The Vegan North: Inconvenient truths about the fire that destroys the Amazon rainforest at this very moment.

The Vegan North: Inconvenient truths about the fire that destroys the Amazon rainforest at this very moment.

by Carlos Magno Abreu (Batata)
Traslator Daniel Castelo Branco

It has recently been said that the "environmental issue is only for vegans who eat just vegetables."

At the beginning of the video “Earthlings”, a documentary known as the “vegan maker”, describes the three stages of truth:

- "Ridicule, violent opposition and acceptance."

Just before I finish writing this text, a friend wrote on Facebook: “We need to start linking the serious problems we live in to our personal consumer choices. Go to the street yes!! But what about at home, how are we agents of change?”

Before moving on, as incongruous as it may seem, I inform you that I am not vegan. And I make this reservation, not as an excuse, but with some shame, because I believe that I already have all the means and information necessary to completely migrate to this philosophy of life, however, due to various personal idiosyncrasies, I still consume some products of animal origin and very, very rarely, eat fish. Still, I take the vegan precepts as a north, which directs my personal choices, and even though I have not yet fully embraced it, I consider myself a vegan activist.

Thus, I believe that if you still eat meat, especially beef, you probably won't like the inconvenient truths of this text, but I hope that you will read it until the end, and if you feel debased, which I don't expect, even less the slightest intention to do so, manifest in opposition to the information set forth herein in the way it deems most convenient.

That said, let's get to the facts: The Amazon rainforest is on fire!!! And the flames that consume it do so at a speed never seen since the monitoring of anthropic burns began. Aside from the “fake news”, which obviously must be ignored, for its complete falsehood and absolute disconnection from the real world, there is no doubt about that. But let's not be naive, no one sets fire to the forest for pure evilness and an insane desire to destroy planet Earth!!! Its primary objective, if not the only one, is to make a profit through the most obtuse and anachronistic predatory capitalism. However, as obvious as it may seem, such profit only exists if the final consumer buys such product. But what product would that be? The rather simple and inconvenient answer: ox!!! Ox raised for slaughter!!! To supply a huge global market hungry for beef!!! One ox per hectare!!! In 2018, while the brazilian population was 208 million, the second largest cattle herd on the planet, was 232 million, the vast majority of it raised, as absurd as it may seem, in the Amazon. And that number keeps growing. The main mover of deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest, carried out with the intense and foolish use of fire, is the clearing the land to create new pastures. Since the soil is poor, it is used for pasture for about ten years and then abandoned. And as demand for beef only increases, in Brazil and around the world, new areas need to be cleared to maintain this unsustainable consumption pattern.

And the soy? The vast majority of soybeans grown in the world are used exclusively to feed cattle for slaughter. Although much of Brazil's cattle breeding is extensive, so that oxen feed primarily on grass, such a scenario is not the same in countries that do not have so much land available, and the vast majority of the 70 billion of land animals slaughtered every year, they’re raised in torturous confinement and feed on ration, of which soy is the main component, and Brazil, the second largest producer in the world.

However, if you still eat meat, please do not feel insulted, as I understand perfectly well that it is an extremely ingrained habit in our culture and that, as we mistakenly understand it as absolutely necessary, we struggle hard to maintain it. So let me give a clear but allegorical and limited example of my own case.

Exactly 16 years ago I took office as IBAMA Environmental Analyst, having been allocated in northern Mato Grosso, right in the middle of what was then called the “Arch of Fire and Deforestation”. That year deforestation reached the impressive 25,000 km2 area, the largest since the 29,000 km2 deforested in 1995, and was surpassed in the following year to almost 28,000 km2. In those years, Mato Grosso was the Brazilian state with the largest deforested area and to date, these were the three largest deforestation recorded in Brazil.

I saw with my own eyes endless wildfires. In helicopter overflights, I saw countless columns of smoke rising from the woods. I felt the heat of these fires from inside the aircraft. Some were so intense that we could not even fly over at the risk of a helicopter crash. Several times, my eyes were temporarily blinded and my nose bled from the soot of the burns. I saw the charred body of countless wild animals. I saw the notorious “correntão” (*) in action. I saw soybean plantations of unimaginable sizes. I saw gigantic pastures with countless heads of oxen. I saw the gigantic sandy areas of abandoned pastures in the middle of the forest. And yet I did not make the obvious and ululant connection between all these absurd atrocities and the simple act of eating meat. I spent hours in the helicopter and when it landed for refueling, so we could return to the overflights in the afternoon, I fed from the bodies of the animals that are the basis of all this destruction and gave my money exactly to their tormentors, and thus directly financed all of these aggressions that we daily fought so hard. The expression “wiping ice” here makes perfect sense and takes on a dimension that borders on folly.

And even with all this experience, even feeling directly the warmth of the criminal forest fires in my own flesh, even seeing all this destruction with my own irritated eyes, even feeling a gray blood pouring through my nose, even being body and soul amidst these situations that go beyond nonsense and result in one of the greatest atrocities that humanity has been committing against the environment, it still took me more than ten years to stop eating meat. And rereading the text I wrote at the time about my motivations, I was stunned by my ineptitude to realize that the environmental issue and the destruction of the Amazon were not even relevant facts in making this decision. The famous conditioned ethical blindness kept me from seeing what was before my eyes. It kept me from seeing that the world is what we eat. It kept me from seeing, even while there, that the Amazon rainforest burns for what we eat.

Today, in the face of the repetition of such atrocities, which we thought we had contained, there is no way not to question the predatory capitalism and not to question the habit that sustains this whole system, namely: the habit of eating the meat of animals, which is the cause and consequence of the atrocities we fight against. There is no way to heatedly discuss against such predatory capitalism and yet transfer our meager money to its main herald. No use, or rather almost none, posting hashtags in defense of the Amazon rainforest and hope for an international boycott, when we routinely feed on the animals raised on pastures that grow on the forest ashes and the wild animals burned alive in the process. .

With the current course of environmental policies, with IBAMA, ICMBio and several other environmental defenders being under direct attack, with the imposition of severe limitations to fulfill their constitutional function, unfortunately it will be up to the ordinary citizen, conscious of the imperativesof preserving nature, to take some practical and effective action against this barbarism. We are in an environmental war for our survival on the planet and, exceptional problems require exceptional solutions.

The philosopher Peter Singer, in his classic book "Animal Liberation", from 1975, which I only came to read in 2013 and which was decisive in my determination to stop eating the meat of animals tortured by captivity, questions: "So, we should not ask us: Is it never right to eat meat?, but: Is it right to eat this meat?” Although the bias of the book is the principle of equal consideration of interests for all sentient beings, we can rephrase the question, from the perspective of what is currently happening in the Amazon rainforest: Is it right to eat this meat, from cattle fed in pastures raised from the ashes of the largest and most biodiverse rainforest on planet Earth? ”. I believe that all who are outraged and struggle to stop the burning will answer that it is not right to eat meat produced in this way. And at the moment, there is none other!!!

I know, whether in IBAMA and ICMBio, NGOs, artists, lawyers, police, in various social strata, many people, many of whom I have the honor of calling friends, much more engaged and who go through much more difficulties and suffering for the sake of the environment than I will ever be able to. People who make my work experience poor and insignificant and who, even today, routinely and hardly, do the work I already feel tired of doing. I would never offend them and do not even have the moral scope to question their will to struggle, over the fact that I had stopped eating meat a few years ago.

However, as clearly stated, in a metaphorical rereading of the northeastern song “Reconvexo”: “I am the rain that casts the ashes of the Amazon rainforest over São Paulo's automobiles” – by the symbolic force of darkness that has imposed itself over the largest city in the Latin America, and therefore the largest meat-consuming market, there is no longer how not to bring our food choices into light, and, equally strikingly, to question the habit of eating animals that are raised in the open pastures over the ashes of once was the largest and most biodiverse rainforest in the world.

Thus, I claim that you are much smarter and more agile than I have ever been, because once again and with much greater intensity, the fire in the Amazon affronts us, every single day, in every existing media. With teary eyes I long for environmental defenders to stop eating meat, especially beef, as soon as possible. Let's stop giving money to those who strike the match. Let us stop enriching those who profit over these damn fires and the destruction of our greatest patrimony, which has the real potential to affect the entire biosphere. This lives-destroyer giant feeds exclusively on money and at this moment its main source comes from the sale of animal protein!!! The delicious hamburger, the undeniable barbecue, the nutritious steak, and the whole range of delicious delicacies that we never even thought of stop eating, are the main raisers of the money that feeds this beast. Every bit, however small, lights a match in the Amazon rainforest. And there are already too many matches burning there!!! Today, it is no longer possible to say that we do not know the harmful consequences of our actions.

I don't want to sound hypocritical and demand what I didn't do from the others, but we don't have another decade to assess the real need to stop feeding on dead animals. Time is a luxury we don't have. We simply do not have. We didn't had it in 2003, we didn't had it in 2013, but now, in 2019, we don't have it much more intensively, because we're on the brink of collapse and less than a step from the cliff.

It is imperative that we begin!!! If not for animal rights, let it be for the defense of our environment and to try to decrease the chances that our largest rainforest will be reduced to pasture. Let's start. Whether it's a meatless monday, no meat on weekdays, or no meat for just a month, until the burning stops, the rainy season comes and saves us or whatever. But today, more than ever, it is imperative that we stop feeding on dead animals raised in the open pastures on the ashes of the Amazon rainforest. It is impossible not to question this habit, fallaciously considered as natural and necessary. There is no way to untie our decisions with the dire consequences that are imposed on the Amazon rainforest today. There is no way we can consume such foods, which are absolutely unnecessary for our health and life maintenance, without feeling a slight weight on our conscience.

I even think that this may be the most important agenda of our time. If not the most important, the only one that we can act directly over, without depending on anyone, even less from any public policy or creation of any environmental protection law, which we know at the moment, will not come to save us. Just do not consume any animal protein, or at least substantially reduce its consumption.

Obviously, diametrically opposed to the beginning sentence, aren’t only vegans who care about environmental issues, but perhaps the adherence to veganism, even if only as a guiding north, has to be the main driving force to prevent that all Amazonia collapses by the flames of the human greed, flames sustained by an eating habit that no longer sustains itself, from any perspective of modern life.

There are countless protests scheduled for this weekend in Brazil and in several other cities around the world. Join in as much as possible, but keep in mind that it is of no use, or of very little use, to participate in such protests and in the end to celebrate the success of the manifestations on a barbecue, even if it is full of organic vegetables and home beers. For predatory capitalism, which currently burns the Amazon, our opinion doesn't matter, Twitter's “trend topics” don't matter, the amount of shares in this text doesn't matter! Nothing matters as long as the money keeps flowing to it.

And if we cannot stop this scourge, as a cruel final irony of our destruction, after the world's largest rainforest has been reduced to a carpet of grass, only plant-eating animals will walk on its ashes. Anyway, we will have a vegan north !!!

 Let us not forget that deep down, every war begins over natural resources.

As always, I end by quoting Gandhi: "Be the change you want for the world."

Consider veganism, even if eventually.

Consider veganism, even if only as a north.

#allforamazon

#actforamazon

#beveganforamazon

(*) TN: A giant chain, pulled by two tractors, that knocks down all in its way. (e.g.: https://youtu.be/zDK8qY0EKoo)

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Carlos Magno Abreu, better known as Batata, has been an IBAMA Environmental Analyst since 2003, a master in marine biology, trying to finish writing his doctoral thesis, author of the book “The story of Boitatá Operation and “Princess Diamond” - The One Million Dollar Snake”and eventually publishes texts on its SomosUnsBossais blog. (http://somosunsbossais.blogspot.com)

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Complementary readings

- The Vegan North: Inconvenient truths about the fire that destroys the Amazon rainforest at this very moment.

http://somosunsbossais.blogspot.com/2019/08/o-norte-vegano-verdades-inconvenientes.html (portuguese)

- About animals, vegetables and Earthlings

http://weareallstupids.blogspot.com/2013/08/about-animals-vegetables-and-earthlings.html

- Facing the Abyss: Considerations over our "extinction".

https://www.facebook.com/obatata/posts/2148120521886689

http://somosunsbossais.blogspot.com/2018/11/encarando-o-abismo-consideracoes-sobre.html