"Are you a man or a mouse?"

Jeremy Rifkin writes in The Guardian today about frightening developments in the development of lab animals: mice with human brains, pigs with human blood, sheep with human livers and hearts. He describes speculation about creating a human-chimpanzee chimera. Chimpanzees and humans already have in common 98% of their genetic code, and, Rifkin says, and adult chimpanzees has the mental abilities and consciousness of a 4-year-old human.

Of course, a 4-year-old human does not in return have the mental abilities and consciousness of an adult chimpanzee. Which is to say, the chimpanzee has its own consciousness. Rifkin worries about the ethical challenges these chimeras will raise. But if researchers can rationalize their abuse of "98% human" chimpanzees, they will have no problem continuing with "99% human" models, especially if they are the ones that create such an animal.

Rifkin says this can not go farther. But it has already gone too far. He implies that research with "normal" animals is ethically sound. It is not.

Animal research is justified in that it provides "models" for human physiology and even psychology where it would be unethical to experiment on people. Ethics should tell us that such similarity, not to mention the integrity of each animal's own individual and social life, means that using them so is as wrong as using people. Well, the researchers say, they are not in fact so very like us, because human tests are ultimately necessary to prove what was found in the animals. Then the animal tests are not only unethical but ultimately unjustifiable! What does it mean to be human? For many, it seems, it means to be different from the other animals, which we can easily prove by using them for tawdry entertainment, useless research, wasteful food, and decadent clothing -- just as racists and sexists cling to their historical or imagined privileges, to their sense, however deluded, of being above their victims.

Are you a man or a mouse? Yes.

categories: animal rights, ethics

Resistance is Never Futile

By Jason Hribal, Counterpunch, April 17 (click on the title of this post for the complete essay):

Whether from the thoughts of the owners or the print of the media, the language used to describe these "escapes" (their term) is most illuminating: "captured," "fugitive," "amnesty," "outlaw," "criminal." These words, in reality, reflect a hidden truth -- a truth that is only exposed when actions are taken by other animals against human domination. In other words, when the curtain is pulled back, our fellow creatures emerge as active beings -- each of whom has the ability to shape the world around them. Agency is not unique to the human animal. Cows, pigs, monkeys, and elephants can also resist their exploitation. Over the centuries, humans have learned to deal with this.

Farmers, ranchers, factory owners, and managers have tried a multiplicity of methods to deter or prevent escapes. Wooden-post fences were erected. Cows leapt over them or crawled under them. Taller, stronger metal fences were developed. Cows found their weak points and busted through them. Barbs were put on the wire to cause pain. A few cows still got over them. The wire was then electrified to cause even more pain.

Humans have used tethers, clogs, and yokes to lessen movement. They have used bull-whips, bull-hooks, and electrified cattle-prods to scar and frighten. They have cut tendons, pulled out teeth, blinded eyes, ringed noses, and muzzled mouths to punish. They have castrated testicles, removed ovaries, and chopped off horns to control aggressiveness. These techniques are not called "breaking" because their targets are mindless, spiritless machines. Quite to the contrary, they are deemed as such because turning autonomous, intelligent beings into obedient, productive workers is difficult.

If these methods failed, humans employed specialized bounty-hunters. They constructed pounds for the detained. Local, state, and federal laws were written. Fines and penalties were levied. The death penalty has always been the final option for those chronic troublemakers. FEMA itself has detailed strategies on how to deal with animal escapes. For this form of resistance can have serious consequences for owners, businesses, and governments. The run-away macaque from Davis, CA, for example, almost brought about the closure of the entire research center. The Tamworth two incited spot inspections and steep fines for the Wiltshire slaughterhouse. But more than bad press and possible loss in profits, these escapes can produce a public awareness of exploitation and resistance. This combination of struggle and recognition then ultimately forces such industries -- their operators, executives, scientists, and engineers -- to adopt animal-welfare legislation and practices.

anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism, human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism

Around the world: two days of the wind energy depredation news

India: Vultures hounded by windmills

Suthari village in Abrasa Taluka, Kutch, used to have 10 to 15 nests of the white backed vultures till a couple of years ago. This year, just a lone nest has been found. Where once there were more than 70 birds, now only 10 to 15 remain. When birdwatchers got together to look for a possible reason for the sudden drop in number of these birds, they attributed it to the wind farms that have come up in the area in the last year. ... In India, no Environmental Impact Assessment is done before setting up windmills as they are [presumed to be] a source of clean energy.

California: Riverside County supervisors doubt necessity of bird-safety rules

Two supervisors in Riverside County, one of California’s top producers of wind energy, want the region to be exempt from new statewide guidelines aimed at reducing the deaths of hawks, bats, owls, and other animals from windmills.

Illinois: Study puts focus on bird deaths by wind turbines

Despite proof that birds and bats are being killed by the rotating blades of wind turbines, a new state report says more studies are needed to determine if anything should be done about it.

Scotland: Council accused of ripping up rulebook over windmills plan

Wind turbines will be built close to a road and a stone circle after councillors over-ruled policies set out to prevent their construction on sensitive sites. The decision paves the way for a Turriff pig farmer to diversify his business with income from three 262ft-high windmills.

Iowa: Wind turbines raise some legal questions for landowners

Roger McEowen, an extension specialist at Iowa State University, says wind energy farming presents legal issues landowners need to carefully consider before entering into an agreement with developers.

India: Maharashtra ignoring tribal rights over forest land

Senior leaders of the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) and the Janata Dal, N. D. Patil and Mrinal Gore on Tuesday alleged that the Maharashtra government was favouring companies over the rights of poor Adivasis in Dhule district. ... Since January, there have been several protests in Dhule over the allotment of forest land for wind energy projects. Earlier this month the government issued notices to extern five activists championing the cause of the Adivasis and ban their entry into Dhule and four other districts.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism

Nordhaus and Shellenberger are not environmentalists (2)

[Click here for part 1]

Excerpts, part 2, "The Enemy Within," by Mike Roselle, Lowbagger:

What really irks me is not just that it has become fashionable among consultants to argue against using boycotts, legislation, litigation and other confrontational and coercive approaches to going after polluter and despoilers. But that you must also differentiate yourself from those who do. This is accomplished by demeaning the efforts of those very environmental activists who have been out there on the front lines doing the heavy lifting over the last few decades. And we can't just be wrong in our approach; we are also selfish, ignorant, irrational, rich, elite or even worse, we are radical.

There are two problems with this thinking, and the first is that the only reason those corporations are sitting down with Breakthrough or any environmental groups is because they don't want to see those sign-waving hippie scum on their doorsteps. Would The Home Depot be talking to any of us if the Rainforest Action Network hadn't picketed hundreds of their most profitable outlets?

And the second problem is that this attitude by the well heeled, well paid professional environmental consultants serves to de-legitimize those very front line soldiers that we are going to need when the going gets rough. What happens when a company refuses to work with the new compliant environmental movement? We have the carrot, but where is the stick? The public may not identify with environmental or animal rights activists, but companies live in fear of being the target of a well coordinated campaign. It is very easy to make fun of the activists, but without them where would we be? ...

I think it should be quite clear by now that Nordhaus and Shellenberger are not, and never were, environmental activists. They have cast their lot with the promoters, developers and opportunists who have taken up residence under the banner of the environment. It is far easier to sit down with big business and cut deals and to give away more wildlife habitat than it is to stick to your guns on principle. You don't have to fight anybody. You don't have to go out into the community to organize the opposition; you don't have to risk being portrayed by these same corporations as unreasonable and confrontational. Indeed, you look out from your conference room table and agree with these bastards, that yes, these scruffy activists are a well-meaning bunch, but they are not realistic. They don't represent anybody, and we represent the voice of reason.

This is horseshit. The conservation movement is a modern, global, political force with historic roots and a clearly defined mission to protect nature. We understand that the survival of humanity depends on the survival of wilderness and natural diversity. We recognize that far too much of the Earth has been sacrificed for industrial and agricultural development, and this has led us to the brink of a mass extinction event and the onslaught of global warming. Without challenging the dominate paradigm of growth for the sake of growth, and getting serious about protecting habitat, a few more windmills and a new $30,000 car with double the gas mileage is not going to make much difference. By rejecting a government role in addressing the global warming crisis with stronger laws in favor of playing patty-cake with developers and alternative energy hucksters, they are abandoning the most powerful tools for achieving corporate responsibility -- the courthouse and the jailhouse. ...

If we cannot get coal mining and oil drilling under control soon, no amount of wind energy is going to affect global warming. We need to continue to question the rapid growth of the human population, and the loss of bio-diversity. If the Breakthrough Institute were doing more to address these problems rather than just play cheerleader for private sector voluntary acts of environmental sanity, maybe I would believe them. But: I don't.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, ecoanarchism, animal rights

Freudian typo

"Our forefathers fought for the right to fee speech." [emphasis added]

-- New York Times, "Six Animal Rights Advocates Are Convicted of Terrorism," Mar. 3

tags:  animal rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism

"Bush's Horse Killers"

'Once protected by federal law, the nation's 3,000 wild burros and 33,000 wild horses, as well as 24,000 horses in short- and long-term sanctuaries, now face Congressionally approved slaughter.

'Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) inserted a rider into the 3,000-page omnibus spending bill of 2005, approved by Congress and signed into law by President Bush, that requires the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to sell all wild horses and burros which have not been adopted in three attempts or which are 10 years or older. Wild burros have life spans of 25-30 years; domesticated burros can live 45 years; wild horses have life spans of 20-25 years. The animals, according to the legislation, "shall" be sold, and can be butchered. There were no hearings or debate.

'The public may not know what forces helped convince Burns to silently insert the rider into the Appropriations Act, but one thing is certain -- the beef industry has its brand all over it.

'During the mid-1800s, more than 2.3 million wild horses and 60 million bison freely roamed America's west. But, ranchers, who had already seized land from the Indians and were deep into a land war with farmers, saw horses as competition for unfenced grazing land. They poisoned the horses' watering holes, blinded the lead stallions by shooting their eyes out, or simply ran them to death, up and over cliffs, according to Mike Markarian, executive vice-president of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). Ranchers "even captured wild mustangs, sewed their nostrils shut with rawhide so they could barely breathe, and returned them to their herds so they would slow down the other horses and make them much easier to capture," says Markarian. In 1897, Nevada allowed unlimited killing of mustangs.

'By 1900, the bison were almost extinct, the result of indiscriminate killing during the nation's "Manifest Destiny." A half-century later, mustangs were close to meeting the same fate as the bison. That's when Velma Johnston, to become known as "Wild Horse Annie," began a national campaign to save wild horses and burros. It took two decades until Congress unanimously passed the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 that gave federal protection to the animals and made it a felony for anyone to capture or harm them.

'In 1974, the first federal census of wild horses and burros revealed that only 60,000 remained in Arizona, California, Idaho, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. The BLM plans to reduce the population on public lands to about 20,000, removing at least 11,500 wild horses and burros in 2005. This number is below the minimum necessary to sustain healthy populations, according Dr. Gus Cothran, equine geneticist at the University of Kentucky. The minimum number of horses and burros in each herd management area (HMA) needs to be at least 150, says Cothran; under BLM plans, about 70 percent of the HMAs will have fewer than 100 animals. Estimates by animal rights groups place the number that will probably be slaughtered by the end of the year at 6,000-14,000.'

-- Walter Brasch

categories: politics, animal rights

Happy, Healthy Animals Killed at Hollister Hill Farm

An article in the Dec. 20 Montpelier (Vt.) Bridge describes a source for "happy, healthy" meat in nearby Plainfield.

It's obvious that the concern is not so much for the animals but rather for the eaters of the animals,who want to feel happier and healthier about a problematic dietary choice. Since they are driven to gorge on animal flesh, it is indeed healthier if it is the remains of a grass-fed "beefalo" free of antibiotics and artificial hormones instead of a feedlot-fattened chemical-sustained cow. And they will be happier with the taste of a free-range naturally fed turkey compared with a "butterball" factory product.

And, during their cruelly shortened lives, the animals themselves are no doubt healthier and even "happy".

Thus, the people who raise them to be killed, their carcasses to be sold and eaten, and the people who buy and eat those pieces are able to feel less guilt and shame.

But the result for the "happy, healthy" animal is the same as for the industrial-raised animal: premature death at the hand of humans.

In times of famine, this might be justified for survival -- after all, cannibalism has been resorted to in such situations. But this "happy, healthy" meat market is a response to surfeit. It feeds the same desire for flesh that sustains the factory lots and drives the clearing of rainforests. Paying more for pieces of "happy, healthy", locally killed animals is an effort to separate one's appetite from that of the common horde.

But it remains, however, (literally, in our very long intestines -- quite unlike those of the carnivorous animals) quite as unhealthy, and the animals meet the same quite unhappy end.

animal rights, vegetarianism, Vermont

Lou and Bill and the desire to eat them

Photo by Caleb Kenna for the Boston Globe—
Alison Putnam and Meiko Lunetta tend to Lou,
who with partner Bill has become a symbol at Green Mountain College,
but they are to be sent to a slaughterhouse.
All they need do now is dress the animals in garlands and fine fabrics and dance and sing around them as they're led to slaughter — sacrifices on the altar of environmental sustainability.

The “moral complexity”, as Green Mountain College Provost Bill Throop called it, clearly means only a web of rationalizations based on the false premise that the students must eat meat. The “complexity” arises to create a fog of distraction from the fundamental fallacy behind their choice. Like Michael Pollan, the students and staff at this college are now traveling over great lengths of ethical deliberation only to arrive right where they started: Kill the beast; We must eat.

We have not seen an exercise of moral decision making. We see only self-serving rationalizations of unnecessary violence.

Update:  See the articles by Marc Bekoff:
http://www.greanvillepost.com/2012/10/17/the-animal-file-mascot-oxen-to-be-killed-for-burger-meat/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201210/bill-and-lou-who-lives-who-dies-and-why
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201211/green-mountain-oxen-bill-lives-lou-dies

Update (5 Nov):  "Grass Power at GMC"

Training sessions are usually done by Christopher Bergen who has also lead [sic] general driving and experiential lessons in dealing with the oxen. [Ben] Dube closed out with a few tips. “To be a good teamster, you need to be sensitive and attentive, but also not afraid to express authority and dominance. I think that most people who start out on Bill and Lou have more trouble with the latter. Sometimes you have to be a little mean with them, which isn’t easy to do with such sweet animals. I don’t like it, but over time, you learn that they don’t really resent it or mind it much.” [emphasis added] In being around Bill and Lou I have seen that this is definitely the case, and understanding how to work with them is a good learning experience.

animal rights, vegetarianism, Vermont

Animal farms and deforestation and global warming

Here are some "inconvenient truths" from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations news room last year (underscoring added) ...

Livestock a major threat to environment

29 November 2006, Rome - According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent -- 18 percent -- than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation. ...

With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy products every year. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes.

Long shadow

The global livestock sector is growing faster than any other agricultural sub-sector. ... But such rapid growth exacts a steep environmental price, according to the FAO report, Livestock's Long Shadow -- Environmental Issues and Options. "The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level," it warns.

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth's entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

Land and water

At the same time herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20 percent of pastures considered as degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification.

The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth's increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution, eutrophication and the degeneration of coral reefs. The major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops. Widespread overgrazing disturbs water cycles, reducing replenishment of above and below ground water resources. Significant amounts of water are withdrawn for the production of feed.

Livestock are estimated to be the main inland source of phosphorous and nitrogen contamination of the South China Sea, contributing to biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems.

Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20 percent of all terrestrial animal biomass. Livestock's presence in vast tracts of land and its demand for feed crops also contribute to biodiversity loss; 15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed as in decline, with livestock identified as a culprit.

Deforestation causes global warming

4 September 2006, Rome -- Most people assume that global warming is caused by burning oil and gas. But in fact between 25 and 30 percent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year -- 1.6 billion tonnes -- is caused by deforestation. ...

Trees are 50 percent carbon. When they are felled or burned, the C02 they store escapes back into the air. According to FAO figures, some 13 million ha [32 million acres, 50,000 square miles] of forests worldwide are lost every year, almost entirely in the tropics. Deforestation remains high in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.

environment, environmentalism,, ecoanarchism, animal rights, vegetarianism

Meat in style

The New York Times published their Spring "Style" Magazine today, featuring plenty of animal corpses as de rigueur entertainment fare. Amanda Hesser goes to market to buy a dead chicken, as "young chickens are at their best this time of year." She says, "It is time to stop being squeamish," that bringing the "cycle of life" (meaning raising animals to kill them for your enjoyment) out of the shadows is "healthier" and a challenge to the industry. That's like saying it was better when the Nazis shot people individually rather than killing them en masse in gas chambers. It's still an industry of death. It's also rather creepy that the dead chicken in one of the photos for Hesser's piece is tied with the same fabric adorning the drugged-looking (human, female) model. Sex, food, death, beautiful victim. Spring chickens trussed up to fulfill the human appetite.

And Todd Purdum writes about Joel Salatin, an inspiring organic farmer in Virginia. He describes the farm as a "peaceable kingdom." But those animals, allowed to do what is natural to them, are raised for a very unnatural end, when Purdum must distance the reader from fostering the lives of cows, pigs, and chickens to write about "raising beef, pork and poultry." He quotes mid-20th-century novelist and farmer Louis Bromfield to describe Salatin as "the happiest of men, for he inhabits a world that is full of wonder and excitement over which he rules as a small god." This evil little god "harvests" over 10,000 chickens, 100 cows, 250 pigs, 800 turkeys, and 600 rabbits every year. What wonder and excitement must he see in so much slaughter?

The Salatins sell much of their "inventory" directly from a walk-in freezer on the farm, in which Purdum spots a "perfect six-pound chicken" among other parts and pieces of the various animals once tended "with such care." In what moral universe is an animal that has been deliberately killed in its prime "perfect"? Is an animal's worth, its "perfection," determined only by someone's desire to eat it? Only then -- killed and presented as "food," is its value fulfilled?

Again, the "cycle of life" is evoked to suppress the "occasional pang when it comes time to kill an especially kindly old cow." Sorry, bucko -- you are not God. Maybe your imagined god has a bottomless hunger for willfully spilled blood. But betrayal of the love and trust nurtured in these animals, cutting short the joyful lives you have given them, is not only a violent mockery of the cycle of life but also reveals all that "care" as a cruel charade.

categories:  animal rights, vegetarianism, ethics

White House misinformation and inaction regarding greenhouse gases

Thanking Obama for his "climate action", as Paul Burns of VPIRG has asked me to do, would be like thanking him for universal health care — not only are Obama's "actions" utterly phony, they are a meaningless sideshow to distract attention of the willfully gullible from the creation of such a paranoid militarized corporatist murderous state that Obama makes Dick Cheney look like Elmer Fudd and Dick Nixon like one of the Three Stooges.

On the White House web site, the President's climate action plan includes this graphic, with the EPA cited as reference:

What's glaringly missing is any indication that the non-CO₂ greenhouse gases (GHGs) have a much greater warming effect per unit of mass emitted. For example, the EPA, despite ignoring it on one page in the same way as the White House, notes on another page the different "global warming potential" (GWP) values of a few GHGs relative to CO₂. They note that over 100 years, methane (CH₄) has a GWP of 20 and nitrous oxide (N₂O) a GWP of 300. That would appear to mean that the 9% of GHG emissions represented by methane actually has more than twice (9 × 20), and the 5% represented by nitrous oxide more than 17 times, the effect of the 84% represented by CO₂.

Moreover, the EPA notes that CO₂ persists for thousands of years in the atmosphere, whereas CH₄ persists only about 10 years and N₂O over 100 years. [Update:  “Continued global warming after CO₂ emissions stoppage”, Thomas Lukas Frölicher, Michael Winton & Jorge Louis Sarmiento, Nature Climate Change, published online 24 November 2013, doi:10.1038/nclimate2060.]

In other words, even if we were successful in drastically reducing CO₂ emissions, there would be no effect for thousands of years. If we want to more quickly reduce the effects of GHG emissions, the obvious primary target is CH₄, with at least 20 times the warming effect of CO₂ and one that lasts only 10-12 years. According to other sources, CH₄ has a 100-year GWP of 25 and a 20-year GWP of 72.

The White House graphic describes methane as coming from the production and transport of coal, natural gas, and oil, as well as from landfills. It neglects to mention that the hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") process of releasing natural gas, which Obama strongly supports, releases a particularly large amount of methane into the air. [Update: "Study: Methane Leakage From Gas Fields Guts Climate Benefit".] And it completely ignores the methane emissions from animal agriculture, which the United Nations has calculated contributes more to global warming than all transportation. [Update:  “Anthropogenic emissions of methane in the United States” [are probably at least twice as high as previously assumed], Scot M. Miller, Steven C. Wofsy, Anna M. Michalak, et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Published online November 25, 2013, doi:10.1073/pnas.1314392110.]

Simply changing our diet away from meat and dairy would have much more effect on climate change than all of Obama's "actions".

And there are many other benefits in reducing animal agriculture:

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9% of CO₂ deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65% of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the GWP of CO₂. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for 37% of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO₂), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64% of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

Livestock now use 30% of the earth's entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33% of the global arable land used to produce feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70% of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing. [Between 25% and 30% of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year -- 1.6 billion tonnes -- is caused by deforestation.]

At the same time, herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20% of pastures considered to be degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification.

The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth's increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution, eutrophication, and the degeneration of coral reefs. The major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers, and the pesticides used to spray feed crops. Widespread overgrazing disturbs water cycles, reducing replenishment of above- and below-ground water resources. Significant amounts of water are withdrawn for the production of feed.

Livestock are estimated to be the main inland source of phosphorous and nitrogen contamination of the South China Sea, contributing to biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems.

Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20% of all terrestrial animal biomass. Livestock's presence in vast tracts of land and its demand for feed crops also contribute to biodiversity loss; 15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed to be in decline with livestock identified as a culprit.

Another obvious target is to reduce hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which have come into use as refrigerants and propellants to replace chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs, such as freon). CFCs were phased out because of their destruction of the protective ozone layer in the atmosphere. They are also potent GHGs, as are HFCs. For example, HFC-134a (CF₃CFH₂) has a 100-year GWP of 1,430 and 20-year GWP of 3,830 and persists in the atmosphere only 14 years, making it, with methane, another obvious candidate for meaningful action. In fact, in 2011 the E.U. banned HFC-134a in new cars in favor of HFC-1234yf (100-year GWP of 4), with a total ban on all uses being phased in through 2017. Meanwhile the U.S. has only talked and delayed about doing the same.

Update (note):  Like his continuing delay (renewed in this latest "action") to finally approve the Keystone XL pipeline to appease Bill McKibben and his 350.org "activists", while it continues to be built nonetheless, Obama's "climate action" seems to be little more than another cynical bone thrown to them, who are just as phony, just as adept at misinformation and inaction, because 350.org also ignores all but CO₂ in the atmosphere, ensuring no reversal of anthropogenic warming – let alone environmental depredation – at all.

environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism, veganism

Animal agriculture as climate killer

Note that organic animal farming is not much better than chemical-based and factory farming of animals. An organic meat diet adds 92% of the greenhouse gas equivalence of a "conventional" meat diet, compared with 13% by a vegan diet and 6% by an organic vegan diet.

environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism

Reminder

The livestock industry -- raising animals for meat, milk, and eggs -- generates 18% of the world's greenhouse gases from human activity. That's more than worldwide transport, and more than the entire E.U.'s total.

Animal farms account for 9% of human-caused CO₂ emissions, 37% of methane, and 65% of nitrous oxide. Methane has 23 times and nitrous oxide 296 times the warming effect of CO₂.

Whereas human-generated CO₂ comes to only 3% of natural emissions, human-generated methane is 150% that from natural sources. And whereas CO₂ stays in the atmosphere for more than a hundred years, methane stays only 8-16 years. Therefore, a drastic reduction of methane would have a much quicker effect on the climate.

Curtailing the livestock industry would also reduce the waste of other resources, such as agricultural land (33% of which worldwide is used for animal feed), water (including its pollution), and forests (deforestation for grazing land being another major contributor to global warming).

environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism, animal rights, vegetarianism

Go vegan to help climate, says [U.K.] Government

By Charles Clover, Environment Editor, Telegraph:

It would help tackle the problem of climate change if people ate less meat, according to a Government agency.

A leaked email to a vegetarian campaign group from an Environment Agency official expresses sympathy with the environmental benefits of a vegan diet, which bans dairy products and fish.

The agency also says the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is considering recommending eating less meat as one of the "key environmental behaviour changes" needed to save the planet. ...

The agency's official was responding to an email from the vegan group Viva, which argues that it is more efficient to use land to grow crops for direct consumption by humans rather than feeding them to dairy cows or livestock raised for meat.

The campaign group entered a comment on the Environment Agency's website saying: "Adopting a vegan diet reduces one person's impact on the environment even more than giving up their car or forgoing several plane trips a year! Why aren't you promoting this message as part of your [World Environment Day] campaign?"

An agency official replied: "Whilst potential benefit of a vegan diet in terms of climate impact could be very significant, encouraging the public to take a lifestyle decision as substantial as becoming vegan would be a request few are likely to take up.

"You will be interested to hear that the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is working on a set of key environmental behaviour changes to mitigate climate change. Consumption of animal protein has been highlighted within that work. As a result the issue may start to figure in climate change communications in the future. It will be a case of introducing this gently as there is a risk of alienating the public majority.

"Future Environment Agency communications are unlikely to ever suggest adopting a fully vegan lifestyle, but certainly encouraging people to examine their consumption of animal protein could be a key message."

environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism

Animal labs are anti-science

To the Editor, The Guardian (U.K.) [published Mar. 15, 2006]:

I would like to add to Sharon Howe's reponse (Mar. 10) to Timothy Garton Ash that antivivisectionists are not anti-science. Garton Ash makes a fetish of science but ignores the fact that it is science that makes it impossible to deny that the sentience of other animals is not very different from our own, and it is science that has, as Howe describes, developed better means of research and testing for human medicine than the Victorian barbarism of animal labs.

tags:  animal rights

Again with the meat?

To the editor, New York Times Magazine:

Kate Hirson, featured in "Kitchen Voyeur," March 20, complains about the depressing repetition of "the vegetarian menu." I immediately wondered why she picks on her vegetarian friends, since most non-vegetarians also -- perhaps more so -- tend towards repetition and predictability.

As Hirson prepared yet another hunk of flesh from yet another dead animal, I also wondered why so few people notice that what makes the meal interesting (not to mention palatable) is the vegetarian component. The animal part could easily be replaced with some of the beautiful root vegetables described a week before in the same space.

category:  vegetarianism, animal rights

"Not surprised"

There's a brave letter in the St. Johnsbury (Vt.) Caledonian-Record today about the show of outrage over a particularly horrendous instance of animal abuse in Lyndonville. It is similar to what Joe Bageant wrote about why liberals hate Bush even as they go along with almost everything he does, namely, he shows the true face of the power they enjoy. So, too, did the abuse of Kacy show the true face, the inevitable consequence, of most people's every-day attitude towards animals.

"If God created it, it feels pain. I just don't get people's way of thinking and please don't take offense at what I am going to say. But then again, if the shoe fits wear it. When you teach a child to kill (hunting) an animal at an early age and call it sport then why are you so surprised over this. How are they supposed to distinguish the difference."

category:  animal rights

"Raising children as vegans 'unethical', says professor"

After studying impoverished children in Kenya, and finding that supplementing their very poor diet with meat or milk made the children healthier, this dope concludes that vegetarianism is evil.

I dare say she would have seen the same (or better) improvement had she provided the children with seitan and soy milk and a wide range of greens, for instance, along with vitamin B12 supplements (which most vegans know they need). It is obviously more difficult to maintain a comparable diet without changing the economic desperation of the people she studied, but that underscores the relative ease with which we in the "developed" world can avoid resorting to eating dead animals.

Besides B12 (available as a cheap supplement), calcium and iron are noted as concerns. Many greens have calcium, and many products, such as rice and soy milks and even orange juice, are fortified with it. Significantly, the metabolism of animal protein leaches calcium out of the body, which is why government nutritionists recommend so much. Vegans require quite a bit less to maintain their calcium. Iron (and other minerals) is available in many greens and other vegetables. Cooking in iron pots is an easy way to add it as well.

To characterize vegetarians as unethical implies that it is ethical to kill animals for food (let alone for "sport") when we no longer have to. Yet vegetarians are well documented as a much healthier group in general than animal-eaters. Not only for the sake of our fellow creatures but also for our own health, vegetarianism is without doubt the ethical choice at every stage of life.

Even if you have no problem eating dead animals, to call vegetarianism unethical is the sign of a troubled psyche.

[Click here for more information.]

categories:  animal rights, vegetarianism

Only nonrestrictive restrictions OK in Wisconsin?

Note (July 22):  After a read of the ruling itself (available here), it is clear that the AP report was taken from an industry spin release. The ruling, it is a relief to learn, preserves the local right to preserve or protect the public health or safety. It is only in restricting wind energy systems for other reasons that it can't decrease the system's efficiency:

We also read the statutes to disfavor wholesale local control which circumvents this policy. Instead, localities may restrict a wind energy system only where necessary to preserve or protect the public health or safety, or where the restriction does not significantly increase the cost of the system or significantly decrease its efficiency, or where the locality allows for an alternative system of comparable cost and efficiency.

As reported by the AP, July 16:

Local governments [in Wisconsin] cannot pass broad rules dictating how far wind turbines must be from other buildings, how tall they can be or how much noise they can produce, the Waukesha-based District 2 Court of Appeals ruled.

Instead, municipalities must consider each project on a case-by-case basis and only restrict them to protect public health or in a way that does not affect a system’s cost or efficiency, the court said.

The decision struck down a Calumet County ordinance that set height, noise and setback requirements for turbines, but lawyers said its impact would be felt statewide.

What are rules about height, setbacks, and noise, if not to protect public health?!

And what is the restriction to limit rules to those that do not affect a system's cost or efficiency, but a bald-faced mockery of government and the rights of citizens?

This court is saying that state law allowing local goverments to make rules to protect public health and safety does not allow them to actually make such rules, that local governments must restrict any project separately, but not at all if it actually restricts the project.

Words fail in expressing one's outraged reaction to such craven venality.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, animal rights, human rights

Omnivores?

Today, the New York Times Magazine published the winning essay in their Ethicist contest for the ethical justification of eating meat. As expected, it is lame.

And in a strange fit, the Times “Public Editor”, Arthur Brisbane, decries the contest for making meat-eaters uncomfortable (which strongly suggests that the ethics of meat eating is indeed elusive).

He cites, apparently as reasonable critique, a blog post by Lisa Henderson, a sophomore at Kansas State University, on the Pork Network: “I believe that humans are omnivores and that meat provides protein and other things that are essential for health. Animals utilize the grass. Animals help us utilize more of the earth. I am not anti-vegetarian, but they seem to be anti-meat, and they seem to want to take that choice away from me.”

The omnivore argument actually justifies a vegetarian diet, because, especially since the invention of cooking, humans can thrive in a large variety of environments without meat. Furthermore, while meat-eaters insist that the imperative of being omnivorous drives their eating habits, they are not in fact omnivorous. Do they eat other humans? Do they (at least the majority in the U.S.) eat horses and dogs? The fact is, they too make ethical and cultural decisions about their diet and do just fine.

It is also telling that meat-eaters always feel threatened by the mere existence of a vegetarian diet. That response suggests that the only justification is indeed cultural in that vegetarians are seen as apostates or traitors.

Brisbane then solicits a comment from Calvin Trillin, which again he cites as apparently meaningful: “If they had a chance, they would eat us.”

Those vicious cows and chickens: terrorists in our midst!

Finally, Brisbane had also noted evocations by animal experimenter Linda Cork of life on the Arctic tundra and arid plains, where she sees fishing and herding to be essential to survival. But that only underscores that animal flesh is not essential to survival in Stanford, California. (Science researchers like Cork, for all their avowed objectivity, generally sugarcoat the fate of their victims as “sacrifice”.)

[[[[ ]]]]
So to the winning essay, by former vegetarian Jay Bost, who, like Linda Cork, apparently saw that life in the Arizona desert would be difficult without eating animals and that therefore it’s OK to eat them in North Carolina and Hawaii, too.

In what Brisbane derides as “awfully complicated”, Bost lays down three conditions (not necessity, not imperative) to feel OK about eating the corpses of other animals: 1) accept that death begets life, that all life is just solar energy temporarily stored in an impermanent form; 2) invoke compassion to choose ethically raised food, vegetable, grain, and/or meat; 3) give thanks.

Bost defines “ethical” as “living in the most ecologically benign way”. He compares boutique organic beef to monoculture/pesticide agriculture and — quel surprise! — concludes that not eating meat may be unethical. He compares the “best” situation on one side (we're not even getting into the horrors of “organic” dairy) to the worst situation on the other. Of course, meat eaters also eat plants, since healthy life without plants is a lot more unlikely than life without meat. They are implicated in both sides.

But let us consider cannibalism again. Since the greatest burden on the earth’s ecology is in fact the burgeoning human population, why wouldn’t it be ethical, by Bost’s definition, to eat other humans? In fact, one might conclude from his argument that not eating humans may be unethical. After all, if grazing animals help the land, it would be unethical to kill them. Whereas the Gospel of John in the Christian testament notes at 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son”. In the ritual of the eucharist (i.e., “thanks”, Bost’s final condition), believers consume the flesh of Jesus (”just solar energy temporarily stored in an impermanent form”), not a sheep or chicken.

[[[[ ]]]]
Which leads me to my own (unsent) entry, imagining the only possible ethical argument, namely, the circular one of religion:

Meat: An Ethical Imperative

In the Book of Genesis, Cain slew Abel, because Abel was a meat-eater and thereby found greater favor with G-D. Having distanced himself from the ways of G-D by foregoing meat, Cain’s ethics had deteriorated to the point that his envy turned to murder. After that, he kept to cities, where a greater variety of sin is possible. But as the mark of his crime faded, his envy rose again, and so today urban vegetarians righteously condemn the diet that has sustained humans for millenia. They denounce meat-eaters as cruel, but instead of being cruel to animals, vegetarians must be cruel to other humans, just as Cain was toward Abel.

Violence and murder are a part of the human psyche. If we don’t regularly kill animals — respectfully, gratefully incorporating their spirits into our own — we end up killing other humans, even loved ones, as Cain killed his own brother. To advocate a vegetarian diet is ultimately to advocate murder. To eat humanely raised and slaughtered animals is to promote peace among men, which is why sacrificial meals are at the core of every religion and community.

As the essential bond of society, shared murder is its ethical basis.

To maintain civilization, if we are to avoid human sacrifice, the crime of Cain, we must slay animals and, to honor them as worthy gifts to the gods, eat them.

In choosing a nonviolent diet, vegetarians deny that ethical necessity. In continuing to eat meat, even to our own and the planet’s harm, we recognize the necessary sacrifice that ethical living demands. We must bear the burden of Cain by emulating Abel.

—o—
Update, April 7, 2013:  Chris Grattan of Brockport, N.Y., writes: “In paleolithic hunting cultures, the rites connected with the killing of game were oriented toward an expression of gratitude to the animal for having given its life and the belief that its spirit would return in another body. In neolithic horticultural and agricultural societies the rites to promote the fecundity of the land were often gruesomely bloody, often in the form of human sacrifice. I try to keep this in mind when being subjected to vegetarian sanctimony.”

Get thee behind me Cain, ye ferking vegetarian!

[[[[ ]]]]
But, back in reality, as omnivores we can choose what we eat. For most people most of the time, there is no need to eat animals. To choose to eat animals is to choose killing and suffering, and ethical justification for that choice — when it is a choice — is impossible.

As I have quipped before, meat-eaters claim to be omnivores, but they can’t swallow the truth.

environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism, anarchism, ecoanarchism