A Moment On Vegetarianism

I was accused this past weekend of being a vegetarian. The nerve! I immediately rebuked this statement, citing as example the eggs I had just ordered to eat for the very meal we were at. Please keep in mind that I wasn't denying the accusation out of a fear of being seen as a weak person, it was out of complete admiration and respect for true vegetarians.

I find it loathsome that there are people who insist they are vegetarian but still include things in their diet such as chicken and fish. The entire gamut of what humans can eat must either be grown or born, and these two categories are quite distinct. A true vegetarian ignores the second category completely and does not have the lissome willpower to be selective among its contents. I have no fundamental problem with what a person chooses to eat and I would never cast judgment upon them for that. The problem I have is when that person labels himself as something he most assuredly is not, and I have an even bigger problem when that person vehemently defends their incorrectly self-appointed status. As for my status, I consider myself a perfect omnivore. I will eat absolutely anything that I kill myself.

Imagine a scenario where, for the sake of argument, everybody had to raise, nurture, and kill animals themselves in order to eat. (I will preemptively avoid an impractical counter-point by saying that this fictional scenario begins tomorrow.) Do you truly believe that the average person who has been raised in a culture that encourages personal comfort would be able to kill without it being a necessity for survival? Sincerely doubtful. I admit that given a life or death situation, even I would be able to commit murder; but this is genuinely not the case. Thankfully, there are other options at my disposal that don't burden my conscience. The collective intelligence of our society has not yet been able to give significant value to the actual ethics of our lives, and this is apparent in nearly every aspect of our culture. We still demand bigger and faster every things, we pollute with the ferocity of a coal-powered lion, and we compromise true art with excess.

The biggest reason that I have chosen to significantly decrease the amount of meat that I consume is a concern for the environment. In North America, more than 60% of the wheat, corn, and grain we grow is used to feed farmed animals; of that food, most of it goes to keep the animal alive rather than actually making it grow. Further, it takes seven times as much land and resources to raise a farmed animal than it does to make the equivalent amount of food in fruits and vegetables. Allow me to present another sadly implausible scenario: if everybody on our planet immediately became vegetarian overnight, we would have enough food to feed us all.

You may want to tell me that you have the right to eat meat. While I agree that you certainly do have the right to eat meat, you also have the ability not to.

Biodiesel and Global Warming

For the last year or so I've been thinking that I would be driving with a calmer conscience if I had a smaller, more efficient vehicle that used a biodiesel-fueled engine. However, I have recently come across some information that, while being perfectly obvious, never quite occurred to me. Biodiesel is derived from biological sources such as vegetable oils and grains that could be otherwise used as food. And seeing as how the majority of people on this planet are already either starving or malnourished, maybe using the fuels that our bodies need isn't the most viable solution to the energy crisis.

If there is any pyrrhic victory that can arise from the global warming situation, it may be in food supply. Some scientists believe that the over-abundance of carbon dioxide in the air as well as the rising global temperature may actually help vegetation. A warmer northern climate would extend the growing season, which would allow more abundant crops to be harvested. Further, plants can be genetically altered to have the same drought-resistance that a cactus has. This would mean that if we experienced desert conditions in Alberta, our crops would not suffer. (Although the economics that tie themselves to this possibility create the impossibility itself.)

It is important to note, however, that with global warming, the inherent danger is not a more comfortable temperature; rather, it is the unpredictability of escalating dangerous weather patterns. Harvesting a massive crop of wheat will still be quite difficult during a tornado or hail storm, no matter how big an umbrella you have.

Sometimes I think that the same people who doubt the existence of global warming are of the same lineage as those who doubted the existence of gravity. And we all know where those same people are today... floating in the clouds somewhere.