July 2019 – Compassionate Spirit

Some of the survivors on July 4 in Washington Park

Some Denver residents are still unaware of the roundup and mass killing of over a thousand Canada geese in Washington Park and other Denver city parks, which took place toward the end of June. The city claimed that the geese were a health problem; and the goose meat is going to the homeless.

Before getting to the rationale for the mass killing of innocent creatures in our parks, it’s worth reflecting on the irony of giving their meat to the homeless. The meat is likely tainted with pesticides and metals, and a few years ago some city officials seemed to think that this precluded feeding the meat to the homeless. Evidently the city has now resolved its doubts on that score. The city also recently defeated, overwhelmingly, Initiative 300, which in effect would have legalized homelessness in Denver by repealing the “camping ban.” Congratulations, homeless people! You won’t be able to sleep anywhere — but you WILL get some goose meat of questionable quality. Continue reading “Let Them Eat Geese”

Whatever happened to the estimate that 51% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are from livestock agriculture (“Livestock and Climate Change,” Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, WorldWatch, Nov.-Dec. 2009)? This certainly supports the vegan cause, but is it scientifically valid?

This claim revolves around how much of an impact human land use has on the carbon cycle. What difference would it make if we didn’t have any livestock industry today? The areas now used to graze livestock, or grow crops for livestock, would revert to their natural vegetation, which in many cases would be forest areas. A new article published earlier this month in Science now gives us a better idea of the potential of reforestation. Even excluding existing forests, urban areas, and farm areas (!), reforestation could store around 200 gigatons of carbon, which is about two-thirds of the carbon humans have put into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, and thus getting rid of 25% of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere. Continue reading “Reforestation is essential to deal with climate change”