Vivienne left a comment recently on this website which said: ”Environmentalists should be either vegan or vegetarian”. I am neither. By Vivienne’s reckoning, I am automatically part of why the world is in trouble.
I am the father of four carnivorous children – a fact several people have told me is inconceivably at odds with a green CV. In my defence, I have nearly had the snip twice and am now contemplating a third run-up at the sterilised scissors.
There is no denying, I am a meat-eating, fertile, cowardly male. I am thus already thrice excluded from environmental credibility. But it gets worse.
These words are being written on a new laptop I bought, encouraged by Kevin Rudd’s small business stimulus incentive. As my friend told me: ”It’s a great computer as long as you can cope with the guilt of owning a piece of moulded aluminium”.
Cope with the guilt? My new computer makes me feel like a mixture of a religious zealot and a man freshly in love. It is hard for me to reconcile this intuitive machine with a big hole in the ground in an aluminium ore mine in some out-of-sight wilderness area.
It is 33 centimetres of jam-packed energy and I suspect cost more in carbon dioxide emissions than produced by an entire village in the developing world. Now Vivienne has driven me down this track, I feel a little guilty.
It gets worse still. I drive a car, I drink beer, I love going on holidays to destinations I can only reach by air. I recently bought a soda stream that makes a pig’s ear out of the silk purse that is the rainwater I collect from my roof.
It sits like a garish plastic Easter Island monolith on our kitchen sink. Into its innards goes a miniature scuba tank filled with enough compressed bubbles to carbonate about 100 litres of water. Surely that cannot be good for the atmosphere?
Then there are the indirect aspects of my life. Each year I say to myself I should select the sustainable portfolio for my superannuation, yet I have never been able to bring myself to do it.
I don’t like to do things that are supposedly good for the environment unless I know they are. Converting from superannuation investment in BHP Billiton to Snowy Hydro’s so-called ”green” hydro-electricity is little more than a fashion statement.
All of this makes me see why Ross Garnaut was right to describe controlling carbon emissions as a ”diabolical” policy problem. Everywhere you look there are pitfalls, solutions that breed problems and perverse outcomes resulting from attempts at being an ”environmentalist”.
Yet my life is not the worst. I don’t have a huge four-wheel drive, I have a solar system powering my house, I don’t own a plasma-screen television, we produce much of our own food and whenever possible we choose second-hand. I try to jump on my bike rather than turn on my car.
Still, it is not even close to enough. Vivienne, I am afraid you are right. But unless you are living in abject poverty in a cave forsaking every 21st-century gadget, you are also wrong. If you are buying bananas and pineapples from former Queensland rainforests or cherries from California, you are definitely wrong.
There is far more to being green than simply what you eat. And there is no such thing as a simple distillation of what makes an environmentalist.
An old time logger who fixes and re-uses all his possessions, grows his food and never gets on an aircraft has a far lighter footprint than a self-described greenie in the city with a laptop, frequent-flyer card and new hybrid car every few years.
Beware the preaching of guilt and fear. Who will change if we all think the world is screwed no matter what we do? Or if we think everyone has to do it exactly the same way?
I have met hundreds of surprising greenies, people you would never pick as one and who would certainly never nominate themselves. Many act quietly, passionately and sometimes mischievously. They make a massive difference, if not on a planetary scale, then at least on their veranda, backyard or farm. They’re the ones I like best.
First published Sydney Morning Herald 25/01/09
If anything there is a strong argument that being a vego or vegan is in fact anti-green. You see, as part of the order of the world, we are omnivores. Our role in the grand scheme is to eat both meat and vegies – not all meat, and not all vegies. We’re supposed to help the scavangers by taking prime cuts from our kill and leaving a carcass for picking over, and help plants to thrive by pruning the tasty bits off, allowing new growth to come through.
So Vegans certainly are not pulling their weight, green wise, and Vegetarian’s are only slightly better. None the less, I don’t think less of them because it is their right to choose that. It certainly doesn’t make them more green than me – although other lifestyle choices may do.
Vivienne should focus on the things that matter, not the things we eat.
I have just read your article in the SMH (25.1.10 Let’s cut the hypocrisy about how to be green). I have been thinking these things for a long time, and can’t get interested in the whole carbon emissions thing until its advocates change (at least) their travel habits.
Sydney’s fireworks display on New Year’s Eve makes a mockery of any of its other “green” gestures.
It’s always more complex than it seems…
If James eats skippy, shot and butchered on site, or fish from the nearby lake, river or ocean (caught himself or by a local) I’d reckon he’s far ‘greener’ (on this score) than the most well-intensioned strictly organic vegan consuming tofu that was grown far from the city using diesel-powered equipment for sowing and harvesting, trucked to a city for processing, trucked (in refrigeration) to a supermarket dispatch centre, trucked again to the city supermarket and (at best) delivered to said vegan’s home on foot or by bike…
Similarly, going without dairy products is ecologically desirable but he/she who consumes DIY or very local dairy products has a lesser impact than a dairy consumer reliant on commercial/industrial dairying and fossil-powered refrigeration and transport to get the stuff to the ‘burbs. Again, it isn’t what you eat so much as it is the specific circumstances around its production and ultimate consumption that determines the total impact.
Vegetarianism or veganism are ecologically less harmful IN GENERAL and IN THEORY, but it’s the damned specifics that make the reality more problematic. The issue of eating (other) animals is both ethical and ecological, and these two fields combine once you get beyond the realm of ‘facts’ and enter the realm of ‘values’.
Unfortunately, environmentalist arguments are (almost) as prone to dogmatic over-simplifications as red-neck / econometric arguments no matter how well intentioned. We would all benefit from more critically reasoned discussions…
Now… who wants to start a debate about whether environmentalism is a religion? I’m not suggesting it is or isn’t, or that such a thing is bad or good, but sorting through the debate might be revealing…
And there’s the rub. How about a city dweller that sticks to public transport and has a reuse policy?
Sweet article. Honest, open, and accepting that if we all spend our time attacking each other nothing’s going anywhere.
Written on my 17′ aluminium power guzzler.
: b
If we’re all made to feel guilty about our level of green-ness a large proportion of the population will be too intimidated to learn about, or try any sustainable initiatives. I do my best to suit our modest lifestyle, but I am not a green angel. I’m an ordinary Mum who will accept a plastic bag (to be recycled in the special collection bins at supermarkets), if I’ve forgotten the green one and have to wrangle a tired and cranky 2 yo, in and out of the supermarket. I don’t want to be judged or have a green guilt following me around in everything I do.
You have to be in denial to be complacent about meat eating. You must have heard the saying, ‘If abbatoirs had glass walls no one would eat meat’.
…or have a strong stomach. Most if not all traditional indigenous people aren’t concerned about hunting, butchering and eating critters. No doubt our ancestors weren’t quesy about it either. But sheltered as we are from so much of the reality behind food production, most of us would probably not eat meat if it was a DIY or participatory proposition, given the bloody realities.
Beyond the grizzly aspects, there are the ethical issues of agri-industrial meet production – e.g. feedlots, antibiotic resistance arising from regular dosing to deal with high population / high stress environments, dodgy transport conditions, industrial slaughtering etc. But there isn’t necessarily an immediate connection between the animal rights issues (killing etc) and the ecological issues. Many would argue there is an indirect connection to the extent that if we’re prepared to eat meat that has been produced in highly unnatural, commercially-driven, agri-industrial processes that treat livestock only as a meat production commodity, we’re not likely to possess the values, attitudes and behaviours necessary for an ecologically viable society. That’s one reason that some environmentalists say that you have to be vegetarian if not vegan to be genuinely ‘green’.
So what is it that you actually do to help the environment? Run a blog?
Great article James.
I’ve been saying for a while now thats its a big picture problem, needing a big picture solution(s).
To focus on meat production is wrong. To focus on carbon trading is wrong. To focus on charity is wrong.
It is my opinion that whilst ever you ignorantly and willfully participate in this thing we call the ‘monetary’ system, you are not looking at the big picture. Admittedly, it is pretty scary if you get a glimpse, but it is essential that people study this system and learn its fraudulent nature that keeps us in a perpetual state of debt slavery.
The environmental problem will NEVER be solved until the ‘monetary’ system is.
Check out community exchange systems!
Good article James.
Thanks for the censorship.
As I said in my censored comments, the world is facing an ECONOMIC problem, not an environmental one.
Society needs to re-evaluate what we VALUE. A land base of resources or fancy bits of plastic/paper that have numbers printed on them?
That my friends is the problem!! Anyone else see the big picture?
Bear Grylls most recent episode of Man v Wild shows him in the Sahara eating a raw frog live, roasting camel and other ‘unusual’ taste adventures.
For the purpose of human survival and for traditional peoples where such practice is part fo culture where no other option is available, there is a case for wildlife eaten for personal survival. Here there is no choice (recognising that Bear is demonstrating survival skills and mindset, rather than suggesting we all go to the Sahara and bite frogs heads off and eat goat testicles).
Industrial exploitation of wildlife such as that pushed by the KAA of kangaroos is one of choice. It is industrial poaching and not survival in ‘the wild’ or ‘traditional hunting where there is no other choice’. Industrial poaching is unnecessary exploitation and morally wrong. It also impacts on natural ecosystems without us knowing the full impact. No roo shooter is a qualified native zoologist so would have a clue about the faunal impact. Independent qualified zoologists set up as watchdogs would be a start to assess the impact and humaness of kangaroo poaching.
The sheer numbers of industrial poaching exploitation may weel be pushing wildlife towards extinction.
As for humans eating meat, humans have been doing so since they were hominids, which means the practice has natirally evolved.
So long as livestock are killed humanely, one could argue that the practice is natural. But again we have taken it to industrial scale even though the animals are not ‘wild’. Does this mean it is acceptable? It is certainly more convenient than everyone living an agrarian lifestyle – bit hard to have a cow in a city apartment.
However, as humans have bred into pathological numbers, the amount of land and resources required to feed the billions is running out.
This is a population supply dilemna. How do we keep feeding a human pathogen? Livestock take up land, potable water, resources and so displace native ecosystems. Crops do too, but on a tonnage output basis less so. So being vegan still translates to humans demanding the earth’s resources to feed themselves, albeit more efficiently than meat eaters.
The big picture problem is the number of humans because as the numbers grow the earth’s resources are put under more pressure. For Bear to bite a Saharan frog’s head off is not going to alter the fragile Saharan ecosystem. But if everyone on the Dakar Rally did it, thee frog would soon become extinct.
Yup,
At its simplest:
IMPACT = population x consumption x technology
The problem of conserving our land and biodiversity is mainly livestock. 70% of the deforestation in the once mighty Amazon. 64% of all the acid rain-producing ammonia; and 15 out of the 24 global ecosystems that are in decline can be attributed to the effects of livestock production.
The average meat eater’s diet requires fifteen times more water than a plant based diet. That means that switching to a plant based diet can save roughly 5 million litres per year.
On the African continent, nearly one in every four human beings is malnourished. In Latin America, nearly one out of every seven people goes to bed hungry each night. In Asia and the south Pacific, 28% of the people border on starvation.
Our nearest animal relative are the primates. Physiologically we are designed to have their diets – that is- foraging herbivores! Even omnivore chimps do not eat nearly the amount of meat that most human societies traditionally do!
Almost all Third World nations must import grain, a large proportion of which is fed to livestock. According to Robbins, 75% of Third World imports of corn, barley, sorghum and oats are fed to animals. Most of the nations that now import grain were once self-sufficient in grain.
The best thing anyone can do to protect our environment is to change to a veg*n diet.
References from Pulitzer Prize nominated Diet for a New America by John Robbins and The Food Revolution also by John Robbins.
The problem is that there are too many people in the world and the global human population continues to grow rather than shrink. If things do not change we will run out of food. Meat eaters will then eat the vegans and vegetarians.
The emisson of carbon is not the most pressing problem. The real problem is over population, land clearing, destruction of native habitat, warfare and the really serious emissions such as lead, mercury, arsenic, phenols, dioxins, radioactive waste, medical waste, bio-toxins, etc. we pump into our land, water and air at an alarming rate. Carbon is essential for plant and animal life on this planet and the Earth has an efficient carbon recycling system consisting of plants (not man-made ones, real plants!). Too many scientists and politicians have it the wrong way round — they are focusing on the least of our worries. I am proud of my carbon footprint but am totally ashamed of my poison footprint. It is the poison footprint combined with overpopulation that will get us if we don’t act soon, not carbon per se. Know any good vegan recipes with vegetarian on the side?!
Paul, I agree with you except with your prediction of canabalism,- the film ‘Van Diemens Land’ was too much.
Rudd could earn his statesmanship ambitions and an Australia Day medal and become the historic greenhouse gas reduction leader, if he declared all state forests across Australia, ‘National Parks’ and compensated the forestry industry and farmers (like Peter Spencer) accordingly to transition into plantations on degraded farmland.
Labor has the mandate across Australian political landscape at present. Just Do It!
A national programme of land rehabilitation of agrarian farmland for organic mixed crops and livestock would set Australis agricultural brand as a world leader able to command top prices.
Hey there, interesting discussion and I applaud Jame’s honesty. I suspect though that technically Vivienne is right. But, am I (unashamed chop lover) in for a grey future of lentils and beans only? Not necessarily, there is a half way house. Most of us could probably cut in half the amount of red meat we eat virtually instantly, hardly notice the impact on our diets and get to eat better cuts to boot. That would have a big speedy impact on emissions but not provide the unmovable barrier that many of us contemplate when considering vego world. As for the rest, sadly people like me are the reason we need governments to legislate. We need to cut emissions but if its left to me to do it on my own it aint gonna happen. We don’t have to legislate vegitarianism but there’s one hell of a lot we can do, via government, collectively to get this ball rolling. Most of us could easily cut down on meat, be healthier, eat better and be smugger. The meat free Monday campaign is not a bad way to tackle it, who knows where it goes from there, now…where did I stick those vegie burgers in the freezer!!
It’s a shame you had to trivialize Vivienne’s point.
Factory farming is not ok. If China and India aspire to eat meat the way we do, we will need another one and a half planets. You have a privileged position as a writer in the Herald, it’s a pity you couldn’t have addressed the issue with a little more respect. Cruelty to animals is soooo funny James.
But as long as you’re comfy and fertile and got a coldie in one hand and a snag in the other, well who cares . . .
If the eco facts prove that meat is extravangant and overdemanding of the environment, where are our political fearless leaders showing an ecological feed solution or have they proven themselves useless and irrelevant?
Word population is predicted to blow out to over 9 billion by 2050. At the same time, there are predicted food shortages as the amount of food that needs to be produced will not be able to keep up with population demands. Despite the demise of the Murray Darling Basin and our search for another food bowl, we probably will have food security in Australia, according to some experts.
The real water guzzlers are the dairy and livestock industries, not just cotton! It takes a great deal of grain and other foodstuffs cycled through cows to produce a small amount of milk. And not only is milk a waste of energy and water, the production of milk is also a disastrous source of water pollution. The average meat eater’s diet requires fifteen times more water than a plant based diet. That means that switching to a plant based diet can save roughly 5 million litres per year. That’s more water than you’d use for showers in two lifetimes!
Even “green” groups will ignore the impact of livestock – clearly due to conflicts of interests.