A couple of weeks back I gave a talk at the London Vegan Festival (LVF). It was rather grandly titled ‘Peak Oil, Transition Towns and the Inevitable Rise of Veganism’….. If you think of it in terms of the way they classify Tom Daley style Olympic high diving then I think I gave myself quite a large degree of difficulty there! But I wanted to just touch on several really big issues.
The first is that fundamental one of oil. Like it or not we are undoubtedly either at or very close to the end of the era of cheap oil. Yes I know that the price has come down a long way from the record levels of a couple of months ago but if you think that’s permanent you are deluding yourself. Only yesterday (22 Sept 2008) there was a huge hike in the price in amongst the turmoil of the current financial debacle. Previous price rises and falls have been accounted for by supply problems but we are now in new territory. 64 of the 98 oil producers across the world have peaked in their production and we are now hearing, amongst other things, about a greater use of the Tar Sands as a source of future supply. The problem here is the incredible inefficiency of draining the oil from the sands. Unlike the cheap oil we’ve got used to the Tar Sands take almost as much energy to get at the stuff as the resulting oil gives us back.
One of the chief problems with oil is that it is so powerful and convenient. A teaspoon of oil can shift a car 30 metres (try pushing one that far and then think about moving it at 30 mph and you’ll begin to get the picture). This power has led to some unbelievable situations. For example it’s estimated that each one of us uses each day, in just living our 21st century lives, the equivalent energy that would be produced by 50 cyclists powering generators 24/7! And our agricultural system is so far out of whack that it now requires an input of 9 calories of energy to get 1 calorie of energy out.
Food production is obviously essential but there are vital facts about the way we go about it these days that really should be given a higher profile. During my talk at the LVF I highlighted the gross inefficiency and huge environmental damage associated with the meat and dairy industry. My talk coincided with a piece in the papers that day covering the latest output from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They are urging everyone to cut down their meat intake by 20%. This relatively small drop in demand would result in the equivalent savings in C02 emissions as if you downsized from driving a saloon car to an ultra efficient Prius.
Subsequently there was also a fascinating article in the New Scientist (13 September 2008) going much deeper into the whole problem. It’s very difficult to take every factor into account but researchers in the USA have tried to calculate the carbon footprint of some key staples of our western diet and the findings are striking. For example a bowl of cereal accounts for the same C02 emissions as you get from driving 7km in a 4x4. Here, it’s not the cereal that’s the problem, it’s the milk. Dairy products, together with red meat are the most emissions-intensive foods. As a vegan I know how ubiquitous milk is. It seems to be in everything from biscuits to savoury crisps and sausages. I bet if it wasn’t there no one would notice! And most of it is introduced to these products in the form of milk powder which itself is a colossal waster of resources. According to the recent International Food Policy Research Institute report on world water demand it takes 1000 litres of water to produce a litre of milk and five times that amount to produce milk powder.
My experience of raising such issues with both omnivores and vegetarians alike is that they don’t want to engage with it. It’s like it’s a step too far. Most people will happily try to cut down on their driving but for various reasons changing their diet is not something they are prepared to do to ‘save the planet’. But sooner or later we are going to have to come to terms with the consequences of our lifestyles in all sorts of ways and in my opinion this issue needs to be confronted now. What do you think?
