Costs And Benefits Of Industrial Hard Rock Mining In Alaska: Fill & Download for Free

Because familiarity breeds the assumption that one understands what one doesn’t, and because people tend not to question the sociocultural norms they are born into, even, in this case, when those are extremely dangerous.People think they know what they are familiar with, and they are familiar with eating. So, like those who think they know how to run a school because they have been to school, think they know about sex because they have had sex, or think they understand another person because they’ve encountered him or her in a checkout line, they are full of opinions, and many of them are wrong. This is a well-established cognitive bias.The following are suggestions for talking to nonvegans about veganism. They are from my book “Trillions of Universes” and can be reproduced and distributed as long as the material is not edited and is properly attributed to me.Answers to Arguments against VeganismYou vegans think you are superior. This is precisely the opposite of the vegan position. Vegans are vegan because they believe that in an essential, defining respect, they are NOT, in some important respects, superior to the trillions of other animals with which we share the planet. Vegans know that other animals are just like them in being sentient creatures to whom their own well-being matters. This makes those other creatures into moral subjects as opposed to objects with which we can do as we will.Where do you get your protein? On average, 14 percent of the calories in plant foods are from protein, MORE than enough to provide the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, and all the essential amino acids—the constituents of proteins—are found in readily available veggie sources. Vegans with high protein requirements—ones who are engaged in body building, for example—can concentrate on wide variety of high-protein plant foods. Ask the vegan gorilla and water buffalo where they get their protein. This one really is a no-brainer.Veganism is too expensive. If one were to eat ONLY processed vegan foods—vegan ice cream, vegan cheese, vegan hamburgers, and so on—then yes, veganism could be relatively expensive, though not that much more so than is the average carnivorous diet. Meat and cheese are among the most expensive items in the grocery store. As of this writing,[1] the website How Much Is It? | HowMuchIsIt.org gives the price of ribeye steak at $7-to-$15 per pound, the price of fillet mignon at $16-to-$20 a pound, the price of premium chicken breast at $3-to-$5 per pound, and the price of cheddar cheese at $6-to-$13 per pound (and much, much more for premium varieties). An economist friend of mine recently did a calculation for me. At the lowest end—based on 2014 commodity prices for dry soybeans and rice—one could supply the basic calorie requirements of an adult at a cost of 13 cents a day. I am not suggesting, however, that you start living on a diet of soybeans and rice bought by the truck load. Ellen Jaffe Jones has written a cookbook called Eat Vegan on $4.00 a Day: A Game Plan for the Budget Conscious Cook. One could easily follow her suggestions and eat royally at very, very low cost. Furthermore, it’s fairly easy to learn how to create yummy, low-cost home-made alternatives to those vegan fake meats and cheeses. See the Recipe section of this book for examples. And, of course, as more people become vegan, the prices of prepared vegan meat and cheese alternatives (which you don’t need anyway—they can be a rare treat) will fall. They are already often less than the prices of traditional meat and cheese—far, far less if one factors in the cost in avoidable suffering.But meat and cheese are so tasty! (Variant: I’m a member of PETA—People Eating Tasty Animals). First, something’s being pleasurable in the short run doesn’t mean that it is either good for you in the long run or morally right (good for you and others). It’s easy to find examples where one or both aren’t so. Having sex with random strangers, using heroin or methamphetamine, and skydiving without a parachute spring readily to mind. Second, tastes change. Many people find that after they go vegan, they lose the taste they formerly had for meat and dairy. Here’s an explanation for that: Taste is highly susceptible to cognitive bias. Research shows, for example, that people in focus groups prefer the tastes of low-quality wines labeled as expensive to the taste of high-quality wines labeled as cheap. Their ideas color what they perceive. Many vegans—former meat and dairy consumers, most of them—are put off by the idea of putting dead things in their mouths, or, as is commonly said by vegans, by the idea of “consuming suffering.” Their ideas affect their tastes. This isn’t a bad thing. It serves them and the animals who don’t suffer and die as a result of their choices.I could never give up meat (or cheese or whatever). Yes you can.Vegan food tastes bad. Early vegan alternative meats and cheeses did taste pretty awful, but that’s changed as the numbers of vegans and vegetarians has grown and competitive products have entered the market. This argument is based on a false premise—that vegans eat primarily alternative meats and cheeses, but there are many thousands of standard dishes that are vegan and contain no awful-tasting ersatz meats and dairy products. For most of human history, in most cultures, most people didn’t eat much meat, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of completely vegan dishes that you can eat that are extraordinarily delicious, as one can readily confirm by checking out the menus of vegan restaurants or looking at vegan cookbooks or recipe websites. See Getting Started with Compassionate Eating and the Recipe section of this book for examples.Veganism isn’t natural. In her breathtakingly beautiful book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, writer Annie Dillard tells how etymologists—people who study insects—rarely find specimens in the wild that are not missing a significant portion of their anatomy—an antenna, a leg, a piece of carapace, a wing. “Must everything whole be nibbled?” she asks, and why is life in the grass one great “chomp”? Ten percent of insects, she further points out, are parasitic. Everywhere one looks in the natural world, one finds blood and death, struggle, “nature red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson famously put it.[2] Eating others is nature’s way, some argue. Veganism is therefore unnatural and we should reject it and do the natural thing—eat others and avoid being eaten. It’s easy enough to see why this argument fails. That something is natural doesn’t make it a model for human moral behavior. Parasitism is natural, but few would think this an appropriate model for human action. So is coprophagia, or eating of excrement, found in dung-beetles, flies, termites, rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas, male-rats, gorillas, chimpanzees, pigs, and juvenile elephants, giant pandas, koalas, and hippos. That cruelty exists—is part of the order of things—is no reason for adding more cruelty unnecessarily. That some other animals kill for a living does not mean that we have to or should.Cooking meat made us human. This was recently the premise of a best-selling book. The argument? Cooking made available the high-density nutrients in meat, fueling the development of our big brains. However, it ought to be obvious enough that cooking makes available a lot of plant calories that would not otherwise be available.[3] Try chewing on raw tuber. You’ll get the idea.Plants have feelings, too. In the documentary film Native American Prophecy: The Elders Speak, Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper for the Turtle Clan of the Seneca peoples, reminds us that plants form communities:No tree grows by itself. A tree is a community. Certain trees—certain plants will gather around certain trees, and certain medicines will gather around certain plants, so that if you kill all the trees—if you cut all the trees, then you are destroying a community—you’re not just destroying a tree, you are destroying a whole community that surrounds it and thrives on it and that may be very important medicine for people or for animals. Because animals know the same medicine—they use this medicine—that’s where we learned. We learned by watching animals. They taught us a lot. Where is the medicine? They’ll tell you because they use it themselves. And if you replant the tree, you don’t replant the community, you replant the tree, so you’ve lost a community, and if you clear cut, which I what is happening . . . then you are really a very destructive force . . . and if you don’t understand that, you will.Modern scientists are now documenting what indigenous peoples have always known—that plants communicate with one another, form communities, react to noxious stimuli, and even wage war (by chemical means). Watch an accelerated film of plants vining or turning toward the sunlight, and it’s difficult to escape the impression that one is looking at something very much like an animal—something volitional. But do plants think and feel pain? Do they do what animals do, but just in slow motion and in one place? Here’s what botanist David Chamovitz says about that:“[T]hinking and information processing are two different constructs. . . . [P]urposeful thinking necessitates a highly developed brain and autonoetic, or at least noetic, consciousness. Plants exhibit elements of anoetic consciousness which doesn’t include, in my understanding, the ability to think. Just as a plant can’t suffer subjective pain in the absence of a brain, I also don’t think that it thinks. . . . [T]he term plant neurobiology is as ridiculous as say, human floral biology. Plants do not have neurons just as humans don’t have flowers!”[4]Noetic consciousness is subjective, inner experiencing—nonreflexive awareness of the kind clearly possessed by nonhuman animals. Autonoetic, or reflexive, consciousness is the ability to place one’s self in the past, in the future, or in counterfactual situations, as well as the ability to examine one’s own thoughts—all of which have been documented widely in nonhuman animals but never in plants. You can think of it as metaconsciousness, activity of the mind involving attention to one’s own awareness. Plants have neither. Plants have neither neural systems for carrying out such activities nor nociceptors for pain, so they are neither conscious nor sensate in the sense that animals are. Though plants do react to noxious stimuli, they simply do not have physical systems associated with experiencing pain. Imagine sticking a pig and a carrot with a knife. It’s easy enough to see the difference.We should respect indigenous lifeways that involve eating animals and using animal products. Yes, we should. In many places throughout the world, indigenous peoples have survived for thousands of years because they followed the rules. As writer and activist Derrick Jensen points out in several breathtakingly eloquent and persuasive books, including Listening to the Land, A Language Older than Words, Endgame Vols 1 and 2, and What We Leave Behind, they didn’t take more salmon from their streams or more buffalo from their plains than the land could replenish. Those who failed to follow the rules, as detailed in Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, managed to destroy themselves without help from the white younger brother. They are gone.We no longer follow the rules. We murder animals by the trillions and devastate the environment in the process (See Chapter 6). Clearly, what we do must stop. But what about indigenous peoples? Here I feel out of my comfort zone, for though some of the blood that runs in my veins is Cherokee, I have not lived an Indian way of life, and I feel myself as unqualified to speak for Indians as I do for women on the subject of their reproductive rights. How do I square my respect for indigenous lifeways with my insistence that the individual lives of individual animals matter, including the lives of those animals killed to fill the hungry bellies of indigenous children and to make useful articles like tepees, drums, moccasins, and pipes? Here I can only say to my brothers and sisters, let us talk and hear one another.Some indigenous peoples live in environments where they can’t grow sufficient quantities of plant foods. The Dalai Lama has pointed out, for example, that the “northern part of Tibet” has a poor climate for growing vegetables and has suggested that a vegetarian or vegan diet, there, is “very difficult” to sustain.[5] Similarly, the Inuit, unable to cultivate plants in the Arctic, depend heavily on animals as food. Most readers of this book, and most who make this argument, will not be Tibetan or Inuit. So this argument applies neither to them nor to you. It’s simply not an acceptable excuse.Vegans are sickly and weak. Tell that to the thousands of vegan athletes like vegan bodybuilder Jim Morris, vegan Ironman triathlete Bendan Brazier, vegan bodybuilder Robert Cheeke (winner of the INBA USA Overall Novice Bodybuilding Championship), vegan cyclist Jack Lindquist, vegan bodybuilder Robert Hazely, NFL hockey player Georges Laraqu, vegan Olympic runner Carl Lewis, vegan powerlifter Melody Schoenfeld, vegan pitcher for the Minnesota Twins Patrick J. Neshek, vegan marathon champion Fiona Oakes, vegan bodybuilder Amanda Reister (winner of 1st place at the Natural North American Bodybuilding Championships), vegan martial artist David Meyer (holder of seven national and international gold medals), vegan ultradistance runner Damian Stoy, and world champion vegan figure skater Meagan Duhamel. And understand that veganism is NOT a diet. One can eat many possible diets that are vegan. A diet consisting entirely of potato chips and Diet Coke™ would be vegan, but it wouldn’t be good for you. Any vegan who is sickly and weak is not eating a broad, well-balanced diet of fats, fruits, legumes, veggies, and grains. It’s really that simple.Other animals do not behave morally, so we have no moral obligations to them. In our law, we recognize that the very young are not necessarily, because of their youth, morally capable and so culpable. But we do not say that because babies are not yet moral actors, we have no moral obligations to them. Clearly, we do. Furthermore, it simply is not the case that other animals lack a moral sense. Rats, for example, have been shown to be willing, when trapped in cages with limited food, to liberate trapped companions and to share their food with them. For extensive treatments of morality in nonhuman animals, see Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce’s Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals.[6]Animals can’t be self-aware because they don’t have language. The notion here is that in order for a creature to have a consciousness that matters morally, he or she has to be self-reflective in words. The creature has to be able to think in words about who he or she is, something that nonhuman animals cannot do. Another variant of this—even more extreme—is that self-reflection is possible only in words. I recently encountered this argument in a collection of famous twentieth-century essays on the philosophy of language, but I won’t shame the author by naming him. Such arguments make me want to weep for what we have lost. Only people who have become so stuck in their word worlds that they cannot fathom simply being could possibly think in this way. Are we ready to say that babies are not self-aware because they don’t yet express thoughts to themselves in language?[7] Can anyone actually believe that he or she is not capable of states of awareness that are not mediated by or represented in language? It’s difficult to imagine that anyone who has thought about this could take the idea at all seriously. I can’t help but think that people who hold this position are terribly stunted. They may even be beautifully stunted, like bonsai, but how could they possibly flower and bear fruit? They have forgotten how to be quiet, how simply to be there, a warm breathing, present to their own being and to others’. I hear this argument and I want to write a prescription: Go somewhere—to a mountaintop, to a seashore, to a meditation retreat—and turn off your language for a while. Try to be present to another without language, beyond language. It might be hard a first, but practice. You’ll get the hang of it.Humans have incisors and canine teeth for ripping meat. This is a variety of the “Meat-eating is natural for humans argument,” and it fails miserably. Incisors are the sharp, flat teeth at the front of your mouth. Canines are the sharp, pointed teeth on either side in front. Many entirely herbivorous animals—horses, for example—have incisors. These are useful for cutting plant foods. Quite a few almost entirely herbivorous mammals—gorillas, and chimpanzees, for example—have canine teeth, but in these animals, the canines are dramatically reduced. They are nothing like the massive canines of carnivores like cheetahs or hyenas. Some mostly herbivorous monkeys—baboons and macaques for example, have fairly large canines. Canines in herbivores make readily available a variety of tough plant foods that have to be torn to be eaten. They are also useful in dominance displays, for scaring off predators and rivals, which explains why in polygamous mammals with canines (gorillas, for example), the canine teeth tend to be much larger in males than in females (a sexual dimorphism, or difference in body form, not found in humans).[8] The canines of humans are relatively tiny and useful for eating a wide variety of plant foods. Think about this the next time you tear into the tough skin of a not-fully-matured apple.Veganism is an upper-middle-class, white, Western fad. Reread the first chapter of this book. For most of human history, in most places, people have subsisted PRIMARILY on plant foods. Lactose tolerance, enabling some people to digest dairy products, is a relatively recent phenomenon, dated to about 4,300 years ago, and today, much of the world—in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean, in particular—continues to be lactose intolerant, as are 75 percent “of all African-American, Jewish, Mexican-American, and Native American adults.”[9] Most people in India are vegetarians. Most people throughout history, and most yet today, simply have not been wealthy enough to eat substantial amounts of meat or dairy. Unfortunately, today, as economic conditions improve worldwide, more people are turning to meat and dairy. According to the Vital Signs project of the Worldwatch Institute, meat production worldwide tripled in the four decades preceding 2011.[10] The United Nations projects that global meat consumption per person will increase by around 22 percent and global dairy consumption by 11 percent by 2030, which, given population increases, will mean a doubling of demand, putting enormous strains on resources of land and water.[11] If the rest of the world begins to eat in the extravagantly wasteful, damaging, nonvegan way that we’ve been doing in the West, then we’re doomed. Robert Howarth, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornel puts it this way:We need to stop over-consuming land-based products. For example, one of our key challenges is overusing agricultural land for growing meat. There is just not enough land on Earth for everyone in the world to eat like Americans and Europeans. . . . [T]o put this into context and to help sustain feeding a burgeoning global population, we need to reduce our meat consumption by 60 percent.”[12]The upper-middle-class, white, Western fad has been our gorging, in the West, on meat and dairy, and consuming ourselves and the rest of the world in the process. It’s long past time for us to stop, for everyone else’s benefit and our own.Eating meat and dairy is correlated with longevity. The argument goes something like this: People in Nigeria and Laos don’t eat much meat and dairy, and they don’t live very long. People in Finland, the United States, and Japan eat a LOT of meat and dairy, and they have the longest lives. This is a classic example of the logical fallacy of false attribution. People in Finland, the United States, and Japan have access to superb medical care, nutrition, and sanitation. People in Nigeria do not. And with those long lives in Finland, the US, Japan, and other countries in the developed world come epidemics of diseases of affluence—heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer, and osteoporosis—all associated with diets heavy in meat and dairy. A 2003 metastudy review of the relevant research literature, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that[A] very low meat intake was associated with a significant decrease in risk of death in 4 studies, a nonsignificant decrease in risk of death in the fifth study and virtually no association in the sixth study. . . . 2 of the studies in which a low meat intake significantly decreased mortality risk also indicated that a longer duration (2 decades) of adherence to this diet contributed to a significant decrease in mortality risk and a significant 3.6-y . . . increase in life expectancy. . . . Current prospective cohort data from adults in North America and Europe raise the possibility that a lifestyle pattern that includes a very low meat intake is associated with greater longevity.[13]“Raise the possibility.” This is the kind of understatement that is fashionable in scientific literature. What will you do, as a vegan, with your extra 3.6 years of life?It’s OK if the meat is raised and slaughtered humanely. If ever there was an oxymoron, slaughtered humanely is one. Add it to the pile with just war and Congressional ethics.But I eat only free range eggs, poultry, beef, etc. The USDA regulates use of the term free range only for poultry, and the sole regulation is that there be “access to the outside.”[14] In practice, this means that a producer can label a chicken or turkey “free range” if he or she was raised in a thousand-foot shed with 40,000 other birds, at one end of which was a tiny opening onto a 4 x 4-foot concrete slab that, at any rate, all but a tiny fraction of the birds could never reach in their short, miserable, earth- and sky-deprived lives.It’s OK if you cut out meat but still eat dairy. Reread the description of dairy operations on page 000 and see if you can still believe this. As Rutgers law professor and leader of the Abolitionist Movement in animal rights Gary Francione has eloquently put it: “There is absolutely no morally defensible distinction between flesh and other animal products, such as milk or cheese. Animals used in the dairy industry usually live longer and are treated as badly if not worse than their meat counterparts, and they all end up in the same slaughterhouse anyway. The meat and dairy industries are inextricably intertwined. As far as I am concerned, there is more suffering in a glass of milk than in a pound of steak.”[15]Farm animals would die out if we didn’t eat them. This simply is not so. If freed, domesticated and farmed animals can and do return to their lives in the wild. The technical term for such creatures—formerly domesticated ones living (and often thriving) in the wild—is feral animals. Downtown Tampa, Florida, has a population of wild chickens. Staten Island has a population of mixed wild and feral turkeys. Chirikof Island, in Alaska, has a population of feral cattle, as does Sapelo Island off the Georgia coast. THE USDA Forest Service runs programs to “gather and remove” feral cattle in the American West. Feral pigs are found worldwide. The wild horses of Australia (where there are some 400,000 of them), Portugal, India, and the American West and the Chicoteague Ponies of Assateague Island in Virginia and Maryland are all descendants of domesticated animals. Many, many more examples could be adduced. And, by the way, I prefer to use the term farmed animals rather than farm animals, for the same reason that Frederick Douglas referred to himself as formerly enslaved but not a slave.Farm animals would overpopulate the world if we didn’t eat them. OK, I recognize that this is a ridiculous argument, but one sometimes hears it, so I have felt obliged to include it here. Farmed animals exist in such numbers because we breed them in such numbers. And it’s inaccurate to say that they would overpopulate the world. They already do, and only we can end this overpopulation by stopping the breeding. People often talk about the human population explosion—about the stress on the environment caused by there being seven billion humans on the planet—but they rarely think of the fact that the number of farmed animals is of an entire order of magnitude greater. We have tens of billions of farmed animals (we slaughter 66 billion a year) worldwide, all consuming resources, because we breed them in these astonishing numbers. The environmental pressure created by those tens of billions of farmed animals—pressures from cropland and water consumption, the production of solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes (including greenhouse gases), and pollution of waterways by nitrogen from agricultural operations to produce farmed animal feed—all are unsustainable. No, it is not true that if we went vegan, farmed animals would overpopulate the world. They already overpopulate the world because we are not yet vegan.There is a bond between the farm animal and the producer, a natural bond, one of commensalism and symbiosis. This argument is purest Romanticism that ignores the facts of the enslavement, torture, and eventual murder of the nonhuman animals so bound.Eating soy causes cancer, hypothyroidism, effeminacy in boys, and so on. No, it doesn’t. An extensive review of the research literature by Mark and Virginia Messina (2010) found thatthe evidence indicates that, with the exception of those individuals allergic to soy protein, soyfoods can play a beneficial role in the diets of vegetarians. Concerns about adverse effects are not supported by the clinical or epidemiologic literature. Based on the soy intake associated with health benefits in the epidemiologic studies and the benefits noted in clinical trials, optimal adult soy intake would appear to be between two and four servings per day.[16]See also Dr. Neal Barnard’s definitive review of the subject in “Settling the Soy Controversy.”[17]Veganism is impossible because one cannot avoid killing other animals. Drive a car or walk in the woods and other animals will die—the moth on the windshield, the spider underfoot. Eat vegetables, and you are responsible for the maiming and deaths of the many, many animals killed in the processes of tilling and reaping. Yes, I know. But this argument is again based on a false premise. Veganism is not about living so as to bring no harm to other animals. Veganism is aspirational. It is about ahimsa, living so as to bring about as little suffering as possible. As Chapter 5 of this book makes abundantly clear, eating meat and dairy are both extraordinarily wasteful of calories and of land. Most of them get thrown away. By eating vegan, we dramatically reduce the amount of land tilled and reaped and thus the number of animals maimed and killed. We should bike more and drive less. We should be careful where we step.Yes, animal agriculture is horrifically destructive because of the land wasted—land that could be used for wild habitat or far more productively for growing plants for consumption by humans than for feed—but what about highlands that cannot be used for growing crops? We should raise sheep and goats on these and eat them. This argument was popularized by Simon Fairlie in his book Meat: A Benign Extravagance. But I have one word for Mr. Fairlie: erosion. Highlands are delicate ecosystems, not places that we should turn into stomping grounds for artificially introduced animals raised for our consumption.Yes, animal agriculture is horrifically destructive because of the land wasted—land that could be used for wild habitat or far more productively for growing plants for consumption by humans than for feed—but what about feeding pigs and cattle on wastes from our plant agriculture and food operations? There would be fewer of them to eat than there are now, but wastes would be reduced. Another argument from Mr. Fairlie, but this one also fails. Those wastes could not sustain a lot of production, so the meat produced would be very, very expensive—a luxury for the very wealthy, and pressure would inevitably be put on the poor to divert additional food resources to such production. And, of course, Mr. Fairlie misses, in the title of his book, the point: there is nothing benign about killing and eating creatures like pigs with the cognitive capacities of three-year-old human children.Sustainable agriculture requires animal fertilizers, not the artificial stuff we now use that is having such devastating impact. This argument was popularized by Lierre Keith in her book The Vegetarian Myth and in her lectures and workshops to college students around the country. But there are alternatives. One can do vegan farming with a combination of green manures (clover and vetch), mulch, vegetable compost, chipped, branched wood, and techniques like crop rotation and polyculture (planting multiple crops in the same space in imitation of natural diversity), and nonpurists can use some rock-based (phosphate) fertilizers.[18] The techniques involved are known collectively as “veganics.” For more information, see the Vegan Agriculture Network website at Veganic Agriculture Network and the following books: Growing Green—Organic Techniques for a Sustainable Future, by Jenny Hall and Iain Tolhurst; Veganic Gardening—The Alternative System for Healthier Crops, by Kenneth Dalziel O’Brien; Teaming with Microbes—A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web, by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis; and The Vegan Book of Permaculture: Recipes for Healthy Eating and Earthright Living, by Graham Burnett.Humans should eat a Paleolithic diet. Paleolithic humans ate primarily plant foods, supplemented by small amounts of hunted and scavenged meat. So, if you want to eat Paleolithic, don’t neglect your vegetables, and supplement with scavenged meat. Roadkill should do quite nicely. While there is significant recent evidence that fats (which are, like proteins, amply provided by plant foods) are an essential part of a healthy diet, excessive quantities of fats, and particularly of the triglycerides found in such abundance in meat, are bad for you. With that in mind, you might want to get your healthy fats from plants, and skip the roadkill (and its equivalents in the meat aisle of your grocery).Hitler was a vegetarian. Godwin’s Law states that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” As any vegan who spends time on social media knows, there’s no shortage, in the world, of meat-eaters eager to interrupt a discussion of veganism with the observation that Hitler was a vegetarian. There are, of course, some problems with this. First, Hitler wasn’t a vegetarian. Second, even if he were, that fact would be irrelevant, for two reasons: 1. Veganism is not a diet. It is a philosophy, and that philosophy has as its fundamental tenet ahimsa, or nonviolence. Therefore, “vegan Nazi” is an oxymoron. 2. From the fact that Hitler did x, it does not follow that x is evil. Hitler wore pants, sometimes. This does not mean that wearing pants is evil, though that’s what my mother was told when she dared to wear them many long years ago.[1] July, 2015.[2] “Man . . . trusted God was love indeed / And love Creation’s final law--/Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw,/With ravine, shriek’d against his creed” he says in “In Memorium A.H.H.” (1849)[3] Pennisi, Elizabeth. Did cooked tubers spur the evolution of big brains? Science (1999) 283:5410; 2004-2005.[4] Cook, Gareth. “Do Plants Think?” Interview with Daniel Chamovitz. Scientific American. June 5, 2012. Do Plants Think?[5] “The Dalai Lama Might Just be The Ultimate “Fregan.” Ecorazzi. July 30, 2010. The Dalai Lama Might Just Be The Ultimate "Freegan"[6] Mark Bekoff and Jessica Pierce. Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010.[7] Human babies fall into the world with a lot of language already wired into them, as Chomsky and the linguists following in his footsteps have abundantly shown, but the question, here, is whether babies are able to use language for self-reflection, which clearly, in the beginning, they cannot do.[8] See Schwartz, Gary T., and Christopher Dean. “Ontogeny of Canine Dimorphism in Extant Hominoids.” Amer. J. of Phys. Anthro. 115:269-283, 2001.[9] Lactose Intolerance Statistics. Statistic Brain. http://www.statisticbrain.com/lactose-intolerance-statistics/ From National Digestive Diseases Information, USA Today. June 23, 2012.[10] “Global Meat Production and Consumption Continue to Rise.” Worldwatch Institute. Oct. 11, 2011. Global Meat Production and Consumption Continue to Rise[11] 52.[12] Friedlander, Blaine. “U.N. Report Sounds Alarm on Farming Land-Use Crisis.” Cornell Chronicle. July 15, 2015. U.N. report sounds alarm on farming land-use crisis[13]Pramil, N. Singh, Joan Sabaté, and Gary E. Fraser. Does low meat consumption increase life expectancy in humans? Am J Clin Nutr 2003;78(suppl):526S–32S.[14] “Meat and Poultry Labeling Terms.” United States Department of Agriculture. 2015.[15] “Gary Francione: Animal Advocate.” The Believer. Feb., 2011. The Believer - Interview with Gary Francione[16] Messina, Mark, and Virginia Messina. The role of soy in vegetarian diets. Nutrients. 2010 Aug; 2(8): 855-888.[17] Barnard, Neal “Settling the Soy Controversy.” The Huffington Post. April 26, 2010.[18] Our current dependence of phosphate fertilizers presents a problem, for phosphorus is a finite resource. Estimates of when we shall reach “peak phosphorus”—the point at which maximum phosphorus production rate (from mining) will be reached vary widely, with some researchers saying that peak production will be reached by the year 2030 and depletion of the resource within 50 to 100 years (Cordell, Dana, et al. The story of phosphorus: Global food security and food for thought. Global Envirn. Change. (2009) 19:2; 292-305). Patrick Dery and Bart Anderson, writing in the August 13, 2007 Energy Bulletin argue that peak phosophorus has already been reached. Others,like Pedro Sanchez, director of the Agriculture and Food Security Center at the Earth Institute, claim that reserves are sufficient to last several hundred years (See Cho, Renee. “Phosophorus: Essential to Life—Are We Running Out?” Earth Institute/Columbia Univ. April 1, 2013. Phosphorus: Essential to Life—Are We Running Out?). As with peak oil, the debate rages.

Red Alert on Blue PlanetOcean waters are warming, World's sea ice is melting at an alarming rate and some of the factors causing this may already be irreversible, the new UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC) claims. While some factors like rising sea level might be irreversible by this point , governments can still take decisive action to ward off the worst of climate change. But World leaders continue to disappoint. As Greta Thunberg asked recently - how dare they ?What is the state of our Oceans ?Climate change is devastating our seas and frozen regions as never before, a major new United Nations report warns.According to a UN panel of scientists, waters are rising, the ice is melting, and species are moving habitat due to human activities. And the loss of permanently frozen lands threatens to unleash even more carbon, hastening the decline. There is some cautious hope that the worst impacts can be avoided, with deep and immediate cuts to carbon emissions.The worst-case scenario is when action is not taken. In this case, "there is a chance of a multi-meter sea-level rise within the next two to three centuries," Regine Hock, a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a coordinating lead author on chapter two of this IPCC report, told CNN. "That is very substantial."This is the third in a series of special reports that have been produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) over the past 12 months. And this is, most certainly, the gloomiest. The study, titled Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere, was carried out by more than 100 scientists from 36 different countries. It outlines the alarming rate at which the seas are warming and the predicted effect this will have, all the way to the year 2300.Stressed by overfishing, pollution and, most of all, climate change, the world's oceans have hit a tipping point, with potentially dire consequences for humans. With some 7,000 studies referenced in the report, it's almost among the most comprehensive to date. The report warns that if climate change is not addressed, millions of humans could be negatively affected by rising sea levels, diminishing fish populations and more erratic weather.Note: The cryosphere is the frozen water part of the Earth system. This includes sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, and frozen ground.Why must we be ashamed ?For the past century, Earth's oceans have helped humans largely ignore the effects of climate change.About a quarter of the carbon dioxide that factories, vehicles and other polluters emit is trapped by oceans. They also absorb about 90 percent of the excess heat that carbon dioxide traps within the atmosphere. The majority of the global carbon cycle circulates through the ocean, through marine food-webs and other processes, and carbon is locked-away in coastal and marine habitats and deep in ocean sediments. Coastal ecosystems alone sequester more carbon than terrestrial forest per unit area. But there is only so much oceans can do if we can’t mend our ways.Since 1993, the rate at which the world's oceans are getting warmer has doubled. And if global temperatures continue to rise unchecked, oceans could become as much as five to seven times hotter, according to the IPCC report. All that extra heat is endangering marine ecosystems due to the acidification of the oceans.The scientists are "virtually certain" that the global ocean has now warmed without pause since 1970. "The blue planet is in serious danger right now, suffering many insults from many different directions and it's our fault," said Dr Jean-Pierre Gattuso, a co-ordinating lead author of the report.The seas were once rising mainly due to thermal expansion - which refers to the way the volume of water expands when it is heated. The extra energy makes the water molecules move around more, causing them to take up more space. But the IPCC says rising water levels are now being driven principally by the melting of Greenland and Antarctica.Thanks to warming, the loss of mass (which refers to the amount of ice that melts and is lost as liquid water) from the Antarctic ice sheet in the years between 2007 and 2016 tripled compared to the 10 years previously. Greenland saw a doubling of mass loss over the same period. The report expects this to continue throughout the 21st Century and beyond.For glaciers in areas like the tropical Andes, Central Europe and North Asia, the projections are that they will lose 80% of their ice by 2100 under a high carbon emissions scenario. This will have huge consequences for millions of people.When will we face the consequences ?Our children and grandchildren will face the worst consequences of our actions and inactions. But many global communities are already dealing with the fallouts of failing marine ecosystems. These are the salient points from the IPCC report:Coastal ecosystems are affected by ocean warming, including intensified marine heatwaves, acidification, loss of oxygen, salinity intrusion and sea level rise, in combination with adverse effects from human activities on ocean and land. Impacts are already observed on habitat area and biodiversity, as well as ecosystem functioning and services.Since about 1950 many marine species across various groups have undergone shifts in geographical range and seasonal activities in response to ocean warming, sea ice change and biogeochemical changes, such as oxygen loss, to their habitats. This has resulted in shifts in species composition, abundance and biomass production of ecosystems, from the equator to the poles. In some marine ecosystems species are impacted by both the effects of fishing and climate changes.Since the mid-20th century, the shrinking cryosphere in the Arctic and high-mountain areas has led to predominantly negative impacts on food security, water resources, water quality, livelihoods, health and well-being, infrastructure, transportation, tourism and recreation, as well as culture of human societies, particularly for Indigenous peoples. Costs and benefits have been unequally distributed across populations and regions. Adaptation efforts have benefited from the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge, the report says.Coastal communities are exposed to multiple climate-related hazards, including tropical cyclones, extreme sea levels and flooding, marine heatwaves, sea ice loss, and permafrost thaw. Increased mean and extreme sea level, alongside ocean warming and acidification, are projected to exacerbate risks for human communities in low-lying coastal areas.Future land cryosphere changes will continue to alter terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems in high-mountain and polar regions with major shifts in species distributions resulting in changes in ecosystem structure and functioning, and eventual loss of globally unique biodiversity.Note: Permafrost is ground that remains frozen for two or more consecutive years. It is composed of rock, soil, sediments, and varying amounts of ice that bind the elements together. Some permafrost has been frozen for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Found under a layer of soil, permafrost can be from three feet to 4,900 feet thick. It stores the carbon-based remains of plants and animals that froze before they could decompose. Scientists estimate that the world’s permafrost holds 1,500 billion tons of carbon, almost double the amount of carbon that is currently in the atmosphere. Unfortunately, when permafrost warms and thaws (melts), it releases carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. As the global thermostat rises, permafrost, rather than storing carbon, could become a significant source of planet-heating emissions.Where did the first IPCC report focus on ?It's the final call, warned scientists in October 2018, in the most extensive warning yet on the risks of rising global temperatures.Their dramatic report on keeping that rise under 1.5 degrees C says the world is now completely off track, heading instead towards 3C. Keeping to the preferred target of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels will mean "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society". It will be hugely expensive - but the window of opportunity remains open.After three years of research and a week of haggling between scientists and government officials at a meeting in South Korea, the IPCC issued this ‘special report’ on the impact of global warming of 1.5C. Despite the inevitable need for caution, there are some key messages that come through loud and clear."The first is that limiting warming to 1.5C brings a lot of benefits compared with limiting it to two degrees. It really reduces the impacts of climate change in very important ways," said Prof Jim Skea, who co-chairs the IPCC. "The second is the unprecedented nature of the changes that are required if we are to limit warming to 1.5C - changes to energy systems, changes to the way we manage land, changes to the way we move around with transportation."The report says to limit warming to 1.5C, will involve "annual average investment needs in the energy system of around $2.4 trillion" between 2016 and 2035. Experts believe this number needs to be put in context. "There are costs and benefits you have to weigh up," said Dr Stephen Cornelius, a former UK IPCC negotiator now with WWF. He says making big emissions cuts in the short term will cost money but be cheaper than paying for carbon dioxide removal later this century.The researchers say that if we fail to keep temperature rises below 1.5C, we are in for some significant and dangerous changes to our world. Coral reefs, the report says, would be essentially 100% wiped out at two degrees of warming. Global sea-level will rise about 10cm (4in) more if we let warming go to 2C. That may not sound like much but keeping to 1.5C means that 10 million fewer people would be exposed to the risks of flooding.Five steps to 1.5Global emissions of CO2 need to decline by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030.Renewables are estimated to provide up to 85% of global electricity by 2050.Coal is expected to reduce to close to zero.Up to seven million sq km of land will be needed for energy crops (a bit less than the size of Australia).Global net zero emissions by 2050."Scientists might want to write in capital letters, 'ACT NOW, IDIOTS,' but they need to say that with facts and numbers," said Kaisa Kosonen, of Greenpeace, who was an observer at the negotiations. "And they have."Who must change their food habits ?The second IPCC report, released in August, linked climate change with our food habits.The report on land use and climate change says the West's high consumption of meat and dairy produce is fuelling global warming. But scientists and officials stopped short of explicitly calling on everyone to become vegan or vegetarian. They said that more people could be fed using less land if individuals cut down on eating meat.The document, prepared by 107 scientists for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says that if land is used more effectively, it can store more of the carbon emitted by humans. "We're not telling people to stop eating meat. In some places people have no other choice. But it's obvious that in the West we're eating far too much," said Prof Pete Smith, an environmental scientist from Aberdeen University, UK.We're also wasting too much food. The panel estimates that greenhouse emissions associated with food loss and waste - from field to kitchen bin - is as high as 8-10% of all global emissions. The report calls for vigorous action to halt soil damage and desertification - both of which contribute to climate change.Rising temperatures, increased rain and more extreme weather events will all have an impact on crops and livestock. But food production also contributes to global warming. Agriculture - together with forestry - accounts for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock rearing contributes to global warming through the methane gas the animals produce, but also via deforestation to expand pastures, for example.The report also warns that plans by some governments to grow trees and burn them to generate electricity will compete with food production unless carried out on a limited scale. The Earth's land surface, and the way it is used, forms the basis for human society and the global economy. But we are re-shaping it in dramatic ways, including through the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.How the land responds to human-induced climate change is a vital concern for the future.How hopeful can we be ?How dare you? These three words full of anger and hatred against world leaders capture the spirit of the youth today.Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg caused a stir at the United Nations on September 23 with her blistering criticism of world leaders' inaction on climate change. She almost choked up when she started speaking. It is a speech that will go down as one of the most powerful ever delivered. “My message is that we'll be watching you. This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!” she said.“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!” she continued.This was not a staged performance, as her critics would like to believe. It was clear from the emotions on the face of the famously introverted climate change activist that she could have slapped anyone who dared to tell her at that moment that science is not clear on whether climate change is being caused by human actions. No one dared.“For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight,” she said. “You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.”Days after millions of young people joined protests worldwide to demand emergency action on climate change, leaders gathered for the annual United Nations general assembly aiming to inject fresh momentum into efforts to curb carbon emissions. But Thunberg predicted the summit would not deliver any new plans in line with the radical cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are needed to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown.Thunberg’s prediction was proved right on the same day. As the summit spooled through about 60 speeches from national representatives, it became clear that Thunberg’s forecast was prescient. Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, told delegates that “the time for talking is over” in announcing a plan to ramp up renewable energy but didn’t announce any phase-out of coal – a key goal set by António Guterres, the UN secretary-general who convened the summit.Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, did set out the end of coal mining in her country but only by 2038 – a lengthy timeframe that disappointed environmentalists. Meanwhile, China declined to put forward any new measures to tackle the climate crisis.Emmanuel Macron, the French president, called for the European Union to deepen its emissions cuts and said that France would not make trade deals with countries not signed up tor the landmark Paris climate agreement. “We cannot allow our youth to strike every Friday without action,” Macron said, in reference to Friday’s global climate strikes.Despite Guterres’ efforts, the summit was somewhat overshadowed by its absentees – most notably US President Donald Trump, and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, whose representatives were reportedly not selected to make a presentation there because of Brazil’s failure to outline plans to strengthen its efforts to counter climate change. (Donald Trump did visit the UN on September 23 but only briefly dipped into the climate summit to see Modi’s speech before attending a meeting which he had called on religious freedom. As he arrived at the UN, Trump crossed paths with Thunberg, who fixed the president with a hard stare.)So, the battle lines are drawn between the old world leaders who only fixate on the next election and the young people who will have to live with the decisions and inactions of these politicians. “The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line,”Thunberg warned in her speech.“Wake up guys before it gets too late”.

Jerry Reflections on Turning 82I just turned 82 years old and am reflecting on my life. I know you have heard this one before - "If I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself." Well, looking back, there are those moments! Some sad but most very glad. I wrote books about everything. I got s good report from my heart doctor and am even thinking I will be living longer. Actually I look much younger than 82; most people say I look to be in my 60s. Right now I am not even suffering significant components of aging: like hair loss and wrinkling. My only and biggest health problem is my feet. They burn with stabbing pains and the keep me from sleeping. I just got a Lyrical prescription filled and we will see how that helps. My 90 supply from Wal-Mart cost $800 but my insurance got it down to $50 bucks. Big Pharma sucks. We need single payer healthcare like Europe. I just had two teeth pulled. One a wisdom tooth, the other one a rotten tooth my bridge was attached to. Now I have a two tooth gap and the dentist wants $3,500 for a new bridge but I can chew OK, besides I don’t have the money for a new bridge.I got nothing to complain about, there have been many high points in my life, and “Growing up in Milwaukee,” “The Navy,” and “Working in Manhattan” are a few that stand out as being the best. I consider myself blessed that Milwaukee was my home until I entered the Navy at nineteen years old, the memories there remain strong and very pleasant. Back then, Milwaukee was a heavy manufacturing town sports town (The Packers and the Braves) of a white European immigrant culture - large German / Polish / British populations - that believed in work, fair play and earned rewards.“Growing Up in Milwaukee” is basically a 1930s - 1940s - 1950s love story and the wonderful experiences of my family and friends living on the Washington Heights section of the North Side of Milwaukee. It is a time long gone by and probably never again to be repeated, a great time of trustfulness and youthful exuberance in a safe city. Even today, savvy travelers who want authentic American experiences go to Milwaukee and it delivers! It is a meeting place of people and cultures, a place where the past, present and future come together. Milwaukee of the past was the real deal, the genuine American City, through and through.Then it was my high adventure sea going Navy days, when I was younger and full of vim and vinegar, during my dancing hard days and looked good wearing a bikini or Speedo at the beach. Back then, I could be on the dance floor living it up or otherwise, just catch a stool and chill . . . and if I saw a cute girl, I'd approach. If I didn't, I'd enjoy my drinks, music and vibe. Sometimes, I would day dream of riding my Harley to Alaska from the Lower 48 which would be my "trip of a life time." But I never did it and still dream about fantasies I never lived . . . but there weren't that many!I grew older and got a IBM Main Frame engineer job, collected lots of guns, hunted in Dismal Swamp, lived in New York, got rid of my guns, got married and had six kids, and worked in the Manhattan computer industry. I could work all day and then hit the streets, club all night and go back to work the next day, which is why I never really went out much during the work week. At 30 my party hard days were almost done. Except for the Jersey Shore where one stayed drunk for days as Springsteen and the E Street Band played ending a tour performance with “Shout.” My preference in NYC were Dive bars that had a top 40 Juke Box like Penn Stations' Rabbit Bar; night clubs like the Chelsea Place in Greenwich Village that catered to the international business crowd; and motorcycle bars like Hogs & Heifers with columns of bikes beneath a giant American flag pinned to the ceiling. From iconic on down, there’s no shortage of any of these types of bars in NYC. There are thousands! By the way, motorcycle bars in New York City are not a tough-guy scene in any way. They are much more like your dad’s garage. But motorcycles aren’t for talking about, they’re for riding and the stories told were great.That's why Happy Hour is so popular in NYC. It’s easy and not about drinking but relaxing and meeting people with an affinity for beer and a seriously good burger. Or are you looking for some seriously good jazz music? So what’s up with all the old guys at happy hour? The fact is, at 21 you want to party, at 25 you want to go clubbing, but at 32, you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.And when you are young, nothing ever changes. Nothing is ever going to change. It's all about booze, pussy, and getting some. We old heads laugh at the young men posted up at the bar trying to wheel in the fresh hot meat. Past 30, you could tell they were a little too old to be there plus they were a little creepish. By the time one hits 50, when the big boobs and short skirts pass you by, we don't even blink, all us old fucks want to do is talk about regulation of banking and the credit-default-swap market. You are fully aware that your best days are behind you, but something keeps pulling you back into the nightlife. They call it People Watching and hope! Then there is 60+ . . . now it is time to it hang up for anything but a laid back bar with big TV screens.But, by and large, 60 + is too old for anything except loud farts you don't give a damn about even if they stink. In my opinion old age never takes too long for reality to hit you in the face like a ton of bricks telling you that you should probably not be in the club anymore. It could be a club fight that breaks out while you’\re there, or knowing that you’ll be calling out of work tomorrow and missing an important meeting because your head is throbbing. Whatever it is, you’ve probably ignored all the signs that it’s time to hang up your club antics.I had a great corporate job. Money was never really an issue. Yes, I had a great retirement plan for 65, but my company was downsizing and also going out of business. I was forced to take an early retirement at 55, and already lost a ton on the stock market. Now I am on Social Security and Medicare. Thus, lots of meds, therapies, doctors, hospitals, tests, co pays, insurance premiums. Not to mention a roof, electricity, phone, transportation. Hopefully, after all that, there is money for groceries. And I have a wife and two dogs who all help keep me keep sane and centered.Bettie and I traveled a lot when I had money. We went on around 20 plus cruises, started with those week long Caribbean, Mexican and Canada cruises and graduated to those 30 and 40 day cruises to the Mediterranean, Northern Europe, Russia, and South America. Between the navy and our cruises I guess I have been to around 80 countries . . . maybe 90 if you count multiple ports in one country. I don’t have that urge to travel anymore. I feel like I have seen it all, done it all, and been everywhere. Now I like being at home and fooling around with my stuff, writing, fixing things and going to Goodwill shopping for curios for my man caves. Bettie and I go grocery shopping about every week to Aldi, Kroger, Wal-Mart and Quality for (for meats) and I like just being with her driving around our part of rural Georgia. It’s growing like crazy with commercial developments, not so much residential, but the bull dozers are everywhere clearing land and buildings are being built. We live in a semi rural area outside the Atlanta Metro full of big box stores, fast food with all sorts of commercial stores. Fast food is everywhere; it’s the main source of food for many people who tend to be over weight. Many are just fat!I quit going to church here in Georgia, the evangelicals worship Trump, even from the pulpit, and I got tired of hearing it. They hate immigrants, homosexuals and abortion and my friends that is the total of what they fight for. I don’t have lots of friends here like I had in New York. Neighbors don’t socialize, people stick to their own kind, and I intimidate people here. I am to open minded and think critically and that is not the normal for most southerners. However, I am mellowing and even stopped writing about Trump and the Republicans. It’s no use to complain about them, they are what they are and my analysis of their idiocy does nothing but fall on empty ears. I was a Republican most of life, even was elected in upstate New York as one for years, but not this crazy God loving, white nationalist, immigrant hating, isolationist crew we have today.I just worry that Trump’s shenanigans has caused my country to lose its world leadership position in morals, trade, security and God’s Blessings and there will be some rascals along the way that will harm us; the Russians, Chinese or Middle East. There are even worrisome threats within the USA, what with the extreme divisiveness the country is going through. The country is more culturally, politically and religiously divided than it was during the Civil War. Then it was slavery and states rights being fought over, today it’s between the forward thinking people vs. the regressive thinking people. I see two nations with completely different world views going in opposite directions. It’s between the progressive hip high tech cities vs. the traditional rural country side who have suffered the most with changing patterns in life.Bettie is traveling a lot, between trips to Alabama, or flying to Connecticut and New York to hang with her nine siblings; she has been away four times this year for about a week or so each trip. In a week she goes to Israel with her sisters. They pay for her trips – I couldn’t, am too poor these days, credit cards are killing me what with health care costs, and I am glad she has the opportunity to be with her large family. Mine is very small and they don’t stay in touch like hers. I don’t know any of my 2nd, 3rd or what ever distant cousins who are the grand children, etc. of my aunts and uncles who have all died. Her family is home based in Aliceville, Alabama and continues to live there, or Birmingham and a few who moved north to Connecticut. Most of them move back south when they retire – even to confederate loving Aliceville. Black people have large families and they tend to stick together more than whites who have much fewer children and spread out across the USA more. And they don’t seem to be bothered so much about southern white Trumpism and the confederacy loving lower white classes. Actually, blacks get along quite well in the south; I would even say that most would be better off in the south where they all came from. It’s the bible thumping black church, fast chicken food (most southerners are over weight), sweet tea, and cheap houses with the laid back life style they connect with. If you highly educated, aggressive, a high risk taker, and want to make the world turn, then you belong in New York and most blacks do not fit that profile. They tend to work in Civil Service in government jobs that provide security and benefits. In the north that got them government great pensions and benefits, so they are well off.I keep working on my two man caves, one in the house and the other in the garage. I have tons of tools, am skilled in most buildings construction techniques and repair, and still work on cars and just replaced a window regulator in my Buick. I can’t do the engine over hauls or under the car work I used to do, I get dizzy when on my back, but at least I know what has to be done and know when I see a good mechanic. Bettie is out in the garden all the time, says she doesn’t want to do the work there, but I think it is in her soul. Not so long ago her people were all field hands under the Jim Crow life and still have that awareness and love of the land.I am always in the Internet researching something. Lately I have been looking at real estate in New York and Georgia. There is little inventory anywhere you look. I wonder where the builders are especially in the fast growing Southland. New York is impossible, high taxes are killing the state. Those - can't be fired, high paid, with huge benefits and life long security jobs - have taken New York to the poor house. Most retired people can't afford to live there anymore. The Mid West is losing people to the Sun Be3lt and East Coast Cities with no input from immigrants or industry, its prime source of past growth. Georgia is growing as is all Southland, even Alabama and Mississippi. They offer warm weather, low cost of living, low taxes and cheap houses. Around here in Georgia you will pay at least $200K for a nice house that would cost more than 500K in upstate New York with taxes around 12k to 18k/year. In Georgia taxes will be around 3K which includes school taxes. When you reach 65 you don’t pay school taxes in most counties and your taxes drop to around $800/year. What is missing in the south is the worldly sophistication, vast social opportunities and high paying jobs found in New York. I hate lawn care though and for a house with a big lot, that will get me in trouble with the perspicuity anal HOA. I hate HOAs, didn‘t know when I bought a house in the trailer park – park your pick up truck on the grass south what I was getting into.North vs. South . . look at this way. Say you have a scale from one to ten being the highest. The scale represents different levels of high tech opportunities, education required, sophistication found like the performing arts, great universities, social opportunities like night clubs, theater, a diverse and tolerant society, having great schools, low crime, mass transit, and etc., etc. New York would be a ten on that scale, the south somewhere between two and a four for Atlanta. So, lower skilled auto assembly plants are all over the south, while the high tech and research centers are in the north. Some glaring differences: The south is the Bible belt territory where severe social judgments are passed while the north being a diverse and mixed society has no such limitations. The fast growing northern big cities are immigrant and high tech friendly while the south is not. Northern executives generally graduate from IVY league universities, vote for liberal Democrats, think critically, want their children to go to great schools, embellish their appreciation for the arts, go to the opera, ballet and concerts.People play golf and join exclusive country clubs and hobnob with others not like them who speak other languages and frequently travel to Europe / Asia / Russia / Africa, and get to work on mass transit, have airports and safe streets and low crime, etc. These attributes are generally found in the East Coast citified north and not so much in the countrified south, a region that is very conservative, religious, and judgmental of those not like them.Then I think back to living in the Northeast for 40 years (3 in New York City, 7 years in New Jersey, and 30 years in New York). I would say those years were exhilarating albeit often stressful, and they had those great people living exciting life's to befriend, job opportunities and social freedoms, but those high - socialism inspired - taxes were outrageous! Yeah, there were so many life styles available without judgmental religious types around wagging their fingers, the north being a “Live and Let Live” environment, and then there were the characters and exciting experiences I encountered that were even better, but those taxes!? Ugh! And the cold weather and snow! Double UGH! Thank God I was young and could shovel five feet of snow because if I had to do it now, it would be heart attack time. I ranted about politics when I lived up north too, about the unions, the free lunch crowd, the jobs for life as long as you worked for the government. But then there were the great schools, best mass transit in the USA, the wonderful transformational life experiences working in Manhattan (Greenwich Village and Midtown) and living in Queens and Upstate, the excitement of Times Square, the multi culturalism, and more than anything, the thrill of Greenwich Village’s bohemianism, intellectualism and cultural artistic leadership. Altogether, I have five children, three steps, thirteen grands and four greats and two second daughters. My miseries are this: most of my large family are in New York and we hardly get to see them. From a previous marriage, I have two children in Virginia Beach who avoid me, one (Vann) like the plague the other (Diana) does talk to me once in a while. But New Yorkers don’t complain. They enjoy life! And if you’re a little weird, it’s even better! Mind you, I am not complaining at all. I am 82 years old and feel fine most of the time. I miss the vibrant life style of New York and appreciated the cheap, warm and comfortable life style of the south in my old age.So what is the quintessence of life? A degree of cynicism helps! The ability to laugh loudly, see the funny side. The ability to accept the bumps in the road. To live in the moment. To have a range of emotions, to feel freely and deeply. To think and learn, grow and develop, to enquire and discover. To have links, connection and deep bonds with other people. Enough "money" to live on, to have your basic needs met, somewhere to live etc. Having something to do, someone to love and something to live for. Bottom line, finding your place in the world and being completely content with it is the key to happiness. What makes life worth while? There are many things and many persons that make life worthwhile. Whether it be knowing that you've affected even just one person for the better in your life, it's your mark. As you get older you learn to really appreciate the little things, after turmoil, struggling and stress you appreciate a sense of calm and "normality." It’s like you have to lose things, then find them again to appreciate what you've got. Bad times and struggles enable you to appreciate the good. And never forget, hope makes life worthwhile and there will always be hope so long as one can have a positive outlook towards the uncertain future . . . hence all we need to do is to inculcate a positive outlook.I have lived in the big city and rural country; both are good for different reasons and I know that if given a choice, and I lived my life over again, I would definitely still live and work in New York and think twice about moving south when I retired. In the Hudson Valley where I lived, there was just more freedom, with more religious, political and life style choices available, where people are not the same and think differently, and we celebrate the differences, and there is tons of fun, a thousand things to do and the Delaware River valley is 15 miles away, the Catskills are just up the road, and the Pocono’s are an hour away and New York City is just a train ride away. It’s a low mountain area, with tons of lakes and rivers dotting the area with the Hudson River and West Point 30 miles a way, and the towns, those beautiful small artistic / university towns, are all over the map. I would still go into the Navy, the March on Washington and Woodstock, get involved in Civil Rights again, and have the same academic, business, Hollywood / artistic and Wall Street friends. It was a very good life!