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Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 18:05:44 -0500
To: "Nathan Binkert" <nate &AElig binkert.org>
Cc: "Nate Clark" <ntclark &AElig eecs.umich.edu>, "Robert Felty" <robfelty &AElig umich.edu>,         improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu
From: "bethany soule" <bsoule &AElig gmail.com>
Subject: Re: more reasons to be vegetarian

> I think you're exactly right.  The essential problem with all of this
> stuff is that environmental costs are rarely paid for directly by the
> people doing the damage.  If people and companies actually had to pay to
> offset the environmental cost of their waste/destruction, then it would be
> in everyone's best interest to improve their own environmental impact.  I
> bet that if farmers had to actually pay to fix the damage they did, the
> damage per pound of meat produced would go way down.  Farmers have little
> incentive to do better.

I'll point out also that if farmers had to directly pay the cost for
their agricultural practices, they'd pass the price on to consumers,
making meat a hell of a lot more expensive, and thereby probably
reducing the consumption of it, which is probably somehow related to
using this as an argument for not eating meat? And the idea that your
consumption choices give you power.

Of course, what's really weird about agriculture in this country is
that not only do farmers not pay their own environmental costs, the
whole industry is heavily subsidized by the government. I wish I
understood that system better.

Also, let's take a minute to point out that you can factory farm wheat
and soy beans, too, and there are definitely negative costs to the
environment in that as well. The ag practices compound the problems
produced by the meat makers, and there are other effects as well.
Irrigation and fertilization cause runoff and erosion and contaminate
ground water supplies (sometimes with contaminants picked up from
running off through a pig farm or whatever). They also destroy natural
habitats and you lose species diversity, which can sometimes have
surprising negative effects. Like the loss of natural prairie habitat
was at least in part cause of the major flood in grand forks, ND
1997.. (I'm sure none of you remember that. I probably only do because
I have cousins there). And also apparently diversity is good for the
sake of itself, and not just as a happy politic buzz-word (see: _The
Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms,
Schools, and Societies_, by Scott E. Page. I'm sure there is plenty of
work quantifying the positives of species diversity (or negatives of a
lack thereof) as well, I'm just not familiar with it).

This coming from a non vegan. I really only have peripheral knowledge
of what I'm saying. My mom deals in this sort of stuff. In fact she
even wrote a book on agriculture and the environment, which I haven't
read. It's called _Farming In Nature's Image_ if anyone's interested.

Hmm. apparently it is available on Amazon.
and these people do research etc in the same vein:

http://www.landinstitute.org

Bethany