Comments on Agriculture and Animals

If any members of your group are interested in discussing this, I would be glad to participate.

I would encourage people to continue this discussion on the discussion board.

Karen

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I enjoyed reading about the dream world that your group envisions for our future. I would like to live in it for a year or so to see if it truly will give us what you are hoping for. You might want to set up a "representative city" for people to live in to experience the ideas so as to get backing and coverage of what you are doing. The number of "Laws" which will be required in order to accomplish your goals will be quite high, so there had better be an even greater number of existing laws which actually get repealed for the betterment of society. We do not need more government, we need less but better government.

There are many goods, services and resources that cannot be exclusively owned, and therefore cannot be sold or provided to individuals for profit. Markets therefore will not provide or preserve them. Many of these resources may be essential to human survival (e.g. the ozone layer, global climate stability). Non-market institutions must provide or protect them, and at this point there are few alternatives besides government.

In addition, it seems that the closer we are to the carrrying capacity of a system, the more laws are needed for humans to sustainably inhabit that system. As an example, spaceships and sailing ships operate under dictactorships (though this was more true in the past, when people at sea could not easily be rescued.) The more sustainable we make our system, and larger the buffer zone from critical ecological thresholds we maintain, the less 'government' we need. As you point out, new laws will be required to attain our envisioned society, but I think I can speak for the ESDA network when I say we believe that implementing those laws now will allow far more freedom in 2100 than would otherwise be the case.

Lastly, you do not make much mention of food supply other than the local growing and being good to the earth principles. You then have this phrase of "We will be well on the way in our transition to the 'carbohydrate' economy." Which worries me a bit. As a board certified clinical nutritionist, Naturopath, and the Vice president of the world respected Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, I would need to know more about food sources. If you have been misled into believing that vegetarianism is a healthy diet and that we should no longer be using animal proteins for health, then the society will not last past 2-4 generations. If on the other hand you would simply want us to have more respect, such as the native peoples and indians have always had, I am with you. No native tribal population shuns animal foods, they simply respect them, allow them to raise themselves in a healthy natural manner, and ask for natures permission before killing one.

We used carbohydrate economy as a play on hydrocarbon economy. We did not mean we will survive on carbohydrates for nutrition, but only that they will used as material building blocks of our infrastructure. There was certainly no group consensus on a vegetarian future.

Sincerely, David

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This is a great work in progress!

It correlates to much of my own vision. Some of my own thoughts:

Quoted in Worldviews--"A steady state economy does not mean an end to development, it simply means that limit the input of raw materials into our economic system and their inevitable return to the ecosystem as waste to a level compatible with the ecological constraints imposed by a finite planet with finite resources." I felt waste was better addressed in Industry--I suggest incorporating in Worldviews the ideas (many thanks to William McDonough for articulating this so well):

We have moved to model nature--there is no such thing as waste; everything becomes food. In our manufacturing, we create goods that are wholly recyclable or wholly compostable, and all become inputs for remanufacture or growing. The manufacturing process itself uses no or creates no substances known or suspected to be carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic or bioaccumulative, or disruptive to human or animal endocrine systems.

I think McDonough views are generally accepted as critical to a steady state economy. I would add that things should be built to last, and re-use is better than recycling. For more comments on waste, see ????

In Built Capital:

"There will simply not be enough land within or nearby most cities to provide all the agricultural production and raw materials for manufacture they require, and much of this must still be shipped in."

Note--Havana, Cuba, produces 50% of its food in urban rooftop and small lot gardens. Consider moving from "much" to "some" being shipped in.

Energy/New Construction:

People will have remembered how to build in harmony with the sun and climate. No more huge West-facing windows burdening summer air conditioning units, etc. In addition to photovoltaics, the sun's thermal energy will be tapped for water and space heating. Appliances will feature super-efficiency and no more ghost loads. (The less energy required by a building in the first place, the fewer resources go into solar panels to power it.)

Finally, these were obliquely referenced in several places, but I suggest articulating:

Natural waterways (a la Curitiba) and wildlife habitat and corridors are the priority for preservation as open space and restoration in built areas.

Food production, as well as becoming more local, no longer requires petrochemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and genetic engineering. Organic, sustainable agriculture with integrated pest management improves ecosystem health and soil and water retention, and provides healthier, more nutritious food. Growing diverse varieties, and choosing native and other crops suited to the local conditions are encouraged.

We were seriously constrained by time in developing this vision. I think your suggestions fit right in.

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Thank you for your great work in assembling a vision statement on developing a desirable and sustainable world. The statement resonated with me, and I sincerely hope that you will be able to convey this vision in a convincing way to politicians, business people and others who have a stake in our future world. I have not yet had a chance to read the entire work thus far, so I don't know if this area has been specifically covered or not. If not, I would like to suggest the inclusion of "food animals" and factory farming as a point of discussion. As you probably are aware, factory-style farming has become ubiquitous in the US. Factory farming is not only horribly cruel to the animals, but produces pollution and negative health effects. The run-off from high concentrations of manure create high levels of nitrogen in our waterways, killing wildlife and polluting drinking water. Factory farming severely confines large numbers of animals in concrete buildings, feeds animals foods which are genetically altered and unsuitable to their natural diets (e.g., vegetarian animals are often made to become cannibals when the carcasses of dead animals are ground up and mixed into their foods, grazing animals are not allowed to graze, etc.). Factory farms typically inject animals with growth hormones to produce more in a shorter period of time. These practices, in turn, lead to sick animals which then require the regular administration of antibiotics. Humans, through consumption of animal products and meat, then develop a host of illnesses and diseases which result in the loss of human potential, elevated health care costs, and the ever increasing need for drugs and technologies to treat these ailments. (For example, the industry of food irradiation has developed because of many of the practices previously mentioned.) I envision a future where factory farms do not exist, where animals would graze in open pastures, breed naturally, be cared for by families rather than companies, and where eating meat would become a special event--e.g., on holidays. While I may be seen as somewhat extreme in my last hope, I do not think that a future which includes the large scale consumption of meat we have today is a sustainable one. We simply will not have the land to raise large numbers of animals for food. While I am no expert on this subject, I do have a strong interest in health and animal protection. If you would like more detailed information on the practices of factory farms and/or the health effects of current farm practices, I'd be happy to supply the names of several organizations which research and document these things. Thank you for taking the time to read my comments.

Sincerely, Kathryn

All good points.

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Here's some feedback on the vision: In the desert, we do indeed have "green spaces" whether we choose to xeriscape them or not is another matter entirely. Also, do not forget the power of COMMUNITY GARDENS, Community Supported Agriculture projects and small farms to help meet the food needs of each community - people need to remember the skills of growing their own food, and in community there is a great deal of sharing to be done in that arena.

Again, good points.

And alternative and renewable energies are an essential component of sustainability as well..

Thank you for articulating a positive vision of the future.

peace, Susan

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I subscribe to Rachel's newsletter and am interested in a clean environment and responsible companies that will not produce and market harmful [goods] to humans and animal life or vegetation pesticides or additives. Thanks. Frances I majored in economics in college (Grinnell) and find all of this extremely interesting and exciting. I do hope that the project will address, specifically and intentionally, the issue of animal exploitation for food, clothing, and so on. A just society must not be a slave society, and that means that raising animals for food, clothing, or research must go. Tolstoy said that "Vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism." Gandhi declared that "the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being." Einstein, Schweitzer, Alice Walker, Dick Gregory, and so many others have declared the need for human compassion for other species, and have stated, explicitly, that this means we don't eat them.

Cheers, Bruce

I would certainly agree that the issues you present should be discussed. However, our goal with this vision is to find common ground that everyone agrees on (though as I've said elsewhere, this will eventually require a broader range of views than were present at our first conference, presumably leading to a narrower vison.) It is quite possible that a truly representative group of Americans might produce a vision that would not ensure sustainability, but it could provide a shared base-line much closer to that goal than the status quo. I know many people who do not share your views (see comments above), and question whether they would find their way into a broad consensus. In many cases meat consumption demands far more resources than vegetarianism (though this is not true for arctic cultures, for example), which means that people with your views will play an important role in achieving a sustainable and desirable future.