This quiz was written and put together by
my two pigs, therefore there is a focus on how going vegan addresses each of
the 17 international sustainability goals. The push bike, cycling advocacy tent
had put together an amazing document on how cycling addresses the goals as well
so I started by acknowledging that.
Davie Phillips of Cultivate – at Cloughjordan Ecovilllage – in his
introduction said how difficult it was to bring these goals to life, maybe especially
as a quiz as no one had heard of them. They include goals like no hunger, no
poverty, gender equality, good health, sustainable cities, looking after life
on land and life under the sea and peace. I settled for a ‘best of three’
format.
Goal: Good partnerships
1.
Do we need a partnership with
a)
Animals b) People c) Nature
Answer: All three
Anyone who participated came up and got a
vegan biscuit ( a chance for me to show which ordinary products are
harmless – Ginger Nuts, Oaties and Bourbon)
Goal: Clean Water
2. If you have 1kg of beef and 1kg of
vegetable protein, which takes
15,000 litres of fresh water to produce?
200 litres of fresh water to produce?
Answer: 15,000
litres (or more) 1kg animal protein
200
litres 1kg
plant protein.
Goal: Decent work/employment
3. How many pig farms in Ireland?
a)
100 b) 200 c) 400?
Answer: 400
4. What percentage of pigs are kept
confined and without daylight?
Answer: 98%
5. How many new Pig Farm Management certificates
were offered; even subsidized in Ireland in 2015
Answer: 500
Who considers intensive farming, abbatoirs,
pharmaceutical testing facilities, food production facilities or computer chip
production decent work?
a) The government b) Corporations c)
Enterprise offices d) Nobody
Answer: All of the above
How many people in the audience have heard
about the idea to pay everyone a living wage and then each person applies
themselves to what they do best?
Answer: Everyone in the room and this
sparked a great debate as they were mainly motivated independent people who
would make the most of the opportunity to create community led projects and
provide local food.
Goal: Gender Equality
6. When we think in terms of gender
equality, which is the most fair of the following 3?
a) Women not being paid the same wage for
the same work in any country (including 1st and 3rd
world)?
b) Female pigs being kept in crates, unable
to turn around and produce several litters of piglets a year?
c) Cow are taken from their calves and
calves are taken from their cows, within days of birth in the dairy industry
for human consumption – of their milk and the male calves to death or fattened
to become meat.
Answer: None of them are very fair at all.
Goal: Health
7. What percentage of farms in Ireland are
organic?
a)
2% b) 10% c) 15%
Answer: 2% but the writer of the research
was in the audience and refined the answer to 1.9%
8. How many times are potatoes sprayed with
glysophate/Round Up on average?
a) 0-10 b)
10-20 c) 20-30
Answer: 20-30 times (Most people in the
audience thought it could be no more that 3 times, especially as they are only
in the ground for 6 months but every not marked organic potato you buy has the
residue of nearly 30 applications of carcinogenic round up)
9. How do we know that the chemical
fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides that we use are unhealthy?
a) 80% of Ireland’s bees are dead b) glysophate is found in tumour
tissue c) It originated as a chemical weapon in the Vietnam war?
Answer: All of the above
Goal: No Hunger
Why are nearly 1 billion of us 7 billion
humans starving?
a) There is not
enough food b) The
food is fed to animals instead
Answer: b ; There is enough grain grown
already to feed a population of 13 billion people. More than half of it is fed
to animals to then produce meat.
What percentage of food produced is wasted?
a) A Quarter b) A Half c) A Third
Answer: A third. It is not bought from the
farmer and so he ploughs it back in
It is lost during production. For example,
one production facility in Ireland, a tonne of pasta is lost every single
lunchtime, as people take their break and the line is left running. It goes
straight into the landfill.
Fruit and vegetables are rejected by the
supermarkets, for imperfections in appearance. Consumers buy more than they need
and end up throwing away a great deal of food – It is thought that every
individual could save 450 euro a year, if they used what they had binned or not
bought it in the first place.
Why are hungry people not fed?
a)
Transportation b) Poverty c) Entitlement
Answer: Entitlement
I asked if anyone understood this as I
didn’t! One parallel was suggested with the CEO of Nestle, who by the way holds
the keys to countless fresh water aquifers and wells in deserts and
drought-ridden countries. He has explicitly stated that people do not have a
right to water.
Another
said that governments have made 'basic needs' a social and charitable concern
when food security should be governed by law and provision to all: written in
to legislation.
Goal: Justice and Peace
How can we have justice and peace if we are
glossing over the death of so many people and animals? 7 trillion animals a
year – I represented the cows, Day One of the festival, pigs on day two (the
whole world might go vegan en masse… and pigs might fly so adopted wings in the evening) and then
all our feathered and other winged friends on the Sunday – the chickens, ducks,
bees and the butterflies in particular.
Are we a) anaesthetized to suffering b)
superior to other life c) allowed to do what we want?
Answer: This sparked a response that the
catholic church has us all conditioned. I suggested, what about Buddhist ideas? They understand that we are all one and connected? Another participant was just
back from a Buddhist country and said that the way animals and people in fact
are treated there is horrific, even worse. So I said, let’s not go down that
road either!
Goal: Education
How do we teach adults to care about
something? To take responsibility for their own actions? To value their
environment, appreciate the resources we have, experience compassion for people
and wildlife they don’t know and can’t see and motivate them to protect the
environment?
a) teach the children b) hit adults in the pocket c) make
laws
Answer: Trick answer, that none of the above
really work as it suits the government to make money from our consumption and
ill health (as in answer c), it suits adults to blame their hard hit finances for ignorant
choices – eg. buying cheap imported food (as in answer b) and children are just being filled
with all this information and have no actual power or say so to do anything
about it because their parents and all society are just carrying on regardless (as in answer a).
I asked everyone to think about how love
and compassion had kicked off in their lives so we can spread the experience of
it around to more and more people, before we trash the place.
In terms of education, the conversation
turned to replacing competition in schools with cooperation and collaborations.
Goal: Responsible Consumption
Some people say that consumers are the
greatest activists. This is because if we retract our support for cruel and/or
harmfully produced goods, we break the chain of supply and demand.
Goal: Wellbeing
What are the things that weigh us down and
make our own lives unsustainable?
a)
Physical pain b) Mental pain c)
Emotional pain d) Grief e) Poverty
f)
Unavailability (closed down-ness) g) Loneliness h) Absence i) Anger k) loss and
l) a range of fears
Answer: All of the above.
I gave a brief intro to self mastery, a
complete redefinition of our reason d’etre, mentioned that we all have a divine
spark and suggested…going vegan!... as a means to ease the conscience, release
the depressing energies in our systems and systematically cultivate more
promising ones; self regard, hope, joy, creativity, problem solving and feeling
connected and supported by that that bond between all living things. Most of
this work was done during two ‘Inner Sustainability' workshops I did in the
Mindfulness Tent – thanks Katriona for your beautiful artwork and creating such
a wonderful space.
Goal: End Pollution
I was going to ask how many in the audience
knew about chem trailing – dropping chemicals out of planes – yes, including
ryan air. Some say it is a toxic waste from coal mining. Some say it is a
deliberate shield created to reduce the global warming, everyone agrees that it
is a willful contamination of soil and water. You will see the lines in the sky
now I’ve mentioned it.
Goal: Safety
I was going to ask why are infant and
teenage vaccines still promoted and sometimes forced when they have such toxic
ingredients and can lead to paralysis and pain worse than paralysis?
I didn’t as we were all enjoying ourselves
at a music festival and everyone knows the answer anyway!
Goal: Sanitation
If sanitation refers to the removal of
sewage and trash and maintaining conditions that do not promote disease?
What do you think happens to animal waste?
Answer: It runs off, untreated into the
waterways and sea and soil.
This led to some good discussion later about
how to properly use ‘organic matter’ for the improvement of the land, rather
than contamination.
A brilliant talk, later in the festival,
was a panel proposing ways to ‘Green The Festival’. I raised this problem with
toilets being super clean but no water had been used, just gallons and gallons
of chemical. There were just disinfectant gels for people’s hands after too.
This stuff is so toxic, it is being banned I heard yesterday. There is no way
that any of that waste could biodegrade. I passed on the question, could energy
be generated by all the human waste? Could it be biodigested perhaps?!
One great speaker Anya, from Eco Eye, I
think, said that they had had compost loos for an 8-day festival of 35,000
people and they had been spotless and smell-less and worked brilliantly. It was
asked if people were ready to manage themselves here in Ireland. I’m sure
everyone would soon get the hang of it! In case you don’t know, you have to not
wee in a compost loo as it interrupts the speedy bacterial breakdown of the
crap.
These are things we all need to know and
that was the vibe I kept going for the quiz.
Many people there knew a lot more than I.
Also the serious discussions about What is TTIP? – Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership – were yet to come.
But I was able to round up with some
rhetorical questions like
What percentage of people like the
invitation of corporations to Ireland with no tax and no EPA governance?!
Goal: Clean Energy:
I didn’t ask a question about this even
though it is my favourite absurd observation that Shell were allowed to seismic
blast and map and drill to high heaven in the nature conservation area in Mayo
but boat operators were refused an extension of two weeks to their license to
bring holiday makers and Star Wars fans out to the Skelligs. Oh yes, the damage
they could do taking those snap shots! Really?!
Goal: Good Industries
My attempt at clean energy was to try and
get my Mazda converted to electric. I found lots about it (There is a national goal to have 40,000 electric cars on Irish Roads as we speak). I rang the SEAI –
sustainability board as I saw they offered a grant.
"All the grants for electric cars are only
available to corporations."
Not even just businesses, only
corporations…the only group who do not need a grant.
Goal: Good Infrastructure
What is environmental infrastructure?
Would everyone like to see the revival of the
rural train tracks that go to all four corners of Ireland?
Answer: Yes but it’s pretty unlikely.
Goal: Good Institutions
Decided this was a contradiction in terms and so we're now going for community led collaborations instead!
Goal: Sustainable Cities
I heard that we should abandon trying to
improve Dublin and build a new sustainable city, with the very best of
sustainable design outside Limerick. Not pour good money after bad.
The answer that won the biscuit was: what
happens to the abandoned places, just a rotting ghost town? Then there was more
evidence of that from all the buildings on outside of towns where businesses
have moved to bigger premises and are not obliged to take down and tidy up
their old one.
Goal: Protect life under the sea
This led to a laugh as I announced that
90 million fish are caught each year and then changed it to 90 million tonnes of
fish. It was funny because we all had to agree it was flipping loads and an
insane amount that could not be replenished. I will write again about this as
we watched the film Atlantic on the last night which I really recommend.
Goal: Protect life on land
If we replace meat with soya, how much does
it reduce land clearance by, per kg of protein?
a) 47% b)
97% c) 77%
Answer: 97% - That is epic!
The whole world might go vegan and also pigs might fly...let us show how it is done in style!!
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