(Green Roof. Vancouver, British Columbia)
This week all you need is a paragraph- and an image, but please feel free to write more if you are into it.
Enjoy your observation experience.
Its going to be a beautiful weekend,
and we live in a beautiful world.
20 comments:
The real story behind our diets has been exposed, and it’s not a pretty sight. Just how much—and what—the world consumes directly affects each and every individual as well as the environment as a whole. Learning about the consequences of our interactions with food sources and what we put into our bodies has been a humbling and somewhat disturbing experience. This is a subject everyone knows, and is intimately acquainted with; everyone eats food. This isn’t about who uses solar power and who doesn’t, or who recycles and who doesn’t, we’re talking about a basic primal instinct to fuel ourselves. And there are catastrophies amuck. But herein lies its saving grace: if everyone has to consume food, then everyone has to make changes. There’s no exceptions.
After reading the article by Michael Pollan, I was horrified by the conditions and issues produced in the meat industry. Being a vegetarian is an area in which I feel I can help reduce the demand for cheap, unsanitary meat derived by cruel and wasteful animal practices. Even more horrifying, American livestock makes up 20% of the world’s greenhouse gases. But this made me think more about even the vegetables and fruits I eat. I buy them in supermarkets, where they have traveled thousands of miles, been chemically sprayed and preserved. These food items are using an incredible amount of oil and gas and chemicals, and can be just as environmentally harmful as other foods. What a vicious circle! I can’t even justify my vegetarianism for its organic qualities; they too are corrupt.
This isn’t about radically changing the world’s, or America’s, diet (though it wouldn’t hurt), this is about making sure we’re not consuming unnecessary and harmful foods that in actuality consume critical resources as well. Cutting back on the number of meals with meat each week is one simple step that could make a huge difference, if applied nationally. Eating lower on the tropic food pyramid helps reduce detrimental excess process to manufacture other foods.
We can make so many changes, each of them plausible and capable, just by growing our own vegetables in a garden, canning and drying foods to preserve them and cut back on consumption later, buying only organically grown fruits and vegetables and free range chicken and meat, only having seasonal fruits and vegetables in markets, supporting local farmers. These are necessary steps to make a necessary change. Joe used Cuba as an example, and though their changes were a result of being cut off, they had to make changes and they have become a leading organic food nation. If today’s standards aren’t crisis enough, then I don’t know what is.
Sean Thompson
There are many problems with cattle production today. Some of the concerns include mad cow disease, E. coli contamination in the meat, groundwater pollution, the production of the greenhouse gas methane from manure, as well as the poor and inhumane treatment of the animals. The way we raise cattle today is totally unnatural. Corn is a cheap source of calories and so the cows are fed corn so they put on as much weight as quickly as possible with the least cost. The problem with this is that because of the way a cows stomach works this diet must be supplemented by the antibiotic called Rumensin or the cows will die. Other chemicals and hormone injections help to shorten the time to slaughter from 3-4 years to just 1 and a half. These injections often carry over and can be found in the meat product that we eat. Such a involved process of raising cattle means that we use a lot of fuel getting the animals the corn and other things spending over 284 gallons of oil per head.
The margins are so slim that a lot of energy and fuel must be used just to get a small increase in the profits that the company sees. This is unfortunate, and it would be nice if people would just notice the waste going into their hamburger and demand that the meat companies deal with the situation differently.
We are an agrarian society whose main crop is corn with a production of 13,300 calories of corn per person per day. This large surplus is made possible by the innovation of using ammonium nitrate as fertilizer instead of in the bombs of WWII, as well as genetic selection of the crop. Farmers now consist of 2% of the population, which means 1 person provides for over 130 others in the US. The meal you buy from the grocery store may have traveled over 1200 miles from its field to your stomach thanks to the well-developed US infrastructure.
Of course all of this uses up fossil fuels to ship the goods and creates pollution as well. Why not just sell to the local people? Our large market economy promotes this gas guzzling approached and it entirely unnecessary. What is the real price we are paying when we buy strawberries in the middle of winter or bananas for mere dimes? What is the hidden cost of the system? I believe we are approaching a time when moving your product so far may be too costly due to the lack of oil supply. The way America is fed needs to change. It’s a shame that that’s what it’s going to take to stop the pollution and depletion of our earth.
Pollan's article to me was less shocking than I think it may have been to others. I read it this last spring in Ira Glass's collection of short stories entitled The New Kings of Nonfiction.
In terms of regulation, the meat industry in the United States has long been behind its overseas counterpart in Europe. In fact, just today the EU proposed more stringent constraints around the production and slaughter of meat in Europe.
The humane treatment of animals before slaughter should be a given, but I must admit I greatly appreciate Pollan's perspective on the issue. For some time now, environmentalists had taken the standpoint of shock—to disgust omnivores into vegetarianism—something that I believe doesn't work very well.
For example, I eat meat. My roommate is vegan and many of my friends are vegan or vegetarian. I've heard and seen some atrocious abuse of animal rights in slaughterhouses and milk production farms and hard passionate arguments from aforementioned friends, yet I am still not by any means persuaded to stop eating meat.
Regardless of information, I feel the majority of people will still eat meat. Pollan does a much better job of persuading the demographic by recognizing and accepting this, he simply is encouraging people to decrease the demand for meat by eating less of it. In doing so, cows would not need to go to force feed lots which necessitate hormones and poor life quality.
One particular point missed by a lot of these arguments though is the replacement of meat as a source of protein. New nutritional information for men suggests a minimum of one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight in order to keep a proper ratio of fat to muscle content in the body.
However, with meat removed as a primary source of protein (and whey isolates in dairy if vegan), a significant deficit is created. Some would be quick to say that soy can easily replace that. However, soy carries with it phytoestrogens which can block normal protein absorption in the liver but also lowers natural testosterone levels and increase estrogen levels in males.
A moderate amount of soy in a diet will not produce abnormal results in the male figure, yet its introduction as a staple could produce gynecomastia as a side effect, wear excess fatty tissues is stored in the breast region for males.
Further, meat and some related saturated fats are important in the digestion of B12, Vitamin D, Vitamin K, and others.
While a vegetarian and vegan diet may not always lead to these ends, the economic and personal outcomes of a shift in diet must be considered when done on a wide scale.
Karin Alpert
ADP Week Response #2
This week in ADP, we concentrated a lot on “Green” Energy, the different types that exist and what make them different, but mostly we spoke a lot about food with a focus on meat and corn, as well as organic standards.
I wasn’t really all that shocked when learning about the United States surplus of corn. I didn’t realize corn was mixed into cattle feed or that it was used in products that aren’t necessarily food products. However, I did think that there was corn mixed in with almost everything we eat especially in the form of corn syrup. For the Jewish holiday Passover, one of the food restrictions aside from flower is corn, including corn syrup. For that period of eight days I truly do realize how much of my normal diet consists of corn or corn products because my diet becomes extremely restricted. Corn really is in almost everything, and now I understand more why that is.
When reading “This Steer’s Life,” and hearing more about meat products and organic standards in lecture, I was seriously disturbed, and I don’t even eat red meat. I kept wondering how people whose diets actually do consist of a lot of meat felt when reading the article. Not only is this cruelty to animals, its harming the environment as well us those who eat the meat as well. The only plus side seems to be more and cheaper meat, but to what greater cost? Is it truly worth it to keep producing meat the way we are? I definitely don’t think so. It seems as though even organic meat doesn’t even truly exist and it’s all just a marketing scam, so people feel better about the products they’re buying and eating.
In lecture we also heard very briefly about the German Jewish scientist, Fritz Haber and his invention, the Haber-Bosch Process. I didn’t quite understand in class who exactly he was and what it was that he invented. However, being Jewish and part German myself I am always interested in my ancestry, so I searched the web to find out more. Fritz Haber seems like he was a remarkable person who was well rounded in many fields study with a focus on chemistry and physics. It seems as though he was rewarded accordingly with the Noble Prize. The Haber-Bosch Process was one of the most important discoveries of the 20th century. However, even though his Haber-Bosch Process was in a sense a lifesaver in regards to fertilization and a problem solver to nitrogen shortages, one could also argue that it was just as harmful to society with its use in explosives. I wonder what Fritz Haber would think or say knowing that his invention aided the Nazi’s in their ability to kill off his own people, the Jews in concentration camps during World War II. Without Haber’s invention I wonder if the Nazi’s would have been as successful or had the ability to kill as many Jews as they did. Does that make Haber’s invention of the century just as bad as it is good?
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1918/haber-bio.html
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-haber-bosch-process.htm
Although “A Steers Life” was quite appalling by my standards I was less than surprised. Having read various reports in the past on similar topics, I expected many of the facts that arose in this article. However, what continues to not only shock and rather disgust me in these reports is seeing how cruel humanity can be. I do not understand how workers at meat factories are able to alter these animals, treat and leave them in terrible, unsanitary conditions still be able to sleep at night. These companies and their workers are able to send off meat that has been sautéed, since birth, in hormones and chemicals and distribute them to society with the knowledge of their effects.
In attempts to make more meat with fewer cows, gene alteration is now taking place. Scientists are now able to remove the myostatin gene with attributes to unnatural muscle growth.
http://neatorama.cachefly.net/images/2006-09/grass-wheel.jpg
http://media.photobucket.com/image/super%20cow/atreyu4life69/hulk_cow.jpg
Myostatin deficiency:
http://www.who-sucks.com/people/monstrous-myostatin-misfortunes-a-collection-of-myostatin-deficiency-pictures
This week's lectures covered some details regarding food and food production in the United States and beyond. The way that humans have regarded food has changed over time in that we went from finding food to manipulating it to work for us by growing it in tidy fields or raising it in pens. This idea of manipulation may be going too far, however, beyond what is safe for us and our environment. Our manipulation of corn went from simply picking and choosing which variations to plant, to having to buy seeds from companies that have engineered an ideal type of corn.
The way that Americans treat livestock has also changed dramatically. Cows went from being able to roam large areas freely to being restricted to an area barely larger than the minimum needed to contain them. Ideal breeds of cow have also become unnaturally engineered-- the vast majority of milk comes from dairy cows who are all related to each other. The potential consequence to this is easy to imagine, a single "defect" in this type of cow could potentially halt the production of milk in this country until we were able to generate a new population. Cows raised to be slaughtered for meat face incredibly harsh and unnatural conditions that result in serious health problems not only to the cow, but to any person who eats the meat of that cow. It is shocking to me that barely anything has been done to change the way these cows are raised when we know the harm that the meat has already caused to our own population. At one point will the health of the country trump the power of the companies who are mistreating these cows and us?
Emma Bumstead
These last two lectures have made me increasingly appreciative of my vegetarian upbringing. While I am not strictly a vegetarian any longer, I find myself not eating meat for weeks at a time with only milk as my animal produced food. The idea of CAFO is horrifying, it is the essence of what I think is inhumane. Not only are the animals subjected to such low standards of living, but also the ecosystem around them has been annihilated. How could there be one when manure and cows are the only things for miles. Local plants, and animals driven out of their natural habitats and extinguished, all so that every American can have a steak for dinner. While I feel for my man, I feel as if we had it coming, we decided that we were the only things that mattered on this planet and we decided to treat the rest of the organisms as expendable. Trumpey pointed out that McDonalds has taken steps to relieve the stress put upon the animals, but as one of the largest buyers of meet in America they should have adopted this stand much earlier than now. What concerns me the most is that there was originally someone who thought CAFO was a good idea, that subjecting the animals to these conditions is alright if it makes them more money.
http://flickr.com/photos/87306242@N00/407362479/
Hearst Tower, New York City. A "green" building where 50% of their water usage is rain water, among other energy efficient aspects of the building.
Erin Murray
Betsy Peters
Before the lectures of the past week, I had a general idea of how horribly the livestock in our country is treated, but after reading “This Steer’s Life” and hearing about CAFO, I am disturbed and appalled. Never would I have thought that there would be packed cattle farms the size of cities, or that they are fed a diet so unlike what they are built to eat that they have to be constantly medicated from birth until they’re slaughtered. And how about the hormones the cows are fed to speed up their growth? If they are having a noticeable and documented affect on children, why would our government allow this to continue? I’m glad now that I’ve led an almost entirely vegetarian lifestyle. At least on a positive note, fast-foot giants like McDonald’s are slowly changing the industry to something slightly more humane. I still don’t like McDonald’s, but at least they’re doing something.
I was also completely staggered by the amount of things we use corn for in this country! From toothpaste to trash bags to artificial sweeteners… doesn’t it seem like maybe we should cut back on this incredible corn usage? Also, this “inbreeding” of corn seems like a bad idea. If we’re messing with the natural growth of our food and something we seem to use in everything (just like we’re messing up the natural order of just about everything in this world), it seems like something could go horribly wrong down the line a few generations. Or when we run out of fossil fuels… that is a day I am not looking forward to.
http://baltimore.metromix.com/restaurants/photogallery/high-5-eco-friendly/374231/content
Here’s a link to a Baltimore website that lists five “eco-friendly” restaurants. My favorite was the first one, which is entirely powered by wind energy.
The past couple lectures have focused mainly on the food we eat and the corruption behind the food industry. Americans consume much more food than the rest of the world. The average American spends about $160 on food each week, whereas Chinese people spend about $60 a week, and Ecuadorians spend around $30 a week. There is such a difference in weekly expenditures in America because of the high demand of any food we want. With such a high demand, unhealthy processes have developed to fulfill the wants of Americans.
The high demand of meat has put strain on the farming system. We read an article about the life of a steer. This article opened my eyes to the animal cruelty and unnatural procedures put onto cattle. In order to supply enough meat to satisfy greedy Americans, growth hormones are given to the cattle to shorten their lifespan and become full-grown in half the time it would naturally take. They are also fed a lot corn and protein supplements. With such an unnatural, unhealthy diet, many cattle get sick and die. Because of this effect, antibiotics are given to reduce the death rate. These unnatural processes are not only harmful to the cattle, but also the people who eat them. If Americans cut back on the amount of meat we eat, we would make a huge difference in the health of cattle and ourselves.
Along with meat, fruit and vegetables are also not as natural as they should be. Produce are sprayed with pesticides and dyed to give a brighter color. The produce we buy in grocery stores also travels long distances. The average American meal travels 1,400 miles. Because of this, chemicals and preservatives are used to keep the fruits and vegetables from rotting.
Processed foods are also a huge part of the American diet. “Fake” foods, high in corn syrup and other unnatural chemicals, are high in calories and have little nutritional value. The average American diet is so unhealthy and chemically based. We need to cut back on how much meat we consume, and preservatives we use. If we farmed more, Americans could buy local produce, grown naturally. We would also save gas money to transport produce all over the country, like we do now. Less transportation of food would greatly benefit the atmosphere as well. If Americans ate less meat, cattle would be able to live naturally and we would have better quality meat. Not only would these changes be healthier, the food we eat would be natural and taste much better.
I found it particularly surprising to hear last week that McDonalds of all evil corporations, made an honest effort to improve the quality of living for egg producing chickens. It was ironic to hear such information considering I had listened to numerous people bring up the name under a bad light. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think McDonalds is a saint by any means, but for a huge billion dollar company to do that on their own defiantly shows some character. The whole process of forced molting is frightening and downright evil.
It was also surprising to find out that all of those cows crammed in CAFOs are related! If my memory serves me right, almost all of the cows are derived from about four bulls. It just baffles me that these cows haven’t generated some genetic issues or a cow plague. Accompanying those confined cows is a whole lot of poop. Why haven’t we found ways to take the poop and reuse it in other ways than just fertilizer? Why hasn’t anyone broken it down into biofuels or extracted the methane and burned it for something on the farm? I know CAFOs are terrible, but at least people could make them more sustainable.
Oh P.S. If you want to read more on how animals are treated in slaughter houses and other fun startling statisitcs while also learning how to eat like a “skinny bitch,” check out the book titled “Skinny Bitch.” There is some info in there that is amazing.
I don’t remember the figure exactly, but I think it was that we tested about 260,000 of 16,000,000 cattle for mad cow disease while countries like Japan test every one. Granted Japan probably doesn’t have near as many as us, but still…
http://www.goveg.com/photos/chickens/chicken10.jpg
My image posting is of a chicken being de-beaked.
Ashley--sorry this wasn't with my paragraph, hopefully after our conversation earlier you understand. Next week everything will be in one post!
This weeks lectures were very interesting to me because the topic of food is a difficult subject. Food is something that our bodies cannot live without, so it's a lot harder thing to adjust than something like recycling.
After reading the book Fast Food Nation last year, the conditions that our animals go through to become our meat wasn't surprising to me. I also did not feel too bad because we eat all organic meat back home, but I was really surprised to hear that some of the organic meat is mistreated just as badly as normal meats.
What also really surprised me, was how the cows are produced. When Trumpey said that the cows were made through artificial insemination through a few top choice cows, so a lot of the cows are related to each other, it scared me because it cannot be healthy to be eating cows that closely genetically related.
Even though I know I will never stop eating meat, it does inspire me to look into the way my meat is being made, and pick brands that have more humane treatment of animals.
The energy windmills in Livermore close to my home:
http://www.glennjamesphotography.com/photos/themes/windmills/82.htm
http://www.worldofstock.com/closeups/BEN1962.php
Recent ADP lectures have worked their way into my brain. I find myself frowning as I read the ingredients of something I’m eating or drinking and see, yet again the mention of high fructose corn syrup. I can’t seem to escape it. I knew it was in all sorts of food and drinks but I was unaware that it was also in products like floor waxes and vegetable waxes. I also find it disgusting that we are force-feeding cows (and according to today’s lecture, even salmon) corn based meal. I can’t imagine a more literal example of a break with the natural way of things. I just can’t seem to wrap my mind around the fact that we have to lace cows’ feed with antibiotics to counter the deadly effects of the food they would have no business naturally eating. This in turn affects the cow, allowing for disease and hormones to infect the food we end up eating. We are hurting ourselves in order to produce faster, fatter meat. Instead of allowing the cows to have a symbiotic relationship with natural grass, we are introducing a foreign food source that would destroy them if it were not for antibiotics! The entire cycle seems destructive to me. Not to mention the fact that all of the shipping and grinding of the corn and shipment of the antibiotics eats up money and oil. I find myself feeling quite dismayed when we continue to talk in lecture about all the everyday products we use and foods we eat whose production and shipment requires great deals of oil. It makes me slightly afraid for the future of our whole oil situation. I suppose the issue always seems to center on our individual transportation (and that issue is big enough within itself)! I tend to forget the majority of products we consume have roots in oil. While I have hope for finding alternative oil and energy sources, I just worry that we may be in pretty deep and things could get rather crazy. Hopefully more people will realize this soon and we’ll make a greater effort to truly solve this problem instead of finding more places to drill. I don’t believe it’s wise for people to hold out as the prices rise. Once we run out of oil, we’re stuck. We need to start doing something now in order to minimize a big crisis in the future.
http://www.greenlivingonline.com/HomeGarden/pop-bottle-carpets-gorgeous-and-guilt-free/
This week’s concentration on food and meat production really resonated with me. I’ve always been aware that the conditions in a feedlot were sub par, but I didn’t realize the extent to which our cattle is mistreated and how that affects our environment, our economy, and ourselves. I didn’t have all of the information, and what I was aware of, I chose not to think about.
I had never thought about the hidden costs that come from gallons of oil to keep feedlots in production, or the cost of antibiotics and growth hormones. Are we better off slowing down our meat production, changing the way in which we raise cattle, and spending more on a piece of quality beef fewer times per year? I think this would help with our obesity problem because the mass production of cheap beef has encouraged Americans to eat more poorly then they should be. Beef has become the staple of an American meal. Anyone has access to it regardless of their income. There are high-end grocery stores and specialized food stores where people can buy a high quality piece of meat, but most people don’t want to spend an excessive amount. But who is benefiting more? Are people who are spending more to get better quality food getting a better deal then people who are buying the cheap alternative? Maybe the solution is to buy meat fewer times per year, but when we do, buy the highest quality. A lot of people are not educated on the journey of their meal before it hits their kitchen table.
I feel lucky that my mom has always been so interested in nutrition. From a very young age, she taught me the importance of finding a brand of sliced turkey that did not have antibiotics, for example, or sliced ham that did not have nitrates. As a child I would often get annoyed with her, thinking that she was making a bigger deal out of food than she needed to be. I wished that she would buy more “normal” products that most of my friends were eating. But then I realized that “normal” products are actually the ones that are closer to the source and not highly processed. She has always tried to buy organic, which I think is important, butt then I started thinking about the conditions of organic products versus non organic products. Is organic that much better? It got me wondering if cows that are raised on organic farms really treated better than those we read about in This Steer’s Life. I think that the production of beef needs to be altered on all levels.
Overall, I think Americans are consuming too many highly processed foods. When Professor Trumpey talked about our place as a secondary consumer in the food pyramid, it put things in perspective for me. We are so far removed from the food we eat. If we are not growing products ourselves, we have no connection to the environment, and as a result we feel no obligation to treat our surroundings with respect. In The Sand County Almanac, Leopold talks about various animals’ journeys to find a meal. They travel a mile at most, while our food travels hundreds to thousands of miles.
Because of the lack of nutritional value in many foods we eat, we have to eat larger quantities of them to feel satisfied. If we ate fresher products and more fruits and vegetables at each meal we would be consuming far fewer calories to give us the same feeling. I’ve realized that eating fresher food is not only beneficial to people’s health, but it is also has a huge impact on our environment.
www.peta.org/accidentallyVegan/mountain.jpg
i261.photobucket.com/.../vegetables.jpg
From last week’s lectures I found the topic that lingered with me most to be that of our food and culture and the transportation of what we consume. It seems everyone knows all about the “green” culture that is taking over currently, with cars that get better gas mileage and the “green” shopping bags that can be purchased at every caring multimillion dollar corporation across the country. We’ve also heard a lot about the evils of the meat industry from the media through Fast Food Nation, and Supersize Me, that show how horrible the food is in terms of health value and how poorly the animals are treated in the process of their lives.
Then, from this information, there has been the hype about the importance of organic food, which I have a hard time falling in line with because of the lack of true standards on what is organic and what is not and also, what kinds of foods are truly better for me as organic as opposed to not organic. Professor Trumpey furthered my reluctance during last weeks lecture when we discussed what it truly means to have a free-range chicken in which the doors where the chickens are kept are opened at least one time about three weeks before they are slaughtered, but normally do not go out because they are so accustomed to being indoors, and afraid of what they perhaps don’t know.
Last week, I was not so surprised to hear about the meat industry or our green culture or the true variables of organic production. What I found completely shocking was the topic of the production and transportation of our food. I can honestly say, not once in my life have I contemplated how far my food has traveled to get to my diner table or how much energy has been spent creating the food products I consume. I am amazed that during a time when energy saving methods seem to be at a peak, that we do not hear more about how we can save energy, most importantly fuel, by picking local foods and especially by reducing our meat consumption. Maybe I have not been looking in the right places, but everything I hear about the food I consume has to do with the health factor for my body.
I have a far easier time allowing myself to eat unhealthy because it is only affecting me and my health. I contemplate the packaging of the foods I buy because this affects others besides myself, and the resources we have as whole. I try to be responsible in picking recyclable containers and packages that don’t contain an outrageous amount of material. I guess I’ve always assumed that this was enough. From last week’s lectures I am amazed by how I affect the energy sources of the world because of where my food comes from. This, to me, is a far bigger issue than any of the other aspects of food production. Now that I think about this issue, it’s extremely obvious: the food had to come from somewhere, and the farther away it comes from the more fuels I have in turn used up from our world. Also, the more the food is processed the more fuel I have used as well.
The idea that the average American meal travels over 1,200 miles to get to its destination will definitely affect my everyday food choices. I am surprised that with all the buzz about saving fuel we do not hear more about how we can save resources based on the purchases we make at the grocery store.
Kelsey Sovereign
Lecture response Sept 17
The waste issue that Trumpey discussed was perhaps the most interesting part of the lecture for me, primarily because of the water usage, methane, and solid waste potential energy. For industrial designers, finding ways to reduce or reuse waste usually results in positive capital for the companies involved, while benefiting the environment. Assuming that CAFO operations are not likely to go away anytime soon, we should look at reduction and reuse. Methane is a natural resource that can be captured and sold as fuel. The same goes for manure. In chicken / egg farms, nitrates from chicken waste could possibly be processed to replace or reduce fossil fuels used in the Haber Bosch process. The issue of water use is likely the most technically complex problem a designer would face at a CAFO. Cleanliness, at least at some level, is important for the safety of a CAFO environment, and clean environments are reliant on water. Post-processing of waste water is a possibility, but doesn’t generate income and therefor there is no incentive for business. Any ideas?
Lecture response Sept 22
Well, we talked a lot about farm fishing and the issues that arise from this practice. I was most intrigued about the counter-intuitive nature of needing to hunt smaller fish, and medium sized fish so that the genetically superior large fish can have fuller lives and reproduce. It still doesn't quite make sense to me. Overall, however, it does seem logical that the more we fish larger catch, the fewer large fish there will be to reproduce.
I was pretty disturbed that we can overfish to such an extent that the entire ocean, which is a pretty large place, can have a depletion of fish. I think someone asked Joe this question in lecture: "If we moved from factory fishing to family owned fishing, could we still provide for the fish demands of the world". Joe responded affirmatively. I don't see how that can be true, though. If the world is consuming fish at the rate that we are fishing the oceans, won't we still be hunting as many fish even if we switch to small family fisheries? This is another example of Joe's tendency to tell us we're all screwed, and then not follow up with how we can possibly go about solving the problem.
Fritz Haber won the Nobel Prize in 1920 for agriculture. He discovered the process for creating artificial nitrogen fixation. This is a process that fixes natural occurring nitrogen in the soil to be accessible for plants and animals to grow. Haber made this process much faster by articifially controlling the soil to make more nitrogen available, and thus creating a faster growth rate. This is added to fertilizer most commonly. Professor Trumpey said that 2/5 of our population would not exist if Haber had not made this discovery, but it is difficult for me to understand this as a good thing. Our population is so exponentially larger than any time in history, which cannot be a natural occurrence. While 2/5 of the population would not exist, do you think that is perhaps what would be natural? This is an example of technology interfering with nautral processes in which we can never turn away from. Now that we have this techonology, it will always be used or more than half of the population would die off, because there is not enough naturally occurring nitrogen in the world. Or, at least, it isn’t accessible. A very big positive to this discovery, however, is that we are able to use nitrogen without having to mine the Nitrogen deposits in Chile.
I am satisfied and thrilled with your responses... well Charles, I don't think Professor Trumpey has an intention to advert your attention, but in truth we must all make changes... big ones. Things will collapse. Things will change, as they always do.
We cannot continue to treat the earth as a resource that will give and give and give...
what about giving back? Is fish farming a real way to give back? No. It is a way to supply our "needs"... sustainable at times yes, but not "the answer".
Dream on artists,
dream on.
It frustrated me how choosing something organic may in fact not even be organic. Free range chickens are given the opportunity to go outside but do not because it is not what they are use to. They have access to a pasture but the food and where they are raised is indoors in a cramped environment. They have no reason to venture outside.
The Force Molten issue was another fact that surprised me. I did not know how inhumane people could be. I am not a fan of McDonalds but I am glad that Force Molten is not practiced anymore. People who eat chickens are eating sick chickens which cannot be good for ones health. It does not seem healthy to consume a sick chicken, but I wonder if it is healthy to consume a chicken born indoors in a crammed environment. These chickens could be scarred or stressed. Do their hormone levels affect ours?
Another issue, which i looked into more is the use of the growth hormone, rBGH. I was truly disgusted by the fact that I have consumed milk from cows that were given this growth hormone. Is it really necessary to pump up the cows with hormones in order for them to grow faster? When I read what I was actually drinking I stopped drinking milk. Ever since I learned about rBGH I have been drinking soy milk, rice milk or almond milk. I want to do a little more research to learn about those three types or milk alternatives and see which is best for my health. I want to keep learning about this issue, finding products that are humane and environmentally conscious.
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