Marta Zaraska’s naïvette

In today’s Time, Marta Zaraska argues that vegetarianism and veganism did not catch on until recently because of two factors:

1. the failure of the first vegan community, ‘Fruitlands’, to survive a New England winter
2. the status symbolism of meat, especially during periods of scarcity like the World Wars

In my view, Time is being completely naïve.

Even if exceedingly rare in the Enriched World, vegetarianism and veganism, whether

1. de jure, whereby there were rigid taboos against consumption of meat or all animal foods, or
2. de facto , whereby animal foods or meat were available in insignificant quantities
1. the two forms of vegetarianism or veganism are totally distinct
2. de jure vegetarianism or veganism does not imply its de facto equivalent; nor does de facto vegetarianism or veganism imply its de jure equivalent
3. the hot and wet climates of the Tropical World allow for longer periods of plant food availbility, as do the very poor soils of the Unenriched World, which select for longer-lived plants
4. paradoxically, the high soil fertility in Mesoamerica and Andean South America may have encouraged de facto veganism by making plant proteins more abundant and selecting against the hierarchical social structures essential for animal domestication

has been normal in the Tropical and Unenriched Worlds throughout most of human history. The low productivity of the oceans and low nitrogen, phosphorus and chalcophile element concentrations in the majority of Tropical World and all Unenriched World soils has severely limited the availability of animal protein compared to rich Enriched World oceans:

Soil fertility (measured as total exchangeable bases, which owing to their lithophile geochemistry overstates real fertility of all Australian and most African soils) and marine chlorophyll concentration (which likewise overstates genuine secondary productivity in low-productivity zones)

It is for this reason that taboos against animal foods – found to varying degrees in all “moralising” religions – are concentrated in the arid outer tropics and subtropics, as I noted earlier (reproduced from ‘A “negative-negative” relationship between religion and animal cooperation?’:

Societies with moralising high Gods in blue (top; from ‘The Ecology of Religious Beliefs’) versus percentage of avian cooperative breeders (middle; broadly defined from Dustin Rubinstein’s ‘Environmental Uncertainty and the Global Biogeography of Cooperative Breeding in Birds’) versus coefficient of variation of annual runoff (bottom; from Thomas Aquinas McMahon’s ‘Global Hydrology Part 3: Country and Climate Studies’)

In Enriched environments, vegetarianism, let alone veganism, is deeply counterintuitive. In preagricultural and coastal societies animal protein is always too abundant for ordinary people to even consider its potential sacrifice when vegetable protein takes much more labour to utilise. In most Enriched agricultural societies, considerable wild game remains on terrain too steep to farm, whilst in cooler-climate farming societies (except for Andean South America) there is invariably major reliance upon milk and milk derivatives. Where meat was scarce it was scarce only for the lower classes – sports like falconry are illustrative of what the ruling classes enjoyed in medieval Europe.

By contrast, even as foragers, Tropical and Unenriched World peoples were largely vegetarian before modern fertilisers increased nitrogen, phosphorus and chalcophile element availability. Amongst farmers, conservation required (near)-vegetarianism or veganism as disciplines to ensure societal growth and ecological protection – although whether any of these societies was absolutely vegan remains uncertain.

It’s paradoxical that the greater greenhouse efficiency of vegetarianism and veganism may have negligible environmental effects if it reduces animal food production merely over the Enriched World. In contrast to the Tropical and Unenriched Worlds, meat and fish production in Enriched lands is entirely “natural” and has never had the impacts on so many native mammals that the pastoral industry in Australia has had. Moreover, their risk-aversion, along with the status symbolism of meat in agricultural societies, has meant vegetarianism and veganism have not caught on in those regions where they are most intuitive and natural as they have in the Enriched World.

The inherent limitations of a political élite

Today, conservative journalist Rod Dreher – a man I have followed since his 2005 Crunchy Cons – provides a revealing look at a problem of which I have long been very aware without ever saying a word or even taking the slightest notice thereof. This problem – one which I can understand very easily – is in the words of ‘Ace of Spades’ that:

“the Establishment’s (my capitalisation) failure to see the appeal of Trump represents their own limitations, not Trump supporters’”

Dreher argues in his article ‘Trump: Fishtown’s Champion Against Belmont’ that the media conservatives who support causes like those of the Politically Incorrect Guides are totally different from the people to whom Donald Trump strongly appeals:

“This alienation separates Trump’s voters from the constituency of another firebrand insurgent, Ted Cruz. Cruz draws from married voters, evangelical Christians, the elderly and those who identify as “very conservative.” These folks might be angry about the political process, but their anger is ideological and their lives – filled with family and church – are fundamentally intact.”

“Trump’s voters, instead, wear an almost existential sense of betrayal. He relies on unmarried voters, individuals who rarely attend church services and those without much higher education. Many of these Trump voters have abandoned the faith of their forefathers and myriad social benefits that come with it. Their marriages have failed, and their families have fractured. The factories that moved overseas used to provide not just high-paying jobs, but also a sense of purpose and community. Their kids (and themselves) might be more likely to die from a heroin overdose than any other group in the country.”

What I can say re-reading this is that the problem of conflict between what ‘Ace of Spaces’ calls:

1. the “gentry” – those who care predominantly about lifestyle and aesthetic issues and
2. “economic/populist people” – primarily concerned about tangible wants and not how a Platonic “good society” would look

is one of the most important conflicts within a society. The first and most important part of this question is that it stands completely independent from the liberal versus conservative, Christian versus atheist battles that have dominated cultural thinking. That my mother and brother – increasingly committed atheists with age – cannot understand this conflict can be seen in their inability to grasp how claimed Catholic miracles such as Marian apparitions (e.g. Fatima) or stigmata and inedia (e.g. Therese Neumann, Alexandrina da Costa) were more successful converting highly educated literati than converting the less-educated working classes.

This observation, however, becomes explicable via the contrasting desires of these two groups. Literati – like most groups in the “liberal arts” – tend to be largely concerned with matters of lifestyle and ideology, and thus are prone to not be practically motivated by the difficulties their ideologies may create for people of lesser intellectual capabilities. Their views are shaped by culture and aesthetics, which can be either liberal or conservative depending upon what they observe in the lower classes. Many intellectuals in early and mid-twentieth century Europe saw the demands of union members, lower income workers and people on welfare as pure greed and wanting wealth earned or inherited by others. These intellectuals were also frequently disparaging toward the culture created by industrialisation, even where improved fertiliser technology created hopeless comparative disadvantages in their older industries of farming and fishing. In contrast, in today’s globalised world the tendency is to see greed within extremely wealthy corporations who exploit workers in distant nations rather than within the “precariat” (freelancers, construction workers and other temporary employees) for whom a stable job, homeownership and decent retirement is an impossibility.

Workers, by comparison, are concerned with the practicalities of making a living and do not care about the aesthetics nor the morals. Thus, it tends to be difficult for them to accept the rigid moral standards of either the “gentry left” (e.g. environmental protection via higher taxes or increased regulation) or the “gentry right” (no extramarital sex, no public welfare), whilst a narrow nationalism via restricted trade and subsidies to manufacturing offers hope to them. Like with the “gentry”, however, these working class demands can either be turned to the Left or the Right – I am familiar with how Jeff Kennett used populist demands to reform inefficient government to major advantage in the outer suburbs during the 1992 and 1996 election, despite being increasingly unable to forgive the global climatic effects of his policies that spent $6,000,000,000 on freeways. I am also aware of how soon after many farmers and small businessmen affected by globalisation turned to One Nation because they felt that public money was lavished upon migrants and Aborigines, who were taking their jobs.

In contrast, workers in Europe and East Asia lack competition with indigenous peoples or recent immigrants, and being more exposed to the wealth of the very rich are more likely to channel their anger towards them or to their own corporations setting up shop in low-wage nations. This was true even with very poorly educated workers: their only interest was a more comfortable and secure lifespan, while Catholicism (and the miracles associated therewith) preaches simplicity and asceticism incompatible with these demands. Thus, the workers of Europe and East Asia are – even with the same basic needs as Australian workers – much more socially liberal.

The key part is that none of these working-class demands, whatever they lead to, are talked about by academics of any political stripe, nor by less-educated mystics who also saw something wrong with how the world was changing. It’s a mistake that academics must avoid to understand most political trends in the modern age, and one too easily forgotten by myself when I have been reading new ideologies.

Lessen for buying Pink Lady apples

Two Pink Lady apples bought at Woolworths mid-week. Notice how they are completely infected with a brown fungus, species not known to me or my family

Mummy and I have liked the fresh, crunchy flavour of Pink Lady apples for over a decade now, so much so that apart from occasional purchases by myself of Granny Smiths we rarely buy any other type.

This week, as we prepare for a lengthy holiday in Singapore, Japan, and with a not-yet-acquired visa Vietnam, I had a rude shock when I brought a few Pink Ladies to tide ourselves over in our last few days in Australia. I bought four Pink Ladies, and found the first to be so brown – infected with a fungus of a species I have not researched personally – that I dared not eat it. When I was in the local Woolworths buying the apples, they felt quite OK, and in the past buying fruit I have always tended to rely on feel since bad fruit is more often than not bad only inside.

However, when we discovered another completely infected and inedible apple on this last day in Australia, and when I first noticed the earlier bad one, my mother said that bad Pink Ladies can in fact be detected by means of their yellow colour in the core skin. One can faintly see a yellow colour in the core of the opened apple, and the one uninfected Pink Lady was green or red all over.

This really should be a lesson for all shoppers, as well as for Woolworths itself!

How artificial blocs doomed Kyōtō

As Time magazine shows another year of record hot global temperatures, we see that the country whose populace (per person) bears most responsibility is still doing absolutely nothing to ameliorate climatic changes. Australia has since at least 1980 had, alongside analogous high-income resource-rich nations surrounding the Persian Gulf, the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the world, as shown by this map from 2005.

Per capita emissions from 2005, excluding land use change 

When we consider CO₂ emissions from the longer 1950 to 2000 period, Australia is less striking but its per capita emissions remain high compared to Europe, East Asia and most of Latin America.

Yet, when diverse countries with opposing interests met as “Annex B” nineteen years ago for a protocol to regulate global greenhouse gas emissions, the Persian Gulf oil states were given no targets at all, whilst Australia was allowed an increase of 8 percent over its 1990 emissions. In contrast, European nations with (1990) per capita emissions one-fifth Australia’s were required to reduce their emissions by 8 percent.

Even permitted such a target, Australia under John Howard refused to sign. Australia’s real powerbrokers – the coal and aluminium industries (Crowley, 2007) alongside car-dependent suburban  families – voted Howard into power. These groups had and have a stake in unlimited greenhouse emissions because that allows them lower taxes and living costs, plus higher corporate profits. Australia’s major parties have had to work within the bounds set by these groups, which simply forbid any reductions in emissions. Aluminium, coal and farming interests, who would surrender their wealth and political power if required to make the requisite in emissions to avoid dangerous impacts from global warming, set rigid limits to policy, as seen in Australia’s carbon tax fiasco earlier this decade. Australia’s greater economic and demographic growth vis-à-vis other “developed” nations – not to mention its limitless reserves of important but energy-intensive aluminium and titanium ores – ensures that as presently framed Australia can simply ignore global demands for reduced emissions.

Officially, Australia’s refusal to ratify the Kyōtō Protocol was due to the absence of participation of so-called “developing” or “Third World” nations. In reality, excepting high-income oil exporters – whose global economic role is analogous to Australia’s as a wealthy coal/lithophile metal exporter – the per capita contributions of “developing” (“G77”) nations to global greenhouse emissions are small. One decisive problem dooming Kyōtō was “G77” nations failure to demand deep and immediate emissions cuts from high-emissions oil exporters inside their ranks. Failure to confront the oil exporters head-on allowed those nations to escape even more scot-free than did Australia. Indeed, Kasa et. al. (2008) has revealed the “G77” as an alliance between unwilling oil exporters and powerless but culturally aligned (via Islam or indigenous culture) Least Developed Countries, and thus wholly ineffective for reducing emissions.

To achieve large cuts to global emissions before 2010, an alliance was required between the industrial high-technology nations of Europe and East Asia on the one hand, and the Least Developed Countries on the other. Despite the large differences in these blocs’ cultures, lifestyles and living standards, they share an economic interest in low emissions because they are:

1. poor in fossil fuels
2. poor in lithophile metal ores
3. usually mountainous (hence opportunities for land clearing are limited).

This requisite alliance would have been directed at Australia, the OPEC States and Southern Africa, demanding rigid and severe emissions reduction targets there without opportunity for negotiating compromise. A move for deep uniform cuts, strict baselines, no bubbles or baskets, fewer gases, early timetables and the exclusion of sinks was proposed for the disparate “developed countries” by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) (Liverman, 2008). AOSIS made credible demands – unfortunately aimed toward a bloc with conflicting interests. If AOSIS and the Least Developed Countries had focused their ire on Australia, OPEC nations, and perhaps South Africa, they might have gained essential support from the EU and East Asia and campaigned for exceedingly deep and rapid emissions cuts for Australia and OPEC.

The actual costs of deep emissions reduction in these critical nations are unclear, but Australia – the worst offender given its ancient land and low-energy ecology (Orians and Milewski, 2007) that biologically demands it have the world’s lowest per capita emissions rather than the highest – could certainly transform to a solar energy- and ecotourism-based economy if the polluters were less powerful. OPEC nations with fewer options would have more trouble, but Barnett et. al. (2004) has suggested that losses could have been made minimal by an accord similar to the Marrakesh Accord. As for the resource-poor manufacturing and Least Developed nations, modifications of their economies (for instance designing goods to last longer and consume fewer resources in the long term) would multiply the effect of eliminating the emissions of the mineral states.

The basic message from the middle 1990s Kyōtō negotiations, and indeed from the Kyōtō Protocol itself, is the failure of blocs based primarily or even substantially upon culture. Needed were and are blocs based upon ecology and economic interests. It is logical that the small number of fossil fuel- and lithophile metal-rich nations with high per capita emissions would be outnumbered, and the rest of the world would demand the severest and quickest emissions reductions by the mineral exporters. This was where Kyōtō should have began, not as a virtual dispute over a serious issue between nations whose economies and ecologies lie diametrically opposed, and we continue to pay the consequences.

References:

• Barnett, Jon; Dessai, Suraje and Webber, Michael; ‘Will OPEC lose from the Kyoto Protocol?’; Energy Policy, vol. 32 (2004), pp. 2077-2088 
• Crowley, Kate; ‘Is Australia Faking It? The Kyōtō Protocol and the Greenhouse Policy Challenge’; Global Environmental Politics, Volume 7, Number 4, November 2007, pp. 118-139
• Kasa, Sjur; Gullberg, Anne T. Gullberg and Heggelund, Gørild; ‘The Group of 77 in the international climate negotiations: recent developments and future directions’; International Environmental Agreements vol. 8 (2008) pp. 113-127
• Liverman, Diana M.; ‘Conventions of climate change: constructions of danger and the dispossession of the atmosphere’; Journal of Historical Geography, vol. 35 (2009), pp. 279-296
• Orians, Gordon H. and Milewski, Antoni V. (2007). ‘Ecology of Australia: the effects of nutrient-poor soils and intense fires’ Biological Reviews, 82 (3): pp. 393–423

An unclear result vis-à-vis necessity

Today, the Animal Legal Defense Fund in the United States has ranked the states in order of animal rights.

Although I am sceptical of the arguments of extreme animal rights advocates, I understand that at least in hotter climates with poorer soils there certainly is need for restrictions on animal killing and possibly even on use in some cases (which probably are not found in most of the Western Hemisphere). Nonetheless, the soil map below, which shows lower-fertility and older soils in the South and nutrient-poor parent materials in the central west coast, does suggest that these hotter regions need more regulations on animal use:

This belief of greater regulation in hotter climates is supported by native cultures: generally there were greater taboos on animal food in hotter regions than in cooler ones, and the greatest taboos of all were found in arid desert regions and in southern Australia where poor soils and dry climates (which create alkaline soils that immobilise phosphorus, zinc and copper) severely limit the availability of animal protein. Many primitive peoples in these regions were de jure and/or de facto vegetarians as a means of conservation – it is ironic that vegetarianism is most “trendy” today in some extremely protein-rich regions such as the Pacific Northwest and Germany where diets based upon animal foods cause limited or negligible ecological costs and comparative disadvantages in plant-based food production tend to be very large.

As can be seen from the map above, there does not seem to be a strong relationship between laws and actual ecological need – though I will stress that this is better than the usual result of inverse relationship whereby the best ecological laws found precisely where there exists least need.

In general, the best animal protection laws would be needed in the low-nutrient Southern states and perhaps in the “southwest” (which ecologically includes California and Oregon as well as the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Nevada normally known as the “Southwest”). As can be seen, some of the relevant states, like Oregon, California, Arizona, Louisiana and Florida, are in the top third, but on the other hand New Mexico, Alabama and Mississippi have laws relatively much poorer than would be required. At the same time, numerous Northeastern states like Maine, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Massachusetts are relatively overregulated.