My Diet

I realized recently that I have not blogged yet about my diet. Since my diet choices are based on my politics, it seems appropriate that I do.

A year ago or so (maybe more, I do not remember), I decided officially that I was going to cut back on meat. For a while I had been see-sawing between effective vegetarianism and serious meat-eating with nothing guiding me. That worked at the time because I had no moral or ethical reasons for going either way.

As I learned more about food production in the US, I saw the effects of our dietary choices. First, I started consuming "free-range" eggs as often as I could. This change stemmed from my new understanding of the conditions of battery cage chickens, including the large amounts of antibiotics and hormones that are injected into them to keep them from getting sick (which is far more likely due to the unsanitary conditions in the battery cage operation).

More than that though, I learned about the industry behind our beef consumption. In fact, the meat industry is an enormous contributor to green house gasses and becoming a vegetarian is an easy way to decrease your carbon footprint. I also learned about the scale of pollution produced at the feed lots in the middle of our country and the conditions animals are kept in to feed our enormous appetite for beef.

The conclusion I came to is that our meat consumption is far higher than needs to be and far higher than is sustainable. This is possible because the prices we pay do not take into account the impact we are having. Introductory level economics courses will tell you that markets are ineffective at including environmental costs into the prices of goods (without regulation). Therefore, we are often underpaying, and therefore over-consuming, things that have serious negative environmental impacts. Meat is a perfect example of this.

I firmly believe that if we included the true cost of meat production, including the costs of pollution and greenhouse gasses, prices would be higher and consumption would be lower. People would realize they do not need to eat meat twice or three-times a day.

In the face of all this, I realized that I needed to decrease my meat consumption even before the market found a way to accurately price meat. I first cut back to eating meat no more than once a day. That was not as challenging for me since I was not eating meat for dinner. My next step was to cut back to eating meat no more than three times in one week. My final step has been to cut back to meat no more than once a week, and when I do I try to get it from somewhere that is raising the meat in a way that is sustainable and treats the animals more humanely.

So far, I have found it pretty easy to cut back to this level. (It helps that I have someone who can cook - and teach me how to cook - great vegetarian dishes.) Once you start trying, you find lots of things to substitute for meat. And when you do eat meat, it feels like a treat.

As you can tell, I do not believe that we all need to become vegetarian. I do believe however that we should think about how often we eat meat and the effects that has. It seems in our country that we feel we should eat meat at every meal as a right. There is no legitimate reason for this. We could all cut back and still lead healthy (maybe more healthy) lives and allow for our meat to be raised sustainably and humanely. As my experience has proved, cutting back on meat is not a major sacrifice. You still eat meat, but less frequently.

Now, in truth the same logic could apply to my egg consumption. I feel that free-range is marginally better than battery-cage. However, the bigger problem is overall consumption of eggs. I almost always eat at least one egg per day, which means I am definitely contributing to a level of overall consumption that is likely just as unsustainable as for meat. I will probably need to deal with this sometime if I want to really tell myself that I am being consistent.

How about this, I'll cut back on eggs if you cut back on meat? We'll do this together.

More Services AND Lower Taxes

I think I am learning something important about Democratic and Republican behavior in response to the public’s desire for more services AND lower taxes.

Democrats, when running for office, tell the country they are going to increase services while pretending that they are also going to be able to cut taxes.

Republicans, when running for office, tell the country they are going to cut taxes while pretending that they are also going to be able to provide services.

The point is that as a voter you should know which things a candidate says are real priorities. Despite giving lip service to both things constituents demand, they will only really be able to provide one. A president that tries to do both will end up running large deficits, as Bush did and as Obama right now is planning to do for at least the next few years.


Speaking of Obama's budget, it seems that he is moving away from some of the absurd gimmicks of the Bush years (ie not including war spending in the budget but asking for supplemental appropriations, which should only be used for unplanned expenses and after a year or two, the wars were no longer unplanned). Transparency is a beautiful thing, and it makes this budget analyst almost tear up to see our president moving in that direction.

Oil Facts

I meant to link to this Times graphic a long time ago. Although the numbers may have changed a bit since then, I am guessing the overall picture is the same or similar. Here are the main ideas I take away from this:

- America is the largest oil consumer. (20.6 million barrels per day)
- America is the third largest oil producer. (8.4 million barrels per day)
- The biggest suppliers to the US are:
1. US (domestic production) (40%)
2. Canada (12%)
3. Mexico (8%)
4. Saudi Arabia (7%)
5. Venezuela (7%)
6. Nigeria (5%)

It is striking that Saudi Arabia makes up a relatively small percent of our consumption. Despite its small share though, it is still extremely important as small changes in production (or expected changes in production) have big impacts on prices.