Climate Change is a bigger issue than cow burps
I had to laugh when I read “Climate Change is a bigger issue than cow burps,” but thought it was a little misleading to speak of it in terms of grass fed cattle. This is because 80% of the beef consumed in the
All this represents a health disaster not just for the cows but for us as well. If you are eating grass fed beef then you are lucky, it’s much better for you. If the cow was well treated all the way from birth to death then it is even better for you. Industry propaganda would have us believe that the factory farm is needed to feed the world’s hungry people but factory farms are about making money, not food, as now more than 1 billion of us go hungry with 5000 a day dying for lack of access to clean water. Most the world’s grain goes to feed animals to produce the industrial world’s meat as only 20% of the world’s population consumes 80% of the planet’s resources. People are going hungry not because there isn’t enough food but because it is not fairly distributed. But why do we need to distribute food? The normal human mode would be hunting, gathering and growing food near by. That is sustainable and sensible, isn’t it? Most of us do not control the production of our food and it is shipped in from elsewhere. In the industrial economy there are countries exporting grain for feed while much of their population starves.
The industrial economy controls the production and distribution of most of our food, fuel and just about everything else they can make a buck off of, even our healthcare. Climate change is a major health threat but it appears our leaders will use the issue to create another bubble that they can pump up and burst, accumulating more money while destroying the earth’s living systems. That is what “cap and trade” is all about, “make a law, make a business” as the saying goes. It is a delaying tactic designed to allow them to continue to pollute and make more money when instead the issue should be viewed as a threatening situation calling for smart and timely action. Our economic and monetary systems are controlled by irrational people who believe in a growth economy with no limits. But we have limits, there is only so much biomass and water on the planet.
It’s for this reason that maverick economist E.F. Schumacher drew a hard distinction between primary goods and secondary goods. Secondary goods are the goods and services provided by human labor, mining, farming, manufacturing, the ordinary subject of economic theory. Primary goods are the goods and services provided by nature, the non-human world, and they make the production of secondary goods possible. In order to grow anything you need to have arable soil, water, and an adequate growing season, as well as more specialized natural services such as pollination. These are nonnegotiable requirements. The same is true of everything else in the human economy: nature’s contribution comes first, and determines how much the human economy can produce. The cycles of nature produce three-quarters of all economic value in today’s world and only around a quarter is produced by human labor. Even that quarter is made directly or indirectly from natural goods, and cannot be made at all without the necessary natural goods. Conventional economics assumes that these things are just there for us to use up and that there is no limit. This is disastrous misconception of the situation.
One in four mammals is threatened with extinction, as are one in eight birds, one in three amphibians. Species are dying 1000 times faster than the natural rate, ¾ of the fishing grounds are exhausted or in dangerous decline as we continue to drive the 6th major extinction on our planet. The average temperature of the last 15 years is the highest ever recorded and the ice caps have thinned 40% in 40 years. 98% of the world’s forests, our planet’s lungs, have been cut down. We know it’s true as we see southern species moving north. Oh yes, climate change is a bigger issue than cow’s burps alright.
The solution is simple enough, just stop doing it and help nature get back in balance. Oil is the primary fuel of this economy and world oil production is on a shaky plateau since it peaked in 2005. Our monetary system is intimately tied to oil which is why the economy is faltering and will continue to fall. We need to relearn how to grow food, fuel, clothes and building materials without oil. We are fortunate to have local examples of how to do it, producing food, shelter and transportation while living a much simpler less consumptive lifestyle. Climate change will throw human kind into crisis mode so better to go voluntarily and creatively than to be forced by necessity for survival but this does not mean we can’t have a good time doing it. Civilizations come and go but humans have been here much longer than any of them because we have been able to adapt.
Climate change is a subject that most people don’t want to think about because it sounds too scary or complex and it is. That’s okay, one doesn’t have to think about it, just think about all the things we need to do in order to be more self-reliant and create a self-sufficient community. Localizing our economy does not mean allowing extractive big box stores to come in. The big box in Hohenwald takes 18 million dollars a year out of our area just in low quality food sales alone. If we can learn to take care of our natural economy and produce life’s essentials with our local human economy we will be better off even if the worst never happens.
