[Assignment from an open university short course called Global Ethics: An introduction. I passed. Hopefully along with a masters in sustainability will be my ticket onto a global ethics PhD]
Example: Is this the END of WATER? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsopf0uOKUg
This video shows that industrialised models of meat production are an environmental disaster now. If we try to expand meat production for an 8- or 9-billion-person population, it would become an unthinkable disaster. It makes the claim that humans have an over addiction to meat. This exacerbates climate change (CC) from the greenhouse gases (GHGs) industrial scale meat production creates. Meat consumption has quadrupled since the 1960s and we currently slaughter 3 billion animals per year for meat. To do this we use 70% of arable land for animal agriculture which is about one third of the total global land surface. To feed a population of 8 billion by 2024, or 9 billion people in 2050, using this production model is unfeasible because there wouldn’t be enough land, water or the atmospheric capacity to absorb the associated GHG emissions sustainably without causing dangerous climate damage.
Cultivating the crops for these concentrated animal feeding operations requires so much water that it is pushing water sources, such as the Ogallala aquifer, to dangerous lows. Farmers are struggling to even cultivate crops for human consumption by having to pump water from rapidly depleting ground water sources as the water table continues to plummet. Droughts in California in 2015 required 12 trillion gallons of water reservoirs to replenish the dangerously low water levels. The effects of water scarcity in Sao Paulo had caused riots. The deforestation of the Amazon is particularly dangerous since 70% of South America’s irrigation comes from the ecosystem services supplied by the Amazon.
I have chosen this example because our global water consumption and dietary consumption habits are unsustainable for a growing population in the current climate emergency.
There are several ethical challenges posed which are those of the tragedy of the commons such as water overconsumption; soil degradation from intensive farming; polluting the oceans from biogeochemical flows from excessive fertilizer use; atmospheric pollution by industrialized agriculture releasing inordinate amounts of GHG’s such as carbon dioxide (CO2); methane and nitrous oxide; the deforestation of our most vital carbon sinks for livestock pastures which previously captured and stored CO2 via photosynthesis; the externalities of these operations not being subject to a true-cost accounting such as buying corn silage below the cost of production which is subsidised by the water for production. These externalities pass the cost onto the public by creating the potential for future water and food insecurity. It is a short-term business model with no thought for the future.
Addressing these issues require governments, business, and consumers to make ethical choices and implement policies that are environment preserving. This would require a mixture of true-cost accounting business models, making the polluter pay, reducing our proportion of animal products in our diets, water conservation, reducing birth rates to prevent overpopulation and ultimately implementing a very strong mitigation, adaptation, and resilience strategy to prepare for climate change.
The Planetarian mode of civilization allows sustainability 