Bicycling wastes gas ?
I found this interesting and thought I would pass it on. I never considered the fact that what and how I eat had this much of an impact on anything more than my own health and well being. Chalk one up for the Veggiemonster :)
http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/energy.html
http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/energy.html
Views: 819
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Andrea Bolks on
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I'll totally look into what you are saying...
Dr. Doom said:What are the "absurd, demonstrably false claims" made in this article?
He seems to think the amount of energy required to raise a pound of meat relative to that required to raise a pound of potatoes is about ten times higher than it is, and his dodgy claims follow on that.
Junk science isn't okay just because it's done in the name of something you (and I!) agree with.
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Yes, that is why I used cows as an example in feedlots vs free-range. And you said that less food would have to be produced if the animal was "free range," obviously not for a "free range chicken."
And I would really argue that an animal "eating off the land" is really taking resources away from what nature would use it for. There is only so much energy in an ecosystem, and there for degrading that land to some condition. I don’t necessarily think more land being used to an extent of being degraded is better than a small amount of land vastly degraded. Although- we as Americans have taken this to the extreme with our meat consumption… and now we use huge amounts of land with a high degree of degradation in order to feed all us meat lovers (lots of corn fields).
I'm just saying, humane does not equal environmentally friendly.
Dr. Doom said:"Free range" is a marketing gimmick. Chickens, for example, who are raised in a building the size of several football fields are considered free range so long as that building has one point of entry into a fenced in open area. If the entry point is about the size of a chicken, and if the open area is about the size of the average Hyde Park lawn, that still qualifies.
If you have to eat meat, it really is best for any number of reasons to get it from local farmers. Once your operation reaches the scale necessary to supply a place like Whole Foods, it's really difficult to give animals the kind of treatment that would be considered humane anywhere outside the meat industry.
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Permalink Reply by Duppie on
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Actually it can. The micro organisms in soil have a remarkable capability to absorb animal waste products and prevent these waste products from reaching the ground water. Not sure about the maximum rate of cowpatties/square foot, but pasture raised cows are generally not considered a threat to the local water quality.
Of course CAFOs are a different story. They are a major source of groundwater pollution. The manure is kept in lagoons, which regularly leak waste in the nearby soil.
Can I suggest you read ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ by Michael Pollan, if you haven’t already that is? I found it to be a well researched, evenhanded book discussing the issues surrounding industrial agriculture and industrial farming (including energy usage). And don’t worry: it is not a backhanded attempt to convert you to the meat eating masses ;)
Andrea Bolks said:Dilution does not cure pollution…
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Permalink Reply by Tank-Ridin' Ryan on
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I've stopped doing downtown Mass, but if we can start throwing fake blood on motorists, pedestrians, and of course omnivores(myself included), I just might change my mind. Halloween is coming up after all. :)
On serious note, awareness isn't worth a damn thing if people don't genuinely care. I'm sure CCM to a lot of people downtown is just a monthly spectacle at best. Same thing with PETA, to most, they're just a gross-out spectacle. And they harm any actual message they may have by engaging people's gag reflex instead of people's brains.
Andrea Bolks said:In my mind PETA is like the Critical Mass approach to the humane treatment of animals- make a large visibale activist statement. This, to me, even if they are not doing everything in the correct ways, gets peoples attention, and having public awarness about an issue is HUGE and makes people think about it.
But I think this strays from the point of the article, the humane treatment of animals for meat that is. I think the point is really to think about what you eat in the terms of how much fuel it takes to make you that food, since bikers are all about not using gas :)
Duppie said:Organizations like PETA are as much a joke as the major meat producer trade organizations. PETA has yet to evolve beyond their simplistic message with actions designed more for their shock value than to inform the consumer about the real issues and solutions.
The meat producing industry on the other hand has, through their trade organizations and intensive lobbying, convinced the US government that their abominable standards of producing meat are to be considered safe, and humane.
The reality is that most food animals would not exist without humans raising them as food. Cows, pigs, chickens, etc have been raised for food for thousands of years and if we would stop raising them they would diminish as a species, because there simply is no need for them. From a darwinistic perspective humans raising animals for food has made these animals hugely successful.
Of course the quality of life of individual animals has decreased significantly over the last five decades or so. CAFOs, industrial chicken production, etc. are designed for the lowest cost, not with the animals welfare in mind.
So in my mind the solution lies in raising animals in humane conditions and then use them as food. Let the pigs express their piggyness while they live. It would lower the energy input required to produce the meat, support small farmers, keep rural communities alive, and be beneficial for the environment as compared to industrial farming. Yes, it raises the price of meat, but that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. It’s not like we are starving.
I do see signs that at least some consumers are shifting their behavior in that direction. The explosion of farmers markets in the last few years is one sign, the increasing numbers of farmers that deliver directly consumer another.
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What would 'nature' use the land for? Animals do exist in nature as well, probably not in the population density that humanity has had a hand in, but wild animals still exist and do 'eat off the land'.
Andrea Bolks said:And I would really argue that an animal "eating off the land" is really taking resources away from what nature would use it for. There is only so much energy in an ecosystem, and there for degrading that land to some condition. I don’t necessarily think more land being used to an extent of being degraded is better than a small amount of land vastly degraded. Although- we as Americans have taken this to the extreme with our meat consumption… and now we use huge amounts of land with a high degree of degradation in order to feed all us meat lovers (lots of corn fields).
I'm just saying, humane does not equal environmentally friendly.
Dr. Doom said:"Free range" is a marketing gimmick. Chickens, for example, who are raised in a building the size of several football fields are considered free range so long as that building has one point of entry into a fenced in open area. If the entry point is about the size of a chicken, and if the open area is about the size of the average Hyde Park lawn, that still qualifies.
If you have to eat meat, it really is best for any number of reasons to get it from local farmers. Once your operation reaches the scale necessary to supply a place like Whole Foods, it's really difficult to give animals the kind of treatment that would be considered humane anywhere outside the meat industry.
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Permalink Reply by nik was here on
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never mind the oil for our tires, the ships brining us the tires on our bikes, the production cost to transport resources, manipulate and deliver the products we use in every aspect of our life... yes, it is the meat bringing us down...
I appreciate the focus of the article, but I think the problems are a lot grander than some cows eating our harvest. And when I get home tonight from my commute, I just might have a steak, with a side of steak.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Perz on
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This somewhat deviates from the topic at hand, but I've never been one to allow perfectly good, panic-inducing hyperbole go to waste. Please excuse me as I inject this into the conversation...
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Damn that kid is fat!
Really - beef = heroin?
I wonder what the producers of that video think of things like Pop-Tarts and the rest of the we've-processed-out-anything-your-body-could-process line of crap out there.
"Is there meat in Fruit Rollups?"
"No?"
"APPROVED!"
Michael Perz said:This somewhat deviates from the topic at hand, but I've never been one to allow perfectly good, panic-inducing hyperbole go to waste. Please excuse me as I inject this into the conversation...
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Thank you, I have read the ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma.’ :)
This is what I do for a living, I work in the environmental side of water. And nonsource pollution is a huge problem. I do not believe that "Pasture raised cows are generally not considered a threat to the local water quality" is true... as I have been involved in both the electroshocking of fish to determine biological integrity well as water quality in the streams and rivers next to pastures and through farms. Besides, we are JUST starting to get water quality data and look at the conditions of our nation’s streams and rivers! And what we are finding is sad... freshwater ecosystems in horrible shape.
And yes, while CAFO's are a substantial source of pollution they are a point source, which I believe at least has a greater potential to be controlled.... over that many animals being spread across the land....which would be a disaster. I think we are already far beyond the “cowpatties/square foot” not being harmful to water quality because of all the land we are already using, and what little we have left for resilient ecosystems.
We can't spread that many animals across the land to feed Americans like they eat today without compromising room to grow food (that feeds them), natural areas, or human development in a space that would have huge environmental effects. I would argue that how much land is already altered by humans is staggering and there really isn’t enough room left, not enough left to keep many species alive. Thus you have the long list of dangered and threatened species, and why most of them are there- habitat loss. We haven’t left enough of the surface places these species can make use of. That is what I see the problem with thinking you can just spread out these animals and everything will be fine.
It's sad. If we could just eat so much less meat all together this would not be such an issue. Nor would all the other issues that go along with this meat like fertilizer pollution from the corn our cows are feed.
The most convincing argument I have seen on low meat consumption is through this documentary- PBS, Frontline: Poisoned Waters (although low meat consumption is not the whole point of the documentary- it is the non-bull crap best laid out argument I have seen!) And this does really dive into pollution from CAFO’s (which is horrible, don’t get me wrong!). It is soooo good. I am a dork, and love this sort of thing, but I think this is one of the most interesting things I have watched! I highly recommend it :)
Also just upon a google search of Free Range Beef
"Is a Truly Free-Range World Possible?
The U.S. animal agribusiness industry currently confines and slaughters more than ten billion land animals each year, the overwhelming majority of whom live intensively confined on factory farms where many cannot even turn around or fully stretch their limbs. Would it be possible to raise ten billion animals without intensive confinement? Probably not.
If intensive confinement operations were banned, it's highly unlikely producers could supply an entire nation of 300 million meat-, egg-, and dairy consumers with enough animal products to sustain the typical American diet. So, without even considering the ethical problems inherent in raising and slaughtering animals for food, from a practical perspective, completely humane farming and slaughtering methods aren't possible."
from http://www.cok.net/lit/freerange.php
So I am not the only one that has though about this before...
Duppie said:Actually it can. The micro organisms in soil have a remarkable capability to absorb animal waste products and prevent these waste products from reaching the ground water. Not sure about the maximum rate of cowpatties/square foot, but pasture raised cows are generally not considered a threat to the local water quality.
Of course CAFOs are a different story. They are a major source of groundwater pollution. The manure is kept in lagoons, which regularly leak waste in the nearby soil.
Can I suggest you read ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ by Michael Pollan, if you haven’t already that is? I found it to be a well researched, evenhanded book discussing the issues surrounding industrial agriculture and industrial farming (including energy usage). And don’t worry: it is not a backhanded attempt to convert you to the meat eating masses ;)
Andrea Bolks said:Dilution does not cure pollution…
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"Nature" is all about the flow of energy and the life forms that make up ecosystems within in. Because a cow is eating the grass it means another animals can't eat that grass… if it takes the niche of another animal then it is in compaction with that animal for its recourses. That is exactly the problem, there is not enough land, non depredated and human influenced land, for ecosystems to remain in any kind of a resilient thriving ecosystems. And these ecosystems play huge roles in what is actually keeping the earth in a state that humans can inhabit it- called ecosystems services.
EPA “Ecosystem services are the many life-sustaining benefits we receive from nature--clean air and water, fertile soil for crop production, pollination, and flood control. These ecosystem services are important to our health and well-being, yet they are limited and often taken for granted as being free.”
So yes, in a place where cattle are being raised those cattle affect the ecosystem, which in turn support the earth.
Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:What would 'nature' use the land for? Animals do exist in nature as well, probably not in the population density that humanity has had a hand in, but wild animals still exist and do 'eat off the land'.
Andrea Bolks said:And I would really argue that an animal "eating off the land" is really taking resources away from what nature would use it for. There is only so much energy in an ecosystem, and there for degrading that land to some condition. I don’t necessarily think more land being used to an extent of being degraded is better than a small amount of land vastly degraded. Although- we as Americans have taken this to the extreme with our meat consumption… and now we use huge amounts of land with a high degree of degradation in order to feed all us meat lovers (lots of corn fields).
I'm just saying, humane does not equal environmentally friendly.
Dr. Doom said:"Free range" is a marketing gimmick. Chickens, for example, who are raised in a building the size of several football fields are considered free range so long as that building has one point of entry into a fenced in open area. If the entry point is about the size of a chicken, and if the open area is about the size of the average Hyde Park lawn, that still qualifies.
If you have to eat meat, it really is best for any number of reasons to get it from local farmers. Once your operation reaches the scale necessary to supply a place like Whole Foods, it's really difficult to give animals the kind of treatment that would be considered humane anywhere outside the meat industry.
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Check out FRONTLINE: poisoned waters | PBS documentary!
And fact- it takes a LOT MORE food to feed the cows to feed than if we just ate lower on the food chain most of the time. I would argue it is one of the greatest problems, and most environmentally significant problems... because all those field of corn and all the fresh water (which we are running out of) and all the fertilizer (which is polluting our waters) and all those pesticides, herbicides and fuel it takes to grow that corn for that steak... had enormous and widespread environmental impacts.
If you want to learn about environmental issues, some of the best information explained in normal terms:
http://www.epa.gov/epahome/learn.htm
it’s amazing…
"Po
nik was here said:never mind the oil for our tires, the ships brining us the tires on our bikes, the production cost to transport resources, manipulate and deliver the products we use in every aspect of our life... yes, it is the meat bringing us down...
I appreciate the focus of the article, but I think the problems are a lot grander than some cows eating our harvest. And when I get home tonight from my commute, I just might have a steak, with a side of steak.
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It takes a LOT MORE food to feed the cows to feed than if we just ate lower on the food chain most of the time. I would argue it is one of the greatest problems, and most environmentally significant problems... because all those field of corn and all the fresh water (which we are running out of) and all the fertilizer (which is polluting our waters) and all those pesticides, herbicides and fuel it takes to grow that corn for that steak... had enormous and widespread environmental impacts.
If you want to learn about environmental issues, and really a lot about what agriculture does to water:
http://cfpub.epa.gov/watertrain/index.cfmit’s amazing…
also: Check out FRONTLINE: poisoned waters | PBS documentary!
nik was here said:never mind the oil for our tires, the ships brining us the tires on our bikes, the production cost to transport resources, manipulate and deliver the products we use in every aspect of our life... yes, it is the meat bringing us down...
I appreciate the focus of the article, but I think the problems are a lot grander than some cows eating our harvest. And when I get home tonight from my commute, I just might have a steak, with a side of steak.
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