05/03/2015
Sunday ... May 3 ... 2015 ...
The Adult Ed exploration of "Becoming Co-Creators of a Food-Secure and Food-Just World" continues on Sunday with excerpts from an eye-opening documentary, "Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret," which investigates what may be the most destructive industry facing the planet today: animal agriculture. To give us enough time to view the most pertinent parts plus have adequate time for discussion, we need to start right at 9:15, so you are invited to join us as early as you can, but plan to come even if you can't be there right on time, as there will be some handouts to summarize the information. Join us for what the critics are describing as "a documentary that will rock and inspire the environmental movement" and "a fresh take-few films are brave enough to tackle a topic this controversial."
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Rather than taking valuable class time to express my opinion of this film I will simply express my thoughts here. If anyone wants to discuss my perspective we can do that outside of class.
Overall, I'm very disappointed and disturbed that a film like this, that seems to have taken a page out of conservative/fundamentalist propaganda strategies that utilize fear-mongering, sensationalism and needless hyperbole, not to mention only a casual relationship with reality, has garnered so much attention, at least in a very narrow sliver of society. I perceive this film as a kind of infomercial for vegangelistic absolutism, something one would see at three in the morning on some three digit cable channel, next to miracle skin lotions, testosterone treatments for men and kitchen slice-and-dice machines.
I have been watching this film, listening to and reading interviews with the filmmaker and looking at an endless stream of references to showings of the film. What I am not seeing is a lot or (not much of any, actually) supportive documentation for too much of anything stated definitively in this film. There seems to be very little interest in looking seriously at the earth's environment and much more focused on convincing (preaching to) people that if only everyone became a "vegan" that all of the worlds environmental problems will be solved.
Regardless of whether a person is a carnivor, omnivore or herbivor, decisions on diet are a by-product of culture, economics, religion, availability and personal preference. Humans have historically pretty much eaten anything edible throughout their existance as a species and have eaten many species of plants and animals into extinction over the millennia.
As for methods of feeding the world, regardless of what strategies are deployed, the ultimate determinant with respect to our success in doing so will have more to do with our ability to control our population than our ideological principles. This film really doesn't address this most important factor, nor does it address the tradeoffs associated with, and inherent within, all strategies for feeding the earh's population.
As I see it, there are three somewhat over-simplified contexts which are at odds with each other:
1. Conventional agriculture, which is focused on intense, high yield agricultural practices.
2. Sustainable, organic, non-gmo agricultural practices.
3. Balance within the earth's biosphere.
The earth's eco-systems need a lot of arable soil in order for these systems to be viable. This film does not address the relationship between a sustainable planet and a well-fed, massive global population, where increasing land mass must be devoted to producing crops or an increasing population.
Agriculture depends on uniformity of crops and the scalability of agricultural processes in order to feed the people of the world. This is the case, regardless of whether animal food sources are present in agricultural production. All animal food could be removed from agriculture and there would still be a need for enormous area for crops, in addition to the fact that large segments of the earth would have several months in which there are no crops (winter). These areas of the planet would have to be served in some fashion, and that reguires transit infrastructure, land and energy resources. There will always be competition between humans and the rest of the natural world for space, water, air and raw materials. It would be nice if this film spent more time addressing the tradeoffs and controlling the population than trying to spread the religion of a particular dietary ideology.
There is much abuse, misuse and ineffective use of data in this film and interviews conducted by the maker of the film. One of the worst examples of this is the constant insistance that the raising of cattle is the single largest contributor of Green House Gases on the planet. There are many web sites citing data from reports that refute this claim. Here is a good breakdown of human made Green House Gases:
01 Power Plants (30%).. Carbon Dioxide
02 Residential Buildings (11%).. Carbon Dioxide
03 Road Transport (10%).. Carbon Dioxide
04 Deforestation (10%).. Carbon Dioxide, Nitrous Oxide, Methane
05 Oil and Gas Excavation (8%).. Carbon Dioxide, Methane
06 Commercial Buildings (7%).. Carbon Dioxide
07 Cement, Ceramics, Glass (6%).. Carbon Dioxide
08 Livestock (5%).. Methane
09 Iron and Steel (5%).. Carbon Dioxide
10 Agricultural Soils (4%).. Carbon Dioxide, Nitrous Oxide
11 Chemical & Petrochemical (4%).. carbon Dioxide
12 Oil & Gas (3%).. Carbon Dioxide, Methane
13 Waste (landfill) & Waste Water (3%).. Methane, Carbon Dioxide
14 Coal MIning (2%).. Methane, Carbon Dioxide
15 Aviation (2%).. Carbon Dioxide, Water Vapour, Nitrous Oxide, Aerosols
Notice that livestock and landfill combine for 8% of the total. There are technologies evolving to harvest those green house gases and use them as energy to power transportation and other services within society.
There is a reason that this film is being ignored by much of the world which is tasked with actually feeding the world, and that is because it doesn't really contribute much to the discussion. It is not a "cowspiracy" or a "conspiracy." It is a shallow, poorly thought out, excuse to promote a particular dietary ideology that rivals Dinesh D'Souza's 2016: Obama's America in its sensationalism, hyperbole and homespun data.
.. The Bard of Franklin Avenue ...
