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Kathy Freston: Future Shock

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Another great article by Kathy Freston.

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Kathy

Freston

Author, Health and Wellness Expert

Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/future-shock_b_210545.html

 

Posted: June 3, 2009 08:30 AM

 

 

 

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Future Shock

 

 

 

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Dateline: June of the year 2109, in a high school

social sciences class in Boise, Idaho.

Teacher: Good morning class. Today we are

remembering what life was like in the days of Barack Hussein Obama, the

first African American President of the United States. As you all know,

President Obama did many things to distinguish himself as one of the

greatest Presidents our country has ever known.

Back in 2009, the country was in a fast downward spiral of financial

disaster; but Obama and his cabinet -- against all odds -- implemented

a plan that re-organized the way banks and public corporations did

business. He made them accountable not only to the shareholders and

government, but also to the environment and to the well-being of the

workers. There were a couple of very dark years for a lot of people,

but a second Great Depression was averted.

It was under President Obama's leadership that this country was

ushered into the era of peace and prosperity that we've experienced

since then. Some argue that he saved the world from impending

ecological collapse by appointing key agricultural and scientific

people that made critical recommendations.

A hundred years ago, you may find this hard to believe, but the

entire world was behaving in a way that made scientists of the time

wonder aloud whether humans are actually a rational species. Some of

the most brilliant scientists of the day argued

that without changes in policy, the world was doomed to Biblical-style

plagues, floods, famines, food and water wars, and other catastrophes

-- all of human origin. Even so, entire industries lined up to condemn

these scientists -- there was actually a debate about whether global

warming was a problem.

 

Gasps and murmuring of incredulity from the students.

I know, we see it all clearly now. But back then, people were used

to just taking whatever they wanted of natural resources, not believing

that there could ever be consequences. They thought there was no end to

the oil in the ground, fresh air or water, trees, or even animals. They

believed they could do whatever they wanted, and so they did.

It's impressive to think about how the transformation occurred,

though. Take for instance how people used to eat. Back in the day,

people used to eat animals as part of nearly every meal. No kidding.

But then in late 2006, United Nations scientists argued that eating

meat was "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to

the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to

global," singling out meat consumption as a top cause of everything

from desertification to loss of biodiversity to global warming. In

fact, it was the business of raising animals for food that caused more

global warming gases -- carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide --

than all the various forms of transportation put together. So even

though driving those millions of big cars and flying old fashioned

planes powered by oil were polluting the environment and warming the

planet at breakneck speed, animal agriculture was an even bigger

problem.

It seemed that no one listened, though, as 10 billion land animals

and tens of billions of fish continued to be killed and eaten by humans

every year in the United States alone.

Student: 10 billion animals and all those

fish were slaughtered a year? For people to eat?

 

Teacher: Oh yes, people in the United States ate

on average about 100 kilograms of animal flesh per person per year; of

course back then the U.S. measured weight in something called pounds --

so it was an average of about 220 pounds. They ate huge chunks of cows

-- their rumps, shoulders, and from around their ribs -- and drank

their milk. They even ate the cow's baby's -- called veal -- because

they liked the taste tender flesh. They dined on chickens more than

anything, eating their breasts, legs, and wings. And people ate their

eggs too!

 

Groans of disgust from the room. One student exclaims, "Humans

consumed the milk and eggs of cows and chickens? Seriously?"

Teacher: Yes, seriously. But back to the

environment please: It was inconceivable to people that the food they

ate was what was warming the planet. Even former President Al Gore, who

at that time had not yet been elected President or started his crusade

against eating animals, didn't embrace the idea. He did finally see the

connection of course, and he became one of President Obama's main

advisors, urging him to see the full picture of what animal agriculture

was doing to our planet.

At the same time, a number of scientists got together and challenged

the world to recognize the insanity of funneling crops through animals

to eat them. In addition to causing almost one-fifth of all global

warming -- and for something both cruel and unhealthy -- funneling

crops through animals also wasted hundreds of millions of tons of

grain, corn, and soy. These crops were funneled through animals,

wasting all of their fiber and carbohydrates, and the vast majority of

their calories.

And remember, this was 100 years ago, when almost a billion people

were starving and more than a billion lived in dire poverty. It's

shocking to think that in such a rich world, people starved, but they

did -- from those almost one billion who were not eating enough to be

healthy, about 40 million people every year actually died from

starvation-related causes. So that makes the waste of crops even harder

to understand.

There is a spirited debate in college and university political

science departments about whether it was the scientific argument about

animals or the environmental and human starvation arguments that

finally caused eating animals to be seen as so totally unethical, but

everyone agrees that Richard Dawkins, other scientists, and animal

protection groups focused attention on the scientific argument -- now

obvious to us -- that other animals are more like us than they're

unlike us (they feel pain, they are familial, they seek enjoyment,

etc.) and that eating them is... well it's beneath our humanity and

certainly bad for our health and the health of the planet.

Professor Dawkins, who was the foremost evolutionary scientist of

his day, denounced what he called "speciesist arrogance" -- this idea

that human beings are the pinnacle of creation -- and he called other

species our "cousins," though these ideas were hardly the scientific

consensus, despite the efforts of Dawkins, Jane Goodall, and other such

pioneers. Of course it's obvious to us that other species have the same

basic capacities and senses as human beings, but again, this was a big,

big deal when Dawkins and Goodall were saying it 100 years ago.

At that same time, animal protection groups started to focus more

and more on the way these animals were treated. Groups documented the

unbelievable cruelty of systems for egg production where so-called

farmers crammed seven animals into tiny cages, as many as 100,000 in a

shed, unable to do anything natural to being a chicken. They documented

slaughterhouses -- it remains amazing to me that society didn't come up

with another name for these places -- chopping animals' limbs off while

they were still conscious.

They kept animals by the thousands in windowless buildings hidden

away from view, and inside, they had people lined up to kill them,

dismember them, and chop them up to be shipped out for food. There was

a lot of blood, and there were horrible sounds coming from those

places. But it was the biggest industry in the whole world, and people

didn't seem to question the rightness of it. You can sometimes see

these videos late at night on the American History channel, but they

justifiably contain a parental warning, since they are not for the

faint of heart.

 

At this point, most of the students are staring blankly, in total

shock.

I'm sorry -- I know this is hard to hear. But it's important that we

understand our history, and it's important that...

A student interrupts: But ma'am, how could this be? Wouldn't people

get sick if they were eating animals' corpses? I mean, they were eating

dead bodies!

Why yes, they got sick. Millions of people got sick from eating

contaminated animal flesh every year, and thousands died. And even more

shocking, more than half of Americans died for heart disease and cancer

(those were big diseases back then), and two-thirds of Americans were

overweight from eating this unhealthy diet. Although some doctors and

nutritionists tried to tell everyone else that the human body is not

designed to consume animals, much as people smoked cigarettes and

denied the harm for so long, people also ate animals and denied the

harm. I know this all sounds quite fantastical to you, but it's true.

Another student chimes in: But why, why did they eat

animals? It seems so... gross.

Teacher: Well, perhaps they liked the taste of

animal flesh [students groan collectively]. I'm really not

sure. In 2008, a movie came

out

about a rugby team that experienced a plane crash, and the members

ended up eating their team members as they froze to death. I suspect

that the realization that humans are also made of flesh might have

shocked some people.

At that time, it's important to remember that the very idea of green

businesses was brand new and some businesses thrived as people clung to

tradition. There were massive corporations dedicated to profiting from

war, coal mining, oil, and killing billions of animals. You may not

believe this, but people would actually call Thanksgiving "turkey day"

because about 50 million turkeys were killed for that day alone.

 

First student blurts out in frustration: How could this be? My

great grandmother was alive 100 years ago -- surely she didn't eat

animals!?

Teacher: Well remember, humans held other humans as slaves not very

long before that, and the Holocaust was a mere 60 years before Obama

came to office. Think of things like the witch burnings, the crusades,

the fact that women couldn't even vote 100 years earlier than the first

black presidency. Thankfully, human beings evolve ethically, not just

physically!

Anyway, about 100 years ago, a campaign began, spearheaded by a

coalition of health, environmental, poverty, and animal protection

groups, and supported by President Obama and his animal-loving family.

Suddenly shirts and bumper stickers were everywhere, "Vegetarian is our

HOPE!" And of course it had many layers to it -- the environment,

global poverty, our health. It started becoming popular to eat a more

plant based diet, and sure enough, a momentum was started, and within a

few years, humans phased out eating animals.

It was, perhaps, the inevitable tide of history. In this case,

scientific understanding met ecological crisis met the strong urge for

self-preservation. We're learning from our mistakes and learning from

science. We can, at least, be thankful for that, class. Don't you agree

that learning from our mistakes is worth celebrating?

 

A young girl, silent until then, says quietly: I'm glad I wasn't

alive then. I don't think I could have stomached eating an animal.

 

 

 

Eco-Eating at www.brook.com/veg

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