Chris Hedges Speaks the Unspeakable

book jacket of Unspeakable by Chris Hedges on the most forbidden topics in AmericaChris Hedges, one of my favorite authors and thinkers speaks with David Talbot “about the most forbidden topics in America” in this new book series from Hot Press (Conversations). David Talbot is a fellow radical journalist who founded Salon and the Hot Books imprint.

This book, Unspeakable, by Chris Hedges (c 2016) is formatted with Talbot asking him questions and then transcription his replies.

This is not a fun read; he has seen too much death and greed and destruction. I am an idealist, so I guess I still have a spark of hope.

I did put this off for another day to read in full: it is bleak.

[note: this was written in August 2017 and I am not sure I still have that spark of hope. Subsequent events: #GOPTaxScam, the close contest for senator from Alabama where a sexual predator was deemed better than a Democrat, and the Democrats eating their own with the hasty and ill-considered holier-than-thou response to Al Franken’s juvenile sense of humor exceeds my capacity to believe that everything will be alright.]

He mentions the documentary Cowspiracy that I have heard about but could not bear to watch. I cannot bear many things these days, like the fact that:

Animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, trains, ships and planes combined. Livestock, along with their waste and flatulence, account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51 percent of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. . . . (p. 139)

He goes on like this citing more statistics, including the stat that my theme reading on water issues already made me aware of: “It takes 1,000 gallons of water to produce a gallon of milk.”

Also, “Crops grown for livestock feed consume 56 percent of the water use in the United States.

Many things take more water than they are worth to produce. Ethanol, as I recall, was a big water waster.


So I’m just going to post this as is without more. It’s December now, and things have only gotten worse and worse. I may not ever feel emotionally strong enough to read this completely. Too much bad in the world.