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I’m watching this amazing talk on ABC Fora (seriously my favourite site) and I’m pretty gobsmacked. It’s called and discusses Eating Animals, a new book by Johnathan Safran Foer, in which he talks about his reasons for eventually becoming vegetarian after several years of flip flopping between eating meat and not eating meat. I can’t really describe just how brilliant this talk is - it basically is a summary of his personal journey towards vegetarianism and the factors which influenced him, told from a beautifully human perspective (particularly the story of his child and grand mother).

His talk is very much about eating meat in the US and nearly all the statistics he mentions are concerning US meat farming practices. I think in Australia the statistics are a little better but the facts are remain the same regardless of where you live, just some of the numbers might be slightly different. But the talk is not so much about the raw statistics (although apparently the book is - he has 70 pages of foot notes and had two independant fact checkers go over his references) as it is a personal story.

The best part is that the way he speaks is very conversational - it isn’t preachy, he’s not telling you you’re a bad person if you eat meat. This is the achievement of the talk (and probably the book) - he isn’t proselytising, his tone isn’t pompous.

One part of this talk in particular struck a chord with me. Mr Foer said that in the US the free range/cage free eggs are the fastest growing sectors in the whole food industry (~36mins in the video). In Australia free range eggs have also become increasingly popular. Free Range is not a legal definition in the US or Australia so some producers mis-label their eggs as free range when they’re not, to take advantage of the increasing popularity of free range and the higher price they command. Anyway, I bring this up only to share a related anecdote: I used to work at a salad bar near where I live and some of the salads you could buy contain eggs. One day a customer asked the girl serving them if the eggs were free range. The serving girl didn’t know the answer so she asked the manager (and sister of the salad bar’s owner) who replied “they’re not but just say they are… As if it makes a difference. People are so stupid about these things aren’t they?” At the time I wasn’t vegetarian (it would be another ~6 months or so before I stopped eating meat) but I was really shocked and often since then I’ve wished I had said something at the time about it eventhough it would have cost me the job. (Incidentally, the manager and owner are both Jewish and I’ve often wondered how they would feel if they found out they had been lied to about having pig meat in something they ate - I’m pretty sure they would be disgusted.)

Anyway, I highly recommend everyone watch this talk. He covers nearly all the points (albeit very briefly) I care about in vegetarianism but much more eloquently than I ever could. Also be sure to watch all the questions he answers from the audience too, he provides excellent answers to some aspects of eating animals in a bit more detail.

About a year ago I decided to become vegetarian. Well, not quite vegetarian. Pescetarian. I still haven’t given up eating fish (or dairy). I decided to become pescetarian one night when I was out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant with some friends. One of those friends is vegan, and was the only non-omnivore in the group. Once this was realised, people started asking questions about his reasons for being vegan and jokingly criticising his choice of diet. For whatever reason, I found this incredibly rude - I’ve never heard people ask or jokingly criticise Jews about their reasons for not eating pig, I didn’t see how there was a difference in this case. So for that evening I decided to be vegan in sympathy with my friend. Talking with my vegan friend during dinner and afterwards, I came to understand a little of his reasons for being vegan. Part of it was because he had recently read Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation. Looking into reasons for vegetarianism/veganism for myself, I realised it was a good thing and not something I could happily ignore after finding out about it. That was why I stopped eating the meat of land animals - I’m not as strong-willed as my friend - I still eat fish and eggs, cheese.

I’m going to list the reasons I’m a pescetarian. This isn’t going to be a self-righteous rant. The reason I’m writing this is so I can summarise it for myself and others when I’m asked about it (as I often am by my friends :P ). In no particular order, the reasons why I don’t eat meat:

1. Meat production is bad for the environment. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation published a report in 2006, that went into some depth about the affect of meat production on the environment. I haven’t read the whole report, just snippets of it, but it was enough to convince me that eating meat is not always a good thing, no matter how delicious. Clearly others agree.
2. Most animals bred for their meat are fed grain which is much better served feeding people. This gets a bit complicated. Basically, 7kg of grain produces 1kg of beef, with similar conversion factors for other types of meat (including fish). Huge numbers of people around the world go hungry  everyday, it doesn’t make sense to use grain to feed livestock so rich people can eat meat. There’s a report here which goes into the specifics of the impact of meat production on grain and water supplies around the world. The article is a little old, but the situation remains the same (or worse) as when it was written.
3. To eat meat (and indeed to subject animals to any treatment to which we would not subject humans) is speciesist. This is the primary focus of Animal Liberation. Peter Singer has written a short essay on this and animal liberation, which you may read if you don’t feel like reading the entire book. After reading the Wikipedia article on speciesism while writing this post, I realised that the Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead touches on this a little.

I’ve always regarded pescetarianism as a stepping stone to eventually being vegan. After re-reading some of these articles while writing this post I’ve realised how bad it is to still be eating fish, and now I feel the day I become vegan (or atleast give up eating fish) will be sooner rather than later.

The title of this post is a quote from a friend of mine who once joked that my being vegetarian explained everything I did. Even though I’ve been pescetarian for a year now, I’m still often quizzed about it by friends. Now I’ll be able to point them to this post to explain the details :)

It’s been really hot in Melbourne recently. Today achieved the second highest recorded temperature in over 100 years (if I remember correctly) according to the news on TV - 45.1degrees. Being the geek that I am I’ve always had pale skin from too many days spent in dimly lit rooms in front of my computer, and heat wave has made me even more scared of leaving the comfort of my house.

Alarmingly the news (I think it was ABC, can’t be sure) also reported that the hot weather has meant hugely increased demand/usage of electricity (presumably from people turning on their airconditioning systems) on such a scale that demand is outstripping supply. Some homes around Victoria have been without power for three days. I find this a bit scary because to me it seems to imply a vicious circle: hot weather results in increased power usage, which means more greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere, resulting in an increasing rate of global warming, in turn resulting in hotter weather, meaning more demand for power, meaning increased power usage etc. Of course one (long term) solution would be to invest in nuclear power plants for the future, but with such strong opposition to nuclear energy in Australia I can’t see anything like this happening within Kevin Rudd’s first term. For more info about nuclear power and other cool science-y topics from an Australian perspective see Physical Insights, a blog run by a friend of mine.

Similarly, the heat has resulted in people far exceeding the recommended daily water usage of 155litres per person per day. The news reported average water consumption per person had risen to 290litres per day. This was all to be expected of course. With everyone sweating buckets people are going to want to drink more. Oddly enough, last Saturday The Age ran an article about how the Opposition’s water spokesperson Louise Asher felt the target 155litres per person per day was too severe, claiming that forcing people to choose between having a shower and watering their garden was “demonstrably unfair”. Erm, what? Does she seriously not understand how this works? The amount of water in the dams can be treated as finite so long as water is being taken from the dams faster than the dams are filled (which is a fair assumption given The Age’s daily figures dam levels are consistently lower than dam levels last year). So using more water now will just mean we run out sooner and even more stringent targets must be put in place so that we have time to sort out some viable alternative water sources. If the daily per capita target was raised a few years from now people won’t be forced to choose between a shower and watering their garden, they’ll be choosing whether they or their garden will be able to have a drink (see the update below).

Today I asked the question on Twitter “does anyone else feel slightly guilty for leaving the airconditioning on most of the day?” One of my friends replied “was working (and sweating) all day - aircon on now and don’t feel guilty!” This is illustrative of how I think many people feel that they’re “entitled” to certain things, no matter the cost. This same attitude is surely evident by people who buy sports cars and other luxury items which have a negative impact on the world. They have worked hard each day and earned themselves a big pile of cash and paid the taxman and now they feel entitled to a slice of the good life, with no thought to the environmental impact. I’m not saying you’re an evil person if you have the aircon on during 40+degree heat (I know I had my aircon on), I’m just concerned about the disregard many people show towards the environment. I think there will come a time when all of these environmental effects will come to a head and people will be forced to pay attention because drastic action will need to be taken. As it is I don’t think the humanity is taking things seriously enough.

**UPDATE**

I decided to check out the Melbourne Water Website weekly report to get some solid numbers on water usage. Melbourne’s water storage facilities are currently at 33.1%, which is 4.2% less than the same time last year. This 33.1% water storage equates to 586.86 billion litres of water. Last week total water consumption averaged 1268 million litres per day. Keeping in mind that last week was one of the hottest weeks on record, if water consumption continued at the rate of 1268ML per day and without any replenishment, we would have 462.8 days until the water was entirely used up.

Now, given that the average residential water usage over last week was 207 litres per person per day, and assuming that the population of Melbourne is 3,806,092 (this is based on a 2007 figure, it’s probably closer to 3.9million now) that equates to a total residential water consumption of 787.86ML per day. This means that there’s 480.14ML of water per day used for non-residential purposes. Using the same population and non-residential water figures, if the residential population of Melbourne was to adhere to the 155L per person per day target, the total daily consumption for Melbourne would be 1070.08ML. If water consumption continued at the rate of 1070.08ML per day and without any replenishment, we would have 548.4 days until the water was entirely used up. Or to put it another way, for every 1L Melburnians save per day (ie. not consumed for residential purposes) the stored water will last another 9.46days.

Now, I wouldn’t take these figures as gospel, they are ballpark figures at best. Obviously I’m not taking into account the replenishment of the water storage facilities by rain/stream flow (according to the website, the rate at which Melbourne’s water is being replenished is well below average), and the non-residential water usage figure is slightly fudged because it’s based on the data from last week’s heatwave (so it’s probably safe to assume the non-residential water use is usually less than the figure I’ve used), and population figure used by the website would be different from the figure I used above (probably more recent).

However, I think the figures are enough to show that increasing the target per person per day water usage (which is presumably what Opposition water spokesperson Louise Asher would do because she feels it’s “demonstrably unfair” to force people to choose between showering and watering their garden) would have a profound effect on Melbourne’s water supply. To increase the target per person per day water usage would be irresponsible especially given the much lower than average rainfall and stream flow into Melbourne’s reservoirs and catchments.

Following my recent decision to stop buying products made from dead animals, I decided to replace my old leather wallet. After walking around the city for a bit looking for a replacement I hadn’t found any nice non-leather wallets, so I decided to make my own! I had read of people making their own wallets out of gaffer tape (duct tape in the US) and after having a poke through google found about 4 different guides. I used this one.

Here’s a couple of photos showing the finished item:

It took me about an hour or so to make, and it’s a bit rough. This was my first attempt at some gaffertape craft, obviously with more practice the result would be better  and take less time to make. The cool thing is once you understand how it fits together it’s easy to make modifications and add different colours (providing you have the tape).

In any case I’ve decided to use it over my old leather wallet. Gaffer tape > dead animal guilt.