Feeding the World....while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions

Cattle release methane, and lots of it. Methane is a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than CO2. Plus with a World population over 7 billion and still growing, we are running out of resources to feed our World.

So do we really need to eat beef, chicken and pork to get our protein? Absolutely not!!!! Look at some of the earth's largest animals - Elephants, Hippopotamus, Rhinocerus, they are all vegetarians, but still very big and strong. In the US, 13% of the population is vegetarian or vegan. In India 31%. In OLLI, I am estimating significantly more than 13%. (A more precise survey would be welcome.)

From a global perspective, it boils down to more efficiently using our limited resources, which are fertile land and fresh water. Consuming crops is far more efficient than consuming animals which have been fed crops. This is due to limited ecological efficiency in converting energy from one trophic level to another. A rough approximation is that the conversion is only 10% efficient. See Wikipedia for more details.

So what are your plant-based eating resources. In OLLI there is an excellent class, Plant Based Eating 101 taught by Dorothy Greet. On the internet, there are an almost infinite number of resources, such as Marc Gunther on Reinventing Meat, or John McDougall's web site dedicated to improving your health through plant based eating.

At the very least, take a look at the health benefits You will gain, and the benefits to the World through better utilization of limited resources, and a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Sally and I both both do it.

HOME - "It's not what's gone, it's what remains that is important."

HOME is a very inspiring video on YouTube about Our Planet and how we have exploited it...... AND, how we can help save it. It is an hour an a half long, but well worth your time to watch all of it.  I do plan to show a few segments in our climate class. Most climate change segments appear after 1:00 hr.

BTW, the photography is also awesome.

Eating to help save the world

I am jumping ahead on this class topic, but I thought you would like to be updated now, and in a very clear way, on how the foods we eat are grown AND LABELLED.

My view? Accurate labeling is only being honest. Why would an honest business not want to be truthful about what is in its products? 

PS - I also believe eating more plants, plus animals low on the food chain, is a key ingredient to our Earth being able to sustain the population here now and on the way.

CO2 Emissions and China

Looks like China may determine the fate of the World relative to global warming. They have been targeted for "dumping" solar panels (I'd like to think they were trying to help the World go solar, but the US Gov thinks otherwise), and now they are recorded as increasing CO2 emissions by 9.3% per year.

At least China's population growth rate is down to a modest 0.5%.

But shouldn't every country be down to 0% growth rate? This is planet Earth!...and I don't think in the foreseeable future we are going to colonize any other planets, large space stations, moons, or whatever.

Climate Refugees - Osher Class 3 - Updated 11/2

Update:
The book David Weber referred to and summarized  was:
"The coming population crash and our planet's surprising future"

by Fred Pearce.  It can be found in the Lewes public library.

Original Post:
Below are the links used in the class on Oct 31, 2011.

Newtok, Alaska, Town of 350 relocates to higher ground.

Cateret Islands map, and trailer  for "Sun Comes Up" about their relocation attempts.

Article from Financial Times about 'environmental migration'. Also see Oct 24 post in this blog.

Climate refugees in 2050, link to International Organization for Migration page on 'Migration and Climate Change' (see paragraph 3).

Link to movie, "Climate Refugees". Link to 2 trailers is at top of their page. We watched 1/2 of trailer #2. This site also contains the 'Take Action' page with 11 tips we reviewed.

Climate Change Vulnerability Index by Maplecroft.

The most and the least vulnerable countries, from USA Today.

Below, photo of Haiti, the most vulnerable country, from Hispanically Speaking News, June 13, 2011.

Sustainable Agriculture

The title link is to the NY Times Blog by Andrew Revkin which contains a link to the excellent video, "The Other Inconvenient Truth", featuring Jonathan Foley.

Some other links used in today's class are:
Skeptic Talking Points Melt Away
NASA On-line Videos
Agriculture and population maps of the world
Nationmaster map and statistics source for countries of the world

Feeding a Growing World

For those in the Osher Climate class, and for everyone else, here is a very good summary of the Earth's increasing dilemma as population grows, the planet warms, and food production becomes far more difficult to increase. From the Scientific American title link:

".....there can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort," Borlaug said in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. "[Man] is using his powers for increasing the rate and amount of food production. But he is not yet using adequately his potential for decreasing the rate of human reproduction. The result is that the rate of population increase exceeds the rate of increase in food production in some areas."

For the healthy perspective:...."ultimately, a little change in diet might do a world of good. Global demand for beef is an inefficient way to get protein, possibly unhealthy, and a major driver of deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. "

Access to Family Planning and Saving the Earth

On Marc Guenther's Blog, he presented the following quote from Ted Turner, of CNN fame:

Food, population and women: “What really concerns me is if we go to 8 or 9 billion. The natural world is collapsing all around us. There are two things we can do that won’t cost a lot of money… Millions of women don’t have access to family planning. If you provide people with  family planning, they won’t have unwanted pregnancies and they won’t have to  have abortions. The second thing we could do and we should have done it a long time ago is half the women in the world don’t have equal rights with men. In the Arab world, people are treated like dogs. They can’t vote in Saudia Arabia. They can’t drive a car. They don’t get an education. Women need to have equal rights with men, and equal education and equal rights to a job, and when women have that, they will choose to have smaller families.”

I have been a supporter of Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth) for a long time, and that is certainly what they advocate. A couple more quotes by Ted Turner, that will hopefully inspire you to read the title link:

The defeat of climate bill: “It’s going to go down in history as one of the great tragedies that we’ve ever had.”

Energy poverty: Rich countries should get together to help the two billion people in the world who don’t have access to electricity. “Why not give everyone in the world who doesn’t have electricity a solar panel and a light bulb so their kids can do their homework?”

Feeding a World of 9 Billion People

"The problem is not so much that we don’t have or can’t develop the technology to increase food and feed production, it’s that urbanization has rendered an ever increasing fraction of humanity unable to produce its own food — and more than that — totally unaware of what it takes. (What’s the problem? I just run over to the grocery store.)" - Nina Fedoroff, a life sciences professor at Pennsylvania State University. This quote was part of Andrew Revkin's Dot Earth Jan 10, 2011 blog titled "Varied Menus for Sustaining a Well-Fed World" (title link).

What I find so interesting is that Bill McKibben in his excellent book, EAARTH, believes that a key means of increasing food supplies will be the return of backyard vegetable gardening, like the Victory Gardens of WWI & II. McKibben points out that this is already occurring in the U.S. to a significent degree, ".... serious people have begun to rethink small-scale agriculture" (p. 166). He further states that this is a far better and safer approach to a warming climate, because it permits a faster, more fine-tuned response to changes in temperature, rainfall, and pests, which accompany climate change. Bill Mckibben has convinced me, and I am currently planning a major expansion of my "edible garden". Bill is also the founder of 350.org, a web site dedicated to "building a global movement to solve the climate crisis", with a specific goal of getting CO2 levels back down to 350 ppm.

The world population will almost certainly reach 9 billion by 2050, AND, if the present growth rate continues unchanged, the world population will grow from a current 6.9 billion, to 11 billion in 2050. The source for this last alarming figure is  Population Connection, an organization which "works to ensure that every woman around the world who wants to limit her childbearing has access to the health services and contraceptive supplies she needs in order to do so. Typically, when woman have access to affordable birth control, they have fewer children, regardless of income or educational levels."Also see the FAQ's on the About Us page of their web site.

Secretary of State Clinton Speech on Access to Reproductive Health Worldwide

"This event was originally scheduled for December 21, 2009, but was postponed due to weather conditions in the District of Columbia. We invite you to join us on the new date, Friday, January 8, 2010. The speech will be live streamed on www.icpd2015.org starting at approximately 3:00 pm. A transcript and video of of the speech will be posted on this site following the event." Population Connection

Secretary Clinton to Speak on Worldwide Reproductive Health, 12/21/09

"Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will deliver a major speech Monday, December 21, 2009 to mark the 15th year of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). Secretary Clinton will announce the U.S. Government's renewed support for and dedication to reaching the ICPD goals and other related UN agreements, including the Millennium Development Goals, by 2015.

The speech will be live streamed on www.icpd2015.org starting at approximately 3:00 pm. A transcript and video of of the speech will be posted on this site following the event."

The bike riding vegan scientist who....

This is a fun read about why babies matter a lot, for lots of reasons, including global warming. And it certainly recalls David MacKay's approach of looking at emissions on a PER PERSON basis.