With that short clip from “Time Has Come Today” by the Chambers Brothers, the time has come for many things: for peace, for climate action, for economic sanity, the list is long. Radio Ecoshock 151007.
This week on Radio Ecoshock we thunder into another place humans don’t like to go. The nasty truth is we are killing off “the only known living companions we have in the universe”, as our first guest says. The venerable biologist and head of the Stanford Center for Biodiversity Paul Ehrlich joins us. He’s followed by Will Tuttle, author of “The World Peace Diet”. Will says you can’t care about climate change and still eat meat, because about half of all global emissions are driven by the industrial slaughter of our fellow species. That hidden holocaust of animals is also eating into our minds, twisting itself back out as illness and violence.
Too much information? Don’t worry, be happy with this week’s “Climate Variety Hour… In just ten minutes.” Get inspired with Bernie Sanders, climate humor from UK’s Guardian newspaper, and bits from climate songs by people who can actually sing.
I’m Alex Smith. Welcome to Radio Ecoshock.
Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)
Or listen on Soundcloud right now!
DR. PAUL EHRLICH – ANNIHILATION OF WILD ANIMALS AND BIRDS
I always consider it an honor to have a chance to chat with Paul Ehrlich. There’s a lot of wisdom stuffed in this interview – so I’ve transcribed some of the best quotes for this week’s Radio Ecoshock blog.
By the way, here is an excellent graphic showing the relationship in animal biomass between wild animals, humans, and our domesticated animals comparing 10,000 years ago to present day.
KEY NOTES AND QUOTES FROM THIS PAUL EHRLICH INTERVIEW
Among stories of Middle East refugees and stock market jitters, we find brief notices that species are disappearing rapidly all over the world. In a scientific journal and a new book, famed scientists Paul and Anne Ehrlich warn that humans are driving the sixth great mass extinction here on Earth. Just released in September, their new book is titled “The Annihilation of Nature – Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals“.
As an author and co-author of more than 40 books, Paul R. Ehrlich is the Bing Professor of Population Studies and the President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University.
Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich
Paul, welcome back to Radio Ecoshock (this is our third interview for the program).
ALEX: Your book title uses the word “annihilation”. Is that just sensational, or do you mean it?
Ehrlich really means it. We are losing “the only known living companions we have in the entire universe.”
“Scientists are very scared about this, particularly because people don’t really understand the threat.“
ALEX: How do we know these extinctions are being driven by humans, rather than being part of a natural cycle so often found in Earth’s long history?
For the scientific paper behind the book, the Erhlichs and their co-author studied past extinction events, and then compared “very conservative” estimates of the number of species that went extinct over the past few hundred years. That was cross-checked with the best estimates of extinctions that have occurred BETWEEN mass extinction events, to determine the “natural” loss of species as evolution continues. The extinctions caused by humans are far higher than that number.
“Looking at both ends of the story, it turns out the extinction rate today is already 10 to 100 or more times the background rate. Which shows we are starting into a vast new extinction, and it’s clearly being caused by human beings.“
ALEX: Paul Ehrlich, how does this book relate to the scientific study on extinction you, Anne and Gerardo Ceballos published in June of this year, in the journal “Science Advances”.
The book explains more for lay people, and also appeals to our emotions, because so many people are “now isolated in cities and don’t know much about what goes on in the natural world – don’t know where their food comes from for example.” Ehrlich gives the example of a serious loss of pollnators like bees and moths, which are necessary to so many of our crops.
Paul also draws our attention to the biological difference between “extinction” and loss of specific populations. For example, is we lost the honey bee population in North America, that would cost at least $18 billion dollars in crop losses, and lower our nutrition. But honey bees may still exist somewhere else, so they are not technically extinct, even if they disappear on one continent.
The idea of population loss is key, even more than extinction, he says. What difference does it make if there are a few bees in a jungle somewhere, if there are no bees near developed civilization where we need them so badly?
Species go extinct in a process of losing populations in certain regions. When the last population goes, then that animal, plant, or bug is officially extinct. The process can be as painful as the final act.
ALEX: In a review of your new book in the Los Angeles Times, Fred Pearce says there have been “only” 800 extinctions registered in the last 400 years. He thinks you are being too emotional about all this. What do you say?
Pearce, says Ehrlich, is not a biologist or even a scientist. He makes large mistakes: for example Pearce has written that the gross and growing population of humans on this planet is not a problem. The only problem is per capita consumption.
ALEX: Pearce says Earth dominated by humans is the “new normal” in the anthropocene. Animals learn to adapt near cities, and even in cities. Paul, we know there are climate deniers. Are there also extinction deniers?
Paul says there are people who cannot face the overall existential challenges we face in not just climate change, but loss of biodiversity, toxic products, waste and more. Scientists “have been very forthcoming” about these risks we face – and yet the recent U.S. Presidential candidate debates do not even mention any of these serious problems.
ALEX: I thought birds would be the great survivors, since they can move away from threats and toward better living zones. But your team writes they are in trouble. Why is that?
Bird can move – but the places they can move to are being destroyed by humans, Ehrlich says. Also, their “refuelling stations” for tropical migrant birds have been cut down for our buildings, roads and so on. Like all animals, some birds are much more resilient than others.
All of this “is part of a huge nexus of problems that everybody should be educated about, but which unfortunately, most of our politicians are not.”
ALEX: It’s interesting that the animals most like us, carnivore hunters, are becoming extinct first and foremost. Tell us about some of the great creatures in jeapardy, and their chances for survival.
Paul tells us about the struggles of the lion. Their populations are falling rapidly. They used to extend all the way to India from Africa, but now, except for a very few in India, the lion is confined to Africa. Amazingly, one problem is lions are suffering from distemper from contacts with domestic dogs. The lion is still being hunted, and sadly even their bones are now a highly prized feature in Chinese medicine.
The Black Rhino is so endangered in South Africa they are being shipped to Botswana, which has the best record of protecting endangered animals. Again, the horns of Black Rhinos are poached because they are thought to be aphrodesiacs in Chinese medicine, or to add male power when made into daggers in the Middle East.
“We thought Viagra might save the Rhino, because Viagra actually works. But it turns out now the dealers are grinding Viagra into the Rhino horn, so that the Rhino horn really works.”
The Ehrlichs write that some of the great cats will live on, because they reproduce well in captivity. It will be a strange world if nature’s ark of characters is preserved only in zoos.
ALEX: Here in Canada, we just had a hockey player charged for taking macho pictures of himself with a grizzly bear he illegally slaughtered. In America, there’s the dentist who shot Cecil the lion. Is this partly just a testosterone problem?
Yes, Paul replies, but we have to remember that as sad and as crazy as sport hunting is – that is a minor factor compared to destruction of habitat and the poaching for supposed medical products. The trade in elephant ivory continues as well, with incredible numbers of elephants killed for their horns.
Ehrlich also raises the example of the scaly ant-eater (Pangolin). There are 13 species of them being killed and endangered all over the world because their scales are used in Chinese medicine. The Pangolins are also hunted for food, being considered a delicacy in parts of China.
The Pangolin endangered – hunted for “medicine”.
The only hunting that really threatens species is when poor people hunt wild species for food, called “bush meat”. As long as there is poverty and hunger, the local animals will be under threat.
ALEX: In the developed world, we may not slaughter species directly, we just steal habitat that was their home – for resources, new shopping malls and suburbs. Why isn’t there a plan to save the species, or is there?
Some countries pay more attention to conservation. “Botswana is way ahead of the United States in conservation. Mexico is way ahead of the United States in conservation.” “Most people don’t know we are entering a great extinction crisis that could end our civilization, and that’s sad, and that’s why I’m raving at you on the radio.”
CLIMATE CHANGE AND EXTINCTION
EHRLICH: “Several things are missing from the media. For example, have you heard anyone point out the more people there are, the greater the climate change is going to be, because each person contributes greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The climate-population connection has not been made. The population-extinction connection has not been made. And the connection between climate change and extinction.“
Ehrlich gives the example of the forests in Western North America being changed dramatically by drought and new fire regimes which are pumped up by climate change. These kind of rapid changes affect many species severely.
SAVING ANIMAL DNA TO BRING THEM BACK LATER
ALEX: Do you think it’s possible that DNA from disappearing species could be saved, to bring them back later in a more ecologically sane world? Is such a project in the works?
“There are some people trying to do that but it’s actually a total waste of time. It’s so much easier to save the habitat while it still exists, and save the organisms while they still exist. The so-called ‘de-extinction’ movement is basically make-work for idiots.” Jurassic Park, Paul says, was a great movie “but scientifically nonsense.” Trying to save DNA is actually “a huge threat because it makes people who are ignorant of science believe that they don’t have to worry because all we have to do is to put the several billion populations we have on the planet, that are genetically different, in freezers and everything will be fine.“
GETTING THROUGH THE MEDIA
ALEX: We’ve just received a new study, partly led by the World Wildlife Fund, saying half the fish in the sea have disappeared since you and I were born. It’s just another brief headline, competing with Hollywood news and a fixation with the stock market. How can giant and dangerous trends, like the annihilation of the animals, get past the everyday roar of
sensational media?
“For you and for me, if we knew how, we’d sure as Hell do it.” Ehrlich once suggested to Ben Bradley that the Washington Post “put in every day the numbers of how much CO2 there was in the atmosphere, how big the human population was, how many people were starving and so on. And he told me ‘No, we don’t want to have numbers in the newspaper. Nobody likes numbers.’ And I said ‘Have you ever looked at the sports or the financial pages?’… Then he told me that he wanted his science reporters to be utterly ignorant of science so they could be unbiased. And I said “Do you hire sports reporters who don’t know what a strike and a ball
is?’ The media has serious, serious problems as I think you know.“
ALEX: There are a lot of gorgeous photographs in your new book “The Annihilation of Nature”. How were they selected, and why are they there?
“The whole idea is to make people know what we are losing. Most people don’t pay attention. And so we selected what we thought were a lot of attractive and interesting animals.”
ALEX: A lof of people, if they see your book, may worry for a short time, which doesn’t solve much. What are the steps needed to save the species remaining, and what agencies need to take leadership in this?
“The most basic step, as we’ve published many times, is to reduce the scale of the human enterprise. There are many too many people and they are consuming much too much, many of them, while there are too many of them that don’t have enough to eat, so they don’t consume enough.” Ehrlich says we have to tackle the notion that we can grow forever, in what he calls our “faith-based economic system, which says on a finite problem we can continue to grow forever and not worry about anything.”
ALEX: Paul Ehrlich, you don’t have a reputation for looking on the bright side of things. Is there any hope for Earth’s threatened animal life, or do we just shrug it off and move on, until the specter of extinction finally arrives at the door of humanity itself?
He used to say “I am very pessimistic about where we are going, but very optimistic about where we could go. I now would say ‘I’m still very optimistic about where we could go, if we chose to do so, but my pessimism has increased by such things as having political debates in which the critical existential issues are not even discussed.”
WHAT DO WE TELL THE KIDS?
ALEX: Do we hide this fear of annihilation from school children? What do we tell the kids?
“It’s going to be in their laps. We are leaving them a world that is in tough shape, and part of their job is going to be to have to help dig us out of it.” Paul believes children can be a big force for conservation. He gives the example of when the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred off Alaska, the kids of the Exxon executives pressured their parents a lot.
ALEX: Paul, is there anything I’ve missed, that you would like to leave with our listeners?
Essentially Ehrlich says don’t take his word for the seriousness of the extinction crisis. Do your own research, see what the scientific community is saying, and then figure out what you can do to help.
“I think every functional human being, who is rich enough not to have to worry about where his or her food is coming from, should be putting something like ten percent of their time into one of the many places in which people can act.“
He recommends: go to mahb.stanford.edu – become a “mahbster” and help save the world.
We’ve been talking about disappearing nature with the renowned ecologist Paul R. Ehrlich. With the Mexican ecologist Gerardo Ceballos, Paul and Anne Ehrlich have just released their new book “The Annihilation of Nature – Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals” from John Hopkins University Press.
Download or listen to this 23 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with Paul Ehrlich in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
WILL TUTTLE – THE MASS MURDER OF ANIMALS
It’s not too hard to get sympathy for the awful killing of iconic animals in the wild. Everybody loves the elephants, lions and tigers. It’s a lot harder to get anyone to listen to the awful truth about our treatment of the animals who tolerate humans the most: the gentle cows, intelligent pigs, and docile chickens. In the United States alone, 75 million animals are killed every day for the meat diet that is scientifically documented to make people sick and fat. Two out of every three Americans are overweight or obese. It’s an epidemic.
Many of our listeners know climate change is real, and not a good thing. Yet we try not to know that at least half of all greenhouse gas emissions come not from cars or factories, but from the far-flung empire of animal agriculture. Don’t believe it? Get ready for the man who blows up the lies behind what we eat.
What is at the root of our violence toward nature, our indifference to changing the climate, and our murderous relationship with all other species? Will Tuttle says he knows.
Actually, that’s Dr. Will Tuttle. His PhD comes from the University of California, Berkeley, in the philosophy of education. Tuttle is a blazing speaker at conferences organized by vegetarians, animal rights activists, and progressive spiritualists. He also helps organize events like the online Veganpalooza in 2012. Find his personal web site here.
Dr. Will Tuttle
Will’s book “The World Peace Diet” was number one on Amazon in 2010, has been translated into at least 18 languages, and continues to sell well around the world.
A listener suggested Will Tuttle for Radio Ecoshock. I had my doubts – until I listened to a couple of his You tube presentations. He is on to something big.
In this Radio Ecoshock interview, Will Tuttle quotes the figure of 51% of climate change emissions driven by animal agriculture. He cites a study by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang. The title is “Livestock and Climate Change“.
That report says:
“Livestock are already well-known to contribute to GHG emissions. Livestock’s Long Shadow, the widely-cited 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), estimates that 7,516 million metric tons per year of CO2 equivalents (CO2e), or 18 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions, are attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, horses, pigs, and poultry.
That amount would easily qualify livestock for a hard look indeed in the search for ways to address climate change. But our analysis
shows that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32,564 million tons of CO2e per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions.“
– Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang “Livestock and Climate Change”
Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with Will Tuttle in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
ONE MORE RELATED ANIMAL CRUELTY NOTE: “THE LAST PIG”
After “Cowspiracy” it’s time for groundbreaking animal rights documentary, which just launched its crowdfunding campaign. Listen to my interview with Kip Anderson, producer of Cowspiracy on Soundcloud here.
Gary Smith of the socially conscious company Evolotus PR writes me:
“Last year, most of us heard of Bob Comis, the pig farmer in upstate New York who had a change of heart about raising animals for food. For more than ten years, Bob was successful, yet he was haunted by the ghosts of thousands of pigs he’d slaughtered. “The Last Pig” follows Bob’s final year as a pig farmer, including his struggles with their looming deaths, his search for sanctuaries that would take in his pigs, and his courage in starting a new life chapter. (Spoiler alert: Bob goes vegan.)
“The Last Pig” will offer the mainstream an entirely new view of small-scale, “humane,” animal exploitation, which is so often glorified as the answer to factory farms. So as “Cowspiracy” did with its indictment of the environmental problems of “sustainable” agriculture, “The Last Pig” does with the ethical issues. Like “The Ghosts in Our Machine” did by centering completely on Jo-Anne and her work, “The Last Pig” has a personal and sharp focus on Bob.
Filmmaker Allison Argo wants “The Last Pig” to force non-vegan viewers to confront their own belief systems, their relationships to nonhuman animals, and their capacity for compassion.
Allison’s work has won more than 100 awards including six Emmys, aired on networks like Nat Geo and PBS, and spans companion animals to endangered species. Even long ago as a vegetarian (now vegan) Allison wanted to focus her camera on farmed animals, but never hit on the right approach or story — and then she heard about Bob just like we all did”.
Here’s the campaign link: http://www.igg.me/at/the-last-pig
The Official website is http://www.thelastpig.com
Alright it’s time for…
“THE CLIMATE VARIETY HOUR …. in just 10 minutes.”
For folks trained by the Tweetosphere, here are some of the climate sounds that zipped past my ears this week, some of them thanks to tips from Radio Ecoshock listeners.
BERNIE SANDERS KNOWS CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL
Are you tired of Republican climate deniers, and Democratic wafflers? Here is a minute and a half from Democractic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders’ speech to enthusiastic,mostly African-American, college students at Benedict College in Columbia South Carolina, on September 9th, 2015.
[Sanders clip]
You can watch Bernie’s full speech at Benedict College on You tube here.
CLIMATE CHANGE HUMOR FROM THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER
In the United Kingdom, the Guardian Newspaper has been showing what climate-responsible media can be. If you’ve wondered when the Coastal real estate market will crash, here is a Guardian vignette as we enter an over-sized house with the local realtor….
“Looking for a beachfront home with a beautiful deck boasting killer ocean views? Why not check out this dream property in the Hamptons. Just ignore the rising tides, the increasingly severe hurricanes and the swallowing up of the east coast by the Atlantic Ocean. You’d be out of your mind to overlook this steal!“
Watch this short Guardian humor clip here.
If rising seas will swallow the East Coast, just as the climate-hyped rains did this past week – maybe we need somewhere higher to go? All the plants and animals will seek a cooler climate further up the mountains. Here is the Guardian newspaper’s fake promo for the city that’s safe from rising seas…
Watch the fake Denver promo here.
We’ll close out the Guardian climate media with just a brief sample from New Orleans musicians Tom Henehan and David S Lewis. They’ve had the “Climate Change Blues” ever since Hurricane Katrina nearly drowned their city.
Find the Guardian interview of the musicians here. And you can listen to the whole “Climate Change Blues song on Soundcloud here.
The whole series was sponsored by a progressive ice cream company. Bless you Ben and Jerry.
SONG: “GOODBYE COOL WORLD” by THE CANTRELLS
I know music is a very personal thing. What I like, you may hate, and vice versa. That’s why I leave my push for climate change music to the end of the show. Don’t be afraid, I’m not going to try to sing this time. This week we have real musicians, the Cantrells. From Nashville Tennessee, Al and Emily Cantrell perform “Goodbye Cool World”. You can listen or buy this song on Bandcamp here. Support climate music!
The Cantrells
I’m Alex. Don’t forget, (if you made it all the way through this horribly long blog) – you can help keep Radio Ecoshock going by donating at this page.
Thank you for listening to Radio Ecoshock, and be sure and tune in next week, as we investigate “Climate Shock” and China’s new plan for an “ecological civilization”.
I often struggle to understand how veganism practically meets a person's micro nutritientional needs and reduces the carbon footprint and adverse effects to the eco systems to low levels. Especially where I live in the UK. Let me elaborate.
Micro nutrient defiencies concerns for a vegan (from http://www.vrg.org/, http://zinc.rich-vegetarian-foods.com and https://www.vegansociety.com) seem to be:
Vitamin B12 (yoghurts e.g. made from coconut; fortified products e.g. soya, yeast extract and cereals)
Calcium (leafy greens, fortified products and other foods from far flung places)
Iodine (supplements are recommended by Vegen Society)
Iron (leafy greens, dried fruit)
Omega 3 and 6 (3: leafy greens, walnuts, flaxseed oil; 6: nuts and lots of nuts and seeds apart from pumpkin that can't be grown in the UK)
Protein (pulses, nuts, seeds and grain)
Selenium (Brazil nuts or supplements if you can't grow them)
Zinc (Tofu, tempeh, legumes, grains, nuts, seeds and fortified products)
In the UK some nutrient concerns can be met. However as shown above a lot of groups rely on food sources from far flung places – read a crazy number of air miles – and highly processed foods (from supplements or fortification) that presumably use a lot of petroleum based products currently in the manufacturing process.
Surely this goes against the philosophy of veganism?
It doesn't seem that for certain populations (like the UK) veganism is practical way of reducing ones adverse effect on the environment. Surely, in places like the UK, significantly reducing meat content (limiting to mainly oil fish) with dairy and egg production all done at a local scale would be a better policy. This would meet the nutritional and the environment concern of the veganism movement and do away with holocaust style food production.
Robert, I deeply appreciate you comment and information. This is all a struggle I am still wrestling with myself. One of my compromises is to eat oily fish from time to time. And the harsh truth is I am still addicted to cheese in cooking.
One place I learned more about essential substitutes was from a cooking course taught by Seventh Day Adventists. They are mostly vegan, or at least vegetarian. I'm not religious myself, but I'll learn from anyone who knows. Some of my canning and preserving skills came from watching You tube videos, and meeting with, Mormon women. They are fantastic preppers.
Anyway, I'm hoping more people will add to this debate of local food, versus vegan food flown from the tropics…
alex
I'm doing fine on eating a plant-based diet (no animal products or oils) which I grow most of myself and the rest only comes from local farmers. If you're worried about vitamin B12 deficiency eat a little dirt. That's where the animals that have the B12 get it from.
Check out The China Study, Caldwell Esselstyn's book on cardiovascular disease, or Forks over Knives.
Thanks for your concern, Robert. I understand, because we are all bombarded with so much misinformation. Basically there are two delusion here. The first is that a vegan way of eating is some kind of deprivation. The exact opposite is true. Since all minerals, essential fatty acids, proteins, carbohydrates, and virtually all vitamins are manufactured by plants (and 0 by animals), vegans typically have higher levels of nutrients and are healthier, all around.
For example, while it's true that vegans are at risk for being deficient in 3 nutrients (calcium, iodine, and B-12), omnivores are at risk of being deficient in 7 nutrients (calcium, iodine, vit. C, vit. E, folate, fiber, and magnesium).
Going through your list – vitamin B-12 is easily maintained with extremely inexpensive supplement. Calcium is easily available in grains and greens, and the bone health of vegans typically surpasses that of omnivores (dairy is actually damaging to bone health). Iodine is available from kelp and other sea veggies, or iodized salt or supplement, same as with omnivores. Omega 3 from hemp, walnut, flax, chia, soy, and greens; Omega 6 is prevalent in virtually all plant foods. Plant protein is much higher quality and more easily assimilable than animal protein because plant proteins are simpler and the amino acids are more accessible and so less acid-forming than large, complex and highly acid-promoting animal protein. Selenium and zinc are similarly available through plant sources more than from animal sources.
The second delusion has to do with the energy footprint of plant vs animal foods. As Richard Oppenlander amply demonstrates in his must-read book, Food Choice and Sustainability, the major petroleum/energy footprint for food is in producing it, and animal foods require about 20-30 times more energy per calorie than plant-based foods to produce. The best thing we can possibly do to reduce our energy footprint is to move to a completely plant-based diet. Fish is not an answer because wild-caught fish require enormous amounts of diesel fuel in the boats, and farmed fish require even more inputs and fuel.
The actual transport of food is only about 4-5% of its total energy footprint.
As always, it's important to question the culturally-mandated official narratives propagated by the military-industrial-meat-medical-pharmaceutical-media complex.
If you think humanity is going to stop eating meat and stop wasting food, then you are fucking delusional. We will be lucky to stop eating ourselves when collapse finally happens. Here is some unwelcome reality.
In 2007, the IPCC told us emissions must peak by 2015 to stay within 2 °C of warming.
In 2014, the IPCC told us emissions must peak by 2030 to stay within 2 °C of warming.
The IPCC says we can make this change because of what they call "negative-emissions bio-energy". meaning we will get energy by consuming plant matter in a way that pulls more CO2 out of the air than it emits; for which, by the way, no such technology exists, and the kicker is, they say, that we will need 1.5 billion acres of NEW farmland to do it. That much farmland is about the size of India, which is equal to nearly 50% of all the arable land on earth.
The acronym for this fantasy is BECCS (Bio-Energy Carbon Capture & Storage). The real acronym is BS (Bull Shit). Where do you think we'll find all this new farmland? The rainforests. World hunger will guarantee it.
Because we add 1 MILLION PEOPLE TO EARTH EVERY 5 DAYS (each who would very much like to eat every day for at least 50 years), we will have to grow more food over the these next 50 years than we grew in all of the last 10,000 years, combined. This is called math, get used to it, it will rule your life. We already converted nearly half the earth's surface into cities and farmland. Do you seriously believe 9 billion people will stop eating meat and wasting food? Yet, Scientific American says humans only have 60 years of agriculture left if we continue to lose and degrade soil at current rates. And climate change only guarantees faster soil degradation rates.
To feed nine billion people all at once for all their lives means we will need 12 million acres of brand new farmland EVERY year for 30 years. Instead, we are losing 24 million acres of farmland EVERY year. We are losing soil at twice the rate we need to grow it just to be able to eat, never mind the additional requirements of BECCS.
In 10 years 4 billion people will be without enough water.
In 10 years 2 billion people will be severely short of water.
Over the next 50 years energy demand will double (at the same time we have to reduce emissions at least 50%) because over 2 billion rural refugees will move to cities, and 75% of the infrastructure they require does not even exist yet. Already, China has poured more concrete in the last few years than the U.S.A. has in all of the last 100 years. Concrete production is a super-emitter of carbon into the air.
Yet, it also takes 10 times the amount of rated intermittent energy to close one equally rated fossil fuel plant simply because renewable energy is intermittent and fossil energy is not. It will be a physical impossibility to meet all future demand with 100% renewable energy and reduce emissions all at the same time. 50% of the renewable power in Europe comes from burning imported wood from all over the world. Rainforests are slashed and burned in South America and Indonesia to grow soy and palm oils that are exported Europe to burn in German diesel cars, who then lie about their emissions.
We cannot meet a doubling of energy demand using the lower power density and intermittency solar and wind technologies provide. These products only last some 30 years and use more minerals per unit of power. Recycling their alloys will use more energy and cost more than mining for them in the first place costs.
We constantly lie to ourselves about how bad it is. We lie to ourselves about how smart we are. We lie to ourselves about how stupid we are.
You can tell these reality based facts to Naomi Klein and Joe Romm until you are blue in the face. Nothing will change their mind because they lie. It's that fucking simple.
https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/3ng7lm/this_changes_nothing_how_naomi_klein_lies/
Robert, good post. We also have to contend with ongoing battles with identity politics which is hogging up our moral capital. Social Justice Warriors demand that the world's poor are entitled to modernization and that poverty and sickness must be eliminated; at the same time the West is expected to take in the Third World's burgeoning population. This is going to be a powder keg of civil unrest as well as a recipe for rising racial and tribal strife.
Found a reference to the Livestock and Climate Change report 2009 (and download) at http://www.greeneatz.com/1/post/2013/04/earth-day-livestock-and-greenhouse-gas.html
Seems to be written by the World Watch Institute rather than the World Bank. The greeneatz article also quotes a chart from http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet and http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/shrink-your-food-footprint. However shrinkthatfootprint I believe use a figure of 19-29% from a more recent 2012 study athttp://www.annualreviews.org/eprint/EBIXxM7sNxrBJyuRYgki/full/10.1146/annurev-environ-020411-130608.
What I thought was interesting from the 'The carbon foodprint of 5 diets compared' article that a no beef diet was only about a third worse than a vegan diet despite poultry and fish being more carbon intensive.
One thing the study noted that 45% of emissions come from wastage. Weaknesses in the report to me were: the study assumes a typical production, transport and retail food distribution; can't differentiate between any differences in carbon intensisties between locality, seasonality, food types and production methods. I would've liked to be able to have a calculator that could give more control in those aspects and see the results.
On the other hand the article references Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States that suggests that "Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food." (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es702969ff). I'm not able to read beyond the first page (problem with my tablet) so I don't know if this includes 'greener' food supply and transportation practices or not. I assume this is what Richhard Oppenlander uses for his book at a guess mentioned by Karuna Veg.
Thanks for your comments everyone I'm busy trying to digest it all. In all honesty the nutrition areana is making my head swim, I'll try and post some thoughts at some point.
I wish Paul Ehrlich would talk about immigration as a driving force behind the population increase in the West. Merkel is commended by the press for opening the boarders up to the hoards of "refugees" and the Pope is praised when he states that we mustn't be "taken aback by the numbers"; this is not sustainable but it is virtually ignored on the left. There is severe cognitive dissonance about the problem.
As an independent ecological researcher (nobody pays us to support their conclusions) which required us to delve into other areas including history, economics, energy psychology and even politics, I am amazed at the divisiveness that such topics as being vegan, vegetarian or an omnivore!
However, there are those that benefit from us arguing amongst ourselves instead of addressing and solving real core issues.
Historical examples of creating a environment of doubt includes the tobacco industry fostering doubt whether or not smoking is linked to cancer.
More recently that tactic has been applied to global warming in creating doubt whether it is caused by man or not – when the legitimate scientific research proves that it indeed is.
Further, questions such as whether choosing to being a vegan, vegetarian or an omnivore are not as simple as what we choose to eat. I know of those who follow each choice who are unhealthy in one way or another. Why?
Unless one raises all their own food containing carbohydrates, proteins, fats, oils including the needed vitamins and minerals, not supplements, they are getting mostly adulterated foods, even most “organic” gets treated with some kind of “organic approved” chemical which in turn negatively affects some living elements of the biosphere let alone organic tilling killing billions of organisms in the soil.
No, most do not have the time in our busy lives just trying to make ends meet – one has to love the “squirrel cage” of most people’s lives as shown in Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM ), Let alone to raise the total number of calories needed to support a human being takes at least staple crops which again takes annuals which again takes tillage and destruction of the environment.
So is there a better answer that helps solve all of this and most environmental issues regardless of whether one chooses to be vegan, vegetarian or an omnivore (and assure no animal cruelty)?
Almost 6 years ago I ran across an interview with Jarod Diamond who laid out 12 challenges that all must be rectified if mankind is to continue. The list has since been highly replicated. Jarod Diamond, is the UCLA professor of geography, evolutionary biologist and physiologist who wrote the books which were subsequently turned into documentaries Guns, Germs and Steel, which outlines the rise of humankind during the last 10,000 years including the development of agriculture; and Collapse, which ironically contributes collapse in every case in large measure to the development of conventional annual crop tilled agriculture.
Recently it came to me as an epiphany, that restoration agriculture (regrarian agriculture as it is called in Australia) as evolved by the likes of Mark Shepard, head of Restoration Agriculture Development, Inc. significantly solves all 12 of Diamond’s challenges and provides healthier more nutritious foods, medicinals, biomass, cost-effectively to the consumer and profitably to the producer.
Not only that, restorational agriculture can provide all the needs of anybody, whether a vegan, vegetarian or an omnivore.
Thanks for the links to Restorative Agriculture. I've enjoyed listening to the talks by Mark Shepard, head of Restoration Agriculture Development. Some links here:https://youtu.be/A1vW7WomC2kk and https://youtu.be/7hlKOZ6TaO0
The eco manager style of farming seems to render the debate mute. One part for example is using grazing animals to prune and clear land. He claims that that style of farming (along with the other techniques he uses) is a carbon sequestration technology but doesn't have the testing on his land to back it up. He further cites in the second presentation at 16 minutes the book 'Cows Save The Planet' that mentions that raising the organic matter by just 1.3% of 38% of the world's cropland would reduce the CO2 levels to preindustrial levels.
I'm going to try and get hold of the paper to try and see if the claims match up.
Has anyone heard about this, is there evidence to back it it up? It sounds too good to be true.
Quickly off the top of my head, because I have to travel off-island today, carbon sequestration in the soil and other living things like new grasses and growing trees is supported by Alan Savory, Wes Jackson, Geoff Lawton, Dave Jacke, Elaine Ingham, Darren Doherty, Joel Salatin, Tom Newmark and even the USDA. See http://www.perennialsolutions.org/carbon-sequestering-agriculture-global-warming-solution-piece-remove-co2-from-atmosphere-organic-garden.html for more details or Alan Savory's web site for even more details of continuing success in replicating what nature did for eons with with wild herds being driven all over by predators and only remaining long enough to graze the grass enough to stimulate its regrowth rather than destroy it.
Today livestock can be managed in this predator/prey herding effect with careful rotational grazing via portable electric fencing.
I believe the 1.3% refers to the total percentage of organics in soil which is mostly made up of inorganics like sand, minerals, etc. where at a maximum the total organics in the distant past measured on average 6%. Most modern day monocroped farmland measures less than 1%. I am sure by checking all of the above sources you will find answers to your measurement questions.