Climate or Ecology? -- The Gastropocene, Chapter II
Re-contextualizing the climate emergency + exposing green capitalism
In the words of Indian environmentalist, researcher & vegetarian, Vandana Shiva: “Gaia, Tierra Madre, Mother Earth—she is a whole, self-organized, self-regulating living system. The Earth evolved her biodiversity and biosphere over four billion years. Around 200,000 years ago, the living Earth created the conditions for our species to evolve, with biodiversity regulating the climate. We are among the youngest siblings in the Earth’s family and—with the dawn of the Industrial Age a mere 200 years ago—have disrupted the Earth’s ability to regulate her climate. Around 3.5 billion years ago, the Earth’s biodiversity reduced the carbon-rich atmosphere of the planet from 4,000 ppm to 250 ppm. The process of photosynthesis allowed living organisms, first microbes and later plants, to capture sunlight and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is nature’s sophisticated “carbon capture” technology that permits carbon recycling through the limitless energy from the sun, transforming CO2 to O2… Technical solutions like geoengineering, industrial carbon capture, and fake lab food are false solutions that will intensify unsustainability and injustice.”
CO2 emissions- a reductive, flawed metric leveraged by green capitalism
Discussing the concept of climate change requires a certain amount of (over)simplification regarding what exactly is happening. This has been reduced to conversations around carbon (CO2) emissions, posed as an easily understood and measurable element which can be used to gauge the impacts of the anthropocene. At first glance, this metric can help us measure our progress towards reducing our species-wide negative impact on the planet but we often forget that is just a tool that cannot fully quantify capitalism’s incredibly complex impact as an industrialized, extractive economic system.
Today, in the calls to return CO2 to below 400 ppb in order to mitigate the damages from our industrialized society, CO2 emissions are treated as a concrete objective or the end goal itself and the metric is no longer representative of a complex web of activities that is driving climate change. This only benefits the state and corporate powers; with CO2 separated from this network of contributors, it is isolated and products can be developed to address this specific metric. Green technologies, carbon capturing, and so on, are offered as solutions to climate change instead of addressing the fundamental problem. And what is the fundamental problem? Well, before we can address the fundamental problem, we need to understand why carbon is a good data point for climate change activism in a hypercapitalist economy, and why this is so misguided.
Carbon is one of many gasses, and not even the most pernicious gas, that contributes to climate change. CO2, unlike other greenhouse gasses, is unique in that it doesn’t break down but instead cycles between the air, ground, and ocean. While methane, for example, is considered to be a far more dangerous gas for the greenhouse effect, it breaks down within a century, while carbon would take thousands of years. It instead can be cycled back into the land. What this means is that CO2 is the easiest long-term issue to tackle, but it isn’t something we can ‘reverse’ without having to rethink the energy consumption tied to its release. This simple math equation– net carbon out, net carbon in, is reductive and ignores the symptomatic conditions of ‘why’ carbon is being released at record rates across the globe.
The real problem isn’t climate change, the problem is ecological destruction. Carbon has always remained out of the air because of the ways humans have stewarded the landscape; diverse, complex ecosystems where no more than what was necessary kept any excess energy loss from occurring. This linear, simplified thinking is what has led us to this current moment, and continuing to think along these lines instead of addressing the systemic issues allows the other pieces of ecological destruction to continue to take place until their situation is as dire as global warming. Global warming, in effect, is just 1 small facet of the ecological destruction happening across the globe in the name of production– the production to satiate our plates, our cars, and our desires to consume, which is magnified by the economic model we live under.
Entropy is the real issue; energy loss from simplified ecological systems which erases the place and time of every inch of ocean and soil across the planet. We cannot fundamentally address climate change without addressing the ecosystem destruction that is ultimately responsible for it; technologies can be helpful but ultimately are a tool to kick the proverbial can down the road. Without rethinking what it means to live within the context of our local, biological community, we will not stop the progression towards global destruction regardless of carbon emissions (“The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies for Ecological Revolution from Below” by Peter Gelderloos).
After 60 or so years of the Green Revolution, it is becoming ever clearer that the promises of abundance and control of nature are not unraveling the way we hoped. Our soils are less fertile, our crops are ever more vulnerable to pests and disease, and we have lost countless numbers of heirloom genetic material. One would think that these problems would lead us into seeking out a new path on how to grow our food. But when faced with an increasing vulnerability, unfortunately, our tendency has been to bunker down and continue to blindly believe in the promises of the agro-giants that control the food and farming industries. Recently, Monsanto and Bayer, two of the largest agro-chemical corporations in the world, merged together in a 66 billion dollar deal to form a massive company that effectively controls a huge part of our agricultural future. Monsanto is best known for its production of genetically modified seed while Bayer is a specialist in agro-chemicals including pesticides, fungicides, and synthetic fertilizers. Together, they will effectively dominate the agricultural industry… Only three companies will own 60% of the seed sold around the world and 64% of all pesticides. — Tobias Roberts
Green capitalism will not save us
This atomization & deconstructed understanding of climate change is repackaged in greenwashed, capitalist vegan products such as alternative meats. These products rely on this deconstruction to sell their products– instead of addressing the problems of monocropping, they can point to isolated studies that imply that the animals fed “corn” emit more methane through their digestive process than might be released by growing any other crop. Further, the study which quantifies the problems of meat and climate change incorporates the entire pasture-to-refrigerator emission footprint, which leaves far more room for interpretation. Yes, we should address the fuels used in transportation, in growing the monocrops we feed cattle, the way our cattle is shipped across the country, etc.
But why is this happening? 85% of the alternative meat industry is owned by the likes of Cargill and other major meat producers, and the reality is that fake meats are easy to produce with products like corn are lower costs. Not only does this give old businesses an opportunity to experience the profits of fast-growing startups, these businesses will be scaled through various ‘green’ subsidies & investor hype on the stock market to build scale, and in the long-term will likely be used to solve the problems of food shortages in marginalized communities, while places like middle America will continue to predominantly consume meat. Simply put, alternative meats will be a tool to further stratify populations across the globe and continue to separate humans from the ecosystems around us.
As Vandana Shiva continues to explain: “Declaring nature as an “asset” to be traded in financial markets is about absorbing nature and her functions into the greed economy. It greenwashes the current extractive economy in order to appropriate Indigenous-protected biodiversity as a tradable good and service… Markets have not protected biodiversity. Today, 80% of the world’s biodiversity resides in the 22% of land that is stewarded by Indigenous people. Their economies of care have outperformed economies of greed and markets, which have promoted deforestation, monocultures, and biodiversity loss. Applying the concepts, tools, measurements, and language of finance to the living world of biodiversity continues the denial of the living Earth. It risks colonial ideas displacing the very people who have conserved biodiversity, replacing their communities of care with new “green economies” and “blue economies” that retain the mechanistic reductionism and industrial technologies of the economies of greed.”
One of the biggest challenges in understanding our complex food system is how history plays into the food conglomerates as they exist today. It’s quite easy to find simply targets to attack, whether that is Bayer-Monsanto or specific industries– the corn and soy industries, the meat industry, and so on. Much like in discussing the misdirection by focusing on carbon emissions, our food system is guilty of the same problems– specifically around corn, soy, and the meat industry. How these three grew to be so intertwined and such an easy target for green capitalism is often misunderstood becomes of a complicated history, one that’s too long for this purpose, but one worth exploring a bit.
Corn- sad tale of a commodified C4 plant
Corn quickly became a primary crop globally because of the work by indigenous people in North America to breed the C4 grass into having vast genetic diversity, allowing it to grow exceptionally well in a multitude of climates. As a C4 plant, it is grows very quickly given the necessary nutrients are provided. Through the early 20th century, the Haber process was developed and refined for making chemical weapons, but was also applied to make nitrogen fertilizers. This new industrial scale, war technology was retooled for growing food, and given the recent dust bowl of North America, it became crucial to grow a surplus of shelf stable calories in case it should happen again. Utilization of corn became a chief concern for the government subsidizing the industry; corn became a filler, a sugar, an alcohol, an oil, and so much more. The remainder from these processes, the pressed cake, which is inedible for humans, became feedstock for animals.
Soy & the dangers of endless capitalist ‘growth’
Soy, originally from southeast Asia, was primarily used to feed livestock in the field the year after corn grew on the site. Soy is a nitrogen-fixing legume, and its primary value for crop purposes was as an oil for light, prior to widespread electricity. It was only in the 1940s as World War 2 kicked off and access to the primary region for growing soybeans was cut off that the need for its oils and fat pushed for American farmers to increase their production, with >77% growth year aftr year at the beginning of the war. Much like corn, its ability to produce incredible amounts of calories meant researchers found new ways to utilize the crop, including as food oils, and expensive product substitutes– such as margarine. After the war, new profitable uses for soybean were explored, including increasing its use as an animal feed. It has only been in the past few decades which oil valuation has dropped, but in the past few years it has begun to reach pricing parity with the meal itself, despite only making up 20% of the volume of the plant. Without understanding this evolution of soybean, soy oil, and the meal and its uses, it’s hard to fully comprehend how and why soy has become such a prominent figure in our food system.
Let’s talk about the nitrogen-fixing that takes place when soy is grown. What’s important to understand in this process is that the nitrogen fixed from the atmosphere only makes up 75% of the nitrogen the soy plant needs to grow. This means that, despite it being a nitrogen-fixing plant, if we pull the whole plant, or even key parts of it, out of the ecosystem, that nitrogen leaves with the plant material. Nitrogen is a key piece of protein production, and makes up roughly 1/6th of the complex chain that is protein. What this means is when we take the protein-filled beans out of the ecosystem to feed ourselves, the soil needs new nitrogen to replace it. Not only this, but if the plant is treated as a cover crop that is fixing nitrogen back into the soil, the plant needs to be left to die on site to return those nutrients.
A secondary alternative, as was done prior to the Haber process, as we discussed, is to allow animals to graze those plants, and return most of those nutrients back to the ecosystem as manure, feeding the cow and the soil. The reason this works is simple; the nutrient cycle remains closed. Despite all of this, there’s 2 major pieces that are incredibly important to understanding why, whether or not we fed soy and corn to livestock, production of these plants would continue to grow:
Firstly, the most profitable part of the corn and soy industries are the oils they produce. These oils are crucial in creating shelf-stable foods. Nearly every food on a shelf in a grocery store has an oil preservative, and that oil comes from primarily these 2 plants. This is the same reason why researchers today are breeding soy primarily for increased oil production and protein secondly. While feedlot production is important for their bottom line, the oils will continue to be needed as long as mass food production continues, and would likely grow in a meat-free world.
The second piece brings us back to the beginning of this– climate change. As global leaders look to solve the carbon issue, a major contributor will likely be biofuels, for better or worse. Looking at how corn and soy took over our food system by being at the right place and the right time, evidence by government funding suggests this will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.
Our current method of growing food simplifies complex systems
Choosing one enemy– whether it be carbon or livestock or the corn or soy industry– blinds us from seeing the scope of destruction that has unfolded before our eyes. Whether that is focusing on how phosphorus is no longer available for backyard farmers because of global shortages that will never recover or by targeting meat production because it utilizes 70% of soy & corn production (without understanding the fact that the same exact corn and soy plants are being used for those other products that we described) its easy to focus on single issues and imagining that “If we tackle this problem, we can fix this”. Without looking at a bigger picture, we’re unable to fully comprehend what is at stake.
As is explained in this article referencing the work of Indigenous Mi’kimaq scholar, Margaret Robinson:“in Mi’kmaq legends; “…the othering of animal life that makes meat-eating psychologically comfortable is replaced by a model of creation in which animals are portrayed as our siblings. Mi’kmaq legends view humanity and animal life as being on a continuum, spiritually and physically” (191). Making meat-eating part of a kinship structure changes the way one relates to the food they are eating. If we were to imagine the steaks on our dinner plates not as ambiguous slabs of meat, but rather a fellow creature that we shared a fraction of our lives and resources with, we could begin to envision a symbiotic, and mutually dependent relationship between ourselves and the animals we eat. This model shifts away from anthropocentric paradigms of Western veganism to instead imagine an inter-connectedness between humans and animals…Whereas Western veganism seeks to elevate animals into the realm of humans (with colonial models of citizenship and anthropocentric hierarchy), the kinship model complicates the decision to either eat meat, or to be vegan. Under the kinship model, people who eat meat think more consciously about who they’re eating, while vegans consider animals as kin instead of viewing themselves as saviours of animals.”
In solidarity,
Andy & Ayesha.
was just listening to the poor proles episode on corn the other day, glad to see more c4 plant discussion here 🤓 also excited to see the shiva and some Indigenous kincentric ecology -- fantastic collab.
This is well thought out. I know entire books could be written about this topic, but you nailed this overview. I've been thinking about how we all relate to our fellow earthlings -- animals, insects, plants, fungi, etc. -- and how destructive it is to pull ourselves away from nature. In doing so, we destroyed countless connective strands. Reconnecting these strands so they are as they were before the industrial age is an impossible task but we need to repair what we can, NOW.