Friday, April 05, 2013
State By State
With the signing yesterday in Connecticut of the nation's most comprehensive gun law, it's become obvious that the issue of gun safety and the drive to reduce violence related to guns is going to occur on a state by state basis. Connecticut now joins Colorado and New York in tough enforcement on assault weapons, magazine size and background checks. In addition, beefed up security provisions at schools were also included in the bill.
The feet dragging and hand wringing at the federal level seems less important now since the states are getting the job done without them. Certainly, there will be states that have more relaxed laws and some that have more restrictive laws. This presents us with a unique situation in which we can now compare which laws are effective in reducing violence and which ones are not by comparing the states.
With this Connecticut law, we now have a "Day One" from which to work and measure the effectiveness of a truly robust gun safety law. It will be interesting to see how it plays out, particularly in terms of the cherry picking that is likely to start occurring any second now:)
The feet dragging and hand wringing at the federal level seems less important now since the states are getting the job done without them. Certainly, there will be states that have more relaxed laws and some that have more restrictive laws. This presents us with a unique situation in which we can now compare which laws are effective in reducing violence and which ones are not by comparing the states.
With this Connecticut law, we now have a "Day One" from which to work and measure the effectiveness of a truly robust gun safety law. It will be interesting to see how it plays out, particularly in terms of the cherry picking that is likely to start occurring any second now:)
Thursday, April 04, 2013
19 Years Later
Say the word "Rwanda" and the first thought that comes into your head after that is usually genocide. But recent gains in health care in the tiny African country are so staggering that I'm hoping the first thought will now be of a more healthy nation.
19 years later, however, Rwanda is on pace to become the only country in sub-Saharan Africa to meet all of its health-related Millennium Development Goals, and the tiny pocket of Central Africa has posted some of the world’s most staggering health gains in the past decade, outpacing nations that spend far more per capita on healthcare.
In the past decade, deaths from HIV have fallen 78 percent – the single largest decline in the world during that time frame – while tuberculosis mortality has dropped 77 percent, the most significant decrease in Africa.
Between 1994 and 2012, they wrote, the country’s life expectancy climbed from 28 years to 56 and the percentage of the population living in poverty dropped from 77.8 percent to 44.9 percent.
Amazing! But how did this happen?
The government took the aid that was pouring in and put it directly into social programs and enacted universal health care for the small nation. In addition to the numbers of above, the chances today that a child in Rwanda will die by the age of five has fallen 70 percent.
These are all truly remarkable accomplishments that demonstrate how real results can be achieved very easily within a generation if government corruption is kept to a minimum and level headed leaders are put in charge. The rest of the countries in Africa should follow this model and bring their nations into the increasingly prosperous global marketplace.
19 years later, however, Rwanda is on pace to become the only country in sub-Saharan Africa to meet all of its health-related Millennium Development Goals, and the tiny pocket of Central Africa has posted some of the world’s most staggering health gains in the past decade, outpacing nations that spend far more per capita on healthcare.
In the past decade, deaths from HIV have fallen 78 percent – the single largest decline in the world during that time frame – while tuberculosis mortality has dropped 77 percent, the most significant decrease in Africa.
Between 1994 and 2012, they wrote, the country’s life expectancy climbed from 28 years to 56 and the percentage of the population living in poverty dropped from 77.8 percent to 44.9 percent.
Amazing! But how did this happen?
The government took the aid that was pouring in and put it directly into social programs and enacted universal health care for the small nation. In addition to the numbers of above, the chances today that a child in Rwanda will die by the age of five has fallen 70 percent.
These are all truly remarkable accomplishments that demonstrate how real results can be achieved very easily within a generation if government corruption is kept to a minimum and level headed leaders are put in charge. The rest of the countries in Africa should follow this model and bring their nations into the increasingly prosperous global marketplace.
Life?
Ever since I can remember, I have always wondered if there was ever life on Mars. Being the closest planet to us, I guess I have just assumed that perhaps at one time it did. Now it looks as though that was the case.
CheMin and SAM identified some of the key chemical ingredients for life in this dust, including sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon, researchers said. Intriguingly, the mix also suggested a possible energy source for indigenous Martian life, if any ever existed in the area. "The range of chemical ingredients we have identified in the sample is impressive, and it suggests pairings such as sulfates and sulfides that indicate a possible chemical energy source for micro-organisms," Paul Mahaffy, SAM principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement.
So, not just the possibility of life but also an energy source for that life. Stunning! I'm hoping that as more tests are done we will learn exactly what kind of life existed on Mars. And perhaps there will be more discoveries as Curiosity continues her mission?
CheMin and SAM identified some of the key chemical ingredients for life in this dust, including sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon, researchers said. Intriguingly, the mix also suggested a possible energy source for indigenous Martian life, if any ever existed in the area. "The range of chemical ingredients we have identified in the sample is impressive, and it suggests pairings such as sulfates and sulfides that indicate a possible chemical energy source for micro-organisms," Paul Mahaffy, SAM principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement.
So, not just the possibility of life but also an energy source for that life. Stunning! I'm hoping that as more tests are done we will learn exactly what kind of life existed on Mars. And perhaps there will be more discoveries as Curiosity continues her mission?
Wednesday, April 03, 2013
Texas Murder Shoots Holes in NRA School Gun Plan
At the same time speculation is rife over whether white supremacists were killing prosecutors in Texas, the NRA has announced its plan to reduce gun violence in schools. Of course, the NRA's plan is to put more guns in schools, in the hands of people whose main job is teaching kids. Just like the main job of Mike MacLelland, the Dallas-area prosecutor who was murdered Sunday, is prosecuting murderers, pimps and thieves. MacLelland had started carrying a gun to work because another prosecutor had been killed.
So, we'll ask the Sarah Palin question, with absolutely no disrespect for the brave victims in Texas: how's that gunny-savey thing workin' out for ya?
In July 2012, MacLelland won a life sentence against an Aryan Brotherhood enforcer. MacLelland then indicted 34 Aryan Brotherhood members in November (the US attorney in the racketeering case has just withdrawn in fear of his life). On Jan. 31, Mark Hasse, another Kaufamn County prosecutor, was gunned down. MacLelland believed the Aryan Brotherhood could have been responsible, and started carrying a gun. Police had been stationed outside MacLelland's home for weeks, but the protection ended recently. I don't knock MacLelland for carrying; I probably would have done the same thing. What else is there to do, other than run like a coward? But carrying a gun is simply not effective protection when patient, determined assassins are after you.
Futher fueling the possible white supremacist connection was the murder of the chief of Colorado prisons on Mar. 19, and the subsequent shootout in Texas, when the killer, Evan Ebel, was stopped and killed by police two days later near Dallas.
We don't know if the Aryan Brotherhood, a white prison gang involved with prostitution and drug running and apparently run by men currently in jail, has anything to do with the Texas killings. Many are saying these actions don't fit their profile. And today another person of interest was identified in the case, a former local official who lost his job in a corruption probe.
What the slaying of Mike MacLelland does tell us is that guns can't protect you. The bad guys can always bide their time, hide in the shadows, snipe you from 200 yards away, wait until you're otherwise distracted, and then gun you down like a dog. They're not going to schedule a shoot-out with you on Main Street at High Noon and settle things like real men.
By demanding people be able to get guns without background checks, buy laser sights, bulletproof vests and infinite amounts of ammo online, the NRA is allowing bad guys like the Aryan Brotherhood, Mexican drug cartels, domestic and foreign terrorists, and crazies like James Holmes to arm themselves to the teeth.
The idea that a good guy with a gun is the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a delusion. Because the bad guy with a gun usually believes with all his heart that he's the good guy. And the fact is, the good guy can easily turn into the bad guy after one too many drinks, getting cut off by some idiot on the freeway, suffering a bad divorce or age-related dementia, or mistaking a cellphone for a gun.
Which is why the NRA plan will increase the number of children killed by guns in schools, due to weapons dropped in bathrooms (which appears to happen all the time), weapons left in desks where children can take them, good guys suddenly snapping for the reasons listed above, or disturbed kids bashing the good guy in the back of the head with a chair and taking the gun. And if an Adam Lanza does break into the school, clad in Kevlar and sporting an assault rifle with a thiry- or hundred-round clip, the good guy with the gun is probably the first guy to get shot.
The murders of Mike MacLelland and Mark Hasse were well-planned and executed. Much the way the assaults at Columbine, Aurora and Newtown were well-planned. When bad guys have time to plan and have access to massive firepower and protective gear it's impossible to prevent them from killing. The only way to stop them is to prevent them getting the weapons in the first place.
More guns equals more death, as has been well-documented in suicide and domestic violence statistics. The math really is that simple.
So, we'll ask the Sarah Palin question, with absolutely no disrespect for the brave victims in Texas: how's that gunny-savey thing workin' out for ya?
In July 2012, MacLelland won a life sentence against an Aryan Brotherhood enforcer. MacLelland then indicted 34 Aryan Brotherhood members in November (the US attorney in the racketeering case has just withdrawn in fear of his life). On Jan. 31, Mark Hasse, another Kaufamn County prosecutor, was gunned down. MacLelland believed the Aryan Brotherhood could have been responsible, and started carrying a gun. Police had been stationed outside MacLelland's home for weeks, but the protection ended recently. I don't knock MacLelland for carrying; I probably would have done the same thing. What else is there to do, other than run like a coward? But carrying a gun is simply not effective protection when patient, determined assassins are after you.
Futher fueling the possible white supremacist connection was the murder of the chief of Colorado prisons on Mar. 19, and the subsequent shootout in Texas, when the killer, Evan Ebel, was stopped and killed by police two days later near Dallas.
We don't know if the Aryan Brotherhood, a white prison gang involved with prostitution and drug running and apparently run by men currently in jail, has anything to do with the Texas killings. Many are saying these actions don't fit their profile. And today another person of interest was identified in the case, a former local official who lost his job in a corruption probe.
What the slaying of Mike MacLelland does tell us is that guns can't protect you. The bad guys can always bide their time, hide in the shadows, snipe you from 200 yards away, wait until you're otherwise distracted, and then gun you down like a dog. They're not going to schedule a shoot-out with you on Main Street at High Noon and settle things like real men.
By demanding people be able to get guns without background checks, buy laser sights, bulletproof vests and infinite amounts of ammo online, the NRA is allowing bad guys like the Aryan Brotherhood, Mexican drug cartels, domestic and foreign terrorists, and crazies like James Holmes to arm themselves to the teeth.
The idea that a good guy with a gun is the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a delusion. Because the bad guy with a gun usually believes with all his heart that he's the good guy. And the fact is, the good guy can easily turn into the bad guy after one too many drinks, getting cut off by some idiot on the freeway, suffering a bad divorce or age-related dementia, or mistaking a cellphone for a gun.
Which is why the NRA plan will increase the number of children killed by guns in schools, due to weapons dropped in bathrooms (which appears to happen all the time), weapons left in desks where children can take them, good guys suddenly snapping for the reasons listed above, or disturbed kids bashing the good guy in the back of the head with a chair and taking the gun. And if an Adam Lanza does break into the school, clad in Kevlar and sporting an assault rifle with a thiry- or hundred-round clip, the good guy with the gun is probably the first guy to get shot.
The murders of Mike MacLelland and Mark Hasse were well-planned and executed. Much the way the assaults at Columbine, Aurora and Newtown were well-planned. When bad guys have time to plan and have access to massive firepower and protective gear it's impossible to prevent them from killing. The only way to stop them is to prevent them getting the weapons in the first place.
More guns equals more death, as has been well-documented in suicide and domestic violence statistics. The math really is that simple.
Tuesday, April 02, 2013
What Kind of A Culture?
What Would He Say?
The Christian Science Monitor had a cover story a couple of weeks back titled, "What Would Mao Say?" that was most illuminating. The first three paragraphs say it all.
Yang Youwei owns a slaughterhouse, holds a big chunk of shares in a nearby coal mine, sits on the coal mine board, and runs the company that sells the mine's production. He drives a black Rolls-Royce. He walks like a capitalist; he talks like a capitalist. He is easily the richest man in this small village 300 miles south of Beijing. And he is also Yangjiaxiang's top communist, secretary of the local party.
Welcome to the paradoxical world of today's Chinese Communist Party.
Modern day China is an excellent illustration of why there is virtually no chance of the world ever seeing a truly totalitarian government ever again. Sure, we still have our stragglers like North Korea and Iran as well as failed states in Africa and the Middle East but these are obvious outliers. If want to be in the global marketplace, you have to adapt and that means embracing capitalism, unfettered trade, and free markets. If not, you are going to be on the outside and much less prosperous. This is why I chuckle and shake my head when I hear the Right blow bowel after bowel about the looming threat of communism. It failed. And even a country like China, with all its military might and government control, can't stop it.
Mao would be outraged and likely confounded, as the article notes, to see how terribly wrong he was in his vision for China. What would he say?
He would be speechless.
Yang Youwei owns a slaughterhouse, holds a big chunk of shares in a nearby coal mine, sits on the coal mine board, and runs the company that sells the mine's production. He drives a black Rolls-Royce. He walks like a capitalist; he talks like a capitalist. He is easily the richest man in this small village 300 miles south of Beijing. And he is also Yangjiaxiang's top communist, secretary of the local party.
Welcome to the paradoxical world of today's Chinese Communist Party.
Modern day China is an excellent illustration of why there is virtually no chance of the world ever seeing a truly totalitarian government ever again. Sure, we still have our stragglers like North Korea and Iran as well as failed states in Africa and the Middle East but these are obvious outliers. If want to be in the global marketplace, you have to adapt and that means embracing capitalism, unfettered trade, and free markets. If not, you are going to be on the outside and much less prosperous. This is why I chuckle and shake my head when I hear the Right blow bowel after bowel about the looming threat of communism. It failed. And even a country like China, with all its military might and government control, can't stop it.
Mao would be outraged and likely confounded, as the article notes, to see how terribly wrong he was in his vision for China. What would he say?
He would be speechless.
Monday, April 01, 2013
Hallelujah!
I was very heartened to see this recent piece in the Atlantic about how our culture has finally shifted away from the "bumbling dad" stereotype. In many ways, we had become like the sex kittens and brain dead secretaries of the 1960s and 1970s.
I remember the old days, when the only media dad was a bumbling dad, flummoxed by diapers, mystified by breakfast cereals, as incompetent at managing a household as his wife was hyper-efficient. In sitcoms, and in the commercials that aired during sitcoms, Dad was comic relief; everyone knew that power in the home (economic power, especially) resided with Mom.
I have been lamenting this for years. It's such a stereotype, not simply of dads, but of all men that feeds the malaise that is the Michael Jordan Generation.
Now, though, it seems like things have changed.
Now, however, the marketers have realized their error, and dads—involved, caring, competent dads like me—are coming to the foreground. We see them with their daughters in car commercials, and with their daughters in other car commercials, and sometimes they even use Google! And not just to, you know, Google stuff. At last, we fathers have been recognized as an important demographic deserving of the attention of America's most creative capitalists.
The car commercial that comes to my mind is the one where the dad is telling his daughter, who is shown at age 6 or so, not to text while she drives. Suddenly, she is no longer 6 but 16. That's how dads really are...like Cliff Huxtable....not Benny Hill.
I really hope things stay this way. Men are not baboons who exist only to eat, watch sports and sleep on the couch while the wife does everything that requires competence.
I remember the old days, when the only media dad was a bumbling dad, flummoxed by diapers, mystified by breakfast cereals, as incompetent at managing a household as his wife was hyper-efficient. In sitcoms, and in the commercials that aired during sitcoms, Dad was comic relief; everyone knew that power in the home (economic power, especially) resided with Mom.
I have been lamenting this for years. It's such a stereotype, not simply of dads, but of all men that feeds the malaise that is the Michael Jordan Generation.
Now, though, it seems like things have changed.
Now, however, the marketers have realized their error, and dads—involved, caring, competent dads like me—are coming to the foreground. We see them with their daughters in car commercials, and with their daughters in other car commercials, and sometimes they even use Google! And not just to, you know, Google stuff. At last, we fathers have been recognized as an important demographic deserving of the attention of America's most creative capitalists.
The car commercial that comes to my mind is the one where the dad is telling his daughter, who is shown at age 6 or so, not to text while she drives. Suddenly, she is no longer 6 but 16. That's how dads really are...like Cliff Huxtable....not Benny Hill.
I really hope things stay this way. Men are not baboons who exist only to eat, watch sports and sleep on the couch while the wife does everything that requires competence.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
An Easter Reflection
Of all of the holidays we celebrate in this country, I find Easter to be the most disconcerting. I think the main reason for this is the lead up, particularly Good Friday. Far too many Christians seem obsessed with the brutal death of Jesus. They seem a little too much like modern day snuff film devotees and that disturbs me.
I find His death to be completely disgusting and horrible. I don't need to relive it over and over again. Nor do I feel the need to be reminded of His resurrection. I've accepted his death into my heart and believe that he died for our sins. Anything after that strikes me as repetitive and insecure. I guess I'd much rather focus on the amazing way He lived His life and how we can expand His message of peace around the world. I suppose that makes me a lousy Christian in the eyes of many but I don't care.
Being a believer doesn't carry with it the requirement that other people approve of your faith.
I find His death to be completely disgusting and horrible. I don't need to relive it over and over again. Nor do I feel the need to be reminded of His resurrection. I've accepted his death into my heart and believe that he died for our sins. Anything after that strikes me as repetitive and insecure. I guess I'd much rather focus on the amazing way He lived His life and how we can expand His message of peace around the world. I suppose that makes me a lousy Christian in the eyes of many but I don't care.
Being a believer doesn't carry with it the requirement that other people approve of your faith.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Amazing!
A wonderful message to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. We are doing His works and greater than these!
Friday, March 29, 2013
A Tax Increase Conservatives Should Love
I've been following Joe Nocera's Gun Report (and the Hammer Report) at The New York Times. Regardless of your take on guns, it's often funny in a morbid and depressing way.
One of the common factors among the incidents I noticed was the involvement of alcohol. It seems that an awful lot of shootings, including domestic violence, accidental child shootings, and gang shootings, involve drunken spouses fighting, drunken parents playing with guns and drunken or high gangbangers evening scores.
Turns out that it's not a coincidence. In an interview with Mark Kleiman on the Washington Post's website, some interesting statistics stand out:
Kleiman: Half the people in prison were drinking when they did whatever they did…Of the class of people who go to prison, a lot of them are drunk a lot of the time. So that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t have done it if they had not been drunk. It’s just that being drunk and committing burglary are both parts of their lifestyle. Still, alcohol shortens time horizons, and people with shorter time horizons are more criminally active because they’re less scared of the punishment. Most people who drive drunk are sensible enough to know when they’re sober that they shouldn’t be driving drunk. It’s only when they’re drunk that they forget they’re not supposed to drive drunk.Maybe the NRA should change their motto to "Guns don't kill people, drunks kill people." Oh, wait, that ship has already sailed: the NRA endorses carrying concealed weapons in bars.
Kleiman's recommendation?
Taxation is just about the perfect way to control alcohol use. It’s not complete, because you need controls for the real problem drinkers. But if we tripled the alcohol tax it would reduce homicide by 6 percent. And you’re not putting anybody in jail. But instead we spend our time talking about doing marijuana testing for welfare recipients.All this murder and mayhem caused by drunks costs American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars every year in workplace productivity losses, law enforcement, prisons, traffic deaths, health care and so on.
In addition to directly reducing the damage to the economy by reducing public drunkenness, tripling the alcohol tax would also raise $17 billion in revenue, helping to recoup law enforcement and health care costs caused by drunks and the beer companies that feed their habits.
Everyone agrees that the people who cause problems should pay for them. So conservatives, especially the most conservative Southern Baptists, Mormons and Methodists, should love an alcohol tax increase.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
An Environmental Case for Factory Farms
Environmentalists generally hate giant factory farms. These massive livestock operations cause all kinds of environmental and health problems. Gigantic chicken, hog and dairy farms are notorious for catastrophic manure spills that kill millions of fish, pollute water with high levels of nitrates that cause spontaneous abortions, cause Salmonella, E. Coli, and cryptosporidium contamination, emit hydrogen sulfide that can cause brain damage in those exposed and even kill them, contribute to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that degrades fishing and shrimping, and so on.
But there are large dairy operations that environmentalists could grow to love. The New York Times has an article about one of the largest dairy farms in the country. Fair Oaks Farms, which has 30,000 dairy cows, uses the methane from cow manure to generate the electricity that powers their entire operation, as well as fueling the tractor-trailers that take the milk to processors in three states. That saves two million gallons of diesel fuel alone per year.
Minnesota Public Radio has a story about the Crave Brothers cheese farm, which uses an anaerobic digester to process manure and waste whey to create methane that's burned to generate all the electricity for the farm's operations, as well as 300 additional households. The remaining waste is used as fertilizer and bedding for the cows.
In these operations potentially toxic manure is neutralized and turned into fuel and fertilizer in a sustainable and carbon-neutral fashion. Instead of taking methane and crude oil from deep within the earth that will be burned once, constantly increasing the amount of dioxide in the atmosphere and contributing to global warming, these farms use the natural carbon cycle to power their operations. Sunlight makes their crops grow, which takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; the cows eat the crops and produce manure; methane is extracted from the manure; the methane is burned and put back into the air as carbon dioxide; and the cycle is complete. The farms' operations can be carbon neutral.
There's a certain minimum size required for such an operation, from both an economic and efficiency standpoint. The larger the operation, the more steps in production you can colocate on the farm (growing feed, producing milk and meat, and more industrial process like cheese making or slaughtering), the more efficient the carbon cycle will be. This form of electrical cogeneration is a perfect way for factory farms to redeem themselves and become heroes of the environmental movement instead of the archvillains.
However, factory farms are guilty of other sins: they use antibiotics simply to increase weight gain, and they confine animals in inhumane, crowded and dirty conditions, rather than allowing them to wander aimlessly through idyllic grassy fields. There's no excuse for indiscriminate antibiotic use: the practice is quickly creating superbugs that are immune to our entire arsenal of antibiotics. Instead, farms should keep animal pens clean, which has been shown to be just as effective in increasing weight in poultry and is essential to proper dairy operations in any case.
The problem with aimless wandering is that manure will be dropped over large areas, making it less efficient to collect it for methane generation. The animals are part of a giant food- and electricity-generating machine, sort of like the people in The Matrix.
We should avoid unnecessary cruelty to animals, and maybe we can find a way to efficiently generate electricity from free-range cows. But if we can't, and the choice is between confined cows and a 10-foot rise in sea level in the next 40 years, the choice should be obvious. If environmentalists want to stop indiscriminate fracking, expanded use of coal and nuclear, they have to be open to all forms of carbon-neutral energy generation.
Even if it makes Bessie sad.
But there are large dairy operations that environmentalists could grow to love. The New York Times has an article about one of the largest dairy farms in the country. Fair Oaks Farms, which has 30,000 dairy cows, uses the methane from cow manure to generate the electricity that powers their entire operation, as well as fueling the tractor-trailers that take the milk to processors in three states. That saves two million gallons of diesel fuel alone per year.
Minnesota Public Radio has a story about the Crave Brothers cheese farm, which uses an anaerobic digester to process manure and waste whey to create methane that's burned to generate all the electricity for the farm's operations, as well as 300 additional households. The remaining waste is used as fertilizer and bedding for the cows.
In these operations potentially toxic manure is neutralized and turned into fuel and fertilizer in a sustainable and carbon-neutral fashion. Instead of taking methane and crude oil from deep within the earth that will be burned once, constantly increasing the amount of dioxide in the atmosphere and contributing to global warming, these farms use the natural carbon cycle to power their operations. Sunlight makes their crops grow, which takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; the cows eat the crops and produce manure; methane is extracted from the manure; the methane is burned and put back into the air as carbon dioxide; and the cycle is complete. The farms' operations can be carbon neutral.
There's a certain minimum size required for such an operation, from both an economic and efficiency standpoint. The larger the operation, the more steps in production you can colocate on the farm (growing feed, producing milk and meat, and more industrial process like cheese making or slaughtering), the more efficient the carbon cycle will be. This form of electrical cogeneration is a perfect way for factory farms to redeem themselves and become heroes of the environmental movement instead of the archvillains.
However, factory farms are guilty of other sins: they use antibiotics simply to increase weight gain, and they confine animals in inhumane, crowded and dirty conditions, rather than allowing them to wander aimlessly through idyllic grassy fields. There's no excuse for indiscriminate antibiotic use: the practice is quickly creating superbugs that are immune to our entire arsenal of antibiotics. Instead, farms should keep animal pens clean, which has been shown to be just as effective in increasing weight in poultry and is essential to proper dairy operations in any case.
The problem with aimless wandering is that manure will be dropped over large areas, making it less efficient to collect it for methane generation. The animals are part of a giant food- and electricity-generating machine, sort of like the people in The Matrix.
We should avoid unnecessary cruelty to animals, and maybe we can find a way to efficiently generate electricity from free-range cows. But if we can't, and the choice is between confined cows and a 10-foot rise in sea level in the next 40 years, the choice should be obvious. If environmentalists want to stop indiscriminate fracking, expanded use of coal and nuclear, they have to be open to all forms of carbon-neutral energy generation.
Even if it makes Bessie sad.
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