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“Double Standards” by Polish cartoonist Paweł Kuczyński

Ethical Eating - 2William Grey

Philosophy WiP Research Seminar – 2 September 2016

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Background – "Cowspiracy"

• Cowspiracy claims that animal agriculture is a greater source

of global warming than fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas)

• Cowspiracy cites a 2009 study which claimed that 51% of all

greenhouse gases are produced by animal agriculture

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Eating is an agricultural act

Wendell Berry

It is also an ecological, political, and ethical act

The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to

eat, in the active and passive

William Ralph Inge

Eat food. Not too much. Mainly plants.

Michael Pollan

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Eating raises many issues

• Carnivorous diet involves killing—animal welfare challenge

(Peter Singer; Tom Regan, et al.)

• Modern agriculture requires (often radical) modification of

environments—that raises questions about "rights of nature"

and sustainability (the province of environmental philosophy)

(Traditional agriculture also involved significant

environmental modification)

• All organisms modify their environments to some extent

– However humans are modifying their environment globally on a

scale—and with rapidity and violence—which is without

precedent

– It is comparable to major global cataclysm, e.g. volcanism or

asteroid impact

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• What to have for dinner is a complex problem for omnivores,

and especially for humans

• Eating as widely (and imaginatively) as we do, considering just

about everything nature has to offer, inevitably presents us

with potential foods which can make us sick—or even kill us

• What to eat raises many issues: health and nutrition; the

treatment of animals; sustainability; biodiversity; ecology; fair

trade and global justice

• Sustainablity is diachronic justice—in the case of diet it is

– Meeting the nutritional needs of the present generation without

compromising the ability of future generations to meet their

nutritional needs (adapting Brundtland 1987) 5

• Like all creatures we are part of a food chain or web (a

"fountain of energy"), and our place in the web determines

the sort of creature we are

• Most of the time humans are securely at the top of the food

chain—though, very occasionally, humans end up as someone

else’s dinner

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• Humans are distinctive in that we have developed the power

to radically modify the food chains that we are part of by

means of our powerful (and often disruptive) technologies

– cooking

– hunting with spears, hooks, traps and guns

• drag nets, explosives and cyanide

– agriculture

– food preservation

all these have transformed our relationship with the natural

world—and fostered an explosive expansion of the human

population

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• All life can be seen as a competition among species for the

solar energy captured by photosynthesis in green plants and

stored in complex carbon molecules

• Sanderson et al. estimate up to 83% of the global terrestrial

biosphere is under direct human influence, based on

geographic proxies such as human population density,

settlements, roads, and agriculture

• Another study, by Hannah et al., estimates that about 36% of

the Earth’s bioproductive surface is “entirely dominated by

humans”http://www.eoearth.org/article/Global_human_appropriation_of_net_primary_production_(HANPP)

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• There are three principal food chains that sustain

us today by linking us to the fertility of the earth

and the energy of the sun

– industrial agriculture (Pollen's "nutritional industrial complex")

– organic agriculture (big organic and small organic)

– hunter-gatherer food production

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• Industrial agriculture has transformed production by

replacing reliance on direct solar energy with substantial

inputs of fossil carbon

• Fossil carbon (of course) is also solar energy—bottled

sunshine—but unlike sunshine it is a resource which is

finite and non-renewable

• Industrial agriculture is not sustainable

– Sustainability—Meeting the needs of the present

generation without compromising the ability of future

generations to meet their needs (Brundtland 1987)

• Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert

petroleum into food (Al Bartlett)10

Major challenges for 21st century

• Climate change from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

– Extreme weather events (storms, floods, fires, droughts)

– Ocean acidification (blocks calcification)

– Sea level rise

• Water

– aquifer ("fossil water") depletion

– ice field depletion (Himalayas)

• Biodiversity loss

• Topsoil depletion

• Social, global and intergenerational justice

All of these problems bear directly on food production

All of these problems are closely related to climate change, and the

primary driver of climate change—anthropogenic GHG emissions

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Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are now above 400 ppm and continue to rise

This is well above the 350 ppm recommended as a safe level by climate

science guru James Hansen (and Bill McKibben)12

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Global temperature facts

• 2014 was the hottest year on record

• Until 2015!

• Now 2016 is on track to break the hottest year record

• We have experienced 14 consecutive months of record-

breaking monthly temperatures

• Based on 1961-1990 average temperatures the last

below-average temperature month was February 1985

• We have experienced 377 consecutive months (31 years)

of above-average temperatures

• Yet we have denialist clowns (like Senator Malcolm

Roberts) saying global temperature plateaued in 1998!

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Brandolini's law

The amount of energy required

to refute bullshit is an order of

magnitude greater than the

energy required to produce it

– Alberto Brandolini

Plot idea: 97% of the

world's scientists contrive

an environmental crisis,

but are exposed by a

plucky band of billionaires

and oil companies

— Scott Westerfeld

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Mitigating climate change

• Global warming is just a problem for the grand-kids

• Global warming is a problem for everyone right now

• To avoid catastrophic climate change there is an urgent

need to reduce GHG emissions

• Overwhelmingly GHG reduction proposals have

concentrated on fossil carbon (coal, oil, gas)

• However the physical laws that determines atmospheric

temperature pay no heed to which GHG is ramping up the

temperature (CO2, CH4, N2O, etc)

• GHG emissions from agriculture, especially livestock (beef,

dairy) are significant contributors to climate change

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"Cowspiracy"?

• Cowspiracy claims that animal agriculture is a greater source

of global warming than fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas)

• Cowspiracy cites a 2009 study which claimed that

51% of all GHGs are produced by animal agriculture

• Two major errors with the estimate

– Includes carbon dioxide exhaled by livestock

– Uses a 20-year methane multiplier (x 72)

• Claim 1: Animal agriculture is a leading driver of climate change,

contributing more to global greenhouse gas emissions than the

combined exhaust of all the world's vehicles

• Claim 2:- Plant-based food production is significantly less polluting

and resource hungry than food production from animal farming18

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Source: IPCC, 5th Report 2014, James Ballantyne, former UK government official

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Livestock GHG emissions

• Our appetite for meat and dairy is a significant driver of

climate change

• Livestock is a major source of methane (CH4) and nitrous

oxide (N2O), two particularly potent GHGs

• Livestock is also an important driver of deforestation (for

grazing and fodder)—a significant source of CO2 emissions

• Meat and dairy production are estimated to contribute 14.5%

of global GHG emissions (Bailey et al, 2014)

• This is slightly more than direct emissions from the transport

sector (14.3%)

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• The advent of modern "industrial" agriculture (Michael

Pollen's "nutritional industrial complex") raises issues about

health and the relationship(s) between diet and disease

• Pollan's book title The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) is taken

from a 1976 paper by Paul Rozin

• "The Selection of Foods by Rats, Humans, and Other Animals"

• The omnivore faces dietary problems which don’t confront

creatures like the koala or the panda—who have exclusive

diets of eucalyptus leaves and bamboo

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Livestock and global warming

• Reducing global meat and dairy consumption is critical to

keeping global warming below the danger level increase of

2°C—the “guard-rail”

• Public awareness of livestock GHG emissions is low, and meat

and dairy consumption remains off the policy agenda

• Taste, price, health, and food safety are the main determinants

of food choice—climate change isn’t on the radar

• Governments need to develop policies to shift attitudes and

behaviours

• Strategies to moderate meat and dairy consumption need to

emphasize co-benefits—health and expenditure

• Worldwide adoption of the Harvard healthy diet could reduce

mitigation costs for energy by more than 50% by 2050

(Bailey et al 2014) 23

• Beef production is also a profligate consumer of water

(up to 50 000 litres per kilogram of beef)

• Beef production generates 150 x GHG emissions per unit

of protein than the equivalent soy protein

—even (less emission-intensive) pork and chicken

generate 20-25 x GHGs than the equivalent soy protein

• Feeding grain or corn to cattle involves transforming

perfectly good vegetable protein into more expensive

(and not necessarily more nutritious) animal protein

This raises equity (or justice) issues about food resources

• There is also an issue about the impact of hard hooves

on Australia’s fragile soils

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Bad News for Skippy

• Kangaroos produce very low levels of GHGs

• Kangaroos produce 80% less

methane than cows

• We may be able to engineer the

microbiota of the rumen of

strong methane producers, to

emulate macropod microbiota

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Resource constraints

• If India and China lift hundreds of millions of people out of

poverty there is no possibility of producing the meat and dairy

that would be needed to provide them with a Western diet

– Indeed the Western diet needs to be moderated for Westerners!

• If we suppose that there is an entitlement for everyone to live a

better-than-subsistence life, the smaller the population, the

greater the scope for living well

– Fewer (human) feet permit larger environmental footprints

• In discussing sustainability and environmental problems we need

to address human population

– Indeed, almost always, population is "the elephant in the room"

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A 38-year-old Indian elephant, Tai, decorated by UK graffiti artist Banksy

for an exhibition ‘Barely Legal’, Los Angeles, September 2006

The “elephant in the room”

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Population: the dismal parson

• Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) famously proposed

the existence of planetary limits in 1798

– An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798 to 1826)

• He was wrong when the population doubled from

750 million to 1.5 billion (1750-1890) — (140 years)

• He was wrong when the population doubled from

1.5 billion to 3 billion (1890-1960) — (70 years)

• He was wrong when the population doubled from 3

billion to 6 billion (1960-2000) — (40 years)

• But will Malthus still be wrong 50 years from now?

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0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Bill

ions

160,000

B.C.

100,000

B.C.

10,000

B.C.

7,000

B.C.

6,000

B.C.

5,000

B.C.

4,000

B.C.

3,000

B.C.

2,000

B.C.

1,000

B.C.

1

A.D.

1,000

A.D.

2,000

A.D.

World Population

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Population Growth Throughout History

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2,150

A.D.

2006 – 6.5 Billion

1945 – 2.3 Billion

2050 – 9.1 Billion

250 Million250 Million1492 – 500 Million1776 – 1 Billion

First Modern HumansFirst Modern Humans(Adam and Eve)(Adam and Eve)

Source: United Nations29

World population is increasing at 1.3% per year

(according to Wiki it was about 1.1% in 2012)

Were this to continue the world population would reach a

density of one person per square metre of the dry land

surface of the earth in 780 years

The mass of people would equal the mass of the earth in

2400 years

Zero Population Growth will happen

(That is, the number of deaths will be equal to, or greater than,

the number of births)

The only question is: HOW?

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Increase Population Decrease/Stabilise Population

Procreation Motherhood Large families Immigration

MedicinePublic HealthSanitation

Peace Law and order

Scientific Agriculture

Accident Prevention Clean Air

Ignorance of the problem

AbstentionContraception/AbortionSmall FamiliesRestricting immigration

Disease

WarMurder/Violence

Famine

AccidentsPollution (Smoking)

Education (especially women)

Source: Al BartlettArithmetic, Population, Energy

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

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Increase Population Decrease/Stabilise Population

Procreation Motherhood Large families Immigration

MedicinePublic HealthSanitation

Peace Law and order

Scientific Agriculture

Accident Prevention Clean Air

Ignorance of the problem

AbstentionContraception/AbortionSmall FamiliesRestricting immigration

Disease

WarMurder/Violence

Famine

AccidentsPollution (Smoking)

Education (especially women)

Source: Al BartlettArithmetic, Population, Energy

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

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Kenneth Boulding’s Dismal Theorem

If the only ultimate check on the growth of population is misery, then the

population will grow until it is miserable enough to stop its growth

Boulding’s Utterly Dismal Theorem

Any technical improvement can only relieve the misery for a while. For

so long as misery is the only check on population, the improvement will

enable population to grow, and will soon enable more people to live in

misery than before. The final result of improvements therefore is to

increase the equilibrium population which is to increase the sum total

of human misery.

Boulding's Moderately Cheerful Form of the Dismal Theorem

If something else, other than misery and starvation, can be found which

will keep a prosperous population in check, the population does not have

to grow until it is miserable and starves, and it can be stably prosperous.

— Boulding, 'Foreword to Malthus' (1971)

Malthusian misery

The total amount of suffering per year in the

world is beyond all decent contemplation.

During the minute that it takes to compose this

sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten

alive, others are running for their lives,

whimpering with fear, others are being slowly

devoured from within by rasping parasites,

thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation,

thirst and disease. It must be so. If there is ever

a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically

lead to an increase in population until the

natural state of starvation and misery is

restored.

Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden, 1995, Ch 4.

(quoted in The Greatest Show on Earth, p. 391) 34

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants

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Michael Pollan In Defence of Food

• Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants

• Much of what passes as food is “edible food-like substance”—the

product of the nutritional industrial complex

• Nutritionism: belief that food is not a system, but a collection of

nutritional components

• Orthorexia: an unhealthy obsession with healthy food

• Nutritionism and orthorexia have displaced tradition and habit

(common sense) and constitute a serious threat to health

• Were Ivan Illich alive he might have added industrial nutrition to

his critiques of technological society

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Historical changes in food production

1 Hunter-gatherer to agriculture (last ~10K years)

2 Industrialization of agriculture (very recent)

Five consequential changes

1 Whole food replaced by refined food

2 Complex foods replaced by simple foods

3 Quality replaced by quantity (aim: maxise cheap calories;

result: overfed and undernourished population)

4 Leaves replaced by seeds (calorie dense foods)

5 Culture of food replaced by “science”; “nutritionism”

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Addendum to Pollan's excellent analysis

• The industrialisation of agriculture is both a cause and a

consequence of a rapidly expanding human population

• The more the human population grows the more constrained

our food choices will become

– Feeding a 9 billion people sustainably presents different set of

constraints to feeding 6 billion or 3 billion

– The range of social, political and environmental options also

narrows—but those are issues for another occasion

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Pollan’s advice

• Get out of the supermarket whenever possible, e.g. to short food-chain farmers’ markets

– “Shake the hand that feeds you”

• Eat wild food

• Cook your meals

• Grow vegetables

• Treat non-traditional food with scepticism (nutritional

neophobia)

• Pay more, eat less

• Eat meals, not snacks

• Have a glass of wine with dinner

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References

• Rob Bailey, Antony Froggatt and Laura Wellesley, 2014. Livestock—Climate

Change’s Forgotten Sector. Chatham House.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/.../livestock-climate-change-forgotten-sector-

global-p...

• James Ballantyne, How accurate is the movie Cowspiracy?

• Al Bartlett, Arithmetic, Population, Energy 1995

• Doug Boucher, Movie Review: Cowspiracy

• Gro Harlem Brundtland. 1987. Report of the World Commission on Environment

and Development: Our Common Future

• Richard Dawkins. 1995. River Out of Eden.

• Thomas Malthus. 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population

• Michael Pollan, 2006. The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Penguin

• Michael Pollan, In Defence of Food,

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