a-long-haul-flightChromeHTML/Shell/Open/Command
US gives meat producers a pass on
climate change emissions
By Nathan Halverson / December 22, 2015
[From the arrogance
of US exceptionalism and power comes double standards and the refusal to carry
out our side of the emissions agreement while holding others accountable. –Dick]
If the Paris climate pact is going to succeed at staving off climate
change disaster, the 195 participating countries will need to achieve a
difficult feat – trust.
Yet the U.S. government already is failing to implement its own
rules on tracking emissions. It is not collecting emission reports from one of
the country’s largest sources of greenhouse gases: meat production.
In its latest appropriations bill passed Friday, Congress
renewed a provision that prevents the Environmental Protection Agency from
requiring emission reports from livestock producers. The move came only days
after U.S. officials stressed to other governments the importance of accurate
reporting at the Paris climate negotiations.
The U.S. government collects the reports from 41 other sectors,
making the meat industry the only major source of greenhouse gases in the
country excluded from filing annual reports.
Livestock producers, which include meat and dairy farming,
account forabout 15 percent of
greenhouse gas emissions around the world. That’s more than all the world’s
exhaust-belching cars, buses, boats and trains combined.
The EPA has called the emission reports “essential in guiding the steps we
take to address the problem of climate change.”
As a result of having inadequate information on livestock
producers, the U.S. government is vastly underreporting its true greenhouse gas
emissions, according to a growing consensus of American scientists.
In 2013, a team of researchers from Harvard University, Stanford
University, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory and elsewhere worked together to collect air
samples and analyze actual emissions near large livestock operations such as
cattle feeding lots in California, Nebraska and Iowa. They found that
greenhouse gas emissions from livestock were twice as bad as what the EPA
estimated. Subsequent studies have found
similar results.
The United States is underreporting its total greenhouse gas
emissions to the United Nations by about 4 percent per year as a result of bad
livestock data – nearly equivalent to the entire emissions of Spain, according
to the 2013 study.
The EPA’s ban on collecting reports from the U.S. livestock
industry, which is the second-largest in the world behind only China, goes back
several years.
In 2008, Congress instructed the EPA to draft regulation
requiring the country’s largest greenhouse gas emitters to file annual reports.
The following year, the EPA finalized those regulations, requiring dozens of
industries – including large-scale livestock producers – to report their
emissions.
But the EPA never received a single report from meat producers.
In 2010, when the first reports were to be collected, Congress attached a
provision to the EPA’s budget. It prohibited the agency from spending money to
collect emission reports on livestock producers – specifically the greenhouse
gases emitted from some of the 335 million tons of manure produced each year.
Monitoring and curbing greenhouse gases from livestock is
considered vital to stopping global warming, according to scientists.
A recent report published in
the Environmental Law Reporter cited several studies showing that forecasted
growth in worldwide agricultural emissions alone – unless curbed – will push
global temperatures past the tipping point.
“Global demand for livestock products is projected to grow 70%,
if not double, by 2050,” wrote Debra Donahue, law professor at the University
of Wyoming College of Law. “Plainly, neither the United States nor the earth
can continue on this track, yet this is precisely our course.”
Decomposing manure is one source of livestock emissions.
Technology exists to capture the methane and turn it into electricity, although
it is rarely used in the United States. The other major source of emissions are
the cows themselves, which belch and fart methane. Scientists also have
developed methods for reducing methane emissions from the cows, such as
changing their diets. But there is little incentive for large-scale farms to
adopt these practices in the U.S.
Under current regulation, there are even disincentives. If a
livestock operator were to capture the methane, turning it into electricity or
another form of energy, it would then fall under climate change regulations. By
doing nothing and simply allowing the methane pollution to escape into the
atmosphere, livestock operators do not have to deal with the EPA greenhouse gas
rules.
Methane is 72 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it
comes to trapping heat and increasing global temperatures. But it stays in the
air for a far shorter period of time – it mostly disperses within 12
years.
Scientists say changing our food system will have a quicker
impact on stopping climate change than altering our fossil fuel habits.
But politicians and even environmental groups are afraid to talk
about it because they fear a backlash from the meat-loving public, according to a 2014 report by Chatham
House, a London-based think tank. The report found governments such
as the United States were doing little about the problem and that “recognition
of the livestock sector as a significant contributor to climate change is
markedly low.”
Sometimes, it’s even hostile. In 2013, the head of the EPA, Gina
McCarthy, testified to the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space
and Technology. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kent., wanted assurances that regulators
would not monitor livestock.
Massie: There is one other
issue that affects rural America that just has us scratching our heads. I hope
it is an urban legend. Is anybody in the EPA really looking at regulating cow
flatulence?
McCarthy: Not that I am aware
of.
Massie: (He then asks more
broadly about methane emissions from cattle.) Can you assure us today that you
are not investigating that?
McCarthy: I am not looking at
that.
Massie: Nobody in the EPA
is?
McCarthy: Not that I am aware
of.
U.S. politicians seem concerned about voter backlash if they
appear critical of U.S. eating preferences. Americans eat more meat per capita
than any other nation.
However, for meat producers, the cost to better monitor
emissions appears to be insignificant, at least according to the country’s
largest pork producer. WH Group, a Hong Kong-based company that owns about 1 in
4 American pigs, wrote an 1,100-page prospectus to investors that included a
tidbit about how it has never filed a greenhouse gas report to the EPA because
of the annual intervention by U.S. lawmakers.
Yet the company’s report said the cost to disclose emissions to
the EPA likely would be negligible to the company’s bottom line.
It is not expected that such costs would have a material adverse
effect on our hog production operations in the U.S.
Big companies like Smithfield Foods, which is owned by WH Group,
could implement monitoring technology, and it would cover much of the emissions
from U.S. livestock. The largest 2 percent of all livestock farms now produce
more than 40 percent of all animals, according to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture.
But for now, as a result of congressional action, the world is
left guessing about American cow farts, even as U.S. officials demand accuracy
from other nations. If the 194 other participants to the Paris climate pact
think that stinks, who can blame them?
What if Everyone in the
World Became a Vegetarian?
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/feed_the_world/2014/05/meat_eating_and_climate_change_vegetarians_impact_on_the_economy_antibiotics.html
Calculating the chaos and the changed climate.
Treating
yourself to vegan burgers with sweet potato and chickpeas isn't just a
delicious indulgence; it could help save the planet.The meat industry is one of the top contributors to climate change, directly and indirectly producing about 14.5 percent of the world’s anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and global meat consumption is on the rise. People generally like eating meat—when poor people start making more money, they almost invariably start buying more meat. As the population grows and eats more animal products, the consequences for climate change, pollution, and land use could be catastrophic.
Attempts to reduce meat
consumption usually focus on baby steps—Meatless Monday and “vegan before 6,” passable fake chicken, and in vitro burgers.
If the world is going to eat less meat, it’s going to have to be coaxed and
cajoled into doing it, according to conventional wisdom.
But what if the convincing
were the easy part? Suppose everyone in the world voluntarily stopped eating
meat, en masse. I know it’s not actually going to happen. But the best-case
scenario from a climate perspective would be if all 7 billion of us woke up one
day and realized that PETA was right all along. If this collective change of
spirit came to pass, like Peter Singer’s dearest fantasy come true,
what would the ramifications be?
At least one research team
has run the numbers on what global veganism would mean for the planet. In 2009
researchers from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency published their projections of the
greenhouse gas consequences if humanity came to eat less meat, no meat, or no
animal products at all. The researchers predicted that universal
veganism would reduce agriculture-related carbon emissions by 17 percent,
methane emissions by 24 percent, and nitrous oxide emissions by 21 percent by
2050. Universal vegetarianism would result in similarly impressive reductions
in greenhouse gas emissions. What’s more, the Dutch researchers found that
worldwide vegetarianism or veganism would achieve these gains at a much lower
cost than a purely energy-focused intervention involving carbon taxes and
renewable energy technology. The upshot: Universal eschewal of meat wouldn’t
single-handedly stave off global warming, but it would go a long way toward
mitigating climate change.
[Negative side-effects of
rapid decrease of carnivore diet.]
The Dutch researchers didn’t
take into account what else might happen if everyone gave up meat.
“In this scenario study we have ignored possible socio-economic implications
such as the effect of health changes on GDP and population numbers,” wrote Elke
Stehfest and her colleagues. “We have not analyzed the agro-economic
consequences of the dietary changes and its implications; such consequences
might not only involve transition costs, but also impacts on land prices. The
costs that are associated with this transition might obviously offset some of
the gains discussed here.”
People would band together to form communes, squat on the
former pasture land, and adopt a lifestyle of free love.
Indeed. If the world actually did
collectively go vegetarian or vegan over the course of a decade or
two, it’s reasonable to think the economy would tank. According to “Livestock’s
Long Shadow,” the influential 2006 U.N. report about meat’s devastating
environmental effects, livestock production accounts for 1.4 percent
of the world’s total GDP. The production and sale of animal products account
for 1.3 billion people’s jobs, and 987 million of those people are poor. If
demand for meat were to disappear overnight, those people’s livelihoods would
disappear, and they would have to find new ways of making money. Now, some of
them—like the industrial farmers who grow the corn that currently goes to feed
animals on factory farms—would be in a position to adapt by shifting to
in-demand plant-based food production. Others, namely the “huge number of
people involved in livestock for lack of an alternative, particularly in Africa
and Asia,” would probably be out of luck. (Things would be better for the
global poor involved in the livestock trade if everyone continued to consume
other animal products, such as eggs, milk, and wool, than if everyone decided
to go vegan.) As the economy adjusted to the sudden lack of demand for meat
products, we would expect to see widespread suffering and social unrest.
A second major ramification
of global vegetarianism would be expanses of new land available. Currently,
grazing land for ruminants—cows and their kin—accounts for a staggering 26 percent of the world’s ice-free land surface.
The Dutch scientists predict that 2.7 billion hectares (about 10.4 million
square miles) of that grazing land would be freed up by global vegetarianism,
along with 100 million hectares (about 386,000 square miles) of land that’s
currently used to grow crops for livestock. Not all of this land would be
suitable for humans, but surely it stands to reason that this sudden influx of
new territory would make land much cheaper on the whole.
A third major ramification of
global vegetarianism would be that the risk of antibiotic-resistant infections
would plummet. Currently, the routine use of antibiotics in animal farming to promote weight gain and prevent
illness in unsanitary conditions is a major contributor to antibiotic
resistance. Last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that at least 2
million Americans fall ill from antibiotic-resistant pathogens every year and declared that “much of antibiotic use
in animals is unnecessary and inappropriate and makes everyone less safe.” The
overprescription of antibiotics for humans plays a big role in antibiotic
resistance, but eradicating the factory farms from which many
antibiotic-resistant bacteria emerge would make it more likely that we could
continue to count on antibiotics to cure serious illnesses. (For a sense of
what a “post-antibiotics future” would look like, read Maryn McKenna’s amazing article on the topic for Medium and her story about a possible solution for chicken farming in Slate.)
So what would be the result,
in an all-vegetarian world, of the combination of widespread unemployment and
economic disruption, millions of square miles of available land, and a lowered
risk of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea?
I can only conclude that people would band together to form communes in order
to escape capitalism’s ruthlessness, squat on the former pasture land, and
adopt a lifestyle of free love.
I kid. Mostly. It’s easy to
get carried away when you’re speculating about unlikely scenarios—and sudden
intercontinental vegetarianism is very much an unlikely scenario.
But if the result of a
worldwide shift to a plant-based diet sounds like a right-winger’s worst
nightmare, it’s worth pointing out that continuing to eat as much meat as we
currently do promises to result in a left-winger’s worst nightmare: In a world
of untrammeled global warming, where disastrous weather events are routine, global conflicts will increase, only the
wealthy will thrive, and the poor will suffer.
Let’s try a middle path. We’re not all going to
become vegetarians, but most of us can stop giving our money to factory
farms—the biggest and worst offenders, from a pollution and public health
perspective. We can eat less meat than we currently do, especially meat from
methane-releasing ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats, etc.). Just because a sudden
global conversion to vegetarianism would have jarring effects doesn’t mean we
can’t gradually reduce our consumption of meat, giving the market time to
adjust. We not only can; we must. After all, with the world’s population slated
to grow to 9 billion by 2050, we’ll be needing to take some of the 25 percent
of the world’s land area back from the cows.
POPULATION
GROWTH
We must
stabilize and then reduce population if we are to stop global warming. See OMNI’s over-population newsletters—its
latest: OMNI OVER-POPULATION, GROWTH, C02 AND TEMPERATURE RISING, SPECIES
EXTINCTIONS, HUNGER, CLIMATE CHANGE NEWSLETTER #8, http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2015/11/population-choicehunger-climate.html
Contents:
Representatives of Population Action International
Mogelgaard
Hymans
Ehlers
On Condoms
Population:
An Overlooked Factor in Climate Change Solutions
Addressing global population growth can
benefit people and the climate
by Kathleen Mogelgaard
First published in
the Winter 2009 Issue of Outdoor America
A Fragile Interconnected System
I've always loved being outdoors. As a kid
growing up in rural New York New Mexico 's
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
The more I studied the more I understood that
our whole planet-like Carlsbad Caverns -is a
fragile, connected system. The quality of water in one community is affected by
agricultural practices far upstream; sulfur and nitrogen from a smokestack in
one state can travel to another and kill its trees; an innocent release of
ballast water from a ship can inadvertently introduce a species from a
different continent that will completely alter a lake's ecosystem and, by
extension, the economic foundation of surrounding towns.
Much of the destruction of the natural world
has occurred because we don't understand these intimate connections between
human and natural systems, or because we begin to understand them only after we
observe the damage of our actions. We're lucky that the natural world is often
resilient and forgiving-that we've been given a second chance to get things
right after we mess them up, as we did with acid rain, the depletion of the
ozone layer, and the use of harmful chemicals like DDT.
But how often will we get second chances?
What happens when the actions we take today-like burning huge quantities of
fossil fuel-produce consequences that we don't fully grasp because they will be
felt by people separated from us by space and time? The broad, sweeping
consequences of unabated global warming-more intense hurricanes and typhoons,
rising sea levels, species extinctions, drought, heat waves, major disruptions
to agriculture-would be felt most keenly by a generation with very little
responsibility for creating them. Will they get a second chance?
The Climate Challenge Requires A
Comprehensive Set of Solutions
At the most basic level, we understand the
global trends that have contributed to the
problem of climate change. The most immediate and obvious cause is the build-up
of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. What are the
driving forces behind this build-up? The world's population has grown
dramatically over the last 200 years, and along with it has come a rapid
expansion of economic activity and energy use.
We have taken huge quantities of coal and
oil-substances created and accumulated by Mother Nature over millennia-and
burned them up in the briefest of moments. We have upset the natural carbon
balance so significantly that we are beginning to alter the entire global
climate system. The models that predict just how far we could go with this
unprecedented global experiment are truly frightening, and we are only
beginning to understand that the solutions will require entirely new
relationships between the world's human and natural systems.
The vast scale of the climate change
challenge requires a comprehensive set
of solutions that can address each of the forces that contribute to the
build-up of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. We
need bold strategies to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by tapping into
cleaner energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal. We need to develop and
spread technologies that will help us meet our needs-and allow for continued
economic development in the poorest countries of the world-while using less
energy. We need to better protect and manage forests to store carbon dioxide,
and find additional ways to lock up excess greenhouse gases.
And we
need to address population growth. Not because
ending population growth alone can solve the climate crisis, but because
solving the climate crisis will be a lot harder if we continue to grow at our
present pace.
We Know How to Encourage Slower Population
Growth
We haven't fully grasped how quickly our
planet has become crowded-and how our needs and desires have increased along
with our numbers. When my grandmother was born in Michigan
in 1915, the U.S. U.S. New York ,
California , and Florida
More of us means more people driving cars,
more wildlife habitat overtaken by subdivisions, more land needed to grow food,
and more water drawn from our lakes and aquifers.
Research suggests that, globally, for every 1
percent increase in population size, there is a 1 percent increase in
greenhouse gas emissions (controlling for economic growth and technological factors).
These relationships are not simple, of course. Population is growing fastest in
parts of the world where an individual's environmental impact is relatively
low. Ethiopia , for example,
has a very high population growth rate-and if their current growth rate
continues, Ethiopia Ethiopia
But as developing countries continue on a
path of economic growth and industrialization, their per capita carbon dioxide
emissions will increase. Last January, Tata Motors in India introduced the "world's cheapest
car"-the $2,500 Nano-in an effort to extend the dream of car ownership to
more than 1 billion Indians (currently, there are about 18 motorized vehicles
for every 1,000 people in India
Far from being an inevitable force, the
extent of future population growth is shrouded in uncertainty. United Nations
demographers estimate that the world's population will grow from today's 6.7
billion people to somewhere between 7.8 billion and 10.8 billion by 2050.
That's a very wide range, and the path of our growth will be responsive to
policies and programs that are put into place now.
The good news is that we know how to
encourage slower population growth. There are three significant interventions,
each desirable in their own right, that have been clearly linked to lower birth
rates in many parts of the world. These include expanding education, especially
for the world's girls; enhancing economic opportunities for women; and
providing access to voluntary reproductive health and family planning services,
so that women and men can freely decide the number and timing of their
children.
These are interventions that require
investment. Unfortunately, our investment as a nation, particularly in the area
of reproductive health, has declined over the past decade. The United States United States
Slower population growth would have
significant benefits in addressing climate change. When combined with effective
renewable energy and energy efficiency technology, slower population growth
would help to put the brakes on fossil fuel-related emissions growth, relieve
pressure on forests and other natural resources that absorb carbon dioxide, buy
time for the spread of green technology, and reduce the scale of human
vulnerability to climate change impacts.
Win-Win Solutions
Separately, both population growth and
climate change can be seen as big, scary problems due to their scale and
potential for changing the world as we know it. Each of these challenges
involves complicated, politically charged issues-things like sex education,
contraception, soaring energy costs, and international cooperation.
But when we are able to look at these
challenges as component parts of a single, larger system, solutions that
produce positive outcomes in more than one area begin to emerge. These win-win
solutions-like slowing population growth through addressing unmet needs for
family planning around the world-are powerful. They have the potential to build
unique partnerships that can mobilize people and resources behind them. These
are the solutions that carry the greatest hope for creating a more sustainable
future.
I sometimes wonder how many kids today can
run around in wilderness like I did when I was growing up. When I recently
visited my childhood home, I was dismayed to see that much of the woods had
given way to subdivisions. That is one of the consequences, I suppose, of a
growing population. But a recent visit to Carlsbad Caverns
was inspiring. The desert and caves were still beautiful and fascinating, and
the Mexican free-tailed bats were no longer struggling, thanks to reductions in
the use of DDT in Mexico
-Kathleen Mogelgaard is senior program
manager for population and climate change at Population Action International,
one of the Izaak Walton League's partners in the Population and Environment Coalition.
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http://omnicenter.org/dick-bennetts-peace-justice-and-ecology-newsletters/
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See: Animal Cruelty, Animal Friendship, Animal
Rights, Climate Change, CO2, Critical Thinking, Direct Violence,
Education, Empathy/Compassion, Ecology,
Ethics, Gandhi, Global Warming/Causes, Health, St. Francis, Structural
Violence, Torture, Vegan, Vegetarianism, Violence, Wars, Water, for starters.
- CONTENTS: OMNI VEGETARIAN ACTION POTLUCK DECEMBER
9, 2015
- Nutrition, Health
- Eggland’s
Advertising Claims
- Animal Rights,
Compassion for Animals
- The Meatrix
- Meat Eating
Accelerates Climate Change
- Chatham
House
- Carrinton,
Reduce Meat Consumption to Prevent 2 Degrees
Centigrade - Maisto,
Less Meat Our Best Chance to Avert Disastrous Climate
Change - McKnight,
Vegetarianism the Real Defense against Climate Change
- Population Growth
Accelerates Climate Change
- OMNI’s Overpopulation Newsletter
- Hymas
Interviews Ehlers, Pres. of Population Action International
- Joanna,
Report on Condoms and Carbon Footprint of Having Kids
END VEGETARIAN ACTION NEWSLETTER #25
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