Under a previous post on whaling, a commenter pointed out the hypocrisy of those in the environmental movement who oppose whaling while tacitly supporting other forms of animal slaughter no less morally offensive. The commenter made the point that as long as an animal species is being managed sustainably, there is nothing inherently wrong with using that animal, no matter how sentient, in whatever ways we desire.
This contention gets at a key weakness in the environmental movement, which deserves significantly more discussion and debate. According to this ethic of sustainability, all that matters is the quantity of the environment, not the quality, in terms of how non-human animals are treated.This environmental ethic is almost by definition amoral; it provides space for such practices as:
- Bludgeoning baby seals for fur coats.
- Unlimited animal testing that takes no account of cruelty or the triviality of the need (e.g. for testing new cosmetics).
- Slaughtering whales, dolphins, sea turtles in extremely brutal ways.
- Industrial agricultural practices such as factory-farming, foie gras, and veal production (in smaller quantities these practices can be done sustainably).
- Sport hunting of all kinds, no matter how cruel.
And the list goes on. As long as any of the above practices don't threaten the sustainable use of animals they are acceptable to those whose view of environmentalism stops at sustainability. But there are many who recognize that while conserving biodiversity is a necessary condition for an environmental ethic, it is not sufficient; how we treat our fellow creatures must be taken into account.
Environmentalists have long suffered from an image and PR problem, which creates pressure to avoid the tough moral questions. We are often viewed as extreme leftists, leftover hippies, and those who favor animals over humans, so any hint of including animal rights in a broader discussion of environmental goals is usually avoided; this is especially true as environmental groups try to court hunting and fishing groups. In addition, most environmentalists eat meat, and many are understandably hesitant to examine in greater detail the conditions of the animals they routinely consume.
An environmentalism that cares only about the absolute quantity of animals on the planet, and not the way they are treated, is a morally bankrupt ideology. In order to keep pace with major scientific advances in biology, which are teaching us that non-human animals are much more sentient and closely related to us than we once believed, environmentalism needs to confront directly the treatment of animals and issues of animal rights.
As a last point, bear with me for a little thought experiment: Consider a superior race of beings that comes to planet Earth and realizes that humans make for tasty delicacies. This race decides to harvest us sustainably, randomly hunting us with harpoons, while ensuring that our numbers do not dip below adequate levels. We try to use our limited cognitive skills to convince them they are morally wrong to kill us, but they don't accept our reasoning since it is not as sophisticated as theirs. How is this version of sustainability any different from what some nations are currently doing to the whales, and all nations, in some way or another, doing to other highly sentient animals with whom we share the planet? And if these superiors being would be wrong to harvest us, whether sustainably or not, then ...
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David Roberts Posted 2:19 am
07 Sep 2006
Concern with biodiversity is not "amoral" because it "allows for" animal cruelty. My concern that my house retain its value "allows for" me to beat my wife -- in that it just doesn't say anything about it. The two are not particularly related.
The reasons behind my concern for biodiversity are largely pragmatic, though there are moral aspects too, in that human beings are immorally dooming their own prospects and removing the ability of other creatures to live.
The reasons behind my concern with animal welfare are largely moral. I believe "minimize cruelty" is a good guide to action toward any species, human or otherwise.
But I don't see them as particularly connected. I don't see how the former without the latter (or vice versa) is somehow incomplete. Maybe you can expand.
www.grist.org
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GreenEngineer Posted 3:39 am
07 Sep 2006
Sustainability is, at its root, about the relationship between human activitiy and natural systems. The destructiveness of our civilization comes from the belief that we are separate from, and superior to, the rest of the natural world.
True sustainability (as opposed to the "being less bad" that is 99.9% of what current passes for "sustainability") will require that we change our attitude and consider ourselves, once again, as part of the natural system. This would represent a profound shift in consciouness that will take several generations to occur, if it happens at all. But as long as humans continue to act as if they are outside of the natural world -- the life support system of Spaceship Earth -- we will continue to act in ways that damage that system.
If we begin to live within a framework that considers humans as just another tool of nature, another component in the web of life, the "moral" issues around animal welfare will become both obvious and moot. We will continue to use animals and rely on them, just as they use and rely on each other. But we will cease to exploit them, because we will understand that what we do to them, we do to ourselves.
Note that, in this context, moral veganism is not the epitome of an ethical relationship with nature, but is in fact its antithesis. To live without making use of animals in any way is to try to place oneself outside of the circle of life. No complex animal species survives without relationships to other animals, and it is arrogant for humans to believe that we can or should be any different in this regard.
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kmp Posted 4:23 am
07 Sep 2006
I don't believe that the distinction between "use" and "exploit" is a valid one in terms of humans' use of animals. Whatever use we may put animals to, whether it be farm labor, transportation, airport security, search and rescue, medical research or aiding the blind, we must presume that the animal had little choice in the decision. Granted many animals are treated very well in exchange for their service; free room, board and medical care, and often love, affection, attention, regular exercise, etc. However, since we cannot communicate with animals we cannot know whether they would have chosen this life of service, or would choose an entirely different life; in fact, we do not even know if they possess the capacity for choice at such a level.
When it comes down to killing animals, for food or other purposes, it's kind of hard to get around the argument that most animals do not want to die. It's a pretty primary biological urge, staying alive. I am not a vegetarian - I eat meat, and in order to do so, animals are killed. I have made my peace with this decision, yet even though I am fully aware that I am "part of the natural world" this does not give me unlimited license to "make use of animals" in any way I see fit.
Jason, I am not sure that this is such a debate amongst environmentalists. Does davidintokyo even consider himself an environmentalist? Although we do sometimes focus on numbers, I have never heard an environmentalist say that only the numbers matter, and can't imagine that I ever will.
I think David's is the key point, to minimize cruelty and prevent suffering in all animals, human and non-human. When you think of it this way, the numbers are irrelevant, because really, one suffering animal is one too many.
Kaela
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caniscandida Posted 4:50 am
07 Sep 2006
For that reason, it seems unjust to charge environmentalists, concerned with biodiversity, with hypocrisy. We proponents of animal rights are indeed happy when environmentalists such as David move in our direction. But I do not think we can fairly require that of all of them.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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caniscandida Posted 5:59 am
07 Sep 2006
Right, GrEn, it seems to be a fact of life that human beings, being animals, are inevitably positioned in this network, or "web," of life-eating-life, which is one of the foundations of biology. It is necessary to add, though, that we are moral beings too. We have hugely, immensely imaginative minds. When we kill, we can think about what we are doing. We can imagine the experience of the living being whom we are killing. And that inevitably affects the quality of our own personal lives.
The meat industry of course wants to disguise the reality of killing. And restaurants gladly join in.
Kaela, you make some excellent points. "Exploit" is rhetoric; it does not mean anything over and above "use," but adds a great moral burden. Sort of like "murder," as opposed to "kill." "Steal," as opposed to "take."
I am very happy that you join David (good David, our David, not at all to be confused with DavidinTokyo) in disapproving of cruelty. As I wrote before, it is not clear to me that that should be acknowledged as a certain, established part of environmentalist ethics. Nevertheless, it is a good direction to move toward.
The principal issue in animal-rights ethics, IMHO, is the relative vulnerability and passivity of beings capable of suffering equal to our own. That is why I believe animal rights ought to be firmly linked to humanitarian moral issues, in which those same considerations are fundamental.
Captivity is an interesting issue in animal-rights ethics. My own feeling is that many animals are quite comfortable in a stable environment, where they have what they need, they are relieved of the burden to find food, and they do not have to watch out for dangerous neighbors. So I am not altogether an opponent of zoos, as are many animal-rights proponents.
I do not know enough about cetaceans to have a firm opinion on captive dolphins and orcas and other cetaceans. As you know, that is a serious subject among animal-rights proponents. In the past couple of years, two beluga whales were bought from a private owner, I think, who had them in horrible conditions in an amusement park in Mexico City, and moved to the state-of-the-art aquarium in Atlanta, where apparently they are thriving.
As you correctly observe, we cannot (yet!) communicate with animals, and so we cannot know what they really want. Do they really want to have free outdoors experiences? To live "naturally"? That is a reasonable surmise, but hardly certain.
Sam Neill, playing the paleontologist Dr. Grant in "Jurassic Park," comments when he sees the enclosure in which the Tyrannosaurus rex is kept, and where a live goat is daily supplied, something to the effect of, "T. rex does not want to be fed, T. rex wants to hunt!" Great theater, but hardly a professional opinion, and no doubt John Horner and his friends in the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology winced. Horner, of course, upon whom the character of Grant was vaguely based, famous professor at Montana State University in Bozeman, is a principal proponent of the idea that T. rex was in fact more a scavenger than a hunter.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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GoodCheer Posted 6:16 am
07 Sep 2006
Add to this argument the fact that much hunting is legislated to insure animals can breed before they are offed (if they survive predation and starvation long enough to breed), and we end up with a system that I think works very well to tie the interests of "sportsmen" and environmentalists together.
Bikes can save us!!
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dwm376s Posted 6:34 am
07 Sep 2006
I think too often issues like environmentalism and animals rights get lumped together without a real relationship between them. Why? I really don't know. I can speculate that the issue of environmentalism has much broader appeal to the general public, and it crosses many social boundaries (political, ethical, etc), than the issue of animal rights. I think the general public of tends to think of animal rights as an "extreme leftists" issue as the author stated. If a connection, perceived or otherwise, can be made between a popular issue (environmentalism) and a not so popular issue (animal rights) then the latter of the two gains some credibility. At the same time the prior loses some.
I don't know if I would consider myself an environmentalist or not. I guess that all depends on how one defines "environmentalist."
I am certainly concerned about issues that I consider to be environmentally related, for instance: air and water quality, natural resources conservation, and wildlife ecology. So in that respect I guess one may consider me and environmentalist. However, I am not near as concerned with animal rights, because I think the issues that are consistently brought up are the most extreme examples. I believe individuals with a direct tie to the animal rights cause use these examples for their shock value (i.e. - "Bludgeoning baby seals for fur coats").
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caniscandida Posted 6:41 am
07 Sep 2006
I mean, really: "being eaten to death," "aiming for my heart," "aiming to fell me cleanly with one blow," "eaten by something like a tiger," "I think I would opt for the bullet"!!!
I am swooning in near-orgasmic adoration!
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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PBrazelton Posted 6:53 am
07 Sep 2006
dwm376s, perhaps your experience is that animal rights activists are only concerned with obviously shocking examples of brutality, but there are many who speak out every day about the incredible suffering imposed upon billions of domestic animals in perfectly mundane conditions. Maybe animal rights do not concern you because it's a handful of battered seals to you; if that's the case, do a bit of research into factory farming. You'll discover a world of suffering and misery that you couldn't possibly hope to comprehend, yet is utterly commonplace. No sensationalism is needed to perceive the hopeless plight of these animals.
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Tom Twigg Posted 7:03 am
07 Sep 2006
I spent many years working along the coast of Alaska and have seen orcas play with their sea lion prey, as I have seen sea lions toss salmon around for the apparent fun in it (and drag gulls under too). Does that justify human cruelty to animals? No. But it may help illustrate how complicated relationships between species can be, and how hard it is to define morality in absolutes.
If a twigg falls in the forest but nobody is there to hear it, it's probably best because there is bound to be cussing.
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kmp Posted 7:08 am
07 Sep 2006
Well, when you are out in the forest, living off the wild, we will certainly bear your preferences in mind. In the meantime, we should all remember that, although we (humans) share some basic biological traits with our non-human animal friends (hunger, exhaustion, the urge to mate) it is sheer anthropomorphism to think that we can pick and choose for our animal friends the "best" way to die.
Certainly animals in the wild starve; but why do they starve? Sometimes it is just the "natural" order of things... a species will reproduce quite effectively in a particular season, overwhelm the natural resources available to it, and the population will starve or become weak due to lack of food and subject to predation. But oftentimes, in our world it seems, the starvation can be directly linked to human intrusion into the animal's ecosystem. Deer are numerous in my neck of the woods, and certainly, some of them must starve throughout the winter. But why? Because humans have built houses, built roads, disrupted wildlife corridors, encroached onto their feeding areas, wiped out their natural predators.... in this respect, I support the annual hunt of wild deer in order to prevent overrun of the population and eventual starvation. But to consider that an animal in a healthy, balanced ecosystem might starve and might rather be shot "straight to the heart" (Guns N Roses? Def Leopard? Pat Benatar? Oh, my 80's songs are all confused..) instead seems a bit specious to me.
Again, I will say that I think it all comes down to preventing suffering. If human intervention or intrusion into a landscape is causing suffering, then I feel we have a moral obligation to do what we can do to obviate that suffering, for as many animals as possible. Strange as it seems, the answer sometimes may be to allow a hunt. But in an otherwise healthy ecosystem, it is simply assuaging our guilt over taking a life to say "but it's better than starving to death."
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GoodCheer Posted 7:52 am
07 Sep 2006
I also would have no hesitation in restricting hunting of a species in areas where there is a natural predator. In doing so I do not think I'm reducing the net suffering of the species, rather that I'm preserving the bounds of the "food chain".
If you goal is to prevent suffering, then I feel you are committing the same sin of which you accused me; you are choosing how wild animals should prefer to die. I'm not a hunter (in fact I gave up fishing at the age of 12 because I couldn't stomach the sight of fish dying the canoe), but I would submit that being shot is likely to cause less suffering than most of the other options.
I simply wish to offer as food for thought that wild animals don't die happily in bed surrounded by loving family. Sturgeons (famously) may produce 3,000,000 eggs in a single year and live to 100. In a stable population in the wild, that means 299,999,999,998 (on average) of that mother's eggs will die before they are old enough to reproduce. The same is true (average of 2 survivors) for any other species. I don't know what the breakdown of starvation vs. predation vs. being killed directly by humans vs. being killed indirectly by humans is for any particular species, but they all have to die, otherwise the populations ain't stable.
Bikes can save us!!
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dwm376s Posted 8:16 am
07 Sep 2006
To clarify, I comprehend the fact that its not just a handful of seals and that is not how I view the subject. I am well aware of the issues that are at hand with our domesticated animals as well - you mentioned factory farming. I am well aware of the issues dealing with "factory farming." I grew up on a farm in Southwest Iowa, and so did pretty much everyone else in this region. Livestock represented the livelihood of most families, and because of that, their livestock was taken care of. I remember going out in thunderstorms, trudging through snow and ice, etc. to make sure the cows were all "okay", or to chop the ice in the pond so they had plenty of water. This is the norm in rural America - believe it or not.
As a Wildlife Biologist in the state of Florida, and formerly Missouri, I have dealt with animal rights issues on an almost daily basis, and dealt with individuals on both sides of the argument. I'd like to think I fall somewhere in the middle - "reasonable ground." I am devoting my career to what I consider, an environmental cause - that is the preservation of wildlife and the unique habitats that enable that wildlife to flourish.
If being an environmentalist means I can't eat meat, drive my car, hunt/fish, then I'd rather not be considered one. I stick with my job title to describe myself and my interests. So for now I think its safe to "agree to disagree!"
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sustainthis Posted 10:43 am
07 Sep 2006
I'm not the kind of animal welfare activist who abhors hunting, although I can't help but cringe even when I see my cat torment a squeaking, half dead chipmunk. Tom Twigg was so right to say that life is beautiful but not always pretty. Hunt if you must, and sometimes it is a useful tool for population health, but if you hunt do it humanely and sustainably.
My concern for animal welfare stems from a visceral repulsion towards suffering and the philosophy that callousness towards any sentient being hardens our hearts towards all.
Before I get carried away, let me give a couple of examples of the crossovers between animal welfare and environmentalism:
-pollution of our ecosystems poisons all of the resources we glean from biodiversity, and the health of individual animals figures into this
-the push away from factory farms towards smaller, local farming enterprises favors more humane treatment of livestock raised for meat
carry on this great discussion,
~Ruth
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davidintokyo Posted 10:50 am
07 Sep 2006
To answer your question, I consider myself an environmentalist in the "conservationist" sense of the word.
Conservation in the dictionary means exploiting resources, but at levels that will not prevent our future generations from also being able to exploit those resources.
Another phrase often used is "sustainable use".
http://www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/susg/
I am not an environmentalist of the "animal rights" type. I believe the animal rightists actually tried to take over the term "environmentalism" to make themselves sound more mainstream. This is a common tactic. Anti-whaling people call themselves "conservationists" when in fact they argue not for conservation but for blanket protection.
I think almost all people on earth would consider themselves environmentalists of the type I represent - far fewer currently support the animal rights version, which has little to do with conserving our environment.
I'd add that I would associate with much of what GreenEngineer said with regard to how humans see themselves in nature. Nature is not a zoo - we are just one species in the massive web.
I'd associate myself with the comments of GoodCheer, who notes that humans with our technology do have quite efficient killing ability. Of course, we can always look to improve, and this is because we strive to be "humane".
dwm376s, Tom Twigg also made points that I can associate myself with.
People interested in environmentalism versus the animal rights movement might enjoy Eugene Lapointe's book "Embracing the Earth's Wild Resources". It's available from the IWMC site (http://www.iwmc.org). Eugene Lapointe formerly headed the CITES organization, but anti-ivory trade "environmentalists" campaigned to have him removed, and he was (although a UN tribunal subsequently found that he had been wronged). Lapointe currently heads up the IWMC, which supports sustainable use / conservation of wildlife, as opposed to animal rights. I'm not financially related with IWMC, although I did buy Lapointe's book :-)
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richardschwartz Posted 11:03 am
07 Sep 2006
===
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dwm376s Posted 11:55 am
07 Sep 2006
you said, "the production of animal products is contributing significantly to global warming, widening water shortages, deforestation, rapid species extinction and many other societal threats"
I agree that is if by the production of animal products, you mean the re-production of more humans than this planet can support? I agree whole heartedly. Face the facts its human actions that are causing the VAST majority of the problems you listed above. Sure animal production is contributing, but minimally at best.
How about the fact that we are absolutely dependent on the automobile, as the main reason for global warming. Or booming human population and urban sprawl for the main reason we have water shortages and deforestation (which causes loss of habitat = loss of species/biodiversity).
Gimme a break!
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katesisco Posted 10:29 pm
07 Sep 2006
Sustainability is correctly stated as seeing ourselves as an irrevocable part of the natural world, not as above it. Our past included small villages which were examples of sustainability where each worked for the good of all; only when there is sufficient 'wealth' in the form of excesses (and only can there be excess wealth if there is excess people) do we separate ourselves from our integeral part of the natural world.
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caniscandida Posted 11:37 pm
07 Sep 2006
you and Ruth, and others, have great things to say. We should all do what we can, to learn from your suggestions.
<<native American spiritualism in thanking the animal's spirit for sacrifice>> is a fascinating concept. I wish I knew more about it. Clearly, this is a most valuable spiritual direction for us to follow. Of course I have read about it, but do not really know how Native Americans apply the concept.
Remember the scene in "Dances with Wolves," right after Dunbar / Kevin Costner locates a big bison herd, and communicates that information to his Lakota friends. Or rather, not-yet-friends. Anyway, they seem pretty much to fall in love with him in the course of the bison hunt. It does not hurt at all, that he has the opportunity to save a cute kid from a charging buffalo.
So by all means, comment further, on what goes through the minds and hearts of Native Americans, when they kill something.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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PBrazelton Posted 1:16 am
08 Sep 2006
Like you, I come from a rural environment (small down Wisconsin). My hometown was primarily agricultural, and I spent my summers in high school working on friends' family farms. I DO believe that most family owned farms do value the animals on which they rely, because I've seen it first hand. Every life and death mattered. This is a sidestep, however, from the issue of factory farming - perhaps we have a difference in definition.
From my perspective, a factory farm is a CAFO, or a warehouse with battery-raised debeaked chickens, or any other similar environment that puts large quantities of animals in compressed, inhumane and unhealthy surroundings. I've been in these environments, too, and every life and death did not matter, not by a long shot. In poultry sheds it's a fulltime job finding and removing dead birds - these birds do not die from having too much fun or from predation. They die because stress kills them.
If industrial 'farming' as described above is your idea of a humane environment where the animals are okay, then I must agree - we have no agreement between us.
Otherwise, I don't think this conversation is about asking anyone who drives a car or likes to hunt to renounce their title as environmentalist. I think it's to foster a conversation about how bettering the lives of animals that rely upon us goes hand-in-hand with an overarching ethic of bettering the environment upon which we rely. No need to jump ship quite yet, eh?
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dwm376s Posted 3:01 am
08 Sep 2006
I think you made an important distinction between a typical family farm in rural-mid-america, and what is being termed in this conversation as a "factory farm" with your chicken house example.
And I would agree with you that there are a lot of cases in which animals are treated poorly, as a commodity.
However, I think there is a lot of gray area in between, the two of those types of farms. I know of families that operate what I would consider large poultry operations, several thousand birds a year, in which a lot of birds die via stress, birth defects, etc. However, I think it comes with the territory. Even on small farms animals die. I would bet that in situations as the two described above they have very similar death rates (% of animals that die for every 1 animal that lives to market size)for their livestock.
That being said I am well aware of corporately owned farms (Tyson, Butterball, etc) in which the employees of that farm have little incentive to "care" whether or not they are losing animals, because they have far less connection to the well being of said livestock, than if they actually owneed the farm. And I would bet that these types of farm operations have much higher death rates than those described above.
All that being said, the point of all this is what does any of this concern for animal welfare have to do with the "environment;" the woods, streams, prairies, etc. I am failing to see the connection, other than people who are concerned with one, may be emotionally/cognitively predisposed to be concerned with the other.
Now if one wants to talk about factory farms and stress how affect they affect the environment, I would be much more agreeable. The large amounts of waste, often high in heavy metals, that pollutes streams and groundwater. This represents a direct connection. Animal rights proponents would argue that the pollution is ocurring because the animals are being inhumanely treated. I would disagree to the point that the water is being polluted from high volumes of waste in a concentrated area. The animals on the particular farm could be treated like kings, but they are still going to produce the same amount of water polluting waste, than if they were treated like dirt. Actually they may produce more waste if they were treated like kings, because they may have better diets, long lives, etc.
whats your take?
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:40 am
08 Sep 2006
It changed the meat packing industry for the people who work in it. Now we need to find ways to improve conditions for the animals in that system.
I would like to see PETA and ALF remain separate from the environmental movement. They focus on the "rights" of animals. They emphasize a little too much, assigning feelings and thoughts to your average cat, chicken, or rabbit that just is not there. Admittedly, everything is related by some degree of freedom to the environment, but the treatment of lab animals, dogs, cats, and farm animals, has next to nothing to do with the preservation of biodiversity. Hunting and fishing on the other hand tend to be very effective. There are huge cognitive differences between human beings and all other animals. There are also huge cognitive differences between animals. Whales dolphins, and chimpanzees are a world apart from fish and lobsters. The sudden death of a dear by a bullet is not worse than a natural death. The harpooning of a whale is another story.
Some people have a tendency to wrap the preservation of biodiversity in with the treatment of domesticated animals. That is pretty fuzzy thinking. They are about as unrelated as two things can get.
The extremists in the animal rights groups sure have not helped the image of environmentalist. I would prefer that they were kept out from under the generally tolerant and accepting environmentalist umbrella, not that you can't be both. I guess that makes me a segregationist...
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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PBrazelton Posted 4:23 am
08 Sep 2006
Is this a factory farm? Not in my mind. But a few miles away, there is one. And it's a world of a difference. It's noisy, the smell is astonishing and the birds simply look like crap (even if you ignore their mutilated heads). There are at least 10x the number of birds crammed in a similar space. It's depressing.
The two farms offer a complete contrast not only in how the animals are treated, but in environmental impact. The former uses the chicken manure (composted) to feed the corn field. The corn is harvested and fed to the chickens. There are still huge fuel inputs, but the farm's footprint is relatively small. The factory farm's waste goes... somewhere. I would gather from the stench that a good deal of it leaches into the soil, but the rest is simply considered waste.
I don't believe you have to be a vegetarian to care about animal rights (though it certainly helps) but I do believe that you can respect life even while you act your part as a predator. And while having that respect and acting on it is a worthy goal unto itself, I also think that this respect results in benefits to the environment.
(I think we've gone afield from the original post, but wanted to follow this one to its end)
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mihan Posted 4:29 am
08 Sep 2006
As many have pointed out, there are many examples of things that would seem bad for individual animals, but are clearly good for the population as a whole: it is bad for an individual rabbit to die, but if none of them die, most of them die of starvation.
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PBrazelton Posted 4:30 am
08 Sep 2006
I would say the same remains true of groups like PETA; while PETA is certainly tone deaf and clumsy at times, they're often the only ones that seem to care about a particular animal welfare issue. It's not like there's a mainstream animal rights movement they're stealing the thunder from - they're all we've got in many cases.
At any rate, I understand why radical groups aren't welcome under the umbrella, but maybe these groups wouldn't have to exist if the more mainstream environmental movement did their jobs for them.
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kmp Posted 4:32 am
08 Sep 2006
Well said.
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Pandu Posted 6:11 am
08 Sep 2006
All this is a question of our experience as real beings in an illusory world. If we look at the universe as matter, then the objects have no real value. A living thing would simply be a brief reaction of chemicals. Its coming into existence would be of benefit, and there would be no loss when it perished. Just as a stone cannot appreciate the company of another stone, there would not even be any sentient being to experience these changes. So materially, living or dying make no difference.
Taking the opposite perspective, seeing the world as a manifestation of spirit, there is also no difference. Each spirit soul is eternal and has no real connection with the body, this world, or anything material at all. So again, there is no difference between death and life because neither pertains to the spirit soul.
Looking at our daily situation, we find that our existence is a combination of these opposite realities. We are sentient but surrounded by matter. The sentience is life (or real), and the matter is death (or unreal). Thus we are always alive, and the body is always dead. While there is absolutely no gain or loss in this world, we project and then experience all sorts of happiness and distress due to our mistaken identification with matter. The result is that we are trapped in an illusory struggle for existence. That is animal life, and humans are more or less affected in the same way.
The root cause of our suffering is our desire for enjoyment, which attracts the mind to the world. It is based in ignorance, and perpetuates ignorance. Constitutionally our position is to give service, but due to the influence of material nature we want to be served to increase our enjoyment. This error binds us to the illusory struggle through all sorts of combinations and permutations of nature, all of which is more or less suffering.
Looking at the topic of discussion from this perspective, the environmental ethic can either be subtle sense gratification or it can be a development of compassion. The same is true of helping animals. Both are forms of service more or less under the influence of the illusory identification of the body with the self, but they are two steps on the path to greater realization. This development of compassion softens the heart, so to speak, and makes us more sensitive to the real needs of the living entities. Gradually our service becomes more direct as we come to understand the real needs of the living entity (rather than the needs of the material body), and our lives become more sublime. Others become inspired, and gradually we all move toward freedom and happiness. It is actual evolution.
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kevcon Posted 10:26 am
08 Sep 2006
I am an activist for both causes and have worked for both environmental and animal rights organizations for nearly 20 years. As my own awareness grew, my circle of compassion expanded, and my understanding of the inter-relatedness of the human animal with other animals, and with our planet's life sustaining systems, I came to my own personal realization of the impacts that I was having by driving a car and consuming animal flesh, blood,ovum and lactates produced in a morally bankrupt and inefficient industrial food system controlled by the petro/chemical/agri-business conglomerates on the sustainabilty of all life on the planet and my own health and spritual well-being.
Everyone is on their own path of awakening and in an attempt to shed a little more light and generate a little less heat, that these environmentalists versus animal rights debates typically spark, I offer these links for your consideration and contemplation.
Eat plants and ride a bike! You can do both, you will feel better and we might even be able to all get along a little better, and perhaps even have a future on this planet together with all life. Hey but whadda I know, here's what some 'experts' say. Peas!
KC
Diet, Energy and Global Warming
Univ. of Chicago study:
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~gidon/papers/nutri/nutriEI.pdf#search=%22university%20of%20chicago%20esh
el%20martin%22
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3312
Another Inconvenient Truth: Meat is a Global Warming Issue
And see also the author's site:
http://www.brook.com/veg/
And E Magazine's issue devoted to the topic.
So You're an Environmentalist. Why Are You Still Eating Meat?
http://www.emagazine.com/index.php?toc&issue=7&sr...=
Volume XIII, Number 1
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002
COVER STORY
ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE - Environmentalists and Animal Rights Activists Battle Over Vegetarianism
Environmentalists and Animal Rights Activists Battle Over Vegetarianism
By Jim Motavalli
THE CASE AGAINST MEAT - Evidence Shows that Our Meat-Based Diet is Bad for the Environment, Aggravates Global Hunger, Brutalizes Animals and Compromises Our Health
Evidence Shows that Our Meat-Based Diet is Bad for the Environment, Aggravates Global Hunger, Brutalizes Animals and Compromises Our Health
By Jim Motavalli
SIDEBAR: BODY OF EVIDENCE
By Sally Deneen
SIDEBAR: THE GRADUAL VEGETARIAN
By Jim Motavalli
World Watch Magazine: July/August 2004
Worldwatch Institute
GLOBAL MEAT CONSUMPTION HAS FAR-RANGING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1670
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timgorski Posted 11:37 am
08 Sep 2006
I consider myself an animal activist, yet I learned that to be an animal activist I must be an environmental activist and human rights activist as well. They are all connected. Humans are animals. To be vegan we must also cosider the rights of HUMAN animals. To buy sweat shop shoes or condone sex slavery in asia we can not call ourselves vegan.
The way we treat our environment effects the lives of animals and the way we treat animals (human and non-human) effects our environment. All too often I see animal activists tossing cigarette butts on the street. I see environmentalists eating factory farmed meat and eggs. They are directly related. Animals need environments and environments need animals. It's all about balance and the bigest inbalance we have today is a human overpopulation problem. We have 6 billion people on the earth and that is due to double in 40 years at the current rate. This overpopulation I believe is the root of environmental, animal, and human rights issues.
If not for human overpopulation we would not be competing with deer, bear, and cayotes for land. We would not even consider hunting as humane population control. To condone hunting as humane pest control is to condone human hunting for population control. It's not the answer. We do not have deer, bear, and seal overpopulations, we have human overpopulations. The earth functioned in balance long before we arived. It is us who threw this out of balance and it is up to us to fix it.
I disagree entirely with GreenEngineer. Ethical veganism I do not believe is he antithesis but the synergy. Humans are the only being on this planet that exploits every "resource" we can. We turn oil into plastic, silk into clothing, wood into furnature and paper, leaves into tobacco, plants and animals into food, etc. To abandon meat eating an animal wearing is far from seperating us from the natural world but actually adopting a grander world view in the sence of balance and compassionate living.
We will always contine to utilize a host of other resources. Meat eating and animal wearing are unecessary and therefore can be eliminated without major sacrifices and serve to give us a better understanding and respect for the animals whom I consider kin.
Casinandida mentioned captive breading. Let me just say that captive breeding serves no purpose if there is no environment to reintroduce the animals into. In this case we are only preventing extinction for human interstest, not those of the environment or animals. Bengal tigers have no future in the wild. They will be extinct in India in 7 years, yet captive breeding exists in zoos all over the world. I ask, why? So our grandchildren can see tigers in cages or zoos? Does it not make more sense to let the bengal tiger slip away in peace and learn from our mistakes? I am torn on this one believe me. Personally I would rather my child see bengal tigers in NG magazine than in a zoo.
One of the funniest arguments against veganism I've heard came from friend of mine the other day. He said it's ethically wrong to be vegan because cows and chickens would go extinct. This train of thought only serves the quantity of life rather than quality. If cows go extinct then at least there will be no more cows suffering in slaughterhouses and no more factory runoff.
As for Casincandida's coments on captivity in zoos and aquariums let me just say that most animals in zoos are caught in the wild, effecting the environment. They are broken of their wild habits and serve to teach children that it's okay to donimate and jail wildlife. And it is psychological torchure. If you have seen monkeys, cheetahs, and dolphins pace and display repeditive behavior then you know what i am talking about. Lolita at the Miami Seaquarium is a perfect example of this. I made a doc about her (http://www.slavetoentertainment.com)
It is also common for zoos to trade animals through the AZA website. When zoo animals become liabilities they are often sold to canned hunts in exchange for a younger prettier animal.
Also to clarify, it is not a handful of seals that are slaughtered every year. Three hundred thousand 2 week old pups are slaughtered on the ice in Canada every year for fur. Fur is uneccessary. What does this do to the mother seals? Any feminists out there want to answer this one? How does it affect the fish and whale populations? Again we humans claim we are culling the heard but in fact I believe we are only adding to the problem.
I also belive the term "sustainability" is tossed around very losely without regards to the consequences. Ivory can be harvested sustainably but does that make it ethical or responsible? Is the pain of a young elephant watching his father's face ripped off inconsequential? How does that effect the environment of the herd let alone the suffereing of the individual?
I do believe that meat eating is the number two problem next to human overpopulation which by the way is a result of mass oil production; not just because 50 billion animals suffer for our cravings every year but because it takes 7 pounds of grain to raise one pound of beef or pork. That grain could feed millions of humans with no added effects to the environment. Are you listening human rights activists? How many antibiotics and hormones drain into the soil and water from factory farms? Any environmentalists care to field that one? The pork, beef, dairy, and poultry industries are some of the biggest polluters in the world and can be elimiated by making simple ethical choices.
And it is after all about choices. I encourage us all to build coalitions and bridges between people in these movements. Feminists need to know that to drink milk is to commit rape. Dairy cows are artificially inseminated repeatedly until spent, then discarded. Their offspring are taken away for the veal industry. The pain is obvious. I've heard the cries.
Animal activists need to undertand the relation of globalization to wildlife. Enviromentalists should learn the issues related to factory farming or exotic pet trades. And we all need to work on reframing the labels that have been cast upon us all. We are all tied and we can propel our movements forward together.
Together we can make a difference.
love and revolution,
~tim
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caniscandida Posted 2:09 am
09 Sep 2006
That said, I rather agree with PBrazelton, that the protests and publicity that these activists engage in are on balance good, even though they can be shrill and "tone deaf," and sensitive souls such as Biodiv find them embarrassing.
I entirely disagree with what Biodiv has written, by way of dismissing the sensitivity and capacity for suffering of animals.
What animal-rights ethicists call the "sliding-scale model" is to some extent a useful tool, but I think it is not yet nuanced enough to be simply applied. David DeGrazia summarizes it thus (in "Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction"): "Humans deserve full, equal consideration. Other animals deserve consideration in proportion to their cognitive, emotional, and social complexity. For example a monkey's suffering matters less than a human's suffering but more than a rat's suffering, which matters more than a chicken's suffering."
But we really do not know enough about those forms of "complexity," and are not in an adequate position to make estimations and comparisons. Also, we naturally and inevitably have a greater empathy for mammals, perhaps especially primates, above other taxa. We seem to recognize something that we can identify with in the experiences of most mammals, which it is much harder to do with birds, reptiles, fish and so forth.
In fact there is accumulating evidence that such birds as corvids, parrots and gulls are at least as "complex" as many mammals. I think the most prudent ethical position is to have consideration for the suffering of all vertebrates, as well as the more intelligent of the cephalopod mollusks, and many arthropods, e.g. lobsters. (But not mosquitos; sorry; still, I recall the Dalai Lama once saying in an interview that he will not swat a mosquito, but will try to "persuade" it not to land on him.)
The long and thoughtful comments by Pandu, KevCon and TimGorski are all much appreciated.
Tim, I agree with what you write on captive breeding programs and, mostly, on animals in captivity; I was not committing myself to any position, earlier, merely examining competing interests.
Thank you for your story on Lolita, which I shall look at in a bit. While I do not know enough about cetaceans in captivity, and the different ways in which they are kept and treated, I strongly suspect these marine entertainment places are not at all a good idea.
It is certainly true that cats and canids are more often than not kept in horrendous circumstances, leading to the neurotic behavior that you refer to.
That is not always the case, though, at least in the larger zoos. The cheetahs at the National Zoo in DC can (sometimes) be seen in the three live cameras installed in different places in their enclosure. There are two mothers, with two recently born litters of cubs, so there is an impressive degree of familial socialization. They seem to have been given a lot of space to move around in -- no, not enough to pursue a gazelle, but still they do not exhibit neurotic behavior. So it is not clear that they are suffering solely on account of their confinement. Now, whether they should be confined in the first place is another question.
I am not so sure about that zoo's two Asian elephants. They seem fairly well kept, I guess; you can watch them getting bathed every morning, and having an exercise session later; presumably there is a fair amount of stimulation. Still, there are increasing concerns about issues regarding both climate and socialization, with elephants in North American zoos. And I think the day is not that far off, when elephants will no longer be kept in zoos in this country, at least not in Northern states. The Elephant Sanctuary, in Tennessee, might be a not too bad alternative, for those elephants already here.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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timgorski Posted 5:26 am
09 Sep 2006
If such a scale is applied (which I do not agree with) it should run on the importance that creature plays in the whole world system not their cognitive, social, and emotional dispositions. In this case humans would deserve the least rights as we contribute the least and are by far the most destructive. But that is speciesism too.
Zoos - I'm not too familiar with the Zoo in DC but I can almost guarantee they trade animals on AZA's website, exotic animals that were trapped in the wild or breed in captivity. Many of their older "liability" animals may have ended up in canned hunts or circus sideshows but I would have to research this further.
The bottom line environmentally is Zoos are freak shows for human entertainment, they are not eco-friendly, they are not natural local habitats promoting conservation, and they are excuses for people to make money from captivity. There may be some education at the parks but that education is minimal at best.
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Robert Delfs Posted 1:32 am
10 Sep 2006
As with your earlier submission on whaling, I am troubled by what you've written. In part, this boils down to the assertion that environmentalists are somehow bound to accept in toto your personal moral objections to the slaughter and consumption of animals. If that were all you said, perhaps your posting could be safely dismissed or ignored.
It is one thing to say that environmentalists should feel morally obligated as individuals to examine the ethical aspects of killing and consuming animals or the more general issue of how our fellow creatures are treated. It is a different matter to conflate the campaign to end cruelty to animals with environmentalism itself; to exalt this conceptual mishmash as a higher (or "more expansive") form of environmentalism, and then to slam ny environmentalism that does not incorporate your own conception of animal rights as "morally bankrupt."
What you suggest here is wrong and also dangerous, not least because it threatens the openness and inclusiveness with respect to motivation that has been a crucial factor in the few tentative successes that environmentalism can claim so far in its short, flawed history. In your comments, you sneered at environmentalists "who try to court hunting or fishing groups" - I applaud them.
Environmentalism's "big tent" - the facts that the movement does not impose rigid ideological or religious tests, that individuals can cooperate in pursuit of common goals without being required to adhere to common systems of belief or morality - has been a crucial strength. Efforts to hijack the environmental movement in service of other agenda, as you have done here - however laudatory or benign your intent may seem in your own mind - threaten our ability to achieve our most important objectives.
The environmental movement is indeed amoral (not just "almost" as you suggest) in the technical (but important) sense that it neither assumes nor prescribes a unitary set of moral beliefs as the sole basis for environmental action or for association with other environmentalists. People may be motivated to try to save a stand of redwood trees or a population of whales for many different kinds of reasons - moral, aesthetic, religious, scientific, philosophical, or combinations of all the above. They may be moved by practical considerations, such as diverse biological communities' potential utility as future sources for new pharmaceuticals, or the benefits of maximizing financial returns from habitats managed as economics assets, or the need to ensure continuing stocks of animals for hunting subsistence, commercial and sport hunting and fishing.
You wrote that excessive tolerance of animal cruelty underlies a "key weakness" of the environmental movement in our time, one which you characterized as excessive focus on sustainability and populations but insufficient concern with the well being of individual animals. {At several points in this paragraph I'm quoting your earlier email draft, not the final edited submission to Grist.} This led you to libel those who believe in an inclusive, open, science-based environmentalism as holding a "minimalist view of environmentalism ... which favors avoiding tough moral questions", and which you slam as "morally deficient". In its place, you have proposed a new environmentalism that "take[s] a more expansive view of environmentalism [and] recognize[s] that while conserving biodiversity is a necessary condition for an environmental ethic, It is not sufficient."
Since it would be premature to voice confidence that environmentalism will actually achieve significant levels of biodiversity protection of over meaningful scales of time (centuries), it seems fatuous in the extreme to suggest that the environmental movement today is overly concerned with sustaining populations and should therefore divert scarce resources to support your own pet schemes for alleviating animal misery.
Perhaps you underestimate the immense challenge of moderating the accelerated loss of habitat and extinction of species and genera currently underway due to human activities (including development, pollution, population growth, over-exploitation of resources, etc.). At the moment, the estimated rate of extinction exceeds normal background loss of species by a factor of at least 100, possibly a faster rate than any of the five previous "mass extinctions" over the past 550 million years. (Andrew Dobson, cited in Colin Tudge, The Variety of Life, Oxford University Press (2000)).
For many (though not all) practitioners, environmentalism essentially is biodiversity conservation - the effort to protect as many species and habitats as possible. We have entered a "demographic winter" which is likely to continue for 500-1000 years while the the human population approaches or exceeds 10 billion persons, anthropogenic climate change accelerates, and the risk of planet-wide ecological collapse remains intense. A modest success, defined as the survival of even a significant fraction of the genera and species and their habitats still left on the planet right now 5 or 10 centuries hence - would be an immense achievement, much more than "sufficient".
I do not mean to minimize the moral implications of actions that directly or indirectly cause intolerable pain or death to one or to many animals, nor would I ever want to limit your efforts to proselytize on behalf of animal rights.
I do insist that the local disappearance or global extinction of an entire species or genera represents a disaster and threat of a much greater magnitude and scale than the pain or death even of many individual animals. (One reason is that an a single extinction can have multiple, complex cascading effects on many other species, transforming or even bringing about the collapse of entire ecosystems.) And I ask that you refrain from trying to conflate the animal rights agenda with environmentalism, or indeed from any action intended weaken or undermine environmentalism now or in the future.
By its nature, the core mission of environmentalism - protecting populations and species from disappearance and extinction - is qualitatively different from the moral campaign to eliminate killing and consumption of animals and prevent other forms of animal cruelty. Responsibility for promoting animal rights lies with animal rights activists, not environmentalists.
Contrary to your claim, environmentalism does not "need to confront directly the treatment of animals and issues of animal rights, no more than it needs to confront directly many other pressing and important issues which nonetheless remain external to the environmental movement's core concerns (such as childhood blindness, female mutilation, ending terrorism, or finding a cure for malaria). It does not demean any of these causes, including yours, to say hey are not intrinsic parts of environmentalism per se, however important they may be,
In the first sentences of your submission, you endorsed the charge of hypocrisy against people "in the environmental movement who oppose whaling while at the same time tacitly supporting other forms of animal slaughter, which in essence are no less morally offensive." Hypocrisy is a very strong word in my lexicon, one I hope you would reconsider, along with relevance of your science fiction allegory about space creatures hunting humans with harpoons. (Harlan Ellison did this sort of thing better.) In fact, you have failed to articulate any coherent arguments supporting your assertion that killing and eating any animal is intrinsically (and equally) immoral, nor have you addressed the obvious questions raised.
One question relates to the ubiquity of predation as a life strategy among living creatures over millions of years. Do lions sin when they hunt and kill? Sharks? A single-celled protozoan? What about a well-fed domestic tabby cat, whose killing of "wild" game in your backyard is no more "necessary" than the sport kill of a weekend deer hunter?
Alternatively, if animals (or at least animals other than hominids) are not morally reprehensible for killing their prey, then do we, as humans, bear responsibility for allowing animal predation in the wild to continue? Could a moral case be made that environmentalists are ethically bound to facilitate the rapid extermination and extinction of predators everywhere in the wild? One hopes not, but an environmentalism that uncritically absorbed the moral tenets of the animal rights campaign might find that it isn't easy to dismiss absurd arguments such as this.
Our own history as a species over the past 200,000 years is an evolutionary success story inseparable from the extraordinary capabilities we acquired as cooperative, skilled, tool-using hunters. Among our first and most revolutionary tools were weapons designed to kill at a distance. We may decry the transformative effects these and other human inventions had on the world if we so wish, but predation was never really an option or a moral choice for our earliest ancestors on the African savannah. If predation was ok for early hominids and remains ok for lions, but not for modern humans, then when in our evolutionary history did meat eating suddenly become morally wrong?
I raise these objections not to denigrate the campaign against animal cruelty (some concerns of which I personally share) but simply to emphasize that its issues are its own. The animal cruelty movement does not share common issues with environmentalism, nor does it participate in the movement's scientific, philosophical or even its moral underpinnings. An unthinking impulse to inject the moral tenets and the agenda of the campaign for animal rights into environmentalism can only narrow the base of support for environmental objectives and damage our necessary efforts to protect habitats and biodiversity.
Frogfish {Robert Delfs}
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bookerly Posted 3:26 am
10 Sep 2006
Dear Frogfish (it's such a great nick, I will use it if you don't mind (grin)),
I absolutely agree with your take on the distinctions between environmentalism and the animal rights movement.
FWIW, I am an environmental vegetarian. As such, when I attended vegetarian events (when I lived in the States, and was somewhat active in the vegetarian movement), I rarely found any common ground except the vegetarianism itself with animal rights activists.
Thanks for writing such an eloquent explanation of the differences and why they matter. I usually stay away from these debates (been there done that! (smile)), but wanted to chime in here and agree with you.
Interestingly, when I spoke about vegetarianism at a festival at a local college (Beijing), there were animal rights activists as well. Students who were interested tended to gravitate to one of us, not both. They could clearly see the differences, and understood that we were talking about very different things.
patrick
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caniscandida Posted 3:40 am
10 Sep 2006
thanks very much for this thoughtful statement.
No doubt I did not read the words of dear young Professor Jason Scorse as carefully as you. I do not think he quite committed himself to so powerfully, morally uncompromising a pro-animal-rights challenge, to all environmentalists, as you read him. But I could be wrong, and you could be right.
Anyway, he will no doubt respond himself, before long.
As I hope you have observed, I rather agree with you, that environmentalists ought not be compelled to adopt a pro-animal-rights moral agenda.
Nevertheless, I find what young Jason has had to say on this issue, as well as many of his correspondents, most inspiring.
And I am glad you are open to a morality that opposes cruelty to all sentient beings.
I would love to pursue the subject that you raised, on how the subject of environmentalism is, in your opinion, associated with "biodiversity conservation." It would be great if Grist could run an opinion survey, exploring such matters.
From my own observations, I think that most writers in Grist, both the regular bloggers and the respondents, are rather more interested in such physics-department and economics-department and poli-sci-department subjects as global warming, politics, electric cars, wind and solar energy, the will of the people, how to change the will of the people, and the big-phallic-wormy Pacific Northwest ecosystem, than we are in such biology-department subjects as, say, tigers, tarpons, tanagers, toads and tortoises. To say nothing of terrapins.
Exceptions include Sarah van Schagen, Andrew Sharpless, and the ever lovable, ever unpredictable Biodiversivist himself.
But what do I know. Plenty of Grist people are obviously interested in biodiversity. Perhaps most. And I certainly do not mean to overlook them.
And that is why I think an opinion survey is in order.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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willa Posted 12:03 pm
10 Sep 2006
It doesn't even matter if you have enough of a moral compass to be opposed to torturing others (debeaking factory-farmed chickens, improper slaughter practices, castration without anesthesia, etc) so that you can enjoy a tasty dinner.
If you're an environmentalist, here's the bottom line: Every step up the food chain loses an order of magnitude of energy. You get one-tenth the energy from a steak that you could get from the grain it took to produce that steak. A world where every human was carnivorous would be a world with one-tenth the carrying capacity for human population as a world where everyone was vegan.
Yeah, it'd be fantastic to reduce our population. Want to? Don't have kids. In the meantime, don't eat meat, and your footprint will be ten times lighter on the earth.
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Robert Delfs Posted 2:35 pm
10 Sep 2006
Thanks for your comments. Clearly I do believe Jason's posting amounts to an uncompromising insistance that environmentalism adopt a strongly pro-animal-rights agenda (the phrases "morally bankrupt" and "environmentalism needs to confront directly..." both come to mind, though I might be over-reacting. I believe Jason does plan to respond on these points himself.
Regarding environmentalism vs biodiversity conservation, what I actually wrote was: "For many (though not all) practitioners, environmentalism essentially is biodiversity conservation..." My own view certainly reflects my interests and experience, including extensive consulting work on a large-scale GEF-funded biodiversity conservation project here in Indonesia. The "big tent" approach to environmentalism that I would like to defend itself requires that the scope be defined as openly and inclusively as possible.
Edward O. Wilson's new book (The Creation: An appeal to save life on earth, Norton (2006)), may exemplify this approach. I've only read a review, but I understand book to be an attempt to build bridges between religion (specifically Conservative Christians) and science in defense of the world's ecosystems, cast as a "letter" to an imaginary Baptist minister in the American South. Wilson puts forward a deceptively simple objective - "to raise people everywhere to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible" - which he believes all of us can accept and work toward together. The point, of course, is that we don't need to resolve (or even address) disagreements on other matters (creationism vs. evolution, property rights, or indeed animal rights)in order to work together on this core mission.
The idea that writers in Grist would consider the "big-phallic-wormy Pacific Northwest ecosystem" to be a physics, econ or poli-sci dept subject but not (also?) a matter of biology is somewhat surprising to me, but I'm not well informed about territorial demarcations in American academe. In any case, matters such as global warming are certainly central to biodiversity conservation, at least from practitioners' points of view, as are the numerous points of intersection with political issues such as human rights, the interests and "will" of peoples and communities. I certainly hope (and believe) there may be matters of common interest among us.
But who is Batrachichthys (aka Pseudis paradoxa?)? Me, I'm Antennarius pictus.
Frogfish {Robert Delfs}
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bookerly Posted 8:13 pm
10 Sep 2006
Dear Willa,
It will be interesting to see if any of the meat eaters here engage you in this discussion. It has been discussed before on Grist, without anyone changing their mind (that I can see) (another reason I don't usually discuss this!).
My own preference is finding those who are interested in environmental vegetarianism and talking to them. (Smile). I don't have the energy for much else (the 4th and 5th graders were wonderful, the 6th grades, I love them, but they are out of control! Any sixth grade teachers out there?)
I certainly agree with your basic premise, it is central to my vegetarianism. I also exclude fish on the grounds that the oceans are in serious trouble and I need to give them a break (I used to miss sushi, but it's been too long now (smile)).
Dear Frogfish,
There are some intersections where animal rights and environmentalism cross at least briefly, but they are often not the same (which is not to say that some people can't hold the contradictions between them perfectly in their minds, it may be a Jedi thing (I speak here of CanisCandida, for example)).
I spent some time at one point listening to Audobon Members and folks from the animal rights movement try to find common ground (they didn't). So, I have some appreciation for the complexity and difficulties involved.
Having said that, I have some sympathy for those who hold dissenting viewpoints (I am often one on other issues (grin)), and feel that their environmental credentials are questioned.
Can we "big tent" environmentalists bring in the PETA, ELF, hunters and Sierra Club members all into the tent, then drag in the new evangelicals and some businessmen to sit next to the socialists?
If it seems impossible, we should remember that it has been done from time to time in an emergency.
Do we realize we are in an emergency situation in regards to global warming? If the tipping point is in ten years, we must NOW begin to get serious or it will be too late....
Momentum is our enemy.
patrick
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atreyger Posted 12:02 am
11 Sep 2006
Even disregarding that, the ten to one conversion rate does not mean that you can go out and eat grass or leaves or plethora of other biomass, simply because it is indigestible by you. That's enough reason to eat grass/leaf/cellulosic biomass-fed meat from an environmental standpoint.
A side note: chickens have a conversion ratio of about two to one (some breeds in particular), for two units of energy input you get one unit of meat energy. The diet would have to be rich in protein, but that should be obvious anyhow. That makes them particularly good little 'meat-making machines' if you want to look at them that way. If not, think of them as Gaia's gift to us, just as we are Gaia's gift to something else (to be determined later).
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kmp Posted 1:08 am
11 Sep 2006
Willa,
I was going to make this point, but atreyger made it for me:
Even disregarding that, the ten to one conversion rate does not mean that you can go out and eat grass or leaves or plethora of other biomass, simply because it is indigestible by you. That's enough reason to eat grass/leaf/cellulosic biomass-fed meat from an environmental standpoint.
I don't actually eat beef, but I have no moral objection to doing so, in fact, I can understand how cows can be worshipped in some societies - they take grass, which is useless as a form of food for humans, and turn it into milk, meat protein, leather (not to mention lye to make soap, bones to make glue?.. lots of things I would guess if we were truly using all of the animal). Quite an amazing feat.
As humans we are at the top of the food chain; we cannot avoid that. We evolved to the point where we do not need predation in order to survive, but we have not devolved to the point where we can convert pure sunlight into energy, or subsist soley on algea or grass or carrots. Humans need protein - granted there non-animal sources of protein (soy, legumes, nuts) but it is certainly more difficult to get an adequate supply of protein (including the right combination of all of the essential amino acids) without eating any animal products, especially if one is an active individual with a healthy supply of muscle mass to support (believe me, I know - I've tried!). [Please believe that I am not arguing against a vegan or vegetarian diet here - if one can sustain it and maintain health and well-being, I say good on you! Simply stating that it is not necessarily the "craving for flesh" as oft quoted by our vegan/veg friends, that keeps us omnivores in the hunt for meat.]
At any rate - the ratio of energy to food calorie is not the only thing to consider. In pure energy terms, a steak may equal 10 ears of corn (to a grain-fed cow, of course) in caloric content, but that 10 ears of corn will not give a human the equivalent in "usable" food energy (i.e. carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, etc.).
Kaela
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caniscandida Posted 1:45 am
11 Sep 2006
there are indeed some lovely photos of Antennarius pictus that I just saw at edge-of-reef.com. What an excellent choice to identify yourself with!
Batrachichthys is just Frogfish in Greek. I did not know it was "preoccupied" as a genus name.
Of course you are right about the Palouse giant worm. I inadvertently and sloppily left it in the wrong category. What I ought to have said is that while a few Grist writers, such as Biodiv, Sarah v.S. and Andrew, turn their attention to zoology-related subjects, such as the rediscovery of the Palouse giant worm, most offerings have little or nothing to do with the conservation of biodiversity. And moreover, it probably helped the worm get mentioned, because of some regional interest on the part of our friends in Seattle.
And even then, you went on with some very good observations about global warming, etc. So I stand corrected. Correct me whenever you like; I am honored to be in your debt.
Dear Patrick,
how I wish I had been present at that debate between the Audubon people and the animal-rights people! What a wonderful occasion, to practice my Jedi skills!
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Pandu Posted 2:57 am
11 Sep 2006
A cow mows my yard. She gives manure, which we appreciate very much for our garden. She's not giving milk yet, but next year we hope to breed her and then the milk will come. When it does, there will be more than enough milk for her calf and my family. Then there's yogurt, butter, ghee, cheese, and so many things to make with these.
One who gives me milk from her body, can I deny that she is a mother to me? Once accepting her as my mother, can I then cut her throat?
http://www.mothercow.org/oxen/cow-protection.html
If we're going to emphasize protein availability over morality, then maybe we ought to promote cannibalism. We could solve the food problem and the population problem in one stroke. Instead of expensive nursing homes and funerals for our old and dieing mothers, we could just have a barbeque and call it Gaia's gift. Wouldn't that be efficient?
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kmp Posted 3:23 am
11 Sep 2006
You propose that it would be immoral to kill and eat your cow and, in fact, would be tantamount to killing and eating your own mother's flesh. Well and good - by all means, do not kill your cow, nor your mother. Simply do not impose your belief structure on me; I can very well tell the difference between a cow and my mother (who would, I am sure, right now say "Are you calling me fat?). Luckily for both, I have no plans to kill or eat either of them. But that won't stop me from enjoying a tasty chicken sandwich.
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atreyger Posted 5:48 am
11 Sep 2006
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Pandu Posted 6:06 am
11 Sep 2006
I'm not imposing anything. I'm presenting my views in the discussion. But in any case, imposing morality is the way of the world. Isn't that what laws are about? Do you think we can have any meaningful progress on environmental issues without some people 'imposing morality' on others? Talk about deregulation...
What if I was driving an H3 to work or just for fun, would you want to impose your morality on me by saying it was bad? (By the way, I drive a 3 cylinder geo metro.)
All I'm saying is that when a cow gives her blood in the form of milk, it seems very wrong to take her blood with a knife.
It's bad enough that the animals can't speak. Don't try to shut up those who speak in their interest.
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bookerly Posted 10:46 am
11 Sep 2006
Kaela,
It's a free world, you can eat meat if you choose.
But it is not a required source of protein. There are a number of atheletes who are vegan or vegetarian and they do quite well.
So, if you wish to eat meat do so, but the idea that only animal protein will keep your muscles strong and fit is a myth.
patrick
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Robert Delfs Posted 6:58 pm
11 Sep 2006
Could it be that tepid interest in biodiversity conservation here reflects the fact that the majority of participants reside and/or work in the US? For all its many wonders and advantages, temperate parts of North America don't score very high on most biodiversity indices. This could also explain why discovery (or rediscovery) of a single species in the Pacific Northwest was such a big deal, compared to the discovery of an undescribed species on a reef or in a rainforest. Just wondering.
I have no Greek, but googling suggested that Batrachichthys might be an archaic genus name for several closely-related species of South American frogs distinguished by the unusually large size of their eggs and tadpoles. You can imagine how this might have led my thinking down very wrong paths.
Albertus Seba (1665-1736), confused by the tetrapod body plan and presumed gait of the Loop-visch (walking fish), believed that antennariids must anuran amphibians, possibly tadpole-like fish stages in the development of an undiscovered giant frog. He classified them with true frogs under the name Rana Piscatrix. Linnaeus corrected this error, but left frogfish systematics confused for another generation by groupig all known species under a single name, Lophius histrio. Philibert Commerson was the first naturalist to use the modern genus name Antennarius in his descriptions of specimens found by Louis Antoine de Bougainville at Mauritius in the 1760s.
So, no use of "Batrachichthys" that I can find in the literature, though the other frogfish genus Histrio was briefly known as Batrachus back in the 1740s.
I like frogfishes because they are so improbable, and so spectacularly cryptic. Here's one of mine, a A. pictus juvenile.
http://www.onasia.com/system/preview.aspx?pvp=rde0030911....
Frogfish {Robert Delfs}
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caniscandida Posted 9:46 pm
11 Sep 2006
(To paraphrase an ancient lyric poet, who latterly lived and then died in this neighborhood. Not far from the AMNH, in fact.)
Gorgeous colors, though.
And what sheer misery it must be for you, having to be based in Bali to do your field work!
On biodiversity in North America: You are probably right. But I think there is still enough going on here to merit some attention. As it is, the lads and lasses in Seattle do an excellent job, and already have plenty on their plates, so it would be most ungrateful to complain if they cannot do absolutely everything.
One suggestion: an endangered species watch; i.e. a periodic report on a North American animal or plant which is in trouble, about which there is some breaking news, for better or worse. Several months ago, e.g., I am glad to have been given the opportunity to ask an InterActivist about wolves re-establishing themselves in northern New England.
The frog crisis probably would merit its own minister-with-portfolio, but I know, in Grist we do our best to put on a happy face.
Another suggestion: an invasive species watch. Last week there was an interesting story in the New York Times about lionfish in the coastal waters of eastern Long Island, which I think escaped Grist's notice. And of course we can never get enough about Burmese pythons in the Everglades, and snakehead fish perhaps crossing the minor continental divide from the Potomac/Chesapeake basin to the Ohio/Mississippi basin.
We should all be encouraged that Grist covered the ivory-billed woodpecker controversy with impressive dedicatedness, earlier this year.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Robert Delfs Posted 12:21 am
12 Sep 2006
Regarding an invasive species watch, the lionfish story is not new - they have been moving northward in the Atlantic for several years since their introduction into the Caribbean, probably by aquarists. They have also recently colonized parts of the Mediterranean via the Suez canal from the Red Sea. Lionfish (Pterois volitans) are tough, adaptable predators - any hope that these fish can be eradicated or even confined is probably fantasy.
The problem is deciding where to start - and where to draw the lines. Invasive species have transformed so much of the US landscape. In many areas, most wild grasses and many birds, insects, trees, and other plants are non-native. A wonderful book about this, if you don't already know it, is: Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900 - 1900, by Alfred Crosby. Reading this book completely rewired parts of my mind.
Eradicating the most dangerous exotics is an priority at Komodo National Park here in Indonesia. Among plants, the most biggest problem is a fast-growing cactus (of American origin), that is now established throughout the savannah areas which dominate terrestrial parts of the park.
The biggest threat has been feral dogs, cats, and goats. These are not precisely invasive species, or at least not recently - dogs may have crossed to parts of Indonesia east of the Wallace line at the same time as the earliest humans, presumably together in boats or on rafts. Even during the Ice Age when ocean levels were much lower, it is unlikely dogs, cats or goats could have swum across the Lombok Strait on their own.
But these animals were only recently introduced to the islands in the park, and their impact has been fierce. Feral dogs contributed to the local extinction of Timor Deer on Padar Island in the 1970s. The deer are the most important prey animal for the Komodo Dragon, which unsurprisingly is also locally extinct on Padar now, though there are plans to reintroduce dragons from the remaining populations surviving in low numbers on Komodo, Rinca, tiny Gili Mota and parts of Flores. Padar is small, so this won't change the long-term outlook for dragons, but it makes sense to try to restore them to an island that had been part of their range just a few decades ago.
Which brings us back to the main subject of this thread. I'm not sure I even want to begin a discussion with AR advocates about eliminating destructive, feral animals in national parks and other protected areas. I know this became very controversial in the US when ferals were removed from some of the Channel Islands in California. For me, the interests of the last remaining giant lizards on the planet clearly outweigh the ferals. Sadly, capture simply isn't a feasible means of removing all these animals in wild, difficult terrains.
Frogfish {Robert Delfs}
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atreyger Posted 12:58 am
12 Sep 2006
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caniscandida Posted 1:56 am
12 Sep 2006
(Yes, odd news from Australia: some people are avenging the death of the beloved late Steve Irwin by murdering stingrays ... )
I am afraid I entirely agree with you, regarding feral mammals such as dogs, cats and goats. Of course, whether extermination is the only practical course must be decided in each case. Probably it will be found to be so, with dogs and cats at least, assuming they can never be tamed. Not with goats, though, I should think. I know that many animal-welfare people in this country recommend a capture-neuter-release program for cats, but I have grave doubts about it; for one thing, it ignores the welfare of songbirds and other small tetrapods.
I would add as candidates for culling, if not extermination altogether, certain wild animals whose numbers have reached an intolerably destructive size. Here in the Northeast, white-tailed deer definitely belong in that category. Not quite yet coyotes and black bears, though we need to do something about them.
So yes, now and again I am afraid I part company from my stricter animal-rights ethicist friends.
It is not at all clear that feral horses in several Western states should be considered any kind of a problem. The claim that they are competing for pasture against domestic livestock looks silly. And I think the recent victory of the no-horse-slaughter legislation demonstrates that most people recognize that. Moreover, anyone with a bit of paleontological knowledge recognizes that the open lands of North America are the horses' ancient homeland. Allowing horses to stay in peace is sort of equine Zionism, without a Palestinian problem.
In Africa, elephants are here and there too numerous for the landscape to sustain them. Hence, some people have recommended that they be culled. That may be the most economically practical option, but it is certainly not the most humane one, nor the most enlightened regarding conservation.
On the rabbits in Australia: I have no clue what to do. And no one does, apparently.
Best wishes with your dragons, those amazing beasts. Did you ever get bit?
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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kmp Posted 2:08 am
12 Sep 2006
Certainly not saying that you cannot healthfully support a body, even an athlete's body, on veggie alone, but just saying that it is difficult. Clearly it can be done, at least at the recreational level - I know plenty of climbers who climber harder and carry more muscle mass than I who are vegetarians. Of course, they are also in their 20's... I think it becomes even more difficult as we age.
I do speak from experience. My Mom became vegetarian when I was about 11 years old; she would still serve the family meat (mostly chicken) but, not surprisingly, it became less and less important in our diet. Over the years I became less enamoured of the taste, and in my early 20's made a fairly committed and valiant effort to go completely vegetarian (not vegan). At the time, as I am now, I was quite active... running, hiking, kayaking, roller blading. For me, personally, I found getting my protein needs from veg sources too difficult, time consuming, inconvient. Not impossible, but impractical. I felt awful, was tired all the time, my sports performance suffered... I eventually went back to my regular diet.
As a now more disciplined closer-to-40-something, I suppose it would be an interesting experiment to try again, but I guess I just do not feel the need. I don't eat a lot of meat, and have tried to lessen even that relatively small amount following conversations on Grist that have pointed out the environment destructiveness of a meat-based diet vs veggie alone.
All that being said, I would be fairly amazed to find an elite athlete, operating at the highest professional level of his or her game, that was successfully vegan. I guess it can be done, but man... how to get the calories in?? It's hard to imagine a Tour de France bicyclist surviving on plant matter alone. I'm with atreyger and would simply be interested if you know of any.
I do know of a professional soccer player who was vegetarian and, following signing onto an MLS team, was told he should switch to a meat-based diet by his trainer - he was dropping weight, getting injured and not healing, and was a small guy to begin with - his trainer & coach (I heard) tried to be sensitive to his dietary wishes, but basically, he needed to put on weight, he needed to put on muscle. They recommended meat. I'm not sure actually whether he ever switched... but he's no longer playing in MLS.
Kaela
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Pandu Posted 2:19 am
12 Sep 2006
vegetarian_athletes
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Pandu Posted 2:22 am
12 Sep 2006
Bruce Lee:
Martial Artist/actor, source: His daughter live on the Big Breakfast (British TV programme) said he was 100% vegetarian about 8 years ago.
http://www.ivu.org/people/sports/index.html
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Pandu Posted 2:59 am
12 Sep 2006
"The world record for the most consecutive pushups is held by a vegetarian (US Marine Corps Captain Alan Jones), who in addition to a phenomenal amount of physical accomplishments (see link below original article), also completed an incredible world record beating 17,003 repetitions.
"The Yale Medical Journal concluded: "There is strong evidence that a non-flesh diet is conducive to endurance". Dr. Ioteyko of the Academie de Medicine of Paris discovered that the vegetarian averaged two to three times more stamina and recovered from exhaustion in one-fifth of the time of meat-eaters.
"Edward Moses, an Olympic Gold medallist, went eight years without losing a race. Paavo Nurmi won nine Olympic medals in distance running. Bill Pickering, at the age of 48, set a new world record for swimming the Bristol Channel. These were all feats accomplished using a vegetarian diet. The Canadian tennis player, Peter Burwash, decided to try living on a vegetarian diet. One year later, he was given the highest physical index of any athlete in Canada. Carl Lewis, a vegan, was an olympic gold medal winner an incredible NINE times!"
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kevcon Posted 8:54 am
12 Sep 2006
http://www.satyamag.com/aug06/index.html
and if your particular myth belief is about high-performance athletes having to eat flesh and blood or drink lactates (or take steriods for that matter) and that vegans are wimps,
here are a few of my friends you may want to know about:
http://www.idausa.org/worldgovegandays.html
http://www.veganmusclepower.com/
http://www.idausa.org/worldgovegandays.html
and some of you may know of the great Olympic champion Carl Lewis:
http://earthsave.org/lifestyle/carllewis.htm
a group active specifically in promoting the performance enhancement of veg and organics to athletes is:http://www.organicathlete.org
Members of OrganicAthlete's Pro-Activist Team are elite and professional athletes from many different sports who live and support a vegan diet and lifestyle. They're using their collective voice to champion the benefits of a healthy plant-based diet for athletes of all ages and abilities.
if your sports tend toward the Xtreme,
http://www.petakids.com/feat/xtremeVeg/index.html
other vegan athlete links:
http://www.veganathlete.com/
As Kenneth G. Williams, a natural body-building champion, vegan, environmentalist, animal activist and all around surperb human being says:
Go Vegan ... and No body gets hurt!
thanks to everyone for contributing to this thread and thanks to Grist for affording the forum to this vitally important conversation.
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Robert Delfs Posted 11:47 am
12 Sep 2006
One could go further with this. Connie Barlow, in The Ghosts of Evolution, maintains that the loss of most megafauna species in the Americas at the end of the Pleistocene (mostly at the hands of the first Homo bands who crossed the Bering Strait to the New World) has been a crisis for numerous plant species (mainly trees) which had co-evolved with the ancient megafauna and relied upon them for dispersal of their seeds.
North America lost 32 of 47 genera of Pleistocene megafauna, while South America lost 47 out of 59 genera. Wonderful animals like mammoths and mastodonts, native horses, camels, ground sloths, giant beavers, Glyptodonts and Toxodons, Gomphotheres and Eremotheriums.
Plants that depended on them included wild avocados, papayas, honey locusts, osage orange, jicaro, and many more - plants that now bear "anachronistic" fruits, having lost their megafauna partners that once ensured the dispersal and fertilization of their seeds.
Some of these survive (even thrive) today because a newly introduced megafauna (hominids) decided to cultivate them artificially in new habitats - backyards, orchards and alongside urban streets. But the knock-on effects of the great extinction of American megafauna continues impoverishing natural landscapes today.
Following the suggestions of Dan Jantzen (a tropical ecologist at U Penn), Barlow explores the idea that introduced species such as horses and cattle, rather than being viewed as alien invaders, could serve as proxies for the animals that roamed American lands 50 million years - or rather all but the last 15,000. Picking up the torch, so to speak.
No, I've never been bit by an ora. My interest in exotic predator-prey transactions only goes so far.
Frogfish {Robert Delfs}
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Jason D Scorse Posted 1:02 pm
12 Sep 2006
Assistant Professor
Monterey Institute of International Studies
http://policy.miis.edu/faculty/faculty.html?id=171
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bookerly Posted 3:02 pm
12 Sep 2006
Dear Kaela,
As you can see from other links, there are a number of vegetarian atheletes. But one of my favorites is ultra-marathoner Scott Jurek.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/sports/othersports/22ou...
Hopefully this link is still active! Anyway, he is a vegan.
If you had problems, then you were definitely doing something wrong. And I certainly don't advocate you go on any diet that causes you problems.
FWIW, I am 54, bike a fair amount (still pass most younger bikers, but have made a concerted effort to slow down, safety ahead of ego), jog (I am a 10 minute miler and happy at that pace (at best, sub 10, right now around 11)). I try to swim two or three miles a week (slowly), and lift moderate weights (not trying to bulk up).
As an older guy, the benefits of reduced stress on arteries (veggie fats vs. animal fats) are in my opinion important. It seems to me that vegetarian/vegan diets are especially good for older folks, but you gotta do it right.
It's like any other change, you need a new routine, once you get it there, it's not a problem to maintain it. It's the initial change, and tinkering to get the diet right for you that takes a bit of time.
I was a veg when I was younger (college and after for a few years), stopped, then switched back ten years ago (44) (which is also the age I started running 10K races (or as the Penguin says, waddling!)).
If people don't feel a desire to change, then don't. But if people feel the urge to check it out, there are lots of good examples (thanks Pandu and Kevcon).
And there are tons of sites that offer recipies and advice on making the switch....
patrick
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:46 pm
12 Sep 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor
Monterey Institute of International Studies
http://policy.miis.edu/faculty/faculty.html?id=171
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kmp Posted 12:50 am
13 Sep 2006
Thanks for all the links - good to know that there are some fabulous vegetarian and vegan athletes out there. I had no idea about Carl Lewis! That is definitely inspiring.
Please don't believe that I think vegans are "wimps" - far from it I am always impressed by anyone who has a personal conviction and lives by it. As I said before, I fully believe that you can be an athlete and veg/vegan - I just stated that it was difficult for me, and I fully concede that this probably had more to do with the discipline, planning and cooking required more than the actual substance of the diet itself.
Anyway, inspiring links and I'm glad we all got the opportunity to see them.
Kaela
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wiscidea Posted 7:19 am
29 Dec 2006
In my opinion, considering what I've absorbed and can recall about this issue...
(1) Environmentalism and animal welfare are connected only in that environmentalists wish to preserve healthy functioning ecosystems. The goal is not achieved if the animals living in those ecosystems are under constant threat -- imposed by humans -- of starvation, disease, stress, anhilation, et cetera. What is good for the environment should, in general, be good for animals.
(2) While animal welfare is very important, there is no need for environmentalists to invoke it to justify saving whales, seals, large predators, et cetera. Considering historical populations, loss of habitat, and currently insufficient numbers for riding out climate change, none of these species can be harvested at a sustainable level.
(3) While animal welfare is very important, there is no need for environmentalists to invoke it to advocate vegetarianism or justify opposition to industrial farming practices. The advantages of the former and hazards of the later are by themselves environmental issues.
(4) Jason has indicated elsewhere that we must have a very good reason for killing an animal. I'm still waiting to learn where we are supposed to draw the line. He happens to believe that killing an animal for food is not such a good reason, unless, I think, you happen to be a Mongolian herder or an Inuit hunter. For us, it is a choice... we do not have to kill for food. But can we kill animals when their population exceeds the carrying capacity of their limited remaining habitat? Can we remove them if they are invasive, reducing overall health of an ecosytem, or threatening biodiversity? And how should this be done? This is my primary opposition to combining environmentalism and animal welfare... how do we set priorities?
(5) Though I do not hunt and have no desire to hunt, I still cannnot get past the idea that humans are hunter/gatherers. We are ominvores. We evolved, along with our domesticated dogs, as predators. Our biology reflects our ability to use a variety of food sources. And there are human societies still dependent on meat and other animal products. Some time ago someone pointed out that deep down I must know it is wrong to kill an animal for food, but that society keeps telling me it is okay. I agreed, but I'm not so sure now. Perhaps... deep down I know it is our nature to kill an animal for food, but society -- via Disney movies, plush animals, and my vegetarian friends -- tells me it is wrong.
(6) Animal welfare can stand alone. An independent case can be made for being kind to animals, not inflicting pain, preserving their habitat, not eating them, et cetera. Whales, seals, wolves, elephants, horses, AND SO ON, are intelligent social animals worthy of protection from human predation... of them or their resources.
(7) Perhaps Jason needs a new term for his proposed merger of environmentalism and animal welfare. Some combination of environment, ecology, morality, and ethics. And there has to be a way to resolve conflicts between preservation of the whole, preservation of the many, and welfare of the individual.
(8) Finally, someone raises a very good point way way above... would you rather die by starvation, tiger, or bullet? Very few animals die of old age. If it is done quickly, what is so unnatural and so evil about "harvesting" a mature animal for food? Why is it okay for a lion, but wrong for a primate who evolved on the African savanna to hunt and kill a natural prey species for food? Which death entails less suffering? If you consider the bullet unnatural, would it be more acceptable if we surrounded and stoned the poor animal to death?
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Jason D Scorse Posted 11:00 am
29 Dec 2006
It is simply unproven that we have to ban hunting of most marine animals because of sustainability concerns- there is no scientific consensus on this at all- therefore, from a sustainability perspective killing whales, seals, elephants, etc. is perfectly fine- I think this is right- I think if this is one's view of environmentalism then opposition to these forms of hunting and not others is incosistent- it lends credence to claims made by the Japanese that the Western environmentalists are engaging in cultural imperialism
I addressed your point about starvation v. being shot in a thread along time ago. This is a false choice. Most animals that are killed by hunters are in their prime so it's the difference between living to say age 20 and dying quickly (if the hunter is skilled) or living until age 80 and dying of illness or starvation. I think most whales, elephants, lions, etc. would rather live out their days and take their chances than be cut down in their prime, just as humans would.
J.S.
J.S. teaches environmental economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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wiscidea Posted 10:21 am
01 Jan 2007
After posting the following...
"Environmentalism and animal welfare are connected only in that environmentalists wish to preserve healthy functioning ecosystems."
... I've been thinking about the social structures of groups of animals, especially whales and elephants. And here is an area where environmentalism should take animal welfare into consideration. The health and survival of certain species -- not just humans -- depends on a functioning social heirarchy and transmission of culture from one generation to the next. Removing animals from such groups at ANY rate exceding natural losses (via predators, disease, age, et cetera) would not be compatible with preserving a healthy functioning ecosystem. This would pretty much eliminate any commercial harvesting of such species.
To use Jason's example of aliens harvesting humans -- fully recognizing the absurdity of it because the aliens would probably eliminate us and raise something more meaty and less troublesome -- it would not be in their interest to harvest... say... 25% of each family group or even 25% of each tribal group. Chances are they would remove someone who contributes to survival of future generations. Furthremore, they would totally muck up our higher social order and intergroup relations. There would be children without parents, rogue males running around trying to establish new groups, loss of information essential for our health... anarchy, stress, just awful.
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caniscandida Posted 8:13 pm
01 Jan 2007
I do not think the Martians in H.G.Wells's "War of the Worlds" wanted to eat us. They just were blasting everything in sight. I am a bit on the meaty side, but I would have given them a piece of my mind before I got blasted, you can be sure.
Same deal with Sigourney Weaver's Aliens, who quite clearly want to eat us. Poor John Hurt; I think of him after every upsetting meal.
In the second movie in the series, there is a hunky young military type, whom one definitely did not want to see falling into the wrong mouth. I tied a yellow ribbon round my tree. Meanwhile, in the same screening room sat an exploratory lesbian, who had her eye on Boy-chick's colleague in the service, an impressively powerful young woman, with a constant snarl, and clear leadership potential. Our lesbian friend nearly swooned, at the pull-ups shot, with Madame Colonel in full body armor.
&&&&&&&& : )
WiscIdea, you are quite right about certain sensitive animals requiring instruction from elders. A cover article in the New York Times Magazine of a couple of months ago documented this very well, specifically about African elephants.
Interestingly, the environmentalism-foe Michael Crichton explored the idea of culture in animals, in his second "Jurassic Park" book. I.e., the allegedly intelligent, culture-reliant velociraptors (probably Deinonychus sp.) cannot act efficiently, because they themselves are only second- or third-generation offspring in a traditionless genealogy.
"Sustainability," as a cause, sounds fine, but is potentially a lie, and a great evil.
If environmentalists declare that the killing of such sensitive animals as elephants and cetaceans is tolerable, because it is "sustainable," then that just means that environmentalists are no more enlightened and no more thoughtful than anyone else.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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