Worst Ecological Disasters?

[LadyTevar]

well, in fairness the genetic issues weren't deliberate, although I doubt that'd have stopped it given what they were doing with normal weapons.

Bhopal was pretty nasty. Love Canal should probably be up there.

How do people feel about the lost valleys of wales? Valleys completely filled with mining spoil, making a new flat area (an the occasional landslide). It's sort of an ecological disaster, but a new ecosystem has come of it.

Ah yes, and they did it again in Appalachian Coal Fields, calling it Mountain Top Removal. Not so much on the new ecosystem yet.

[Straha]

Without a doubt: Animal Agriculture.

Ignoring the unprecedented (and unimaginable) cost to lives that mechanized slaughter causes directly (which is... something) it:

- Is the largest contributor to global climate change by far. According to the UN, and if you include necessary transportation for Animal agriculture removing it would almost single-handedly decrease emissions enough to halt warming.

- Uses massively unsustainable amounts of water, and then destroys local water systems, often contributing to droughts and depopulating local river systems.

- Pesticide and ground clearance destroy local ecosystems, and wreak wide-spread havoc on native animal populations all while rending the land uninhabitable except through massive use of fertilizer (which comes with all its own problems.)

- Create horrifically toxic waste that is often fatal on contact to humans and most local wildlife and is difficult, if not impossible, to dispose of.

There's more (more anti-biotics are used in animal agriculture in certain states of the US than are used on the entire human population of the country, for instance) but that gets the magnitude across. It outweighs any other human made ecological disaster by far, thanks to its long history and ubiquity, and barring some catastrophic nuclear war will probably be the biggest ecological impact that human kind inflicts on the world.

[Flagg]

Without a doubt: Animal Agriculture.

Ignoring the unprecedented (and unimaginable) cost to lives that mechanized slaughter causes directly (which is... something) it:

- Is the largest contributor to global climate change by far. According to the UN, and if you include necessary transportation for Animal agriculture removing it would almost single-handedly decrease emissions enough to halt warming.

- Uses massively unsustainable amounts of water, and then destroys local water systems, often contributing to droughts and depopulating local river systems.

- Pesticide and ground clearance destroy local ecosystems, and wreak wide-spread havoc on native animal populations all while rending the land uninhabitable except through massive use of fertilizer (which comes with all its own problems.)

- Create horrifically toxic waste that is often fatal on contact to humans and most local wildlife and is difficult, if not impossible, to dispose of.

There's more (more anti-biotics are used in animal agriculture in certain states of the US than are used on the entire human population of the country, for instance) but that gets the magnitude across. It outweighs any other human made ecological disaster by far, thanks to its long history and ubiquity, and barring some catastrophic nuclear war will probably be the biggest ecological impact that human kind inflicts on the world.

Really agriculture period is a disaster. I hadn't even considered it but I recall reading a very long time ago an essay on how agriculture was the best thing to happen to human civilization but the worst thing to happen to human health causing disease, cutting longevity, and even making us shorter.
Great observation Straha.

[Guardsman Bass]

I wouldn't say it's "by far" the largest contributor to climate change, unless you get really generous with the transportation costs (this is a break-down of the sources of greenhouse gases). Even if you assumed that most of the transportation and agriculture segments of it were for animal husbandry, that's still not much more than a quarter of emissions.

[Elheru Aran]

I do think you have to make a distinction between modern industrialized agriculture and pre-modern subsistence agriculture, though. There is a definite difference between the two in the impact they have on the environment.

For example, take your point about destroying local water systems. Pre modern, the local water system would have been part of the agricultural methods of the area; herd animals would drink there and it would supply water to crops. It wouldn't be diverted or depleted nearly as much as it is now.

Then the toxic waste bit; without modern fertilizers or mass-producing meat farms and their mountains of shit, suddenly the main waste you have is shoveling some horseshit, which can then be used to produce... I think it was saltpeter? And other animals' byproducts are useful for fertilizing fields.

Ground clearance is definitely a major problem and is probably one of the biggest impacts of agriculture in general, no matter the level of technology-- there's a reason the UK is almost clear-cut now. So I won't argue that point. I will also agree that indiscriminate herding across the landscape, as seen in the Western US previously and the modern Sahel in Africa, tends to be a Bad Thing.

I'm not arguing that agriculture isn't bad, but you do have to draw a distinction between historic and modern methods in terms of the impact they have upon the environment. Also more to the point of the topic, this is more of a global even taking place over millennia, rather than a specific 'ecological disaster' that you can identify as a single occurrence even though it may have taken place over decades... bit of a difference there.

[Straha]

So, I'm going to answer this back to front:

I'm not arguing that agriculture isn't bad, but you do have to draw a distinction between historic and modern methods in terms of the impact they have upon the environment. Also more to the point of the topic, this is more of a global [event] taking place over millennia, rather than a specific 'ecological disaster' that you can identify as a single occurrence even though it may have taken place over decades... bit of a difference there.

A disaster is not an isolated incident that happens all by its lonesome. A disaster is a process, the ongoing result of years of development that lead to it, and to deny it and to claim that in order to be a true 'disaster' it has to be a single occurrence is nothing short of the denial, the creation of a mental divide that says 'I'm not responsible for this because it is so much bigger than me' that can turn us all into modern day Eichmanns. Bhopal, Kuwait, the Dust Bowl, Agent Orange, and the other events referred to in this thread are much the same, just much smaller in scale and slightly more 'historical' than Animal Agriculture.

I do think you have to make a distinction between modern industrialized agriculture and pre-modern subsistence agriculture

I do think there's a difference between subsistence agriculture and modern agriculture. Agriculture on a whole I have very conflicted feelings for, but I'm not necessarily willing to toss it all out. But I stand by what I said in my post, animal agriculture is the worst thing that has been inflicted upon this planet and I don't think the same historical divide can be drawn here because the moment anyone declares that they can completely control the lives of other beings, from creation to destruction, and that those beings will only be valued according to what pleasure they can give we've entered into a dark and disturbing world the logic of which ultimately will always culminate in the Factory Farm.

[Elheru Aran]

So, I'm going to answer this back to front:

Also more to the point of the topic, this is more of a global [event] taking place over millennia, rather than a specific 'ecological disaster' that you can identify as a single occurrence even though it may have taken place over decades... bit of a difference there.

A disaster is not an isolated incident that happens all by its lonesome. A disaster is a process, the ongoing result of years of development that lead to it, and to deny it and to claim that in order to be a true 'disaster' it has to be a single occurrence is nothing short of the denial, the creation of a mental divide that says 'I'm not responsible for this because it is so much bigger than me' that can turn us all into modern day Eichmanns. Bhopal, Kuwait, the Dust Bowl, Agent Orange, and the other events referred to in this thread are much the same, just much smaller in scale and slightly more 'historical' than Animal Agriculture.

My point was more that the general understanding of disasters is in the form of specific incidents, as that's what people tend to point at rather than going all the way down the tree to the ultimate root causes. Maybe it's shallow; I won't deny that. I find the Eichmann reference to be inappropriate as the great majority of people don't actually cause or contribute to these natural disasters. Take Agent Orange; the Vietnamese were the victims, the USA the cause of that disaster, but are you going to go all the way to blaming the Vietnamese for putting up a fight and giving the US a reason (however wrong) to use Agent Orange on the rainforest? I think that's just a little bit too over-reaching.

And do you have to go all the way back to the root causes to label it a 'disaster'? Take, say, a multi-car pile-up. Do you want to go all the way back to Henry Ford and blame him for it? American consumerism? Over-reliance upon petroleum products? When the fact of the matter is that people have died or been injured and property has been damaged or destroyed. Fretting over the roots of disasters has its place and can help prevent future incidents of that kind, but you still have to deal with the immediate disaster itself. Pointing fingers at the past and going "see! see! If you don't care about that you're an amoral jerk!" won't help anything right now. It's still a disaster whether or not it's a 'single occurrence' or something that you track back all the way to the guy who invented the wheel.

I do think you have to make a distinction between modern industrialized agriculture and pre-modern subsistence agriculture

I do think there's a difference between subsistence agriculture and modern agriculture. Agriculture on a whole I have very conflicted feelings for, but I'm not necessarily willing to toss it all out. But I stand by what I said in my post, animal agriculture is the worst thing that has been inflicted upon this planet and I don't think the same historical divide can be drawn here because the moment anyone declares that they can completely control the lives of other beings, from creation to destruction, and that those beings will only be valued according to what pleasure they can give we've entered into a dark and disturbing world the logic of which ultimately will always culminate in the Factory Farm.

OK, this is getting into personal conviction territory here. Animal agriculture does benefit humanity. It also has undesirable environmental side effects. Both of those are givens. I understand your attitude towards cultivating domestic animals for meat and byproducts. Most of the world chooses to feel differently. I freely avail myself of meat and leather, and I don't believe that I'm wrong to do so.

I do certainly agree that modern animal agriculture is highly unsustainable from an ecological point of view and that the majority of factory-farmed animals are inhumanely treated for the space of their unnatural lives. I believe that animals nurtured in a sustainable manner and treated humanely will return humanity with better and healthier meat and byproducts, as well as not damaging the environment nearly as much.

I don't agree with your contention that animal husbandry for the whole span of its history has been ecologically harmful. Historic methods of animal agriculture were much more symbiotic with the environment than people may have understood at the time, such as the custom of herding ducks in rice paddies in Indonesia at a certain season; this eliminated weeds and insects as well as fertilizing the soil. No, people back in in the day didn't have a scientific understanding of ecology, but there was a basic understanding of the fact that they had to conserve their land in some manner, and traditional animal husbandry practices reflect this. They are less effective in a modern context, but that's due to factors which did not exist previously such as widespread deforestation, introducing non-native species to a new ecosystem, human-made chemicals in the ecosystem, etc.

The whole morality of animal agriculture is a whole other debate, though, one which I don't really have the time and inclination to get into. Discussing the effects of said agriculture is more to the point as far as ecological disasters go.

[Straha]

My point was more that the general understanding of disasters is in the form of specific incidents, as that's what people tend to point at rather than going all the way down the tree to the ultimate root causes. Maybe it's shallow; I won't deny that.

Yes, I understood your point, and I think that's an incredibly problematic way to view disasters and is one that always leaves us dealing with symptoms rather than causes. It’s also a tool for psychological distancing, a way for us to separate ‘disasters’ not only away from ourselves (‘That’s them, it couldn’t possibly happen to me’) but also from each other disaster, making us absolutely myopic when it comes to any sort of understanding of these disasters.

I find the Eichmann reference to be inappropriate as the great majority of people don't actually cause or contribute to these natural disasters. Take Agent Orange; the Vietnamese were the victims, the USA the cause of that disaster, but are you going to go all the way to blaming the Vietnamese for putting up a fight and giving the US a reason (however wrong) to use Agent Orange on the rainforest? I think that's just a little bit too over-reaching.

The Vietnamese weren’t responsible for Agent Orange, but the Americans who demanded that their economic system not just be defended but spread over the opposition of other peoples with a crusader’s zeal, and who supported the otherization and fear-mongering whenever the specter of Communism loomed definitely were. If someone profited from the massive economic boom of the 60s that came out of the expansion of the military-industrial complex, as most of the country did, they too were part of the problem, as were the people who directly supported the military-industrial complex in any of a myriad of ways (notably, giving money and time to Universities which made their profits off of selling the information to make the American weapons of war.)

To use a starker example from earlier in the thread: The Kuwaiti oil field fires (or the modern day Fracking disasters) would not have been a thing without the constant overuse of petrochemicals in the Western world. The constant need for more and more oil for frivolous personal use is what drives up the insatiable demand for more oil and creates the condition where lives are worth less than controlling the oil. Moreover, this isn’t a secret. It’s open, public, everyone is aware of it. So, yes, I will call someone who drives needlessly from place to place an Eichmann.

And do you have to go all the way back to the root causes to label it a 'disaster'? Take, say, a multi-car pile-up. Do you want to go all the way back to Henry Ford and blame him for it? American consumerism? Over-reliance upon petroleum products? When the fact of the matter is that people have died or been injured and property has been damaged or destroyed. Fretting over the roots of disasters has its place and can help prevent future incidents of that kind, but you still have to deal with the immediate disaster itself. Pointing fingers at the past and going "see! see! If you don't care about that you're an amoral jerk!" won't help anything right now. It's still a disaster whether or not it's a 'single occurrence' or something that you track back all the way to the guy who invented the wheel.

I’m not really sure what your point is here?
Are you trying to imply I’m against immediate aid to victims of ‘disasters’? (‘… you still have to deal with the disaster itself.’)
Are you saying I overly limit the scope of what could be called a disaster? (“do you have to go all the way back to the root causes to label it a 'disaster'”)
Are you saying this overly recursive?
I’m really not sure, and I’m not sure where you seem to be getting some of this read of my posts.
My point re: disasters is very simple. That disasters are not singular events but rather parts of ongoing processes. They don’t start with the ‘event’, and they don’t end with it either, and to think otherwise is problematic for a variety of reasons (largely explained above). I’m genuinely curious how you read the rest of this into my posts.

Flesh consumption:

I believe that animals nurtured in a sustainable manner and treated humanely will return humanity with better and healthier meat and byproducts, as well as not damaging the environment nearly as much.

Right there is my point, you make it more eloquently for me than you can know. The logic of animal agriculture doesn’t give two shits for the non-human. Their lives are valued by what they ‘will return [to] humanity’. Because the Cow/Chicken/Pig’s life is always already forfeit in their eventual murder, and because the relationship is never going to weighed for the farmer by ‘What can I do for you [Pig]?’ but rather ‘What can I do for you that will help me?’ the factory farm is an inevitability. Their welfare will always be trumped by economic or social demands and the moment a farmer says ‘I can fit five pigs here instead of one’, they will.

The only way to stop this is to not have the farm in the first place. To prevent that possibility from ever occurring.

I don't agree with your contention that animal husbandry for the whole span of its history has been ecologically harmful. Historic methods of animal agriculture were much more symbiotic with the environment than people may have understood at the time, such as the custom of herding ducks in rice paddies in Indonesia at a certain season; this eliminated weeds and insects as well as fertilizing the soil. No, people back in in the day didn't have a scientific understanding of ecology, but there was a basic understanding of the fact that they had to conserve their land in some manner, and traditional animal husbandry practices reflect this. They are less effective in a modern context, but that's due to factors which did not exist previously such as widespread deforestation, introducing non-native species to a new ecosystem, human-made chemicals in the ecosystem, etc.

Sure, fine. You can be 100% right and it still wouldn’t be responsive to my argument. Animal agriculture inculcates a mindset where the non-human is always subordinate to human pleasure. That perspective will always sacrifice the environment whenever it potentially comes into conflict with human desires, and will only value the environment so far as it is valuable to humans. That’s where permanent ecological destruction becomes a possibility, and the only way to stop that is to stamp out that mindset in the first place.

The whole morality of animal agriculture is a whole other debate, though, one which I don't really have the time and inclination to get into. Discussing the effects of said agriculture is more to the point as far as ecological disasters go.

You’ve got it backwards. The question of morality in discussion with non-human interests, and the ethics contained therein, needs to be addressed before we can begin to discuss the effects of our actions. Otherwise we don’t have a way to weigh our actions or understand their consequences.

[Guardsman Bass]

Sure, fine. You can be 100% right and it still wouldn’t be responsive to my argument. Animal agriculture inculcates a mindset where the non-human is always subordinate to human pleasure. That perspective will always sacrifice the environment whenever it potentially comes into conflict with human desires, and will only value the environment so far as it is valuable to humans. That’s where permanent ecological destruction becomes a possibility, and the only way to stop that is to stamp out that mindset in the first place.

It won't always sacrifice it, but it will subordinate it to human desires. The environment by itself has no intrinsic value, and is indifferent between being a rain forest, a savannah, or a recently submerged swampland. I don't see what's wrong with utilizing it as we see fit, although there are ways to utilize it that preserve greater biodiversity and ecosystem healthiness than others.

[Straha]

Sure, fine. You can be 100% right and it still wouldn’t be responsive to my argument. Animal agriculture inculcates a mindset where the non-human is always subordinate to human pleasure. That perspective will always sacrifice the environment whenever it potentially comes into conflict with human desires, and will only value the environment so far as it is valuable to humans. That’s where permanent ecological destruction becomes a possibility, and the only way to stop that is to stamp out that mindset in the first place.

It won't always sacrifice it, but it will subordinate it to human desires. The environment by itself has no intrinsic value, and is indifferent between being a rain forest, a savannah, or a recently submerged swampland. I don't see what's wrong with utilizing it as we see fit, although there are ways to utilize it that preserve greater biodiversity and ecosystem healthiness than others.

So there are two issues here:

First, in the question of Animal Agriculture there are definitely other interests and desires at stake. The cow has an interest, an intense one, in staying alive, in not being harmed. More importantly, the cow's thoughts and mind are uninteligible to us. We cannot think like the cow, and I think that encounter forces us into a moral divide: Do we either negate what we do not understand and force into an abject position compared to our own, or do we treat what we do not understand with respect and distance? I think the first leads us to a very troubled place, and the second is our only real option.

Second, I'm not going to claim that the environment has intrinsic value, I think that's a silly proposition that leads to the worst of the inanities of the deep ecology movement. But the more important question is recognizing that there are other beings who have an interest (and potential future interests) in the environment, and that our moral calculus needs to take their interests into account. It can never be just 'us' as humans, our interests as humans must always be made in dialogue with others.