Comments Noah has made

  • go straight to vegan

    I would caution against buying vegetarian cookbooks over vegan ones. (Moosewood, for example, is way dairy-heavy and doesn't lend itself to veganizing.) If you're going to learn a new way of cooking, it's easier to just learn it once. Dairy is addictive, and you might think it impossible to let go of at present, but you'll be much better off in the long run if you learn to cook vegan now. At some point in the near future, I would recommend a three week vegan trial so that you can a) feel better and b) see that it's not that hard. After all, eggs and dairy are essentially the same in terms of the impact on animals and the environment as meat.

    See the Vegan Starter Guide from Friends of Animals for recipes and info.On That's it for me and industrial meat posted 2 years, 9 months ago 46 Responses

  • Here's another good one

    "But the fish story is more important by a long shot and requires actions far more simple than choosing a Senator: Stop eating creatures that are being fished to extinction, and tell your friends to stop, too."

    "Our species may not have crawled out of the oceans to build civilization, but our willingness to protect the oceans is a bulwark not just of the ethics of environmental stewardship but also of the responsibility to keep cities from being poisoned or falling into the ocean and millions from starving to death. It's a pretty high price to pay for sushi."

    --"Want Fish? Ethics First, Please" The Scientist Dec. 2006 by Glenn McGee, director of the Alden March Bioethics Institute at Albany Medical College, where he holds the John A. Balint Endowed Chair in Medical Ethics.On Umbra on sustainable sushi posted 2 years, 11 months ago 54 Responses

  • Anything but giving up meat!

    My point all along has been very simple: Why aren't environmentalists promoting veganism? I'm not saying to start out by targeting poor people of color in the Global South. I'm talking about starting with our privileged selves. There's no reason why anyone reading this forum cannot adopt a vegan diet or advocate that others do as well.

    The environmental case for veganism is well-documented. Consider the 29 Nov 2006 UN FAO report, Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options:

    "The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.

    Livestock's contribution to environmental problems is on a massive scale and its potential contribution to their solution is equally large. The impact is so significant that it needs to be addressed with urgency. Major reductions in impact could be achieved at reasonable cost."

    Interestingly, that report also notes that, "In light of these facts, the livestock sector may well bear the prime responsibility for worsening hypoxia in the northern Gulf of Mexico. This is confirmed by Donner (2006) who shows that a dietary shift away from grain-fed beef to vegetarianism in the United States could reduce total land and fertilizer demands of Mississippi Basin crops by over 50 percent, with no change in total production of human protein. The change would return nitrate-nitrogen export by the Mississippi River to levels at which the Gulf of Mexico 'dead zone' was small or non-existent."

    An easy solution to environmental problems is to go vegan. But instead of acknowledging that, people are simply saying, oh that's too hard. Sure it's a lot easier to tell people to buy a hybrid, but imagine if environmental groups actually lobbied for changes in food policy, both on an individual and an institutional level. Veganism cannot be dismissed when it hasn't even been tried.
    On Umbra on sustainable sushi posted 2 years, 11 months ago 54 Responses

  • we know people feel pain -- what about them?

    1. benjamin2012, the Hawaii thing was bothering me. It goes like this: privileged (assuming white) North American man justifies eating fish by pointing to traditional dietary habits of an illegally occupied land whose traditional food culture was destroyed by colonization. This does not compute for me. People all over the world are having their food choices limited by force due to the inherently unsustainable attitudes inherent in industrial capitalism. Their forests are being clear cut to raise cattle for export. Any "real" solution is going to have to rely heavily on people in Western nations consuming less. Period.

    2. benjamin2012, I just want to point out that no one is forcing you to live in Colorado. But that is a very micro view of this discussion. I'm more interested in the question of why aren't environmentalists promoting veganism? In the face of global warming why aren't environmentalists taking the impact of our food production head-on? The issue didn't even make it into An Inconvenient Truth, for example. I repeat, this is a moral issue. People in other countries are going to start dying in massive numbers in large part because of a system of animal agriculture that there is very little priority in addressing. This promotion can occur both on an individual level and in terms of what policy changes are sought.

    3. mckittre, To suggest that I must support fishers in order to help them fight against loggers and miners is a false choice. This logic sounds like supporting "the enemy of my enemy" with CIA money. That always seems to come back and bite us in the butt.

    4. atreyger, yes, corn is also fed directly to humans (and used in far too many processed products that should be eliminated as well), but  "Most of the [corn] crop is used as the main energy ingredient in livestock feed." 67% of the corn consumed in this country goes to livestock. Also note that other crops, like sorghum, oats, and hay also wholly or in part go to feeding animals. To claim that this is "poor practice" is misleading. This is standard practice, and that needs to be acknowledged. It is not misleading or inaccurate to state that "animal agriculture" is the leading cause of the dead zone, because it is. You may wish that animal agriculture was practiced differently, but it's not at all helpful to view what's going on as simply in need of different practices. Fundamental re-thinking is what's needed. We only got to the state that we're in by viewing animals as commodities -- the heart of animal agriculture. We are experiencing the logical conclusion of that mindset.

    5. atreyger, You seem to be suggesting that humans are not causing climate change. Blaming wetlands for climate change is something the Bush administration would endorse. Wetlands have existed since before us. "Livestock" animals now outnumber humans 3:1. That's new. That's a problem.
    On Umbra on sustainable sushi posted 2 years, 12 months ago 54 Responses

  • thanks for discussing this

    1. Dead zones are caused by fertilizers (thank you Tom for laying out the corn connection), and also directly through the massive amounts of manure animal ag produces.

    2. Animal ag is a leading cause of global warming. It's a totally separate mechanism from fossil fuels. In addition to fossil fuel use by animal ag, animals directly produce methane, which turns out to be far more relevant. Check out the summary: Earth Save Report: A New Global Warming Strategy: How Environmentalists are Overlooking Vegetarianism as the Most Effective Tool Against Climate Change in Our Lifetimes

    3. Vegan-organic farming that requires no nonhuman animal inputs is possible and should be developed further. The Vegan-Organic Network is a great place to learn more.

    4. The problem is not only "poor practices," but massive scale. The Earth cannot support the current level of animal agriculture, let alone increase it. The bottom line is that people will have to eat less meat. This is a moral issue affecting other humans in addition to nonhumans.
    On Umbra on sustainable sushi posted 3 years ago 54 Responses

  • the status quo is not set in stone

    Thanks, caniscandida.

    But I'm a little confused by the puritanical label. Am I also puritanical for saying that there should be no forced labor? That rich countries shouldn't pillage poor countries? At some point, I guess, those things too rely on individual restraint.

    But I'm not talking about self-discipline or only individual change. I am talking about transforming society so that veganism becomes the norm. I think that has to start with ourselves, but not end there. Individual changes do lead to institutional changes. If we can't even restrain ourselves, how can we ask others to?

    What's a leading cause of dead zones and global warming? Animal agriculture. Did y'all see the UN report from yesterday, Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars? Sadly, the UN misses the boat too and advocates reforming rather than eliminating or even reducing.

    It's not just a question of "eat what you like." It's a much bigger question of what kind of society do we want to live in and create. Food production is probably the most pressing environmental concern at this point, especially since meat-centric culture is rapidly spreading.On Umbra on sustainable sushi posted 3 years ago 54 Responses

  • Reality: catastrophic loss of fish species

    atreyger, this is your reality:

    Study Sees 'Global Collapse' of Fish Species

    (And that line in the article, "We still have rhinos and tigers and elephants because we saw a clear trend that was going down and we changed it." Um, that's kind of a lie. All of those species are very much on the brink. If I were a fish, I'd be concerned to be as well off as elephants.)On Umbra on sustainable sushi posted 3 years ago 54 Responses

  • question for the fish eaters

    Benjamin,

    I have to ask you (and anyone else who eats fish), why? If you believe fisheries should be regulated -- why not start by regulating yourself? You don't have to wait for anyone else to take action on the problem. Fisheries are going to collapse in 50 years, and many already have. At this point I think it's clear that the only solution for the foreseeable future is to not eat fish. So why persist?

    How can an environmental site say, "of course you can continue to eat at sushi restaurants without feeling guilty"?

    Genuinely curious,
    NoahOn Umbra on sustainable sushi posted 3 years ago 54 Responses

  • the importance of different realities

    "The real world" is whatever we make it. We could sit around and say "in the real world" women and people of color and working class people are always going to be exploited or we can work to end that. It's a question of what we strive for -- ending exploitation or regulating it. Asking for mere regulation represents failure to even try.On Umbra on sustainable sushi posted 3 years ago 54 Responses

  • Taste vs. morals

    The idea that eating less fish (or driving your car less) is the solution is actually the problem. We need to take revolutionary action and actually live our values. If we don't get our butts out of cars and onto trains and bikes, the public transportation and bikeways will never happen. The same thing applies to eating fish. Fisheries are about to collapse because sea animals are viewed as a "resource" to be exploited. It's the exploitation mindset that must be eliminated -- not modified to become "sustainable" exploitation.

    "Conscientious meat-eaters?" is like "compassionate conservative." Adding one word cannot override the enormous, devastating environmental consequences that are inherent to animal agriculture.

    It requires far less discipline to simply remove all fish from your diet. What could be easier than simply ordering the vegan sushi? On Umbra on sustainable sushi posted 3 years ago 54 Responses