Change Our Malignant Tradition
BY: MAYESVARA DASA
May 9, OHAI, CALIFORNIA (SUN) — How our eating is impacting the environment.
Years ago the hippies chanted, "Get back to the earth" and advocated organic gardening. Now CEOs and mainstream Americans patronize "Health Food" stores. The environment is a major concern and many are now reevaluating "modern life." Recycling and wholesome foods have become a public religion.
Modem communications, international travel, instant computer resources, and the FAX machine have brought people closer together. Political barriers have fallen and national customs have mixed. For the politically suppressed, timely news has been the catalyst for revolution.
With the unveiling of propaganda people have demanded changes. But change requires personal sacrifice. Vaclav Havel and Nelson Mandela demonstrated this dramatically. From within a prison they redirected the destiny of their nation.
We are fortunate to live in a laud where communism and apartheid do not exist, however, we are not free from propaganda or commercial manipulation. We may appear physically free, but many Westerners are enslaved to the comforts that come at the cost of precious resources like clean air and water.
America is home for six percent of the world’s population but we consume over 33 percent of the available energy on the plane! That’s more energy every year than all the countries of Western Europe combined even though their collective population exceeds our by 75 percent Yet sadly enough, garbage keeps piling up in landfills and cities get denser. Meanwhile we bask in thermostatically controlled mineral baths and contrive how to afford more junk from Madison Avenue. Even the most decadent consumer knows time is running out, but who is ready to give something up?
The news media has brought us to a point of frenzy. We have learned about everything from the greenhouse effect to genetic engineering. Consequently the interest in recycling, animal rights, no-growth politics, organic gardening, alternative medicine, vegetarian eating, water conservation, and new-age philosophy has skyrocketed.
While other nations scramble for civil rights, Americans scramble to redirect an environmentally reckless standard of living.
But we must be wise.
If we respond with the same old scientific methods that created the mess, how can we expect anything to improve? Many have realized that the Newtonian school of thought will never produce the type of solution we need. A mathematical formula cannot magically make the smog disappear or revive extinct animals. Band-aid attempts to prevent the impending ecological collapse fall short and simply underscore the fact that a new outlook is required.
We begin by first recognizing that we can't exploit everything in sight. We must agree on fundamentals, otherwise how can we ever expect to agree on the solutions required to solve the big problems?
In this regard many have reexamined their own position. Smoking is now scorned even though it was OK 20 years ago. Perhaps two cars in every driveway and a chicken in every pot is not such a good idea? Now there are strict smog laws and animal rights. Are pollution laws, smoking restrictions and vegetarian diets quackery or relevant and thoughtful?
The public has supported control of pollution and smoking, but what about the rising campaign to stop eating meat? Does the public really understand this issue or is it slumbering? Please consider how long we were duped by the insidious advertising of cigarettes! Just see how many years of pain, death and national expense we had to suffer before we took action!
How long will it be before middle class American realize the link between the food on their plate and the environment they wish to preserve?
The ugly truth is that eating livestock for nourishment is a terribly inefficient form of energy conservation. The atrocity is well hidden by corporate meat producers for a good reason.
Believe it or not, the prime reason for cutting down the rain forests is the insatiable appetite Americans have for fast-food hamburgers! A fast-food environmentalist is like a gasoline-drenched firefighter! Both of them contribute to the very problem they wish to eliminate and appear foolish to the informed.
Harsh words? Yes… but true. Indeed, so direct is the relationship between meat production and deforestation that Cornell economist David Fields estimated that for every person who switches to a pure vegetarian diet an acre of trees is spared every year!
Water is another vital resource being squandered away in the production of meat. How many hamburger eaters are conscious of the fact that it takes over 625 gallons of water to produce their ¼-pounder?
That’s enough water to service all the combined household needs of an average family for a week. The land we depend on for our food is also shamelessly raped to product the phenomenal amount of grain needed to feed cattle.
According to the New York Times over 80 percent of the corn and oats we grow in America go solely to feeding livestock. The USDA has concluded that this excessive burden on the topsoil is responsible for 85 percent of the rapid soil depletion that will eventually transform our Midwest farms into barren wasteland.
The problems we currently face with pollution, housing shortages and a runaway inflation are insignificant in relation to what the future holds if we continue to push the soil with chemically-driven high yields. Try to imagine what our grandchildren will have to pay for food when the nutrients in the land are so depleted a 3inch carrot is considered average and tomatoes are a luxury!
Studies indicate that 76 percent of Americans call themselves concerned environmentalists but what does that really mean? If we are serious about changing our fate we must awaken to the magnitude of the problem.
Slick advertising manipulates subtle social pressures and influences our judgment. To become a vegetarian is a small adjustment in relation to the tremendous benefit it provides. That’s why it’s hard to understand why 72 percent of the so-called environmentalists resist it. Perhaps they mistakenly feel it is an arduous sacrifice not to eat animals? But that’s what many smokers said about cigarettes until they made a genuine effort to quit. It seems that it’s all really just a matter of conviction.
Nobody really knows what the future holds, but it’s logical to assume that the outcome is dependent on the willpower of the people today.
In a lot of ways it’s easier to just give a tithing to the clergy then to change a bad habit. But we all know that real piety begins with introspection ant that’s what we need to turn things around. IF we can’t muster some conviction now then we shouldn’t be surprised what the hellish conditions yet to unfold will be.
Show-bottle sentiments are as useless as the words of a thief who pleads he was only borrowing the goods. If we plunder the earth faster than it can be replenished then we deprive other generations of property they are entitled to.
We must see nature as a borrowed commodity. Even the blood in our veins is made up of borrowed molecules. If we started to consider everything as on lone then we would all be much better off for it.
