What’s your fair share of meat?

by | May 16, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity

Food historian Tristram Stuart has a piece in the Guardian this morning asking the question: what’s one person’s fair share of meat consumption? 

After all, meat (especially red meat) and dairy products have a disproportionate impact on climate change – the livestock industry is responsible for 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions – as well as on land use, grain consumption, water consumption and other issues besides.  So if by now we’re all used to the idea that we can quantify our carbon footprint and compare it to what our personal share would be if we had a safe global emissions budget that was shared out equitably between the world’s people, then what would the meat equivalent – the sustainable ‘Big Mac footprint’, if you like – work out at? 

As Tristram acknowledges, it’s not as straightforward as ‘meat bad, vegetables good’, given that

no two pieces of meat are the same. A hunk of beef raised on Scottish moorland has a very different ecological footprint from one created in an intensive feedlot using concentrated cereal feed, and a wild venison or rabbit casserole is arguably greener than a vegetable curry. Likewise, countries have very different animal husbandry methods. For example, in the US, for each calorie of meat or dairy food produced, farm animals consume on average more than 5 calories of feed. In India the rate is a less than 1.5 calories. In Kenya, where there isn’t the luxury of feeding grains to animals, livestock yield more calories than they consume because they are fattened on grass and agricultural by-products inedible to humans.

Nonetheless, encouraged by the declaration of a meat-free day a week in Ghent, Tristram’s got his calculator out and made a guesstimate of the kind of consumption changes we might be talking about.  Here’s the deal:

Global average consumption of meat and dairy products including milk was 152kg a person in 2003. Average EU and US consumption, by contrast, was over 400kg, while Uganda’s was 45kg. In order to reach the equitable fair share of global production, rich western countries would have to cut their consumption by 2.7 times – and this doesn’t include the fact that the butter will have to be spread even more thinly if the global population really does increase by another 2.3 billion by 2050.

However, still further reductions would be necessary because global meat production is already at unsustainable levels. The IPCC among other bodies, has called for an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Since high levels of meat and dairy ­consumption are luxuries, it seems reasonable to expect livestock production to take its share of the hit. For rich ­western countries this would mean decreasing meat and dairy consumption to significantly less than one tenth of current levels, the sooner the better.

Taliban reportedly waterboarding captured US soldiers

by | May 15, 2009 | Conflict and security

Can’t confirm the accuracy of this report, but over at Balkinization, Brian Tamanaha has this:

According to reports out of Kabul, the Taliban announced that they have waterboarded three U.S. soldiers taken prisoner. The Taliban commander asserted that waterboarding is not torture and does not violate the Geneva Convention or U.S. law. He assured everyone that a medical officer monitored all waterboarding sessions to insure that no permanent damage was done to the soldiers. In addition, he said they were careful to follow the directions on waterboarding in a SERE training manual they found posted on the internet.

In support of his assertion that waterboarding is not torture, the Taliban commander cited legal analysis produced by the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice. He pointed out that the authors of this legal analysis are a respected federal judge on the second highest court in America and a professor at a top American law school. The Taliban commander also referred to the careful legal analysis of a Distinguished Professor of Law who concluded that waterboarding is not torture because U.S. trainers did it to their own troops “hundreds and hundreds of times.”Update

Update: David thinks this is a satire.  He’s probably right. Ah, the pitfalls of the blogosphere…

Four key risks for India’s next PM

by | May 15, 2009 | South Asia

Indian writer Aravind Adiga yesterday offered the winner of India’s election a heads-up on four emergencies likely to test them early in their term of office. Two of them – terrorism, and India’s fiscal position – aren’t any great surprise.  The other two?

Three: In the past few weeks, the Naxals – Maoist guerrillas who operate in the desperately poor states of north and central India – have attacked a major aluminium mine, killed voters and policemen, and disrupted trains. The Naxal insurgency, which taps into the resentment of those left out or threatened by the economic boom, has grown steadily in the past five years. Yet most urban Indians still think of it as an obscure menace that is “out there” – far from the cities and towns.

This is likely to change. The emboldened guerillas look set to escalate their war against the Indian state in the months ahead. Attacks on industries, mines, police stations and trains are likely to rise; a spectacular strike that grabs national and international attention is on the cards. Understaffed local police and corrupt regional politicians will not be able to deal with the Naxals without significantly greater assistance from New Delhi.

Four: India’s population continues to grow and demand for water – for irrigation, industrial and personal consumption – keeps mounting; yet no government has given enough thought to husbanding the country’s water resources. Tensions over the use of water simmer across India. Sooner or later, they will explode. In the months after a bad monsoon, for example, there could be a flare-up between neighbouring regions over the use of a shared river; this could lead to strikes and protests that paralyse parts of the country.

Here’s the go-to site on Naxalites, btw.

How UN consultants get laid

by | May 14, 2009 | Africa, Conflict and security, Off topic

Chris Blattman, a political scientist who moonlights as a UN consultant and blogger, is worried by the way international officials insist on flying business class:

I seldom fly business myself, even on Bank and UN consultancies, mostly to conserve my project funds for research assistants and survey expenses. My incentives are just right: money I spend on me comes out of money I’d spend making my research projects just a little better. Not so the rest of the agency?

I also hold back from business for another reason: $6000 for a single ticket? When the purpose of your trip is to contribute (however little) to ending poverty, something about that price tag just doesn’t seem right.

In an age of diminishing aid and global belt-tightening, now seems an opportune time to change this little practice. Mr. Zoellick? Mr. Ki-Moon? [That’s Mr. Ban to you.]

If you Bankers and UNers out there disagree, please comment. I could be convinced. But let me make one final argument. Five years ago, deciding not to stay in the Bank’s preferred five-star hotel in Nairobi, I roughed it in a nearby four star guesthouse (principled, I know). If I hadn’t, I never would have met that cute aid worker, dusty from southern Sudan, at the Internet cafe down the street.

Jeannie and I married 18 months ago.

So remember this in your business class comfort: the hot humanitarian workers fly coach.

That last sentence doesn’t follow logically from the evidence. Perhaps the hot humanitarians are in internet cafes trying to get upgrades online. You can’t be sure.

What you can be sure about, however, is that a post like this is bound to draw irate, self-justifying comments from the business class lovers. To select from one of 40-odd comments Blattman received at random, here are some really cutting-edge thoughts:

A better way to save money (and reduce carbon emissions) would be to increase the use of video and teleconferencing for cases where face to face meetings are not essential.

But what about the hot humanitarian aid workers? Nobody’s going to get dusty in a teleconference!

At the UN, policy is that flights are now economy class for travel times of about 7 hours or less, if I recall correctly. The cost differential between business and economy should also factor in the extra night or two of accommodation and DSA that travelers would need to rest and adjust to the time difference.

Hm, do you happen to be a UN spokesperson in disguise?

Better still: airlines should offer a more modestly priced section with seats that allow for a decent night’s sleep without all the other perks of business class. I think many development professionals would be happy with that compromise (or could be guilted into accepting it).

Ooh yes, that’s a good idea. Why not have a specialized “UN Class” on every plane, with only Hotel Rwanda as a video option and free copies of the Human Development Report instead of in-flight magazines?  All the seats could be painted white, and have a little “UN” stencil on the side…