ECOCIDE - I have only just seen this for the first time, though it seems a perfectly acceptable addition to the dictionary. It must mean 'the killing of the environment or ecosystem'.
It should also be recognised as being very close to "genocide" since the effects are already being manifested in the number of impoverished people whose children starve to death each and every day. This is the direct result of political inaction or refusal to act and, if recognised for what it is, should morally come within the sights of the international court. The major obstacle to justice in this case is that too many of us are accomplices to the crime and it would be simply scapegoating to put only the politicians and bankers on trial, wouldn't it?
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Lifestyle changes
14th June 2012 - just after midnight
After a long break I'm back to the blog. I'd even forgotten where my blogs were posted and hit on the place almost by accident.
My reason for returning - still the same would-be eco-friendly me is wanting to do something practical, intensely personal in addition to the preaching to our small congregation of TICC and the chatting times with students learning English. I wanted to document the journey I'm about to begin on completion of three score years of life.
I think I'm going veggie - there; I've come out!
The crunch point has come with reading two books by John Robbins - haven't you read them? Everyone should. The first he wrote was published in 1987 was "Diet for a New America". I'm still reading it but must finish it soon because I've promised to lend it to a friend. The second, which I read first was "The Food Revolution". It was published more recently (2001) and I have the 10th anniversary updated edition. There's a new book by the same author called "No Happy Cows" which I must get too. For all this I am grateful to Peiling, my wife for first reading the Chinese version of "The Food Revolution" and giving a running commentary as she sat there, and then for her offer to send for the English version so that I might, after all, be convinced.
How has the new direction come about?
First there's the man's personal testimony. He was destined to take control of the ice cream business his father and his Uncle Baskin had founded. By then it was the biggest ice cream company in the world. But he turned away from the opportunity to bask in the riches it promised him. Instead he turned vegetarian and took his family to live in the country. From his new base he accumulated huge amounts of information about the state of the American food industry. His books contain copious references and are self-evidently meticulously researched with, in the case of "The Food Revolution" no less than 46 pages of notes.
Second, among the contents I found much that agreed with what I had recently been discovering through news items and the documentary movie; "Food Inc." I had been on this tack for several months already. While I had been concentrating on the issue of global warming as being the most critical and urgent in human history the issue of food production had seemed to be of secondary importance. There are others that are important, such as war, injustice and human trafficking but I still believe they pale into insignificance against the dangers we are risking by our relentless emmissions of greenhouse gases. My friend John nicely connected the issues with the sweeping statement the the burping and farting of US cattle contributes more harmful emissions than the entire international aviation fleet. This is especially important since methane is much more potent than CO2 in its effect on atmospheric warming.
Third, as I contemplated the issues in a sermon I stood before a colleague from the Church of Bangladesh whose country is in the front line alongside Kiribati and Tuvalu when facing the prospect of rising sea levels. At least 300 million people in Bangladesh and adjacent West Bengal in India are at the mercy of the politicians seemingly endlessly debating how they might one day do something positive to take us away from the brink that we are about to spill over. The book had just given me another link to the same country with the statement that in America (supposedly the world's richest country, although in fact it is the world's biggest debtor nation and has 50 million of its own people below its own agreed poverty line) 55% of the adult population suffers from the diseases caused by being overweight while in Bangladesh 56% of the children suffer from the diseases caused by being undernourished. With this and many other disturbing facts highlighted in the books I cannot avoid the observation that this is an urgent moral issue that Christians must tackle now. There it was - focussed in our church through our own members.
Fourth, the "Diet" book heightened my sense of anger and outrage with the realisation that not just Americans but we in Britain too, along with most of the West had, for many decades, been deceived by the food industry into eating and drinking products they convinced us were health-giving when, in fact, the opposite was true. Like John Robbins, I grew up believing that milk was undeniably good for me. In student demonstrations in the early seventies as we complained about the reductions in government funding for university students we shouted the mantra - "Maggie Thatcher - milk snatcher" because one of her earlier actions in office had been to end the giving of free milk to school children. Her intention had been simply to save money without regard to the human cost, but I now see that, unwittingly she had actually done something positive. It's the only positive thing I have ever been able to say about her but I suppose we all sometimes do things that are out of character!
It turns out that milk is actually bad for us! And the facts have been known for several decades now but governments have ignored it and have even continued to allow milk producers to distribute nutrition information for school teachers to use in primary schools. I knew milk contained cholesterol but was still in the mindset that it was good on balance because it also contains calcium which is good for our bones. But, and forgive me if it's old news to you, the excess protein milk also contains needs a process that uses calcium to be washed through the kidneys and out of the body. If it cannot find enough calcium in the diet our body actually takes what it needs out of our bones!
So putting together these four reasons with my natural instinct to protect the worlds animals and plants I am resolved to take this new direction.
So, what is the next step?
We have been finding restaurants where vegetarian food is an available option and I have cut out as much meat and dairy food as I can. We still have some cheese and butter in the fridge to finish, though I suppose they ought to be thrown away. When we went to Costco the other day it was actually quite liberating to look at the rows of meat and dairy products and to think - "I don't even need to walk along there." And as a 'card-carrying veggie' no one will even consider asking whether we should buy this or that meat, dairy or egg product. It would still be good if there was a greater range of vegetarian restaurants in Tainan, but perhaps there are and we just need to sniff them out.
It might, then, be a week or two before the changeover is complete but I'l get there.
I just heard yesterday that one of my students who has been on sabbatical in Japan is returning today. He is a heart doctor and I think we will have a lot to talk about at his next class. The introduction to "The Food Revolution" is written by a heart doctor who has steered clear of the usual surgical methods for his patients and claims to have much more success advising patients and helping them become vegetarian. One line of thought from today was that I might ask him to monitor my progress and check out whether my body responds to the new diet in the way I have been led to believe it will. I hesitate to find out how much cholesterol I have! But I am highly reassured to learn that it will be reduced by the diet.
After that - ...? Watch this space!
After a long break I'm back to the blog. I'd even forgotten where my blogs were posted and hit on the place almost by accident.
My reason for returning - still the same would-be eco-friendly me is wanting to do something practical, intensely personal in addition to the preaching to our small congregation of TICC and the chatting times with students learning English. I wanted to document the journey I'm about to begin on completion of three score years of life.
I think I'm going veggie - there; I've come out!
The crunch point has come with reading two books by John Robbins - haven't you read them? Everyone should. The first he wrote was published in 1987 was "Diet for a New America". I'm still reading it but must finish it soon because I've promised to lend it to a friend. The second, which I read first was "The Food Revolution". It was published more recently (2001) and I have the 10th anniversary updated edition. There's a new book by the same author called "No Happy Cows" which I must get too. For all this I am grateful to Peiling, my wife for first reading the Chinese version of "The Food Revolution" and giving a running commentary as she sat there, and then for her offer to send for the English version so that I might, after all, be convinced.
How has the new direction come about?
First there's the man's personal testimony. He was destined to take control of the ice cream business his father and his Uncle Baskin had founded. By then it was the biggest ice cream company in the world. But he turned away from the opportunity to bask in the riches it promised him. Instead he turned vegetarian and took his family to live in the country. From his new base he accumulated huge amounts of information about the state of the American food industry. His books contain copious references and are self-evidently meticulously researched with, in the case of "The Food Revolution" no less than 46 pages of notes.
Second, among the contents I found much that agreed with what I had recently been discovering through news items and the documentary movie; "Food Inc." I had been on this tack for several months already. While I had been concentrating on the issue of global warming as being the most critical and urgent in human history the issue of food production had seemed to be of secondary importance. There are others that are important, such as war, injustice and human trafficking but I still believe they pale into insignificance against the dangers we are risking by our relentless emmissions of greenhouse gases. My friend John nicely connected the issues with the sweeping statement the the burping and farting of US cattle contributes more harmful emissions than the entire international aviation fleet. This is especially important since methane is much more potent than CO2 in its effect on atmospheric warming.
Third, as I contemplated the issues in a sermon I stood before a colleague from the Church of Bangladesh whose country is in the front line alongside Kiribati and Tuvalu when facing the prospect of rising sea levels. At least 300 million people in Bangladesh and adjacent West Bengal in India are at the mercy of the politicians seemingly endlessly debating how they might one day do something positive to take us away from the brink that we are about to spill over. The book had just given me another link to the same country with the statement that in America (supposedly the world's richest country, although in fact it is the world's biggest debtor nation and has 50 million of its own people below its own agreed poverty line) 55% of the adult population suffers from the diseases caused by being overweight while in Bangladesh 56% of the children suffer from the diseases caused by being undernourished. With this and many other disturbing facts highlighted in the books I cannot avoid the observation that this is an urgent moral issue that Christians must tackle now. There it was - focussed in our church through our own members.
Fourth, the "Diet" book heightened my sense of anger and outrage with the realisation that not just Americans but we in Britain too, along with most of the West had, for many decades, been deceived by the food industry into eating and drinking products they convinced us were health-giving when, in fact, the opposite was true. Like John Robbins, I grew up believing that milk was undeniably good for me. In student demonstrations in the early seventies as we complained about the reductions in government funding for university students we shouted the mantra - "Maggie Thatcher - milk snatcher" because one of her earlier actions in office had been to end the giving of free milk to school children. Her intention had been simply to save money without regard to the human cost, but I now see that, unwittingly she had actually done something positive. It's the only positive thing I have ever been able to say about her but I suppose we all sometimes do things that are out of character!
It turns out that milk is actually bad for us! And the facts have been known for several decades now but governments have ignored it and have even continued to allow milk producers to distribute nutrition information for school teachers to use in primary schools. I knew milk contained cholesterol but was still in the mindset that it was good on balance because it also contains calcium which is good for our bones. But, and forgive me if it's old news to you, the excess protein milk also contains needs a process that uses calcium to be washed through the kidneys and out of the body. If it cannot find enough calcium in the diet our body actually takes what it needs out of our bones!
So putting together these four reasons with my natural instinct to protect the worlds animals and plants I am resolved to take this new direction.
So, what is the next step?
We have been finding restaurants where vegetarian food is an available option and I have cut out as much meat and dairy food as I can. We still have some cheese and butter in the fridge to finish, though I suppose they ought to be thrown away. When we went to Costco the other day it was actually quite liberating to look at the rows of meat and dairy products and to think - "I don't even need to walk along there." And as a 'card-carrying veggie' no one will even consider asking whether we should buy this or that meat, dairy or egg product. It would still be good if there was a greater range of vegetarian restaurants in Tainan, but perhaps there are and we just need to sniff them out.
It might, then, be a week or two before the changeover is complete but I'l get there.
I just heard yesterday that one of my students who has been on sabbatical in Japan is returning today. He is a heart doctor and I think we will have a lot to talk about at his next class. The introduction to "The Food Revolution" is written by a heart doctor who has steered clear of the usual surgical methods for his patients and claims to have much more success advising patients and helping them become vegetarian. One line of thought from today was that I might ask him to monitor my progress and check out whether my body responds to the new diet in the way I have been led to believe it will. I hesitate to find out how much cholesterol I have! But I am highly reassured to learn that it will be reduced by the diet.
After that - ...? Watch this space!
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