'If you care about world hunger, eat less meat...'

while the world food summit is taking place, wanted to repost this on the economics of eating meat.

quoted from george monbiot in the guardian. the full article can be read here.

'Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession that is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch. You have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters over the past year, that of wheat by 130%. There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices.

But I bet that you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1bn tonnes, the global grain harvest broke all records last year - it beat the previous year's by almost 5%. The crisis, in other words, has begun before world food supplies are hit by climate change. If hunger can strike now, what will happen if harvests decline?

There is plenty of food. It is just not reaching human stomachs. Of the 2.13bn tonnes likely to be consumed this year, only 1.01bn, according to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation, will feed people...

But there is a bigger reason for global hunger, which is attracting less attention only because it has been there for longer. While 100m tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed cars, 760m tonnes will be snatched from the mouths of humans to feed animals - which could cover the global food deficit 14 times. If you care about hunger, eat less meat...

In his magazine The Land, Simon Fairlie has updated the figures produced 30 years ago in Kenneth Mellanby's book Can Britain Feed Itself? Fairlie found that a vegan diet produced by means of conventional agriculture would require only 3m hectares of arable land (around half Britain's current total). Even if we reduced our consumption of meat by half, a mixed farming system would need 4.4m hectares of arable fields and 6.4 million hectares of pasture. A vegan Britain could make a massive contribution to global food stocks...

The Food and Agriculture Organisation calculates that animal keeping is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental impacts are especially grave in places where livestock graze freely. The only reasonable answer to the question of how much meat we should eat is as little as possible...'

buddhism + the bomb

a meeting of the network of buddhist organisations, at taplow court, the spectacular elizabethan headquarters of sokka gakai internation uk, who were hosting the meeting.

the meeting is very enjoyable. the activities committee has had the same core of people for some years now, serious practitioners, who know each other well, and work together easily and harmoniously.

one of the perennial problems of inter-buddhist dialogue is trying to arrive at 'the buddhist position' on some complex and controversial matters. recently the nbo was asked to comment on the buddhist position on nuclear weapons. while reading and thinking about it, i came across these passages from bhante, extracted from his lecture on Buddhism, World Peace, and Nuclear War

extracted from
Buddhism, World Peace, and Nuclear War , by Sangharakshita

The superpowers are armed with a variety of nuclear weapons, i.e. they are armed with a variety of weapons capable of destroying life on a scale not only unprecedented in history but not even imaginable before the present century….
Even limited nuclear war would be so destructive of human life, and do so much damage to civilization and to the earth itself, that neither side could be victorious in any humanly meaningful sense of the term. Limited nuclear war must therefore be regarded as an absolutely unacceptable option. Full-scale nuclear war is even more unacceptable, if that is possible. Full-scale nuclear war is a prospect so frightful that no one with the slightest imagination can even contemplate it without an effort of will. All the deepest instincts of humanity recoil from it in utter horror. Full-scale nuclear war means nuclear holocaust, with hundreds of cities reduced to rubble, hundreds of millions of people burned or blasted out of existence, and millions more doomed to an agonizing death from the short- or long-term effects of nuclear radiation. Full-scale nuclear war means fire-storms and `black rain’. It means the destruction of the ecosphere. It means the death of the earth. It means the suicide of humanity .

Nuclear wars are fought with nuclear weapons. If even limited nuclear war is unacceptable it follows that nuclear weapons are unacceptable too. Nuclear weapons must therefore be abolished. They would still have to be abolished even if there was at present no intention, on the part of the superpowers and others who have produced them, ever actually to make use of their dreadful destructive capacity. So long as nuclear weapons exist in the world there will always be the risk of accidental nuclear attack due to mechanical failure or human error - not to mention sudden insanity in one or other of the seats of power - and so long as there is the risk of accidental nuclear attack there will be the risk of full-scale nuclear war .

Thus we are obliged to regard the very existence of nuclear weapons as being tantamount, in the long term at least, to the actual use of those weapons. Control of nuclear weapons is therefore not enough. There is no way of ensuring that nuclear weapons are not used, and that a nuclear holocaust does not take place, other than by making sure that nuclear weapons no longer exist. So long as the superpowers and the small powers have their stockpiles of nuclear weapons prevention of nuclear war is no more than a pleasant dream. Indeed, it is a dangerous dream, since it tends to make us oblivious to the very real threat to humanity that the mere existence of such stockpiles represents. There is no one in the world, perhaps, who does not want peace (what peace really is I shall try to explain later on), but if one wants peace it is important to realize that even in the very limited sense of absence of nuclear conflict peace is impossible without the total abolition of nuclear weapons. Working for peace therefore involves, to a great extent, working for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and working for the abolition of nuclear weapons involves working for peace ...

Now what I have already said on the subject of Buddhism, world peace, and nuclear war, as well as what I am going to say, all rests on a single assumption. Some people would regard it as a very big assumption indeed, but I nevertheless hope it is an assumption you share with me, since otherwise it will be difficult for us to explore together the significance of the Rohini incident in the way that I have proposed. Indeed, it might even be useless for us to do so. The assumption to which I refer is the assumption that nuclear war, particularly full-scale nuclear war and nuclear holocaust, is not inevitable. It is the assumption that nuclear weapons can be abolished and world peace, in the sense of the absence of nuclear conflict, achieved…

But as we contemplate the possibility - perhaps the increasing possibility - of nuclear holocaust we should not allow the sheer horror of the prospect to reduce us to inaction, like frightened rabbits mesmerized into immobility by the headlights of an approaching car. Neither should we allow ourselves to be seduced by the united siren voices of fanaticism, fundamentalism, and fatalism as they seek to assure us that nuclear holocaust is in fact the prophesied Armageddon and that instead of trying to avert it we should welcome it as the righteous judgement of an angry God on sinful humanity. Whatever other religions may believe, Buddhism, like secular humanism, believes that ills created by man - and many not created by man - can be remedied by man. This does not mean that it underestimates the difficulties involved, least of all those which stand in the way of the achievement of world peace through the abolition of nuclear weapons, and it certainly does not mean that it subscribes to the shallow optimism of which some forms of secular humanism have been guilty .

One of the things that strikes us as we look at the pro-peace, anti-nuclear movement is that it is not a strong and unified body of opinion speaking with one voice about what has to be achieved and the means to its achievement. It is not a movement at all, so much as a motley collection of forces eddying more or less confusedly about matters of growing popular concern. Some of these forces even seem to be moving in contrary directions, as we can see in the case of the great debate as to whether nuclear disarmament should be unilateral or multilateral. All such differences are, of course, differences about means rather than ends. What the solitary figure, and solitary voice, of the Buddha serves to remind us of is the fact that if we are to speak of the opposing forces of our own day with any effect we have to speak to them as one man. We have to speak with one voice: we all have to say the same thing. At present our energies are divided to far too great an extent. Time that should be spent impressing upon the authorities that what we desire above all things is the total abolition of nuclear weapons is spent arguing with one another about the exact way in which they should be abolished - thus letting the authorities off the hook. The authorities in question are, of course, the governments of the various sovereign nation-states which possess, or are about to possess, nuclear weapons, including the government of this country. The way in which nuclear weapons are abolished is a matter of secondary importance, and one that can be finally settled only at international level, when the governments of nuclear and non-nuclear powers alike meet together and, in response to the irresistible pressure of world opinion, apply such wisdom as they collectively possess to the question of how best to lift the shadow of nuclear weapons and nuclear war from mankind. Until then we must simply keep up the pressure, firstly on our own government, and secondly on the governments of other countries to whatever extent we can. Such pressure should be massive, unanimous, and unmistakable, and we should keep it up until we see governments in general, and the governments of the nuclear powers in particular, making the total abolition of nuclear weapons their top priority. We should keep it up until we see the nuclear stockpiles dwindling. We should keep it up until the abomination of nuclear weapons disappears from the face of the earth, and mankind can breathe freely once again .

About one thing, however, we must be quite clear. In whatever way pressure is brought on a government to make the abolition of nuclear weapons its top priority, that pressure must be brought non-violently …

Though there can be no world peace without the abolition of nuclear weapons, abolition of nuclear weapons is far from being synonymous with world peace in the full sense of the term. Nuclear weapons are not the only weapons in the arsenals of the sovereign nation-states. There are many others, some of them hardly less horrible than nuclear weapons themselves, and even if nuclear war ceases to be a possibility these could still do irreparable damage to civilization and inflict untold suffering on mankind. If peace in the full sense of the term is to be achieved we shall therefore have to work not only for the abolition of nuclear weapons but also for the abolition of conventional weapons too. We do not want to abolish nuclear weapons only to find ourselves in the same kind of situation that we are in today, minus nuclear weapons. Neither do we want to abolish them only to find ourselves in the same kind of situation that we were in yesterday, or even the day before yesterday .

Though it will undoubtedly be an unspeakable blessing to mankind, and an infinite relief, the abolition of nuclear weapons is by no means enough. Even the abolition of both nuclear and non-nuclear weapons is by no means enough. Peace in the full sense of the term will be achieved only when disputes between sovereign nation-states, as well as between smaller groups and between individuals, are settled entirely by non-violent means ...

In order to achieve peace - world peace - in this fuller sense we shall have to deepen our realization of the indivisibility of humanity, and act on that realization with even greater consistency. We shall have to regard ourselves as citizens of the world in a more concrete sense than before, and rid ourselves of even the faintest vestige of nationalism. We shall have to identify ourselves more closely with all living things, and love them with a more ardent and selfless love. We shall have to be a louder and clearer voice of sanity and compassion in the world. We shall also have to bring to bear on the governments and peoples of the world, and on ourselves, the same kind of pressure that was required for the abolition of nuclear weapons but to an even greater extent. Above all, we shall have to intensify our commitment to the great ethical and spiritual principle of non-violence, both in respect to relations between individuals and in respect to relations between groups...

The possibility of nuclear holocaust thus represents not only the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced but also the greatest opportunity. Formerly it was possible for some men to dwell in peace while others were at war. It was possible for some men to live in accordance with the principle of non-violence while others lived in accordance with the principle of violence. It was possible for some men to face the problem of death while others ignored it. Now this is no longer the case. The possibility of nuclear holocaust means that we must all dwell in peace, all learn to live in accordance with the principle of non-violence, all become more aware of the fundamental problem of death. It means that we must all rise to our full stature as human beings - or perish .