Because the supply-side propaganda pushes meat consumption so relentlessly, and because it has support from state and federal governments and from corporate powerbrokers two to three degrees of separation away from CAFOs (fuel, tractor mechanics, grill makers, condiment sales, fast-food joints, big-pharma/ medicine, etc.), and because American meat consumption evolved into a gluttonous luxury, the pressure on water use to serve this industry will likewise be relentless.
When we talk about using the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation to prop up non-beneficial water uses to grow vast quantities of thirsty hay products in deserts that too often harm the public health, safety, and welfare (by way of harming the environmental health of the ecosystem we rely upon for survival), we face this relentless supply-side propaganda that promotes the gluttonous luxury, which meat consumption has become. We also contend with the numerous connected industries that comprise the culture of red meat, which lobbyists allege is “too big to fail.”
These industries have figured out a way to monetize the harm to public health as it applies to heart disease and all the other attendant maladies resulting from gluttony, but they haven’t figured out how to monetize the destruction to the environmental health of the ecosystem which includes the water sources that belong to the public.
Why can they monetize public health but not environmental health? Regarding the former, they view humans as just more livestock along with the cows (one consumes the other) and the result causes a costly health problem to fix among the human herd for which the herd can pay by way of their human resources. But, this racket is inapplicable to the costly health problem the ecosystem experiences since the ecosystem can only pay up by shedding more of itself which causes even more decline in its health.
The ecosystem is not renewable to the extent that its demise (poor health) can be monetized: when the water supplies run low due to permanent aridification resulting from climate change and over-appropriation of water in streams and aquifers, growing hay will become too costly. China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and other nations have already realized this expense, which is why they penciled out that it’s more cost-efficient to import hay from Oregon and other western states than it is to grow the hay themselves. The term Virtual Water Exports refers to water-thirsty crop sales abroad.
The molecules of water that form the hay that make the meat that fattens the humans who seek widespread medical attention as they die is a one-way water-extraction system that will only end when the water stops. Sadly, once that happens, all other flora and fauna will have been suffering as well and our future generations will experience want and depravity as a result of the gluttony born, in part, by the Doctrine of Prior Appropriation and politically driven debasement of the Doctrine of Beneficial Use of water. Indeed, it is the same supine lassitude that results from gluttony that powers the inertia among our elected officials to perpetuate our degrading system of antiquated and inequitable water policies.
Quit appropriate that the primary market pitch is directed to the gluttonous US population which then fuels the profits for the corporate health care industry. Vegan and vegetarian is so much the healthier life style. Economist Katherine A. Fitz call this era the great poisoning of America.
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