Vancouver Forum: Vancouver Forum -> mosander's Blog

A short time ago, I was given a very personal taste of having to deal with a person, who, best intentions notwithstanding, was a walking talking example of why schools should teach critical thinking starting in about Grade 3.

I was enjoying a steak dinner, something to which I treat myself on occasion. I am omnivorous by nature, and inclined to ignore such distractions as vegans, or at least allow for 'live and let live'. I do not subscribe to their tenets, but do not go out of my way to try and show them the error of their ways.

The person who sat down at the table next to mine however, proceeded to lambaste me verbally as a base carnivore, an enslaver of animals and a contributor to the demise of animals everywhere, apparently utilizing extreme violence to fill my maw. I made every effort to ignore this person, however her persistance was a red flag in front of a bull (presumably an attempt to resurrect the contents of my plate).

Goaded to reply I asked my tormentor just what her thesis was. She replied that if people would only adopt a vegetarian existence, and cease the slaughter of defenseless animals, the world would be a better place, because as everyone knows, carnivory leads to violence.

I then asked if she really thought that World War II was really caused by the over consumption of bratwurst as opposed to a punishing post-Great War treaty and Racial idealism. She had no answer.
I then asked her what the buffalo population was. She did not know. I then told her that by the turn of the century a little over one hundred years ago, the population was perhaps 200 individuals. The population today number in the thousands. However prior to their near extermination, bison formed herds numbered in the millions, migrating through the great plains from northern Alberta almostto the Gulf Coast on a yearly basis. I then said to her that the bison, though no longer in danger of immediate extinction, would never be allowed to reach their former numbers. This because most grain farmers would find a herd of 2 million grazing animals passing throught their farms counter-productive.

I then bombed here with numbers. Cattle 15,000,000 only 1,000,000 of which are dairy cattle. Pigs, 13,000,000. Sheep, 600,000, not all of which are good for wool. Poultry, alas I'm running out of zeroes. These numbers are for Canada only.

So, I asked, did she really wish to be responsible for the attendant slaughter which would very quickly follow the cessation of meat-eating. Or was it possible that she expected cattle ranchers to maintain several thousand now unsaleable cattle as pets. Or was it more possible that he would eliminate them and probably put his land up for sale to the developers?

Livestock were bred for one purpose, and one purpose only. To be consumed by human beings in one way or another. They are kept by humans, maintained by humans, and modified by humans. Some, for instance sheep, cannot even survive without shepherds. Chickens and turkeys released into the wild make for very happy, fat predators, and feral pigs are a dangerous disaster.

Don't shoot from the lip, THINK, and leave me alone to enjoy my meal.

I hope that the title has drawn a few people to read this missive, even if they only clicked on it expecting to read some sort of red-necked gay bashing. Actually this blog has little or nothing to do with gay people saving the fact that they are human beings who occupy the same planet as non-gays. They in fact belong to a far larger group, with just about everybody else you can name. That group is composed of human beings who, while they are aware that something is seriously wrong with our environment, and know that something has to be done, haven't the faintest clue just what they can do about it.

The short answer is: very little. This does not mean that environmental awareness is pointless, that choosing sustainable options is useless, or that we cannot reverse the trend. What it does mean is that climate change is a natural occurrence, whatever that cause. (Humans are natural, making what they do just as natural) The climate has changed before, sometimes slowly, sometimes catastrophically, and will change again in the future. It is a crap shoot. What makes this change different is that is occurring at a time which is extremely inconvenient for us. This is not a case of therapsid reptiles faced with drought, or elephants having to grow hair due to an ice age (forgive the teleology). It is a case of the status quo being disrupted, and in a fairly scary way.

The physics and chemistry of the cause of the present problem are clear-cut. So much of an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere leads to so-much infrared radiation retained in the atmosphere, which in turn leads to an increase in the average global temperature. The key words here are average and global. In other words, the problem has little or nothing to do with pine beetle survival or the fact that your grand dad remembers winter with 200' of snow and temperatures near -273 C. It means that such an increase in temperature can result in changing weather patterns world wide, in a totally unpredictable manner. Palm trees in Prince George, or 2.5 miles of ice? Nobody really knows.

Along come the Green people. These people are peddling environmental awareness of the effect that humans have on their surroundings, both short and long term. These people have been around for quite some time, and truly are to be commended for sticking to their guns. But now I fear that the Greens have had their name co-opted by just about every special interest group you can name, and the word green has become little more than a buzz word and marketing tool. Just as the homosexual community has grabbed the term `Gay`, guaranteeing a giggle during the singing of certain Christmas caroles, the word green is being used by anybody who can fit it on the label whatever product they are hawking, be it commercial, industrial or political.

Daily, we are bombarded, by ads for green products, greener industrial processe, and green solutions to the problems which occupy so much of the energy of our politicos. Green social housing 5 years down the line is just so much more acceptable than just social housing 5 years down the line. And an enormous open-pit copper mine has so much less impact on the environment when it is surrounded by a screen of trees so you cannot see it.

In other words, I am extremely leery of a word used so easily by anybody, and for which there seems to be absolutely no real definition. Kind of like Lo-fat or Lite.

Caveat Emptor