My dad kindly ordered "The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter" for me off my Amazon wish list a few months ago. It took me about two months to read it, though it's just under 300 pp. and very well-written. There's no revelatory research, but it's impressive (and long overdue) in its scope--the review considers ethical implications for animal welfare, the environment, and human health and culture. I was particularly happy to read (finally!) a critique of the "buy local" invocation, which makes little sense to me, especially considering the enormous impact a few dollars can have on the well-being of farmers in developing countries. I was surprised that often the environmental impact, in terms of CO2 produced, is much lower for food shipped halfway around the world (by sea or freight rather than air) than items grown locally in greenhouses. I have an urge to give this book to most everyone I know, but they seem to fall into two camps: either they have already reached >90% of the conclusions summarized here and adjusted their habits accordingly (though the book is useful reinforcement), or they don't seem the least bit interested. I have no idea how to touch the latter. I'm reminded of a relative of mine who, when I asked her if she had seen "An Inconvenient Truth," replied, "Why should I go see that?!"
I wish I knew what genetic or environmental factors determine the bounds of our compassion. Perhaps the difference is more in our propensity to strive for internal consistency in belief. Perhaps some of us are working from different assumptions--we just don't understand the state of fisheries, climate change, and the unnecessary suffering of so many humans and other animals on the planet, and (most likely) we especially don't understand how our day-to-day decisions effect [sic] the world. But what drives some people to investigate and others to toss their hands in the air, declaring the problem too vague, complex, irrelevant (e.g., if God takes care of it all) or simply uninteresting?
We have a frustrating tendency to group our concerns for various causes into a gross category of "benevolence" and rarely to try to determine which among these causes most deserve our attention. Iraq, animal rights, sex offenders, climate change, the neighborhood soup kitchen, civil liberties, socially responsible investing, public health--the same halo floats over each. We rarely delve (at least publicly) into the necessary moral calculus to weight these problems. The problem is even harder, of course--we then need appropriate models for effecting change, acknowledging that certain interventions, such as literacy, potentially solve several problems at once and are prerequisites for others. I wish there were more objective discussion about what our priorities should be--this is an inherently philosophical question that depends on one's degree of utilitarianism--and then the corresponding challenges in public policy.
Finally, I need to vent about popular sports: playing sports is great, admiring technical ability is great, but it bothers me to no end that our beliefs, time, and energy can be sold so easily by the desire to belong to a group. It is the most abritrary, superficial connection I can imagine.
