On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Graydon <o...@uniserve.com> wrote:
> Why is that not letting nature take it's course? > > We're part of nature. We've decided to draw a line between things "natural" and "artificial". I think we ~should~ act as if we're an integral part of the ecosystem, but we don't. The argument that "we're part of nature" can be used to justify the continuation of human activities that will eventually lead to the disappearance of the polar icecaps and all of our coastal cities ending up under water. Then we'll all ~really~ be part of nature, won't we? ;-) <snip> > Depends on how [the meat industry is] done. > > The guy ranching elk near Whitehorse is doing it on land that can't > support a farm and would support elk (or similar ungulate) anyway; not > quite as many as he's got without the management, but the ecological > footprint is hard to determine. > > Feedlot beef has a large ecological footprint because it's driven by > maize growing, which has a byzantine and complex set of subsidies > driving it in the States. > > I mean, this is the traditional economic explanation for pastoral > cultures; you can graze your herds places you can't farm. You are > eating higher on the trophic web and that does change the efficiency in > terms of converting sunlight into food, but that's not a determination > of the fraction of the available sunlight you're converting into food. > Plant farming that converts 50% of the available sunlight (at the basic > initial 1%ish max efficiency of photosynthesis) gets rid of half the > extant ecosystem (or more; consider California strawberries and bromine) > where grazing on maintained grassland -- so short-grass prairie kept as > prairie -- might not get rid of *any* of the extant ecosystem. > > Ecological impact has to be done with diversity and disparity counts and > actually figuring out where the energy is going. It can't really be > done by type of activity. (Arboriculture can _expand_ the diversity and > disparity of the local ecosystem, even if it replaces a lot of the plant > biota, for instance.) I agree with what you say, but I'm talking about how the majority of meat (especially beef) that we in the West eat is produced. We don't have enough pastureland to raise all the meat that we currently eat, if we let that livestock eat grass and gradually grow to an economically feasible weight before slaughter. If we were to make sufficient land for that purpose, the ecological impact would be devastating. If we want to grow our animal-based food "ethically", our only choice is to eat far less meat than we do now. cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
