Eating Meat Part One, The Easy Stuff.

In what I plan on being a long series of posts, I will attempt to explain why I personally do not eat meat and why other people should not. Of course I am not the master of the universe and I can't force my eating habits on other people. However, I think it is important for people to critically look at the impact of their eating habits and I think these posts will at uncover some of the issues behind eating meat.

For this post I am going to address the simplest and what I think is the most undisputable reason why to veg, meat destroys the environment. A 2006 United Nations report called the meat industry "one of the top two or three significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from global to local". When you dive through the literature about meat and the environment, it is obvious that there is no room for debate, meat has a huge negative effect on the environment. Here are some examples.

1.More than 260 million acres of U.S forest have been cleared to make room for grazing cattle.

2.It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of meat.

3. One third of raw materials and fossil fuels in the U.S goes into the meat industry.

4. A factory farm of about 5,000 animals produces the same amount of fecal waste as a city of 50,000 people. Vast quantities of fecal waste are toxic to humyn beings and increase polution.

5. The same United Nations report concluded the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUV's, cars, planes, and ships in the world, COMBINED.

Now I don't want to hear "oh but meat tastes so good" because I am saving my response to that in another post. This post is more directed at all of those "environmental activists" out there that still consume meat.

The "C" word.

Now when I say the "C" word, I am not talking about that offensive slur that is directed at womyn. I am talking about capitalism. I am calling it the "C" word because it seems like a lot of people are afraid to say it, like its inappropriate to talk about it. Now I am not shy about my political views, I wouldn't call myself a Marxist because I am not particularly knowledgeable about the actual works of Marx. I have read a lot of Neo-Marxist/anti capitalist literature and would call myself a "socialist" (whatever that means). I try not to be obnoxious about this (even though sometimes I find myself being the annoying kid who won't stop talking about the economic rational behind whatever social issue we are discussing) because I really hate when someone flaunts their political stance in order to seem cool or radical. Even though I try not to be obnoxious about it, lately I can't contain my frustration with the status quo.

Because I participate in the International Baccalaureate program, our classes often have very open discussions about different social issues. What sometimes occurs in these discussions, is that people will make points or agree on premises that revolve around the issue of capitalism. For example, today in history we had an open discussion about affirmative action. Almost everyone agreed that there is not equal opportunity for everyone because of economic status(even if they didn't use those words). Some people even went far enough to imply that if you are born with a certain level of privilege that you owe something to society in return.

The thing that bothered me about this conversation was the obvious omission of the "C" word. Not once in this discussion were the fundamental premise of the free market challenged. What keeps recurring in these discussions is that people agree on socialist principles, like belief in a collective good, being opposed to inequality, ect, but no one ever mentions the main driving force behind the problems being discussed, capitalism.

Now I am not convinced that people are purposefully leaving it out of these discussions in some sort of malice way. I think the problem stems from two main things. 1- Lack of understanding what the principles of the capitalism vs socialism are about. And 2. Fear of being a "communist", a lot of people are scared of all the stigma that comes with being opposed to capitalism. I will talk more about that in another post.

I have resolved to start bringing up the "C" word in these class discussions because I am really getting sick of this. The problem I have with this omission of the "C" word is that it greatly limits the potential of this discussion. If we talk about social issues without discussing their origins it becomes almost a futile effort. Don't get me wrong, I thing we should fight inequality and address a lot of these social issues. But a lot of these issues need to be discussed in the context of capitalism.

Blogging?

I have never really thought too much about blogging because I have never found myself too interested in anyone particular blog. But lately I have realized that I often find myself just bottling up a lot of ideas I have. This bottling has only made me very frustrated with things so I figured I might as well write about them even if no one else reads them.