chillichocaholic said:

that's cute Chilli!

Uh oh...twasn't meant to be cute

heartbeatocean said:

Fish is not vegetarian... unless you're Catholic, perhaps.

Christaro said:

Let's address each of those in turn....

1) Maybe this is the lawyer in me, but "murder" usually by definition involves the killing of a human. If you object on moral/ethical grounds to killing animals, you're certainly entitled to feel that way, but calling it murder is like a right-winger describing abortion as murder.

2) Source? (Even if it's true, my metabolism runs on the fast side anyway, but that's just me.)

3) "Low energy frequency"? Huh? You can make some reasonable arguments for vegetarianism, but this is not one of them.

4) You got me there -- taste is a subjective judgment. For example, I think beets are repulsive. I haven't had them in years, but they were the one food that would actually trigger my gag reflex as a kid.

matt said:

[Edited 4/22/07 14:18pm]

Christopher said:

How about Lake Washington or Lake Union???

This decent Earth Day article covers some of the ignored (on this thread anyway) environmental reasoning:

Earth Day Cometh and Earth Day Goeth

And Where have all the Bees Gone?



Earth Day Report by Captain Paul Watson



Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and
I'm not sure about the former.

- Albert Einstein

(1879 - 1955)



Earth Day is almost here. I don't believe in Earth Day myself. I think
it's a little silly to devote one single day of the year to being
concerned about the environment, but I suppose one day is better than
no day at all.



Having been an environmental activist since 1968, I have seen the
movement go up and down like a roller coaster in popularity. It was
big in 1972 with the Environmental Conference in Stockholm which I
attended and it became big again in 1992 with the U.N. Environmental
Conference in Rio De Janeiro that I also attended. I remember that the
priority issue in 1972 was the danger of escalating human populations
but by 1992, that concern was not even on the agenda.



Well we are approaching the end of another 20 year period and it looks
like ecology is in vogue again thanks to global warming and a few
other scary things. Green is once again popular.



I can always tell when the environment is getting to be faddish again.
My indicator is the number of lectures I am booked for around this
time of year. It reached its peak in 1992, practically disappeared for
awhile and now it's coming around again.



What worries me is that the movement is constantly being sidetracked
by the issue of the day.



It's global warming now. When we were trying to warn people about
global warming and climate change twenty years ago, no one was
interested. Now it's become the "in" issue and the big organizations
are tapping the public for donations to address the problem although
no one has come up with anything that makes much sense. But global
warming is good for business if you're one of the big bureaucratic
organizations whose primary concern is really corporate self preservation.



Greenpeace is even telling people that they can slow down global
warming by (and I kid you not) "singing in the shower". Yep, you see
all you have to do is run the water, then get wet, shut the water off,
and sing in the shower as you lather up and then open up the faucet
and rinse off. Ah, so simple to save the world.



The problem is that these big organizations are to politically correct
to address the ecologically correct solutions.



Instead they are baffling everyone with abstract concepts like carbon
trading and carbon storage or trying to sell us a new hybrid Japanese car.



Even Al Gore with his Inconvenient Truth totally ignored the most
inconvenient truth of all. I'll get to that in a moment.



But let's look at the number one cause of global greenhouse gas emissions.



First and foremost it is human over-population, the very same issue
that was the priority concern at the 1972 United Nations Conference on
the Environment in Stockholm.



It's 6.5 billion people folks.



Remember in 1950, the world population was 3 billion. It's now more
than doubled.



6.5 billion people produce one hell of an annual output of waste and
utilize an unbelievable amount of resources and energy.



And this number is rising minute by minute, day, by day, year by year.



And most of the people having children have no idea why they are even
having children other than that's what you do. Most of them don't
really love their children because if they did they would be very much
involved in trying to ensure that their children have a world to
survive in.



Unless over-population is addressed, there is absolutely no way of
slowing down global greenhouse gas emissions.



But how do you do that within the context of economic systems that
require larger and larger numbers to perform the essential task of
consuming products?



Corporations need workers and buyers. Governments need tax-payers,
bureaucrats and soldiers. More people means more money.



I've said for decades that the solution to all of our problems is
simple. We just need to live in accordance with the three basic laws
of ecology.



First is the Law of Diversity. The strength of an eco-system lies in
diversity of species within it. Weaken diversity and the entire system
will be weakened and will ultimately collapse.



Second is the Law of Interdependence. All of the species within an
eco-system are interdependent. We need each other.



And the third law of Ecology is the Law of Finite Resources. There is
a limit to growth because there is a limit to carrying capacity.



Human populations are exceeding ecological carrying capacity.



Exceeding ecological carrying capacity is diminishing both resources
and diversity of species.



The diminishment of diversity is causing serious problems with
interdependence.



Albert Einstein once wrote that "if the bee disappeared off the
surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life
left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more
animals, no more man."



That is the Law of Interdependence.



Forget global warming folks. The disappearance of the honeybee could
end our existence as human beings on this planet far sooner than we think.



And the honey bee is in fact now disappearing. Why? We don't know why.
It could be genetically modified crops, it could be pesticides or it
could be that our cell phones are interfering with their ability to
navigate.



Whatever the cause the fact is that they are disappearing. All around
the world bees are disappearing in a crisis called Colony Collapse
Disorder.



And bees pollinate our plants. Everywhere on the planet, bees are hard
at work making it possible for you to live and enjoy life.



We hold on to our place on this planet by only a toehold. If anything
happens to the grass family, we are screwed. If the earthworms
disappear, we are in big trouble. If the bees disappear, well
according to Albert Einstein who was considered somewhat smarter than
most of us, we will have only four years. Just enough time to get a
college degree to discover that everything you learned is relatively
useless when sitting on the doorstep of global ecological annihilation.



We are cutting down the forest and plundering the oceans of life. We
are polluting the soil, the air and the water and we are rapidly
running out of fresh water to drink.



Only corporations like Coke and Pepsi have figured out that water is
more valuable than gold. That is why they are bottling it in plastic
bottles and selling it. This week I saw a bottle of water in my hotel
room that I could have drunk for only $4.



Unbelievable. That means that water is now being sold for more than
the equivalent amount of gasoline. I hope that I'm not the only one
who thinks this is insanity.



Now for Al Gore's really inconvenient truth. In his film he does not
mention once that the meat and dairy industry that produces the bacon,
the steaks, the chicken wings and the milk is a larger contributor to
greenhouse gas emissions than the automobile industry. You see, Al may
drive a Prius but he likes his burgers.



This is why the big organizations like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club
will not say a thing about the meat industry. Last year I saw
Greenpeacers sitting down for a baked fish meal onboard the Greenpeace
ship Esperanza while engaged in a campaign to oppose over-fishing.



When we pointed out that our Sea Shepherd ships serve only vegan
meals, the Greenpeace cook replied, "that's just silly."



We see what we want to see and we rationalize everything else.



The oceans have been plundered to the point that 90% of the fish have
been removed from their eco-systems and at this very moment there is
over 65,000 miles of long lines set in the Pacific Ocean alone and
there are tens of thousands of fishing vessels scouring the seas in a
rapacious quest to scoop up everything that swims or crawls.



This is ecological insanity.



The largest marine predator on the planet right now is the cow. More
than half the fish taken from the sea is rendered into fish meal and
fed to domestic livestock. Puffins are starving in the North sea to
feed sand eels to chickens in Denmark. Sheep and pigs have replaced
the shark and the sea lion as the dominant predators in the ocean and
domestic house cats are eating more fish than all the world's seals
combined. We are extracting some fifty to sixty fish from the sea to
raise one farm raised salmon.



This is ecological insanity.



Yet the demand for shark fin is rising in China. Ignorant people still
want to wear fur coats. In America, we order fries, a cheeseburger and
a "diet" coke.



Ecological insanity folks.



Last week a reporter called to ask me if I had really said that earth
worms are more important than people. I answered that yes I had. He
then asked how I could justify such a statement.



"Simple," I answered. "Earthworms can live on the planet without
people. We cannot live on the planet without earthworms thus from an
ecological point of view, earthworms are more important than people."



He said that I was insane for suggesting such a ridiculous idea when
people were made in the image of God, and earthworms were not.



What we have here of course is a failure to communicate between two
radically different world views. His which is anthropocentric and sees
reality as human centred and mine which is biocentric and sees reality
as including all species equally working in interdependence. He sees
us as divine and better than all the other species and I see us as a
bunch of arrogant primates out of control.



But that's my two cents worth for Earth Day 2007.



Consider the humble honey bee and remember that the little black and
yellow insect you see flitting busily from flower to flower is all
that stands between us and our demise as a species on this planet.



We better see to it that they don't disappear.





May be freely published and distributed











Captain Paul Watson
Founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (1977-
Co-Founder - The Greenpeace Foundation (1972)
Co-Founder - Greenpeace International (1979)
Director of the Sierra Club USA (2003-2006)
Director - The Farley Mowat Institute
Director - www.harpseals.org




"Sail forth - steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all."
- Walt Whitman




www.Seashepherd.org
Tel: 360-370-5650
Fax: 360-370-5651



Address: P.O. Box 2616
Friday Harbor, Wa 98250 USA

mostbeautifulgrlntheworld said:

wikipedia should NEVER be used as a source for anything. articles on wikipedia can be edited and altered by almost anyone. i've done it a few times myself to see if someone would catch it, and its still there.

Because I hate plants!

Ha ha.

Ok.

I'm a vegetarian because the industries that produce animal products are incredibly cruel/ethically horrifying and destructive to the environment.

HereToRockYourWorld said:

That's a reasonable position to take. But, you agree that this stuff about meat having "a low energy frequency" is nonsense, right?

matt said:

Is is nonesense to you only?

matt said:

I just don't know what the hell it's supposed to mean. Does it take less energy to produce a pound of carrots than a pound of beef? Absolutely, and that matters.

But "energy frequency" in the physics sense? WTF?

HereToRockYourWorld said:

I think they are saying that is more effficent for the environment to eat the cereals directly then to feed it to the livestock, which in turn is raising them to be killed for food. Also maybe to eating the cereals and what not dirctly cuts down on livestock waste and is better for the environment in that way. I dunno...


less = cleaner ground and air.
[Edited 4/22/07 17:50pm]

HereToRockYourWorld said:

Exactly.

mostbeautifulgrlntheworld said:

If that's what they're saying, yeah, I think it's a good argument. "Energy frequency" is just a strange way to put it.

HereToRockYourWorld said:

I could be wrong that is just the way I would interpert it.

There is really no need to eat meat, meat substitutes taste the same. Plus people in health food stores are way more attractive.

lilgish said:

It's true, we're hot.

HereToRockYourWorld said:

you are.

ok, fine. i'm vegetarian because my boyfriend is and i don't wanna be sucking face with a big ol' hunk of white castle clam strips in my teeth.

there. i said it. happy goddamn earth day.

Anx said:

Happy I mean Earth Day to you too.

lilgish said:

Maybe for some folks, but I did the vegetarian thing for quite some time, and my health just kept getting worse. Every objective doctor I've asked about it has said that in his/her experience, some people handle vegetarian diets well, but they don't "work" for others.

matt said:

how many doctors have you spoken to on this topic and how did you assess their ability to be objective? did you do a research project on this? i'd like to read it. and i don't mean that to be contrary or snarky. i'd really be interested in your argument and your mission surrounding it.

mostbeautifulgrlntheworld said:

THAT is what my Earth Day thread is missing

WOW...Did this thread suddenly get all Preachy and technical or is it just Me??? Like I said b4, for me its like Matt said with the whole gag thing...red meat makes me sick, but I can eat chicken. As for meat being Murder....what a load of garbage!!! I'm against am nimal cruelty and what they do to battery hens makes me wanna punch the offenders out!! But Im with Matt, meat not murder unless ure Jeffery Daumer or Hannibal lector. Let's see u go to the Jungle and tell a lion " Please dont eat me, cause meat is murder"
If ure a veggie, put ure hand up, say yeah, but preach to someone else. There u all go, there's my little rant. hehehehehe. Love to ya!!!

Anx said:

I don't think I'm qualified to do scientific research in this area, nor do I really have any "mission," besides debunking the idea that a vegetarian diet is suitable for all humans. And the only reason I have an interest in doing that is my firsthand experience with wrecking my own health.

How many doctors? Well, I could probably count them on my hands. But as for objectivity, all of them are here in Seattle, which is very vegetarian-friendly, and the other one was an Indianapolis doctor who used to practice in California and had worked with many vegetarian patients before. The Indy doctor obviously knew her stuff... I wouldn't be surprised if she's vegetarian herself. No doctor ever suggested that vegetarian diets are bad for everyone or seemed totally opposed to the idea.

I actually have in my files copies of lab reports that document my health getting worse during the experiment... wish I had a scanner at home so I could post them.

chillichocaholic said:

The Smiths - Meat Is Murder


Heifer whines could be human cries
Closer comes the screaming knife
This beautiful creature must die
This beautiful creature must die
A death for no reason
And death for no reason is MURDER

And the flesh you so fancifully fry
Is not succulent, tasty or kind
It's death for no reason
And death for no reason is MURDER


And the calf that you carve with a smile
Is MURDER
And the turkey you festively slice
Is MURDER
Do you know how animals die ?


Kitchen aromas aren't very homely
It's not "comforting", cheery or kind
It's sizzling blood and the unholy stench
Of MURDER


It's not "natural", "normal" or kind
The flesh you so fancifully fry
The meat in your mouth
As you savour the flavour
Of MURDER


NO, NO, NO, IT'S MURDER
NO, NO, NO, IT'S MURDER
Oh ... and who hears when animals cry ?

matt said:

i didn't really think you were suggesting that you were doing scientific research, though you do seem pretty passionate about advocating against the (for lack of a better term) "sanctity" of the vegetarian diet.

i'd be interested in knowing how balanced your diet was and how you planned for your nutritional requirements when you were attempting vegetarianism. a lot of people say "it's not for me" when the truth is, a lot of people go into it unprepared, simply thinking they can cut out meat and not have to worry about replacing those nutrients with a balanced vegetable-based equivalent. i don't know what your situation was, maybe you went as far as to work with a nutritionist and it didn't work for you - i can only speak from my experience as well, which is based on almost 20 years of absolutely no problem with a vegetarian diet, and during the past three years i've been working out regularly, being in the best physical shape of my entire life.

because of my experience, i'm really interested in other people's stories - i hope to do something with my years of vegetarian life - a book? a blog? i don't know, some kind of project - and i'm always interested in hearing how/why it didn't work out for other people who really did give it an honest go.

Anx said:

For the record, he had me around at the time helping him try to eat properly, and I know a lot about this stuff. Especially for a person who doesn't really like vegetables much, he was eating really well, and really doing very poorly on it, mainly as far as maintaining his weight. Don't know why.

Mary was vegan for years and also had to give it up because she didn't feel well. And she, too, really knew her stuff and was very motivated to try. In her case, she couldn't keep her blood sugar regulated on a veg diet, even with a high protein content and minimal starch. Don't know why.

And then some of us feel great.

Hopefully science will cough up some answers in time. I'd love to know what the deal is with that.

Though my reasons are primarily about ethics, so while I do find it to be a very positive thing for me, I would choose to be vegan even if I weren't convinced that it's ideal for my health.
[Edited 4/22/07 19:09pm]