Discount rates, relative prices and climate economics

Yesterday I wrote a bit about the "relative prices" argument for swift and decisive action against climate change. Some additional comments to provide context:

For economists engaged in the climate change debate, one of the most important – yet difficult – things to find agreement on is a suitable discount rate. This may seem a strange issue to fixate on from the perspective of non-economists, but the point here is that climate change is an intergenerational problem that will potentially affect many people over time. The question then is how to measure future costs and benefits against those of the present?

As with any investment which involves cost-benefit analysis over time, the favoured approach in climate change economics is to use a discount rate.[*] This allows us to assess things in present value (PV) terms. Thus, and while it may seem somewhat trivial against the wider scientific uncertainties of climate change, the discount rate actually proves a critical factor in determining the economically efficient level of abatement. Here's a simple example to illustrate the importance of choosing a particular rate of discount:

If we discount \$100 a hundred years from now at a rate of 1 percent, we obtain a present value of around \$37. However, if we feel slightly more impatient and raise the discount rate to 3 percent, then the present value falls to only \$5!

Importantly, the effect of compound interest means means that we see an exponential impact from the difference in discount rates, as well as the length of time that we are discounting. In other words, we're dealing with a distinctly non-linear process.The central message to take away is that – when it comes to estimating economic costs and benefits of the future – seemingly innocuous changes in your a priori assumptions over the discount rate can lead to substantial differences in cumulative terms. (Use this calculator to see for yourself.)

So, the choice of discount rate has a potentially massive impact on the perceived efficiency and timing of climate policy. Again, it is worth emphasising the intergenerational nature of climate change, where present (and future) sacrifices will have to be made in order to protect future incomes and utilities. The corollary of this is that acting too slowly may harm future generations in the form of rising climate costs, whilst acting too quickly may be equally as harmful by unnecessarily limiting economic growth.

Against this background, it probably won't be surprising to hear that the chief criticisms for the much-feted Stern Review –  from an economics perspective at least –  were reserved for his choice of discount rate. By drawing on the famous Ramsey Equation[**], Stern used largely ethical arguments in deriving a final discount rate of 1.4%. This, his critics argued, was much too low in comparison with observed market rates, which are closer to 3-4%. Moreover, since Stern's major findings hang on a "low" discount rate, the same critics say that his central policy recommendation of "act fast, act now" does not hold. (Indeed, a belief in higher discount rates is what underpins a lot of economic rationalisation on the benefits of delayed action against climate change; e.g. focus on growing our economies as fast as possible now so that we will be in a better, wealthier position to deal with the effects of climate change in the future.)

At the same time, however, numerous other economists have come out strongly in support of Stern, while he also has vigorously defended his methodology in the period since. In the interest of keeping this post as short as possible, I won't go into much further detail on this debate between supporters of Stern and their opponents (or those in between). I highly encourage you to look over the Sterner and Persson paper that I recommended previously for a very readable summary of the various elements involved in determining the discount rate, as well as the different schools of thought on what the appropriate level really is.

What I did want to get to today was this: One of the most interesting insights of the "relative prices" argument from my perspective is that strong, early emissions reductions can be economically justified even in the presence of high discount rates. Prior to this, opponents to early abatement paths such as those proposed by Stern have argued that such plans can only be sustained in the presence of what they perceive to be unacceptably/unrealistically low discount rates. And yet, we now see compelling economic reasons to follow an aggressive emissions path even when using high rates of interest.[***]

In other words, the relative price argument allows us to partly abstract from the intrinsic subjectivity of the discount debate, which currently clouds the timing of climate policy. It does this by demonstrating the extent to which a loss in natural assets (clean water, predictable seasons, etc) could affect our ability to generate, or even enjoy, man-made assets (such as cars, computers, restaurants and so on) in the future. In this way, we are able to formalise the intuitive concerns that many people have regarding the destabilisation of natural systems that we are intimately dependent on.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: The choice of discount rate is crucial to determining an "economically efficient" response to climate change. Unfortunately, there is widespread disagreement among economists as to what the correct discount rate is. However, by incorporating the impact of relative prices into our analysis, we can still conclude that it is better to act sooner, rather than later... even if we assume a discount rate that is relatively high. And that is a critical first step to reach agreement on.

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[*] There are people who question the validity of even using the "standard" cost-benefit analysis (CBA) approach to climate change, but that remains another subject for another day.

[**] The Ramsey Rule is: r = δ + η * g 

        Which says that the discount rate (r), is equal to the sum of the pure rate of time preference (δ) and the product of the elasticity of the marginal utility for money (η) and the per capita growth rate of the economy (g). To simplify, we interpret the first component of the equation, δ, as the tendency to discount future utility simply because it is in the future. The second component, η * g, implies that we value future consumption less than consumption today, because our wealth should increase over time as the result of economic growth. This latter notion rests on the assumption that a rich person gains less welfare than a poor person for a given quantity of money.

[***] This is a bit of a simplification. The choice of discount rate will always have an impact on how aggressively we approach the issue of climate change. However, we are left with a central message that – regardless of differing opinions on what the discount rate should be – it is still in humanity’s best interest to decisively cut emissions sooner rather than later.

Food prices and climate change (gasp!)

Secondary subject line: The relative prices argument for strong action against climate change.

Paul Krugman must have been feeling more provocative than usual yesterday:

What’s behind the surge in food prices? The usual suspects have made the usual claims — it’s all about the Fed, or it’s all about speculators. But I’ve been looking at the USDA World supply and demand estimates, and what stands out from the data is mainly that we’ve had a huge global harvest failure. 

[snip]

Why is production down? Most of the decline in world wheat production, and about half of the total decline in grain production, has taken place in the former Soviet Union — mainly Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. And we know what that’s about: an incredible unprecedented heat wave. 

Despite his later disclaimer about attributing any single weather event to larger trends in our climate, you have to credit Krugman for knowing how to rile the opposition. The implication that rising food prices (i.e. inflation) are the result of climate change -- rather than the actions of Dark Lord Ben Bernanke and his evil minions -- is enough to have caused brain explosions in conservative households across America. The only way that Krugman could have come up with a more unholy combination aimed at upsetting this particular constituency would be to suggest that Mao Zedong was directly descended from Jesus.

Anyhoo, I don't wish to get dragged into the relative merits of Krugman's argument on what is causing the current rise in food prices.[*] What I am interested in, however, is the idea that he touches on here; how climate change could affect food prices. It got me thinking about one of the strongest arguments I have heard in favour of swift and decisive action against climate change: the role of relative prices.

The basic gist of the relative prices argument goes like this: Environmental goods and man-made goods are imperfect substitutes. With environmental goods expected to become "scarcer" as a result of climate change (increased drought, loss of biodiversity, etc), it follows that they will become more expensive in comparison with man-made goods. This will clearly impact our ability to generate future wealth and needs to be accounted for when we evaluate our best response to climate change. Indeed, incorporating this into our analysis strongly supports the notion that we should be looking at decisive action against climate change sooner rather than later.

The above ideas are neatly encapsulated in the following paper by Sterner and Persson: An Even Sterner Review - Introducing Relative Prices into the Discounting Debate. As I have said elsewhere, this might be the one paper that I would recommend everyone read to understand the basic arguments surrounding the economics of climate change. The authors do a great job in discussing the most salient aspects of the discount rate (which is central to much of what climate change economics is about) and the controversy surrounding different estimates by the likes of the Stern Review and his opponents, before adding their own contribution via the aforementioned relative prices twist. Seriously, have a look. It's not too long and very readable.[**] 

Anyway, I was thinking of all this when I read that Krugman post. I left a comment -- lost among the many :'( -- that included a quote from the above Sterner and Persson paper, which is very germane to the issue at hand:

"[G]lobal agriculture is said to represent 24 percent of global GDP (Stern Review, p. 67). A 1-percent loss of agricultural output might be estimated to reduce global GDP by.24 percent. Basic logic, however, tells us that a 50-percent loss of agricultural production would reduce global GDP by much more than 12 percent, and a 100-percent loss would reduce GDP by more than 24 percent of GDP. The mechanism behind this would be escalating food prices: As food became more and more scarce, its relative price would rise so fast that the dwindling food supplies would crowd out everything else and approach 100 percent of total GDP." (Pg. 68, emphasis added)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Apart from being tremendously self-indulgent, one of the reasons I started this blog was because I wanted to try and act as an intermediary for ideas that I have come across in my field of specialisation (environmental and natural resource economics) and put them in a format that friends and non-specialists could easily access and debate. When it comes to the economics of climate change, reasonable people have argued that it makes sense to focus adaptation measures rather than attempting to reduce carbon output. Typically, this would involve the continued heavy use of fossil fuels in a bid to grow our economies as fast as possible so as put us in a better position to deal with any effects that climate change has. However, there are several reasons why I respectfully, yet firmly, disagree with this position. The impact that relative prices will have on our ability to create wealth is chief amongst these.

UPDATE: I have some follow-up comments about this relative prices issue, as well as the role of the discount rate in climate change economics here. 

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[*] For what it's worth, I think that we are going to see higher food prices generally in comparison to previous decades. In particular, the evidence points to a stronger link between the prices of energy and non-energy goods. This was a key driving factor during the 2006-2008 boom and, while the recession may have burst that particular bubble, I don't see any obvious reason why the fundamentals have changed. 

[**] For those of you feeling up to it, the ever-impressive Christian Gollier has put forward a number of analogous, though far more technical papers on this subject... For example here and here. [Wonkish: By focusing on the "ecological discount rate", Gollier actually goes some way to merging the relative price argument with Weitzman’s uncertainty principal, before arriving at separate discount rates for biodiversity (1.5%) and consumption (3.2%). As some of you may recognise, the former is pretty much on par with Stern’s rate of 1.4%…]

Dumb regulation

As should be clear from some of my previous posts, I think that some areas of our economy are in need of regulation; others distinctly less so. Here is an article describing some cases that fall into the latter category: A License to Shampoo: Jobs Needing State Approval Rise. 

Apart from the more ridiculous stories of occupational licensing, perhaps the most interesting insight is that the call for more regulation is coming from the practitioners themselves. They argue that "regulation will boost the prestige of their professions, provide oversight and protect consumers from shoddy work." Of course, the cynical economist in me says it would be remiss of us not to highlight problems of rent-seeking. Still, this is an admirably balanced article and not simply an anti-Government rant. 

A quote I rather enjoyed:

Mr. Lykins says it's in the public's interest to insist manicurists are well-trained. "Have you ever had a nail fungus? It's terrible," he says. "That's why we're there."

[Snaps fingers, bobs head]

(HT: Adam Ozimek)

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I've also been meaning to describe a particularly daft case of regulation that I've come across here in Lisbon. Across the city there are many decrepit and abandoned buildings, literally right in between thriving office blocks. This was really puzzling to me at first as, Portugal's wider economic troubles notwithstanding, I couldn't understand how you could get such variation within the same neighbourhoods... even the richest parts of the city are afflicted. From asking my Portuguese friends there are various reasons for this problem, including a rush out to Lisbon's outer suburbs that left the central parts of city suddenly much emptier than they had ever been. However, here is aspect worth retelling as cautionary note for all would-be rent controllers: 

(The precise details may be a little off here, but not so much that it materially affects the story.)

After the Carnation Revolution in 1974 overthrew the authoritarian Esta Nova regime created by Antonio Salazar, the left-leaning revolutionaries instilled a new law whereby property rent was fixed from the time that a person first moved in. Tenants may have celebrated this ruling at first, but of course this also meant that landlords had no incentive to invest in maintaining or renovating their buildings over the years that followed. I believe the law has since been amended to allow for rent increases in line with inflation, but long-established tenants (particularly in the south of the city) are still paying absurdly low rentals. This includes historic neighbourhoods like the otherwise beautiful Alfama... even buildings that would constitute prime real estate right in the financial district.

The same tenants that benefited from decades of low rentals now have to live in dangerously decrepit buildings. Worse, there is a very real social problem at stake, since the housing "shortage" has pushed up prices for residents in functioning buildings all over the city. As with abandoned neighbourhoods around the world, there is a lingering problem of crime in places where no-one is investing and actively living. 

[UPDATE: Here is an article discussing the same problems behind  the abandoned buildings of Lisbon. Here's another.]

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Dumb regulation will make everyone's lives worse off, no matter how good the underlying intentions.

Torres on football clubs: "Romance is dead"

[HAPPY UPDATE: Well, well, well... What do you know? Perhaps romance isn't dead! Headline this morning: Torres endures nightmare debut as Liverpool regain old swagger. As John said to Paul:

]

I'm a rugby man first and foremost, but have certainly grown into my football fandom over the last few years... especially after spending time in England and other parts of Europe. You cannot help but get up to speed on your weekend football results and banter if you properly want to integrate into a London, Oslo, or Lisbon. (On that note, I'm always struck by how much of leveller sport is around the office, which is one of the great things about it. I've seen canteen staff vigorously debating top management types on something as mundane as an offside play from the weekend more times than I care to remember...)

And, of course, the World Cup in South Africa was, to use the local vernacular, ama-ZING. I only went to one stadium game*, but was right in the heart of the action for most of the tournament. The fanwalk area around Cape Town Stadium was always epic, as was the general vibe in the whole country at the time. I'm really stoked that I got the chance to go back for that.

Anyway, what I'm getting to here is an article from The Independent on a Fernando Torres press conference, following his much-discussed (read: highly controversial) transfer from Liverpool to Chelsea. I should add that Liverpool happen to be, unfortunately, my club of choice and this has been a tough gig the last few seasons. Torres was, for the most part, the highpoint for any Liverpool supporter during this period:

Romance is dead, says £50m Torres

Fernando Torres dismissed accusations of disloyalty over his controversial move from Liverpool to Chelsea yesterday by declaring that "romance is dead" in football when it comes to players sticking with their clubs and said he did not have the time to wait for Liverpool to rebuild.

In a frank and revealing press briefing, Torres said that he simply ran out of patience with Liverpool and feared that he would miss out on collecting the domestic trophies that so many of his Spain World Cup-winning team-mates have. He denied the allegations of hypocrisy over his previous protestations of loyalty to Liverpool by claiming that the only club he really loved was his childhood side, Atletico Madrid.

[snip]

With the likelihood that he will start, Torres said that he would not celebrate if he scored against his former side but that was the only concession to sentimentality he made. He disagreed with accusations that he was a traitor, saying that he had given Liverpool three and a half good seasons as well as generating the club a major profit.

Torres said: "I see some players doing that [kissing the badge] when they join a club, but the romance in football has gone. It's a different thing now. People [players] are coming and leaving. When you are joining a club you want to do the best for yourself and that club, and that's all. Some people like to kiss the badge. They can do it. I only want to score goals and do my job, and achieve all the targets the team has.

"I took the decision to leave Liverpool because I heard about Chelsea's interest. They were pushing hard, which means they really wanted me. I really wanted to leave Liverpool, so I told them straight. Everything was clear. At the end of the day, it's about being fair and honest with everyone."

I have to agree with him. For all the talk about loyalty, professional sport is a completely different animal from days gone by. Liverpool ceded the moral high ground some time ago when they embraced the same foreign-owner, foreign-player, high stakes financial game as everyone else. I'm not saying they could have avoided it - indeed, that's largely my point and if those are the rules of the road, you best stick to them. This post isn't meant to be a glowing review of the way Roman Ambramovich runs Chelsea (far from it), but football has made its own bed and now it's time to sleep in it.**

The top players expect to be surrounded by peers and management of similar calibre. If Liverpool couldn't provide that to a guy like Torres (indeed, they dismissed some of their best players in the last two seasons), what rights do they think they have in playing the loyalty card?

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: The surest way to get someone to act like clown is to start treating them like they're in circus. Those who don't buy into the show can - and probably will - leave.

* If you're interested, the game in question was France-Uruguay. The game itself was rubbish (a nil-nil draw), but it took place on the opening day directly after Bafana Bafana (the SA national side) played Mexico in the first game of the tournament in Johannesburg. I went with a few mates and, having already spent a good few hours in the pub, we were fairly steamrolled by the time of the Cape Town kick-off. Not only that, but for some reason we had decided to go as three gorillas and a banana... Okay, the reason being we wanted to boost our chances of media footage! It worked a charm though; here's a pic from the next day's paper that was taken of of us (alongside some girls supporting ze frogs) taken just prior to the game:

** Sometimes I truly think that the salary caps in rugby (in places such as England) are a good thing. It seems inevitable to me that football will blow up in ever-expanding bubble of unsustainable salaries and dangerously debt-financed clubs. In a related note, here is the ever-provocative Bill Maher on what "makes NFL football so great" (spoiler: "socialism"): Irritable Bowl Syndrome. If you can't watch the clip, here is a text version.

Karl Smith on the importance of maths-free papers

... And simple allegorical stories to help our intuitive understanding of economic concepts. Here is an excerpt:

I posted a link to Bryan Caplan’s paper on Behavioral Economics and the Welfare State. Many of the comments I got from economists were predictable:  

   1. Where is the formal model and existence proofs?

   2. Where is the data analysis?

   3. How is this a paper?

   4. Do you mean to tell me this is publishable? 

I too was shocked initially by these features or lack thereof. However, that’s part of what made the paper compelling.

Some papers get a wonderful data set, perform magnificent identification and get a result that really changes your mind about something you care about. Most don’t.

Most are cases that are of very narrow interest or do a 90% good job at the ID but leave enough doors open that you are not really sure if  the result is meaningful or not.

On the other hand, one could as Bryan and his co-author did, attack an important question, string together some non-obvious points and in my case leave the reader thinking about whether he or she should reexamine an import view.

The profession should rightly celebrate the first kind of paper. However, what about the relative worth of the second and the third?

I submit that bringing up arguments that use the economic way of thinking matter. This is true even if the argument is not definitive, has no mathematical proof behind it and marshals no data.

Now, clearly I've written in support of using maths in economics on this blog before. However, in case anyone missed it, my point was not to say that we have to have put forward a mathematical equation for each and every economic argument or study. Indeed, I took some pains to make it explicit that this wasn't the case... Shoehorning a maths proof into an economics paper does not (cannot) constitute analytical rigour, let alone intellectual honesty.

I wholeheartedly agree with the excerpt above. We should embrace any economic paper and/or argument that aids our conceptual understanding, or forces us to re-examine our views on a particular subject. However, I continue to submit that theory alone is insufficient... 

Smith goes on to describe the baby-sitting coop allegory, which he says did more to make him a "confident Keynesian" than any other analysis. The important caveat here is that - as pointed out in the comments section - we have competing parables such as Bastiat's "Broken Window" that appear to offer completely different policy prescriptions. Again, this reinforces my belief that we ultimately need to seek empirical validation/refutation of our theories, whether they come in the form of a complex mathematical proof or a simple children's story. As I wrote here:

Knowing when to use your tools is just as important as knowing how to use them. Also, the ultimate test for any model - mathematical or otherwise - should always be how well it describes real-life data.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: It's always good to have a explanation at hand that everyone can understand.

PS - The Bryan Caplan paper that Smith is making reference to here is well worth a read. There are also some interesting critiques in the comments section of Smith's initial post about it.

To the heart of the Euro crisis!

Well, maybe not the heart... Pancreas perhaps? After seriously hacking to sort out the correct visa (I <3 immigration bureaucracies), I'm off to Portugal!

Having enjoyed great visit home, I'll be packing this final sunburn and heading back to the European winter - a very relative concept after my time in the Nordics - to spend my final semester on exchange in Lisbon as part of this programme (which I'm doing in parallel to my primary Master's). I've heard very good reports from friends that have spent time in Lisbon before and I'm sure the same positive experiences await me. Although, if anyone's wondering, I'm not not complaining that my bursary is denominated in foreign currency...

Snarks about the strength of the country's balance sheet notwithstanding, I'm hoping to soak up some culture, history, language and generally have a good old time..

Bon Voyage Boa Viagem!

o-[-<

Exploitation and Industrialisation

In the comments thread of the Meat and Veg(etarianism) post, I drew a parallel between the ethical treatment of animals and the banning of child labour. That is both involved society making a collective decision about the appropriate regulations rather than simply leaving it up to individuals to decide upon the standards themselves. The exact quote, if you're interested, was: "[L]ike many cases, I actually think that the decent treatment of living creatures is a social good deserving the requisite levels of public discourse and debate. Similarly, we have not outlawed child labour in modernised countries because it is unprofitable to firm owners, but because it is morally repugnant."

By coincidence then, here is something I happened to read last night in David Landes' masterful The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Providing some afterthought on the industrialization of Japan and other countries (pp 381-383), Landes writes:

  The traditional account of Japan's successful and rapid industrialization rings with praise[...] It is a good, even edifying story. Yet one aspect of the Japanese achievement has not caught the attention of celebratory historians: the pain and labor that made it possible. The record of early industrialization is invariably one of hard work for low pay, to say nothing of exploitation. I use this last word, not in the Marxist sense of paying labor less than its product (how else would capital receive its reward?), but in the meaningful sense of compelling labor from people who cannot say no; so, from women and children, slaves and quasi-slaves (involuntary indentured labor). The literature of the British Industrial Revolution, for example, is full of tales of abuse[...]

  The most common ailment of these wretchedly unhappy children  [sent to work in the textile mills, coal mines and so on] was a nervous stomach. Small wonder that many fell victim to sexual predators and went on to prostitution. It seemed a promotion. 

  The high social costs of British industrialization reflect the shock of unpreparedness and the strange notion that wages and conditions of labor came from a voluntary agreement between free agents. Not until the British got over these illusions, in regard first to children, then to women, did they intervene in the work place and introduce protected labor legislation. [...]

  The European countries that followed England on the path of modern industry had their own labor problems and scandals, though less serious, largely because they had had warning and were able to introduce protections by anticipation.

Remember, this from arguably the foremost economic historian of recent times and in a book that was, among other things, praised for "unashamedly bang[ing] the drum for the liberal ideals of freedom, hard work and open markets" by the FT and a score of other reviewers. Your dyed-in-red, protectionist, trade-unionist Landes is not. (His snipe at the Marxist conception of "exploitation" direct evidence of this.) Yet his views on the dangers of unfettered industrialism (capitalism?) are laid out quite succinctly above. Like him, I believe that history clearly shows there to be asymmetries of power and information in economic relationships which warrant the protection of certain parts of our society.

"But the one on the left looks happy!"

As an afterthought on the paragraph highlighted above ("the strange notion that wages and the conditions of labor came from a voluntary agreement between free agents"), this is surely analogous to cases of domestic violence. We don't stand idly by while women (or men) suffer abuse at the hands of their partners on the flimsy defense that they are engaged in a relationship of their own accord. Instead, we actively support them through protective structures (legal and police enforcement) that are decided upon and borne by society as a whole because that is the only morally just course of action.

2010 ties for hottest year on record

There or thereabouts.

Just saying.

PS - As for the floods in Australia, Brazil and elsewhere... I believe that those are the result of La Niña. I find it as frustrating as the next man to see any and every environmental - or even social - problem simply shoehorned into a climate change  "angle". (E.g. See towards the end of this post.) However, extreme weather events are among the most worrisome aspects of the big CC and, if anything, these tragic events show up our limitations in adapting or coping with irregular (violent and nonviolent) natural phenomena.

Chirp of the Day - Australia

A Norwegian friend of mine was telling me about the first time he ever traveled outside of Europe, which happened to be a gap-year stint in Australia after finishing high school. Not being completely sure of his English at that stage, he was feeling pretty nervous about the prospects of spending such an extended period of time in a remote foreign country. All this wasn't helped by the fact that he had, for some reason, decided to try and sneak some Norwegian meats inside his luggage. (If you haven't been to that part of the world before, I can promise you that no-one is more strict when it comes bringing agricultural produce into their territory and monitoring their borders in general.)

Anyway, he was fairly bricking himself while lining up to face the fierce-looking border official in the NOTHING TO DECLARE queue. Fortunately for him, fate had deemed to place a "pissed Kiwi" (his words) in front of him, which ultimately took all the pressure off. After going through the normal inquiries (purpose of visit, accommodation, etc), the officer got to the money question:

AUSSIE BORDER OFFICIAL: "Do you have a criminal record?"

DRUNK KIWI: "Ahh mate, I didn't know you still needed one to get in here!"

Very good. 

Reminds me of a great Barmy Army chant [sung to the tune of "She'll Be Coming 'Round The Mountain"] I heard while watching the England cricket team take on Australia* in Australia: "If Your Granddad Was Deported Clap Your Hands!" 

"Meh"

* I had actually meant to post this little story immediately in the wake of England's Ashes victory over Australia - just to rub it in - but got a little sidetracked and then felt bad having another go at our friends Down Under, because of the tragic floods in Queensland. Now, with the water starting to recede and the recovery operation having kicked into gear, perhaps my timing is not too crass. If you feel otherwise, remember: It's just a bit of humour!

Meat and Veg(etarianism)

UPDATE: I stumbled upon this George Monbiot post today (Jan 24) from a few months back, discussing what seems to be a very interesting book by one Simon Fairlie: "Meat - A benign Extravagance". Fairlie apparently skewers a number of "green" myths concerning the environmental damage wrought by meat production; although he advocates a much different farming system than the one we currently have to prevent the environmental degradation and suffering that does occur from livestock farming. To his credit, Monbiot (an already admirable environmentalist and journalist in many ways) recants his previous views in light of Fairlie's evidence and research. Read the post; there's much food for thought (he he sorry) therein.

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Something's been cropping up quite often in conversations that I've been having lately.

Vegetarianism.

Me? I eat lots of meat. Too much, I fear, and have recently endeavored to cut back on red meat in particular. Now, "Stickman" isn't a particularly ironic moniker so I guess you could say I'm doing okay in the weightiness department. However, there is good evidence to suggest that large portions of Western society consume more meat than is strictly healthy. Part of the problem is that we humans are outgrowing our biology, as we now consume certain foodstuffs in much greater quantities than the natural settings of our ancestors ever allowed. (More on that below.) I thus find myself sympathizing with a several pro-vegetarian arguments, although I don't think I'll be going full veggie any time soon myself. Still, a number of my friends have embraced the non-meat path and my discussions with them, as well as fellow carnivores like myself, seem worth jotting down.

Naughty.

To start, it seems biologically obvious to me that we are "meant" to eat meat. Humans are essentially the perfect omnivore. Our teeth are a nice mix of flat molars, premolars, incisors, etc that allow us to easily process both plant and animal material. Similarly, our digestive tract (intestines and all) is adapted to process and absorb the nutrients from all ends of the spectrum. Not only have our bodies evolved to deal happily with everything from rump steak to salad leaves, we actually require certain vitamins and nutrients that are only available in one food group or the other. In other words, we have to source some food from animals (e.g. certain B-vitamin complexes) and some from plant matter.

Can't we just talk about this?!

Of course, that last sentence only holds true in completely natural surroundings and, as I said earlier, I see the vegetarian debate is an example of us "outgrowing" our biology. The irony is that the consumption of meat played a pivotal role in the development of the human brain and broader civilization. The higher protein and calorific content of a partly carnivorous diet provides sustenance over longer periods, which among many other things allowed us time to plan and engage in other activities besides living literally hand-to-mouth. Perhaps most importantly, it fostered coordinated group action and communication between individuals, which were critical to tackling your average woolly mammoth.[*] And, indeed, doing pretty anything of substance ever since.

Getting back to what is "natural", I guess you could say that this is now a largely redundant concept. We don't live very naturally at all anymore... And, of course, this is part of the problem as we now have instant access to quantities of meat (and sugar and fat) that we would never have come across in such abundance in nature. Witness the rising trend in developed nations where more people are dying from diseases of lifestyle opulence and excess (e.g. heart attacks and obesity) than infectious diseases. The flip-side to this is that we are having to consciously curb our intake of certain foodstuffs that our bodies crave; something that I don't imagine has precedent for most of human history. The other aspect of having "overcome" nature in this way is that we now have all manner of supplements and products to make fully-fledged vegetarianism a viable and healthy lifestyle alternative. Or so I'm told.

And then you have to unpack the more tricky component of our evolved biological selves: Ethics.[**] While our physiology and human history provide very good reasons to dismiss the notion that we should be herbivores, there's no denying the strong moral compulsion that many people feel when it comes to killing animals. While it's hard to defend someone's distaste for hunting when they eat meat that comes all conveniently packaged from the supermarket, I do think that decent people can agree the suffering endured by many farm animals is abominable. (Watch Food Inc or the even more disturbing Earthlings - which you can see in its entirety online - if you're feeling up to it. On a quasi-related subject I plan to write something on GM crops sometime soon... I'm actually generally pro them for reasons that I shall explain.) It's not too much of stretch going from anti-cruelty to believing that we should not kill animals at all, although I do make this jump myself. Visiting my family in England (including my aunt who has been a vegetarian for decades), my cousin had an interesting thought. She mentioned how she'd been discussing vegetarianism with a friend and they'd pondered whether eating meat might suddenly become totally unacceptable in much the same way that slavery did. I think that this idea has more to it than face value, because it shows how dramatically  we can shift away from a norm that has been socially acceptable for the majority all of human history.

Another twist in the ethical tale is related to matters of resource use, loss of biodiversity to farming and (dum dum daaaa) climate change. I have several friends that have completely or to a large extent cut back on meat, because of such reasons. I admire the strength of their convictions, but can only see the general trend in meat consumption moving one way... particularly with the increased wealth and rising demand for higher protein, Western-style diets coming out of developing nations.

I'm about done here, but I thought I'd leave you with a final, macare thought. I'm not sure where this thought first came to me -- likely some low budget sci-fi film -- but I sometimes have this vision of aliens feasting around a dinner table in much the same way that we do in polite society. Except, rather than roast pork or skewered beef, the meal on display is a grisly composition of human parts. The fleeting image of an exposed human rib-cage ready for the offing might not be enough to permanently put me off my food, but it does cause me to take a depressing second thought about that rack of lamb I love so much.

Right, that's it for now. I'm off to lunch.

o-[O< 

(fat full Stickman)

[*] This is a major theme in Jacob Bronowksi's The Ascent of Man, which although dated in some minor aspects, is still a fantastic read. The other great book detailing the role of diet in driving civilization is, of course, Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.

[**] I know many would contend that morality stems directly from a higher power. I would encourage you to view this post if you're interested in that debate.