#over-population

Hot to trot

These three amigos seem to be gobbling, "Choose me ... choose me ... choose me" to the hens just outside the frame. The hens seemed thoroughly unimpressed.

Nonetheless, it's mating season the local toms are strutting around our yard like contestants in a charity bachelor auction. Not that we need a baby boom out here; just before the weather broke, I counted 52 birds in a single flock.

Let’s start from this one first, shall we? Source

Appetite for Destruction: You may already know the effects that meat-based diets have on our planet, but did you know that the largest impact actually comes from what we're feeding our livestock? (source)

No Human Will Starve in a Plant Based World (source)

Why are we Fattening Animals While Humans Starve? (source)

Why factory farming is not just cruel – but also a threat to all life on the planet (source)

“The world desperately needs joined-up action on industrial farming if it is to avoid catastrophic impacts on life on earth, according to the head of one of the world’s most highly regarded animal campaign groups.Philip Lymbery, chief executive of Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) and the author of Farmageddon and more recently Deadzone, said: ‘Every day there is a new confirmation of how destructive, inefficient, wasteful, cruel and unhealthy the industrial agriculture machine is. We need a total rethink of our food and farming systems before it’s too late.’ ”

“The UN has warned that if we continue as we are, the world’s soils will have effectively gone within 60 years. And then what? We shouldn’t look to the sea to bail us out because commercial fisheries are expected to be finished by 2048 …”

“The rainforest homes of the likes of jaguars and the critically endangered sumatran elephants are being razed to make way for intensive crop production and plantations that are feeding factory farm animals ... the mixed farm habitats of once common farmland birds such as barn owls, turtle doves and skylarks are being stripped away, and ... vast quantities of wild fish are being scooped up to feed industrially reared farmed fish and chickens and pigs, leaving the likes of penguins, puffins and other species starving.” 

Vast animal-feed crops to satisfy our meat needs are destroying planet (source)

“The ongoing global appetite for meat is having a devastating impact on the environment driven by the production of crop-based feed for animals, a new report has warned. The vast scale of growing crops such as soy to rear chickens, pigs and other animals puts an enormous strain on natural resources leading to the wide-scale loss of land and species, according to the study from the conservation charity WWF.”

“The study entitled Appetite for Destruction launches on Thursday at the 2017 Extinction and Livestock Conference in London, in conjunction with Compassion in World Farming (CIFW), and warns of the vast amount of land needed to grow the crops used for animal feed and cites some of the world’s most vulnerable areas such as the Amazon, Congo Basin and the Himalayas.”

“Protein-rich soy is now produced in such huge quantities that the average European consumes approximately 61kg each year, largely indirectly by eating animal products such as chicken, pork, salmon, cheese, milk and eggs. In 2010, the British livestock industry needed an area the size of Yorkshire to produce the soy used in feed. But if global demand for meat grows as expected, the report says, soy production would need to increase by nearly 80% by 2050.

‘The world is consuming more animal protein than it needs and this is having a devastating effect on wildlife,’ said Duncan Williamson, WWF food policy manager. ‘A staggering 60% of global biodiversity loss is down to the food we eat. We know a lot of people are aware that a meat-based diet has an impact on water and land, as well as causing greenhouse gas emissions, but few know the biggest issue of all comes from the crop-based feed the animals eat.’ ”

And finally, this: Goodbye – and good riddance – to livestock farming (source) 

“What will future generations, looking back on our age, see as its monstrosities? We think of slavery, the subjugation of women, judicial torture, the murder of heretics, imperial conquest and genocide, the first world war and the rise of fascism, and ask ourselves how people could have failed to see the horror of what they did. What madness of our times will revolt our descendants?

There are plenty to choose from. But one of them, I believe, will be the mass incarceration of animals, to enable us to eat their flesh or eggs or drink their milk. While we call ourselves animal lovers, and lavish kindness on our dogs and cats, we inflict brutal deprivations on billions of animals that are just as capable of suffering. The hypocrisy is so rank that future generations will marvel at how we could have failed to see it.”

“The answer, we are told by celebrity chefs and food writers, is to keep livestock outdoors: eat free-range beef or lamb, not battery pork. But all this does is to swap one disaster – mass cruelty – for another: mass destruction. Almost all forms of animal farming cause environmental damage, but none more so than keeping them outdoors. The reason is inefficiency. Grazing is not just slightly inefficient, it is stupendously wasteful. Roughly twice as much of the world’s surface is used for grazing as for growing crops, yet animals fed entirely on pasture produce just one gram out of the 81g of protein consumed per person per day. 

A paper in Science of the Total Environment reports that ‘livestock production is the single largest driver of habitat loss’. Grazing livestock are a fully automated system for ecological destruction: you need only release them on to the land and they do the rest, browsing out tree seedlings, simplifying complex ecosystems. Their keepers augment this assault by slaughtering large predators.’ ”

“In the UK, for example, sheep supply around 1% of our diet in terms of calories. Yet they occupy around 4m hectares of the uplands. This is more or less equivalent to all the land under crops in this country, and more than twice the area of the built environment (1.7m hectares). The rich mosaic of rainforest and other habitats that once covered our hills has been erased, the wildlife reduced to a handful of hardy species. The damage caused is out of all proportion to the meat produced.

Replacing the meat in our diets with soya spectacularly reduces the land area required per kilo of protein: by 70% in the case of chicken, 89% in the case of pork and 97% in the case of beef. One study suggests that if we were all to switch to a plant-based diet, 15m hectares of land in Britain currently used for farming could be returned to nature. Alternatively, this country could feed 200 million people. An end to animal farming would be the salvation of the world’s wildlife, our natural wonders and magnificent habitats.” 

The comments section in this one are a jolly good time! Typical assholes!

Climate change aid to poor nations lags behind Paris pledges (source)

“Finance for poor countries to help them reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and deal with climate change is lagging behind the promises of rich countries, an Oxfam report finds.

While taxpayer-funded finance has increased, and the private sector has stepped up with some initiatives, the amount raised could still fall short of the goal of providing $100bn a year to the developing world by 2020.The 2015 Paris agreement on climate change re-stated the $100bn financial target, but Oxfam says the taxpayer-funded finance from rich countries in 2015-16 stood at about $48bn, or nearly half the amount promised for 2020.”

“Tracy Carty, senior climate-change policy adviser at Oxfam, said the money flowing to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable to tackle climate change was ‘sadly inadequate’.”

How many Earths do we need? (source)

“It has been suggested that if everyone on the planet consumed as much as the average US citizen, four Earths would be needed to sustain them.”

Methane From Livestock: Scientists Underestimated Impact Of Cow Fart On Climate Change (source)

Reach ‘peak meat’ by 2030 to tackle climate crisis, say scientists: Reducing meat and dairy consumption will cut methane and allow forests to thrive (source)

Huge reduction in meat-eating ‘essential’ to avoid climate breakdown: Major study also finds huge changes to farming are needed to avoid destroying Earth’s ability to feed its population (source)

Per Capita Consumption of Poultry and Livestock, 1960 to Forecast 2021, in Pounds (source)

We know for a fact that meat based diet requires more land, energy, and water than a vegetarian diet. Why won’t you shift? The fact that many of you hide behind the “indigenous people”, which are killed for the deforestation, is sickening! Then we have this from basic Google search. 

But, you see, the corporations, man! They’re overfishing, overeating, overconsuming, and breeding like rats! It’s funny, but you rich white countries continue to fuck up the world, don’t you, supporting mass-slaughter campaigns fought by your countries aside, of course? Because who wants to talk about that? You make up about 1/7th of the world’s population but consume about 80% of the resources! But, hey, it’s the corporations, man, certainly not hyper-consumerism that’s ruining all life on earth as we know it. 

Crowd control

I lost count at around 50. And, stretch as it might, my camera lens couldn’t quite wrap its view-finder around the throng that trotted into our backyard Friday morning.

We’re accustomed to seeing large flocks of wild turkeys out here, but never like this.

In fact, it’s probably too much of a good thing. Overpopulation can lead to food shortages and the rapid spread of disease, ultimately leading to a population crash.

Hunting alone isn’t doing the job. I know of only two turkey hunters in the immediate area (including me) and the maximum bag limit is two turkeys per year, per hunter.

This has just kind of been on my mind, between some of the stuff I used to think about, triggered by some recent activities here on Tumblr, and kind of culminated by a video that I'm watching on YouTube from a handful of months ago.

I don't really have a thesis, just some random thoughts. More below the cut because this is a full-on essay.

Having an Animal is a Lifetime Commitment

If you take on the decision to bring an animal into the home, that commitment is for the lifetime of the animal and arrangements must be made for the animal if someone passes before the animal, like another family member or be rehomed to a loving home rather than dumped in a shelter.

Animals are living beings with emotions and require their needs met. They may not understand that someone will…

How Have We Lasted This Long?

Remember not long ago, I told you that Popeye’s had come out with a chicken sandwich that was said to be the equal of Chick-Fil-A’s?  I was happy to hear this, for I refuse to set foot in a Chick-Fil-A restaurant because of their overt bigotry, but I did like their chicken sandwiches long ago.  Well, before the girls and I got around to trying Popeye’s new sandwich, it was announced that they…

Huge reductions in meat-eating are essential to avoid dangerous climate change, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of the food system’s impact on the environment. In western countries, beef consumption needs to fall by 90% and be replaced by five times more beans and lentils.

The research also finds that enormous changes to farming are needed to avoid destroying the planet’s ability…