Eat a Big Mac: Buy a
Carbon Credit?
By P.J. Gladnick
NewsBusters
July 17, 2008
Will we be forced to buy carbon credits from Al Gore in
order to assuage our guilt over eating Big Macs or other types of hamburgers? Perhaps. As we saw recently in NewsBusters,
there is a theory out there that Bovine "Burps" contribute
significantly to causing global warming due to the release of methane by cows
during their "burping" process. And now environmental whackos want us
to cut back or eliminate our consumption of hamburgers in order to keep bovine
methane from destroying our planet. Here are some excerpts from the July 16
article by Jim Motavalli in the San Antonio Current
expounding on this subject:
Ask most Americans what causes
global warming, and they’ll point to a coal-plant smokestack or a car’s
tailpipe. They’re right, of course, but perhaps two other images should be
granted similarly iconic status: the front and rear ends of a cow. According to
a little-known 2006 United Nations report entitled “Livestock’s Long Shadow,”
livestock is a major player in climate change, accounting for 18 percent of all
greenhouse-gas emissions (measured in carbon-dioxide equivalents). That’s more
than the entire transportation system! Unfortunately, this incredibly important
revelation has received only limited attention in the media.
How could methane from cows, goats,
sheep, and other livestock have such a huge impact? As Chris Goodall points out in his book How to Live a Low-Carbon
Life, “Ruminant animals [chewing a cud], such as cows and sheep, produce
methane as a result of the digestive process … Dairy cows are particularly
important sources of methane because of the volume of food, both grass and
processed material, that they eat.”
According to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, the American meat industry produces more than 60 million tons of
waste annually — five tons for every
Mr. Motavalli doesn't exactly come
out and declare himself to be a vegetarian but it sure sounds like he has a
"beef" over the eating of meat:
The environmental consequences of
meat-based diets extend far beyond their impact on climate change. According to
the UN report, producing the worldwide meat supply also consumes a large share
of natural resources and contributes to a variety of pressing problems...
...A study by the Pew Commission on
Industrial Farm Animal Production, released last April, called the human health
and environmental risks associated with the meat industry “unacceptable.”
...The few commentators who have
taken on the connection between meat consumption and global warming ignore the
most obvious solution: not eating meat.
Because vegetarians enjoy lower
levels of blood cholesterol and suffer less frequently from obesity and
hypertension, their life expectancies are several years greater. But the
benefits of the vegetarian option are rarely on the agenda, even when the
environmental effects of the meat industry are under discussion.
Most people grow up eating meat and
seeing others doing the same. The message that “meat is good and necessary for
health” is routinely reinforced through advertising and the cultural signals
we’re sent at school, work, and church. Vegetarianism is regularly depicted as
a fringe choice for “health faddists.” The government reinforces this message
with meat featured prominently in its food pyramids.
Jim Mason, coauthor of the book The
Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter,
offers another possible reason we’ve kept vegetarianism off the mainstream
agenda. “People who eat meat and animal products are in denial about anything
and everything having to do with animal farming,” he says. “They know that it
must be bad, but they don’t want to look at any part of it. So all of it stays
hidden and abuses flourish — whether of animals, workers, or the environment.”
So people who eat meat are in denial? Motavalli
suggests that a big coverup is at work surpressing the the cause of
vegetarianism that he seems to support:
Even such an enlightened source as
the 2005 Worldwatch report “Happier Meals: Rethinking
the Global Meat Industry” is careful not to advocate for a vegetarian diet,
including it in a range of options that also includes eating less meat,
switching to pasture-raised “humane” meat, and opting for a few non-meat
entrees per week. Vegetarianism is the “elephant in the room,” but even in a
very food-conscious age it is not easily made the centerpiece of an activist
agenda.
Even though human teeth and our digestive systems are
designed for the consumption of meat, Motavalli
continues to make the case for the vegan cause based on nature:
...Offer these facts to many meat
eaters, and they’ll respond that they can’t be healthy without meat. “Where
would I get my protein?” is a common answer. But the latest medical research
shows that the human body does not need meat to be healthy. Indeed, meat is
high in cholesterol and saturated fat, and a balanced vegetarian diet provides
all the protein needed for glowing health. Were humans “meant” to eat meat,
just because our ancestors did? Nonsense, says Dr. Milton Mills, a leading
vegetarian voice. “The human gastrointestinal tract features the anatomical
modifications consistent with an herbivorous diet,” he asserts.
Even Al Gore comes in for criticism for not pushing
vegetarianism:
The fact that the cornerstone of
the American diet aids and abets climate change is an “inconvenient truth” that
many of us don’t want to face, says Joseph Connelly, publisher the San
Francisco-based VegNews Magazine. He takes a dig at
Al Gore for not mentioning meat-based diets in his film and only dealing with
them glancingly in his book An Inconvenient Truth.
The article concludes with a glimpse into the future in
which hordes of chip-on-the shoulder vegans will make beansprout
munching a moral cause:
Lisa Mickleborough,
an editor at VegNews, is probably right when she says
that animal concerns are a powerful force for turning meat eating into a moral
issue. To be an animal-rights leader is almost by definition to be a vegan. But
few environmental leaders have gone that far. “As an environmental issue, it’s
pretty compelling,” she says. “The figures on methane production speak for
themselves. But when it comes to doing what’s right for the environment, most
people don’t take big steps — they just do the best they can.”
So are we looking forward to a time when meat eating could
be made illegal due to supposed global warming? Who knows? If this turns out to
be the case, your humble correspondent will be making plans to meet his burger
dealer in dark alleys in order to make his illegal purchases of Tommy's burgers
smuggled in from
newsbusters.org