For some reason beyond my ken, we're having a typical Welsh summer of changeable weather, but mostly light rain.
It's predicted to remain as such through to mid August, according to the Met Office's long range forecast. The academic year ends today, so hopefully we'll be able to the grandkids out and about for most of the holidays without risking heat stroke.
It's currently 14C, muggy enough to need a fan on full blast, but I can't quite believe our good fortune compared with the awful conditions elsewhere.
That would be feckin' hilarious if it wasn't so tragic in context.
Nothing is sacred, or safe, is it? Not women, not religious artifacts, not top secret documents, nothing.
It's a trifling thing compared with describing his first drone target authorisation as a 'win' when 22 civilians including 10 children under the age of 12 were killed, but it does add to an overall picture of his psychological state.
It captured my attention because it smacks of privilege and supremacy. I can't imagine it's routine for defendents to ask for trialls to be postponed in the order of years because they're too busy getting on with their lives.
From what I've read/seen, it's more common in the US for people to end up in prison for years awaiting trial because they can't afford to make bail. During that time, the chances are they will lose everything and have their lives ruined whether they're guilty, or not.
I also came across the answer to the question I asked you earlier - if Trump were to be elected for a second term, he could pardon himself before getting to trial.
How delicious, more to huff about and ruminate upon.
Women always had the right to vote and black people always had equal rights.
Equal rights weren't magnanimously bestowed upon us, they were ours by default.
Equal rights were and are taken away from us.
Laws weren't made to give us rights. They were made to inhibit the continued and continuing theft of our rights.
If governments make laws with respect to environmental issues they will equally be about theft and assault. Our planet and it's inhabitants already have the right not to stolen from, or assaulted, or killed.
There are 6,825 registered B Corp companies in the private sector. Twenty-seven of them were certified this month.
I choose to invest in a number of these companies these with my consumer power. I choose to find more. My dollar is just as feckin' almighty as anyone else's.
We can do something, many things now. We don't have to wait for someone, or our governments to do things for us. They follow the trail of our choices and our money.
Do you know what are the next generation are like for sustainability?
As I understand it the aim was to halve emissions between 2020 and 2030 and then every decade thereafter to be on target with respect to global increase in temperature. Do we have time to develop that technology?
There are so many things we can do simultaneously and it all contributes to change, you're right.
I was just interested in comparing attitudes toward change in these two particular areas. As much as anything, I was wondering if criticism of Democrat fossil fuel policy might be revealed as being, at least in part, politically motivated.
I also expected that many people have vehicles out of necessity and not just convenience. And of course there are financial issues where lentils are cheaper than steaks; petrol cars are cheaper and currently more practical for many than electric.
Sorry, I was narked that you compared yourself favourably against the people of the USA, who aren't the biggest meat consumers in the world anyway. Hong Kong is.
If we're going to compare ourselves, we need to look at the shitty end of the stick as well in order to have a fair sense of perspective and equality.
On the other end of the scale, according to the United Nations 25,000 people die from hunger related causes including 10,000 children per day.
This happens disproportionately in developing countries, as does deforestation and desertificaction of land due to growing animal feed crops to satisfy our demands and expectations in richer countries.
One documentary highlighted that piracy off the West Coast of Africa came about as a direct result of developed countries illegally trawling to feed the demand for fish, leaving indigenous fishermen with nothing to catch legally. We've stolen poor people's food out of their mouths and when they need to find other ways to survive we call them criminals. Not only is that morally reprehensible, it's systemic racism on a global level. It's not going to stop for as long as we continue to support it with our consumer power.
You mentioned in your first comment that inequality might be an issue with respect to greenhouse gases. It doesn't get any plainer than this, that you were dead right.
The UK could convert all it's animal farmland into forest and still have enough land to grown all the food we need. We don't need to steal food from, or exploit starving people to eat. We don't need to damage our environment to eat.
We all contribute, even those of us who think we have a small footprint. In one documentary, the maker talked about quick showers, reduced heating and other domestic savings, but calculated that one burger a week could blow that water usage and emissions many, many times over.
It was suggested that 2oz/50g of animal product a week is sustainable, so if little you is having more than a couple of prawns per week, you're likely having more than your fair share. You can have my weekly egg to go with them, mind.
Except that if Trump runs again, the Democrats have a track record of being able to win with Biden.
Biden doesn't appear to have pissed people off enough, at least yet, that he wouldn't serve as a vote against Trump, like you said.
Another candidate who was perceived as more socialist, or more unacceptable in terms of gender, race, or sexuality would be too much of a risk against Trump. Despite alleged s*xual misconduct, Biden's a mainstream, straight white man. That's the favour he's doing for the Democrats and the country.
The question I posed was whether you would give up animal products, or fossil fuels. Fish and seafood (apart from sea plants) are animal products. What we are doing to the oceans is potentially worse than industrial animal farming on land with respect to creating a mass extinction event in the fairly near future.
I didn't check average consumption of animal products according to country. The two figures I quoted were from a US and an Austrian documentary respectively. It appears they may have been underestimates, or out of date according to another source.
It appears only a handful of the very poorest African and Asian countries eat meat at a sustainable volume.
I don't not sure what you mean about the sweets at the till. My daughter once had a full on, supermarket-filling screaming tantrum because I was trying to sneak past the sprouts without her seeing. (I like them now I get organic veg box deliveries.) I guess you mean rather than people making informed choices, try and keep some options out of sight, or maybe tempt them with something else ( the latter I have tried with previous blogs.)
I kind of hear what your saying, but I deliberately asked people to theoretically choose because I wanted to see what would happen. I've heard much dissent on the blogs about reducing and/or eliminating reliance on fossil fuels and wondered how much that would hold given an alternative sacrifice.
In the documentaries I've watched and articles I've read, activist groups aren't dealing with food production at all. As I keep mentioning, politicians are under the big food corporations' thumb to the point that they make their own policies and laws, Greenpeace avoided interviews completely, the Marine Stewardship Council are paid for their blue ticks on product labels, but don't actually monitor enough (particularly by unbribable employees) to be able to guarantee what they guarantee.
If that's not enough, people who do try to monitor and speak out, whether that's rain forest clearing, marine bycatch, whatever, are getting shot at point blank range, or thrown overboard never to be seen again. The avocado industry in Mexico is as valuable and cut-throat to cartels as drug running.
We all have some level of consumer power, however. Collectively, we hold the bigwigs by the bollux.
As for feeding animals food we could eat, if we all ate a plant based diet, we'd only need a quarter of the landmass we currently use for food production to feed the whole world. We could rewild a huge expanse of land and still have wiggle room for some animal husbandry. It's a no brainer from my perspective, but my food culture is already plant based and that has evolved since I was five, half a century ago. Clearly, I'd underestimated the importance of food culture.
Low emission supplemental feed sounds like a drop in the ocean if most Austrailian livestock are grass fed. Countries like the US and the UK don't have sufficient grazing land to meet the current demand for meat.
We mostly factory farm which has all sorts of wide reaching consequences, such as run-off (urine/faeces, etc.) affecting marine and waterway ecology, overuse of antibiotics, importing supplemental feed from poor countries leading to the desertification of their land, and more. Suplemental food technology sounds like more of the same artificial animal husbandry to me, with who knows what environmental consequences?
There seems to be two, or three schools of thought concerning sustainable animal produce from what I've seen: one is poly-agriculture where small farms raise a diverse range of animals alongside a diverse range of crops creating mini ecosystems; one where animals are used as part of a scheme to re-establish ground cover and soil health in desertified areas (but I didn't understand how that was sustainable on it's own long term); & lastly no animal farming at all.
Whichever way we go forward, we can't sustain our current level of animal product consumption. I don't think we have a choice beyond reduce, or eliminate. Unless of course, we're preared to say feck you to our children and grandchildren.
(And I'm not saying that everyone has to eliminate just because that's my choice. I can see the value in poly-agriculture including animal husbabdary even if that's not within my personal ethical code of conduct.)
Yes, I agree with you, it's a complex problem and no single action will create an effective solution. I just wanted to explore attitudes towards food and energy given the current poltical machinations.
I also think inequality may be key, but I'm still reading up about that. One thing is for certain from my exploration of our environmental predicament, everythng is interconnected and of equal value in a balanced ecosystem. If we cause an imbalance in one place, like killing all the top predators, or over-tilling soil, the particuar ecosystem starts to change and/or die. It therefore stands to reason that creating human inequality is an imbalance that is going to result in collective loss...and not just economically.
I don't drive, I've never been on a plane, I haven't used heating in my home for over 20 years apart from the occasional blast from a piddly little fan, I have a piddly little electric shower on a low setting, I don't use the gas supply to the property, etc.
Using public transport is my biggest deviation from having a easier life, especialy given the terrain and location of where I live. If there were no buses, it would have a massive impact.
I said earlier that I have been surprised by the documentaries and articles I have perused. Whatever ethos they explore, the message seems to point to food production practises contributing a huge impact on climate change - not only is poor practise feckin' up the planet, healthy practise can reclaim our eclogical equilibrium relatively quickly and easily. A change in food production practises may be a more powerful weapon than changing energy production practises.
I've also been surprised by the responses to ths blog given that commenters are almost exclusively more open to ditching fossil fuels than animal products. I'm left wondering whether people have really thought the consequences through - domestically I could easily function with the aid of a couple of solar panels, or via our numerous local windfarms, but it would be grim without public transport, or postal deliveries.
I stopped using dairy at age five, stopped eating meat at age 12, I've had a plant based diet for a few years. I eat yummy food and I don't feel I go without by any stretch of the imagination, but having said that, I'm not totally averse to some animal products in certain circumstances.
Given the same choice that I proposed above and with my personal experience, changing food production practises strikes me as having a much lower impact in terms of life style, as well as a more productive/immediate impact with respect to the environment.
I thought big food corporations wielding political clout through financial means was the source of governments almost exclusively focussing on fossil fuel reduction/elimnation, but it seems maintaining food culture is a lot more important to people than I anticipated.
Thank you for commenting everyone, it's food for thought.
Do you only eat animal products? Like, no vegetables at all?
I agree with you about large food corporations. They also wield a lot of financial power in US politics according to some. That might explain why environmental issues aren't being addressed in the food industry.
That's you destined to be a shish kebab wth this lot congratulating themselves that an accompanying slice of tomato and a lettuce leaf is two of their five a day.
Yeah, I vaguely remember raising the issue of cannibalism when studying for my first Holy Communion. I don't recall being overly satisfied with the terse reply I received, but at least my teacher didn't have a total menty like the time I asked about recycling souls so heaven didn't get full.
I think my seemingly imminent apostasy was a hot topic in the staff room for many a school year.
I'm optimistically with Johan Rockström and many other scientists on this. I like to think we still have a small window of opportunity to claw back from the perilous position we've put our children and grandchildren in.
If we achieved it with the ozone layer in the 80's, we can achieve it with the other eight boundaries.
Feel free to always worry and stop breathing if you think that wll help, though.
Does being a gift from god mean we have the right to create the next mass extinction with our greed and folly? Only we're perilously close to killing most of them and ourselves off. Destroying everything god created seems an odd way to honour the gift to me.
I would have thought the gift of the dominion over the Earth rather puts us in the position of being the guardians of the planet and it's inhabitants. That doesn't rule out utilising animal products, but it does kinda mean we are responsible for them, too, doesn't it?
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RE: Record heat
For some reason beyond my ken, we're having a typical Welsh summer of changeable weather, but mostly light rain.It's predicted to remain as such through to mid August, according to the Met Office's long range forecast. The academic year ends today, so hopefully we'll be able to the grandkids out and about for most of the holidays without risking heat stroke.
It's currently 14C, muggy enough to need a fan on full blast, but I can't quite believe our good fortune compared with the awful conditions elsewhere.