Cornell Notes Unit 4 Earth Science Of 5 Questions In This: Fill & Download for Free

US News ranks it as #23.It ranks around 130th according to Kevin O’ Connors StartClass rankings for Engineering programs.College Confidential has a nice little thread answering this question.It ranks #5 on this site I tripped over for the first time. Seems like basically just an SEO’d site that will garner some credibility by showing up in the SERPs.With these handful of 3rd party sites rating the program, it would seem the top ranked ivy league school has the respect of the publications who perform reviews.However, the program tries to explain “why” you should attend here.CWTS Leiden Rankings, 2017The Leiden Ranking, compiled annually by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, ranks the top 750 universities worldwide with the largest publication output in the Web of Science database.Impact is determined by several indicators, including the average number of citations of the publications of a university, and the proportion of publications that belong in the top 10 percent most frequently cited. The ranking does not use data from reputational surveys, or data provided by the universities themselves,Based on 2012 to 2015 numbers in the Web of Science database and when normalized for size, Harvard ranked first overall.U.S. News and World Report Graduate Schools, 2018Best Engineering Schools (ranked in 2018, based upon 2016 data)Harvard's graduate engineering programs ranked 23rd in the 2018 U.S. News and World Report Graduate School Rankings.The schools ranked immediately above Harvard included Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, University of California - Santa Barbara, and Johns Hopkins University; University of Maryland, College Park ranked immediately below.The top 10 engineering schools have remained relatively consistent over the past several years.Of particular note are SEAS' research expenditures per faculty member ($635,138, 2 year average), especially high given our relatively small size; high percentage of faculty members in the National Academy of Engineering (13.6%); low acceptance rate (11.2%); and the low Ph.D. student/faculty ratio of 4.9 to 1.The complete data (representing stats from 2016) from U.S. News are below:Score54Peer assessment score (5.0 highest)3.7Recruiter assessment score (5.0 highest)4.1Average quantitative GRE score (new test) of entrants in master's and doctoral programs166Overall acceptance rate11.2%Ph.D. student/faculty ratio4.9 to 1Faculty membership in National Academy of Engineering13.6%Engineering school research expenditures (in millions), 2 year average$48.9Research expenditures per faculty member (in thousands), 2 year average$635.12012-13 Ph.D.s granted48Total graduate engineering enrollment478Other rankings of related specialty programs in engineering and applied sciences include...#33 in Environmental / Ecology#18 in Computer Science#14 in Materials Engineering#15 in Mechanical Engineering#22 in Biomedical Engineering / Bioengineering#17 in Computer Engineering#31 in Electrical / Electronic / Communications EngineeringRankings of related Harvard programs include...#1 in Biological Sciences (tied with MIT and Stanford)#2 in Physics (tied with CalTech, Princeton, Stanford, and UC Berkeley)#3 in Mathematics (tied with UC Berkeley)#3 in Biostatistics (tied with the University of Washington)#4 in Chemistry (tied with Stanford University)#3 in Statistics (tied with the University of Washington)#8 in Earth Sciences (tied with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the University of Texas, Austin)U.S. News and World Report Undergraduate Programs, 2018Best Colleges / National University Rankings (ranked in 2018 based on 2016 data)Harvard College, ranked #2 for 2018, has consistently ranked among the top 1 or 2 programs in the country. Undergraduates pursuing degrees in engineering and applied sciences are admitted, enrolled in, and receive degrees from Harvard College. The College was also ranked #1 for "Best Value" among national universities.For undergraduate engineering programs, Harvard was ranked #28 overall Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs (tied with Ohio Stat University, Columbus, the University of California, Davis, and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles). Note, the rankings are "based solely on the peer judgments of deans and senior faculty who rated each program they are familiar with on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished)."Times Higher Education SupplementWorld University Rankings (ranked in 2016-2017)Harvard University ranked # 6 in Overall World University RankingHarvard University ranked # 4 in Overall United States University RankingQS World University Rankings (2017)Harvard University ranked...#3 Overall Worldwide#1 in Biological Sciences#5 in Chemistry#6 in Computer Science#2 in Earth & Marine Sciences#2 in Economics & Econometrics#8 in Electrical & Electronic Engineering#13 in Engineering & Technology#4 in Environmental Studies (tied with University of Oxford)#5 in Materials Science#2 in Mathematics#4 in Mechanical Engineering (tied with University of California, Berkeley)#1 in Medicine#2 in Physics & Astronomy#1 in StatisticsPLACEMENTGraduating seniors concentrating in engineering and applied sciences have recently been accepted to graduate programs at MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Georgia Tech, University of Cambridge, and Harvard.Our Ph.D. graduates have gone on to take positions at research institutions including: Ben Gurion University (Israel), Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Cornell University, MIT, National University of Singapore, Princeton University, University of California–Berkeley, University of Chicago, University of Sydney (Australia), University of Virginia, and Harvard.Those pursuing careers in industry and government have been hired by technology companies such as Pixar, Google, and IBM; defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman; policy and research organizations such as the National Institutes of Health; banking and investment firms like Citigroup; non-profits like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and environmental consulting groups like Boston-based CDM.Others have become entrepreneurs. Our graduates started Microsoft, Online Shoes, Clothing, Free Shipping and Returns, Tacit Knowledge Systems, and SupplyWorks. In fact, some of the most well-known companies in the world were started by Harvard graduates—for example, Electronic Arts, 3Com, and Sun Microsystems.AFTER HARVARD *Primary Occupation Post Harvard%Computer Software, Hardware, Systems23Banking, Finance, Communications11Engineering & Science11Education8Full-time student7Law6Consulting6Medicine, Healthcare, Public Health5Arts, Government, Politics5Other18

[Warning: VERY LONG]Almost everything was known publicly before.Here are 23 things I learned while watching the lawsuit.Most surprising to me was #21 (Legacies):Out of the 233 (14%) legacies in class of 2022, maybe 82–105 are minorities.Asian-American 41-53African-American 22-28Latinos 19-24Also #23 (Legacies): In class of 2019, Crimson survey had legacies (2,269, 756 avg) averaging higher than non-legacies (2,221, 734 avg) on SATs.Jennifer Hu's answer to Harvard rated Asian American applicants lower on personality traits for admissions. What is the logic behind the decision for lower ratings? is a fantastic answer.I also highly recommend reading Karabel’s Chosen (2005, ~100 pages are free at Google Books) for long stories about the intricate history of HYP admissions (rather than sound bites in the newspapers)."Not only at Harvard, but at Yale and Princeton as well, the academic side of the college experiences ranked a distant third behind club life and campus activities.As a consequence, the competition for social position and the leadership of extracurricular activities could be - and often was - ferocious; in scholastic matters, however, the “gentleman’s C” reigned supreme.Competing in sports, Peabody believed, helped develop in students a multiplicity of virtues: loyalty, courage, cooperation, and masculine strength. By teaching young men to exert themselves to the fullest while playing within the rules, athletics would teach self-control and a sense of decency and fair play….Ranking lower still was intellect - a quality that was viewed with suspicion as oriented to the self rather than the community.”The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton: Jerome Karabel: 0046442773553: Amazon.com: Books (Jerome Karabel, 2005).More excerpts: https://www.quora.com/What-secrets-about-Harvard-s-admission-process-were-revealed-in-2018/answer/Mitchell-Tsai/comment/78578706Harvard originally did a lot of religious training. Then it became a finishing school for the upper class. Only in the late 1800s, did they try to become a top research university (An idea which came from Germany to the US with Johns Hopkins in 1876).The proportion of Harvard students which should be “smart” has been an issue of great debate in 1880–2018 (and probably even before). Harvard decided it wanted to become a top research university, not just a feeder for private clubs and the social world of the upper class.23 Things I learned during the lawsuit:(1) Strong ratings (1 or 2, on a scale of 1–6) are rare for non-Academics. This lawsuit is the first time I’ve seen exact numbers. 150,701 applicants in 2014–2019.“Everyone over decile 6 is lumped into Academic score 2. (Academic score 1 is reserved for faculty-reviewed academic submissions.)”- Jennifer Hu's answer to Harvard rated Asian American applicants lower on personality traits for admissions. What is the logic behind the decision for lower ratings?- David Card’s 12/15/17 Brief Exhibit 5(2) No model in the lawsuit (1–6 ratings, & other info) is better than 74%. Card estimates that 31–43% of admissions is decided by things not revealed in the lawsuit (such as teacher recommendations).This 31–43% leaves a huge window open for racial bias.It is also possible that there is no bias (or little bias) in the unobservables.- David Card’s 12/15/17 Brief Exhibits 20 & 30(3) Technical details from Slate article on Harvard Classes of 2014–2019 (6 years).What We’ve Learned About Who Gets Into Harvard From Its Discrimination LawsuitOnly about 439 domestic 1s each year out of 25,117 applicants (150,701 applicants for 6 years).A few tricky points which readers might not notice.(1) Domestic students only (1,858 admits/yr, rather than 2,000–2,000 admits)(2) People with multiple 1s: about 26/yr admitted with 1126 or better. Five 1133s were lumped into the “Solid candidates” (1/yr).(3) People with one or two 2s (and no 1’s) aren’t mentioned in Exhibit 4.(4) Well-rounded (Four 2s) is very rare (103 out of 25,117 applicants)(5) 2+/2/2- are very different(6) About 90/yr admits with 1 and two 2s (1226 or better).- David Card’s 12/15/17 Brief Exhibits 4 & 6.So here are my best guesses at filling in the gaps (domestic students only)Multiple 1s (? admission - 26? 1126+ admitted, 1 1133s applicant, 1134&below?)- 0.1%? of applicants (30?), 1.5%? of admits (26?)Non-Extracurricular 1s or Four 2s (66–88% admission)- 2% of applicants (444), 19% of admits (347)Extracurricular 1 or Three 2s & 4 (43–48% admission, 2224+) “Excellent Candidates”- 6% of applicants (1,620), 38% of admits (700)Two 2s & Two 3s (23% admission - might be any two 2s) “Solid Candidates”- 10% of applicants (2,500?), 31% of admits (580)One or Two 2s (2%? admission, Between 2234 & 2666)- 44% of applicants (11,100?), 11%? of admits (200?)Zero 2s (0.1% admission)- 37% of applicants (9,330), 0.5% of admits (10)Total admits - 1,858 domestic, 2,000-2,100 with internationalNote 1: Legacies (34% admission)- 3% of applicants (774), 13% of ALL admits (263), ALL = domestic + international- about 35–45%? are minorities (haven’t crunched numbers yet)Note 2: Children of faculty & staff (47% admission)- 0.2% of applicants (53), 1% of ALL admits (25)Data for notes 1 & 2 from What We’ve Learned About Who Gets Into Harvard From Its Discrimination Lawsuit(4) Even for non-recruited-athletes, Athletic 2 is a big help.Athletic 2 (12% admit) vs. Overall (7% admit) = +5%2222 (68% admit) vs. 222 w Athletic 3 (48% admit) = +20%Harvard’s history from the past 200 years shows that they consider athletics important for loyalty, courage, cooperation, self-control, and a sense of decency and fair play…“62. Harvard’s admissions data confirm the importance of the athletic rating. For example, applicants with an athletic rating of 2 have an admission rate of 12%.That is substantially higher than the overall admission rate of approximately 7%, and is the same as the admission rate of applicants with an academic rating of 2.Further, as shown above, receiving a rating of 2 on all four profile ratings is associated with an admission rate of 68%, while receiving a rating of 2 on the three non-athletic ratings and a rating of 3 or worse on the athletic rating is associated with an admission rate of only 48%.”- David Card’s 12/15/17 Brief(5) Asian-American females are stronger non-Academically and more likely to be multi-dimensional (Three 2s or better) than Asian-American males.Asian-American females are more slightly more likely to be admitted than average applicants (Advantage in 5 years out of 6. It’s some years, the advantage has statistical significance, but not in other years).- David Card’s 12/15/17 Brief Exhibits 23 & 24.(6) “Card said his model showed a slight advantage for Asian American female applicants, and Asian Americans who applied from California.”Harvard attorney appears confident in admissions case ruling(7) Harvard weighs both potential & accomplishment, and tries to balance the number of people in different concentrations and possible careers.Arcidiacono’s data did not reflect intended concentration, intended career, mother or father deceased, mother or father occupation, hours applicant works, whether they were born outside the US, etc…86. “For example, if the son of a professional writer and the son of a police officer display talent in writing, Harvard might regard the latter’s talent as more impressive than the former’s. The same might be true of the daughter of professional scientists and the daughter of factory workers, both of whom exhibit talent in a scientific field.”- David Card’s 12/15/17 Brief Exhibits 12–14.(8) The two sides have major differences in what is considered important.Arcidiacono contends that the personal rating is suspect. Harvard considers three 2s (and a 4) essential for an “excellent candidate” (43–48% admission), but you can’t get three 2s if you excel at academics and extracurriculars, but have low personal and athletic scores. You can’t get Two 2s and two 3s “strong candidate” (23% admission) either if you do no sports…or you get rated 4–6 in personal.(9) I would agree with Arcidiacono’s contention that to detect racial bias, you should compare “typical Asians”, “typical Whites”, and “typical AHOs” (African-American, Hispanic, Other).Or you could compare “legacy Asians”, “legacy Whites”, and “legacy AHOs”.When possible, try to compare apples to apples.“Professor Card makes a similar modeling error by always including recruited athletes, children of faculty and staff, applicants who are on the Dean’s List or Director’s List, and legacies in his models.”- http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-415-2-Arcidiacono-Rebuttal-Report.pdf(10) Until 2004, Texas A&M University gave legacy applicants a four-point boost on a 100-point scale. But the school ended that practice after being criticized for maintaining legacy preference when it had stopped considering race in admissions.Legacy Admissions Offer An Advantage — And Not Just At Schools Like Harvard(11) “There was no testimony from rejected students. The names of the Asian-Americans represented by Students for Fair Admissions were redacted from the record, because they were worried about being harassed and reviled for their views, according to the leader of the group, Edward Blum.”The Harvard Trial: A Double-Edged Sword for College AdmissionsIMO, none of the rejected students would have gotten in with race-neutral admissions.They probably would have gotten in if Hispanic or African-American, but not if they were white non-hispanic (This is in response to a commenter…who said they would have gotten in if African-American).(12) “In 1977, freshman class was 1,585 with endowment of $2 billion.In 2017, freshman class was 1,659 with endowment of $37 billion.”Harvard's Data Problem(13) “Athletes with the highest or second-highest academic rating on an internal Harvard admissions scale have an acceptance rate of 83 percent—compared to 16 percent for non-athletes—according to a report from the University’s Office of Internal Research.By Ivy League Conference rules, recruited athletes are placed on a 240-point Academic Index, which is calculated based on GPA and standardized test scores. While the minimum score required for Ivy League admissions is 176, the average Academic Index for recruited athletes cannot be more than one standard deviation below the index of the previous four freshmen classes.At Harvard, the student body index is roughly 220—approximately equivalent to a SAT score of 2200 and near 4.0 GPA, according to a 2014 Crimson report. Students who walk-on to teams are not included in the Athletic Department’s estimate.Coaches cannot guarantee admissions spots to prospective student-athletes, whose applications must be vetted by the full 40-member admissions committee.Recruited athletes who pass this process will receive a ‘likely letter,’ indicating the applicant is likely to be admitted by the University.”Filings Show Athletes With High Academic Scores Have 83 Percent Acceptance Rate | News | The Harvard Crimson(14) I liked this step-by-step article about the admissions process.Here’s How the Harvard Admissions Process Really Works | News | The Harvard Crimson(15) “It admitted 1,800 U.S.-based students to the graduating Class of 2019. But for those 1,800 slots, it received more than 37,000 applications, including 8,000 with grade point averages of a perfect 4.0 and 3,500 with perfect math SAT scores.”William Watson: Harvard, facing a lawsuit, discovers cries of ‘racism’ aren’t always fair(16) “Black students are much less likely to graduate from high school and attend college than white students with the same family income.The differences were substantial. Whereas poor white men graduated high school about 78 percent of the time, black men whose families had the same income graduated only 70 percent of the time. Disparities for women exist too, but were much smaller.The authors note a puzzling phenomenon: On average, black girls score lower on tests than white girls with the same family income, but there’s no such disparity in their adult earnings. This suggests that test scores don’t fully capture the skills of black girls.Ironically, Raj Chetty, coauthor of this study, is perhaps best known in the education world for pioneering but controversial research on the links between test scores and adult income. (That research focused on teachers’ impact on student scores, which was found to translate into higher earnings later in life.)The latest study doesn’t overturn the previous research, but it does raise questions about whether test scores may be less accurate for certain groups of students.The paper points out that kids of all races do better in certain neighborhoods.“Black and white boys who grow up in neighborhoods with lower poverty rates, higher test scores, higher median rents, and more two-parent households tend to have higher incomes in adulthood,” they write.The research finds that up to 25 percent of the black-white income disparity is connected to the neighborhood a student grows up in.That suggests that ensuring families of different races live in the same neighborhood and attend school together — integration — can have a significant effect.https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/03/23/race-not-just-poverty-shapes-who-graduates-in-america-and-other-education-lessons-from-a-big-new-study/(17) “At the postgraduate level, rates of African-American achievement are disheartening. According to the National Science Foundation, people who are “Black or African-American” earned barely 2 percent of Ph.D.s in physical sciences and earth sciences in 2016. Universities awarded 1,730 doctorates in math and computer sciences in 2016, but only 78 of them went to black or African-American individuals.Even in the humanities, where African-American studies programs and hiring have been an obsession for more than three decades, blacks and African-Americans didn’t even reach 4 percent of the total.Meanwhile, as academics and advocates have fervently defended the practice in spite of its small demonstrable advantages, the share of black children who live in single-parent households has risen to two-thirds.Given the high correlation between family structure and educational attainment, this trend casts affirmative action in a different light.Racial preferences boost a tiny cohort of African-Americans once they reach the point where they can seek entry into elite institutions. But for everyone else, it does little.”The Clock Ticks for Affirmative Action(18) “In one presentation, she noted that only a little over 2,000 African-American students in the United States score above 700 on the SAT, while more than 50,000 white and Asian-American students earn such a score.”Harvard Admissions Officials Are Grilled on How They Use Race in Admissions(19) Since Harvard is admitting 15% African-Americans (300 admits/yr), they could admit all African-Americans of deciles 6–10 (and half of decile 5). Academic Index deciles = SAT/GPA.Thanks to Jennifer Hu for turning Table 5.1 into a beautiful graph.Who could do the work at Harvard? Estimates are that anyone in deciles 3–10 (top 80%) could finish their classes & graduate in good standing.60% of African-American and 41% of Hispanic-American applicants might be under-qualified (13% of Whites & 9% of Asian-Americans). The applicants are correctly seeing that Harvard has much lower standards for African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans.Note: This table (only 129,861 out of 150,701 applicants) does not include internationals (?), legacies, recruited athletes, children of faculty & staff, dean’s interest list, people whose race could not be identified (Card did a better job than Arcidiacono and identified about 10,000 more people), and maybe other stuff.- Jennifer Hu's answer to Harvard rated Asian American applicants lower on personality traits for admissions. What is the logic behind the decision for lower ratings?(20) “Sixty-seven percent of the university’s undergraduates come from families that made about $110,000 or more a year. That share rises to 72 percent at Princeton University, and is 62 percent — the lowest in the Ivy League — at Columbia University.Fifteen percent of Harvard students come from families that made about $630,000 or more a year. Only two Ivy institutions — Columbia and Cornell Universities — have a smaller share of students from such families, at 13 percent and 10 percent, respectively. At the top of the list is Dartmouth College, with 21 percent.At Harvard, the median annual family income is $168,800. Columbia’s is the lowest, at $150,900, and Brown University’s is the highest, is $204,200.”Median Family Income for Harvard Undergrads Triple National Average, Study Finds | News | The Harvard Crimson(21) I tried to do a legacy analysis on the Class of 2022 from Harvard (1,661 people) & Crimson data (1,064 people). I would LOVE to see an actual total of legacy tips (people who otherwise would not have been admitted). But understandably, Harvard wants to keep that private.Class of 2022 By the Numbers (Crimson)82% of those admitted will join Harvard’s Class of ’22 (Harvard)233 legacies - 14% Legacy based on Harvard (18% based on Crimson survey)White 150-193Minorities 82–105Asian-American 41-53African-American 22-28Latinos 19-24If 50% of legacies got in on their own merits, 116 were legacy tips.If 75% of legacies got in on their own merits, 58 were legacy tips.(22) Admissions math - looking at a purely “academic merit” approach - ignoring empathy, compassion, ethics, creativity, social causes, activities, athletics, music, legacy, parents who didn’t go to college, parental occupations, race, intended concentration, teacher recommendations, personal essay, etc…4,300,000 US High school students3,600,000 US High School graduates (2017)2,100,000 SAT exam takers (2018)434,000 SAT 1,200+ (2018)413,680 Top 10 students of each high school (Class Rank)202,000 SAT Math 700+ (2018)145,000 SAT 1,400+ (2018)141,000 SAT English 700+ (2018)82,736+ Valedictorians, salutatorians, and co-valedictorians.41,368+ Valedictorians, co-valedictorians17,000–18,000 SAT 1500+ (750+ avg, 2014, 2,400 rescaled to 1,600)-> possibly 20,000-22,000 in 20181,400-1,700 Typical Ivy League class size (Cornell 3,400, U Penn 2,500, MIT 1,100, Caltech 240), which may include 5–20% international students.(23) Harvard is willing to take people with SAT 400s & 500s, GPA 2.8 & 3.0 - by looking at empathy, compassion, ethics, creativity, social causes, etc…What is the lowest SAT accepted to Harvard?Class of 2021 & 2022 - Crimson stopped publishing SAT/GPA charts.Class of 2020 - two people self-reported 1,320, 1,450 (out of 2,400).Class of 2019 - three people 1,240, 1260, 1,360 (out of 2,400).Legacies (2,269, 756 avg) averaged higher than non-legacies (2,221, 734 avg).Someone commented that these five sub-500 averages might have been on the new 1,600 SAT (incorrectly not converted to 2,400 in the Crimson survey), so here are seven people averaging 550–580.Class of 2020 - three people 1,650, 1,680, 1,730.Class of 2017 - four people 1,660, 1,680, 1690, 1,700.

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.