Meatlover's DrawDown Bookclub #2: Can We At Least Have Fish?
Compartmentalize, folks, shove any upsetting headlines of floods, melting icebergs or presidential firings to the denial part of your brain, grab a gnosh plate and pull up a chair for the second meeting of the DrawDown bookclub!
This is a bookclub that doesn't push members to read too many pages per week - for DrawDown is mainly a textbook. But we want to make like John Muir, who, facing boulders tumbling his way in a frightening Yosemite rockfall, jumped on to surf one to its new resting place.
We're jumping on climate change in attempt to surf it, even steer it, with the DrawDown book club.
We're going to walk through fires, slide down debris flows, string up solar panels. We're not running away from climate change. We're going to endure it and plant saplings along the way.
If you're joining us late, minutes from meeting #1 describe our reactions to Michael Pollan's essay "Why Bother?" (DrawDown page 52.) Pollan neutralized our doubts by acknowledging them, then asked us to start a vegetable garden. We readers decided aloud any garden started by us would commence a year from now because the waiting list for an urban garden plot is rumored to be as long. Perhaps we should actually sign up for one. But.
But the reading did get us to notice some vegetarian recipes pushed into our twitter newsfeed by TreeHugger. New York Times food critic Mark Bittman writes a lot about vegetarian cooking now. Apparently we're supposed to cook vegetables like we do meat, and go for the outer sear that locks juices in.
We didn't cook the recipe, but we noticed it and read it. Which truly is action not passivity.
Onto this week's two DrawDown readings: "Plant-Rich Diet" page 38 and "Multistrata Agroforestry" page 46.
I. Plant-Rich Diet, page 38
II. Multistrata Agroforestry, page 46
I. Plant-Rich Diet
What do the following people have in common: Confucious (551 BC,) Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1920,) George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950,) Colin Kaepernick (1987 -) and Tom Brady (1977 - )?
All have championed the plant-based diet. Most of them for moral reasons, i.e. eating-an-animal-is-mean-to-animals, and that's not a ride we're boarding. Tom Brady's chef says he's a flexitarian, one who serves meat but never as the main dish.
This two-page essay was a bit more work, and persuaded us only some. The whole purpose of this book is its editors and authors don't describe how to merely arrest carbon emissions. They describe actions, that draw CO2 out of the air and back down to the earth. And refraining from eating meat would merely arrest emissions.
Nonetheless the reading starts by listing how much carbon dioxide livestock-raising emits into the air. This bookclub host loves a good steak every Christmas eve, but beyond that and a few roadtrip hamburgers, eats mostly fish. So what is the point of this. Who's eating all this chuck and steak? "Livestock accounts for nearly 15% of global greenhouse gases emitted each year by the most conservative estimates," the book tells us. Really? How much do cars or factory smokestacks account for?
"If cattle were their own nation, they would be the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases." Wow.
So we'll stop ourselves from eating more steak beyond our Christmas eve special. What else can be done about this? Non-meat meat is available in more and more markets now, the book says. Well some of us aren't sold on artificial meat even if it's made from something natural like bean curd.
"In addition to meat imitation, the celebration of vegetables, grains, and pulses in their natural form can update norms around these foods, elevating them to main acts in their own right, as opposed to sideshows."
Now we're getting somewhere. If we could get the same satisfaction and physical strength from vegetables cooked the right way, we could side-show this beef forever. (Fish is still acceptable, right?)
The chapter says pop culture practices such as Meatless Mondays or VB6 (vegan before 6 p.m.) are attempts to rally the wealthier, higher-beef-consuming groups to this cause. And as developing nations increase their wealth, which they are, they'll be consuming more beef too, and that demand will prompt people to cut down forests to raise that cattle, and ... OK we get it. We get it. Cattle, beef directly and indirectly emit greenhouse gases.
And emitting greenhouse gasses is the opposite of drawing down CO2.
Maybe we should start a "plant a tree then eat that steak" restaurant.
We'll stick to eating fish since DrawDown didn't dissuade that in this chapter.
II. Multistrata Agroforestry
This was interesting - strata means layers, and some farms in tropical locales called "multistrata agroforests" grow both trees up top and crops below including coffee, cacoa, black pepper, cardamom. The trees produce bananas, pineapple, coconuts, rubber and timber.
Pretty straight forward chapter. And a chance to load up on new climate-management terms. Coffee traditionally was all "shade-grown" in these agroforests, but in an effort to increase yields, farmers shifted to "full-sun" operations. Also terms "biomass" and "afforestation" are not at the forefront of our brains.
Home gardens as multistrata agroforests sound very appealing, and they are popular for now in Jakarta. They do require a tropical climate.
Now we're getting some numbers thrown at us and we acknowledge they don't mean much to us just yet, like "2.8 tons per acre."
And multistrata agroforestry can take root on "steep slopes and degraded croplands, places where other cultivation might struggle."
Here's the challenge: multistrata agroforests last longer than full-sun farms, are better for flood prevention, erosion pacing, but they are more expensive to set up and "without immediate returns." Once in place, though, they use very little energy to run, thankfully, since their complexity will make running them difficult to mechanize. And yields can be lower compared to full-sun farms. But home gardens in urban plots converted to multistrata agroforests are the "epitome of sustainability" according to expert P.K. Nair.
Home gardens as multistrata agroforests also provide food security which would cut migration.
Cool.
III. Next Week
Let's tie our next DrawDown readings to some news pegs, specifically the power grid. And driverless cars. Puerto Rico is still not back up to full power after last fall's hurricanes. And Northern California has some power issues of its own with speculation that above-ground powerlines sparked November's fires.
It's long confused many of us that some types of energy capture, such as solar, cannot be stored long-term like other energy sources. That can't be right, can it? Let's read:
- "Energy Storage (Utilities)" page 32 and
- "Energy Storage (Distributed)" page 34.
Consider those two chapters the lower bound, bare-minimum readings for next week.
Extra, optional reading for next week: from the "Coming Attractions" part of the book, forecasting far far into the future, let's exercise our skepticism toward driverless cars, and read:
- "Autonomous Vehicles" page 184.
See you then.
<- DrawDown Book Club #1: Reading 'Why Bother' Was a Wise Choice | DrawDown Bookclub #3: Future Energy Storage More Fascinating Than First Appears->
------
Further reading:
Mark Bittman's recipe for Roasted Carrots with Cumin.
Mark Bittman says Treat Your Veggies Like Meat.
thekitchn.com - I Tried Mark Bittman's V6 Diet and Here's How It Went.
Catch up:
This is a bookclub that doesn't push members to read too many pages per week - for DrawDown is mainly a textbook. But we want to make like John Muir, who, facing boulders tumbling his way in a frightening Yosemite rockfall, jumped on to surf one to its new resting place.
We're jumping on climate change in attempt to surf it, even steer it, with the DrawDown book club.
We're going to walk through fires, slide down debris flows, string up solar panels. We're not running away from climate change. We're going to endure it and plant saplings along the way.
If you're joining us late, minutes from meeting #1 describe our reactions to Michael Pollan's essay "Why Bother?" (DrawDown page 52.) Pollan neutralized our doubts by acknowledging them, then asked us to start a vegetable garden. We readers decided aloud any garden started by us would commence a year from now because the waiting list for an urban garden plot is rumored to be as long. Perhaps we should actually sign up for one. But.
But the reading did get us to notice some vegetarian recipes pushed into our twitter newsfeed by TreeHugger. New York Times food critic Mark Bittman writes a lot about vegetarian cooking now. Apparently we're supposed to cook vegetables like we do meat, and go for the outer sear that locks juices in.
We didn't cook the recipe, but we noticed it and read it. Which truly is action not passivity.
Onto this week's two DrawDown readings: "Plant-Rich Diet" page 38 and "Multistrata Agroforestry" page 46.
I. Plant-Rich Diet, page 38
II. Multistrata Agroforestry, page 46
I. Plant-Rich Diet
What do the following people have in common: Confucious (551 BC,) Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1920,) George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950,) Colin Kaepernick (1987 -) and Tom Brady (1977 - )?
All have championed the plant-based diet. Most of them for moral reasons, i.e. eating-an-animal-is-mean-to-animals, and that's not a ride we're boarding. Tom Brady's chef says he's a flexitarian, one who serves meat but never as the main dish.
This two-page essay was a bit more work, and persuaded us only some. The whole purpose of this book is its editors and authors don't describe how to merely arrest carbon emissions. They describe actions, that draw CO2 out of the air and back down to the earth. And refraining from eating meat would merely arrest emissions.Nonetheless the reading starts by listing how much carbon dioxide livestock-raising emits into the air. This bookclub host loves a good steak every Christmas eve, but beyond that and a few roadtrip hamburgers, eats mostly fish. So what is the point of this. Who's eating all this chuck and steak? "Livestock accounts for nearly 15% of global greenhouse gases emitted each year by the most conservative estimates," the book tells us. Really? How much do cars or factory smokestacks account for?
"If cattle were their own nation, they would be the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases." Wow.
So we'll stop ourselves from eating more steak beyond our Christmas eve special. What else can be done about this? Non-meat meat is available in more and more markets now, the book says. Well some of us aren't sold on artificial meat even if it's made from something natural like bean curd.
"In addition to meat imitation, the celebration of vegetables, grains, and pulses in their natural form can update norms around these foods, elevating them to main acts in their own right, as opposed to sideshows."
Now we're getting somewhere. If we could get the same satisfaction and physical strength from vegetables cooked the right way, we could side-show this beef forever. (Fish is still acceptable, right?)
The chapter says pop culture practices such as Meatless Mondays or VB6 (vegan before 6 p.m.) are attempts to rally the wealthier, higher-beef-consuming groups to this cause. And as developing nations increase their wealth, which they are, they'll be consuming more beef too, and that demand will prompt people to cut down forests to raise that cattle, and ... OK we get it. We get it. Cattle, beef directly and indirectly emit greenhouse gases.
And emitting greenhouse gasses is the opposite of drawing down CO2.
Maybe we should start a "plant a tree then eat that steak" restaurant.
We'll stick to eating fish since DrawDown didn't dissuade that in this chapter.
II. Multistrata Agroforestry
This was interesting - strata means layers, and some farms in tropical locales called "multistrata agroforests" grow both trees up top and crops below including coffee, cacoa, black pepper, cardamom. The trees produce bananas, pineapple, coconuts, rubber and timber.
Pretty straight forward chapter. And a chance to load up on new climate-management terms. Coffee traditionally was all "shade-grown" in these agroforests, but in an effort to increase yields, farmers shifted to "full-sun" operations. Also terms "biomass" and "afforestation" are not at the forefront of our brains.
Home gardens as multistrata agroforests sound very appealing, and they are popular for now in Jakarta. They do require a tropical climate.
Now we're getting some numbers thrown at us and we acknowledge they don't mean much to us just yet, like "2.8 tons per acre."
"...an acre of multistrata agroforestry can achieve rates of carbon sequestration that are comparable to those of afforestation and forest restoration -- 2.8 tons per acre per year, on average -- with the added benefit of producing food. At times, the sequestration rates for multistrata agroforestry plots can out-sequester nearby natural forests."
And multistrata agroforestry can take root on "steep slopes and degraded croplands, places where other cultivation might struggle."
Here's the challenge: multistrata agroforests last longer than full-sun farms, are better for flood prevention, erosion pacing, but they are more expensive to set up and "without immediate returns." Once in place, though, they use very little energy to run, thankfully, since their complexity will make running them difficult to mechanize. And yields can be lower compared to full-sun farms. But home gardens in urban plots converted to multistrata agroforests are the "epitome of sustainability" according to expert P.K. Nair.
Home gardens as multistrata agroforests also provide food security which would cut migration.
Cool.
III. Next Week
Let's tie our next DrawDown readings to some news pegs, specifically the power grid. And driverless cars. Puerto Rico is still not back up to full power after last fall's hurricanes. And Northern California has some power issues of its own with speculation that above-ground powerlines sparked November's fires.
It's long confused many of us that some types of energy capture, such as solar, cannot be stored long-term like other energy sources. That can't be right, can it? Let's read:
- "Energy Storage (Utilities)" page 32 and
- "Energy Storage (Distributed)" page 34.
Consider those two chapters the lower bound, bare-minimum readings for next week.
Extra, optional reading for next week: from the "Coming Attractions" part of the book, forecasting far far into the future, let's exercise our skepticism toward driverless cars, and read:
- "Autonomous Vehicles" page 184.
See you then.
Further reading:
Mark Bittman's recipe for Roasted Carrots with Cumin.
Mark Bittman says Treat Your Veggies Like Meat.
thekitchn.com - I Tried Mark Bittman's V6 Diet and Here's How It Went.
Catch up:
- March 01 DrawDown Bookclub is Here!
- March 09 DrawDown Bookclub #1: Reading 'Why Bother' Was a Wise Choice
