a voice for the voiceless
It is time for Blog Action Day again. This year’s topic is an easy one for a vegan: Climate Change.
A couple years ago I read “With Speed And Violence” by Fred Pearce, a book that did a great job explaining what “global climate” means. It explained what wasn’t known, various theories about what the linchpin of the global climate actually is, and why no one knows yet which theory might be right. It explained the significance, in terms of carbon and the impact on climate, the melting of the ice caps and the razing of the rain forest. A lot more than this list besides. It was exactly the kind of detailed but not-overwhelmingly-technical look at this huge phenomenon known as “climate” that I wish everyone (especially journalists and politicians) would read.
That book might be a couple years out of date already, but I think the majority of the information it contains has not changed, and it remains the best resource I can point people to who have an interest in understanding how dust storms in Chad add to the fertility of the North American Breadbasket, and why shifting weather patterns could eliminate that source of fertility that we unknowingly depend on. These are the types of things that can’t be explained in soundbites, and which illuminate in garish neon why talking about “global warming” is destructively simplistic. Because let’s get real: we’re not talking about “global warming”, we are talking about “climate change”. That’s a lot bigger, and a lot badder, and whether or not you think that humans are a contributor, it is something that should make you sit up and pay attention, because it is happening whether or not you want your political opponents to score points.
My own education in Biology helped me make other connections. I understand rain forest ecology on a high level; enough to know that the rain forest resources are held in the canopy, not in the topsoil, and what that means when rainforests are cleared for farming. (i.e., a big fail) And the rainforests are being cleared at an alarming rate. For cattle ranching, for palm oil plantations, for coffee.
Maybe the doubters are right, and the shifting climate is within normal for the history of the earth, and isn’t accelerated by human-added pollutants and human-caused alterations. What the doubters should try to understand is that the majority of human history has occurred in a period of remarkable climate stability, and signs are pointing to that stability ending. We all need to understand that sustainability and survival are going to require us to change, and that in the end it probably doesn’t matter what caused it or whether there has been an acceleration. If the author of “With Speed And Violence” is right about there being a tipping point, I think it is hugely unlikely that we, humans, will change our behavior quickly or significantly enough to not sail right past that tipping point.
We still need to protect what we have. Protect the water, air and soil quality from our human-added poisons. We face enough environmental pressures without self-destructing in such a direct way. We need to think about sustainability, not just in so-called “third world” countries, but everywhere. We need Food Not Lawns, we need to think about the Story of Stuff before we consume ourselves to death.
It is clear that climate change is happening:
That’s just the start.
And if you’d like a peek at what we have to look forward to, there is a list of 100 effects of global warming.
There are so many changes we can all make. Reduce the paper products we consume: get cloth napkins, cloth handkerchiefs, cloth utility towels instead of rolls of paper towels. Reduce the disposable plastic products we consume: get To-Go Ware or similar solutions, carry real silverware with you so you’re never caught without, use your non-disposable refillable water bottle instead of purchasing water in plastic bottles. Shop in your closet or from second hand stores instead of purchasing new. Bike or walk if you can; otherwise try public transportation or ride-sharing, and if all else fails with those options, figure out how you can minimize your driving by planning out your errands.
And the big one: go vegan.
I was listening to some Animal Voices podcasts this past weekend as I drove up to Vermont, bringing some former fighting roosters up to Eastern Shore Chicken Sanctuary to be rehabilitated. One of the shows was an interview with the author of “Just Food: Where Locavores Get it Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly”, which challenges some of the assumptions of the locavore movement. He had a lot of great information to share, some perspectives I hadn’t thought of before, but one of the most powerful moments to me was when he explained that in his research for the book, he came to understand that the most powerful action you could take was to go vegetarian. His pithy statement:
“If you want to make a statement, ride your bike to the farmers market. If you want to make a difference, go vegetarian.”
I’m going to assume he means vegan, because I don’t see how dairy and egg farms aren’t contributing as much if not more to the entire issue as the beef and broiler farms are.
It was his own research that caused him to decide to change his consumption habits. He started writing the book as an omni. That’s a pretty powerful statement to me. We have heard from many sources about the impact of animal agriculture on the environment, but I know that many if not most omnis assume that vegans have an agenda and therefore dismiss anything we might have to say, facts be damned. But here is someone who did not start out writing his book as a veg. His transformation came about because his research showed him what we’ve been saying all along: meat consumption is hell on the environment.
The Animal Voices radio show is an hour long, but it is definitely worth making the time to listen. It might just change the way you think about the impact of your food choices on the environment.
Going vegan is a positive step from every direction. Less harm to the environment. Less harm to the animals. Less harm to ourselves. And it opens up a whole new world of food brimming with deliciousness and fun.
I eat chili year round, but there is something extra special about a hearty spicy warming bowl of chili with cornbread on a nasty day in early fall. (Like today.) I’m not the only one who is feeling this way! One of my friends posted about her chili and cornbread yesterday, and it was one of those recipes that magically needed nothing I didn’t already have in my approaching-pathetic pantry, so tonight I followed her example!
I love chili and cornbread. In fact, it was my most commonly home-made meal when I purchased my first cookbook. I was vegetarian at the time. Only after I went vegan did I notice that my favorite vegetarian recipes were already vegan! It was a pivotal moment; up until then I was convinced that going vegan meant I was sacrificing tasty food for the sake of the animals. That misconception turned out to be a big joke (on me!) because it was only after I went vegan that I started exploring food for real. All the foods I’d never tried before going vegan, and which I now consider staples, would take up an entire page! Maybe that will be a later blog post…
I want to remind everyone that tomorrow is Blog Action Day.
I mentioned it a few weeks ago, but I have heard hardly anyone talking about it, and it seems a shame that there might not be many vegans speaking up this year. A couple exceptions: nothoney and stephanie. This year it is a topic custom made for vegans: Climate Change. And I saw a post from a week or so ago that makes it clear they are very interested to hear what food bloggers have to say. Of course they specifically mentioned the Slow Food people, so Vegans really need to represent. And with all the great info out there, from FARM, from the UN, others besides, it is easy for vegan food bloggers to represent. Sign up for BAD, and do your normal VeganMoFo blog post, with a paragraph about Climate Change. I think it will speak for itself. Or go all out and research and write up a storm. I just want there to be a lot of vegans, and especially vegan food bloggers writing for BAD!
I signed up for VeganMoFo again this year. Why, when I’m so clearly not a food blogger? Because it was fun last year, and I figure it is good to step out of my typical subject for a little while. And so I’m going to be blogging about vegan food quite a bit through the month of October. Not likely in the foodie-blogger style; I just don’t have it in me! I’ll figure something out. I certainly eat a lot of food these days, thanks to the bike commuting…
And right smack in the middle of VeganMoFo, on October 15, is Blog Action Day.
To be a part of this year’s event, all we ask is that you commit to writing one post, in your own voice, on October 15, on the topic of climate change.
This is perfect, really. Climate Change, plus hordes of vegans talking about vegan food. It will hardly be any work at all! Just a couple quotes from the latest studies showing the negative impact of an animal-based diet, and it writes itself.
I’ve been thinking a lot about poverty for the past few weeks. I decided before I knew this year’s topic that I would participate in Blog Action Day. Last year the topic was the environment, which is a no-brainer in terms of the intersection with animal rights.
This year’s topic is Poverty, and the more I think about it, the stronger the connection I see with the more general topic of resources. That’s something that seems obvious, and perhaps simplistic, but as I thought about it I realized that to examine “resources” as an issue is to examine the entire world. Not exactly in the scope of a blog post. Or even within the scope of my abilities.
And first, what is poverty?
That is a question that I also found surprisingly complex. In the U.S., we have an income level that we declare to be the poverty line. Yet I have lived below that line, and not because of a political, activist, ethical or aesthetic stance…I lived below the poverty line because I had a crappy job with crappy pay.
Yet I was not living in poverty, as I saw it. I had an apartment, and was able to pay my rent on time every month. I was able to pay my utilities every month. I even had health insurance, despite that I didn’t have it through my job. I lived on $8 of food per week, which amazes me now to think about, but I never went hungry and neither did my dog. I was, amazingly, able to save money to move across the country. That doesn’t sound anything like poverty to me, even though I was on a very strict budget and lived on very little money.
Gas was cheap then. I was living in, as it turned out, the cheapest place I have ever lived in. (Nashville, if you’re curious.) So poverty income or not, I was doing okay. I was lucky too, because I didn’t have any big events, no health issues, no pregnancy, my landlord didn’t get foreclosed on, no car accidents, etc, that could have wiped out my savings in a heartbeat.
That was my experience at the poverty line. For me, living at that income level was precarious because though I was able to pay my bills and keep myself and my dog fed and housed, I was also very aware that I could fall off that cliff way too easily and with no notice. Getting a bag of chips from the vending machine was, after all, a luxury I almost never could justify indulging in at that time. Yet my life was luxurious in comparison to others.
Many people are supporting families on that kind of income. And then there are the situations such as of those in Bolivia, where people drink gasoline tainted water because they do not have the money to connect to the water pipes that are taking the water from their own land to be sold to the rich countries like the U.S. In the U.S. we have access to water from our own taps, yet we will often ignore it so that we can buy water from companies that knowingly prevent people in other countries from accessing water they need for life. Our convenience drives the degradation of lives elsewhere.
Or what about the people in China (and other places) who are “recycling” our used electronic parts by melting them down at great damage to their own health and the environment? Our luxuries create waste that harm others. It would be illegal to do in our own backyards what others are forced to do for lack of options.
That is what comes to mind, for me, when I think of poverty. A lack of options, forcing people into impossible situations, impossible choices. There is an unending list of other examples, many of them in our own backyards. Or perhaps only a bit further out of sight than that.
Poverty is not merely a lack of housing, to me. I remember being at a festival of some sort in Boulder, Colorado. I had been on my feet all day, and wandered into an area where there was a band playing and amphitheater type seating. A man wandered by with a backpack. The kind of backpack I traipsed around Europe in, back when I was doing a semester abroad. His was very well worn. He was well worn, wrinkled around the edges, road dust embedded into his very soul.
I talked to him for a few minutes. I can’t remember how or why the conversations started, and I can’t remember exactly what we said. I do remember that he is homeless and unemployed, and that both are by choice. He didn’t want to live a life hemmed in by rent and wages, he wanted to live a life that he felt gave him freedom. It was a risky choice, sure, but it was his choice.
That’s an important aspect to consider. The key point is by choice, because it actually highlights several issues.
If someone chooses to live without a permanent address, society sees that as a problem, but why? That’s a recent aspect to society, when you think about it. Only people who are rooted somewhere are seen as legitimate. Those who would choose to not have a residence are discouraged in specific ways that end up impacting everyone.
Water is severely restricted. Potable water, at least. Public lands are restricted as well. Public, they might be, but there are rules as to how long we can sit on benches, whether we can sleep on a piece of grass, or whether we can do something like grow strawberries on land that we do not own. Who makes these decisions? What kind of of society is this where growing strawberries on our public land is illegal? Why is potable water a privilege? We’re not living on Dune, after all.
So it isn’t really the resources that are the issue, so much as the access to them. We, as a society, have made basic requirements of life a privilege. Why?
This is taken further elsewhere. Companies based in this country, go to other countries where people have little to spare, and they will find ways to trick people into giving up what little they have, and even what they don’t have.
Nestle is one example. Nestle will go to countries in Africa and convince new mothers that there is something lacking in a mother’s milk. These new mothers are given formula, for free at first, and by the time they realize that they can’t afford to purchase the formula, their milk has dried up, and they’re left with little choice other than to use resources they don’t have to purchase milk. Unethical and perverted, companies like Nestle perform a double-whammy of exploitation. The cows have their entire lives controlled, including their reproduction, so that this milk can be stolen from them and their babies, in order that it can be used to steal milk from other women and their babies.
Sick.
This entrenches the poverty of these families in Africa that are tricked by the snake oil salesmen of Nestle.
Control and exploitation. Control of resources to further exploitation and expand the profits of the corporations.
This is the same pattern we see repeated over and over.
Control of resources is where it seems to start. The same pattern applies to the exploitation of animals. Control their resources, control their reproduction, control how they live and when they die.
The location of these animal exploiters is telling also. No one wants this in their backyards, so they are forced on communities without the economic and political power to block them. The resulting environmental and economic degradation of the area creates a backlash that degrades the local society as well. The pattern repeats, entrenching poverty, pushing people closer to that precarious line. And not by choice.
Groups that seek to alleviate some of the symptoms to meet the immediate needs fall into two general categories that I’ve seen. Those who help without question, and those who help with controlling conditions.
Some who help with no conditions have few resources themselves. Some try to use edible food that others are throwing out, to address environmental resource issues even as they work on poverty resource issues. Food Not Bombs is one such groups.
The government harasses groups like this. Threatened by the end-run around resource control?
There is no quick and easy solution to poverty. Not in this country, not in others. The way I see it, we need to work on many levels.
We need harm reduction. This is working on the symptoms, finding ways to get food, water, shelter, and medical care to those with too little access. This is about life, it should not be about privilege.
We need to address the contributing factors, such as education, environmental degradation of economically suppressed areas, and access to fresh vegetables and other healthy foods in low-income neighborhoods. We can get bikes to people with transportation limitations so they achieve greater mobility and independence, so they have one sustainable tool for breaking out of the limits that access imposes.
Finally we need to address the root of the issue, which has elements of “society’s ills”, as in laws and atttitudes, as well as corporate greed. This one is tougher, and less clear. As expected.
I don’t have all the answers, only things that each of us can do. When we consume something, whether food or clothes or anything at all, we need to ask: is this necessary? Is this ethical? Who is this impacting? Is this a good choice?
We can donate our time and/or money to those groups whose ideals and ethics match our own. There are so many things we can do.
I saw this on a coffee cup, of all places, attributed to Tom Brokaw:
It will do us little good to wire the world if we short-circuit our souls. There is no delete button for racism, poverty or sectarian violence. No keystroke can ever clean the air, save a river, preserve a forest. This transformational new technology must be an extension of our own hearts as well as of our minds. The old rules still apply. Love your mother – Mother Earth.
I just spent a couple days at an expensive Web Design conference held at an expensive hotel where we were given stuff, free food, unending supplies of snacks and various drinks, and even an iPod Touch to one lucky person. It was the antithesis of poverty in many ways, yet at the same time there was an underlying theme: Think Of Others.
And it was actually meant on several levels, not just the superficial one, which would be “think of the end user/customer” which is not that different from “think of the money.”
One of the last speakers talked about William Morris. Who is he, you are likely thinking. I had no idea, myself. He was essentially the Father of the Arts and Crafts movement. He was someone who valued the work of others, even the tedious work that he himself did not like to do. He did it all, ast least once, to make sure he understood and valued what he’d hire others to do. It was part of his ethic.
What drove him was a desire to make the world a better place. The details matter. What we do, matters. How we do it matters. Beauty matters. Ostentatious displays of wealth do not.
This struck many chords for me.
What we do matters. What we do impacts others. Choosing bottled water degrades the environment and gives greedy corporations incentive to steal water from people whose land contains it. Choosing to eat animal products causes death and suffering to those animals, and entrenches poverty and violence and environmental degradation in the communities who are forced to house those companies profiting from the exploitation.
What we do matters.
Choose with a conscience. Take action. Change the world.
Blog Action Day is on October 15 again. I participated last year, which had a focus on the environment. This year’s focus is on Poverty.
As they ramp up this year and post on their blog, they had a post that started out by asking us to think about poverty. To think about it on many levels. At the top of the post was a picture of a young woman with two dogs.
Is she homeless? Living in poverty? She is sitting against a wall of a building, on the sidewalk, so the impression being given is certainly of hard times. Whether it is an accurate portrayal of her life, or merely a metaphor, it is nevertheless a picture that does make you think.
At least it makes me think.
Blogging about the environment was easy last year, from an animal rights perspective. We all depend on the environment for our very lives, and so the connection is easy and obvious – environmental abuse is animal abuse. And suicidal as well, but few think of it that way.
Blogging about poverty as relates to animal rights might be a bigger challenge, but I think it is one that is worth taking on. There are connections, always, and I believe that it is important to constantly push ourselves to understand, on a deep level, how these connections come into play.
They are also encouraging us to act, to do something to call attention to the issue of poverty, or to do something to positively impact the lives of those living in poverty. October 15 is on a Wednesday, so personally I’m not going to try to take action on the day itself, but I am thinking about how I can take action on another day. Maybe on many other days.
I have a friend who has recently become involved with a couple of his local FNB groups. I might try to find and join in a local group here as my action. It is a great intersection between the promotion of veganism and the alleviation of one of the sufferings of poverty – providing healthy filling vegan food to those in need.
Or I might think of something else. It seems like there is plenty that needs doing, there should be no end to the ideas.
It is Blog Action Day and the topic is the environment. I suppose the question is: what does this have to do with animal rights? My answer is: everything.
Animal rights starts for me with the most basic right: the right to live. People, animals, whatever species, we should have the right to live, unquestionably. That means not purposefully killing us for any reason. Not if we’re a “nuisance”, a “pest”, “unwanted”, or “tasty.”
This means not poisoning us. This means not destroying our habitat. This means protecting the environment, and thus the inhabitants of the earth. This means avoiding causing harm.
Humans have altered the earth and its populations and ecosystems in almost unimaginable ways. We have altered the paths of waterways, as well as their existence. We have removed vast populations from large regions of the earth. We have created substances that nature had never seen before, and we have distributed them so widely that it is believed by scientists who study these things that there is not a single organism on the planet Earth that does not have plastic incorporated into their individual environments on some level. Plankton in Antartica have been found to have plastic molecules in them.
When we contribute to the pollution and consumption of the Earth, when we cause harm to the environment, we are putting pressure on the most basic right of all Earthlings – the right to live.
The environment and animal rights are so intrinsically linked together that contributing to the industries that are in the business of raising and slaughtering animals for consumption cause the immediate environmental degradation of the surrounding area. The air, water, and land is polluted. Property values lower, health aliments increase. So much methane is added to the atmosphere that even the U.N. has finally admitted that animal agriculture has a major impact on the global climate. Methane, as we all should know, does not last as long as carbon in the atmosphere, degrading after about 10 years, but while it is up there, it has a 100 times greater impact on the issue of global warming, depending on how you calculate it.
Care about the environment? Care about animals? The answers are the same. Go vegan. Change your consumption, your carbon footprint, your habits.
It isn’t as difficult to make changes as we imagine. Certainly going vegan, while somewhat challenging in the beginning, is easier than learning to live with the major lifestyle changes that will be forced on us as the global climate changes drastically. Giving up some paper products, driving less, buying local produce, reducing our consumption (of plastic especially), reusing and recycling as much as we can, these are all minor changes in the grand scheme of things. If we haven’t passed the tipping points for the major changes in the global climate already, we’re within ten years of triggering them, some scientists believe. They could be wrong. The easiest and smartest option for every Earthling is to play it safe. Go vegan. Change your consumption, your carbon footprint, your habits. And maybe we’ll survive what we’ve done to the Earth.
This one is about the environment, but it can be approached from whatever angle you choose.
I know I’ve talked about it a bit here, the connection between environmental issues and animal rights issues, so even if you’re an animal rights blogger who doesn’t take away any time from the animal rights issues, you can still participate. After all, the more we destroy the environment, the more pressure we put on animals, denying them of the basic right to survival. Not only by targeting them in hunts, “eradication” campaigns, and similar actions, but by poisoning their water, taking away the locations and habitats they need for survival, killing off what they would eat to survive, we are infringing on their rights as surely as when we otherwise treat them as commodities.
Well, I’ve made my position clear over time, so anyone reading is probably not at all surprised to hear me harping on the environment! If you’ve a mind to participate, you can sign up, and join the 10,000 + blogs currently signed up (with an estimated combined reach of over 8.25 million people) and then blog about the environment this coming Monday, October 15, 2007.
All proceeds will be donated to the sanctuary.
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