In some recent encouraging vegetarian related news, Oprah Winfrey has committed herself to a vegan diet during a three week "cleanse." Sure, three weeks isn't much, but when this lady speaks people listen.If she so much as turns 1% of her audience into vegans, that 74,000 less people straining the environment with their diets.
After a day off came the lovely pairing of Workingman's Dead first set and American Beauty for set two. These albums were released back to back so it makes sense to see them together in a show.
The second self titled Dead album otherwise known as "Skullfuck" or "Skull and Roses" followed on the next night. For the second set Phil skipped ahead a decade for a little Dead Set. Go to etree to get aud copies of these shows, although Phil is likely to release soundboards of the whole Warfield run as he has for other multi-night stands in the past.
I think most people have heard for so long that there is a human overpopulation problem that they take it for granted. While this theory, that there are too many people on the planet, or there will be unless measures are taken, seems to be utterly without merit. In fact the exact opposite may be true, that there is an underpopulation problem.
Most developing countries with the exception of the US have below replacement birth rates, yet I still hear some people talk about how they don't want children because there are "too many people." China is a great example of this paranoia in action, with their infamous one child policy. That's managed to upset the gender balance causing many more boys to be born than girls, but it hasn't done much to change their already declining birth rate.
Certainly there are large cities that have population issues to deal with such as transportation, education, etc, but these problems are only related to organizational and logistical shortcomings of governments. Logically populations migrate to areas with more opportunities and better resources, so instead of trying to control the amount of people on the planet, we should make it more attractive for them to move to areas where they are needed and respected.
With renewed energy the band explored choice album cuts while debuting two new songs. "Already There," a Storm in Heaven cut sounded lovely as well as a spontaneous "Gravity Grave," from the Verve EP. Lead man extraordinaire Richard Ashcroft already had the acoustic guitar on for "Drugs Don't Work" but bassist Simon Jones, clearly enjoying himself played a bit of the "Gravity Grave" bassline drawing anxious pleas from the audience. Ashcroft picked up on it saying how Simon wanted to play a "15 minute" version. He handed his acoustic back to the roadies and they were off into the song. Just the type of interplay that shows when a band is enjoying themselves. The complete setlist is here.
It's the cows. Cows eat many times the amount of the amount of food they will eventually become, and they consume a whole lot of fresh water. And these bovine eco-terrorists emit lots of pollution. To make matters worse, at this very moment vast swaths of pristine, virgin rainforest are being cleared to make room for more livestock to graze. These acres of ancient trees, which help soak up carbon-dioxide, are being slashed and burned primarily to raise more cows which can eat up more of the world's food.
And Meat consumption is actually quite devastating to world finances. Unthinkable amounts of time and money is wasted in food cultivation and production for livestock, and then the vast meat production industry. Wasted transportation (as in millions of gallons of gas annually), massive recalls, and most crushingly the health care cost of the sick, debilitated and dying, of which poor diet is the number one killer. And the threat of mad cow disease is always looming.
A great start for anyone is to stop supporting the meat and dairy industry. There are plenty of vegan foods that taste wonderful and are superbly healthy. Instead of blaming gas prices for the food shortages, maybe the problem is just old habits. This problem has been a long time coming and even electric cars aren't going to stop us from using cows to kill us all.
