Environment and Global Warming
Celebrating Crop Dusting and Sexism
Published December 11, 2008 @ 06:51AM PT
The debate over whether sexism pervades PETA's tactics involving scantily clad or naked women can continue as regularly scheduled (we haven't talked about that issue yet here, have we? Don't worry--we will), but I'd like someone from the agriculture industry to please explain this too:
Cropdusters.biz Babes
"For some reason the Cropdusters.biz booth was one of the busier booths at the NAAA trade show."
I love how the writer doesn't include a photo of the founder who was interviewed for this post or an image of any of the business's products yet finds it necessary to include this image of arched backs and low-cut shirts. Regardless of how successful or unsuccessful the tactic is, at least the women who pose or engage in public stunts for PETA do so with the intention of getting an important message out. But "Duster Babes"? And tank tops and short shorts bearing the words "Duster Babe"? Really?
But oh, it gets worse. The actual Web site for the so-called business is full of images of women wearing skimpy or tight outfits, posing suggestively, or, in one case, kissing one another. There's an entire page of nothing but suggestive photos of women, some of whom look like they're probably still in their teens.
There is even a Secretary of the Month section that suggests you send in a photo if you too have "a hot secretary." I am completely freaking serious.
The Web site itself is infuriating beyond words, but equally infuriating is the fact that AgWorld--"News from the World of Agribusiness"--felt the need to feature this crap.
Maybe you're wondering why I'm posting this on the Animal Rights blog. Well, first of all, this was a story featured by an agribusiness Web site, and I consider just about anything that comes out of agribusiness to be fair game.
Second, this was a reminder, for me at least, that there is some difference between what PETA does, which it can be argued is done with good intentions and with the cooperation of women with good intentions, and what this is--obvious and indisputable objectification of women with no greater purpose. Many of us may disagree with PETA's tactics, vehemently in some cases, but I do see a distinction between these two kinds of campaigns and the intentions behind them, on the part of the organization or business behind the campaign as well as on the part of the women involved. Ask me what I find more offensive--PETA's Lettuce Ladies or the Crop Duster Babes--and I won't struggle to come up with my answer.
Third, there was just too much wrong with this post and with these images to ignore. The sexism is astonishingly blatant, but what the women's bodies are being used to promote is equally astonishing. Crop dusting? Who wants to be associated with crop dusting? In what way is crop dusting sexy? We're talking about the aerial spraying of fertilizer and pesticides here! So not only is this business exploiting women to glamorize an industry and products, but it's furthermore doing it to glamorize something destructive.
Polluted water, contaminated soil, and cancer and other illnesses in humans and nonhuman animals alike. Yeah, that's hot.
The whole thing reeks of patriarchal society. A white man runs a business predicated on ownership of nature and freedom to do with it--and to it--what he pleases, in an industry that champions conquership, control, and ownership of land and animals, and in the context of a tradition that is historically patriarchal and sexist. And to promote the whole thing, he unabashedly objectifies women. Lovely.
ALDF: Fix Global Warming the Easy, Low-Tech Way
Published December 10, 2008 @ 06:00AM PT
If you stopped by here yesterday, you saw a post on an upcoming CNN special Planet in Peril. At one point in that post, I lamented the fact that the most obvious, most effective, and easiest thing humans can do to go green and combat global warming was left off of recommended-actions lists featured on the show's Web site. You may also recall that Animal Person recently provided some related commentary.
The director of communications of the Animal Legal Defense Fund has also weighed in on this topic now. She published a fantastic, smart response yesterday to the New York Times article "As More Eat Meat, a Bid to Cut Emissions" and to the issue in general.
I really recommend that you read the whole post, but here's part of it:
According to the article, “As More Eat Meat, a Bid to Cut Emissions,” published on December 3 in the New York Times, consumption of “red meat,” i.e. cows and pigs, is expected to double globally between 2000 and 2050. . . .
Because, according to a United Nations report, livestock generates 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions—more than from cars, buses, and airplanes—the projected spike in meat consumption over the next few decades is a piece of the global warming juggernaut that can no longer be ignored.
Or can it? All evidence points to society’s desperate attempts to ignore this very fact, even as we’ve come to grips (most of us, anyway) with the stark reality of global warming. . . .
We just do NOT want to talk about the fact that the personal choice to eat animals, multiplied by several billion, is one of the single biggest factors contributing to impending environmental devastation. Do I sound hysterical? Because honestly, I feel a little hysterical here. Rather, the Times piece details, like a wish list for a sci-fi Santa, the variety of high-tech fixes that we’ve dreamed up and will dump countless millions of research dollars into to avoid prescribing people away from a meat-based diet. In one such futuristic fix for the problem of high-methane-emitting pig poop, “the refuse from thousands of pigs is combined with local waste materials (outdated carrot juice and crumbs from a cookie factory), and pumped into warmed tanks called digesters. There, resident bacteria release the natural gas within, which is burned to generate heat and electricity.” Yum. Alternatively, we might focus on “inventing feed that will make cows belch less methane.”
Who dares suggest the low-tech fix, here? Even environmental organizations have by and large shied away from the most obvious, most elegant of prescriptions to the problems caused by raising animals for food: people need to stop eating meat. Not some other, abstract people, who live in very-far-away, oh-so-polluting countries like China and India, but people like Al Gore, for example. People who read the New York Times. How about you?
I’m not suggesting people should stop eating animals because I said so, for god’s sake (I’m hysterical, remember?). But why not listen instead to Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “I’m not sure that the system we have for livestock can be sustainable,” the article quotes him as saying. It goes on: “A sober scientist, he suggests that ‘the most attractive’ near-term solution is for everyone simply to ‘reduce meat consumption,’ a change he says would have more effect than switching to a hybrid car.” Simple, right?
Let’s see what kind of mental gymnastics humankind will resort to next.
Read the post in its entirety here: "The Low-Tech Fix That Dare Not Speak Its Name"
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Image courtesy of Animal Aid.
Planet in Peril--and Denial?
Published December 09, 2008 @ 08:01AM PT
Last week, I received an e-mail from someone promoting the CNN special Planet in Peril: Battle Lines, which will air this Thursday night, December 11. I'll admit--the "Behind the Scenes" preview on the front page didn't quite draw me in. Though interesting, It was focused more on showing us how the reporters lived on assignment than on the actual issues facing the planet and its inhabitants. (And as might be expected, I also wasn't too impressed with the "yum-yum, whale blubber" comments by one pizza-eating journalist in particular.)
The actual trailer (embedded at the end of this post), however, though substantially shorter, focuses more on the issues the program aims to tackle--the ensuing fast-paced snippets, for example, deal with pandemic-potential viruses, lead poisoning, longline shark fishing, infections, and the dangers faced by mountain gorillas. Anderson Cooper's voice at the start of the trailer tells us that this is a special about "conflicts over our natural resources." See the Web site for a look at what more is going to be covered.
It's difficult for me to make a judgment about the program itself in advance, so you tune in (or record it), and I'll tune in, and we'll discuss it afterward. I was an environmentalist and conservationist even before becoming an animal rights advocate, so I'll be watching it with broad interest. But the AR advocate in me is going to be looking out for some attitudes and statements and hoping (probably futilely) for others. Among other concerns, I'm interested to see if the program places the wild animals it focuses on into the category of humans' "natural resources." Already, the trailer talks about placing "the needs of tourists . . . in balance with the needs of preserving the mountain gorillas," and that itself is an interesting commentary. We talk not about the desires of tourists, but about their supposed "needs." I understand that appealing to tourism interest can be an effective way to gain support for saving species and habitats. But anytime humans use language that implies their desires, described inaccurately as needs, are as important as animals' and nature's needs, I'm bothered.
I am going to make some judgments in advance about some featured articles on Planet in Peril's homepage. There's an Oprah list of "11 things you can do now to save the planet" and another CNN list titled "Save the planet: Go green with these tips for home, work and travel," and sadly but perhaps not unexpectedly, there's no mention of adopting a plant-based diet, even though that's one of the most significant changes we can make. Despite attention to the issue of climate change, there is no mention of animal agriculture's responsibility for nearly one-fifth of all greenhouse gases (more than what results from all the world's cars, planes, and other transportation combined), including 65 percent of nitrous oxide emissions (a gas with a global warming potential [GWP] 296 times that of CO2) and 37 percent of methane (GWP 23 times that of CO2). No mention of the massive clearing of vital forests for cattle ranching or the extermination of American wildlife at the request of cattle ranchers. No mention of the astounding use, and pollution, of water by animal ag. No mention of how many more of the humans starving on this planet could be fed if we would stop diverting so many resources to feed the animals we breed and raise just to kill and eat. These aren't problems of factory farming alone. These are problems of animal agriculture, period. But mainstream, meat- and cheese-loving programs and journalists refuse to reiterate these undisputed facts. Disappointing.
Anyway, watch the actual Planet in Peril program Thursday night, and we'll talk about it later.
Trailer:
Animals in the Blogs: "Expendable" Animals, Global Warming, and More
Published December 04, 2008 @ 07:44AM PT
Animal Person covers Problem Solving 101 this morning, tackling the issue of most scientists' and environmentalists' preference for trying to ignore or work around the enormous contribution of animal agriculture to climate change:
When you have a problem and you know what causes it, what do you do? Do you attack the symptoms of the problem? No, because you know what the cause is. When wouldn't you go to the problem's cause? Simple: When you don't want to.
(This comes a day after some other smart Animal Person commentary, on interesting responses to Bush's pardon of a poacher.)
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A couple days ago, the Reformed Fast Food Mascot described the "final two hours of a life" of an animal humans like to pretend doesn't feel, think, and suffer and contemplated people's reactions to such a death.
You do one thing and one thing only to a rat. You kill it. That's what you do. Life is filled with so many gray areas, enough moral ambiguities to drive a person nuts. So those few certainties there to grab hold of, we grab hold. One of those certainties is this: the life of a rat has no value. The pain a rat suffers is of no consequence.
It's a great post. Please read it.
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The Animal Law Blog has remarked briefly on an unimpressive policy revision from the American Veterinary Medical Association:
Another hundred years or so and they may actually come out with a position that actually takes the interests of the animal into consideration.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Blog author Amy also directs us to a Wall Street Journal article that I otherwise would have missed: "Seeking a Presidential Pardon? Try Praising the Right to Bear Arms"
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And finally, check out The Vegan Ideal's latest post: "Moving From Abstraction to Veganism: Advocating Alternatives to Exploitation, Not Alternative Exploitation"
Advocacy for new methods for exploiting other animals, based on the abstraction that it will reduce existing suffering, is in fact advocacy that supports the exploitation of actual other animals who will specifically be bred into existence to meet the demands of the new methods of exploitation being advocated. . . . What we end up with is an actual increase in suffering for the individuals and for the collective group.
Conversations in the Comments: Animals Above Humans and More
Published November 17, 2008 @ 07:24AM PT
I spend significant time responding to critical comments on this blog, as do a couple faithful readers, to whom I am immensely grateful for sharing the burden. But I imagine that many of the rest of you miss the conversations (in some cases, very long conversations) that follow some of the posts. So this morning, I'm going to share with you some of my responses to a conversation that's been taking place in recent days.
"In other words, you are deciding for us that the animal’s rights are more important man’s. I don’t care if you want to put an animal’s life above a family members of your, but I sure won’t."
In asking people not to exploit animals, no one is talking about taking away humans' rights or about elevating animals' rights above humans'. Asking people to respect animals' rights to simply live and live free from suffering does not require them to sacrifice anything extraordinary. Contrary to what many want to believe, humans don't need meat. We don't need dairy. We don't need eggs. And no, we also don't need leather or wool. But people like these things, so they want to keep eating and using them, despite the enormous suffering and death caused to other sentient beings as a result.
Animal rights advocates don't want to take away humans' basic rights--to live, to eat, to work, to enjoy life, to enjoy good health. We just want nonhuman animals to have the right to live and enjoy life too. No one is asking that people put a nonhuman animal's life above their own or that of a family member. It's not one or the other. Humans can live--and live quite well, better even--without consuming and exploiting animals.
"Anyhoo, im just wondering why vegetarians are so close minded to other peoples choice of food, (meat) in particular. Someone please answer this! . . . why does it matter what we eat as long as we are happy and kind to each other in the short period of time we are on this planet?"
The End for the Axolotl?
Published November 05, 2008 @ 03:41PM PT
I was a kid the first time I saw a photo of an axolotl, and I was instantly fascinated. I had an immediate flashback to that sense of wonder when I saw the Treehugger post today featuring the salamander--and then nostalgic wonder turned to sorrow. Indeed, two Treehugger posts today were sad ones:
"Ubercool 'Mexican Walking Fish' Nearing Extinction"
We're saddened to learn that the alien-looking Axolotl salamander (Ambystoma mexicanum), aka Mexican walking fish or Mexican water monster, is seriously threatened with extinction because of habitat destruction and water pollution. One of the coolest things about Axolotl - apart from their appearance - is they ability to regenerate most body parts.
"Norwegian Lemmings Threatened by Climate Change"
See both posts for more details and photos.
Oregon's Livestock "Rendering Crisis"
Published October 22, 2008 @ 05:49PM PT
Above: One of the landfill alternatives—"whole animal" composting, in this case compost rows full of dairy cows.
So what happens when dairy-producing cows and egg-laying hens are "spent," and they and other farmed animals are so ill and in such bad shape that they can't be slaughtered for human meat consumption? Or when an animal dies before reaching the slaughterhouse? Or when someone doesn't want his or her sick or injured horse anymore but can't find someone to buy the animal? Well, generally, these tortured beings are sent to rendering plants, where they're turned into pet food, livestock feed, and other animal "byproducts."
But uh-oh—Oregon has a rendering "crisis" apparently, particularly in the case of spent dairy cows:
As it stands now, there are no such processing plants in the entire state. And as Kristian Foden-Vencil reports, about 100 cows a week are going straight into Oregon's landfills. . . .
