Ice cream is the real thing, as in the original that all these soy, rice, coconut, and hemp (see below) frozen desserts are trying to imitate, with varying degrees of success.
You're absolutely right that cow's milk isn't a healthy food for everyone. Wikipedia gives an estimate that 75% of the world's adult population have some degree of difficulty in digesting lactose. For those of us who don't have such difficulty, though, I see no personal health argument for avoiding milk entirely--and ice cream and gelato are absolutely luscious. There must have been some evolutionary advantage to eating milk or the mutation that allows people to continue producing the enzyme necessary to digest lactose--lactase--throughout adulthood wouldn't have become predominant in certain population
Many ecosystems need ruminants to be healthy, so I don't see any reason why those of us who can digest milk just fine shouldn't be able to eat milk from ruminants grazing such ecosystems. We can argue about how much to eat, but there're no personal or ecological health reasons for arguing we should never eat milk, period. You can make an ethical argument, of course, but that will always be a matter of opinion.
Personally, I think Tofutti's products have a bizarre synthetic quality to the texture and mouthfeel.
I was in a health food store today and saw another alternative: Living Harvest Tempt frozen dessert based on hempseeds (LivingHarvest.com)! I didn't buy any--it was expensive and the hempseeds weren't organic, though some of the other ingredients were--but it's another option for those who decline to eat dairy for ethical reasons or who have health problems when they do.
The Wholesoy Glace I mentioned in my last message used a Swedish process that reduced the beany flavor, and they still use it for their soy "yogurt" and soy "yogurt" frozen desserts.
Anyone else remember the Ice Bean brand of imitation ice cream? When I was vegan, that was the first brand I ever had, as I recall. I remember thinking it was tasty, but it had been years since I'd had the real thing so it couldn't pale by comparison.
On A review of six non-dairy ice creams posted 4 months, 4 weeks ago 30 ResponsesIt seems to me that testing different flavors from each brand is a lousy way to compare them. Why not pick a single flavor readily available from each? It would likely have to be a simple vanilla or chocolate.
I avoided ice cream for years because I was vegan, but I also love vanilla ice cream so I've tried several different brands of dairy-free imitations. Unfortunately, the beany quality of soy tends to overpower the subtleties of vanilla and, consequently, most of them didn't taste particularly good to me. The rice substitutes never worked for me, either, because I think the strong rice syrup flavor also interferes with the crisp, clean vanilla taste. Cocoa, having a much stronger flavor, holds up much better to the soy and rice flavors.
Unfortunately for all those who love vanilla and don't eat dairy for one reason or another, my favorite vanilla soy cream was part of the Wholesoy Glace line that was discontinued several years ago. Wholesoy does still sell a lowfat "frozen soy yogurt" (Wholesoyco.com) but I don't think I've ever tried it. Lowfat ice cream (or imitation) seems to me to be a contradiction in terms. Of the brands that are still on the market that I've tried, my favorite is the Double Rainbow Vanilla Bean Soy Cream (DoubleRainbow.com).
The coconut-based imitations didnt' hit the market until after I started eating real ice cream again so I don't have an opinion about their compatibility with vanilla.
On A review of six non-dairy ice creams posted 4 months, 4 weeks ago 30 ResponsesAh, I see. Boulder Ice Cream is currently in the process of transitioning to an organic line. A few of their flavors are sold in my local store so I'll check 'em out.
On A tasting of seven organic ice cream flavors posted 5 months ago 15 ResponsesHi, HEATHASHLI. I don't see any organic ice cream flavors on the Boulder Ice Cream site. Am I missing something?
On A tasting of seven organic ice cream flavors posted 5 months ago 15 ResponsesBen & Jerry's actually debuted a line of four certified organic ice creams about 5 years ago, but they seem to have quietly discontinued it because those flavors are no longer on their site. I'm betting they ended their organic line due to poor sales. Their organic flavors (Vanilla, Chocolate Fudge Brownie, Sweet Cream & Cookies, and Strawberry) weren't the sort of creative and unusual combinations B&J's has come to be known for, and all but one of those flavors is also available from 100% organic brands that are well-established in the freezer cases of health food stores. Julie's Organic Ice Creams makes Vanilla and Strawberry (and they used to sell a Cookies n' Cream), and Stonyfield Farm makers Gotta Have Vanilla and Cookies 'n Dream. Moreover, Ben & Jerry's had been selling a conventional Chocolate Fudge Brownie for years, so that wasn't a new flavor, just an organic version of an existing flavor.
I also wonder whether the execs at B&J's and/or Unilever (B&J's parent company) were uncomfortable with selling organic ice creams, fearing that this drew unwanted attention from committed organic buyers to the fact that the great majority of B&J's flavors are conventional.
On A tasting of seven organic ice cream flavors posted 5 months, 1 week ago 15 ResponsesOh, and in addition to donating 1% of their profits to Conservation International, Howler sourced flavorings from the rainforest to use in their gelatos and sorbettos, including the Mexican vanilla beans that made that gelato so faboo.
Stonyfield Farm's Gotta Have Vanilla is the only organic vanilla ice cream I know of that's not made with eggs, which must explain why I prefer its flavor over the other brands.
On A tasting of seven organic ice cream flavors posted 5 months, 1 week ago 15 ResponsesI'm surprised that Alden's was your favorite, Tom, and that it was ranked second. It has significantly more air whipped into it than the Julie's, Stonyfield, and PJ Madison's ice creams, all of which are super-premium ice creams. That extra air makes the Alden's brand easier to scoop straight out of the freezer (because it's less dense), lower in fat (because there's less actual ingredients present in each serving), and less expensive per serving. I hate to buy a container of ice cream that's largely air, though.
Personally, I prefer vanilla ice cream recipes that do not have eggs in them because I think the egginess interferes with the crisp, clean vanilla taste. My favorite of those you tested is Stonyfield's Gotta Have Vanilla, but by far my favorite organic vanilla frozen dessert of all time was Howler brand Organic Vanilla Bean Gelato. It was made with Mexican vanilla extract and vanilla bean specks, giving it the most wonderful clean, strong vanilla taste. It also had a luscious dense texture because no air is whipped into gelato. Unfortunately, Howler Products went out of business 4-5 years ago. Howler donated 1% of its profits to Conservation International to fund rainforest preservation, too, all the more reason to bemoan their demise. Their other gelato flavors included Mayan Blackberries & Cream, Chocolate Hazelnut, Dark Forest Chocolate, Mocha Chocolate Chip, Aztec Cappucino, and Chocolate Orange Passion, and they made multiple sorbet flavors, too. Man, I miss that Vanilla Bean Gelato. I've tried other vanilla bean flavored gelatos at gelato shops but none of them lived up to my memory of the Howler recipe, and none of them were organic, either.
On A tasting of seven organic ice cream flavors posted 5 months, 1 week ago 15 ResponsesI agree that this bill is primarily intended to indirectly subsidize automobile production, getting the factories humming, workers working, and automakers--particularly the U.S. based ones--into better financial shape.
Regarding the work truck issue, JustLou, though upgrading from a 10 MPG vehicle to a 12 MPG vehicle doesn't seem to be much of an improvement, that is a gain of 20%, not too shabby. In fact, if you do the math, you can see that twice as much fuel will be saved over 100,000 miles of driving by switching from a 10 MPG vehicle to a 12 MPG vehicle (1,667 gallons) than by switching from a 30 MPG vehicle to a 40 MPG vehicle (833 gallons). I know, it seems hard to believe at first glance--I found it hard to believe the first time I read it--but check it yourself if you don't believe me.
Of course, one will still use far less fuel overall by driving 100,000 miles in a 30 or 40 MPG vehicle than in a 12 MPG vehicle, so we need people to take a step back and ask a different question: What sort of vehicle will meet my daily needs? Many people choose a vehicle which has passenger, cargo, and/or hauling capacity they only use a few times a year rather than a vehicle that meets their daily needs and borrowing or renting for those unusual needs. Right-sizing needs to come first, and then one can consider which vehicle within the class that meets one's daily needs offers the best combination of fuel efficiency, safety, and quality.
For those who actually need a truck for work or a large vehicle to haul a large family, it can make a very significant difference to go from 10 MPG to 12 MPG, and it's possible the increase will be much larger if one really has a 10 MPG vehicle. The 2009 Ford Expedition full-sized SUV, for example is rated to get 16 MPG combined city/highway and the 2009 Ford F-150 2WD is rated to get 17 MPG combined.
On House approves "Cash for Clunkers" bill, enviros unimpressed posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago 12 ResponsesDave and "Durden": My understanding is that you're vastly overestimating the percentage of a vehicle's lifecycle energy usage that's attributable to the manufacturing phase. Here's a blogpost from the Union of Concerned Scientists on that subject (http://hybridblog.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/hybridcenter_qa.html):
-
Interesting question that I thought might be more widely informative:
Q: A friend of mine drives a 25-year-old gas
guzzler. His mileage is terrible, but he thinks he's probably doing
the ecologically right thing by holding on to his old car, given the
resources and energy required to make a new car. I had never
considered this angle, which seems crucial to acting in an
environmentally responsible way.
I wonder if either of you have ideas about this or know of a
resource to consult to help one assess the full impact of one's
consumption. Trading your old station wagon for a Prius, or recycling
your old air conditioner and buying a newer, more efficient model, is
it really saving energy?
A: A variety of reputable investigators have
concluded that 85-90 percent of energy use and global warming emissions
attributable to an average vehicle over its entire lifecycle come from
operation. Only 10-15 percent is production and disposal. This is true
for both hybrids and conventional vehicles.
In order to achieve
a net reduction in per-mile global warming emissions, (i.e. to offset
the additional emissions from manufacturing and disposing of another
vehicle) the new vehicle will have to get 10-20 percent better fuel
economy than the old vehicle, assuming the vehicle will be driven in a
typical way (i.e. that it will be used for its full useful life -
usually around 170,000 miles).
Or, to look at it a different
way, how long would it take to offset the manufacturing and disposal
energy associated with the new car?
Assuming 15 percent of
lifetime energy use for the new car is manufacturing and disposal, and
a lifetime of 170,000 miles, you can calculate the miles which you need
to drive in order to make up for the manufacturing and disposal of the
new car, using the following formula:
Miles = 25,500 / (MPG_new / MPG_old - 1)
For
example, suppose his old vehicle gets 15 mpg and he's considering
replacing it with one that gets 35 mpg. As soon as he's driven 25,500
/ (35 / 15 - 1) = 19,100 miles, he will have already made up for the
energy and global warming emissions that went into producing that
vehicle. For the remaining 150,000 miles of the new vehicle's life, the
reductions in global warming pollution are all "profit."
That's not to
say he should drive his old car another 19,000 miles. Not at all. So
long as he replaces the old car with one that gets at least 10-20
percent better fuel economy, he should make the replacement right
away. In certain situations, it may take longer for fuel savings to
make up for the manufacturing emissions. For example, if the driver
does very little driving, it will take longer to offset the
manufacturing emissions, and it may be worth discounting future
emissions - something that's beyond the scope of the current discussion.
Posted by: Don
However, given we're talking about heavily subsidizing the trade-in through the government, I think we should set the bar higher than 10-20% so we get greater benefit for the bucks. I'm thinking a fuel economy improvement of at least 25% should be required to get the subsidy.
On House approves "Cash for Clunkers" bill, enviros unimpressed posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago 12 ResponsesMy understanding has been...
...that carbon fiber is still too expensive to use in a mass-market automobile. Do you have any solid numbers as to what a car like, say, the Prius would cost if carbon fiber was used in place of the steel body panels, amazingdrx? Yes, I recognize that the hybrid system could be downsized because of the reduced weight of the carbon-fiber body, which would offset some portion of the higher body cost.
Any proposed solution that is too expensive for large numbers of people to afford isn't really a solution at all. That's the problem with the Volt. Most Americans haven't been willing to consider a full or mild hybrid up 'til now despite the fact that the price difference between hybrids and comparable conventional cars is much less than the premium one will have to pay for a Volt if it ever actually comes to market with the advertised capability.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On CMU study suggests GM has wildly oversized the batteries in the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago 37 ResponsesOh, and...
...the EPA actually does classify the Prius as a sedan rather than a station wagon even though it has a hatchback. It is on the lower end of the midsize sedan class at 112 cubic feet of combined passenger and luggage volume, while the conventional Fusion has 117 combined cubic feet.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Ford starts marketing campaign to emphasize fuel economy in new hybrid posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago 9 ResponsesIn fairness to Ford...
...the 2001 Prius, at 89 cubic feet of passenger space, was classified by the EPA as a compact car (the EPA classifications are based on combined passenger and cargo space). In contrast, the Fusion has 101 cubic feet of passenger space and the current Prius has 96 cubic ft. of passenger space, both being classified as midsize cars. I've read the redesigned 2010 Prius will be a bit larger.
I do agree that the Fusion Hybrid has significantly more combined horsepower than necessary. If they'd gone for ~160 combined horsepower instead of 194, Ford might've come close to matching the MPG ratings of the current Prius.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Ford starts marketing campaign to emphasize fuel economy in new hybrid posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago 9 ResponsesClimate _______?
My own opinion is that neither "global warming" nor "climate change" has proved very useful so far in motivating a response that matches the scale of the challenge and risk we face.
"Global warming" suffers from several faults, but I think the most important is this: People who know very little about the science tend to take the term "global warming" to mean that scientists are asserting the world will just get progressively warmer and dryer in a uniform and linear way, each season of the year being warmer and dryer than the previous year's. This, of course, isn't what the models predict at all, and not what's happening, either. Consequently, every cold snap and heavy winter storm brings out the peanut gallery saying "So much for global warming!"
As for "climate change," that term is far too mild to convey the scope of the effects we face, and it's also hampered by the fact that most people in the industrialized world generally assume "change is good." Given how dissatisfying the industrialized way of life is, how far short of meeting our real needs as human beings it falls, I think it's no wonder people look forward to change; we need to be well aware of that strong bias.
As an alternative to both terms, I offer "climate disruption due to global warming," and simply "climate disruption" for short. The advantages I think it offers are:
- It more effectively conveys the scope of the problem, "disruption" being a stronger descriptor than "change." No one likes their life or their plans to be disrupted, do they? Disruption definitely carries unpleasant connotations.
- It puts the focus on the effects we are feeling, and will feel, rather than the atmospheric change that is producing the effects, which is what "global warming" describes. And the effects are what we need to bring home to people.
- "Climate disruption" could be used comfortably by both advocates for action and the scientific community. I think other proposed alternatives, such as "climate chaos" and "climate crisis," are too strong to be adopted by the scientific community because they connote a certainty about the scale of future effects that scientists are likely to be uncomfortable with for the most part. It generally goes against their training to make statements that "go beyond the evidence." But we--and scientists--can safely and honestly say, based solely on the evidence, that we are already experiencing climate disruption, and we can expect to experience larger-scale disruptions in the future based on computer models and other evidence. And we advocates could still use terms like "crisis," "chaos," and "catastrophe" in our work with the public, because those are real risks if greenhouse gases continue to increase, but not as direct substitutes for "global warming" and "climate change."
John Holdren, professor of environmental policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, made the case for the advantages of using global climate disruption when he was a guest on Democracy Now! last summer.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On 'Climate change,' 'global warming,' 'climate chaos' -- what terminology fits best? posted 10 months, 1 week ago 34 ResponsesTangerine to Grapefruit...
If you're going to make MPG comparisons, it's vital to match vehicles with comparable capacities. The VW Beetle TDI is classified by the EPA as a subcompact car, with only 85 cubic feet of passenger volume and 12 cubic feet of luggage volume. If that's plenty of space for you (as it probably would be for me), fine, but it's hardly comparable to the current Prius, which is on the low-end of the EPA's midsize range with 96 cubic feet of passenger volume and 16 cubic feet of luggage volume. The current Jetta TDI is a more comparable vehicle to the Prius, but it still only has 91 cubic feet of passenger volume (plus 16 cubic feet of luggage volume). The Passat (96 cubic feet passenger volume) is the most comparable VW to the Prius in capacity but apparently it's not currently offered with a diesel powertrain.
Umbra's answer also neglects to address the impact of biodiesel from food crops on biodiversity, food supply and prices. If you can get it made from waste veggie oil, that's another matter, of course.On Umbra on biodiesel vs. hybrids posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 12 Responses
Sunflower...
...where do you live? I've mentioned to folks on the Toyota-Prius Yahoo group that I'd heard someone was quoted $7,000 to replace the multifunction display and was told this is way over the correct price.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Memo to Prius owners: Get the extended warranty posted 11 months, 1 week ago 12 ResponsesI got to thinking...
... that something in Joe's original post didn't make sense. He wrote that, if not covered by the extended warranty, the new multifunction display would have cost almost as much as a new battery pack. Battery packs are going for much less than $6,000 last time I checked. Joe, if you're reading this, what price did they quote you for the MFD?
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Memo to Prius owners: Get the extended warranty posted 11 months, 1 week ago 12 ResponsesI retract my doubt...
Sunflower. I Googled up some posts on PriusChat.com and, sure enough, prices quoted there for new multi-function displays are in the $6-7,000 range--which seems crazy to me. Joe, one of the posters said that used MFDs can be had on eBay for hundreds rather than thousands of dollars.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Memo to Prius owners: Get the extended warranty posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 12 ResponsesThat can't be right...
$7,000, Sunflower? Are you sure that's what it would have cost to replace if it hadn't been under warranty? I can't imagine there's any way that little screen could cost that much. I have a 2002 Prius with a smaller such screen. My understanding is that the really expensive replacement pieces on the Prius have been the battery pack (though that's come down dramatically within the last year) and the transaxle.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Memo to Prius owners: Get the extended warranty posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 12 ResponsesRe: new diesel vehicles
Hi, biod. Though I've been generally aware of the plans by major automakers to introduce new so-called "clean" diesel models in the U.S., I really haven't paid much attention because I'm highly skeptical of the idea that diesels can make a positive contribution to solving our transportation challenge. Here's why:
First, I don't think there are any ecologically viable ways to produce biodiesel on a large scale. By that I mean we have no way to produce a large amount of biodiesel without contributing to the destruction of biodiversity--and to extinctions. If we have no good prospects for running these new diesels on a high percentage of biodiesel in the foreseeable future--much less the near-term--I don't see any value in promoting them.
Second, now that diesel fuel is significantly more expensive than gasoline, the MPG advantage for diesels is at least partially cancelled out in strictly economic terms (I haven't run any numbers to try to determine exactly how this balances out, though). Given that diesels are also more expensive than comparable conventional vehicles upfront and their reputation among Americans as being dirty and unreliable, I doubt many folks are going to be interested in buying one in hopes their decision may pay back over time. Moreover, some automakers have backed off of their plans to introduce new diesel passenger vehicles given the higher price for diesel fuel. I also think diesel is likely to remain more expensive than gasoline given the increased demand for diesel fuel caused by industrialization in China, India, Brazil, and certain other countries.
Third, the new diesels aren't really "clean" compared to modern gasoline vehicles, much less hybrids. They're just significantly cleaner than the old diesel engines, but, from what I understand, the emissions systems necessary to make them cleaner are expensive--which takes us back to that higher upfront cost. Automakers could theoretically combine diesel and hybrid technologies for a super-MPG vehicle--and concept cars that would do this have been shown at auto shows--but imagine how much more expensive a diesel-hybrid would be than a conventional vehicle. At this point, I doubt enough folks would be willing to buy such a vehicle to make a business case for producing one, though the price premiums for diesel and hybrid technology may some day drop enough to make a diesel-hybrid viable.
For those who are interested, the Union of Concerned Scientists has also been skeptical of the likelihood that diesel engines will play a major role in reducing greenhouse gas and other pollution from passenger vehicles. The UCS has been a strong proponent of hybrid technology instead. They released a report several years ago titled "The Diesel Dilemma: Diesel's Role in the Race for Clean Cars" which compares diesels to hybrids and more advanced and fuel-efficient gasoline vehicles.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On A very long review of Friedman's latest book posted 1 year ago 14 ResponsesInsight fuel economy
Hey, biod. One note on the new Honda Insight: While it will reportedly be considerably less expensive than the current Prius, it's apparently not going to be more efficient. And the current Prius--which has been on sale for about 5 years already--will be superseded next Spring by the next-generation Prius, which is supposed to be significantly more fuel-efficient. I'm basing this conclusion on Honda's press release for the new Insight's debut at the Paris Auto Show. Quoting:
CO2 emissions and fuel economy are targeted to be at a similar level to the existing Civic Hybrid, giving drivers a flexible and highly practical lower environmental impact car. At its expected price point, Insight will have a unique combination of passenger space, luggage capacity, emissions and economy.
To put some numbers on this, the 2009 Civic Hybrid is rated at 40 city/45 highway/42 combined and starts at $23,550 while the 2009 Prius is rated at 48/45/46 and starts at $22,000.
My reading of that paragraph of the press release is that Honda has realized their Integrated Motor Assist system can't compete with Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive on miles per gallon in comparable vehicles. Consequently, they're going to compete on the basis of lowest upfront cost rather than lowest fuel-use cost over time. And that might be a good strategy given many folks have balked at the price premium for hybrids versus comparable conventional vehicles. Honda can scoop up the customers who will only pay ~$2,000 more upfront for a significant boost in fuel economy while Toyota gets those who are willing to pay more upfront to pay less over time on fuel. I imagine the Prius will still confer the status of driving the most fuel-efficient hybrid vehicle, however, so it'll be interesting to see how each vehicle sells.
Toyota has said that they're also working to reduce the cost of their hybrid system, though, so the base model next-generation Prius may have a lower price premium than the current Prius.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On A very long review of Friedman's latest book posted 1 year ago 14 ResponsesRe: digestive methane emissions from cattle
Hi, salemguy. Here's one more report I already had a link to: "The Science of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Grazing Management Strategies: an Investigative/Awareness Report,." It was prepared by Tyrchniewicz Consulting and was funded by the Canadian government's Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Program for Canadian Agriculture as well as industrial ag trade groups for beef, pork and dairy plus the Soil Conservation Council of Canada. Here's a quote from pg. 5:
Feeds high in fibre, such as straw, result in the production of more methane than forages of low fibre content, such as fresh green grass and alfalfa. The addition of grains, such as corn, barley or wheat, to the diet will reduce CH4 emissions further. An imbalance in the nutrient content of the feed eaten, such as a shortfall in the amount of protein or mineral, will also increase the amount of CH4 produced. For these reasons, cattle fed in a feedlot usually emit less CH4 than grazing cattle because they consume a substantial amount of grain and the ration is formulated to meet the animal's requirements for nutrients.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On A food/climate manifesto presents new visions for responding to climate change posted 1 year ago 30 ResponsesRe: digestive methane emissions from cattle
Hi, salemguy. I'm not going to take the time to look for multiple studies to substantiate a blog comment, but I refer you to section 3.5.2 of the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization's "Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options" report, "Reducing CH4 emissions from enteric fermentation through improved efficiency and diets" (pg. 119). While it never explicitly states that digestive methane emissions are higher from grassfed than feedlot cattle, the point of the section is that you can reduce digestive methane emissions by providing more easily-digestible feed--in other words, less-fibrous feed.
As I understand it, though, switching from grass to grain and soy is not the only way to reduce digestive methane emissions; management intensive grazing has also been shown to reduce such emissions in comparison to continuous grazing. The UNFAO report refers to "improving grazing management" in a list of EPA recommendations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (in the same section noted above).
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On A food/climate manifesto presents new visions for responding to climate change posted 1 year ago 30 ResponsesMethane emissions from grassfed cattle higher
Hi, Tom. I liked lots about your post, but, as I understand it, it contains one false conclusion. You wrote:
Shiva made what I found to be a novel and powerful point about livestock's contribution to greenhouse gases, recently documented by the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization: If you're going to take animals off of pastures, deprive them of their native foods (i.e., grass for cows, bugs for chickens, whatever the landscape offers for pigs), and feed them a diet heavy on beans (i.e., soy), they're going to get gas -- literally, greenhouse gas (methane).
This seems to make sense on the surface--if you and I increase the amount of beans in our diet, we're likely to produce a lot more methane--but it fails to take into account that the digestive systems of cattle are radically different from ours. As much as we might like the methane emissions to be higher on a feedlot diet, studies have found (here's one) that feedlot cattle actually produce considerably less methane than grazing cattle. Bacterial digestion of fibrous material during rumination apparently produces a great deal of methane, and even the folks at Eat Wild acknowledge that methane emissions are higher from grassfed cattle (scroll down almost halfway).
I had initially guessed that feedlot cattle would produce more methane myself based on the fact that they're fed a diet they didn't evolve to eat--and I wanted to believe it was true--but I figured I'd better check it out before I started telling people that was the case. I was disappointed to be wrong, but that's the way it goes.
Which is not to say that I don't think pasturing cattle is, on balance, the ecologically superior approach. There are lots of other factors that have to be taken into account, some of which have already been noted in the comments, including the many sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the production of industrial corn and soy (nitrous oxide from nitrogen fertilizers, fossil fuel combustion for machinery plus fertilizer and biocide production) and the release of carbon from cropped soil.
How does the animal factory diet affect methane emissions from pigs and chickens? I don't think I've ever seen reports about any studies looking into those questions. Anyone else know of such studies?
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On A food/climate manifesto presents new visions for responding to climate change posted 1 year ago 30 ResponsesNot quite that daunting
Hi, Sharon. I largely agree with you, but I'm pretty sure you've misunderstood James Hansen. As I noted in my essay "Climate On the Edge, Ordinary People Need to Get a Move On" (which Grist didn't accept for publication, unfortunately), Hansen was quoted as saying "we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change...no longer than a decade, at the most" a couple years ago. He also more recently wrote the following:
Our conclusion is that, if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, CO2 must be reduced from its present 385 ppm (parts per million) to, at most, 350 ppm.
To my knowledge, however, he's never said that our goal needs to be to get CO2 down to 350 ppm within 10 years, which is why I think you've conflated the 2 recommendations into one. Yes, we need to make a serious start on reducing greenhouse gas emissions within the next several years, but getting atmospheric concentrations back down to 350 ppm is a longer-term goal.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On What I would like to say in the New York Times posted 1 year, 1 month ago 7 ResponsesA price is not a price
Ken, while the price of gasoline is the retail price one mucst pay to buy a particular form of hydrocarbon energy, it is obviously not a price on carbon in the sense intended by either EDF or Joseph Romm. The whole point of the latter kind of carbon price--which is, more precisely, a carbon dioxide price--is to internalize one of the true costs of our energy choices that the companies who sell fossil energy sources are currently allowed to externalize--the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere from the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas.
Your idea to tax vehicles is interesting, and I do see some value in trying to frontload the full lifecycle energy costs of one's vehicle purchase decisions, I'm not convinced it's a better strategy than putting a CO2 price on energy sources. For one thing, I think it'd probably be even harder to get support for than a CO2 price because it would be seen as constricting individual consumer freedom. More importantly, as I've already written, I don't think you can have an honest market as long as companies are allowed to externalize a large portion of the true costs of the products and services they sell--people can't make wise choices about what to buy if they aren't given accurate information about what products and services really cost. Consequently, while choosing to try to internalize the true cost of CO2 emissions in vehicle purchase prices would likely coerce people to buy higher-MPG vehicles, it wouldn't influence them to drive fewer miles once they have a vehicle.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On 'What is a carbon cap and how will it cure our oil addiction?' posted 1 year, 1 month ago 13 ResponsesDon't forget the cost of production
Ken, it doesn't make any economic sense to count the price you pay for gasoline as a price on carbon. To internalize the impact of the carbon emissions from gasoline use, the carbon price has to be added to the current retail price, which reflects the costs of production (extraction, refining, and transportation) and marketing--plus an acceptable profit for the companies as long as we stick with capitalism. Not one cent of the price we pay at the pump now internalizes the climate and geopolitical impacts of gasoline use. You could argue that it indirectly incorporates some of the air and water pollution impacts because it reflects the costs of compliance with government regulations intended to reduce those impacts.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On 'What is a carbon cap and how will it cure our oil addiction?' posted 1 year, 1 month ago 13 ResponsesThe really fitting aspect of...
...taking the money from the Pentagon to fund our energy transition is that the Pentagon has been the primary active instrument of American energy policy over the last 60 years or so. The U.S. had lots of coal and natural gas so the government didn't have to do much other than let companies drill for it, but it also needed the global price of oil to be acceptably low. Because our economic philosophy is to leave it up to "the market" to set the price of oil, it was essential to keep the supply of oil sufficiently in excess of demand to keep prices low. One of the ways to do this was by providing financial and other support to governments in oil-exporting countries--repressive or not--as long as they were compliant and kept the oil flowing.
Not all governments have been so cooperative, though, and some even get uppity about getting more money for their oil--cases in point, the Ba'athist regime in Iraq and the Chavez administration in Velenzuela. Consequently, one of the primary roles of the U.S. military since WWII has been to remain in place all around the world so the big stick of the U.S. military is close at hand. Sometimes it is actively used--most notably in the Persian Gulf War that started in 1991 and has no end in sight--but usually its intimidating presence is sufficient to keep the oil flowing. After U.S. oil production peaked in 1970-71, the use of the U.S. military as an oil protection service has only became more central to its mission. Professor Michael Klare has written extensively about this, most recently in his book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy.
We need to wake people up to the reality that the "Defense" Department is primarily in the business of global dominance, that our "support" for the troops is support for imperialism and neocolonialism, and that we still pay those true costs of our oil use, but through our taxes rather than at the pump.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On What would you do with $700 billion? posted 1 year, 1 month ago 12 ResponsesHow about full internalization?
Hi, all. I understand that we're unlikely to impose a carbon price (through cap-and-trade, a carbon tax, or a combo plan) high enough to drive significant increases in fuel efficiency--much less high enough to drive a transition to compact, walkable communities and much greater reliance on transit, walking, and biking--but I'm not convinced that we should forego putting increasing taxes on transportation fuels. It seems essential to me that we move toward the internalization of the true costs of all our decisions, including transportation.
Consequently, I'd like to see a True Cost fee phased in on transportation fuels that does its best to internalize not only the climate impact but the air and water pollution that results from gasoline and diesel combustion, the geopolitical consequences, and the military spending that goes to ensure the global flow of oil. It seems to me that we'll never have a sustainable economy without such internalization, and I think we'd be wise to dedicate the funds raised to subsidies that will help us make the transition to a climate-safe, clean energy transportation system. Charge a fee on what we want to discourage and use the proceeds to invest in the alternatives.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On 'What is a carbon cap and how will it cure our oil addiction?' posted 1 year, 1 month ago 13 ResponsesMore info on the new Insight
Hi, folks. For those who are interested, you can see more photos plus a video of the new Honda Insight by going here. Also, Honda recently launched a blog for the new Insight and a hybrid minisite with info about all their past, current, and future hybrid models, including the new Insight, CR-Z and Jazz/Fit Hybrid (which Toyota has no current plans to sell in the U.S., unfortunately).
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Demand for green products exceeds supply posted 1 year, 1 month ago 6 ResponsesNo...
...I don't think that would work. Pulse-and-glide only seems workable when you are going to be in motion for an extended period of time, particularly on the highway.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Chevy Volt not so revolutionary posted 1 year, 1 month ago 22 ResponsesHave you ever tried...
...this pulse-and-glide driving technique, biod? Scroll almost all the way down the page to the "Advanced Techniques" heading to read about pulse-and-glide if you're not already familiar with it.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Chevy Volt not so revolutionary posted 1 year, 2 months ago 22 ResponsesMost efficient way to drive a Prius
Hi, biod. You wrote:
My attempts to convince Prius drivers that you can't increase mileage by keeping in in battery mode have also failed miserably (the engine just has to run longer to charge the battery back up).
After wrecking my Honda Insight, I recently bought a 2002 Prius. I had been assuming that I'd increase my fuel economy by accelerating slowly, maximizing the time spent in electric-only mode rather than having the ICE kick in quickly to boost acceleration. Have you found this to not be the case in your later-generation Prius? Doesn't the energy captured when slowing down and applying the brakes provide plenty of charge to the battery pack under most circumstances? What driving style have you found to be most fuel efficient?
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Chevy Volt not so revolutionary posted 1 year, 2 months ago 22 ResponsesNot to...
...discourage you from trying to be the kind of person you want your kids to look up to, Dave, but I think the evidence is clear that you're assuming you can have more lasting effect on the kind of people your children turn out to be than you actually will. Oh, your behavior toward and in front of them will certainly have strong effects on your relationships with your sons and on intrafamily dynamics, but it will apparently have little if any discernible lasting effect on their outside-the-home personalities.
Judith Rich Harris, the foremost person in recent times to point this out publicly, has written 2 books explaining the evidence, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do--Parents Matter Less Than You Think and Peers Matter More and No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality. Her website is here and one of her short essays explaining her ideas is here.
All of which is not to say that you have no way to affect the outside-the-home personalities of your sons, just that your ability to affect them is less direct, through the decisions you make that will help determine who their peers will be during childhood.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Ramblings for Fathers Day posted 1 year, 5 months ago 7 ResponsesGetting used to the taste of his foot...
Hi, bigTom. I'm not sure if this is what you're referring to, but, according to this D Magazine blog, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz apparently said he thinks "global warming is a total crock of sh*t." The blogger also says he claimed that "[h]ybrid cars like those made by Toyota 'make no economic sense,' because their price will never come down," which will likely come as a huge surprise to Toyota and Honda, both of which (as I recall) have said the cost of their hybrid systems will drop by roughly half with the next generation version.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Toyota and Honda could sure learn something from Chevy! posted 1 year, 5 months ago 12 ResponsesWell, then, that would be...
Biod, you wrote:
Will demand outstrip supply for the Volt for years on end? Only if it morphs into a reliable, affordable, four door, five passenger, mid size hatchback that averages better than 48 mpg.
In other words, only if it turns into something much like the next-generation Toyota Prius, which apparently will go on sale next Spring and is projected to achieve real world fuel economy in the mid-50s. Honda's upcoming new hybrid model (scheduled to go on sale early next year) will likely meet most of your criteria, too, though it will probably be a compact rather than midsize hatchback. It is intended for families, though.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Toyota and Honda could sure learn something from Chevy! posted 1 year, 5 months ago 12 ResponsesWell, then, that would be...
Biod, you wrote:
Will demand outstrip supply for the Volt for years on end? Only if it morphs into a reliable, affordable, four door, five passenger, mid size hatchback that averages better than 48 mpg.
In other words, only if it turns into something much like the next-generation Toyota Prius, which apparently will go on sale next Spring and is projected to achieve real world fuel economy in the mid-50s. Honda's upcoming new hybrid model will likely meet most of your criteria, too, though it will probably be a compact rather than midsize hatchback. It is intended for families, though.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Toyota and Honda could sure learn something from Chevy! posted 1 year, 5 months ago 12 ResponsesWhile I'm all for...
...lower horsepower engines, amazingdrx (I was considering the purchase of a '94 70 horsepower Honda Civic CX hatchback last week because I wrecked my Honda Insight but it sold before I got to the dealer), but how many Americans are at the point of buying such a car for the MPG benefits? Probably not many (not yet), and I can understand why. Even with my Insight, which had a bit more effective horsepower with the engine and electric motor combined (73), I had a tough time getting up to highway speed on occasion. Who likes the sight of a semi roaring up at high speed in their rear-view mirror and no more power available?
I loved lots of things about my little Insight, but I gave up a backseat in addition to horsepower in order to average 60 MPG year-round. Not many people were willing to do that, the result being that Honda sold a total of ~18,000 Insights worldwide (most in the U.S.) over 7 model years before they discontinued the model.
Also, I was under the impression that carbon fiber was still too expensive to make its use in mainstream cars economically viable. GM has already acknowledged that they won't make their original announced price goal of around $30,000 for the Volt; it will apparently be closer to $40,000. To have a meaningful impact, such cars must be affordable for large numbers of people.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Toyota and Honda could sure learn something from Chevy! posted 1 year, 5 months ago 12 ResponsesDavid,
I didn't pick up the sarcasm, but humor is so tricky in plain text. My apologies, though I think I provided some interesting background info, all the same.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Toyota and Honda could sure learn something from Chevy! posted 1 year, 5 months ago 12 ResponsesI should've noted...
...that the continuously-variable transmission (CVT) available in the Japanese Vitz improves fuel economy over an automatic transmission (AT), though the driver operates both in essentially the same way; that is, you don't have to shift gears manually with a CVT or AT. I think a vehicle equipped with a manual transmission (MT) will typically still achieve a bit higher MPGs than one with a CVT, though that's not always the case (the Nissan Sentra is one contradictory example). Even without a CVT, though, Toyota managed to nearly match the MPG rating of the MT-equipped Yaris with the 4-speed AT-equipped Yaris.
Nissan has been the most aggressive automaker in switching from ATs to CVTs to improve fuel economy.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Toyota may have something up its sleeve posted 1 year, 5 months ago 27 ResponsesI should've noted...
...that the continuously-variable transmission (CVT) available in the Japanese Vitz improves fuel economy over an automatic transmission (AT), though the driver operates both in essentially the same way; that is, you don't have to shift gears manually with a CVT or automatic. I think a vehicle equipped with a manual transmission (MT) will typically still achieve a bit higher MPGs than one with a CVT, though that's not always the case. Even without a CVT, though, Toyota managed to nearly match the MPG rating of the MT-equipped Yaris with the 4-speed AT-equipped Yaris.
Nissan has been the most aggressive automaker in switching from ATs to CVTs to improve fuel economy.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Toyota may have something up its sleeve posted 1 year, 5 months ago 27 ResponsesYou're kidding,...
...right, Dave? I'll take Honda's upcoming CR-Z or Toyota's FT-HS (which likely will see production in some form, too) over the Volt, though it is a matter of taste. And the much-praised "sexy" styling of the Volt concept has been changed, because, when GM tested it for aerodynamics, they discovered they had a big problem. Said Vice Chairman Bob Lutz:
When we put the concept in the wind tunnel, it was a disaster. We could almost put it in the wind tunnel backward and get a better result.
The aerodynamics have been changed, though supposedly it's still recognizable.
Oh, and there's the slight problem of having no lithium-ion batteries available yet that are adequate to enable it to perform as promoted while keeping the cost affordable for the mainstream.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Toyota and Honda could sure learn something from Chevy! posted 1 year, 5 months ago 12 ResponsesFuel-saving features on Japanese version
Hi, biod. A possible explanation for some of the interesting features you've found in your Yaris that have left you wondering if they're planning a hybrid version may be that the Japanese version--called the Vitz--comes with Toyota's Intelligent Idling Stop System (IISS), which shuts the engine off when idling at stoplights/signs and in traffic. This is one of the features that was deleted from the U.S. version to lower its cost because most Americans (at least until recently) only bought subcompact cars because that was all they could afford. The Vitz also comes with a continuously-variable transmission, which improves fuel efficiency, as does electric power steering. In Japan, of course, a small car isn't necessarily a stripped-down, no-frills budget car. I think it's a shame Toyota doesn't offer a top-of-the-line Yaris in the U.S. with IISS and a CVT in addition to offering base, no-frills versions. I haven't been able to determine whether any European versions of the Yaris offer the IISS, though the U.K. version does have more other amenities than the U.S. version.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Toyota may have something up its sleeve posted 1 year, 5 months ago 27 ResponsesThe Yaris is...
...certainly a big step up from the Pinto in safety, biod, just not as much as the Fit. Of course, you can get a Yaris for a few thousand dollars less than a Fit (though both are in short supply with gasoline at $4/gallon) and life always entails tradeoffs.
Looks like Honda will be the 1st to market with "a hatchback hybrid that gets over 40 mpg for less than 20 grand" when they start selling their new hybrid model--and that's less than a year from now, with the hybridized Fit to follow. I expect Toyota will not let Honda stand unchallenged in the "under $20,000" hybrid market for long, either, given their historic rivalry and Toyota's detemination to be the leader in hybrid technology. I know of no plans by any other automaker to sell a 40+ MPG hybrid for under $20,000.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Buying a high-mileage car easier said than done posted 1 year, 5 months ago 20 ResponsesEven though I'm too late...
...to help you, biod, I figured I'd post this anyway because it may help someone else. The primary reason the Yaris scores lower than the Fit in Consumer Reports testing and is not recommended is because of its worse performance in what's called "active safety"--in other words, the ability to avoid a collision ("passive safety" refers to the ability of a car to withstand a collision). CR has knocked the Yaris for its poor emergency handling during their avoidance maneuver test and the long braking distance when not equipped with the antilock brake option. Of course, the Yaris may still perform better in both areas than your 17-year-old car, whatever it is. CR also knocked the "flawed" driving position in the Yaris, the amount of road noise, poor rear visibility, and the center-mounted instrumentation, which they claim is too far away and hard to read.
I hope you were able to get one equipped with the ABS and side and side-curtain airbag options (which tests show dramatically improve safety in a side impact), both of which come standard on the Honda Fit. Did you get a hatch or sedan?
Folks should also be aware that the U.S. Yaris is not really equivalent to the Euro Yaris. Because Americans equate "small car" with "cheap car," the U.S. Yaris is more bare-bones than the Euro Yaris, with fewer airbags available, lower-tech instrumentation, and fewer amenities in general. Europeans have long been more inclined to drive smaller cars in general, consequently there are many well-equipped and even luxurious small cars sold in Europe, including models sold by Mercedes and BMW.
For those in the market for a new, reasonably-priced, fuel-efficient car, Honda has begun the early marketing buzz campaign for their upcoming (but still unnamed) dedicated hybrid model, which will 1st be shown at the Tokyo Auto Show in September and is expected to go on sale early next year. They're making affordability the centerpiece of the campaign, so I'm expecting its starting price to be at or even below $20,000. The Honda Civic Hybrid currently starts at $22,600. Honda has also announced plans to sell a hybrid version of the next-gen Honda Fit (though it won't go on sale this Fall when the conventional version does), which I expect to be even less-expensive than the new hybrid model, and the CR-Z concept car (no on-sale date announced, though I expect it within 2 years). The next-gen Prius is supposed to be shown for the 1st time at the Detroit Auto Show in January and is expected to go on sale next April. Given that it's rumored to be somewhat larger than the current-gen with a more powerful engine, it may not come down in price much, if at all, though. Toyota has at least one smaller hybrid in the engineering pipeline but who knows when it will come to market.
As for why the Prius is again in such short supply, (according to AutoBlogGreen.com) Toyota's V.P. of Communications Irv Miller explained it this way:
Last year at this time we required incentives to move the Prius that were accumulating in dealer stock and it was a big month. While the numbers are off for the month compared to last year, we ended the month with less than 1 day supply. You can see that our business is ahead of last year and we are constrained by battery supply on a global basis. With the plant announcements to increase battery production we should be on course to reach the next level with annual Hybrid production.
I expect this to remain the case until Toyota finishes construction on at least one of their 2 new battery plants.
I'm in the market for a car myself because I ran into the rearend of a Volvo S80 with my 2000 Honda Insight during rush hour 9 days ago and the estimate to fix it is too high. Unfortunately, I can't afford another used hybrid right now, nor even a budget car like the Yaris. Not sure what I'll end up with, but I'm determined to find a high-MPG used car like the old Honda Civic VX hatchback.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Buying a high-mileage car easier said than done posted 1 year, 5 months ago 20 ResponsesWhy...
...compare George W. Bush to a chimp in an attempt to be insulting, amazingdrx? Seems to me that all chimps should be insulted to be compared to Dubya--if they're capable of feeling insulted.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Soy, corn, and wheat prices puzzling economists posted 1 year, 8 months ago 11 ResponsesBut what if...
...North American natural gas production is about to go off a cliff into decline, as a growing number of observers predict? Does it really make sense to become increase our reliance on energy sources that will soon have to be imported from often dangerous and hostile parts of the world--if they can be gotten at all?
Which is not an argument in favor of coal or nuclear but rather an argument in favor of dramatically higher efficiency in all energy use and a rapid transition to truly renewable energy sources.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On Natural gas utilities are no friends of Big Coal posted 1 year, 8 months ago 7 ResponsesMore background...
...for anyone who's interested. I'm currently reading The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz, Professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College, which I highly recommend. While waiting for a friend to meet me for dinner this evening, I got to the portion late in the book in which Schwartz offers his take on how people look around them at what and how others are doing, compare it to their own lives, and adjust their behavior accordingly in pursuit of status. Fascinating stuff that provides additional substantiation for what I've been saying. Go here to read it.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesThe end of advertising?
wiscidea, you wrote:
Reagrding the Prius ad, if the car is not really made from biodegradable material synthesized from twigs, straw, and clay, then it is false advertising and should not be legal.
If every ad that didn't stick straight to the facts was ruled illegal and banned, there wouldn't be much advertising left (would that be a bad thing?)! Not to defend the Prius ad in question (which I haven't seen) or others Toyota has run to promote their hybrids. Their Lexus hybrid ads have annoyed me even more than I imagine that one would. I support people buying Priuses under the conditions I've described above on the merits of the car, not because I think Toyota is a paragon of corporate responsibility.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesGreen seals
wiscidea:
Consumer Reports has a Greener Choices service which evaluates green claims, though I wish they'd invest more resources in it. I know of nothing better in this area, though.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesApology
I wrote...
Though spaceshaper has demonstrated [s/]he's not interested in considering s/he might not be right about absolutely everything...
...and I wish I hadn't. spaceshaper, I was peeved with you and I reacted by overgeneralizing. For all I know, I'm just special and, most of the time, you're tremendously open-minded and compassionate when you disagree with people. I'm sorry for reacting the way I did.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesWell...
...not everyone of my posts is composed with them distracting me. Geez, I hope my posts don't all read like they are!
The little buggers are being particularly quick to get upset when they don't get their ways today.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 Responses"Strategic," not "sustainable"
Just noticed my brain misfired and I typed "sustainable" when I meant to type "strategic consumption" when referring to Alex Steffen's essay at WorldChanging above. The challenges of trying to write as well as one wants with twin 3-year-olds demanding one's attention.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesWhoops
Forgot to change both pronouns in paragraph 3 of my last post to indicate I don't know for sure whether spaceshaper is female or male. I meant to post:
Though spaceshaper has demonstrated s/he's not interested in considering s/he might not be right about absolutely everything, here's some additional background info for anyone who is:
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesSniping
spaceshaper, you wrote:
And then again, it may not. Coulda woulda shoulda.
"What did you do about global warming, Grandpappy, back when it mattered?
I did what I could, Tootsie. I bought a car!"
You have no intention of addressing the question of how we achieve the necessary social change to save the world, do you? No, you'd much rather pretend I've argued something I have not (that buying a car is what we should do about global warming, and all that we should do) and mock that argument. Real helpful.
To clarify for everyone else, what I've argued is this: If you see no acceptable alternative to continue driving, and you have the discretionary funds to buy a new (or used) highly-fuel-efficient hybrid vehicle, and you decide that's the best use for your discretionary funds, you almost certainly will reduce your own energy use plus greenhouse gas and other air pollutant emissions by doing so--and driving an easily-identifiable hybrid vehicle might help change the social climate over time so that we can achieve a real solution to the problems caused by our current transportation system and meet our mobility needs sustainably.
Though spaceshaper has demonstrated he's not interested in considering s/he might not be right about absolutely everything, here's some additional background info for anyone who is:
This blogpost titled "Giving 'Hybrids' Traction:
'Veblen' Status for Buying Green Cars" makes one of the arguments I've been making but it's written by UCLA Professor of Economics Matthew E. Kahn; maybe some will consider it more credible from a credentialed source.
Wikipedia gives a basic overview of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and the idea of social epidemics itself here. You can preview the book itself here courtesy of Google Book Search.
Here's an excerpt from Jonathan Haidt's Happiness Hypothesis in which he explains why so many people continue to practice conspicuous consumption even though it's not bringing them the happiness they expect it to.
I've already recommended "Places to Intervene in a System" by Donella Meadows as an introduction to systems thinking, but some may've missed it.
WorldChanging's Alex Steffen makes an argument for "sustainable consumption" here.
Please keep in mind that pointing out these works is not meant as an endorsement of every single word therein. I provide them as substantiation for what I've been arguing.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesRe: yada, yada
spaceshaper, you wrote:
JFK, your ambitious and so-far unsupported assertion that the social paradigm-changing effect of a new Prius is sufficient to justify its environmental and economic cost is for you to demonstrate, not for me to disprove. In the absence of that supporting evidence I'll consider it as no more than wishful thinking and continue to look at the balance of actual environmental benefit and disbenefit of purchasing a new car.
It's impossible, of course, to demonstrate or prove a hypothesis of this sort in advance, but to refer to it as "unsupported" is simply false. A growing body of psychological research supports what I'm saying about the way human minds work, though no one I know of has tested the effects of Prius-buying specifically. At least I'm pointing to research, though, while you have nothing but your personal opinion to stand on. Have you even deigned to look into what I'm saying? If you're willing, I'll try to find a good online overview. My view of this is drawn from multiple books, essays, and articles I've read over the years.
Ultimately, none of us has direct control over anything but our own behavior, and even that agency is constrained by the social framework within which we live and our own "elephant," to borrow a metaphor from psychologist Jonathan Haidt. The "elephant" in this sense represents our automatic mind--including our "gut feelings, visceral reactions, emotions, and intuitions"--distinct from our rational, focused mind, the "rider" part of us which imagines it's directing things.
You also wrote:
But it's still a car, with an ICE that generates pollution, and it demands roads and parking spaces and all the other resource-hungry doodads that contribute to the mess we're making of our environment, and buying one is not going to save the world.
Never claimed it would all by itself, only that the spread of identifiable greener cars could play a role along with many other verbal and nonverbal messages in changing the social climate and helping us reach a tipping point of cultural change.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesRe: messages, mind-changing, and more
spaceshaper, you wrote:
Let's ignore for a moment the fact that the Prius is not a "highly-energy-efficient vehicle", just a slightly-more-efficient-than average vehicle. Does the second half of this sentence amount to any more than saying that buying more cars will solve the problems caused by cars?
We can argue about whether the Prius deserves to be called "highly energy-efficient"; I meant in comparison to the best current conventional cars available in the U.S., but I didn't say so explicitly. Still, I think the numbers make clear that the Prius is much more than a "slightly-more-efficient-than average vehicle." There's no conventional version of the Prius, but the most comparable other Toyota is the Matrix; it's a hatch like the Prius with similar passenger and cargo capacity. The current Prius is rated to achieve 58% higher fuel economy than a 2008 Matrix with a manual transmission and 70% higher fuel economy than a Matrix with an automatic transmission. You may consider that only "slightly-more-efficient," but I think most folks would consider it substantially more efficient.
Regarding your question, I referred to buying vehicles like the Prius as an interim step to solving the problems caused by cars, not a complete and final solution to the problems caused by cars.
You also wrote:
But however distant Greg's worldview might seem, I'd trust communication using good old-fashioned actual language over ambiguous "messages" embodied in some trendy piece of hardware.
Based on how the Prius phenomenon is reported about in the mainstream media, I don't think there's anything ambiguous in the message the general public is receiving from the proliferation of Priuses. As I've articulated before, the message they seem to me to be getting is exactly the message the Prius owners I know want to send: It's important to me to "be green" by reducing my transportation energy use. That's a simplified version of their messages, of course, which also typically include a desire to reduce dependence on foreign oil, undermine the American empire, reduce air and water pollution, cut their CO2 emissions, and so on.
I'm not claiming that the message sent by driving a Prius is sufficient by itself to create fundamental change--we need to be doing many things to bring about change, including having respectful, one-on-one conversations with people like Greg Gasguzzler--only that it could be one factor in creating that fundamental change. I don't claim with certainty that the message a Prius sends will influence even one single individual to want to "be green" and reduce their own transportation energy use. I do claim that driving a Prius will almost certainly reduce one's own energy use plus CO2 and other air pollutant emissions over the lifetime of the vehicle and has the potential to play a beneficial role in influencing the social climate regarding these issues. I make this claim based on my understanding of the psychological research into how people's minds work and the role of status-seeking in human societies. I could certainly be mistaken in the specific case of the Prius phenomenon, though. You haven't provided any evidence to falsify or undermine my hypothesis, however, nor have you made any substantive argument against it. All you've done is dismissed it out of hand. Why are you so sure it won't have the effect I've posited?
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesOh, and...
...you didn't respond to my questions about Greg Gasguzzler, spaceshaper:
Moreover, what influence do you expect continuing to drive an older car instead of a Prius or going car-free is going to have on Greg Gasguzzler? You think he's more likely to be persuaded by either of those examples (if he notices them at all)? If not, what do you think could change his behavior?
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesParadigm-shifting
spaceshaper, you wrote:
And the similarly dubious mindset or paradigm that I feel obliged to question is that environmentalists can outbuy the wastrels. Buying more cars to fix the problems caused by cars may indeed improve average fleet efficiency but this brings no overall beneficial environmental impact unless it also has the effect of reducing total fleet emissions.
That's a straw man criticism. No one here has suggested that buying more cars will solve the problems caused by cars, only that buying highly-energy-efficient vehicles can be an interim step to reduce energy use and CO2 emissions as well as to help create the social climate necessary to actually solve the problems caused by cars.
You also wrote:
As far as effective paradigm shifts are concerned: that's what elections are all about. It may seem unbearably quaint, but I still believe that this is a democracy in which how you vote counts more than what kind of car you drive.
Elections can be useful, to be sure, but here's the way I think about it: Until we change the paradigms of a large enough portion of the population, we cannot elect candidates who are genuinely committed to achieving the fundamental change we need to save the world. Even if you could somehow elect such candidates without first achieving that paradigm shift in the general public, they would be incapable of forcing or coercing the public to make fundamental change it was unwilling to make.
What we need (and what has actually begun, though there's no ironclad guarantee it will continue) is a reinforcing feedback loop that pushes us toward ever-more progressive candidates, ever-cleaner energy sources and forms of transportation, ever-less waste, ever-less persistent organic pollutants, and so on. None of those goals can be achieved in a single step--they have to be achieved incrementally--and that's why I support incremental steps like highly-energy-efficient hybrid vehicles.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesRe: Actually
amazingdrx:
You're right that there are companies which will convert a parallel gas-electric hybrid to a serial plug-in hybrid. I was referring to a Toyota executive who claimed they'd be first to market a production plug-in hybrid, and he was probably only referring to major automakers. Fisker Automotive may be the first to market with their $80,000 production plug-in hybrid sedan, but they only plan to make 15,000 a year. As I recall, that Toyota executive's statement (which I haven't turned up again) was made in response to General Motors showing their Chevy Volt plug-in concept, so it may've been bravado. Toyota Group Vice President Irv Miller has said:
Our aim is produce the best hybrid possible, and nothing less. And when it comes to PHEVs, the race to produce a workable, practical PHEV won't necessarily go to the swift. It will go to the company that gets its homework done properly.
He's referring to Toyota's opinion that lithium-ion battery technology doesn't yet meet their standards for safety and reliability; given Toyota built its global success on reliability, and it would be a big blow to adoption of plug-in hybrids if the first one to hit the market was terribly unreliable, I can understand their position. This is why they are currently saying the next generation Prius (which will probably go on sale in 2009) will carry an improved version of the nickel metal-hydride battery techonology in the current Prius rather than a lithium-ion battery pack. They haven't committed to an introduction date for a plug-in hybrid, but you can bet they'd prefer to not be 2nd to GM's EFlex plug-ins given the 2 automakers are vying to be the biggest automaker in the world.
And plug-in hybrids aren't going to instantaneously make the current hybrid technology obsolete, preventing them from profiting handsomely on their investment in parallel hybrid technology; plug-ins will almost certainly cost considerably more, and many folks will be unwilling to pay a large premium for a new technology that's unproven in the real world.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesRe: assumptions
The kind of epidemic of social change that I'm talking about is happening around us all the time, spaceshaper. Why do you think automakers are rushing to introduce hybrids of various kinds and trying to convince the general public that they're well on the way to introducing much-greener vehicles, such as hydrogen fuel cell and plug-in hybrids? They're trying to keep up with the cultural change in society, which is fluid, ongoing, and cumulative. And that is actual information.
You can dismiss what I'm saying about how social change can behave like an epidemic or you can look into it yourself. Moreover, what influence do you expect continuing to drive an older car instead of a Prius or going car-free is going to have on Greg Gasguzzler? You think he's more likely to be persuaded by either of those examples (if he notices them at all)? If not, what do you think could change his behavior?
What I'm talking about is partly derived from systems thinking, as well, which is neatly introduced by Donella Meadows in "Places to Intervene in a System." I hope everyone will take note of what leverage point #1 is.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesRe: Ford Escape Hybrid
To be fair to Ford, I'll note that the 2008 Escape Hybrid is a compact, car-based crossover SUV, not a huge, truck-based SUV, and it is rated to get 33-60% better fuel economy than a conventional Escape (% dependent on which combination of engine size, transmission, and front or 4-wheel drive you compare to). Given that the Escape Hybrid is also available as a 4-wheel drive vehicle while the Prius is not, and in some parts of the country it's very valuable to have 4WD, I think it's beneficial that Ford offers a hybrid version of the Escape--it gives people another option.
If anyone wants to bash a particular hybrid, pick on the Lexus LS 600h L, which only improves fuel economy 10.5% over the conventional LS 460 L it's derived from--and it's actually rated 2 MPG lower in highway driving. Toyota chose to optimize acceleration instead of fuel economy in that model, and I hope their sales figures will teach them that was a mistake.
Also, it seems to me the point of the commercial in question is not that all hybrids are created equal but that you don't have to drive a distinctive and unusual-looking vehicle to drive a hybrid; Honda has tried the same tack with their Civic Hybrid. I imagine it's a smart marketing move given both automakers have sold a lot less of the Escape and Civic Hybrids than Toyota has of the Prius. There are no doubt people out there who want the ecological and economic benefits of a hybrid but either don't want to stand out or don't like the styling of the Prius in particular. I agree with biod that we need to have many different styles of hybrids, all of which I would like to be engineered to greatly improve fuel economy over comparable conventional vehicles.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesWho'll be first to market with a plug-in hybrid?
amazingdrx:
Actually, I read somewhere (wasn't able to Google it up just now) a quote from a Toyota executive who claimed they'd be first to market with a plug-in hybrid, and they have begun testing a plug-in version of the Prius in both Japan and the U.S.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesRe: Sending messages
spaceshaper:
You can proceed under the assumption that people's minds work the way you think they ought to work or you can do your best to understand how they actually work and proceed on the basis of that knowledge--your choice. I think it's pretty easy to see which course of action is likely to be more fruitful, and I hope anyone else reading these comments will, too.
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesPersonal and societal changes
spaceshaper (and the rest of you lot):
It seems to me that we're mixing up two separate questions here. The first I'd articulate as something like Can I reduce my own transportation energy use plus CO2 and other emissions by buying a new, highly-fuel-efficient hybrid vehicle? According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the studies that have looked into the lifecycle energy use of vehicles clearly confirm that the answer to this question is yes given that multiple researchers have found that the great majority of energy consumption occurs during the operational phase, not manufacturing and disposal. It will take more time to compensate for the energy consumed during the manufacturing process if you drive much less than the average American does (I think 15,000 miles a year is the usual estimate), but it will be compensated for eventually if the car is driven until it wears out. This does not address the question of whether or not paying the premium to buy a new hybrid car rather than a very efficient other car is the optimal use of any individual's discretionary funds, of course; each one of us has to make that decision based on our own particular circumstances, our values, and our ideas about what makes a difference in society.
Which brings me to the other question, one I think is deeper and far more important. I'll articulate it as What is the effect on cumulative societal energy use and emissions of my decision to buy a new, highly-efficient hybrid car? For you, spaceshaper, the overriding issue appears to me to be the fact that, if you buy a new hybrid (or any new car, for that matter), one car has been added to the growing global fleet of cars "unless you are able to personally ensure that a usable vehicle is removed from service at the same time." While true, this seems to me to miss the point. The psychological and social forces that are driving people to want to own their own personal vehicles began long before hybrid cars were invented and aren't likely to abate if automakers never sell another new hybrid car. If you want to stop the growth of the global car fleet and then reverse it, you have to address those psychological and social forces, and it seems to me that buying and driving a hybrid car--particularly one that is easily identified as a hybrid car by other people either because it's very distinctive (like the Prius) or carries clear signage to that effect--is one way to address those forces. How's that?
Humans are social primates, and so we (the great majority of us, anyway) are always looking around us to see what our fellow humans are doing and comparing what they're doing to what we're doing. We're always measuring ourselves against what is not only socially acceptable but socially desirable--which behaviors bring status to people--and adjusting our own behavior accordingly. Consequently, those of us who want to save the world are going to have to help create the social change necessary to make it socially desirable to both care about saving the world and take actions to play one's part in saving the world.
Now, how does social change happen? As Malcolm Gladwell explains in his wonderful little book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, social change often spreads very much like a contagious virus does. In other words, it spreads from person to person, and it can seem to be spreading very, very slowly--until it reaches what is called a tipping point, after which it spreads very rapidly. This is true of many kinds of social changes, from seatbelt-wearing to pet rocks to the desirability of SUVs to equal rights for women.
Now, the conditions have to be right for any particular social change to reach the tipping point of rapid transmission--society has to be ready--and there's no way to force society to be ready, but I think reaching a tipping point of social change is our only hope for action that that will be rapid enough to meet the immense challenge of our ecological crisis.
Back to hybrid cars: When you buy and drive an easily-identifiable hybrid car (new or used), it seems to me you're sending a clear message about your values to everyone who sees you, which I'll articulate as It's important to me to "be green" by reducing my transportation energy use. Based on my reading of the mainstream media, that is the unspoken message received by the general public from hybrid-owners (though it's not positively received by everyone, of course). Consequently, the more people who buy and drive hybrid cars, the more prevalent that message is, and the more socially acceptable it becomes to care about "being green" by reducing your transportation energy use. At some point, in combination with other many other factors, the adoption of hybrid vehicles could play a part in making it not only socially acceptable but desirable to care about being green, laying the groundwork for the more fundamental change we must have. I'm not guaranteeing it will, but it could play a part because it does send a clear message.
Is driving a hybrid car "enough" of a message in the sense I'm talking about? Of course not, but it's a step, and I think it's an important step in an extremely car-centered culture such as ours given how inconvenient and limiting it would be for most Americans to go car-free in our sprawling, poorly-planned cities and towns.
Unfortunately, though going car-free is a big step in reducing one's own ecological footprint and I completely support folks making that choice if it works for them, it only sends a clear message about one's values to the people one knows well enough to talk to about why one doesn't use a car--it's invisible to the vast majority of people. For all they know, people walking, biking, and using transit can't afford a car or had their licenses taken away for driving drunk.
To put it another way, driving an easily-identifiable hybrid car not only reduces the greenhouse gases you put into the atmospheric climate, it helps to shape the social climate--and, based on my understanding of culture change, that's the single most important thing we must do to save the world.
You wrote:
With regards to the "drive less" mantra: only about a third of average personal vehicle-miles in the US are related to home/work travel and thus, arguably, critical for a household's economic well-being. I'm suggesting that for most drivers there are likely be substantial and painless reductions to be found in the remaining two-thirds, thereby reducing our carbon emissions without the necessity for bringing yet another new vehicle into the world.
There are no doubt substantial reductions that could be made in the other two-thirds, but how painless it'd be for most Americans to make substantial reductions is highly questionable. I know, because, as I've already stated, I've done it, and I still do it to a lesser degree because I often choose to not do things I'd have to drive to do. I think we can all agree that people need much more in life to be happy than just those activities that are "critical for a household's economic well-being" (emphasis added).
"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesRe: Beater cars and po' cuzzin Lance
spaceshaper, you wrote:
the Californian program to get beaters off the road had it right. Buy back the smog mills and junk'em!
I'm not terribly familiar with the California Beater Buyback program, but it sounds like an idea I'd provisionally support. Given that it does nothing to change either the desire to own a car among the general public nor the feasibility of living in California without owning a car, though, it seems to me we still need people to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles in the near-term if we're going to reduce greenhouse gas and other emissions from our transportation system.
And, until you can show us all a workable and desirable way out of the current product economy, it strikes me as rather immature to ridicule the idea of making greener purchases in order to reduce our negative ecological impact.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesRe: Huh?
spaceshaper, you wrote:
Are you seriously telling us that the best thing we may be able to do for the environmet is buy a car - in fact, preferably buy a NEW car?
No, I claimed nothing of the sort, and you didn't address what I did write at all. Prefer not to look at your own self-righteousness, eh?
I don't agree with your reasoning, either. While the act of a single individual buying a new, highly-efficient hybrid doesn't directly take a less-efficient vehicle off the road, that is the overall effect of people in general switching to more fuel-efficient vehicles. Less-efficient, more-polluting, and beat-up older vehicles are junked all the time as new cars are purchased--a sort of trickle-down effect as the cars the new hybrid-buyers trade in are bought by other folks who can't afford new vehicles, who then sell their cars to people who can only afford lower-priced used vehicles, and so on, eventually reaching the folks who trade one lousy jalopy for a bit better one. Yes, that's simplified, but it's basically the way the market works.
Barring catastrophic societal collapse (I'm by no means saying this won't happen, but I'm not counting on or hoping for it), the American car culture is not going to either end or even dramatically transform in the near future--the infrastructure of our cities and the pattern of our lives will take some time to change. Consequently, it seems quite reasonable to me to support the folks who decide their best available option for dealing with that reality is to buy a new hybrid car--as well as to support the folks who are able to go car-free. And I mean truly car-free. I got to thinking about it earlier, and it wasn't really accurate for me to describe myself as having been "car-free" for more than 6 years. I didn't own a car, but I accepted offered rides on occasion and even asked for them once in a while. I was also involved with a woman who owned a car for part of those 6 years, and I rode in and drove her car part of the time when we were both going to the same place. Obviously, then, I still relied on cars for transportation to some degree. Life would've been quite different if I'd refused to ride in a car entirely for 6 years.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesHybrid fuel savings
amazingdrx, you wrote:
Regular hybrids only save around 25% with around the same price premium as the simpler Audi plugin hybrid design.
If I understand what you're asserting here, this is incorrect. Or, to be more precise, it's oversimplified because you can't say that all hybrids save the same amount of energy during operation. Hybrid systems can be full or mild/assist, and some vehicles marketed as hybrids provide such minimal fuel economy gains that the Union of Concerned Scientists calls them
"hollow hybrids" (Saturn Vue and Aura Greenline models as well as the new Chevy Malibu "Hybrid"). Also, both full and mild/assist hybrid systems can be engineered primarily to boost acceleration rather than fuel economy.
All that noted, my understanding is that hybrids which are engineered primarily to boost fuel economy the energy savings versus comparable vehicles is in the range of 40 to more than 50%, not 25%. Of the models marketed so far, this includes the Toyota Prius, Honda Civic Hybrid, and the Ford Escape/Mercury Mariner Hybrids. "Muscle" hybrids (like the now-discontinued Honda Accord Hybrid and all Lexus hybrid models so far) achieve very minimal fuel economy gains. And some hybrid vehicles don't heavily emphasize one or the other, instead striking a balance between increasing fuel economy and boosting acceleration. The two models that come to mind are the Toyota Camry and Highlander Hybrids (redesigned 2008 model), which get ~36% better fuel economy than the conventional versions of those models.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesRe: Hybrid "implants"
JMG, you wrote:
As I say, I like hybrids, and I'd far rather that the small percentage of people whose drives can't be slashed radically or eliminated be driving them compared to some piece of Detroit Iron.
Wow. You sure pretend to know just what's feasible for the vast majority of Americans when it comes to radically slashing or eliminating driving. As someone who chose to give away his car and live car-free for more than 6 years, I think it's rather more complicated than that. I made that choice while living in the most densely-populated part of Greater Kansas City, the part of town with by far the best transit service, and I know well the tradeoffs that required: the friends and family I rarely got to see, the events I couldn't go to, the activism I couldn't engage in--the ways in which it constricted my experiences and relationships. In another part of Greater KC, the limitations would have been much more severe, and I suspect there are many other towns and cities in which folks would be worse off than I was here. Yes, there are also cities with relatively comprehensive and appealing transit, walkable and affordable neighborhoods, and the like--you may even live in one, JMG--but to act as if that's an obvious solution for all but a "small percentage of people" is absurd, IMO.
Just as our energy crisis cannot be solved by individual decisions like buying highly-efficient hybrid cars, it cannot be solved by individual decisions like living closer to where you work in a walkable neighborhood--because neither option is readily available to everyone, for financial reasons as well as the simple fact that there aren't enough walkable neighborhoods for everyone to move into. Systemic problems can only be solved by systemic solutions. In other words, if the choice is between buying a hybrid or involving yourself more in the work of transforming our social system, please, by all means do the latter. But if you can do both, and the tradeoffs of being car-free are (in my view, understandably) unacceptable to you at this time, by all means buy a hybrid car--maybe even a used one (although you're not telling automakers yes, please, make more like this when you buy used).
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesEnergy use in automotive lifecycle
spaceshaper:
I think you're reading that quote from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) blog post too literally. First, they gave a range for the percentage of energy use over the lifecycle of vehicles attributable to manufacturing and disposal--10-15%--because the percentage varies from one model to another. Hybrids, diesels, and luxury vehicles are no doubt on the higher end of that range, simple econocars like the Toyota Yaris and Kia Rio on the lower end.
Moreover, it seems to me that the final sentence ("This is true for both hybrids and conventional vehicles.") can reasonably be read to mean that it's true for both hybrids and conventional vehicles that energy use during manufacturing and disposal is a much smaller percentage of lifecycle energy use than energy use during operation of the vehicle. This is a blog post, after all, not a scientific paper.
To put it another way, their point seems to be that higher energy use during the manufacture and disposal of a high-efficiency hybrid vehicle (not a muscle or hollow hybrid) compared to a conventional vehicle does not outweigh the energy saved by the hybrid system during its operational lifetime, not that the breakdown of energy use during the different lifecycle phases of a hybrid vehicle and a comparable conventional vehicle are exactly the same.
I'm really curious why many people (not solely here, but in the media at large) are determined to "prove" that hybrids don't really provide the energy-saving and emission reduction benefits their proponents claim hybrids do. I understand the desire to point out that hybrids aren't anything close to the answer to our energy and global warming/climate challenges--that we need to change our way of life, not just our vehicle technology--but not the eagerness to bash hybrids.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesBuy a Prius or drive a fuel-efficient used car
Tom, you wrote:
The one serious knock on the Prius is that it consumes enormous resources in production. On a life-cycle basis, as I understand it, a conventional used car with good gas mileage is a greener buy than a freshly minted Prius.
I'm not sure why you understand that, Tom, but it doesn't jibe with what I've read. Here's what the Union of Concerned Scientists has to say on the subject of whether or not to switch to a highly-energy-efficient hybrid like the Prius or Civic Hybrid:
A variety of reputable investigators have concluded that 85-90 percent of energy use and global warming emissions attributable to an average vehicle over its entire lifecycle come from operation. Only 10-15 percent is production and disposal. This is true for both hybrids and conventional vehicles.
In order to achieve a net reduction in per-mile global warming emissions, (i.e. to offset the additional emissions from manufacturing and disposing of another vehicle) the new vehicle will have to get 10-20 percent better fuel economy than the old vehicle, assuming the vehicle will be driven in a typical way (i.e. that it will be used for its full useful life - usually around 170,000 miles).
Okay, so, taking the Prius as our example, let's do the math: Its combined city/highway fuel economy rating is 46 mpg. If we use the high-end of the UCS's range, 20%, that means, unless your used car gets better than 38 mpg combined (under the EPA's revised fuel economy testing procedure, which more accurately simulates real-world driving conditions, not the original EPA rating), you'd save energy and reduce CO2 emissions by switching to a brand-new Prius. For the Civic Hybrid, rated at 42 mpg combined, you'd need a used car that gets better than 35 mpg combined, which is easier but still not easy.
Now, how many cars sold in the last 20 years can you name that get better than 38 mpg? I can't name many myself. The HF version of the old Honda CRX did, and the Honda Civic VX hatchback sold for model years 1992-95 did, but both models are rare because most Americans bought versions of the CRX and Civic hatch that had more powerful engines than the HF and VX. Some old Geo Metros apparently got better than 40 mpg, too.
Even if you can find a used car that gets 38 mpg or higher, keep this in mind: It's probably much less safe (because it doesn't have modern passive safety features) and produces much higher emissions of smog-forming air pollutants than a Prius or Civic Hybrid.
In other words, it seems to me that, if you can afford to buy a new Prius and you expect to keep it a long time, you will save energy and reduce your CO2 and other emissions dramatically by swapping your older car for a new Prius.
Something else to keep in mind: It's entirely possible to find a used hybrid. Priuses are pretty common (though they've held their value well due to high demand, so don't expect any great bargains) and you can also find Honda Civic Hybrids and Insights. I bought a 2000 Insight a bit over 3 years ago for $7,500 that had just shy of 104,000 miles on it. I've averaged 60.3 mpg combined year-round since then.
For the record, I don't have any illusions that hybrid cars are "the solution" here, and I'm all for transforming the American way of life so it's easy to live without a car.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On When do green ads translate to green action? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 114 ResponsesRe: What About Mass Transit's Wasteful MPG?
jabailo:
If true--and I don't know enough to evaluate the author's methodology or data--this paper is good incentive to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of mass transit. I also agree with the paper's author that the real solution is to live closer to home--to move us and our stuff around a lot less.
In my case, the bus is going to run whether I ride it or not (to provide transportation to those who cannot afford a car as well as those who cannot or do not drive for other reasons), so it's clearly more energy-wise for me to take the bus when feasible rather than drive my own car. And I improve the energy-efficiency of the system by adding a rider to bus-routes that are generally far from full.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On When is a Tundra a better buy than a Prius? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 47 ResponsesPrius miles
spaceshaper:
While I see your point about the hypothetical Prius driver who only puts 5,000 miles a year on her/his car, that driver is only hypothetical, and I bet there aren't too many real drivers who fit that description. I imagine most Priuses get driven not too many fewer miles than conventional cars simply because of the realities of U.S. development patterns. Take me, for example:
While I certainly consider myself "green-thinking," and though I walk and use the bus here in metro-Kansas City when feasible, I've put about 12,000 miles on my Honda Insight this year. Why? Because I live in what's called the northland, the part of Kansas City, Missouri that's north of the Missouri River, and bus service out here is meager at best. It's somewhat better in the heart of the city, but I have to be able to get to and from the heart of the city to take advantage of that better service and that's not always feasible--so I drive much more than I would in my ideal living situation (where I wouldn't have cause to drive at all). I could theoretically move to the heart of the city (and likely will at some point), but the higher rent and insurance costs would require taking a regular job, which would leave me less time for my activism--ah, tradeoffs.
On the upside, a Prius does get more than 10-20% better fuel economy than a conventional car--much more. There's no conventional version of the Prius, but the most comparable other model Toyota makes is the Matrix. The most fuel-efficient version of the Matrix achieves an EPA combined city/highway rating of 29 MPG while the Prius rates 46 MPG combined. Doing the math, that means the Prius gets 58% higher fuel economy than the Matrix--not shabby at all.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On When is a Tundra a better buy than a Prius? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 47 ResponsesRe: the value of buying a hybrid
spaceshaper:
I'm not sure we agree as much as you seem to me to think we do. The way I see it, as long as people are going to buy new vehicles, I think we should encourage them to buy the most-efficient, least-polluting vehicles they can afford that meet their daily needs--hybrids, where possible. Though vehicle technology may well improve dramatically over the next 10 years, I still think it will be better to have a large rather than a small percentage of hybrids in the used vehicle market.
Regarding lifetime vehicle energy consumption, the Union of Concerned Scientists had the following to say:
A variety of reputable investigators have concluded that 85-90 percent of energy use and global warming emissions attributable to an average vehicle over its entire lifecycle come from operation. Only 10-15 percent is production and disposal. This is true for both hybrids and conventional vehicles.
In order to achieve a net reduction in per-mile global warming emissions, (i.e. to offset the additional emissions from manufacturing and disposing of another vehicle) the new vehicle will have to get 10-20 percent better fuel economy than the old vehicle, assuming the vehicle will be driven in a typical way (i.e. that it will be used for its full useful life - usually around 170,000 miles).
The UCS give more detail on that page as to how and when it makes sense to buy a new car rather than continuing to drive the vehicle you have.
Given that I'm getting higher MPG in my used Insight than I would've in a new Prius, this doesn't apply to me--but I'm a single guy, so a tiny, 2-seat hybrid is adequate for my needs.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On When is a Tundra a better buy than a Prius? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 47 ResponsesRe: Vehicle-switching
Eric:
One thing we need to keep in mind when we talk about the relative energy-saving benefits of vehicle-switching is to compare vehicles with comparable utility. Your example comparing a Dodge Durango to a Toyota Tacoma doesn't really hold up in this regard because the Durango is a large SUV while the Tacoma is a midsize pickup. Someone who wants the interior hauling capacity offered by a Durango isn't going to be satisfied with an open-bed pickup, not even an extended-cab version with a backseat. It makes much more sense to me to compare vehicles with similar passenger and cargo capacities that have significantly different fuel economy ratings. There are a variety of ways automakers can dramatically improve fuel economy in vehicles with comparable utility without going so far as adding hybrid systems. Automakers could opt to use less-powerful engines (average horsepower has increased to an absurd degree over the last 20 years, to the point where some "family sedans" accelerate as quickly as muscle cars used to) as well as to improve the efficiency of their engines (cylinder-deactivation systems are one example). Automakers could also make vehicles smaller (or at least keep them the same size) and lighter when they introduce redesigned models, rather than continuing the trend of bigger-and-heavier at each redesign. And these are choices that buyers often can make right now, opting for 4 or 6-cylinder crossovers rather than 6 or 8-cylinder SUVs, if they are willing to place more emphasis on reducing fuel use and emissions than acceleration or that SUV "presence."
We also need to figure out how to persuade people who are going to buy a new vehicle to make their decision on the basis of their daily rather than their occasional needs. Too many people choose a vehicle based on their desire to be able to haul home a load of lumber or a passel of people in their vehicle--which they rarely actually do--rather than their normal commuting needs when they could borrow or rent trucks/vans when they need that much capacity.
To put it another way, rather than comparing a Durango to a Tacoma, I'd compare a Durango to a Toyota Highlander. No, it's not a perfect comparison: The Highlander isn't quite as large, but it does offer 3 rows of seats like the Durango. The Highlander doesn't have the towing capacity of a Durango, either, but how many people need to be able to tow a huge trailer 365 days a year?
The Highlander is what's called a crossover SUV, meaning that, though it has that basic SUV shape and sits fairly high off the ground, it's derived from a car (the Toyota Avalon) rather than a truck platform; the Durango is derived from the Dodge Ram truck. The Highlander is also front-wheel drive while the Durango is rear-wheel drive. These differences as well as the Highlander's somewhat smaller size result in the 2WD V-6 Highlander achieving a fuel economy rating of 20 MPG combined while the 2WD V-6 Durango is rated at 16 MPG combined--that is, you get 25% better fuel economy in the Highlander.
And, for those who could afford the premium for the hybrid version of the Highlander--which is only available as a four-wheel drive (4WD) vehicle--the bump would be from 15 MPG combined for a 4WD Durango to 26 MPG combined for the Highlander Hybrid--a 73% increase in fuel economy.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On When is a Tundra a better buy than a Prius? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 47 ResponsesRe: Malcolm Gladwell on SUVs and auto safety
Sean referred to a New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell about how SUVs, though perceived to be safer, have actually been shown to be less-safe in the real world. That article is "How the S.U.V. ran over automotive safety."
I do want to note that the article was published almost 4 years ago now, and to some extent it's been outdated by technological development. What I mean by that is many--perhaps most--SUVs now either have electronic stability control (ESC) systems standard or available as options, and ESC significantly reduces some of the increased risk of SUVs by overriding driver decisions that can cause the driver to lose control of the vehicle, leading to crashes and rollovers. SUVs are still typically less-nimble and take longer to stop than cars, though, which are very important factors in what is called "active safety"--the ability to avoid getting into a crash or collision. The large mass and height of SUVs typically do give them advantages in "passive safety," which refers to protection in a crash or collision.
It seems clear to me that the safest vehicles are those which strike a good combination of active and passive safety, including secure handling, short stopping distances, strong structural design, and a full complement of airbags. Fortunately, the 3rd generation Toyota Prius (the hatchback version), when equipped with side airbags (optional on model years 2004-6, standard thereafter) does strike a good balance of all these features, though its crash test ratings aren't as high as I'd like. The Toyota Camry hybrid, for one, has better crash test ratings, but I'd trade that small loss in passive safety for the extra 12 MPG in the Prius (combined city/highway) if I was buying a new car.
I think it's important to keep in mind that people didn't switch to SUVs because they wanted to burn more fuel and set the planet on fire but because they honestly perceived them to be safer than cars--and sexier than minivans. If we want to get people out of SUVs and into more efficient vehicles, we need to show them really safe options that meet their need for status, too. We shouldn't expect berating or making fun of them to do any good.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On When is a Tundra a better buy than a Prius? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 47 ResponsesRe: Hard sell...?
spaceshaper:
Your point that newer vehicle technologies may make today's iconically-"green" Prius look old, dirty, and inefficient in the foreseeable future doesn't really make sense to me. It seems clear to me that, under the prevailing market economy, we'll never see a day in which everyone can afford the latest, most-efficient, and least-polluting vehicle, and we're not at the point where society at large has determined that it's in our interests to ensure everyone has the best available vehicle technology, so we can expect there to continue to be a large market for used vehicles in the future (barring dramatic change in our economic system, which is by no means outside the realm of possibility but not important to my point). Isn't it better for the affordable used vehicles to be Priuses and Civic Hybrids and Honda Insights rather than Durangos and '71 Darts?
I'm a perfect example: I'd like to have bought a Prius, but the most I could afford was a model year 2000 Honda Insight with just shy of 104,000 miles on it, which I paid $7,500 for, roughly 1/2 what a Prius would've cost. On the upside, I've averaged 60.3 MPG year-round since I got it, which I couldn't have achieved in a Prius.
In other words, I think it's highly unlikely that any new vehicle technologies will be introduced over the next 10 or even 20 years which will be so much more efficient and clean--and readily available--that they'll consign today's Priuses to the scrap-heap even though the Priuses will have a lot of miles left in them.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On When is a Tundra a better buy than a Prius? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 47 ResponsesRe: Idlers and hybrids
jabailo, you wrote:
A better solution would be some kind of computer control that shuts down the engine (a sort of reverse cruise control) when idling -- or even, when going downhill for a long period on highways after exceeding a certain speed.
That essentially would give a standard car all the benefits of a "hybrid" without having the added burden of carrying around two engines and two storage systems.
This claim isn't any more true posted here than it was when you posted it to the "Prius smackdown, round two" blog. Yes, the stop-start function contributes to the fuel economy savings of hybrids, but it isn't even close to the primary contributor. Here's how I explained it before:
The main efficiency gain of a hybrid comes from the fact that the electric motor provides a significant portion of the energy needed to move the vehicle by capturing, storing, and then using energy generated during braking and while cruising that goes to waste in conventional cars. Some hybrids--those classified as full hybrids--even move using the electric motor and battery pack alone under certain circumstances, such as stop-and-go traffic. Full hybrids include all Toyota hybrids, Honda's 2nd-generation Civic Hybrid, Ford's Escape and Mariner Hybrids, and General Motors' upcoming 2-mode hybrids (hybrid versions of the Chevy Tahoe/GMC Yukon/Cadillac Escalade and the Chevy Silverado/GMC Sierra pickup).
Mild hybrids, in contrast, derive a significant amount of their motive power from the electric motor and battery pack but cannot be driven on the electric motor alone. Mild hybrids include the 1st generation Civic Hybrid as well as the discontinued Honda Insight and Accord Hybrids.
Then there are vehicles which do receive a slight acceleration boost from their electric motors and battery packs, but their systems are so weak that the Union of Concerned Scientists classifies them as "hollow hybrids." Vehicles that fit this description include the Saturn Vue and Aura Greenline variants and the new Chevy Malibu "Hybrid."
Okay, let's look at a real-world comparison. Since there's no conventional version of the Prius, I'll use the conventional and hybrid versions of the Honda Civic as examples:
The conventional Civic (whether equipped with a manual or automatic transmission) is rated at 29 MPG combined city/highway while the Civic Hybrid is rated at 42 combined. That's just shy of a 45% increase in fuel economy. According to the EPA, stop/start systems (which they call "Integrated Starter/Generator" systems) improve fuel economy 8%.
In other words, stop-start systems, though contributing significantly to improved fuel economy, are not the primary reason that hybrids are more fuel-efficient than comparable conventional vehicles.
Even so, it would provide significant fuel economy benefits if every automaker made stop/start systems standard on all their models, and they could do it without adding much to the price of a car--Chrysler claims "several hundred dollars."
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On When is a Tundra a better buy than a Prius? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 47 ResponsesRe: Do-it-yourself stop/start
Regarding the fuel consumption effects of turning the engine off yourself with the key and restarting it when you're ready to go: My understanding is that it will save fuel to shut the engine off and restart if you expect to be idling for 30 seconds or more, which is applicable to situations like drive-through lanes and waiting for trains to pass. I'm not sure it would make sense to turn the engine off quite frequently, day-after-day, in stop-and-go traffic, though. The increased wear on the starter motor, shortening its lifespan (and maybe other components involved in starting, too), might outweigh the fuel savings. Vehicles that are equipped with automatic stop/start systems are engineered for frequent restarting.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On High gas prices make hybrids look even better posted 1 year, 11 months ago 45 ResponsesRe: Mild diesel hybrid or gasoline full hybrid
GreyFlcn:
I'm not aware of any comparisons between a mild diesel hybrid and a full gasoline hybrid like the Prius. To my knowledge, there aren't any of the former on the market yet, though both BMW and Daimler have plans to introduce such a system on several of their models.
BMW has also begun offering the stop/start system by itself on at least one model, their 1 Series, and they have plans to introduce it in other models--but only in Europe as of now.
One obstacle to using a diesel engine in a hybrid system is cost: The air pollution control systems necessary to clean up diesel exhaust sufficiently to meet U.S. regulations (particularly California's) are expensive, so putting that additional cost on top of the additional cost of the electric motor and battery pack may prove cost-prohibitive, at least for most buyers.
Several automakers have plans to start selling so-called "clean" diesel vehicles in the U.S., including Honda, Nissan, VW, Audi, BMW, and Daimler. To my knowledge, none of them have plans to use a clean diesel engine in a hybrid.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On High gas prices make hybrids look even better posted 1 year, 11 months ago 45 ResponsesRe: Idlers
jabailo, you wrote:
But I was just thinking...the main efficiency of a hybrid seems to be that it's designed to be stuck in traffic. Because it can run the electric engine, it doesn't matter if it's not moving, because it's not "idling". However, the cost of that is that you have to have two engines, a gas and an electric.
Actually, no, I don't think that's correct. The main efficiency gain of a hybrid comes from the fact that the electric motor provides a significant portion of the energy needed to move the vehicle by capturing, storing, and then using energy generated during braking and while cruising that goes to waste in conventional cars. Some hybrids--those classified as full hybrids--even move using the electric motor and battery pack alone under certain circumstances, such as stop-and-go traffic. Full hybrids include all Toyota hybrids, Honda's 2nd-generation Civic Hybrid, Ford's Escape and Mariner Hybrids, and General Motors' upcoming 2-mode hybrids (hybrid versions of the Chevy Tahoe/GMC Yukon/Cadillac Escalade and the Chevy Silverado/GMC Sierra pickup).
Mild hybrids, in contrast, derive a significant amount of their motive power from the electric motor and battery pack but cannot be driven on the electric motor alone. Mild hybrids include the 1st generation Civic Hybrid as well as the discontinued Honda Insight and Accord Hybrids.
Then there are vehicles which do receive a slight acceleration boost from their electric motors and battery packs, but their systems are so weak that the Union of Concerned Scientists classifies them as "hollow hybrids." Vehicles that fit this description include the Saturn Vue and Aura Greenline variants and the new Chevy Malibu "Hybrid."
It is true that meaningful fuel-savings can be achieved solely from a Stop/Start feature that shuts the engine off at stoplights, stop signs, and in stop-and-go traffic, then automatically restarts the engine when you are ready to go. Some automakers plan to introduce so-called "microhybrids" (I don't think that name is accurate) that have the Stop/Start feature but do not derive any motive power from their electric motors. Such systems could be added to pretty much any model for about $500 if I remember right.
You also wrote:
So, taking a fuel efficient regular gas car, at 35 mpg, if you could eliminate the idle, as a hybrid does, you then get nearly 42 mpg -- or hydrid level efficiency (maybe more).
One problem with that: The only vehicles currently being sold new in the U.S. that achieve a City EPA rating of 35 mpg or higher are the Prius and Civic Hybrids, and it's in the city that the fuel economy benefits of the Stop/Start feature occur. The conventional car with the highest City mpg rating is the Toyota Yaris at 29 mpg, followed by the Honda Fit and Toyota Corolla at 28 mpg (all equipped with manual transmissions). And, once again, it's important to keep in mind that the Yaris and Fit are itty-bitty subcompacts and the Corolla is a compact, significantly smaller than the Prius hatchback (though roughly the same size as the Civic Hybrid). The Yaris, Fit, and Corolla also appear to me to be less safe in a crash than the Prius and Civic Hybrid based on their crash test results and, in the case of the first 2, their much smaller size and lower weight.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On High gas prices make hybrids look even better posted 1 year, 11 months ago 45 ResponsesPrius and Echo similar?
GreyFlcn:
Well, such things are a matter of opinion, of course, but I don't think the Prius hatchback and the Echo sedan look much alike at all, and they're certainly much different in size. The Echo was classified as a subcompact while the Prius, though having relatively compact exterior dimensions, has the passenger room of a midsize car (larger than a Corolla, but not quite as large as a Camry) and very versatile interior space because of the hatch.
Now, if you want to compare the Echo to the first generation Prius, which was sold in the U.S. from 2001-3, then I see strong similarities. The 1stG Prius was a subcompact sedan like the Echo.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On High gas prices make hybrids look even better posted 1 year, 11 months ago 45 ResponsesRe: Safety
There are always tradeoffs in engineering any car, and one needs to consider both active (ability to avoid a crash) and passive (protection during a crash) safety. The Prius hatchback has Good (the highest possible) frontal offset and side impact crash test ratings from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety when equipped with side airbags (optional 2004-6, standard after that) and has a low rollover risk while achieving an EPA combined fuel economy rating of 46 mpg--a good balance, it seems to me. Larger, more massive vehicles--a Chevy Tahoe hybrid for example--likely will protect the occupants better in a crash, but, because of their size and mass, they are harder to maneuver when you want to avoid a crash (active). Given that I value fuel economy highly, I'd take the Prius despite the mass disadvantage.
The Echo, in comparison, never offered any side airbags, had mediocre crash test ratings from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is tiny (you can only fairly compare the crash test ratings of vehicles of similar size and weight), and is known for not handling very well when pushed to its limits, which makes it harder to avoid crashes.
I think you make a good point about feeling safer in your Prius than in sports cars. Sports cars tend to foster driving behavior that exploits their power and handling, leading to more dangerous driving. Whatever kudos the Prius may receive, I've never heard anyone say it's a car that driving enthusiasts love.
On the other hand, it seems to me that many SUV drivers feel they are so safe in their big, tall vehicles that they drive recklessly, not taking into account the greater rollover risk, longer stopping distances, and less-agile handling characteristics of such vehicles (generally speaking).
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On High gas prices make hybrids look even better posted 1 year, 11 months ago 45 ResponsesOn status
I don't know you or odo, biod, so maybe neither one of you does anything out of a desire to attain status in society. I think we're in agreement that the vast majority of people do act to seek status among those whose opinions matter to them. This is as true of punks as daytraders, and of goth kids as much as sorority girls and frat boys. What differs between those groups are the characteristics and behaviors to which status is ascribed, not the desire to attain status (though the strength of that desire surely varies from individual to individual).
In my case, I don't conform much to attain status in mainstream American culture (though I do feel the pressure to make more money, buy new clothes, get a respectable job, etc.), but I most definitely want status among my friends and activist colleagues.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On High gas prices make hybrids look even better posted 1 year, 11 months ago 45 ResponsesOther valid considerations
odo wrote:
If you want to be a (non-bicycling, non-mass-transit) carbon king, drive a used Echo.
Except that the Toyota Echo was a tiny subcompact car, which won't suffice for everyone's needs. It has no side airbags and its crash test ratings were mediocre, which is a valid concern given all the lumbering behemoths on the road--unless one hopes to become "carbon king" by getting killed in a collision (if you want a fuel-efficient, low-polluting, inexpensive subcompact car with good safety features and crash test ratings, try a Honda Fit or Toyota Yaris, both of which you might be able to find used).
Moreover, under the EPA's new method for calculating fuel economy, an Echo with a manual transmission gets a combined rating of 33 mpg, 13 mpg below the Prius hatchback. With an automatic transmission, the Echo only gets a combined rating of 31. Also, an Echo, with an EPA air pollution score of only 2, will put out a lot more smog-forming air pollutants than a Prius, which scores 8 or 9.5 (depending on whether it was built for California and certain other states with higher air pollution regs or the rest of the nation), or a Civic Hybrid, which scores 9 or 9.5 (ditto).
In other words, a Prius gets almost 40%, or almost 50%, better fuel economy and emits much less smog-forming air pollutants than an Echo--all while being much roomier (it's classified as a midsize car), safer, and more versatile.
Finally, buying a used Echo does nothing to support the development of new, more fuel-efficient and less-polluting vehicle technologies or to help us build toward a tipping point of social change. The only message most people get from seeing you drive an Echo is that you couldn't afford anything better because Echos, though reliable, were entry-level cars subject to cost-cutting in materials and design.
For the record, I drive a 2000 Honda Insight I bought used 3 years ago. It is possible to find a used Prius, though they were all outside my budget.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On High gas prices make hybrids look even better posted 1 year, 11 months ago 45 ResponsesIntangibles
I think buying a Prius (if you can swing the upfront costs, which I couldn't) has two additional, intangible, but very real benefits:
- You send a message to the automakers that you want a car that's very fuel-efficient and minimally pollutive. Yes, buying a Corolla, Yaris, Fit, conventional Civic, or other such car gets you good fuel efficiency and fairly low emissions at a significantly lower upfront cost, but they don't send a clear message to the automakers that you place a high priority on a car's ecological impact. For all they know, you could've bought such a car because it was relatively inexpensive but still well-made.
- You help to build the critical mass necessary to hit a tipping point of social change. How? By sending a highly-visible message to other people that you are serious about reducing your energy use as well as your emissions of greenhouse gases and smog-forming air pollutants. You demonstrate that you were willing to pay more for a car upfront to get those benefits, taking a longer-term and deeper view of the cost of driving.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On High gas prices make hybrids look even better posted 1 year, 11 months ago 45 ResponsesThe message you're taking...
...from the fact that no one took you up on your March bet seems to be based on the assumption that "peak oilers" share the desire to "make money" and get rich, Jason. I, for one, do not. The desire to get rich--to hoard personal wealth--is eating the world alive, and it's making us emotionally miserable.
That noted, I'm not firmly in the camp of the darkest gloom-and-doomers. I do think that catastrophic collapse is among the possible outcomes, but I suspect a prolonged decline of the industrial economy with periodic hard shocks is more likely. The first of those hard shocks may come as something on the order of 2 million more adjustable rate mortgates reset to much higher interest rates over the next year--especially if the Bush administration bombs Iran next year, too, perhaps sending the price of a barrel of oil over $200 in a few days. The peaking of global oil production and North American natural gas production cannot be considered in isolation because their effects won't be experienced that way.
Either way, I think we need to move with all possible speed to a renewable and regenerative economy.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Why I don't agree with James Kunstler about peak oil and the 'end of suburbia' posted 2 years ago 65 ResponsesSurely you don't imagine...
political instability and speculation are going to end anytime soon, now do you, Jason? I bet the world is going to become more, not less, politically unstable in the future as we batter up against global limits and experience the consequences of global warming and climate disruption. I also see no reason to think speculation will end as long as global oil supplies are tight, and the observers who seem credible to me don't think supplies are going to loosen.
As for refinery capacity, the argument has been made that oil companies aren't going to make significant investments in expanding capacity precisely because they understand we are at or near the peak of global oil production. My understanding is that refineries are extremely expensive to build in the U.S., so the oil companies might have good reason to be leery of investing in new U.S. refinery capacity that may well soon become superfluous.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Why I don't agree with James Kunstler about peak oil and the 'end of suburbia' posted 2 years ago 65 ResponsesIF...
...you can find a Yaris hatch that has no options other than the side and side curtain airbags plus the antilock brake system, those safety features apparently will add $950 to the Yaris base price of $11,300. You might have a tough time finding one without any option packages, though. Here in the Greater KC area, Yarises with the side airbags and ABS options are hard to find, though maybe things are different in Seattle.
If you look into the Fit, be aware that the Sport trim level's MSRP is $15,270 compared to the base trim level at $13,950, the latter being the version I compared to the Yaris in my previous comment. That $1,320 buys you a nicer audio system, a body kit of plastic pieces stuck on the car to make it appear more sporty (I think they look cheesy), and a few upscale features. Unfortunately, the base trim is apparently harder to find than the Sport trim.
Honda also has plans to introduce a dedicated hybrid model (instead of a hybrid version of one of their conventional cars) that will be a small family car priced under the current Prius and Civic Hybrid yet projected to go farther on a gallon of gasoline than either. No production date has been announced, though, so it may not be out for a couple years.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Tell BioD what car to buy posted 2 years, 1 month ago 27 ResponsesIF...
...you can find a Yaris hatch that has no options other than the side and side curtain airbags plus the antilock brake system, those safety features apparently will add $950 to the Yaris base price of $11,300. You might have a tough time finding one without any option packages, though.
If you look into the Fit, be aware that the Sport trim level's MSRP is $15,270 compared to the base trim level at $13,950, the latter being the version I compared to the Yaris in my previous comment. That $1,320 buys you a nicer audio system, a body kit of plastic pieces stuck on the car to make it appear more sporty (I think they look cheesy), and a few upscale features. Unfortunately, the base trim is apparently harder to find than the Sport trim.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Tell BioD what car to buy posted 2 years, 1 month ago 27 ResponsesMaybe a Honda Fit?
Hi, BioD. Based purely on the quality of the cars, I'd suggest a Honda Fit rather than a Toyota Yaris hatchback. Though Consumer Reports ranks the Yaris hatch and Fit as the 2 most reliable small cars (in that order), they also say the Yaris didn't perform well during their handling test and "stops are very long without the optional [antilock braking system]." Consumer Reports recommends the Fit but not the Yaris.
In addition, the Yaris is very much an economy car, with lots of cost-cutting choices made in its design and the interior materials used. The Fit uses higher-quality interior materials and has an extremely versatile and roomy interior design for a subcompact car, it's a 4-door rather than a 2-door hatch, and it comes with side and side-curtain airbags (which would be very important should you be unfortunate enough to be plowed into from the side by a mammoth SUV or truck) plus antilock brakes standard (both of which are only optional on the Yaris). And the Fit does have electric power steering, so your electrifying dream is still potentially realizable.
Downsides: The Fit's base price is $2,650 more than the base price for the Yaris hatch, though I've read that it's really hard to find a base Yaris and, if you do, it won't have side airbags and antilock brakes; add those and the price gap will narrow. Also, the Fit's EPA fuel economy rating is 1 MPG less combined city/highway than the Yaris's. If you wait a year, a redesigned Fit is supposed to hit the market that's supposed to be more fuel-efficient.
For those who've argued it makes more ecological sense to repair your old beater or buy used rather than buy a brand-new car, this blog post from the Union of Concerned Scientists explains when that's not true.
Also, here are some studies which explored automotive lifecycle energy use:
Smog-forming air pollutant emissions are another consideration, of course, and new cars typically do a much better of controlling these pollutants than older cars do.
And, if you're not in too much of a rush, you might be able to find a used Fit or Yaris hatch, eliminating worries about being responsible for the energy use and toxic chemical releases due to new car manufacture.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Tell BioD what car to buy posted 2 years, 1 month ago 27 ResponsesRelevant to meat-eating and health
I dunno if anyone is still paying attention to this blog post, but, just in case, I thought I'd point you to a New York Times article from October 9th that I think is relevant to David Roberts' assertion that "[e]ating meat is entirely an aesthetic choice, based on taste and habit." The article is "Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus."
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: What is eating locally? Is it eating logically
C4nier:
I don't know how much dairy was allowed for on the lowest-impact omnivorous diet the researchers considered, but it was probably more than the 2 oz. of meat. The reason I think this is so is the simple fact that you don't have to kill the cow when you want to eat milk.
It's true that eating local food alone isn't necessarily an answer, but that's why I used the term "place-based" instead. The point is that it's not just what can be grown locally but what makes sense to grow locally, in that place's particular mix of climate, biodiversity, soil, etc. As I understand it, it's also true that transportation isn't the biggest source of energy consumption in the industrial food system. Inputs--synthetic fertilizers (especially nitrogen) and biocides--consume more energy. Consequently, we need food that's not only grown locally but is grown with biological soil replenishment--animal and green manures, compost, covercropping, fallowing, etc.--instead of synthetic fertilizers as well as without petrochemical biocides.
Yes, the industrial animal agriculture system produces greenhouse gases other than CO2, most especially methane. From what I understand, though, healthy pastureland sequesters enough CO2 to more than compensate for the methane produced by the animals pastured on it.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: What is eating locally? Is it eating logically
"Place-based eating" as I'm using the term isn't a generality. What it means is to eat the foods that are well-suited to grow in your region, foods that are produced with little or no fossil fuel inputs. It's also a goal to be achieved through an incremental process--you can't jump to it overnight--but we'll never get there if we don't start moving in that direction. As global oil production begins to decline and prices skyrocket, place-based diets will also be a necessity, I bet.
You wrote:
According to the summary you couldn't even have a bowl of cereal for breakfast.
I just looked through the study again and I don't see any passage that I read to support this claim. The summary doesn't give any figures about the quantity of milk foods one could eat while having the lowest-impact diet; it does give a 2-cooked-ounce limit for meat and eggs combined, but I don't know of anyone who puts meat and/or eggs on her cereal.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Why aren't Environmentalists pushing less meat
Actually, many are. Few promote vegetarianism or veganism, and those that talk about reducing meat consumption may not pay as much attention to the issue as it deserves, but they are talking about it. Even Al Gore, who was the subject the PeTA press attack which initiated this discussion, addressed this issue on the film's site. As I understand it, he also addressed it in the book version of An Inconvenient Truth.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Just curious
spaceshaper:
You seem to have things backwards here. It was PeTA and their supporters who initiated this discussion by claiming that "you just can't be a meat-eating environmentalist." Those of us who think that's bull-hockey have simply responded to this unfounded assertion. Nor have I been trying to convince anyone they shouldn't become a vegetarian or vegan (though I have pointed out the health concerns that may come with those diets); I have been making the argument that you need not become a vegetarian or vegan in order to have a sustainable way of life.
I also think there's no chance that a small number of self-described "environmentalists" will be able to balance the ecological impact of the dietary choices of a large number of average Americans by eating a vegetarian (or vegan) diet. No, if we're going to get to sustainability here, we'll have to do it by persuading most people to change their diets.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Forgot to point out...
C4nier:
Why is it that you are so determined to try to find evidence that a vegetarian or vegan diet is the best way to go, at least in most places? Why are you attached to that as the ideal?
What I've argued again and again is that what we need are place-based diets, not generalized diets based on lines drawn to exclude entire categories of food. The only reasons to have exclusive diets like that are religious and cultural.
I imagine that every bioregion has lands that are unsuited to growing crops which are well-suited to hunting or pasturing animals--and the reverse is likely also true.
The issue with ecological footprint is not only how large it is but how deep it is--how heavily you impact the land you rely on. This is why the researchers concluded that a diet containing some meat and dairy made more ecological sense than a vegetarian or vegan diet.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesNew study supports meat-eating
Well, now, here's a study that supports what I and a few others have been arguing on this and related blogs for some time: Not only is it not necessary to exclude all meat from one's diet in order to "be an environmentalist," it actually makes more ecological sense, at least in some parts of the world, to include small amounts of meat and other animal foods in one's diet than it does to be a vegetarian or vegan. The study is by researchers at Cornell University (guess they didn't get permission from T. Colin Campbell before publishing) and you can read a brief description of its conclusions here.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: cannibalism; obligation; slaughter
caniscandida, you wrote:
Nevertheless, we can hardly doubt that full transparency and accessibility of CAFOs and slaughterhouses would turn the hearts of many against meat-eating and the meat industry.
For a while, but I'm betting most of them would eventually look for other ways to get meat because they craved it and decided they needed it to be healthy and feel good. Yes, that is an entirely unverifiable opinion, though I think the experience of many people who've tried vegetarianism provides substantiation. Fortunately, the number of small farms producing meat from pastured animals is growing every year.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Time, precious Time
Patrick, you wrote:
I have to say that activism beats head-banging-against-the-wall.....
Some of us manage to do both, much more of the former than the latter. This particular thread touched a nerve with me, though, because I used to be on PeTA's side--until my worldview changed and I began to understand how the world really works.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Subsidies (JFK) and fuzzy math (BioD)
C4nier:
How do you know I was being smug? Tone can be very hard to discern in plain text. I was asking JohnformerMarine a genuine question.
Regarding farm subsidies: Have you been eating anything made from conventional wheat, field corn (including oil and syrup), rice, or oats? If so, you've paid lower prices for that food due to U.S. government commodity crop subsidies. Organic farmers are also eligible for such subsidies, though how much subsidies affect organic food prices--both plant and animal--is more complicated and less-studied than the effect on conventional food prices. Because certified organic food typically commands higher prices, anyway, they may not often collect the subsidy checks. And plant foods benefit from other subsidies, such as for energy and irrigation.
I never argued that the benefits from farm subsidies were equally distributed between animal food production and plant food production. I agree that they primarily benefit the former.
Regarding feedgrain consumption by farm animals, please reread my earlier posts. Pastured chickens and hogs eat much less grain than factory chickens and hogs because they also eat grasses, insects, grubs and whatever else seems tasty to them. And ruminant animals don't need to eat any grain during their lives; in fact, they aren't evolved to eat large amounts of grain. Ruminants can be raised on pasture without any grain-feeding. This is the way the food web operates: Many kinds of herbivores are able to transform plant matter that is indigestible to omnivores and carnivores into flesh, milk, and eggs that is.
And how many times must I say that I'm not advocating the production of the same amount of meat from pastured animals that is currently being produced from animal factories. Because it would likely be unsustainable to produce the same amount of meat doesn't mean we should eat none.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Better ways to raise livestock
We finally agree on something, JohnformerMarine. I'm fully in favor of removing subsidies, both direct and indirect, to food production, including meat production. You are aware that certain plant foods--primarily corn, wheat, and soy--are subsidized, too, right? I'll trump you and also say we, as a society, need to apply what I call a True Cost Fee to food so that conventionally-produced food is priced to reflect, well, its true ecological cost.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Land use, soil erosion, biodiversity
It'd be really helpful if Pearl would stop posting quotes from and links to articles that address the destructive effects of the industrial agriculture system given that no one here is defending that system or proposing it continue. Yes, that system feeds enormous amounts of grains to animals in Confined Animal Feeding Operations, and, yes, that system uses grazing methods which contribute to soil erosion--but it isn't the only way to provide meat. I, for one, am advocating a pasture-based system, which would feed a whole lot less grain to chickens and pigs and little-or-no grain to ruminants such as cattle, goats, bison and sheep. And the system I'm talking about is intended to preserve--even to improve--the health of the land on which it's practiced, and many of the farmers practicing it continue to strive toward sustainability. We all need to be striving for sustainable ways of providing our food.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Ok we've had our fun
All:
spaceshaper may somehow be unable to remember the different ecological arguments that have been made in favor of eating animals on this blog and the related PETA's dogma is all bark and no bite, but that doesn't mean everyone else need remain ignorant. I don't expect everyone to go back and reread the many posts on both blogs to glean these nuggets, though, so I'll summarize the main points I recall (my apologies to anyone whose contribution I leave out:
- Since the early days of farming, maintaining soil fertility on farmland has been a perpetual challenge. Various methods both ancient and modern have been developed to help maintain soil fertility (including fallowing, crop rotation, covercropping, "green manure" crops, and the addition of composted plant waste), but one of if not the most ancient and time-tested methods has been to farm animals and plants together, with the animals eating some of the plants and their waste being returned to the soil to replace some of the nutrients lost. The modern industrial agricultural system, in its dubious wisdom, decided to split this elegant solution into two enormous problems, all in the name of maximizing production and profit. The animals were taken off the land for all--or, in the case of beef cattle, the last part of--their lives and put into what are bureaucratically dubbed Confined Animal Feeding Operations--that is, animal factories. This means huge amounts of animal waste become concentrated in a very confined area instead of being spread across pasture land, resulting in a huge waste disposal problem. On the flipside, cropland stripped of animals has lost the manure and urine inputs which help to maintain soil fertility, resulting in soil degradation over time. The answer to this has been synthetic fertilizers, including nitrogen fertilizers synthesized using natural gas and atmospheric nitrogen, and mined phosphorus and potassium. Returning to the ancient elegant solution of farming plants and animals together would help solve this problem. Applying human waste to the fields could also help maintain soil fertility, but there are huge logistical, legal, and health obstacles to using human waste on cropland at this time. Moreover, we need to not only prevent further soil degradation, we need to begin to rebuild it on the enormous amount of degraded cropland worldwide. Farm animal waste could be a tremendous help in this regard.
- Much of the land currently being cropped is unsuitable for this use, resulting in soil degradation, including topsoil loss; the most recent estimate I've seen is that an average of 7 tons of topsoil are lost per acre of U.S. cropland per year. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, Jared Diamond related an anecdote from a visit to Iowa. Some friends took him to see a church that had been built in the middle of cropland in the 19th Century, land which has been farmed since then. Today, it looks like the church was built on an island in the middle of the farmland because it sits 10 feet above the surrounding fields, but the truth is that the land around it has been washed away. That might just make for strange landscapes if topsoil was in unlimited supply, but it's not, of course; if you wash away the topsoil on an ongoing basis, you wash away your descendants ability to grow food. Soil erosion has contributed to the downfall of many civilizations. Much land would be far healthier if turned into pastureland covered in deep-rooted plants that would hold the soil in place, with people eating meat from the pastured animals rather than crop plants. Yes, cropland would also become healthier than it is now if not farmed at all, but people still want to eat.
- Healthy ecosystems are diverse ecosystems, and these inevitably contain a mix of different species of plants and animals. Taking the animals (or the plants) away, or drastically limiting their diversity, produces fragile and unhealthy ecosystems that are prone to collapse.
- There is no one right way to eat that can be applied everywhere around the world. What we need are place-based diets, founded on what grows well in the specific conditions of each place of the world. It's a lot harder to eat a diet that's both place-based and nutritionally healthy if you completely exclude animals from your diet. In some places, such as the Arctic, it's impossible--unless global warming so drastically disrupts the climate that it becomes possible. That's a future I hope to avoid.
spaceshaper is also fond of pointing out that only a tiny percentage of the meat produced in the U.S. comes from small farms that pasture their animals. While true at the moment, this is a poorly reasoned argument. They are few in number precisely because there aren't yet that many people who are willing to pay the higher prices they charge for pastured, grassfed meat--higher because they aren't benefiting from the various subsidies the animal factories receive. As long as the current economic system prevails (which may not be that long, but that's another subject), the simple fact is that, if those who love the world and want to eat meat don't support these small farms, small animal farms will not only fail to increase in number, many of those that exist now will shut down because they make too little to stay in business. It's already common for small farm families to rely on off-farm income to make ends meet. It's nonsensical to point out how little of the meat produced in America is from small farms striving for sustainability and then propose a course of action which, if followed, would put many of the existing farms out of business--if your interest is really sustainability. If your real agenda is to convince people to stop eating animals because you think it's "wrong" to do so--which is true in the case of PeTA--well, then, you might be willing to make all kinds of outrageous, exaggerated, and unfounded claims to achieve your goal.
What's spaceshaper's primary motivation for advocating vegetarianism? I don't read minds, but this post of his from Sept. 23rd, which was addressed to me, may provide a clue:
You're absolutely right. I can't "prove" it's wrong to eat animals any more than I can "prove" it's wrong to drive a Hummer. It's just one of life's many choices. You make yours, I make mine.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: "meat addiction"
spaceshaper wrote:
There are overwhelming environmental reasons for making this choice [eating a vegetarian diet].
No, there aren't. Place-based diets are what we need, not a simple-minded general commandment that Westerners shalt not eat animals.
I've made sound arguments. spaceshaper just doesn't agree with them, which is his prerogative, of course.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Where is the uproar????
Karsten, I think you already know the reason why the vegetarian and vegan advocates are talking about this issue and not the fashion issue (except, perhaps, for fur and other animal-source materials that are used): This isn't really about the ecological impacts of eating meat. It's about their moral certainty that it's wrong to eat animals--or, in the case of folks like caniscandida, their strong discomfort with the moral implications of eating animals.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Re: Prairie options
Pearl, you posted a link about the end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinction in North America, which, as I understand it, was caused, at least in part, by human hunting. When you use this to argue against GonzoDon's suggestion of returning much of the Great Plains to a Buffalo (actually, Bison is the correct term) Commons, you're totally off-base. Anytime a new species enters an ecosystem--and, particularly in the case of humans, when a species develops a new technology--extinctions are one possible result. But the folks whose hunting (probably) contributed to that megafaunal extinction did not go on to cause a progressive, mounting wave of extinctions the way our global civilization has. They didn't keep driving species to extinction, which is why there are still bison (and many related species) around for us to consider the possibility of a Bison Commons. It was Whites who nearly drove the bison to extinction.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Burnt flesh and my boggled mind
spaceshaper, you wrote:
From the prevalence of the practices it would seem that humans have also been prepared by evolution -- or The Creator -- to be naturally attracted to overindulgence in cigarettes and liquor, cheating on their spouses, stealing from their business associates and pulling legs off grasshoppers.
Yes, actually, evolution shaped us to have tendencies to be attracted to mood- and perception-altering substances, and to screw around on our mates, and to cheat and steal--possibly even to pull legs off grasshoppers, though I'm not sure about that one. Of course that doesn't mean that any of these things cannot have destructive effects depending on the particular circumstances because, of course, they can. Culture also plays a powerful role in determining which tendencies are expressed. For anyone who wants to understand how the human mind works and why people often do things they live to regret, I highly recommend Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis.
You also wrote:
"If I like it how can it be bad?" seems an insufficient defense of any demonstrably destructive habit, including the meat addiction.
You've failed to demonstrate that eating meat, at all times and in all circumstances, is a "demonstrably destructive habit." What matters is how the meat is acquired. Industrial animal factories clearly must be shut down as soon as feasible, but that doesn't mean we can't create a sustainable way of acquiring some meat to eat.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: bad questions
caniscandida:
You seem to have forgotten that I'm not the one who first made the connection between the supposed nutritional and moral benefits of vegetarian and/or vegan diets. At least a few other folks made that claim, and I'm just responding to it. Consequently, I think it's fair to ask why so few of the people who try such diets remain on them for the rest of their lives.
You wrote:
But as for the rhetorical assumption that we are "spiritually uplifted," that is silly. One does not try to perform good actions for the sake of whatever inner satisfaction the performance of them may bring. As Aristotle used to say, "Virtue is its own reward."
I didn't suggest that people do or should adopt the diet expecting to feel spiritually uplifted. But, if eating a vegetarian (or vegan) diet is a morally superior way to eat, why don't all the people who try it feel the spiritual benefits and stick with it for the rest of their lives? Why don't they feel so wonderful about not killing other animals to eat (never mind the plants) that they can't even conceive of "going back"?
As for the difficulty of eating such diets in this country, I became a vegetarian and then a vegan when it was still really difficult, in the mid-to-late 80s, and where it was really difficult, in Fulton, a small town in mid-Missouri. I knew of no health food stores nor did I have any books on the subject when I became vegetarian. Comparatively, it's a breeze to be vegetarian or vegan now with the proliferation of healh food stores, books and magazines on the subject, the addition of many vegetarian and vegan foods to restaurant menus, the various veg*n support organizations, both local and national, and so on. So, again, if this diet is so much better for people in every way, why don't more people who try it stick with it?
Also, as I've noted previously, it's estimated that as little as <20% to as high as 42% of the present population of India is vegetarian--despite thousands of years of exposure to Hindu, Jainist, and Buddhist teachings promoting vegetarian or veganism. Delicious vegetarian foods are widely available. Consequently, India hardly seems to me to be a society that's hostile to vegetarian dietary choices, and still only a minority of Indians--maybe less than 1/5th of the population--eat a vegetarian diet. Anyone want to try to explain that?
Yes, some explain this away by saying that people just don't understand what's right and good, and others that people are sinful by nature, but I don't find either to be a satisfying explanation. I have a much higher opinion of my species than that. It makes far more sense to me that the explanation is that humans are omnivores, and the more varied one's diet is, the easier it is to take in all the nutrients one needs to be healthy.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Re: Blah, blah, blah... Enough already!!!
I wrote:
Assuming you've described the studies in question accurately, I make the following observation: For Campbell and his team to do feeding studies on other species of animals using casein--a single type of protein that's found only in mammalian milk and not, as I understand it, in meat--and to then claim that "protein," in general, causes cancer in human animals so every human being should eat a vegan diet containing no animal foods, is, at best, overreaching their own evidence. But I suspect Campbell got the results he wanted.
This may be obvious enough from the context, but, just in case, I'll note that the "protein" in quotes I referred to above is "animal protein."
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Blah, blah, blah... Enough already!!!
ridgerunner:
I'm flattered that you find me so exasperating. I must be doing something right. You wrote, referring to me:
He describes how he was once a vegan activist, but has since seen the light and now consumes animal foods from sustainable grass and pasture fed animals. Animals that are humanely raised in a sustainable manner in harmony with the surrounding environment.
Actually, no, I haven't claimed that the meat I eat was sustainably-produced; sustainability can only be judged after the fact--generations after the fact, by one's descendants. I'm striving for sustainability, but I don't claim to have achieved it. I don't know anyone who has--and anyone who thinks a vegetarian or vegan diet is, by definition, sustainable is simply wrong. Nor have I described the meat I eat as "humanely raised," whatever that means. The vast majority of the meat I eat does come from small farms that pasture their animals.
You also wrote:
Using the scientific method over his career spanning 40+ years, Dr Campbell demonstrated a strong direct relationship between consumption of animal foods and the development of cancer. Using both extensive animal studies and the large scale epidemiological China Study, he has concluded that animal protein is one of the most potent cancer promoting substances on the planet. Its not just the fatty saturated fats, (and the hormones, antibiotics, PCBs and other carcinogenic contaminants) of red meat which shows this correlation - its the protein. The animal studies conducted by Dr Campbell's team at Cornell were conducted using Casein, which is the protein found in cow's milk. In fact, they were able to actually turn cancer growth on and off like a switch, by varying the percent protein in the diet between 5% and 20%.
You don't give much detail here, but this may help explain one of the incredible (in the original sense of the word, "so implausible as to elicit disbelief") results of Campbell's research. Most mammals lose the ability to digest lactose after weaning, so they may have trouble digesting the milk protein casein as adults, too.
Assuming you've described the studies in question accurately, I make the following observation: For Campbell and his team to do feeding studies on other species of animals using casein--a single type of protein that's found only in mammalian milk and not, as I understand it, in meat--and to then claim that "protein," in general, causes cancer in human animals so every human being should eat a vegan diet containing no animal foods, is, at best, overreaching their own evidence. But I suspect Campbell got the results he wanted.
Good luck getting enough calories and nutrients from fruits and vegetables during the winter in places like Missouri--after the global peak of oil production makes the industrialized food system untenable. There's a reason settled farming peoples throughout human history ate grain and legume-based diets: these were the only foods that could provide sufficient calories and protein because meat wasn't readily available for most of them most of the time; grains and legumes can also be easily stored to be eaten in winter.
But, as I've pointed out before, human beings, in general, are not well-adapted to thrive on such diets. And still none of the proponents of vegetarian and vegan diets has had a thing to say about that paper.
For counter-evidence to ridgerunner's claims about the superior health benefits of vegetarian and vegan diets, all are welcome to...click on my name to see my past posts on this blog.
One more thing: I know a lot of people who've tried being vegetarian or vegan, but very few who have continued to eat that way over the long-term. If eating a vegetarian or vegan diet is so much better for one's health, and if it's the morally superior way to eat, why don't a higher percentage of the people who try it stick with it? After all, they ought to have felt better than ever--and spiritually uplifted, to boot. Are all those failed veg*ns just too stupid to know how good they had it?
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: I changed my mind
Karsten:
I don't know where you live, so perhaps it may be true that small farmers in your area have no small slaughterhouses to take their animals to. That is not the case here in the Greater Kansas City area, though, and I suspect it isn't the case in other parts of the country, either. Also, chickens can be slaughtered on-farm, at least in some states; that's the case in both Missouri and Kansas.
For anyone interested in finding meat and other animal foods from small farms, check out Local Harvest, the Eat Well Guide, and Eat Wild. I'm confident most of the farmers you find through those sites will be happy to explain the challenges they have to deal with.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Natural Gas
Michael:
My point was to ask whether it affects your plan if there is an insufficient supply of natural gas (NG) to increase NG-fired electricity generation, as suggested in your essay. How much does it affect your plan if not only is there insufficient NG to increase NG-fired electricity generation but insufficient NG to maintain the current levels of NG-fired electricity generation and NG use as a transportation fuel?
It's a sincere question, which perhaps would be answered by reading your book--but I haven't done that yet. Any energy plan that doesn't take into account near-term supply constraints can't be taken all that seriously, in my opinion, so I'm trying to determine if you've taken these possible constraints into account.
My personal suspicion is that constraints on both oil and NG supplies due to peaking oil production worldwide and past-peak North American NG production are going to force us to emphasize reducing consumption by changing the way we live over the transition to renewable technologies, but we shall see how things play out.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Shellenberger & Nordhaus respond to critics posted 2 years, 1 month ago 23 ResponsesRe: Abundance or famine
Pearl:
Though I'm in favor of dramatically reducing the amount of grains and soy fed to animals raised for food, I'm not in favor of turning those grains and soy into human food precisely because it would allow the world to support billions more people--that is, it would fuel continued population growth. I think we need to stop population growth and begin a gradual decline, and I also think we need to stop using so much land to grow grains and soy to feed animals--including human animals.
The fact that the world has consumed more grain than it's produced in 6 of the last 7 years (and the 2007-8 crop year is projected to be the 7th of the last 8th) is very troubling to me. My hope is that rising grain prices will reduce the amount of grain being fed to animals in factories and help shut those places down. As I see it, however, the only viable way to reduce world hunger is to change the global economic system so that it stops making it so hard for people to provide for themselves. It doesn't make any sense for farmers in countries like the U.S. to continue degrading soil, polluting air and water, and draining aquifers to produce vast surpluses of grain for export. This undermines self-sufficiency and, by definition, cannot be sustained indefinitely, anyway.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Spaceshaper, some more thoughts to ponder
biod, you wrote:
Raising a chicken for four months to slaughter will take less water and grain than keeping an adult chicken fed to lay eggs, and the same for raising a calf for slaughter verses keeping an adult dairy cow fed (a dairy cow eats considerably more per pound of body weight than a beef cow, as does an adult hen compared to a newly hatched chick). A person eating an once of eggs and dairy a day will have a bigger footprint that someone who instead eats an once of chicken or beef.
Actually, as I understand it, you've missed the mark here. While it's true that a hen kept as a layer will consume more water and grain over its entire lifetime than a chicken raised for meat, that leaves out the fact that, if you want to keep eating chicken, you have to keep raising chicken after chicken for meat over the lifetime of that layer hen. As I understand it, those multiple chickens raised for meat will consume more water and grain than the layer hen.
The situation with cattle is more complex. Cattle raised for beef will do just fine on a completely grassfed diet, so they need never eat any grain. Cows kept for milk can be entirely grassfed but the dairies that eschew all grainfeeding are few and far between as I understand it. The dairy I buy from feeds 2/3 grass, 1/2 grains.
Since much of this discussion has dealt with the suffering animals endure in the food system, I think it's important to note that many observers have concluded layer hens and dairy cows suffer more in the industrialized food system than do broiler chickens and beef cattle.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Re: Health, and more
Pearl, you wrote:
Seems I have to repeat myself. Fat (regardless of the source) and sugar represent energy.
Which I haven't disputed. So, do you agree then that people crave animal fat because we're evolved to eat it? If you don't, what's your explanation for why so many people crave it? I'm unaware of any evidence that gorillas crave animal fat in this sense even though they aren't complete vegetarians.
I'm well-aware of the mass extinction we're in the early stages of; I addressed it in my essay The Sixth Extinction: And then there were none. I just don't agree that we all have to stop eating animals to stop the extinctions. In fact, I think we need to be eating animals, at least in most parts of the world, to have place-based diets, and I think we need place-based diets to stop the mass extinction from coming to pass.
Surely you don't think our line stopped evolving 6 million years ago. And the decline in human health described by your quoted source came not when we started eating animals but when some humans settled down to become farmers and civilization-builders, as explained by Jared Diamond in his Discover magazine article The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race.
We've been over the American Dietetic Association's Position Paper on Vegetarian Diets, which clearly explains the difficulties in having sufficient supplies of certain essential nutrients while eating a vegetarian or vegan diet and the need to plan such a diet well or appropriately. The ADA also encourages the use of supplements to ensure that one has enough of some of these nutrients.
You also wrote:
Intended for growing babies and infants, all milk naturally contains a growth factor - insulin-like growth factor (IGF).
Have you considered the possibility that the same folks who carry the mutation necessary to digest lactose throughout adulthood may also carry the ability to deal with the presence of Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 in milk?
For the record, I don't think there's a particularly strong health argument in favor of most people consuming the milk of any other species. Still, culturing processes can make milk digestible even by people who cannot digest lactose, and it is a nutrient-dense food.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: "religious debate"?
caniscandida, you wrote:
In this latter stage of the thread, JFK has proposed two kinds of arguments:
one, based on the published findings of professional societies of dietitians of the US and Canada (two countries with large and important meat industries, one might note in passing), which says that certain substances essential to long-term good nutrition in human beings can be derived only from animal products;
Actually, what I've said is that it's difficult to have sufficient supplies of certain nutrients while eating a vegetarian or vegan diet, not that it's impossible for every single human being to do so. Once again, it's PeTA and certain advocates of veg*nism who are making the unqualified statement that not only is it wrong to eat animals but that every human being can be perfectly healthy without eating animals.
And, again, what I've argued is that humanity's place is with the omnivores, not the carnivores.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not accuse you of willfully misrepresenting my positions.
You also wrote:
JFK is undoubtedly articulate. He and a friend maintain a well-designed and intelligent blog. And he used to be your colleague, I think, until not long ago, as a Contributor in Gristmill's stable.
First, that's sweet of you to say so. Second, no, I've never been asked to contribute blog posts to Gristmill; I've only ever been a commenter.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Kudos, John
Thanks for the support, BioD. As you noted, I don't need it, but it's still nice given the hostility of certain posters here. I'm well aware of how difficult it is to try to have a dialogue with anyone who is absolutely certain s/he is morally right; I haven't really been writing to the folks who've been disputing what I've written but to the folks who are reading but not posting. I'm not sure there are any of those left after this many comments have gone up.
I also agree that there's no point in continuing to go over what I've already covered. Why keep posting the same arguments?
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: veg*nism and responsibility
caniscandida, you wrote:
JFK, our moral faculties, including our feelings of sympathy, concern and affection, are not regulated by an on/off switch.
Quite true, but I never suggested anything of the sort. I merely pointed out that we have no obligation to love all animals the way we love our family and other intimates, nor can we since the vast majority of them are and will always be strangers to us.
There are many opportunities for that kind of sudden, momentary, heart-breaking relationship in the PETA video, "Meet Your Meat": e.g., a fluttering turkey, clubbed to the floor by a farmer who keeps strolling along; a piglet, wailing in terror and pain as its incisors are extracted, one after the other, by a smiling woman; a cow, suspended from the ceiling by one hind leg, alive and aware as its throat is slit, and it is left to choke on its own blood.
I've seen videos like this. The filmmakers do a fabulous job of cutting together horrific examples of cruelty, which are common in the industrial agriculture system. This shouldn't surprise us, as the animals are treated as commodities rather than living beings--but, then, so are the plants in the industrial system. Animals don't have to be treated that way before they're eaten, though, and that's what I'm working toward.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Bottom line
spaceshaper:
It's widely-recognized by organizations working on the issues of hunger and malnutrition that the problem is not that the world produces too little food but that our economic systems and various forms of intra- and international conflict prevent people from providing food for themselves. Check out Food First's "12 Myths about Hunger", which was cofounded by Francis Moore Lappe.
That noted, I'm all for getting ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats, bison) pretty much completely off of grain diets--they can't digest grains well so they do so inefficiently and produce less-healthy meat, too--and pasturing other animals (such as chicken and hogs) rather than keeping them in animal factories. The latter would still eat some feedgrain, but far less. Oh, and for getting fish off of feedgrains, too; that's even more nonsensical than the ruminants.
Would this mean a world in which people in the U.S. and some other countries ate less meat? I suspect so, and I'm fine with that. I'm arguing that it's healthier, at least for most people, to eat meat, and that this is most certainly not incompatible with achieving a sustainable and resilient food supply. We need place-based diets to achieve that goal, and excluding all animal foods makes it much harder to have place-based diets.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 1 month ago 256 ResponsesRe: Shellenberger responds
Michael:
I'm clearly in the minority here, but I largely agree with your post (as I did with "The Death of Environmentalism"--the sooner we pull the plug, the better our chances of saving the world). But one factor you don't seem to be taking into account (at least in this post) is that North American natural gas production has peaked and gone into decline and significantly increasing imports of liquefied natural gas is problematic for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it would increase the U.S.'s reliance on energy imported from unstable and mostly-hostile parts of the world. I don't see any way we will have a supply of natural gas sufficient to fuel an increase in the number of natural-gas fired electricity plants; in fact, I think we are likely not going to have the supply necessary to fuel all the current plants in the foreseeable future. Production limits and rising prices are the reason why utilities have turned back to coal for electricity generation after decades of opting for natural gas to reduce air pollutants and acid rain.
So, if I'm right and we won't be able to use natural gas as a less-carbon dense transition fuel while we build an infrastructure for a truly carbon-neutral and sustainable energy system, how does this effect your strategy?
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Shellenberger & Nordhaus respond to critics posted 2 years, 2 months ago 23 ResponsesRe: caring, culture, carnivores
caniscandida:
Playing our evolved part in the food web doesn't mean we cannot care about other animals. But it doesn't make any sense to me to suggest that we should care about other animals as individuals in any way comparable to the way we care about our families and other loved ones--they aren't our families or other loved ones, and we are incapable of having the same kind of relationship with them that we have with our families and other loved ones.
You've clearly studied the subject of evolution in much greater depth than I have--and I'll (almost) leave the subject at that. Surely the first animal species had to be an herbivore, though--there were no other animal species to eat. Well, I guess it could have been cannibalistic, but how could the species have survived and thrived if the only thing individuals had to eat was their own kind?
The passage you quoted sure seems to make an argument for human animals continuing to eat other animals instead of being pure vegetarians, though. After all, "Plants are neither particularly nutritious nor readily assimilable when compared to animal flesh."
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: You can be a meat-eating environmentalist...
Do you have anything thoughtful, substantive, or compassionate to post, oh-John-former-Marine? If not, please spare us. You're hardly doing any favors for the veg*n crowd as a self-appointed spokesperson.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: imitation animal foods; Essenes
caniscandida, you wrote:
(1.) carnivory is the original condition of all animals, which is always potentially expressible in all animal lineages;
This is the 2nd time you've made that assertion. What's the basis for it? I've never seen a statement like that made anywhere else and it doesn't make any sense to me. Given that the primary flow of energy is from the sun to the photosynthesizing plants to the plant-eaters to the animal-eaters, I can't imagine that "carnivory is the original condition of all animals." I don't even really know what you mean by that. Will you explain or provide a reference?
And you wrote:
(2.) "attraction" to eating animal foods is a social artefact determined by no natural need, along the lines of how whether most men in a particular society are sexually aroused by the sight of a woman's naked breasts more than her legs, or by the sight of a woman's naked legs more than her breasts, or by the sight of a naked woman exclusivey and never by the sight of a naked man, is merely a social artefact determined by no natural need;
This is a stunningly broad assertion, and one you're going to have a tough time substantiating, I bet. Where's the evidence that the very widespread attraction to eating animal foods is purely a "social artifact"? It's been well-established that culture modifies our food choices as well as what we're attracted to, but neither our food nor our sexual preferences are solely products of our culture. Surely you can't really believe that evolution endowed us with no instincts regarding what we need to eat for our health and to whom to be attracted in order to ensure the continuation of our species. I think that's preposterous.
And you wrote:
3.) the fact that in some societies and traditions, certain animal foods are considered disgusting or taboo (e.g., foods derived from cattle, pigs, horses, dogs, reptiles, amphibians, mollusks and arthropods), which foods are eaten with great relish by members of other societies and traditions, suggests that there is nothing necessarily universal about carnivory.
Carnivory isn't universal among humans, of course; that is, the practice of eating animals isn't universal. Is the taste for meat universal, meaning every single human who's ever lived has shared it? I imagine not. But the eating of animals has been a shared characteristic across thousands of very diverse human cultures in dramatically different bioregions. Surely vegetarianism would've been commonly found among those thousands of cultures instead of quite rare if the desire to eat meat was "merely a social artifact."
I don't have to ask PeTA about the wide range of fake meat and dairy products on the market. While I'm sure some percentage of them are eaten by people who eat real meat and dairy products, too, I don't see any reason to think most of them are. Why would that be the case if humans have no biological taste for animal foods? Why would even people who think it's "wrong" to eat any animal foods still be attracted to their characteristics enough to buy imitations? Exceptions such as you don't invalidate the overall pattern.
And you wrote:
Rather, it looks like this, logically: The assertion, "All human beings need to feed on animal products in order to be healthy," is like the assertion, famously used in logic textbooks, "All swans are white."
Except I've never asserted that "[a]ll human beings need to feed on animal products in order to be healthy." My statements have been qualified, leaving open the possibility that some folks will be adequately healthy on a vegan or vegetarian diet (though I'm admittedly skeptical anybody can be optimally healthy on a vegetarian or vegan diet; still, I suppose it could be true in some cases). What I've done is question the assertion by PeTA and some advocates of vegan (or vegetarian) diets in Gristmill that all human beings can be healthy on a vegan (or vegetarian) diet and that a vegan (or vegetarian) diet is the one right way for all people to eat. Oh, and that those of us who continue to eat meat must not really care about the living world--no matter what else we do.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: Health continued
Pearl, you wrote:
Better get to it, huh, instead of simply relying on the say-so of those telling you what you want to hear.
I became a vegetarian for ethical reasons when I was just shy of 21. I think I became vegan about 2 1/2 years later. Though my original reasons for both dietary changes were ethical, I became convinced of the health and ecological benefits over time, as well. I remained on a vegan diet until I was 32. I developed no health problems while I was on a vegan diet that I attributed to my diet at the time (though now I wonder). I was a self-righteous proselytizing veg*n activist for a total of more than 10 years, and a public vegan activist for the last 3 years or so with Vegetarians of Kansas City.
My 1st reaction when I read the 2 books that inspired me to change my worldview and stop being a vegan--Daniel Quinn's Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest and The Story of B--was that I would write to him through his site to convince him he was mistaken. The only problem was that I couldn't think of any way to refute what he'd written, so, over time, my own thinking changed instead.
Which is a long way of saying that there was a long period of time when I absolutely didn't want to believe that humans are omnivores, that animal foods are necessary for optimal human health, and that it's no more wrong for a human animal to eat another animal than for any other kind of animal to eat another animal. I wanted to continue believing a vegan diet was optimal in all ways and morally "right," but I no longer could after changing my worldview.
With regard to the nutritional questions, I have considered the evidence you provided though I'm not interested enough to read the entire studies nor do I have the expertise to fully evaluate their methodology. The China Project (CP) is hardly news to me since I promoted its recommendations when I was vegan, but I find it less credible than the cautions of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada. T. Colin Campbell advocates a completely vegan, very lowfat diet as optimal for human health based on the results of the CP, yet the CP doesn't compare the health outcomes on optimal very lowfat vegan diets to optimal vegetarian diets and optimal omnivorous diets. Until someone does that study, no one can say which diet is optimal based on science, and I won't be holding my breath for such a study to be funded.
That's why I keep coming back to the evidence which shows how people have eaten over our history as a species, our anatomy (which studies show we are adapted to eating some animal foods), and the fact that most people seem to me to be strongly attracted to eating animal foods (even vegans, many of whom eat lots of highly-processed imitation animal foods). That strong attraction explains why consumption of animal foods rises rapidly as countries industrialize and people become wealthier, as is happening in China right now. I can't think of any good reason we'd have such a powerful desire to eat foods that are inherently unhealthy for us. Yes, we can certainly overdo it when foods are highly-processed away from their original form (cake and other pastries come to mind) and when they become far more abundant than they would've been through most of human history for most people (sugars and milks are obvious examples), but it seems to me that our innate cravings are what drive us to overdo it--the cravings are real.
You also wrote:
But you won't actually say that our continuing exploitation of fish is ecological ignorance (to put it very mildly).
I won't say it because it's not true. Continuing our present levels of industrial fishing would be ecologically disastrous, but that doesn't mean humans have to stop eating fish entirely. In fact, I think it'd be a huge nutritional mistake if we did. There are more choices before us than either continue what we're doing now or stop eating fish completely. Do you agree? If not, why not?
You wrote:
Have you a degenerative disease possibly impairing your ability to convert?
I dunno. Like many Americans, I can't afford our for-profit system of health care except when I have an emergency. But the American Dietetic Association said the following about conversion of ALA to DHA in their 1997 position paper on vegetarian diets:
The essential fatty acid linolenic acid can be converted to DHA, although conversion rates appear to be inefficient and high intakes of linoleic acid interfere with conversion.
They and the many other sources saying similar things might be mistaken about that, but so might the sources you cite that say ALA-to-DHA conversion is efficient enough. I haven't done research on the subject personally--have you?
You have a tendency to prefer to believe the sources who confirm what you already think--that people don't need to eat animals--and I have a tendency to prefer to believe the sources who confirm what I already think--that eating animals is best for human health. According to The Happiness Hypothesis, people in general have that tendency. Quoting from pgs. 64-65:
When people are given difficult questions to think about--for example, whether the minimum wage should be raised--they generally lean one way or the other right away, and then put a call in to reasoning to see whether support for that position is forthcoming. For example, a person whose first instinct is that the minimum wage should be raised looks around for supporting evidence. If she thinks of her Aunt Flo who is working for the minimum wage and can't support her family on it then yes, that means the minimum wage should be raised. All done. Deanna Kuhn, a cognitive psychologist who has studied such everyday reasoning, found that most people readily offered "pseudoevidence" like the anecdote about Aunt Flo. Most people gave no real evidence for thier positions, and most made no effort to look for evidence opposing their initial positions. David Perkins, a Harvard psychologist who has devoted his career to improving reason, found the same thing. He says that thinking generally uses the "makes-sense" stopping rule. We take a position, look for evidence that supports it, and if we find some evidence--enough so that our position "makes sense"--we stop thinking. But at least in a low-pressure situation such as this, if someone else brings up reasons and evidence on the other side, people can be induced to change their minds; they just don't make an effort to do such thinking for themselves.
Now let's crank up the pressure. The client has been caught cheating on her taxes. She calls her lawyer. She doesn't confess and ask, "Was that OK?" She says, "Do something." The lawyer bolts into action, assesses the damaging evidence, researches precedents and loopholes, and figures out how some personal expenses might be plausibly justified as business expenses. The lawyer has been given an order: Use all your powers to defend me. Studies of "motivated reasoning" show that people who are motivated to reach a particular conclusion are even worse reasoners than those in Kuhn's and Perkins's studies, but the mechanism is basically the same: a one-sided search for supporting evidence only. People who are told that they they have performed poorly on a test of social intelligence think extra hard to find reasons to discount the test; people who are asked to read a study showing that one of their habits--such as drinking coffee--is unhealthy think extra hard to find flaws in the study, flaws that people who don't drink coffee don't notice. Over and over again, studies show that people set out on a cognitive mission to bring back reasons to support their preferred belief or action. And because we are usually successful in this mission, we end up with the illusion of objectivity. We really believe that our position is rationally and objectively justified.
Good reason for us all to be humble about the positions we take, I'd say.
You wrote:
Whilst at the same time significantly increasing LDL cholesterol...
Evidence?
Do the studies you cited on correlation between dairy product consumption and disease control for how the dairy products were produced? I bet they were done on people eating conventional milk from animal factories, which is dramatically different in nutritional composition from raw, unhomogenized milk from pastured cows. Organic milk doesn't have the residues of antibiotics and other drugs or the synthetic growth hormones that conventionally-produced milk has; the biocide residues in organic milk will also typically be lower because the animals are eating organic feed.
No, I can't point to studies that show people eating raw, unhomogenized, pastured, and organic dairy foods do not have the same health problems as people eating conventional dairy foods--because, as far as I know, they haven't been done. The conventional dairy industry has no desire to study the issue and the grassfed/pastured folks don't have the money to pay for studies of that magnitude. And the majority of the world's people who cannot digest lactose--I think estimates range from 70-75%--would probably be better off not eating uncultured dairy foods at all. But the studies you cite don't show that raw, unhomogenized, and organic dairy foods from pastured cows are unhealthy for the 30% or so of the world's population (most of whom are of European descent) that can digest lactose--because they didn't study that question.
Will you concede that not all animal foods are the same with regard to nutritional composition? The Union of Concerned Scientists has reviewed the evidence regarding this question in their papers Greener Pastures and Greener Eggs and Ham for those who are interested.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: OMT
Pearl:
I'm not going to tackle the nutritional questions yet again; I've covered them with sources that differ from yours already. Who's right? Well, I haven't done the research myself, but I know which ones seem more credible to me.
I've also pointed readers to criticisms of the China Project you're so fond of citing so I won't address that.
I will, however, respond to the issue you raised regarding the ecological wisdom of relying on marine fish for our docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) Omega-3 needs. As I've noted elsewhere, I very rarely eat seafood because I live in the middle of the North American landmass. Instead, I rely on eggs from pastured hens and meat from grassfed ruminants for the DHA I need plus (hopefully) some conversion of plant-source alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) Omega-3 into DHA. And I try to keep my Omega-6 fatty acid intake down because that apparently interferes with conversion of ALA to DHA.
Dairy products from grassfed cattle also contain another beneficial fatty acid called conjugated linoleic acid.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: B12 deficiency
spaceshaper, you wrote:
Tedious though the task is, your persistence in propagating your unsubstantiated opinion in this blog has to continue to be challenged because I believe that Grist is a place for the exchange of actual information, not just wild-ass claims and creeds. I'm sure there are forums elsewhere which will welcome the sharing of faith-based dietary opinions.
I bet the American Dietetic Assocation and Dieticians of Canada are going to be very surprised to find out they've been dispensing "wild-ass claims and creeds" and "faith-based dietary opinions." You wanna break it to 'em?
For those who are actually interested in the evidence, the primary sources I've referred to regarding the difficulty in having sufficient supplies of certain essential nutrients (such as Omega-3 DHA fatty acid, vitamin B12 and iron) while eating a vegetarian or vegan diet are the Position of the American Dietetic Association: Vegetarian Diets (1997) and the revised 2003 The Position of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada:Vegetarian Diets. You may not like their conclusions and recommendations much, but they are based on scientific research.
I've also referenced a paper titled The Late Role of Grains and Legumes in the Human Diet, and Biochemical Evidence of their Evolutionary Discordance which addresses the biochemical reasons why people in general aren't well-suited to eat grain and legume-based diets. To my recollection, none of the proponents of vegetarianism or veganism has had a thing to say about that one.
Finally, the Cornell China Project so often cited by advocates of vegetarianism and veganism has been criticized for its methodology and conclusions. Here's the most telling point from the linked criticism as far as I'm concerned:
Ultimately, attempts to claim that the China Study "proves" all omnivore/faunivore diets are bad fail as yet another logical fallacy. Basically, none of the county diets in the China Study were vegan diets, and none were evolutionary diets (and, by the way, none were the SAD/SWD diet). Most were high carbohydrate, grain-centered diets (though one county reported high consumption of both meat and dairy--reminder: dairy was never a part of humanity's evolutionary diet). Campbell, writing in Junshi et al. [1990], reports (p. 63):
The national mean [average] percentage energy intake obtained from animal foods was observed to be 5.7%, with a range of 0.1-59.4%.
Thus we observe that extrapolation to strict vegan or evolutionary diets (or even the SAD diet) go beyond the range of the China Study data, and hence such projections are less reliable statistically. Also, as none of the China Study diets were evolutionary diets, and the meat consumed came from domesticated rather than wild animals, the results from such (Chinese) diets cannot be extrapolated to evolutionary diets (i.e., yet another logical fallacy).
[Note: SAD stands for Standard American Diet and SWD stands for Standard Western Diet.]
Your self-reported good health on a vegetarian diet is not in any way proof that all human beings can be healthy eating a vegetarian diet. And let's keep in mind that PeTA, the organization that started all this, advocates veganism, not vegetarianism.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: it's a dog-eat-dog world
Hi, caniscandida. I'm glad we seem to have reached some level of understanding though we continue to disagree.
I'm not going to let PeTA off the hook for the "you just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist" statement, though. Yes, that statement was made by Matt Prescott, a spokesman for their group, rather than on the ads and billboards in question, but Prescott is an official PeTA spokesperson and he was quoted making that claim in The New York Times, hardly a minor news outlet. If PeTA didn't share his opinion, they would've been wise to loudly disavow it because it was obviously intended to be a controversial statement.
Moreover, it isn't just Matt Prescott who's making statements like this. Over on this PeTA Media Center page, Ingrid Newkirk, PeTA's President, is quoted as saying the following: "You can't express concern for global warming if there's a drumstick in your mouth. Mr. Gore is ignoring a scientifically established fact: There's no such thing as a meat-eating environmentalist because meat-eating is the main culprit."
The same claim that you can't both eat meat and be an environmentalist has also been made more than once in PeTA's blog. This post includes a graphic that reads: "Think you can be a meat-eating environmentalist? Think again! If you care about the planet, go vegetarian. GoVeg.com." So, not only are they saying I can't be an environmentalist (which I don't think of myself as, anyway, but that's a different topic) if I eat meat, they imply I must not care about the planet if I continue to eat meat.
Though I doubt many vegetarians would support trying to stop other animals from eating animals, the subject is seriously discussed by some. Check out this paper titled "Policing Nature" for an example. Even though few vegetarians advocate trying to stop predation, I have the sense that many more do think it's "wrong" and regrettable--but that's just my sense of it, inferred from the way they talk about predation.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: B12 deficiency
amc89:
Any diet that requires people without some preexisting health problem to take supplements in order to have adequate supplies of essential nutrients hardly seems healthy to me.
There's nothing inherently unhealthy about diets containing meat, though meat from animal factories has profoundly unhealthy qualities. Do you see the distinction?
You didn't address the difficulty of having sufficient quantities of the long-chain Omega-3 essential fatty acids EPA and DHA while eating a vegetarian or vegan diet.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: OK, JFK, if you wish.
caniscandida:
First, let's remember that PeTA started this by claiming that you couldn't be a meat-eating environmentalist, and those who think it's wrong for human animals to eat other animals extended it by making that argument here. I didn't go spoiling for a fight with vegetarians; in fact, I don't particularly care if other people choose to be vegetarians though I think it's a mistake at least for most people. I do care if other people tell me they know the one right way for me to eat.
One need not embrace the concepts of "right" and "wrong" to be interested in understanding the consequences of our actions and trying to work together to produce desirable consequences. In fact, I think foregoing moral idealism makes it easier to do the work of making the world a better place because we don't waste time arguing about what's "right" and what's "wrong."
I apparently haven't explained myself well enough. I am not a moral relativist, not a person who thinks morality is relative to particular social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances. The argument I'm making is that moral judgments are pointless and a waste of time since there's no way to verify them to everyone's satisfaction.
It's true that we don't "need" to know why we think and believe what we think and believe, but it sure does help us to understand ourselves and each other better.
The Guidebook to Moral Behavior in the Universe I hypothesized about would have to be indisputable to be of any use, of course. There are already plenty of religious texts that their promoters claim to contain such a guide, but they're all obviously written by humans and endlessly disputable.
You wrote:
I think you said you avoid eating the products of animals that have been kept or killed cruelly.
No, I haven't made that claim, and I can't make that claim. I'm not present from birth thru death with the animals I eat. I do buy the vast majority of the meat I eat from small family farms that pasture their animals.
I don't think evolution is an Intelligent Designer, but it need not be to prepare an animal well for the conditions its ancestors experienced. It doesn't seem a stretch to me to say that species which have long been preyed upon as a matter of course have adapted to the reality of predation.
It seems to me the world clearly demonstrates that suffering is not something we must avoid at any and all costs. Those animals that are adapted to eat other animals cause some measure of suffering, but I see no reason to think this is an immoral act.
The fact that people are capable of deciding it's "wrong" for human animals to eat other animals doesn't make it "wrong." People are obviously capable of thinking a great many things that have no substantive basis. Our species is a product of evolution just as all species are, and we evolved into our current form while eating other animals. In fact, I think the argument has been well-made that we couldn't have evolved into our current form if we hadn't been eating animals, that the eating of animals played a crucial role in creating human nature as we know it. We would be a different species if we didn't eat animals, possibly one that would be incapable of debating whether or not it's "wrong" to eat animals.
For the record, yes, some vegetarians and vegans do think it's wrong for any animal--not just a human animal--to eat another animal, and some have even proposed trying to end the practice. In fact, reading one such article played a part in my decision to abandon veganism.
I can't now imagine believing in a divinity that was incompetent or perverse, though I did for about the first 20 years of my life when I was still Catholic. It seems to me that any divinity which exists knows what they're doing and does it well. The food web wouldn't work the way it does if it didn't work really well that way.
You must be confusing me with someone else. I haven't claimed to be irreligious; just the opposite, in fact. Earlier on this blog I wrote:
Regarding religion, I don't have any religious beliefs, though I feel religious in some sense. If I'm anything, I'm animist, though I shy away from "isms" for the most part. All it means for me to be an animist, though, is that I experience the world as alive.
To say that someone or thing is sacred isn't to make a statement of fact but to make a statement about the value one places in someone or thing. The Bible is sacred to Christians, the Quran to Muslims, the Torah to Jews, The Book of Mormon to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but they're all books to me, albeit books that have led to a whole lot of conflict. The world is sacred to me, but it's just a collection of resources ripe for exploitation to many people. The world is sacred to me, but it's a vale of tears to be transcended for people of some religious traditions.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: JFK
spaceshaper, you wrote:
What proportion of the billions of animals slaughtered every year in the US are raised in these small ecologically-balanced and ethically-run farms that you feel are sufficient to let meat-eaters off the hook (creepy image in this context, huh?) of environmental accountability?
The animal farms I promote are small in number now to be sure--just as are the numbers of truly sustainable fruit, vegetable, and grain farms, homes, transportation systems, businesses--and everything else. We have a long way to go to reach sustainability in every aspect of our lives. The fact that the vast majority of all these things are unsustainable doesn't mean we have a moral obligation to stop eating farmed fruits, vegetables, and grains, or to abandon our houses and apartments, or stop using any form of transportation other than our own legs, or stop buying from all businesses.
If meat-eating is necessary for human physiological well-being, how is it that such large numbers of long-term vegetarians are somehow found to be in excellent health? In fact can you produce any general statistical evidence of long or short-term health effects of a reasonably well-balanced non-carnivorous diet - other than the oft-cited beneficial ones, of course?
The numbers of apparently-healthy long-term vegetarians is quite small compared to the total world's population, and, again, they're a self-selected group--likely to be the people who, because of biochemical differences between individuals, fare best when eating a vegetarian diet. Folks who don't feel well or quickly develop obvious health problems while eating a vegetarian diet stop. And it remains open to question just how healthy those who stick with vegetarian diets really are. Some of the consequences of deficiencies in the nutrients that are difficult to have in sufficient supply while eating a vegetarian diet are not acutely life-threatening, but they are quite debilitating and can contribute to premature death over time. For example, vitamin B-12 deficiency can cause irreversible brain and nervous system damage over the long-term and fatigue and weakness over the shorter term. Iron deficiency anemia "can affect the function of numerous organ systems." Here's what wikipedia has to say about the reasons we need adequate supplies of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, a long-chain Omega-3 fat):
DHA is a major fatty acid in sperm and brain phospholipids, and especially in the retina. Dietary DHA can reduce the level of blood triglycerides in humans, which may reduce the risk of heart disease. Low levels of DHA cause reduction of brain serotonin levels[2] and have been associated with ADHD, Alzheimer's disease, and depression, among other diseases, and there is mounting evidence that DHA supplementation may be effective in combating such diseases.
So, if someone has impaired fertility, or depression, or elevated blood triglycerides, or ADHD--all common conditions in the U.S.--how likely is it the connection would be made between his/her health problems and his/her vegetarian diet?
I'm not going to take the time to search for statistical studies on the negative long-term health effects of vegetarian diets. I suspect there's not much to find since the studies I've read about compare vegetarian diets to the Standard American Diet (SAD) to determine how health outcomes compare on these two diets. The studies I'm aware of don't look at how vegetarian diets compare to diets containing meat from grassfed ruminants and pastured pigs and chickens. There's been little incentive to study the ways in which a vegetarian diet may be harmful since so few people in the industrialized world eat that way. The compelling need has been to figure out the relationship between diet and common American health problems, many of which can be attributed in part to the SAD.
And just to make it simple, let's confine our discussion to non-vegan vegetarianism, which is after all the lead topic of this thread.. your conflation of these two significantly different dietary choices has been as far as I can see deliberately introduced to disrupt rational discussion.
I've been using the term veg*n to encompass both vegetarian and vegan diets for brevity's sake and because I know PeTA advocates veganism, not vegetarianism. Even so, I now think this was a mistake. It wasn't done to "deliberately...disrupt rational discussion," however. I haven't questioned your good faith participation in this discussion and I'd appreciate it if you'd reciprocate.
No thoughts to share on my question about why the world is the way it is if it's wrong for animals in general--or human animals in particular--to eat other animals?
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesGrassfed beef...
...has a healthier fat composition than grainfed beef.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On It's only natural posted 2 years, 2 months ago 32 ResponsesRe: Your butcher weren't none too bright
biodiversivist:
There will never be an additional 3 billion people if we don't manage to increase food production enough to feed them--people are made from food, after all. I suspect--and hope--we won't be able to increase food production enough for even another 1 billion people, but we'll see what happens.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On It's only natural posted 2 years, 2 months ago 32 ResponsesRe: "of mice and moralists"
caniscandida, you wrote:
Whatever sort of a body it is that we inherit from our pre-human ancestors, it is amply proved that we human beings can thrive on a vegetarian diet. So our answering that question begins with the understanding that we have a real choice between two incompatible alternatives, and neither of those alternatives is constrained or enhanced in any way by our physical heritage.
Actually, no, this hasn't been proven, though it's been vociferously asserted. The fact of the matter is that there are several essential nutrients which are difficult at best to have an adequate supply of while eating a veg*n diet. The most clearcut of these are the long-chain Omega-3 fatty acids, which are absolutely essential to the healthy functioning of the nervous system, including the brain, the eyes, and the cardiovascular system.
For those who don't already know, we must have two types of long-chain Omega-3s, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). These are not found in plant foods other than spirulina and marine algae, which are hardly common foods in people's diets because they aren't particularly tasty. One can buy DHA supplements derived from marine algae, but it seems to me that any diet which requires nutritional supplements can hardly be called "healthy."
Yes, some more commonly-eaten plant foods such as flax and hemp seeds do contain significant amounts of another type of Omega-3 fat, alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), which can be converted into the EPA and DHA we need to a limited degree at least by some people. According to the American Dietitic Association's 1997 position paper on vegetarian diets, however, "conversion rates appear to be inefficient and high intakes of linoleic acid interfere with conversion." Linoleic acid is a type of Omega-6 fatty acid that most Americans, including vegetarians, consume too much of.
This conversion problem is rather less well-explained in the 2003 update to the ADA's position paper but the concerns about inadequate supplies of EPA and DHA in veg*n diets are still addressed. That 2003 update also provides details on the difficulty of having sufficient quantities of high-quality protein, vitamins A and B-12, iron, and zinc when eating veg*n diets.
Oh, and the issue isn't "[w]hatever sort of a body it is that we inherit from our pre-human ancestors" but what we as humans are evolved to eat today. The origins of the genus Homo stretch back some 3-5 million years, which is plenty of time for evolutionary adaptation to a diet different from that of our prehuman ancestors to have occurred.
Regarding religion, I don't have any religious beliefs, though I feel religious in some sense. If I'm anything, I'm animist, though I shy away from "isms" for the most part. All it means for me to be an animist, though, is that I experience the world as alive.
Judging from the high levels of mental illness and the use of mood-altering substances in the U.S., both legal and illegal, it seems to me that lots of Americans are thinking things that aren't satisfying for them so I could be doing the same. My religious worldview satisfies me near as I can tell, though, and I very rarely use mood-altering substances, even then only in small amounts. Which hardly means I don't have any emotional problems, because I do. But, then, how could a being whose species is evolved to live in tribes yet who has never lived in a tribe not have emotional problems?
I used the adjective "wrong" in the commonly-understood sense of something that is universally immoral. But be aware that I was questioning the application of this concept to eating animals, not endorsing the concept itself. Personally, I don't think of things as either "right" or "wrong." I'm interested in evaluating the consequences of acts in specific circumstances, not in general prohibitions based on moral judgments.
No, I don't think of myself as having been "wrong" in any moral sense when I thought it was "wrong" to eat animals. I think of myself as having been mistaken, which is one meaning of "wrong," of course. And I think now that I was mistaken then because the ethical vegan view of the world doesn't make sense of the world as I understand it.
Yes, I do think that "right" and "wrong" are merely matters of opinion to be argued about. Unless we discover a Guidebook to Moral Behavior in the Universe produced by some creator being(s), this will remain so.
Have I said I don't care about unjust suffering? That's hardly true. We do obviously disagree about what is unjust, however.
I don't think species of animals that are commonly preyed upon live in the "nearly constant" terror you imagine they do. Being prey is a part of their nature, and I don't doubt that evolution has prepared them to deal with that reality. How could it not have done so?
I've written it before and I'll write it again: In order to think it's in any way immoral for one animal to eat another, one has to be prepared to reject the fundamental basis for the living world because that's how things work around here. Some animals eat plants, some animals eat animals, and some animals eat plants and animals. And all animals are fed on at some point, even if only after death.
Can anyone who thinks there's something immoral or even objectionable about animals eating animals give me an explanation for how the world can be the way it is if that's true? Is whatever creative energy that gave rise to the world as we know it incompetent? Sick and twisted? Some other explanation?
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: "lacto-ovo-enviro-vegetarians"
ridgerunner, you wrote:
The care that the Great American Farmer once had for their animals is gone - corporate profit is now the bottom line, and intensive factory farming is the reality of the day...
Actually, no, you're mistaken about that. Confined Animal Feeding Operations are by far the dominant form of animal agriculture in the U.S., but there still are farmers who do care for their animals. I know some of them, and I buy from them.
When will veg*ns stop talking about this issue as if the only animal foods in existence are those produced in animal factories? And I ask this as someone who did the same damn thing for years when I was an ethical vegan activist. That's because early on I was unaware of the small farms that still existed; once I learned of them I stopped talking that way and began moving toward the EarthSave approach of encouraging plant-based diets before finally abandoning veg*nism altogether. But the folks on here don't have any excuse based in ignorance because I and others have been pointing out the small-farm, hunting and fishing alternatives on this blog.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesSloppy proofreading
That question should'a been "Is it natural?"
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: "natural diets" and ethical choices
spaceshaper:
As far as I'm concerned, the question "It is natural?" is meaningless. There is no such thing as "natural" or "unnatural" human behavior if we're as much a part of the world as every other species, and that seems so to me.
The contribution of animal waste to soil fertility is no minor matter. Can you show me any ecosystems that don't have animals and plants? Again, we need food systems modelled on healthy ecosystems, which support a diverse mix of plants and animals.
I suppose we could have animals on the land to help maintain soil fertility with their wastes yet not eat them, but how could we keep them from overshooting the carrying capacity of the land in the absence of predators? Manipulate their breeding to prevent population growth? Does that make more sense than eating some of them?
Of course, any suggestion that we might choose to keep animals around for their waste without eating any of them assumes there's something "wrong" with eating animals, which cannot be proven--it's no more than an opinion. Eating animals certainly isn't inherently an ecological problem.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: killing to eat, morality and religion
caniscandida:
Why do you think I "have an even closer natural kinship with the mouse" than the owl? I don't see that. It seems to me that humans don't live much like either type of animal--we are neither raptor nor rodent.
For the record, most mice are omnivores, though the animals they typically prey on are small--insects. They will eat meat, however, and the species commonly known as grasshopper mice are considered full carnivores.
I don't feel any need for a religion that will "try to console us for the great disappointment that attends this mortal existence of ours." I'd much rather focus on changing the cultural causes of our suffering than be consoled.
I agree that we need to honor the lives of the animals we eat--and the plants, too. I don't make a clear distinction between the respect due to animals and plants. All are alive, and I take their lives in order to live--and that is the way of the world, not a moral abomination, or even regrettable.
I didn't choose to be an omnivore any more than I chose to have a penis--I was born that way. I did try to stop being an omnivore for an extended period of time (my 20s plus a bit) but eventually my mind changed and I could no longer see the eating of other animals by human animals as "wrong."
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: "Not Natural"
Pearl:
You haven't provided any evidence by posting the philosophical musings of a Natural Hygiene proponent. If we were truly frugivores as you argue, you wouldn't have to try to convince us to stop eating animals on a regular basis; in fact, you'd be hard-pressed to force us to eat animals on a regular basis.
The destruction you cite as resulting from meat-production is not intrinsic to the eating of animals. Yes, a great deal of harm has been done to provide meat, but that doesn't mean it has to be so. In fact, we need farms that integrate animals and plants in a continual nutrient loop or else we'll lose soil fertility over time. Healthy ecosystems are diverse ecosystems that include both animals and plants, and we need to duplicate this kind of resilient health in our food systems.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesWhoops...
My last post was addressed to caniscandida, not wiscidea. Sorry about that.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: "good for the environment"
wiscidea:
What's the basis for your apparent assumption that killing to eat is immoral? To argue that it is means you have to be prepared to condemn the entire evolved community of life as we know it because killing to eat is intrinsic to the food web.
Any religion or belief system that requires rejecting the basic way of the world is of no interest to me. If the gods thought killing was immoral, the world wouldn't be the way that it is.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesWhy is it...
...that veg*ns imagine we shouldn't eat meat because we usually don't kill animals with our bare hands and eat them raw? We use our minds and our culture-building capacity--innate, evolved characteristics of our species--to invent tools for hunting, farming, and fishing as well as to cook meat. Are you folks prepared to stop doing everything that we are only able to do because of our minds? If so, what in heck are you doing using a computer? Do you drive a car? Live in a house? Fly in airplanes? Wear clothes?
It's really bizarre to suggest that using our minds to eat meat is "unnatural" unless you're prepared to say that everything we can only do because of our minds is "unnatural."
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: "Taste" and "habit"
Pearl:
As noted in other posts, I was a vegetarian and then a vegan for more than 10 years, most of them as a vegan. I've read Diet for a Small Planet, Diet for a New America, lots of issues of Vegetarian Times and a heck of a lot of other stuff propounding the veg*n viewpoint--and I gave it quite a lot of thought over the years. And that thought leads to conclusions like this one: It's nonsensical in my opinion to argue that we are a frugivorous species when you haven't been able to produce a single example of a frugivorous culture and the vast majority of the world's people are omnivores.
You also never really addressed my point about the difficulty in having enough long-chain Omega-3 fats when eating a veg*n diet. It's not enough to eat a range of plant foods if you can't efficiently convert the alpha-linolenic acid type of Omega-3s found in plants to the types needed for good health--and some percentage of the population isn't able to do so.
I accept that no evidence I produce is going to change your mind because you're convinced humans shouldn't eat other animals. That's fine, I don't need to convince you otherwise, and I'm not particularly worried that you're going to win a lot of converts to fruitarianism.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: "Taste" and "habit"
Pearl:
We could go back and forth trading quotes from others regarding whether or not we are anatomically omnivores or frugivores, and I have a feeling neither of us will be persuaded. So let's turn from words to the world.
If, as you claim, we're anatomically frugivores (for those who don't know, a frugivore is an animal that primarily or, in some cases, solely eats fruits), where are the frugivorous human cultures? Why, instead, is omnivory almost universal? Are we omnivores all just too stupid to eat what we're evolved to eat?
If we're frugivores, why do so many people crave the taste, smell, and texture of meat? Why is this craving so powerful that a rapidly growing industry has arisen to elaborately process plant foods into imitations of meats and other animal foods, including soy "milk," soy "ice creams," and soy and nut "cheeses"? Why is there a long tradition among vegetarian Buddhists of going to great lengths to imitate the taste and texture of animal foods?
I don't think this is all by accident.
Omnivores aren't automatically exempt from health concerns. I haven't argued that it's impossible to be unhealthy on an omnivorous diet. I have questioned if it's possible for the majority of people to be healthy over the long-term on a veg*n diet.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: "environmentalists = vegetarians"
albertli, you wrote:
practice what you preach, please.
I do. Who are you to assume any of us does not?
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesFirelady
To find local dairy, you can search through Local Harvest or the the Eat Well Guide. If you want raw dairy, go here.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Animal-rights group makes the stupid claim that enviros must be vegetarians posted 2 years, 2 months ago 208 ResponsesRe: "PETA is right"
Hi, veganess. Actually, the waste produced by organically-raised animals is less noxious than that produced by animals raised in animal factories, lower in biocide residues, no antibiotics or other drugs, and no hormones. Heavy metal content would be lower, too.
What's more important is not whether the animals are just organic but whether they're eating organic feed and out on pasture. The animal factories take one elegant solution--animal waste feeding crops that feed the animals while people eat some of the plants and some of the animals--and turn it into 2 huge problems: the loss of soil fertility in croplands and a massive, reeking waste disposal problem where the animals are confined.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Animal-rights group makes the stupid claim that enviros must be vegetarians posted 2 years, 2 months ago 208 ResponsesRe: "JFK,"
spaceshaper:
What do you consider "a large number of entirely healthy long-term vegetarians in the western culture"? Perhaps you just have a much lower bar for "large number" than I do.
Setting aside the numbers issue, those folks are self-selected, not random members of a population selected to eat a vegetarian diet over the long-term while their health is monitored and compared to people eating other diets. Those who try a vegetarian diet but don't do well on it self-select back to eating animals. We are not all biochemically identical, and I don't doubt that some folks do better than others on veg*n diets. As I've noted, I thought I did farely well on a vegan diet while I was eating that way.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Animal-rights group makes the stupid claim that enviros must be vegetarians posted 2 years, 2 months ago 208 ResponsesRe "Taste" and "habit"
Pearl, you wrote:
Nutritional research confirms what is plainly evident from anatomy, biology
and physiology - humans are frugivores and are -not- naturally carnivorous.
Huh. You say we're frugivores, yet I can't think of a single frugivorous culture. Can you?
Even the Vegetarian Resource Group recognizes that we're an omnivorous species. Their conclusion: "Humans are classic examples of omnivores in all relevant anatomical traits."
Lots more about the evidence we're omnivores can be found here.
Why do you think we're so attracted to sweet tastes and fatty textures? Do you think it's an accident? No, with something as important as food, it surely must be for a good reason.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: "Cruelty, Health & Environment"
kliffee, you wrote:
Nevermind global warming, eating a tiny piece of meat takes wasteful amounts of water and grains which could be used to feed starving children.
Ruminant animals such as bison, cattle, goats, and sheep need not be fed any grain at all to thrive; in fact, they're not evolved to eat large amounts of grain, which is why it's so wasteful. The great majority of the meat I eat is from solely grassfed bison and cattle. This is the wonderful thing about ruminants as a source of food: they can do just fine grazing pastureland that would be progressively destroyed by farming, eating forage people cannot digest. Once slaughtered, the meat of grassfed ruminants is very healthy.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Animal-rights group makes the stupid claim that enviros must be vegetarians posted 2 years, 2 months ago 208 ResponsesRe: "Evidence"
Pearl:
Your multiple citations only reinforce the challenges of being healthy on a veg*n diet, particularly the effort one most go through to ensure an adequate supply of essential long-chain Omega-3 fats.
Your evidence is weak because, for the most part, it compares veg*n diets to the Standard American Diet (or similar diets in other industrialized countries like the U.K.), no paragon of nutritional quality and healthful results.
Grassfed and pastured meats, dairy products and eggs are sources of long-chain Omega-3 essential fats. I rarely eat seafood myself since I live in the middle of the North American continental landmass.
Meat and dairy foods from grassfed ruminants (cattle, goats, sheep, bison) and eggs and meat from pastured chickens are also rich sources of another type of healthy fat that is difficult to get from vegetable sources, conjugated linoleic acid.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Animal-rights group makes the stupid claim that enviros must be vegetarians posted 2 years, 2 months ago 208 ResponsesRe: JFK
spaceshaper:
I didn't claim that <20-42% of 1.12 billion people is insignificant. What I wrote was:
India's out, since only a minority of its population even today is vegetarian, possibly less than 20%, though estimates vary, with 42% apparently being the highest.
Whether it's 20 or 40%, that's a minority. You wrote:
Considering how few people in our culture ever try the non-carnivorous life the number of extremely healthy long-term vegetarians in our own culture is most certainly good evidence that meat-eating is not generally necessary for health. I accept there may be some for whom this is not the case and your own experience may be a case in point, but I suspect that most who claim that meat-eating is necessary, unlike yourself, have never given it a try.
No, actually, that's not "good evidence that meat-eating is not generally necessary for health." It is good evidence how disinclined people are to stop eating animals, though.
I actually did pretty well on a vegan diet, else I wouldn't have stuck with it so long. I didn't stop because of any obvious health problems, though I did later come to discover that I'd develop some kind of metabolic problem (not yet diagnosed) while I was vegan.
I only brought up the ADA's statement because you wrote:
And healthy vegetarian diets require no more special "planning" than does healthy carnivory.
It was the ADA which asserted that veg*n diets have to be carefully planned. I, on the other hand, have pointed to specific nutritional needs that are difficult, perhaps impossible, to adequately meet on a veg*n diet--points which those who claim we can be healthy without eating animals have remained revealingly silent on.
How much longer do you think we will continue to have access to a wide range of foods imported from all over the world? You might want to look into the peaking of global petroleum production. Even if that proves to be a false alarm, how much longer can we afford to continue importing food from all over the world given the climate crisis, air and water pollution, impact on indigenous cultures in other countries of export-focused economic models, and so on?
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Animal-rights group makes the stupid claim that enviros must be vegetarians posted 2 years, 2 months ago 208 ResponsesRe: "Lighten up people"
spaceshaper:
Please name one healthy vegetarian culture that has existed for centuries. India's out, since only a minority of its population even today is vegetarian, possibly less than 20%, though estimates vary, with 42% apparently being the highest.
Perhaps you should talk to the American Dietetic Association about the planning necessary to be healthy on a veg*n diet.
A handful of long-lived, apparently healthy--or at least healthier than your average American--vegetarians is meager evidence for a claim that all people can be healthy on a vegetarian (much less vegan) diet when matched up against the evidence that: we evolved as omnivores; we don't do well on grain- and legume-based diets; we have trouble getting the long-chain Omega-3 essential fatty acids we need for healthy brain/nervous system and cardiovascular health and vitamin B-12 from plant sources; and so on...
For the record, I really enjoy a lot of foods that contain no animal ingredients--but I'm not going to be a vegan again if I have any say in the matter.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Animal-rights group makes the stupid claim that enviros must be vegetarians posted 2 years, 2 months ago 208 ResponsesRe "Why..."
wiscidea, you asked:
Why do environmentalists assume everyone on the planet will want to adopt the same unhealthy dietary and other bad habits of the average American as soon as they can afford to do so?
I can't speak for environmentalists--I don't even think of myself as one (I'm a community activist)--but I'd say the reason they assume everyone on the planet will adopt Americans' bad habits is that this is what we typically see when countries industrialize. Not that everyone in industrializing countries adopts these bad habits, but that's been the general trend. I think that's because people see nothing better to strive for, though, not because of human nature. If we're to become sustainable, we'll have to give them something better to strive for: community, real security and belonging, and a world getting healthier from generation to generation rather than every living system of the planet in decline, and the rate of decline accelerating (thanks to Paul Hawken for the idea I just paraphrased).
Regarding Hindus, Buddhists, and vegetarianism:
Many people mistakenly imagine India to be a country of vegetarians. According to Wikipedia, there are approximately 200 million vegetarians in India, including both Hindus and Buddhists. That's apparently a higher concentration than in any other country of the world, but it's still less than 20% of India's total estimated population of 1.12 billion people. Some estimates of the prevalence of vegetarianism in India are higher, however, the highest being 42%. Whether the correct figure is 20%, 42%, or something in between, it's still evidence that, despite the centuries of ubiquitous Hindu, Jain and Buddhist beliefs regarding the moral superiority of veg*n diets, most people--and possibly an overwhelming majority--in that part of the world don't find them persuasive enough to live by.
Also, again according to Wikipedia, "Buddhism in general does not prohibit meat eating, while Mahayana Buddhism encourages vegetarianism as beneficial for developing compassion."
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 Responses"Taste" and "habit"
David Roberts:
I've commented fairly extensively in the blog for Alex Roth's original article regarding the moral and health arguments so I won't repeat those here. I do want to address this statement or yours, though:
Eating meat is entirely an aesthetic choice, based on taste and habit.
You're going to have to produce some evidence to support this statement. Since it's well-established that humans are an omnivorous species and animal-eating has been found to be nearly universal among human cultures, how can you make this statement unequivocally? Have you considered the possibility that we have an innate nutritional wisdom, and that our tastes are indicators of that wisdom (with the caveat that evolution could not have prepared us for some of the novel conditions found in industrialized societies, such as the easy availability of large quantities of sugars and fats in processed foods)?
No, eating meat is a matter of taste, habit, culture--and nutrition. It's also the way of the world.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On On PETA's latest campaign posted 2 years, 2 months ago 256 ResponsesRe: Evidence
Pearl, your evidence looks weak to me. Note the beginnings of the 1st two sentences in the American Dietitic Association statement you quoted:
'Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the lifecycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence. Appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.' These 'certain diseases' are the killer epidemics of today - heart disease, strokes, cancers, diabetes etc.
Emphasis added.
Note the need to stress that such diets be well or appropriately planned--you have to work at it to have a truly healthful vegan or vegetarian diet over the long-term. And the planning they're talking about assumes the continued existence of supermarkets with a wide variety of foods available that have been shipped from far away--something I think we neither can nor should count on as global energy supplies begin to decline and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise. We need many different diets adapted to the particular places of the world cultures inhabit, not long-distance diets. I bet few if any such place-based diets will be "well-planned" and healthy veg*n diets.
The other studies you cite compare health outcomes on plant-based, vegan, or vegetarian diets (three distinct diets) to health outcomes on the Standard American Diet (SAD). I'm not advocating the SAD, I'm talking about the health benefits of animal foods from wild-caught and grassfed, pastured animals.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Animal-rights group makes the stupid claim that enviros must be vegetarians posted 2 years, 2 months ago 208 ResponsesRe: "meat-eating is 'wrong'?"
Do you find it to be an effective rhetorical device, JFK, when you are speaking with someone who you think is arrogant and bullying, to smile and say, "Ah yes, I was like you, once upon a time, an obnoxious horse's ass"?
First, you put words in my "mouth"; I didn't call anyone "an obnoxious horse's ass." Regarding what I actually wrote, it wasn't a rhetorical device, caniscandida, but simply the truth of my experience, a way of saying I've lived in shoes very much like their own, I have a rough understanding of where they're coming from, I have relevant insight into why they think what they think--and I disagree.
Regarding the healthfulness of veg*n diets, it's important to remember that studies on this subject have been conducted on a self-selected group, not a random population, and they aren't particularly long-term in nature, certainly not over a period of generations. And the fact remains that we are anatomically omnivorous, with only a very short history of eating grain- and legume-based diets. No one has commented on the article I cited regarding this subject.
Vitamin B-12 is not the only nutrient to worry about for veg*ns. Long-chain Omega-3 essential fatty acids are also a matter of very real concern as they are, well, absolutely essential to the proper function of our brains and the rest of our nervous system, our cardiovascular system, and more. The type of Omega-3 fats (alpha-linolenic acid or ALA) found in most plant foods, including flaxseed, are not nutritionally equivalent to those found in animal foods (eicosapentanoic acid, EPA, and docosahexaenoic acid, DHA) and must be converted for use; the ability to make this conversion varies in effectiveness from person to person and so there's reason to question whether everyone could get sufficient EPA and DHA on a vegan or even a vegetarian diet.
I didn't assert that all veg*ns are obnoxious proselytizers. In fact, I know a few personally who aren't. I was addressing PETA and multiple commenters to this blog post.
* I suppose it is true that on one level, the devouring of a hamburger by a human being is morally equivalent to the devouring of a trout by an eagle, or the devouring of a gnu by a crocodile. But it would be false to our humanity, were we to linger on that level. Yes, because of our sense of ethics, the sense of kindness, fellowship and compassion that gives us some real responsibility for the well-being of any and all vulnerable sentient beings, and sometimes even what well deserves to be called love for them, humanity is a special case within the community of living creatures of the Earth. And it is by no means either anthropocentrism or a deluded flaunting of an alleged superiority, to accept that responsibility, to embrace that love, and to act on them.
Emphasis added.
Sure reads to me like an assertion that humanity is separate from and superior to the rest of the animals. Why do you think "humanity is a special case within the community of living creatures of the Earth?"
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Animal-rights group makes the stupid claim that enviros must be vegetarians posted 2 years, 2 months ago 208 ResponsesFeeding and being fed upon
It's been very interesting to read so many arrogant, bullying comments by those who agree with PETA that you can't eat meat and be an environmentalist--interesting and familiar. Why familiar?
I became a lacto-ovo-vegetarian for ethical reasons about 21 years ago, then a vegan who even avoided honey about a year-and-a-half later. I remained a self-righteous, proselytizing vegan for about 8 years, roughly the last 3 of those years as a very public activist on behalf of veganism (and zero population growth). In other words, their comments are familiar because I've spoken and written very similar words myself--in the past.
Then I read two mind-opening books by Daniel Quinn, Providence: The Story of a Fifty-Year Vision Quest and The Story of B. Even though vegetarianism is only mentioned twice in the former and never in the latter, these 2 books, over time and in combination with content on Quinn's website, prompted me to radically reshape my worldview. Once I'd read those books, I could no longer convince myself that it was any more "wrong" for humans to eat cows or pigs or monkeys than for lions to eat antelopes, or rattlesnakes to eat rodents, or black widow spiders to eat insects, or orcas to eat seals, or...well, you get the idea. Feeding and being fed upon is central to life, the primary driving force in evolution, and humans are a part of the living world. We evolved not as herbivores nor as carnivores but as omnivores--we're biologically prepared to eat an enormous range of foods, including animal foods.
Yes, at least some of us can survive without eating animals, but there's no evidence to think humans, as a species, can be optimally healthy over the long-term without eating animals. And vegans and vegetarians (veg*ns from now on) would be wise to keep in mind they are a self-selected group; those who feel poorly on these sorts of diets early on stop eating that way. Those who do all right on them, at least in the short-term, are much more likely to stick with such diets.
Most, though not all, veg*n diets are grain- and legume-based (though hopefully with lots of veggies). Unfortunately for advocates of veg*n diets, there's evidence that grain- and legume-based diets aren't particularly healthy for people. The fact of the matter is that grain- and legume-based diets are a very recent phenomenon evolutionarily-speaking, even among those populations whose ancestors adopted them earliest. Evolution takes time to adapt the anatomy of a species, and humans haven't had enough time to evolve to thrive on grain- and legume-based diets.
More evidence about our omnivorous nature can be found here.
Yes, it's true that the Standard American Diet--SAD--isn't healthy for people, either, but that's not because it contains animal foods. No, it's due to the fact that most of the animal foods Americans are eating have been produced in animal factories, resulting in higher total and saturated fat and lower essential fatty acids plus contamination with a variety of harmful substances including antibiotics and other drugs and, in cattle, growth hormones. Foods from animals that, in the case of ruminants such as cows and bison, are entirely grassfed have healthy nutritional profiles, as do foods from chickens and pigs that are pastured. Check out the Eat Wild website for more about this.
And don't forget that the SAD isn't only high in animal foods produced in factories: it's also high in grains and grain-derived foods, including breads, pastas, cakes, and so on, plus hydrogenated fats. And it's much too high in Omega-6 fatty acids, as are many veg*n diets.
I also wholly agree with folks who think PETA's tactics are counterproductive with most people. Sure, some small percentage of folks will be receptive to such an "in your face" message, but most folks are turned off by it. But that doesn't matter much to PETA I bet: they'd rather feel "right" than be effective. In fact, I suspect they expect to not be very effective because they seem to take a very dim view of their own species.
One of the conclusions I came to as I moved away from veganism was that most people who think it's "wrong" for people to eat animals are just as anthropocentric--just as convinced that humans are separate from and in some sense superior to other animals--as those who take the view that we can do pretty much whatever we want with animals, that it's our right to dominate them. They've just come to different conclusions about what our superiority means we ought to do. Those who think it's wrong to eat animals (and "exploit" them in other ways) think we shouldn't do so because our particular sort of mind enables us to feel compassion, to empathize with their pain--because we have a capacity for emotion and understanding they do not. Those who think we are the masters of other animals do so because our particular sort of mind has enabled us to conquer most of the world and (as they see it) subjugate animals to our wishes. Of course a lot of them think this was ordained by the deity they happen to believe in, too. Once you see that our human minds don't set us above and superior to the rest, though, both conclusions become untenable. Once you see we are simply one of many species, you start thinking in terms of how best to relate to your neighbors in the community of life instead.
PETA's also factually wrong in their claim that "you just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist" but I'm not going to tackle that here in Gristmill. Perhaps I'll make time to write an article and submit it for publication.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Animal-rights group makes the stupid claim that enviros must be vegetarians posted 2 years, 2 months ago 208 ResponsesAre you...
...more interested in feeling "right," JMG, or in actually being effective? It's one thing to attack people who we have have solid evidence are only pretending to be green. It's quite another to attack the well-meaning efforts of those who are sincere, and I see no reason to think the folks at Redefining Progress are insincere.
If you attack people, almost all of them will go into defensive mode, and, once they're on the defensive, they're unlikely to listen to anything you say. If you approach them with some humility, on the other hand, acknowledging the simple fact that none of us created the system that's eating the world alive and all of us participate in it to one degree or another, you can find common ground and begin to work together to improve things.
I disagree with you and Al Gore about the value of treating the climate crisis--or any other aspect of our ecological crisis--as a moral or ethical issue. That sort of rhetoric only works with those who are already inclined to agree with you; those who aren't already inclined to agree will simply engage you in an argument about it which cannot be won by you or by them.
We were all born into a cultural system that by its very nature is destructive to the world, a locomotive that has 10,000 years of momentum built up--and there's simply no way to stop it quickly. If we're to stop the train at all, we have to stop treating the other passengers who don't yet realize we're heading off a cliff as enemies and recognize that they're victims here, too.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Apparently no one is immune to greenwashing posted 2 years, 3 months ago 32 ResponsesSo, JMG...
...benefit do you get from this self-righteous attitude (asked by someone who's been accused of self-righteousness more than once in the past, but who thinks he's doing much better now)?
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Apparently no one is immune to greenwashing posted 2 years, 3 months ago 32 ResponsesHuman nature
Hear, hear, David. I'd say, based on my years of activism, that deeply pessimistic views of human nature are the biggest obstacle to saving the world we face. As long as the great majority of people assume that people are selfish and greedy and shortsighted and destructive by nature, how will we ever change things for the better? After all, everybody knows you can't change human nature.
Fortunately, it's not human nature that prevents us from saving the world but our destructive culture, and cultures can change--as ours is in the process of doing. Maybe not quickly enough, of course. Who knows if we have time--we might've been in overshoot for decades already, for all I know--but there could never be enough time as long as most people think human nature is the problem.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Apparently no one is immune to greenwashing posted 2 years, 3 months ago 32 ResponsesPep?
If you want real energy-efficiency, Dave, you're going to have to give up the automotive "pep" you've grown accustomed to in the era of cheap fuel. Accelerating rapidly isn't energy-efficient. Gas-electric hybrid cars and all-electric vehicles can be made with lots of "pep," but they can't be made peppy without squandering energy in the process.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On A few random observations before getting back to work posted 2 years, 4 months ago 25 Responses"Contradictory" arguments?
I was somewhat surprised to see this piece as I usually think Morris's work is spot-on. I think he makes a number of valid points regardless but continue to view corn ethanol as a dead-end that is unlikely to even prove beneficial for farmers in the medium-term. For the record, biodiesel and hydrogen don't look very promising to me for large-scale use, either. What does? Moving us and our stuff around a lot less, relying more on our own biological energy, and electrifying the remaining transportation as much as is feasible.
I think this argument by Morris is absolutely nonsensical, though:
The assault on corn comes from so many directions that sometimes the arguments are wildly contradictory. In an article published in the New York Times Magazine earlier this year Michael Pollan, an excellent and insightful writer, argues that cheap corn is the key to the epidemic of obesity. The same month, Foreign Affairs published an article by two distinguished university professors who argued that the use of ethanol has led to a runup in corn prices that threatens to sentence millions more to starvation.
Cheap corn has been key to the epidemic of obesity in recent decades, but the ethanol boom of the last few years has made it rather less cheap, which does seem to be pricing the least-affluent around the world out of the market. Corn still remains cheap enough that it hasn't reduced its use in American food products (most notably as high-fructose corn syrup) noticeably so far, though, so we're unlikely to notice Americans slimming down right away.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On With the right rules in place, it could work posted 2 years, 5 months ago 115 ResponsesHow to influence who your children become...
Pandu:
From what I understand, the most potent, though indirect, way parents have to influence the personalities and values their children will have is through the decisions they make which determine who their children's peers will be--where to live and what school, if any, to send their children to prime among them. By homeschooling your children, you are taking powerful action in this regard, though I'm an advocate of unschooling myself.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Countering the pro-natal propaganda wave posted 2 years, 7 months ago 6 ResponsesGar asked...
..."Why the emphasis on limiting food supply?"
First, to once again be clear, what I've advocated is no longer increasing food production--and that isn't the same as limiting food supply.
Why do I emphasize no longer increasing food production? Because that would actually achieve the goal I think we must achieve to head off a catastrophic global collapse--a near-term end to population growth. You may certainly disagree with my conclusion that we must achieve that goal--no one knows for sure what the carrying capacity of the planet is--but that doesn't make me an advocate of genocide.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Feeding the world sustainably posted 2 years, 7 months ago 36 ResponsesWhat I am advocating...
Wow, Gar, now you're offhandedly accusing me of advocating genocide. That's pretty amazing. For the record, genocide is "deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group." Hmmm...nope, nowhere have I advocated anything like that.
No, I'm not "advocating limiting the food supply as a way to reduce population." I'm advocating that we abandon the ridiculous idea that we have to increase food production in order to "keep up with" population growth, as if the human population will continue growing regardless of whether the food supply does. And I'm also advocating that we, in the collective sense, stop working our asses off to increase food production year after year in the mistaken belief that this will someday "end world hunger."
Yes, theoretically we could stop population growth by limiting the water supply, but there's one crucial difference: Most of the human food in the world today is in a very real sense manufactured, while the amount of fresh water simply is what it is. Yes, folks do various things to increase the amount we can harvest, including desalination, but it's still not the same thing.
Here're the premises I work from:
- We may already have overshot the carrying capacity of the planet, as evidenced by such reports as Redefining Progress's "Footprint of Nations 2005," which calculated that the "world's ecological footprint exceeds biocapacity by nearly 40%."
- Even if we haven't already overshot the carrying capacity of the planet, it seems clear to me from the evidence that we can't be far from doing so.
- On the basis of the first two premises, it also seems clear to me that we cannot afford for the world's population to continue to grow, certainly not by another 2.8 billion over the next 43 years.
- No population agency or demographer I know of thinks increased access to contraceptive information and methods combined with empowerment of women and greater prosperity in less-affluent regions will stop population growth in the near-term.
- Stabilizing food production will stop population growth because people are made from food (yes, and water, too, much of which is consumed in food).
Now, you argue that this "mean[s] starving people to death." Is that true?
Say we actually did somehow manage to stop increasing food production as of right now. Not going to happen, but this is a hypothetical. Even if no one in the world made a different decision with regard to whether or not they will have a child in the next year in response to the end of food production increases--which seems highly unlikely to me--and we had just as much net population increase over the next year as the U.S. Census Bureau presently predicts, would people starve to death as a result? More than are currently starving to death, that is.
The Census Bureau currently projects that between 77 and 78 million people will be added to the world's population from the middle of this calendar year to the middle of the next. Let's round it up to 78 million. Now, does anyone think that, if we add 78 million people to the current estimated population of just shy of 6.6 billion--and those 78 million would be spread out around the world, not concentrated in one nation, region, or continent, of course--that there's any reason to think people are suddenly going to be starving who weren't starving already? Why? Babies don't eat that much.
What this would do, though, is send a signal to everyone that we cannot keep growing, and people might just take a closer look at the contraceptive methods available to them. And I'd gleefully support increased funding around the world for contraceptive education and access.
I also find it particularly interesting that you keep declining to address my longer-term point, which is that not stopping population growth in the near-term--continuing to increase food production and watching the population continue to grow toward a projected 9.4 billion by "A.D." 2050--would lead to catastrophic famine on a massive, global scale in the future. Even if you're right that no longer increasing food production would mean more starving people in the near-term--and I'm not saying you are--I think that'd still be the more compassionate course of action in the long run.
And, for me, at least, this ain't all about humanity. There is a whole community of life here that we're part of, and the simple fact is that continuing to increase the amount of the world's biomass that is made up of us and our stuff (including the animals and plants we have a coevolutionary relationship with as our food) will inevitably decrease the amount of biomass that can be other species. The world will only support so much biomass, so continuing to increase the human proportion is a direct attack on the diversity of life. Given that we're already in the early stages of the 7th Mass Extinction in the history of the planet, that strikes me as utter insanity. I'd even call it ecocide.
No matter how many times you attempt to cast me in the role of a villain here, Gar, I will refuse to play along.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Feeding the world sustainably posted 2 years, 7 months ago 36 ResponsesBefore anyone jumps on it...
...let me acknowledge that I just went to the U.S. Census Bureau's site and found that they are currently projecting a global population of 9.4 billion in "A.D." 2050. Last I recalled seeing when I wrote my earlier posts were projections of a population of 9.1 billion in 2050, which I rounded down to 9 billion.
Projections vary, though: The most recent prediction I have found from the United Nations Population Division is 9.2 billion in "A.D." 2050.
Which doesn't alter my underlying point: Unless we increase food production enough to create an additional 2.8 or so billion people, we won't ever have 9.4 billion people on the planet--and I hope we don't. The best answer we have to the challenge of hunger is local or regional self-sufficiency, not increases in global food production.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Feeding the world sustainably posted 2 years, 7 months ago 36 ResponsesDeal with what I wrote, Gar...
...not your biases. I don't hope for anyone to starve, though I recognize that it is inevitable to some degree. No species is immune to starvation. If you want to see starvation, though, just go on "increasing food production to keep up with population growth" because that will fuel growth beyond our sustainable capacity to feed people--if we're not already there, and we might be for all any of us knows for sure.
Provide some facts if you can to prove what I'm saying isn't true, starting with answering this question: What are those 2.5 additional people who are projected to be alive in "A.D." 2050 going to be made from if we don't increase the global food supply enough to feed 9 billion people?
I didn't claim that each nation's population perfectly matches its potential--or even its actual--food production. I asserted that the total world population cannot outgrow total food production--a simple biological fact.
Here're two papers on the subject for those whose views aren't so entrenched as to immediately accuse me of "hoping" people will starve:
"Human Population Numbers As A Function Of Food Supply"
"Human Carrying Capacity Is Determined By Food Availability"
And here's a nontechnical approach to the subject: "Reaching For the Future with All Three Hands"
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Feeding the world sustainably posted 2 years, 7 months ago 36 ResponsesPeople are made from food
Gar:
I have no disagreements with most of your post, but I think it's important to challenge the underlying assumption in this question:
How big an increase [in food production] do we need to keep up with population growth?
The simple fact is that we don't need any increase in food production to "keep up with population growth." People are made from food--you can't make them out of anything else. Consequently, the world's human population will not continue to grow unless the food supply grows to support a larger population. Increases in food production fuel population growth.
The danger is not that we won't be able to increase food production enough to feed 9 billion people by "A.D." 2050 but that we will, because that means we can count on having 9 billion people. And, if we do increase food production sufficiently to feed 9 billion people, I think it's highly likely we will eventually find ourselves no longer able to feed them because of soil degradation, aquifer depletion, climate disruption and sea-level rise, and so on. We can't outgrow our food supply, but we can outgrow our ability to grow food on a sustainable basis.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Feeding the world sustainably posted 2 years, 7 months ago 36 ResponsesHow do children develop their values?
Jason:
Your comment assumes that prospective parents can expect to be able to successfully transmit their values to their children if they strive to do so. My Mom would probably laugh at that, as I bet lots of parents would. More importantly, that assumption isn't supported by the actual research on childrearing, from what I understand. In my opinion, Judith Rich Harris makes this point quite powerfully in her book The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do: Parents Matter Less Than You Think and Peers Matter More.
If we want ecological values to become the norm rather than the exception, I'm convinced we can only achieve it by changing minds on a broad scale, not by those with such values having more children.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Countering the pro-natal propaganda wave posted 2 years, 7 months ago 6 ResponsesRe: social change
If we reach a true tipping point of culture change, spaceshaper, it will sweep through the political establishment eventually. They'll be last, as usual, but that's the way these things work.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Prius consumes more energy in lifetime than Cherokee posted 2 years, 9 months ago 52 ResponsesRe: the pace of change
Hi, spaceshaper. Have you read much about how social change happens? If not, I recommend you take a look at the highly readable and short The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. One of the key things to understand about social change is that it does seem to happen very slowly to those who are eager for the change--until it reaches a critical mass or tipping point and explodes throughout the general population. We may--I emphasize may--be on the verge of tipping on over.
Which doesn't mean I don't empathize with or haven't shared your frustration with the slow pace of change over the years I've been an activist. When one loves the world, and the world is being destroyed, how can change ever come quickly enough? But I don't know any way to change the manner in which social change proceeds, so I just keep pushing toward the goal. Nothing else will save our free range, antibiotic-free, organic-fed bacon.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Prius consumes more energy in lifetime than Cherokee posted 2 years, 9 months ago 52 Responsesspaceshaper
I agree that we're not all that far apart in substance. It seemed to me that in previous posts you were coming down pretty hard on those who have made different choices than you have regarding transportation, though that may have been partially due to the limitations of plain text, which is stripped of most of the evolved elements of human communication (body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, inflection, eye contact, etc). I came to that realization some time ago, and just today I read on this page about a UCLA study which supposedly "indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues." I don't know if we can really quantify things that definitively, but my experience with plain text supports the notion that we lose a great deal of valuable information.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Prius consumes more energy in lifetime than Cherokee posted 2 years, 9 months ago 52 ResponsesRe: Prius priorities?
spaceshaper:
You seem to me to have a bad habit of making unwarranted assumptions. While I don't doubt there are drivers who feel absolved of any need to be concerned about the eco-impacts of their driving because they bought a hybrid, this isn't by any means universal. I own a used Honda Insight but I often walk and take the bus even though it would be so much easier and quicker to just take the car. In metro-Kansas City, though, the simple fact is that the transit system here is mediocre to nearly non-existent depending on where you live and where you need to go. I didn't have a car for a bit over 6 years because I didn't want to be responsible for the destructive consequences, but that choice inhibited my ability to spend time with loved ones and my flexibility to take part in activism considerably. When I received an inheritance, I consequently chose to spend it on a used hybrid. I think that's a justifiable, though imperfect, decision.
Have I or anyone else writing here claimed that hybrids are "a savior technology which every consumer with a conscience should aspire to own"? I know I haven't, and I don't think anyone else has, either. To the contrary, I've said explicitly that individuals have to weigh their own circumstances and priorities when deciding how to meet their transportation needs and wants but, for those who can afford to buy a new hybrid, doing so can be a beneficial and ecologically-justifiable choice.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Prius consumes more energy in lifetime than Cherokee posted 2 years, 9 months ago 52 ResponsesRe: Batteries age via oxidation
Got me there, Nucbuddy: Batteries do weaken and eventually fail over time. I should have been more specific and stated that I see no reason to think this will happen within 10 years in the case of current hybrid battery packs in normal use as imagined by spaceshaper. I think it's also likely that the replacement costs for battery packs will fall significantly along the way.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Prius consumes more energy in lifetime than Cherokee posted 2 years, 9 months ago 52 ResponsesRe: assumptions
spaceshaper:
What's the basis for your suspicion that gas-electric hybrids using current technology will be obsolescent within several years? Sure, hybrid technology is likely to continue improving, and there may even be flex-fuel plug-in hybrids on the market in the next few years, but there's no reason to think everyone who chooses to drive will be able to afford to buy a new vehicle with the latest technology at that time any more than everyone who would like to buy a new hybrid can afford to do so now. It seems clear to me that less-affluent folks--including me--will still be glad to have the chance to buy vehicles with older hybrid technology rather than only have conventional vehicles to choose from, and this will likely ensure that current hybrids retain much of their value in the future.
I can think of two scenarios in which current hybrids lose their value within several years:
- If major problems arise with the battery packs, though right now I know of no reason to think they will, though, at least in those vehicles using Toyota or Honda technology. My Insight has 141,000 miles on it and there's no sign of any problems with the battery pack. It would be interesting to know how the very first Priuses--sold only in Japan starting about 10 years ago--are doing. Anyone have any information on that?
- If the downside of the global oil production curve after peak is so steep that gasoline becomes prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthiest people in the world, in which case there won't be many current vehicles with any resale value. Which could happen, mind you, though I'm provisionally convinced a long, undulating plateau of oil production, gradually declining over time, is a much more likely scenario. That will still cause prices to rise dramatically, but not as precipitously.
Finally, I'm not saying everyone who cares about the living world should do whatever is necessary, including going deep into debt, to switch their current automobile out for a brand-new hybrid. The point I'm trying to make is that one can make a case for the ecological benefits of that decision in a general sense; each one of us must weigh all the factors in our own lives and decide how we can best meet our transportation needs and wants while staying true to our ecological values.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Prius consumes more energy in lifetime than Cherokee posted 2 years, 9 months ago 52 ResponsesRe: My 2 cents
Spaceshaper, it seems to me you're basing your hypothetical scenario on some huge and highly questionable assumptions. Here's the first one:
Prius batteries are about dead at ten years old. Not cost-effective to replace them - car's value has plummeted because plug-ins have made them obsolete, and they're not rugged enough to run as junkers on rough roads. End of life at ten years/50K miles.
What evidence do you have that the Prius' battery pack would be "about dead at ten years old" with only 50,000 miles on it? As noted previously in the comments there are 2nd-generation (the 1st generation sold in the U.S.) Priuses in use as taxis with over 250,000 miles on them. There's no reason I'm aware of that age alone would cause the batteries to weaken and fail.
And the second:
Not cost-effective to replace them - car's value has plummeted because plug-ins have made them obsolete, and they're not rugged enough to run as junkers on rough roads.
There will always be older vehicles on the road unless some massive coordinated effort to replace all of them with state-of-the-art vehicles is undertaken, and I'm not holding my breath for that. Given the likelihood that global oil production will likely peak within the next several years (if it hasn't already), it seems to me that used fuel-efficient vehicles, including hybrids, are likely to hold their value much better than used gas-guzzlers.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Prius consumes more energy in lifetime than Cherokee posted 2 years, 9 months ago 52 ResponsesDave...
...I can't link to a page on their regular site because that statement appeared in the blog for their Hybrid Center. But here's where the post in question is archived. Just scroll down about 1/3 of the page.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Prius consumes more energy in lifetime than Cherokee posted 2 years, 9 months ago 52 ResponsesWhoops
The last line of my previous post should have been "Most if not all of the hybrid models currently on the market are either Super-Ultra-Low Emission Vehicles or Advanced Technology-Partial Zero Emission Vehicles."
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Prius consumes more energy in lifetime than Cherokee posted 2 years, 9 months ago 52 ResponsesFrame of reference
Jason, I'm no expert on the emissions testing regime in California, but it seems to me from reading your message that your 1988 Volvo probably scored in the bottom 10% for emissions when compared to all the individual vehicles tested in California, which I'm guessing is primarily made up of vehicles that are too old to have been equipped with the best current technology. The particular model of Volvo you drive probably wouldn't score anywhere close to the bottom 10% if compared to new models instead, nor would my Insight.
Emissions controls have been improving steadily over the years, largely driven by California's increasingly stringent regulations, but only the most recently introduced or redesigned models are likely to be equipped with the latest technology (though it's important to check Air Pollution Scores; not all new vehicles achieve the same emissions reductions). Most if not all of the hybrid models currently on the market are either Ultra-Low Emission Vehicles or Advanced Technology-Partial Zero Emission Vehicles.
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Prius consumes more energy in lifetime than Cherokee posted 2 years, 9 months ago 52 ResponsesAir pollution
Jason, with all due respect--and that's considerable--I think your statements about air pollution are factually incorrect. I tried checking the EPA air pollution scores on 1988 Volvos at www.fueleconomy.gov but they didn't even assign scores that long ago. The oldest model Volvos with Air Pollution Scores are from the 2001 model year. The scores assigned to different Volvo models that year range from 1 to 3--most of them rating a 2, some having no assigned score--on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best. By comparison, a 2007 Prius rates either an 8 or a 9.5 depending on whether or not you buy the version built for most of the nation (the former) or the western and northeastern states with higher emissions standards (the latter). Every Prius I've looked at around here in Kansas City, Missouri has been what's called an Advanced Technology-Partial Zero Emission Vehicle. Consequently, I think it's a safe bet your Volvo puts out significantly more air pollution than a new Prius.
You don't have to spring for a new hybrid to achieve air pollution reductions, either. The low-cost 2007 Toyota Yaris scores either a 6 or a 7 (same explanation for the difference as for the Prius) on the EPA scale and its MPG rating is 34/40 (manual trans) or 34/39 (automatic).
I also want to note that I wasn't trying to tell you or anyone else who thinks it's wiser to continue driving an older vehicle instead of buying a new hybrid that you should do the latter. All I was trying to do is make it clear that reasonable people can come to different conclusions about which is the wisest course of action, that the answer is not as clearcut as you asserted. I chose to buy a used 2000 Honda Insight myself in which I've averaged just over 60 MPG over almost 2 1/2 years. Unfortunately, I discovered that it's Air Pollution Score was only a 2 after I'd already bought it. Life is full of tradeoffs, ain't it?
The world is sacred, and I am part of it.
On Prius consumes more energy in lifetime than Cherokee posted 2 years, 9 months ago 52 ResponsesIt should be noted...
...that the Union of Concerned Scientists had this to say about the CNW Marketing Research study in August:
About that CNW hybrid study
We have gotten a number of inquiries asking for our take on the CNW study that claims that hybrid vehicles are a net-environmental loser due to the additional production and disposal costs. On the face of it, we are skeptical of their claims, but we are taking a close look at the report's findings before we make an official reaction.
Our skepticism, is based on several previous studies undertaken by very well-respected analysts. We thought it would be helpful to point these out so everyone will understand that the CNW study does not exist in a vacuum.
- The 2001 MIT study called "On the Road in 2020: An Assessment of the Future of Transportation Technology" (.pdf) used a life cycle analysis that concluded that increasing fuel efficiency with hybrid technology, is a net energy and global warming pollution winner.
- Andrew Burnham, Michael Wang, and Paula Moon at the Center for Transportation Research of Argonne National Labs recently gave presentation called "Energy and Emission Effects of the Vehicle Cycle" at the 2006 SAE World Congress. One of the key the conclusions is "Total energy cycle energy use decreases for advanced powertrains & lightweight vehicles... Improved fuel economy offsets increase in vehicle cycle energy."
- Heather L. MacLean and Lester B. Lave of Carnegie Mellon University published a 1998 life-cycle assessment which concluded that 85 percent of energy use associated with a conventional vehicle's life cycle is attributable to operation. Only 15 percent is attributable to manufacturing and disposal. Given that, it seems implausible that a 50 mpg rated Honda Civic Hybrid could be worse for the environment than a 17 mpg rated Hummer H3, even if it took twice as much energy to make the hybrid and it is driven half as much before it is replaced.
A brief summary of the Carnegie Mellon study mentioned above can be found on the website of the Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment
.
Jason, you asserted that...
...but this seems shortsighted to me. First of all, CO2 emissions are not the only issue. Newer cars, in general, produce much less air pollution than older models do, and gas-electric hybrid vehicles in particular are dramatically less-polluting. Moreover, if only a very small number of people buy more fuel-efficient vehicles that employ advanced technologies, what economic incentive will manufacturers have to continue making them, to introduce new models, and to invest in technological advances that will boost fuel economy and reduce emissions of all kinds even more? In other words, if one has the means to buy a new gas-electric hybrid outright or doesn't mind taking on the debt, doing so seems to me to be beneficial overall.
biod, I think you overstate the case when you claim...
It seems to me that the issue isn't whether or not we're "running out" of energy. For geologic and economic reasons, we'll never pump the last drop of oil out of the ground, extract the last cubic foot of natural gas, or mine the last pound of coal. When it comes to energy supply, what matters is not so much the total quantity of an energy source that's ultimately recoverable over the long-term but the rate at which we can extract or capture a particular source of energy and its energy-return-on-investment (EROI), or energy profit.
Also, while it's typically claimed that we have 200 years of coal left, that assumes current rates of consumption continue. Given the likelihood that global oil production will peak in the near-term (if it hasn't already), North American natural gas production has already peaked, and dramatically increasing natural gas imports would be logistically and politically problematic, expensive, and energy-intensive, that seems to me to be a highly questionable assumption. We'll burn through that "200-year supply" of coal a lot quicker if we start turning a whole lot of it into liquid transportation fuels in a desperate attempt to keep the "non-negotiable" American way of life going. It also doesn't take into account the fact that the remaining coal is lower in quality and coal's EROI is declining.
