Thank You, Population Geographers!

I know that it might seem a little self-serving to note that today I was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Population Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) here at the annual meeting in San Francisco. However, this provides me with a public opportunity to thank people to whom I owe so much--my colleagues, my students, and my publisher (and, of course, my wife). Special thanks go to Rachel Franklin of Brown University, current President of the AAG Population Specialty Group for organizing a wonderful session. Thanks to colleagues/friends Doug Stow (SDSU), Arthur Getis (SDSU), David Lopez-Carr (UCSB), David Rain (GWU), and Peter Craumer (FIU) for their very generous comments, and thanks to former students/now colleagues and friends Tarek Rashed (Indiana University), Debbie Fugate (US State Department), Justin Stoler (U of Miami), and Anna Carla Lopez-Carr (SDSU/UCSB) for their amazing comments. And thanks to everyone else in attendance, with whom we had a chance to mingle during the post-session reception hosted by Cengage Learning Publishers. Thanks to you all--I couldn't do this without you.

Putting a Global Price Tag on Eating Meat

Recently I commented on the important way in which eating meat is costly in terms of environmental damage and deleterious health effects. But I didn't put a price tag on those costs. However, today I saw an article referenced in The Atlantic that does exactly that.

In a study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Marco Springmann and his colleagues at the University of Oxford conservatively estimate that if people continue to follow current trends of meat consumption, rather than shifting to a more balanced or plant-based diet, it could cost the U.S. between $197 billion and $289 billion each year—and the global economy up to $1.6 trillion—by 2050.

Out of all the world’s countries, the U.S. would save the most by curbing its taste for meat. Due to its very high per-capita health-care costs, the country could save $180 billion if the population ate according to recommended guidelines, and $250 billion if it eschewed animal food products altogether—more than China, or all of the EU countries combined. And this is to say nothing of the number of obesity- and chronic-disease-related deaths that could be averted (at least 320,000 per year), and the accompanying benefits of reducing the level of greenhouse-gas emissions.

How much would be saved? Here is a graph of their calculations:

Reality versus Perception of How Many Muslims Live in Europe

The terrorist attacks by Islamic Jihadists in Paris and Brussels have sharpened the already divisive debate about the flood of migrants from the Middle East to Europe. Even before these attacks, the presence of Muslims in Europe was exaggerated by European respondents to opinion polls, according to data put together by The Economist. Take a look at this map:

In France, 8% of the population was Muslim as of 2010, but an Ipsos-Mori poll in 2014 found that the average respondent thought the figure was 31%. In Belgium, a 6% Muslim population translated into the perception of a 29% Muslim population. 

A possible explanation for this is the fact that the terrorist groups have been so closely affiliated with Islam, even though the vast majority of Muslims have no sympathy for their cause. The combination of natural xenophobia combined with a terrorist fear skews perceptions. George Friedman puts it this way:

When we see pictures of terrorists calmly pushing luggage carts in an airport, it is not their courage that stands out, nor their willingness to die, but the sense that death does not mean to them what it means to us. We speak of dehumanizing people by regarding them as “other” or alien. These terrorists are “other.” They are not like us in the fundamental sense that they say they prefer death over life—and by every indication, they do. We are, of course, terrified by the randomness and the violence of the terrorists, but what is more frightening is the terrorist himself.

Recognition of the problem is at least a first step to dealing with it. Treating it as a disease may be the right approach. You isolate the disease, get rid of it, and then vaccinate the rest of the population against it coming back. I know, terrorism is complicated, but so are most diseases.

Global Health and the Environment

This coming week I will be a discussant in a plenary session on "Global Health & Environment" at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers in San Francisco. One question that the panel will be examining is: What is the most harmonious way for us to produce and consume food going forward? If you have read my book and/or followed this blog, you will immediately know the answer: eat less meat! In my view, the raising of animals for slaughter as food on the dinner table is one of the biggest threats to our ability to keep feeding a growing human population and a major threat to the environment at the same time. It is also a threat to human health, as I noted a few months ago.

We are already using all of the good agricultural land in the world to grow food, but the demand for food for animals who are raised to be killed for food is constantly pushing farmers into ever-more marginal land, and in many places this involves deforestation in order to create new farmland. And, of course, grazing animals produce a lot of methane gas that is bad for the atmosphere. And I haven't even mentioned the water necessary to grow feed for animals, much less humans. 

So, who are the big meat eaters in the world? A report by the OECD shows that on a per capita basis, people in Argentina eat more beef and veal than anyone, followed by Uruguay and Brazil, with the US coming in 4th place. The Chinese consume the greatest amount of pork on a per person basis, followed by the residents of the EU (collectively), Korea, Vietnam, and then the U.S. Poultry is consumed by people in Israel at a higher rate than anywhere else, following by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. You can see, then, that the US, in particular, does not top any of the lists, but it is high on all of them--unlike any other country. This needs to change.

And if damage to the environment and your health is not enough of an incentive to cut back on meat, how about the new round of findings that animals are "people" too. They have emotions, senses of humor, and feel pain and fear. Meat on your table isn't just a piece of meat--it was someone's parent, child, or friend. 

The New York Times Primer on Demography

Thanks to Francesco Billari whose tweet yesterday alerted me to a NYTimes blog post by Michael Gonchar titled "Demography is Destiny? Teaching About Cause and Effect With Global Population Trends." Now, my first reaction was that I had to applaud an article whose first link was to my blog post about the origins of the term "demography is destiny." But things started to go a bit down hill after that because the first section of the "lesson" takes the reader to a Retro Report video on the Population Bomb that the NYTimes put together last year and to which I took exception at the time, because it was clearly biased. Yet, despite the many comments to that effect on the NYTimes website at the time, Gonchar asks students questions about the video as though it were an unbiased factual piece of news. 

Fortunately, the remainder of the lessons are better. Indeed, I have probably blogged about most of the articles linked in the story because the NYTimes is typically an excellent source of news and I have been a long-time subscriber. This blog of mine essentially replaced my long-time practice of bringing in news stories to share with students at the start of class in order to impress upon them that demography is central to our lives, whether we know it or not.

At the same time, just reading news articles isn't enough for you fully to know what's going on. That's why I wrote the book...