Museum and musings

Zero birding and mothing done this weekend (weekends are reserved for family stuff now Jacob has started school but alas I try and sneak in stealth birding where possible). Saturday we spent local shopping (this is non-stop birding so even when we go shopping we go to local farm shops and independent outlets which are nature friendly) and on Sunday we went to the Oxford natural history museum to see some of the prehistoric marine reptiles and also some dinosaurs (and other natural history) which were collected from the local geology. Also downlaoded a geology app (Geology of Britain 3D) which is like apple maps for geologists. Apparently the Old Vic is on the Oakley Member sedimentary rocks (limestones and mudstones) which is below the Kimmeridge Clay, a late Jurassic sequence which is rich in marine deposits including plesiosaurs , pliosaurs , some dinosaurs and other Jurassic life- so the Old Vic is built on the bones of dinosaurs and marine reptiles which is nice to know considering how fanatical Jacob is about dinosaurs.   

A local Plesiosaur - this stuff lurks beneath our feet in Oxfordshire 

Saturday afternoon was spent preparing a whole batch of home grown food 

In the cafe on Sunday preparing the next five month plan for Little Oak Group

There was an interesting display at the museum called 'Meat the Future'. Interesting to see such a political display within a natural history museum and a thought provoking one. It seems like meat is becoming the fall guy for Capitalism with lefties going all in on the anti-meat/ vegetarian cause. Only the deluded can deny that industrial scale meat production is unethical and unsustainable however plant based industrial farming should not be getting such an easy ride either. Even if meat production is reduced (in western societies) it unlikely that will free up land which will go over to rewilding or nature conservation projects. It's more likely that will go over to biofuels, solar farms, wind farms, housing and intensive plant based food for humans- all of which are generally destructive to nature. It is also unlikely that the demand for meat in the developing world will be subject to the same lobbying as the west and demand is likely to increase. So basically reducing meat consumption is not some silver bullet that will sort out what is wrong in farming and nature conservation. The narrative is actually a very blunt blow and likely to cause blunt force trauma to nature conservation (while delivering more of a carbon reduction hit). 

Most industrial scale farming is destructive to nature whether plant based or animal based. We need sustainable/ethical farming in all its sectors. I've done a bit of work on this over the years and been involved in some experimental projects with my brother in Bulgaria See here  and also needless to say our own mini-farm at the Old Vic HERE. In short I would say that the best farming systems for nature are small scale independent farms which serve local/niche markets. Industrial scale anything often becomes unethical and while the world can support a certain percentage of 'unethical' anything its important that is kept in balance and it clearly offset and mitigated elsewhere. Currently we are far from 'in balance' with industrial scale systems dominating with an unfair advantage over the development of small and medium scale eco-farms.  

Meat production is often a vital part of those eco-farm systems and in many cases grazing animals are used as ecosystem regulators to manage habitat and are often vital for some species of birds too (Yellow Wagtails, Cattle Egrets! etc). Knepp Re-wilding project and Elmley National Nature Reserve (one of the UKs only family run NNRs) depend on grazing animals/livestock to effectively replace the lost megafauna (hunted to extinction by humans such as Bison and top predators such as Bears and Wolves) of the Western Palearctic in order to increase biodiversity by introducing that megafauna element to manage ecosystems (maintaining grasslands, scrub and keeping back succession ) with humans and farming acting as 'Apex Predator' and regulating the herds by meat production. The economics of this works better too. 

While I fundamentally support the idea that the public should be eating less industrial produced meat I don't support the way that this is being driven partly by an animals rights agenda where some people are wearing the climate change cloak but hidden beneath that is an ideology which is against eating meat and where they believe that the 'food web' is unethical and they promote plant based food (even if those plant-based foods are unethical and destructive to ecosystems). I also find that idea quite irrational as animal rights are also tied up in the destruction of ecosystems (all those animals from invertebrates to top predators are denied the right to even exist in an industrial scale plant based system) There is a conflict between animal rights and nature conservation, just as there is a conflict between climate change politics and nature conservation politics - look at windfarms and solar farms- not great for nature either! As a naturalist I believe my main objective is to work out the ways which are best for nature- not for human belief systems or 'green' industrialists. 

So basically, I'm a bit wary of this populist vegan/ vegetarian movement and maybe shouldn't have been surprised to see it at the Oxford Natural History museum. I guess the museum if funded by the Capitalist system somehow and is part of traditional society (colonial, committee and social hierarchy based) then promoting plant based diets is a way of releasing planetary stress while maintaining high levels of humans living in overcrowded nature impoverished environments which are then put to work in capitalist industries which then fund museums and NGOs. It a form of class oppression using environmental politics to sustain it. 

There's got to be a better way and there is- its what I might call the Third Way. The way we do it. It's neither the right wing blatant nature destroying raw capitalist organisations or the left wing NGOs being funded by them and in their pockets by exchanging greenwash for social licence. The third way is  independent free regular citizens taking full control of our own environment, running our own businesses on our terms and our principles, trading within an ethical network, supporting other small and medium sized ethical business and largely detached from large scale industrial systems (which have their place but in moderation and in balance). Its basically a hack, a by-pass of the main system and building a concurrent/alternative society- one that can grow big and strong enough to mitigate/offset destructive unethical practises.  It would be better if the NGOs linked into that community more and sever unethical ties with big business and dead capitalist's legacies. 

Being part of that community and helping that community grow is also the best way of bringing balance to corporate led run away system.... while not being pulled into their simple narratives that use fall guys (such as the meat industry which will grow anyway from new markets opening up in the developing world ) to distract from what they are all up to, which is basically dodgy business as usual with  corporations, NGOs, museums, charities; all  manifestations of the GDP paradigm, a paradigm which is fundamentally all about making money whether openly or covertly,  a paradigm which is finally coming to an end, even if that end is just a personal choice to detach from the dodgy bits of it.