Turtle Island

I have never been the type of person who necessarily understood and enjoyed poetry. Gary Snyder's book Turtle Island is a composition of multiple essays and poems expressing his thoughts on interactions between humans and the natural world. His works are interesting, focusing on every living being's contribution to the biological and cultural path of life. Some poems were more straightforward and focused on political issues involving humankind's place in nature and some poems were more abstract and hard to understand what his exact message was. Perhaps that's the point of more abstract poetry? Maybe the specific messages are up to the interpretation of the reader. His poems also varied in topic: some were focused on destruction of life and some focused on the cultural aspects of life.

A poem that centered on the destruction of life that I came across called "The Dead by the Side of the Road," detailed the process in which humans use roadkill and hunted animals for resources. A quote, "Fawn stew on Hallowe'en hit by a truck on highway forty-nine offer cornmeal by the mouth; skin it out... Pray to their spirits. Ask them to bless us: our ancient sisters' trails the roads were laid across and kill them: night-shining eyes The dead by the side of the road." A poem I thought to be powerful, referencing our infrastructure's deadliness and ancestors practices.


A poem that I found to be a bit more culturally relevant was called "Anasazi." I looked up what Anasazi meant and the direct translation I found was "Ancient Ones." The Anasazi are thought to be the ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians and were located on the Four Corners country of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Snyder seemed to reference native cultures a lot throughout the collection. I quiet enjoyed this quote from "Anazasi," "you eyes full of pollen the smell of bats. the flavor of sandstone grit on the tongue. women birthing at the foot of ladders in the dark. trickling streams in hidden canyons under the cold rolling desert." I really love the visuals, sounds, and smells that this poem created; It was a great reminder of where our country came from and how humans thrived before current technologies.

Meat The Truth

I must say it was interesting reading Comfortably Unaware by Dr. Richard Oppenlander and then watching Meat The Truth. I purposefully chose to watch Meat The Truth because I had read Comfortably Unaware and I was curious how they would compare.Both the book and documentary are about the impacts of livestock production and consumption, however Comfortably Unaware focused on both environmental impacts of meat production as well as the negative health effects consuming meat has on the human body. Meat The Truth mainly focused on just the environmental impacts. The movie was released in 2008 whereas the book was published in 2012 so the book has more updated statistics, which have only increased.

There were two main focuses I noticed in Meat The Truth: The amount of land used to raise and feed livestock and its impacts on the environment and the inhumane treatment of animals and employees. All of the statistics are mind blowing and there are so many I could never list them all in just one post. One comparison I will give you to give you a sense of how much pollution livestock create is that one cow creates more pollution than a car that has driven 70 billion km. And it's not just the animals themselves destroying our planet with their waste and methane emissions. The masses of land required to put the livestock on and grow crops to feed the livestock is mind blowing. Our rainforests are being completely depleted due to deforestation for the maintenance of livestock and livestock crops. By cutting down our forests we are losing carbon sponges and emitting more carbon only making our problems worse. The graphs above show that the countries that consume the least amount of meat are sacrificing the most amount of land solely for the production of livestock, which is a devastating concept and example of how corrupt our industries can be.

Although the inhumane treatment of animals and employees doesn't have much to do with pollution it was still important to address in the film. A lot of farms are owned by large coorporations and the farmers have little to no say of what goes on on their farms. Farmers often don't get paid enough to make a comfortable living for the work they do. Chicks are debeaked so they don't have the risk of pecking each other. Piglets are castrated with no anasthetic and I could go on

Meat The Truth was a lot of the same information from Comfortably Unaware and then some. It was nice getting another perspective on the destruction that our livestock industry is causing.

Eating Our Future Away

Imagine taking your very first bite into that big, juicy quarter pounder with extra bacon on it and gooey, melty cheddar cheese. Now please consider that the burger you just bit into cost the planet 55 square feet of rainforest, and no, I am not kidding. Do you feel guilty yet? I know I do.

After reading the beginning of Comfortably Unaware by Dr. Richard Oppenlander my eyes were opened wide. I had already been educated on the effects of livestock production, but because in our world today our food industry is so tied into economics, politics and culture that I completely forgot just how devastating the effects are and that's exactly what these people want to happen. That's why no one knows that livestock production produces more emissions than all car, train, bus, and plane emissions combined. It's why no one knows that we raise, feed, water, kill and eat over 70 billion animals a year; that's more than 10 times the amount of people we have on this planet!!! It's why no one knows that it takes over 5,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat, which by the way is starting to become a non-renewable resource due to the over consumption of water and climate change causing droughts all across the globe. These facts and statistics are only a mere glimpse at what this book contains factually. 

I am only a quarter of the way into the book and want to become vegetarian. Becoming vegetarian is one way a single person can make a HUGE difference in our planet's current climate crisis. You think there's nothing you can do alone to change this situation? WRONG. Stop consuming animals. Save 5,000 gallons of water. Prevent that 55 square foot plot of rainforest from being slashed and burned. Stop depleting our world's resources because soon enough there won't be any left for humans. I found one quote from the book that explains the importance of reducing livestock production: "On any given acre of land we can grow twelve to twenty times the amount in pounds of edible vegetables, fruit, and grain as in pounds of edible animal products. We are essentially using twenty times the amount of land and crops and hundreds of times the water, as well as polluting our waterways and air and destroying rain forests, to produce animals to kill and eat." (Oppenlander, 24)I don't know about you but just hearing how much damage one person can do to our planet through the consumption of animals and animal products is enough for me to highly consider being vegetarian.