sustainability...

[greenorelse]

Now that's a bit naughty. For every "report" highlighting the damaging effects of a high-meat diet on the Inuit, it is a simple matter to find another poo-pooing the whole thing

Damn that World Health Organisation! They had me fooled for a minute. Again. Can't trust 'em. Thanks, MKG.

Veganism, no matter anyone's personal stance on the matter, is an intellectual ideal and a political statement. Why anyone should think that its health benefits need to be either attacked or defended (or worse, rammed down unwilling throats) is completely beyond me.

It's more than that, though your sentence is correct in itself, MKG. However, the thread was started by crowsashes asking some questions and a number of issues were raised, which were discussed. Is that a problem for anyone? No-one is forcing anyone else to read this thread, which is how it should be.

[crowsashes]

we do have a problem with the current population and with the forecasts on population increases sustainability really is (to me) much much more important than any intellectual/moral ideal with regards to only eating a vegan diet. but thats not to say animal welfare isnt important - it is but we can do that and still enjoy eating meat, just less of it.

im still unsure of weather a fully vegan diet is 100% sustainable in this country or would it be more of a mixed diet - leaning towards fewer meat based meals?

i read somewhere that when it comes to meals - meat should ideally be just a garnish! with the majority made up of vegetables - then potatoes/rice/pasta and finally meat. i know we eat to much. but do i eat too much? what is eating too much? once/twice a week or should we be looking at much less. once a fortnight perhaps? if i ate meat once a week that would equate to approx one chicken a month, so 12 in a year or 1-2 lambs roughly. is that number sustainable? (i dont eat beef or pork)

im off to do a little more research you have definitely answered some of my questions but i now have a hundred more to find the answers too!

[MKG]

Damn that World Health Organisation! They had me fooled for a minute. Again. Can't trust 'em. Thanks, MKG.

Tetchy

But you're right - the WHO have a habit of massaging figures to suit their own agenda. I wasn't having a dig at you, greenorelse, but rather the "my figures are better than yours" syndrome. For instance, here are some Canadian Government snippets (no doubt equally laden with errors) ...

"The findings for the Inuit-inhabited areas do not distinguish life expectancy for Inuit from that of non-Inuit people. However, if the life expectancy of the non-Inuit population (who make up about 20% of the population in the four areas combined) is assumed to be the same as in the rest of Canada, then, taking into account the relative population sizes of each group, the life expectancy of Inuit residents would have been 64.2 years, or 15 years less than for Canada as a whole.

Analysis of the 2001 Census data revealed lower levels of education and income and poorer housing conditions for the Inuit-inhabited areas compared with Canada as a whole. Any or all of these, in addition to lifestyle risk factors and environmental conditions, could be at least partly responsible for the lower life expectancy in those areas.

In the three five-year periods studied, from 1989 through 2003, the infant mortality rate was approximately four times higher in the Inuit-inhabited areas, compared with all of Canada. However, the absolute difference in those rates fell by 30% from 1989 to 1993 to 1999 to 2003."

And then ... "In 2006 there were about 50,500 Inuit in Canada. The data released on Wednesday shows the further north they lived, the shorter their life expectancy".

There are lots of possible reasons for shorter life expectancy in there, not the least of which is that the further away you live from emergency medical aid, the higher the likelihood of someone not being able to treat you.

Your argument for veganism as a tool for sustainability should be standing or falling on its own merits, without recourse to data actually from the opposite side of the coin, being one concerned with a purely animal diet, and especially not when those data have been taken out of context.

Mike

[grahamhobbs]

Crowsashes in answer as to how much meat you should eat, I'd like to push the boundaries even further. In the West, we take an analytical approach - you need to eat so much protein, so much cabohydrates, vitamens, etc. - the trouble is you will get a hundred answers as to what you should actually eat (frequently based on rather dubious and simplistic science, the problem being that our bodies are far more complex than the models we use for them) .

In the East there are also various approaches but they generally do not take this slicing up attitude, but rather a holistic approach to this question, looking at the individual body, its health and what foods will help balance it. These are not based on what we would consider scientific analysis and are therefore often difficult for us to really comprehend or accept. The chinese not only have their own medicine but the same philosphy detirmines the foods to be eaten or served to a particular person at each meal.

Traditional Japanese is also based on the dialectical forces of yin and yang and trying to achieve a constant changing balance between them. Books on Macrobiotics (a westernised explanation) are probably the best for getting an insight into this alternative way of looking at the body and its relationship to food, seeing the body and food as one (remember the slogan 'you are what you eat'), although in a constant changing dialectical relationship.

The older you get, the more you realise that there are always more questions than answers.

[crowsashes]

sometimes i wish there was a simple answer ....

[grahamhobbs]

......there is, many zombies have discovered it...don't ask questions !!

[sleepyowl]

I actually stumped an argument on veganism & sustainability once with one word agroforestry then it became a moral argument because for the statistics for veganism & agroforestry are near enough the same give or take a percent in either direction depending on which organisation. I did become vegetarian for a short while, then my body spectacularly rejected my diet & I became very ill. I just have a reduced meat diet (though not at the mo as my OH has been put on a high protein diet). Vitamin B12 is also an issue for vegans, as it is important in processing of other nutrients, some multi vitamins that are vegan friendly don't contain vitamin B12 but an analogue of it, some of which are more harmful that not having vitamin B12 at all as it can have the opposite effect & can block nutrients into the system which is why some people don't get on with a vegan diet (I have had vegetarian friends who have tried to become vegan because they feel strongly about not using animal products of any description). As for the Inuit & other Eskimo tribes there choice is limited & they actually need high fat diets to survive in their environments, a low fat vegan diet would decrease their lifespan unless they ate all day & did nothing else, their diet came out of necessity & in Greenland a 1pepper that is going wrinkly costs them £2 in English money. I do wish everyone well whatever there dietary lifestyle is & where they sit on the argument.

[KathyLauren]

Do you grow your own food, KeithBC?

Not yet, but we are working on it. As we get more experience, we plan to grow more. As much as possible, what we don't grow ourselves, we buy from local farmers.

This makes a good read, KeithBC - I think you'd enjoy it. It's a long piece but superbly written and it certainly sums it up for me:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-kings ... nmentalist

Thanks for the link. I will check it out.

[KathyLauren]

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"

I have never liked that definition because it is (probably intentionally) vague.

[rant]
Sustainability means zero net consumption of resources. If you use it, you put it back. 100% recycling of everything. I would make one exception for sunlight, because it is a net input to the Earth. Everything else consists of material substances, and is all we have got to work with.

Zero net consumption of material resources is difficult to do. It is impossible with the world's current population at any standard of living. It is impossible at any population level with the current western standard of living. Yet it is essential to achieve it or else the whole system, rich and poor alike, comes tumbling down.

Imagine you live on a small island, like I do. Imagine that there is no ferry. Nothing comes in, nothing goes out. You live with what you have or you die. If you can't make it, you can't get it. How would we live in that situation? How many of us could live there?

That is in fact how the Earth works, yet we haven't been asking those questions or seeing that reality.

I don't think the Brundtland Commission's definition even comes close to suggesting the reality of sustainability.
[/rant]

[MKG]

That is in fact how the Earth works, yet we haven't been asking those questions or seeing that reality.

I don't think the Brundtland Commission's definition even comes close to suggesting the reality of sustainability.
[/rant]

I was getting all geared up to post until I got to that part of your post, Keith. But I thought I'd do it anyway to agree with you. That is, indeed, how the Earth works. Says it all, really.

Until we work out a way to stop thinking of sustainability in regional terms (which inevitably does some other region down), we are, indeed, DOOOOOOMED!!!. There isn't an -ism which is going to change that. We are faced with a potential catastrophe at some undefined point in the future, and yet we all sit and discuss the finer points of unproved, unworkable, (dare I say it?) unsustainable solutions to sustainability. As a fully paid-up member of the "seen it all before" brigade, I feel I have to object to this. We regurgitate the same old arguments about life choices and patterns, but we never actually reach the point of DOING something. With apologies to people like greenorelse (who I may have offended) veganism, Buddhism, oh ... communism or anythingatallism have all signally failed to even begin to address the problem. And the problem is that there are too many of us competing for a dwindling set of resources. We can discover the magic technology which will save us all, we can agree, somehow, to limit breeding and reduce population, or we can disappear from the face of the earth.

I signed up for Hugh FW's Fishfight campaign tonight. Not that I believe for a moment that it will do anything at all in the face of blind stupidity - but I'm always up for a good campaign. Actually, though, it rather sums up the world (unless you're a vegan ). We'll still be supporting Hugh when the last ever cod points its lower fins towards heaven.

Sustainability? We are possibly not capable of such a high-order concept. Our politicians certainly won't allow us to be, but we lap up politic-speak time after time. If we really, really want to save the world, we have to forego things like "balance of payments", "integrity of borders", "gross national product", and begin to get our feet dirty along with the inhabitants of Sri Lanka, Borneo and, pretty quickly, all of the low-lying island nations of this world who will be the first to go under a rising sea. We have to forego the rather precious discussions we have in the western world about whether or not it is OK to eat horse or dog, let alone meat of any kind.

Sustainability is, almost by definition, a global problem demanding a global solution, The big question is whether or not we, as a species, have reached a level of maturity which may enable us to reach that global solution.

Mike

[oldjerry]

Thoughtful ,considered,and hard to disagree with.Just a thought though,if people are too stupid,ignorant ,blind etc to volantarily choose a sustainable future and vote for it,is a measure of authoritarianism justifiable? Beneficial?

[jim]

Dear Oldjerry,

I'm sure I can see your tongue outrageously sticking in your cheek, but no! A form of authoritarianism involving vegetarian diet and solving population problems by means of eugenics has been proposed and put into practice by a person of Austrian heritage during the last century. And he wasn't the only one, just the most spectacularly awful!

Draconian methods can achieve good ends? No, it's an oxymoron. Inefficient as it sounds we must rely upon persuasion and example to achieve sustainabity. (Sorry to sound pedantic but 39 years as a teacher take their toll!)

Love and Peace
Jim

[oldjerry]

Dear Oldjerry,

I'm sure I can see your tongue outrageously sticking in your cheek,

Love and Peace
Jim

Thank God for that! ...but in truth sustainability(as so well defined abve by Keith) is the complete antithesis of global capitalism,the most powerful force this planet has ever known,I'll keep teaching my kids to farm,and forage,and shoot straight.

[MKG]

But, to paraphrase Oldjerry, is democracy a suitable political vehicle to carry through the measures necessary to even approach sustainability? It's a horrible thought, but I suspect not. And, as Jim points out, in that direction lie many nightmarish possibilities. But is it possible, in a system which allows any old joe to vote, to remove the psychological and commercial clout of powerful vested interest groups who are to sustainability what Hitler was to brotherly love?

We have some interesting choices ahead of us.

Mike

EDIT: I know the campaign website has only recently opened, but I note that just over 278,000 people have signed up so far to HFW's Fish Fight - certainly a sustainability issue. I would have expected more - or am I just being over-optimistic?

[boboff]

Sustainability is "ish" in my mind.

We could never be trully sustainable on this planet.

To survive we either have to rely on science to provide for us, i.e. Hydrogen cars, grow meat in the lab, all nutritional needs in a pill etc, or we need to look at obtaining resources from off planet.

What we are all doing is out little bit or our allot bit to help. As a family we can future proof ourselves against somethings, by invetsing in land, renewable energy and carbon neuatral living.

We could never rely on Authoratarian people, those who put listings on 1960's carbuncle buildings, and put tree preservation orders on my small bit of woodland, the only bit for miles that would actually get used sustainably.

It is a truth that most people are complete and utter cocks, if being sustainable we could 100% remove ourselves from these idiots I for one would be first in the queue. But that is not going to happen because of all the cocks.