alanjjohnstone
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First of all – i am not a vegetarian. I recognise the logic of their case
And yes i am making links to the socialist case. This is not about some 19th-century health fad which i think Morris was criticising as i would if i was suggesting the Party supported macrobiotic diets or fruitarianism or whatever is the current fashion.
There was no exaggerations and i have pointed the relevance of my comment out to Matt. And quoting a quote in a Lancet article is scarcely an exaggeration either.
To say that the adulteration of our food for profit and the marketing of known carcinogenics is not part of the socialist case for a better society is remarkable.
The food industry has a hefty meat lobby and is as influential on policies as the fossil fuel industry in thwarting climate change mitigation. To highlight its complicity is part of our condemnation of capitalism
How a large number of our fellow-workers suffer from the effects of their working conditions determined by the profit system surely is a concern for any socialist about the welfare of his or her fellow-workers.
As for being called out, so be it…
That is still a broad aspect, Bijou..can you narrow it down a bit more by suggesting the priority that should be concentrated on.
“I do not think a meat, vegan/vegitarian diet should be something to overly concern the party”
Malcolm, out of interest what should we focus our message on?
We can agree that in socialism many things will be different, Matt.
We don’t wait for socialism to end war, we go on record to oppose it now and explain why socialism will end it. Industrial-level animal husbandry is a cruel barbaric form of food production to be condemned now.
If someone wants to rear a pig in the back-yard, so be it. He or she has the task of slaughtering and butchering the animal. I’ve listened to the squeals of distressed pigs being killed coming from neighbours. It is not a pleasant sound. They say Munch’s “The Scream” was inspired by the artist being within ear-shot of an abattoir as well as a near-by asylum.
The European Court of Auditors (ECA) reveals, with economic interests often trumping welfare rules. “Our audit and other reports show it’s difficult to introduce improvements on intensive farms and enforce laws,” Janusz Wojciechowski, the ECA member responsible for the report, told the Guardian. “In intensive farming systems the risk for animal welfare is increased. When there are 100,000 pigs it is very difficult to control. Small farms are easier places to achieve high animal welfare standards.” Wojciechowski said he believed the words of Mahatma Gandhi. “That the greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I would say the greatness of the EU could also be judged on this.”
Slaughterhouses can quicken their line speeds and process more animals by skipping stunning – the part of the slaughter process which renders the animal unconscious and therefore unable to feel the actual killing.
A significant number of the EU’s farms are also excluded from controls because they are too small: the report estimated that as many as 40% of farms fall outside the EU’s remit. Another control loophole noted in the report is the issue of ‘landless farms’ – these are often intensive pig farms, which do not use agricultural land and therefore do not benefit from Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies, setting them free from related controls and fines.
If we look at the US, pigs are already slaughtered at an astonishing rate of approximately 1,100 per hour. With new rules, those speeds could reach up to 1,300 or even 1,500 pigs per hour. The US has led the world in large-scale farming, pioneering the use of intensive livestock rearing in hog farms, cattle sheds and sheep pens. There are now more than 50,000 facilities in the US classified as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) Globally, CAFOs account for 72% of poultry, 42% of egg, and 55% of pork production.
In 2000, there were an estimated 15 billion livestock in the world, according to the Worldwatch Institute. By last year, that had risen to about 24 billion (Strange how the over-populationists seem unconcerned about that increase)
Farms do not consist of green fields but rather vast sheds. The reality is an increasing number of livestock are “zero graze”, spending all or almost all of their time indoors.
Yet another report about the immediate impact climate change is having right now. More bad news
https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/
“Climate-related risks will continue to grow without additional action…neither global efforts to mitigate the causes of climate change nor regional efforts to adapt to the impacts currently approach the scales needed to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades.”
“Regardless of future scenario, additional increases in temperatures across the contiguous United States of at least 2.3°F relative to 1986–2015 are expected by the middle of this century. As a result, recent record-setting hot years are expected to become common in the near future. By late this century, increases of 2.3°–6.7°F are expected under a lower scenario and 5.4°–11.0°F under a higher scenario relative to 1986–2015.
“Sea levels are expected to continue to rise along almost all U.S. coastlines, and by 2100, under the higher scenario, coastal flood heights that today cause major damages to infrastructure would become common during high tides nationwide”
“It is very likely that some impacts, such as the effects of ice sheet disintegration on sea level rise and coastal development, will be irreversible for many thousands of years, and others, such as species extinction, will be permanent,” the report warns
The White House said the report was inaccurate.
This is a discussion list and i question the implications of questioning my contributions.
Am i to assume that party members are restricted in what to discuss because a non-member maybe looking over his or her shoulder.
Has advocating vegetarianism, veganism or flexitarianism or whatever become grounds for bringing Party discipline charges?
I would also be interested to know if there are any complaints that this “pro-vegetarian” propaganda has spread to any of our social media or blogs.
As for the quote Matt, i provided the link in the Guardian. We know what goes on in slaughterhouses and abattoirs is not always what is claimed – that they are humane killing factories.
But i used google and found this
Breaking: Pigs’ Heads Are Bashed in With Metal Pipes in Cambodian Slaughterhouse
https://campaigns.peta2.com/cambodia-pig-slaughterhouse/
Mother Pigs Killed with Hammers – Secret Video Exposing Italian Ham
But the reference i made was not so much the killing technique but the psychological effect on workers – to reinforce an earlier claim of mine that people living in a socialist society will simply not volunteer in the numbers required to maintain the present level of meat-eating when even today the food industry concede they have a labour shortage which isn’t to do with pay-scales but the nature of the work itself. Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” was written to focus on the brutal working conditions but it was turned into a public health issue.
Not sure of your question ALB – is producing a tin of peas equivalent to a tin of spam? In manufacturing the tin can (or plastic), and the transportation to our tables, probably the same. I am sure that raising crops does leave a level of carbon footprint, after all unless it is organic, artificial fertilisers and pesticides are used as well as complicated machinery utilised in raising cereals. But research into hothouse gas emissions in organic farming shows it is beneficial compared to conventional methods.
Processed meat is a specific product and nothing to do with the packaging and is included in WHO health warnings alongside red meat.
One article from our blog citing the health concerns of processed meat UNDER capitalism.
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/03/processed-meat-for-processed-people.html
As for the source of the first claim, i cited a quote in the Lancet article which came from an equally authoritative source a peer reviewed Science journal…I think you are beginning to academic quibble, ALB, when the forum is a more informal exchange of information.
Highlighting the environment and the health impacts of a predominant meat diet i do not see contravening any party rules. I think it is legitimate to speculate what a future socialist society will produce and how it does.
These are not private matters but social questions and when people are empowered they will democratically decide on what is made available. It will be the contrarian minority who will have to resource their personal option, not society or the community. As attitudes on what is considered animal abuse can be expected to change so social acceptance may very well be minimum.
The agriculture and livestock farming form part of the environmental debate, held responsible by overwhelming scientific authority as a contributory element to climate change, we cannot be part of the denialist that global warming is unaffected by our dietary behaviours which is not an individual choice but made socially by the capitalist market and the power of the existing food industry.
We currently take action within the Party on lifestyle choices such as banning smoking in HO. We debate what is on our menu at ADM.
So will socialism allocate resources to tobacco growing? Will opium poppy growing be as big as it is today? Will socialism facilitate self-inflicted body harm? I think socialism will be a rational system and people will make reasoned decisions.
Lancet article
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32971-4/fulltext
The lowest-impact meat causes “much more” environmental impact than the least sustainable forms of plant and vegetable production…So what is a healthy amount of red or processed meat? It’s looking increasingly like the answer, for both the planet and the individual, is very little.
I don’t know if this helps
“Those who desire to gain a clear notion about that must not be satisfied with simply following the example of the old materialist who reduced everything to ponderable atoms. Cosmic matter has not only gravity, but aroma, light and sound – and why not also intelligence? If the smellable, visible and audible is more spiritual than the ponderable – if the comparative is natural, why not also the superlative? Gravity cannot be seen nor light be smelled, nor the intellect be touched, but we may perceive everything which exists. Don’t we perceive our thoughts as physically as we feel pain, light, heat or stones? The prejudice that ponderable objects are more perceptible than the phenomena which are communicated to us through hearing or feeling in general misled the old materialists to their atomistic speculations, misled them to make the ponderable the final cause of things. The conception of matter must be given a more comprehensive meaning. To it belong all phenomena of reality, also our force of thinking. To the idealists who call all natural phenomena “Ideas” or “intellectual phenomena” we say that the natural phenomena are by no means “things in themselves,” but objects of our sensations. Since also the particular phenomenon called subjective feeling, soul or consciousness is an object of sensation, there is no use here splitting up things into subjective and objective. The objective thing can only be perceived subjectively, and vice versa. Both exist and both are of the same kind; body and soul are of the same empirical material. An impartial observer can have no doubt that spiritual material, or, to be more exact, that the phenomenon of our force of thinking is a part of the world and not the reverse. The whole governs the part, cosmic matter the mind, at least in the main, though it is true that mind reacts on cosmic matter. And it is in this sense that I said we must love and honor the material world as the supreme being, as the cause of all causes, as the creator of heaven and earth.
That confession does not in the least prevent us from regarding the intellect as the primus inter pares, as the first object of all the objects in the world.
When Social-Democrats call themselves materialists, they only want to emphasize their view that they refuse to acknowledge anything which pretends to lie beyond human cognition in a metaphysical way. All witchery must go overboard.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/dietzgen/1876/philosophy.htm
Dave Douglass in WW continues his defence of CCS.
It led me to this article
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Don_Valley_Power_Project
So on paper CCS is indeed a viable option for coal
Geo-engineering
<p dir=”ltr”>The idea involves spraying reflective sulphites 20km above the surface of the Earth, into the stratosphere, where the particles reflect sunlight back into space, preventing solar energy from warming our planet further. If effective, the technology, known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), could be used to offset the impacts of our continuing greenhouse gas emissions.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>A new study examining only the process of delivering the sulphites to the stratosphere indicates an effective global effort is possible, and would be relatively inexpensive if purpose-built high-altitude aircraft were manufactured</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>“It would also be remarkably inexpensive, at an average of around $2bn – $2.5bn (£1.5bn – £1.9bn) per year over the first 15 years.”</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/solar-geoengineering-atmospheric-spraying-climate-change-global-warming-a8647206.html</p>
<p dir=”ltr”>The new planes would comprise a fleet of eight in the first year, rising to a fleet of just under 100 within 15 years. The fleet would fly just over 4,000 missions a year in year one, rising to just over 60,000 per year by year 15. The team estimated the total development costs at less than $2bn for the airframe, and a further $350m for modifying existing engines.</p>
<p dir=”ltr”></p>Hiding the facts
Coal is the most damaging of the fossil fuels because of the quantity of carbon dioxide it releases when it’s burned. For years, the increase in the number of Chinese coal-fired power stations has been criticised.
Now environmental groups say China is also backing dozens of coal projects far beyond its borders. Chinese-supported coal projects are underway or planned as far afield as South America, Africa, southeast Asia, and the Balkans.
“You cannot be a world leader in curbing air pollution and at the same time the world’s biggest financier of overseas coal power plants. By having China invest in over 60 countries along the Belt and Road Initiative, it’s perpetuating a source of pollution that has been demonstrated to be harmful not just to the climate but also to economies.”
Doesn’t Dieztgen and Pannekoek consider ideas as material things that are required for establishing socialism?
If so, then it is true, we are waiting for that consciousness to arise. I don’t think anybody believes our minuscule efforts to communicate the socialist case is effective against the overwhelming hegemony of capitalist ideology. Our conviction in workers’ democracy extends to the autonomy of our class to work out the solutions for themselves and take the appropriate actions independently of any intellectual elite.
If i am right in my reading that ideas are part of the material conditions, we will only be able to gauge that material conditions have matured when we encounter a growth in our membership (or whatever socialist organisation comes to represent the socialist idea)
I think i am facing is statistical overload…too many figures and projections.
We do need to simplify the science
The main greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change have all reached record levels, the UN’s meteorology experts have reported.
Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are now far above pre-industrial levels, with no sign of a reversal of the upward trend, a World Meteorological Organization report says.
“The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO<sub>2</sub> was 3-5m years ago, when the temperature was 2-3C warmer and sea level was 10-20 metres higher than now,” said the WMO secretary general, Petteri Taalas. “The science is clear. Without rapid cuts in CO<sub>2</sub> and other greenhouse gases, climate change will have increasingly destructive and irreversible impacts on life on Earth. The window of opportunity for action is almost closed.”
Prof Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia, said, “I am very concerned that all three gases most responsible for climate change are rising upwards unabated. It seems the urgency and extent of the actions needed to address climate change have not sunk in.”
Patricia Espinosa, head of the UN framework convention on climate change, said: “On one hand, greenhouse gas emissions have yet to peak …”
Levels of CO<sub>2</sub> rose to a global average of 405.5 parts per million in the atmosphere in 2017 – almost 50% higher than before the industrial revolution.
Levels of methane, a potent greenhouse gas responsible for about 17% of global warming are now 2.5 times higher than pre-industrial times owing to emissions from cattle, rice paddies and leaks from oil and gas wells.
Nitrous oxide, which also warms the planet and destroys the Earth’s protective ozone layer, is now over 20% higher than pre-industrial levels. About 40% of N2O comes from human activities including soil degradation, fertiliser use and industry.
“CO2 remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years and in the oceans for even longer. There is currently no magic wand to remove all the excess CO2 from the atmosphere,” said WMO deputy secretary-general Elena Manaenkova.
<p dir=”ltr”>IPCC chairman Hoesung Lee said: “That deep and rapid reductions of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will be needed in all sectors of society and the economy. The WMO greenhouse gas bulletin, showing a continuing rising trend in concentrations of greenhouse gases, underlines just how urgent these emissions reductions are.”</p><aside class=”element element-rich-link element–thumbnail element-rich-link–upgraded” data-component=”rich-link” data-link-name=”rich-link-1 | 1″>
</aside>
There is another similar report on our blog that says the worst offenders – Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – would take the world beyond 4C.
(I had reservations that Saudi isn’t really an industrialised country but it could be its oil well gas flaring)
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2018/11/system-change-not-climate-change.html
the source
Perhaps i am the optimistic one after all 😆
I’m with those singularity folk whose emphasis is on robotics, cybernetics, and automation …full luxury communism. I want Artificial Intelligence to do the thinking especially since most accidents are human error.
I actually think those deep green primitivists have lost the battle and are a fringe of the fringe of the fringe. After all, it was the mobile phone and social media that is organising Extinction Rebellion last week and it is technology that will monitor the success or failure of the implementation of their demands.
A couple of Guardian letters from those involved.
Our task is to ensure that this new generation of protesters and resisters do not march down the same road as previous generations. i already highlighted the Green New Deal – believing that the Democratic Party, the party of Wall St will be the salvation and their saviours.
Yup…if they view us as grumpy old men…then that is the role we should adopt. But then Noam Chomsky and Bernie Sanders are no youngsters and yet possesses a youthful audience.
