As someone who tries earnestly to be a better citizen of the planet (car-sharing, cloth grocery bags, no printing stuff unless it’s required, turning off faucet when brushing teeth/sudsing hands, obsessive recycling, impressive amounts of reusing, not so good on the “reducing”…sorry), I tend to fume at SUV-drivers and not bat an eyelash at my carnivorous and omnivorous peers, even though I am well aware of all the statistics which Esprit, Sting and other organizations drilled in to me in the 90s regarding how many acres or gallons of water beef requires blah blah blah.
Well, apparently I can’t give H3s dirty looks any more.
Via The New York Times:
EVER since “An Inconvenient Truth,†Al Gore has been the darling of environmentalists, but that movie hardly endeared him to the animal rights folks. According to them, the most inconvenient truth of all is that raising animals for meat contributes more to global warming than all the sport utility vehicles combined.
The biggest animal rights groups do not always overlap in their missions, but now they have coalesced around a message that eating meat is worse for the environment than driving. They and smaller groups have started advertising campaigns that try to equate vegetarianism with curbing greenhouse gases.
Oy, I don’t see this going over well with the public at all. Amurricans love their flesh. They like to eat meat, too.
Some backlash against this position is inevitable, the groups acknowledge, but they do have scientific ammunition. In late November, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization issued a report stating that the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.
That sound you heard was my mind being blown. I knew raising animals was less than ideal, I never realized that it was worse than driving, let alone all types of transportation combined! SWEET. I can go back to having naughty dreams about the Veyron, sans shame or guilt. Anyone know how to type that sound Homer makes when he’s contemplating donuts or other yummy things? Because I’m totally doing that right now.
When that report came out, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other groups expected their environmental counterparts to immediately hop on the “Go Veggie!†bandwagon, but that did not happen. “Environmentalists are still pointing their fingers at Hummers and S.U.V.’s when they should be pointing at the dinner plate,†said Matt A. Prescott, manager of vegan campaigns for PETA.
In a move which makes me feel confused and anxious, PETA has decided to drum up awareness by plastering a banner festooned with this new, urgent, “Meat is (Earth’s) Murder”-message on a Hummer, which will tool around my town, complete with a chicken in the cockpit. Well, it’s a driver in a chicken suit who will be in the cockpit, and not an actual specimen of poultry, but what I want to know is, why not a Rooster suit? Why don’t men get any respect?
“You just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist,†said Mr. Prescott, whose group also plans to send billboard-toting trucks to the Colorado Convention Center in Denver when Mr. Gore lectures there on Oct. 2. The billboards will feature a cartoon image of Mr. Gore eating a drumstick next to the tagline: “Too Chicken to Go Vegetarian? Meat Is the No. 1 Cause of Global Warming.â€
The Humane Society is also on board, since it worries about polar bears as well as puppies:
On its Web page and in its literature, the Humane Society has also been highlighting other scientific studies — notably, one that recently came out of the University of Chicago — that, in essence, show that “switching to a plant-based diet does more to curb global warming than switching from an S.U.V. to a Camry,†said Paul Shapiro, senior director of the factory farming campaign for the Humane Society…“Our mission is to protect animals, and global warming has become an animal welfare issue,†he said.
And switching from a Camry to a MINI will do more to curb boredom. Bow down before the mighty Cooper S, I say!
Let’s hear from a spokesperson for Gore:
Chris Song, his deputy press secretary, simply noted that a suggestion to “modify your diet to include less meat†appears on Page 317 of Mr. Gore’s book version of “An Inconvenient Truth.â€
He did not address Mr. Gore’s personal food choices.
An activist quoted in the article rightly mentions that “it’s a lot easier to ask people to put in a fluorescent light bulb than to learn to cook with tofu”, and to that I say, uh…yeah. Tofu scares the Madagascar out of the picky and unadventurous (read: me). It IS easier to swap a bulb for a more energy-efficient one, take metro instead of a car or use one of the handy cloth bags which are now all over Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, for groceries.
Aside: those of you who scored this are on my “I’m so jealous”-list. I will console myself by marinating in haterade, since the bags aren’t made of anything organic, weren’t fair trade and obviously used icky, poo-ey airline miles to get to us from China. Ha! You may have the bag, but I have my obnoxious, envy-tinged righteousness. 😉
Off-aside: food is very personal, and I’m not sure how successful these efforts will be, but I don’t think there’s any harm in educating people about the impact our diets have on our bodies and on the world.
[sticks fingers in ears] LALALALALA[/sticks fingers in ears]
I’ve even read John Robbins and Peter Singer and Michael Pollan and Vandana Shiva and Anuradha Mittal and the Lappes, so I have no excuse…but to paraphrase Homer, if God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did he make them taste so good?
What about those tofu-farms? They create plenty of methane!
The article doesn’t state exactly HOW raising livestock contributes to global warming. Is it the transportation industry? In which case, purchasing anything contributes to global warning. Distributing tofu by tractor-trailer also impacts the environment. It’s also a favorite right-wing meme that pig farts (livestock-generated methane) generate more greenhouse gases than other industries. And the NYTimes article is filed under the heading “Media & Advertising,” so it’s about how animal-rights groups are attempting to promote the notion that eating meat is bad for the environment. It’s not really a news item, but a story about spin. Don’t chuck that cheeseburger just yet.
Apparently flatulent moose are worse than SUVs…
The fact that meat causes a negative effect on the environment stems from the assumption that eating meat is bad/undesirable/wrong. By the same logic, how much water goes into producing grain? vegetables? etc. A man/woman’s gotta eat right? I am still not clear on the mechanism of the increase in greenhouse gases? Refrigeration? Then what about our frozen veggies?
Hey! My ironic formatting got lost…That was supposed to read [sticks fingers in ears] lalalalala [/sticks fingers in ears] What happened to my faux html?
You used real brackets. 🙂 Fixed.
PETA, as usual, is being reductionist. Three points:
It is not meat consumption per se that is damaging to the environment. It is how the meat is raised and the costs of production, etc.
Most food production in the U.S., veggies included, is not necessarily good for the environment, either. Tons of waste comes from transport, including the transport of veggies. [NYT]
From a land-use perspective, we have huge swathes of arid land being irrigated (e.g. the San Fernando Valley), and a large amount of waste also comes from non-indigenous “locally grown produce” raised in usually inhospitable land.
I’d also be curious to see how much damage our (U.S.) ag subsidies do environmentally.
You’re wrong about “the assumption.” The assumption that “eating meat is wrong” is not necessary to arrive at the conclusion that meat causes a negative effect on the environment, although it would probably me more accurate to say that factory farming causes more damage than it’s worth. Everything involves a trade-off, a balancing of the costs vs. the benefits. If we define our “selves” as a small part of a larger whole, the cost/benefit ratio favors veganism.
We check our assumptions at the door and still dispassionately arrive at the conclusion that meat production requires more water than grain production, as meat is a secondary product that requires large inputs of grain. Instead of wasting grain on the cow, people could eat the grain and the grain and water would go much farther.
Factory farming is gross and wrong (says the hypocritical omnivore who doesn’t usually have much use for dualistic morality.) Wrong. And gross.
thanks, ANNA – yet another reason for me to feel guilty about eating meat 🙁 but as camille suggested, since farming methods are likely at fault, do non-conventional methods – e.g. organic – satisfy this environmental shortcoming?
on another note, what about human-emitted methane that results from eating certain staples in a vegeterian diet – does that not offset to some extent 🙂
i don’t see how this is so if they’re just looking at bare statistics re greenhouse gas emissions, unless those numbers are skewed in some way motivated by a bias against meat-eating.
Harbeer, that analysis, however, totally ignores the other environmentally detrimental impacts of non-meat food production. I’m not trying to be an instigator, I just think PETA in particular glosses over the environmental negatives of veganism/vegetarianism in favor of a “eating meat is morally repugnant.” The environment is popular right now, so framing it as an environmental issue is repugnant. I think there are completely valid moral, ethical, etc., reasons for people to choose veganism/vegetarianism, but it’s not wholly accurate to say that they are environmentally less destructive than meat production. One of the most environmentally friendly ways to get your food would be to only eat plants and animals that grow indigenously in your area… which kind of puts us back to the hunter/gatherer diet. A lot of people live in areas that, without the advent of technology, would normally be totally inhospitable to large human settlements, and yet we do it anyway.
As a vegetarian who promotes vegetarianism through discourse, I’m not so sure that I would draw the conclusion that meat-eating promotes global warming. Meat eating certainly causes waste of more energy, but its effect on global warming is not quantifiable, since global warming itself may be a bit of a myth.
Just today, the WSJ reported that NASA tried to fudge data to hide the fact that the warmest recent years were in the 1930’s, and not in the 1990’s as Gore’s convinient lie states.
M. Nam
Sorry my last post was unclear. I think PETA is trying to frame this as an environmental issue couched in their standard “meat is immoral” argument. And, by extension, because environmentalism is becoming a sexier topic, they’re trying to broaden the appeal of their campaign. Sorry if that came out disjointed or confusing.
Does it matter that it’s not just PETA? I respect the Humane Society, though I’m sure one of you will read this comment and immediately post a link which will convince me why I shouldn’t. From the same NYT article:
And what about the bolded part?
If it’s a U.N. report, it must be partial and impeachable.
M. Nam
I don’t mean to come off as dismissive just because PETA is one of the organizations promoting this finding. I’m not surprised by the argument, and in general I think meat production, specifically in the U.S., is detrimental from a health and environmental standpoint. I just wanted to acknowledge that “regular” agrarian production can be super harmful, also, especially if you take the U.S. food system in isolation. ANNA, do you know if this is the report NYT is citing? Or is it this one?
I think one can come to a similar global warming conclusion for a plant/vegetarian diet, if one went ahead and tried to study it from that perspective (as in energy/resources required to grow plants and Camille gave some good examples). Give me ethics and morals about eating animals, but this kind of article which does not even explain how that conclusion was reached does nothing for me.
Actually, as I understand it, it’s less to do with raising the cows and more to do with eating them. Indian cows in particular are pretty bad because they eat mainly grass. So the rest of you veggies, especially the ovo-lacto types, but also even the vegans who don’t want to commit bovinicide are not off the hook …
Camille, I think it’s your middle/second/”this” link. 🙂
The methane produced by livestock a giant contributor to greenhouse gases and India is at top of the class with most cattle in the world. A large volume of cattle (the root cause), if I’m interpreting this correctly, is the problem. This would include uses for eating meat and dairy product, right? What’s the difference between cattle produced for meat or for dairy? Do the ones destined for the chop house fart more?
If everyone was vegan now, THEN you’d have the desired effect of ‘reducing’ greenhouse emissions. I don’t think that’s happening anytime soon.
Of the UN report, the Times says only this (and doesn’t provide a link): “In late November, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization issued a report stating that the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.”
From this, we infer that it is trucking and other internal-combustion engines in the livestock industry that are bad for the environment. But again, if all the farms that raised cows and chickens were suddenly given over to soybean/tofu production, the net drop in greenhouse gases wouldn’t be huge.
Of course, the livestock business generates more emissions than other forms of transportation–it’s a huge industry.
It’s a really silly and lightweight article in the Times, which doesn’t investigate the claims made by PETA and other groups beyond referencing (but not actually quoting) the UN study. It would fail Journo 101 at any decent j-school. It’s little more than “some people say” . . .
it’s not just Peta, i think. meat production, in its current form – with the sheer size and means of production, is far more energy intensive at that scale (not to mention cruel in many cases). land is diverted to grow the grain etc. to just feed the animals. they use more water. if i remember correctly from reading a Worldwatch paper, the meat industry contributes heavily to depletion of the water table in some areas. isn’t this what’s happening in brazil – the rainforest is being cut down in huge swathes to expand large-scale cattle farms, a source of tension between indigenous tribes there and land-hungry cattle ranches. it would be hard for any form of food production to be 100 percent carbon neutral, but i do think the evidence so far shows that meat production outstrips other food production. the effect of thousands of animals on the actual earth is also a factor. this author, who was on jon stewart, says that the increasing appetite for cashmere from china, has resulted in hordes of goats being kept there, and their hooves have now led to increasing desertification. and don’t some form of lentils/pulses have more protein per ounce than some meats?
I think its the classic food pyramid argument behind why meat is bad. More calories get wasted in feeding higher ups in the food chain.
Err, you don’t need Tofu to be vegetarian. Veggies by themselves taste quite good actually.
Unfortunately, I love my meat much and I say we just spend all the money we thinking of using for Global Warming technologies to instead head to Mars
“but again, if all the farms that raised cows and chickens were suddenly given over to soybean/tofu production, the net drop in greenhouse gases wouldn’t be huge.”
true, any monoculture is bad. however, i think meat production in its current incarnation is still more wasteful because of the energy inputs just to raise, say, one beef cattle as opposed to growing one soybean plant. i don’t think this should be approached purely in terms of greenhouse gases.
Isn’t part of the problem also the animal waste products, hormones, antibiotics and chemicals? The pesticides which are needed for the extra grain, to feed the cows…?
Soybeans don’t get hormones or antibiotics pumped in to them, right?
I can recommend two excellent books that I’ve read recently on food issues. 1. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan 2. The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer
The first one has an excellent chapter devoted to Polyface Farm and how they raise cows, poultry which in my opinion is very enlightening (at least it was for me).
Peter Singer’s book explores (among other things) some common slogans like “buy locally” and actually comes up with some surprising results in some cases, where it may take more energy to produce out-of-season foods locally than transporting them from another state.
Check out your local library for these books – good summer reading.
then again, you can eat organic berries/flowers flown in from thousands of miles away – great to have the choice but also wasteful in its own way.
Not sure about the environmental aspects but it has become a big bone of contention between the developed and developing nations trade wise. For eg. a contention is that US grown cotton is much cheaper due to subsidies and is dumped into the international market and thus cotton grown sans subsidies is unable to compete and thus farmers from developing countries suffer. While the US advocates the free markets paradigm, local politics has so far not allowed politicians here to do away with these subsidies which are contrary to free market global trade.
Camille sez:
I’m not sure I follow what you’re trying to argue. You’re right that there are no doubt many factors that go into how environmentally damaging different types of food production can be. For example, organic beef from a nearby farm may be less harmful to the environment than veggies that have been flown in from across the world. But the argument the animal rights folks are making is that all other variables being equal, meat production consumes more resources/is worse for the environment than the production of a comparable amount of vegetarian food.
I’m quite sure that is exactly what they are doing — I doubt anyone would deny that. There are different moral arguments — if harm to and siffering of sentient beings doesn’t concern people as much as climate change and harm to the environment, then of course they will use that angle to promote their cause.
Correct, if the goal is to eliminate waste. At best, we can only strive to reduce it by the choices (individual/society) we make.
Also, I think in this discussion we are all taking the scientific facts too seriously (which is a good thing, but is it that important?). To think of it, how many people would debate this as seriously? It will just add to the guilt factor and put a lot more people over the tipping point. I think this is a very clever move on the part of animal rights groups to exploit the current cool fad of ‘saving the planet from green house effects’ to further it’s own objectives for making people turn to vegetarianism. Even if there are enough doubts around their claims, a clever marketing campaign will help them get a lot more people thinking about going meatless and since there wont be any counter advocacy groups which would be pro meat except the actual meat raisers (who are not well liked anyways for their practices), I think these animal rights groups will meet some of their objectives.
Ardy, a corporate PR firm urgently needs you. 😉
“Correct, if the goal is to eliminate waste. At best, we can only strive to reduce it by the choices (individual/society) we make.”
exactly. and it’s not so easy to make those choices either. we’re already buying things imported from various parts of the globe, so why should food/flowers/tea be any different, especially when they come from poorer areas that benefit from growing these things? it’s a conundrum.
I don’t know. Rational and scientific thinking seems to be all the vogue these days, as seen in many comments here. 😉
True. But buying locally usually serves the purpose of buying in-season produce that is usually suited to that particular region’s climate. Obviously, with this method, you’ll get far different (and far more) produce in the pacific northwest as opposed to the southwest or the mid-atlantic region.
Again, true. A massive and sudden switch-over to short-track, light-rail intensive transportation of perishable/non-perishable goods is highly unlikely–the tyranny of long-haul trucking (and the consequent terrors of I-95, and I-81 in addition to many other high-volume trucking routes–believe me, i underwrite excess layers for many of these 3-7,000 unit trucking outfits and see their loss history in gory detail) is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
Agribusiness, in it’s current incarnation, is unlikely to pull back it’s armies of lobbyists if there ever was a congressional push to fundamentally change the way that livestock are raised, slaughtered and brought to market as it currently represents the most cost-effective option. The only thing that could drive this business the other way, is if massive amounts of consumers started to actively choose higher-priced grass-fed beef, free-range chickens (not always a reliable indicator of ‘alternative’ farming methods, but a start) or boutique bacon (yes, the varieties of pigs that have almost died out due to the dominance of one or two in agribusiness).
again, such a mass shift is highly unlikely. Veer shtuck!!!
Actually have done that with some non profits part time 🙂
I recently posted something related to this on my blog, including:
Is that so, though? I haven’t thought of this issue specifically in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, but my understanding has been that raising cows/chickens/other animals consumes far more resources that growing plants, simply because it is far more efficient for humans to grow and eat plants vs. grow plants and eat the animals that feed on the plants. (Admittedly, I have no scientific data to back this up, I’ve generally taken this to be true since hearing about “Diet for a Small Planet” and it certainly makes sense to me.) And if it consumes more resources and energy to produce meat, it would seem to follow that meat production also produces more greenhouse gases ….
anna, you always post the best stuff, thanks…………i’ve gotten sick of telling people that eating meat is the solution to so many of the world’s pressing problems, ie. starvation, destruction of the environment, promotion of violence through de-sensitization to slaughter, not to mention dangerous excesses in testosterone levels…..these are the same people that protest michael vick, these animal eaters. at least he’s got the balls to do his own killing…..i have been saying since this whole save-the-environment campaign began: eating meat is 1000 times more harmful to the environment than all the other destructive elements combined…..people need to remember, the earth and the environment and the planets will all be here long after we’ve destroyed ourselves. damage to the way the world is is just suicide……lastly, i laugh when fat girls complain that models are too thin and b.s. like that…..that, you fat skanks, is how normal people look. normal people don’t ingest big macs and shit like that into their systems. if you’re fat off of eating meat, ie the murder and consumption of innocent animals, you deserve to get laughed at. 90% of athletes and models, the cream of human physiology, do not eat meat. during his twelve year reign as middleweight champion bernard hopkins, one of the feircest gladiators in history, kept a vegetarian diet.
There’s produce grown using green-houses which is considered local. When it comes to food choices, it’s a complex issue and it’s not my goal to convince anyone to become a vegetarian, other than to recommend books that I read and found useful. Read them (or not) and make your own decisions. Any argument will pretty soon devolve into the standard cheat-sheet reasons on both sides, which I’m least interested in participating. 🙂
Ardy, I knew it! 🙂
“I think its the classic food pyramid argument behind why meat is bad. More calories get wasted in feeding higher ups in the food chain”
Here’s another way of looking at the classic food pyramid argument.
Has any vegan ever thought about cellulose? The organic compound which makes up the cell wall in plant cells. Isn’t cellulose indigestible,hence the fiber.
Don’t animals that live on a predominantly plant based diet have multiple chambers(stomachs) in their digestive systems to break down cellulose.
Don’t a lot of them ruminate.?
Can a pound of lettuce disseminate more calories than a pound of animal fat?(Please know that Calories are a unit of measure of energy and not something evil)
If the classic food pyramid argument should work, shouldn’t the lions, tigers,the bears and the snakes of this world just stop hunting abruptly and start munching on the flora around them .
They may not be as smart as you extremist “vegans” are but it shouldn’t take even a dumb animal more than a few thousand years to figure out that eating grass is more efficient.And that is only if you believe the ridiculous Abrahamic relions’ theory that the earth is only six to eight thousand years.
If you give some though to how humans(not man) must have evolved, can you not see that they survived and hence evolved only because they were oppurtunistic, that is omnivorous?
Doesn’t that make veganism unnatural and unlike human beings?
But as someone who believes human morality which definitely and constantly evolves as unlike most people who look up to the great surveilance camera in the sky for their dose of morality,factory farming is not something that makes me comfortable.
One last point ,I don’t understand how people who just shut their eyes and ears when someone questions their illogical faith ,preach their morality so brazenly.
Veganism is nice ,please keep at it.I hope one day the whole world is vegan.But please don’t be so smug abott something when hardly half the exaggerated health benefits and enviroment friendliness you claim is true.
Veganism is great ,but someone must put an end to the vegan hypocrisy.How many times have you come across a vegan ranting against animal slaughter when they themselves are sporting shoes made of cow hide or wearing leather belts or boasting of leather seats in their pimp rides or wearing make up tested on animals and last but the best, popping pill that have animal products in them in addition to them being tested on animals.
Eating flesh when you can eat veggies is anyway deplorable. ( I might not pester a theist to become an atheist but I’ll always bite the non veggies ) Another thing that i don’t quite get here is the way the public transport system is so bad, that alone causes so many cars – with only one passenger inside – on the road, especially outside the cities.
i wonder how fish and other seafood factor into this, if at all. ecology is complicated!
One thing that can help humans reduce carbon footprint is to reduce CONSUMPTION no matter what we consume. As for meat/fish/poultry etc., does the research account for how much is actually consumed and how much is wasted?
IMHO if meat eaters only consume what they need and not waste food, these numbers would look a lot better.
“at least he’s got the balls to do his own killing.”
i wouldn’t be so charitable. what he did was despicable and cowardly and his insincere “apology”, once it dawned on him that his lucrative career was in mortal danger (and only because of public pressure and not seemingly any real conscience on the part of some in the sports world), was revolting.
@camille,
peta is being simplistic about this, but as a rule of thumb they have a point. the lower in the food chain you eat, the less impact you have on the environment.
basically if you eat a cow, the cow eats corn. the cost of eating the cow also includes the corn the cow eats—this cost cannot be less than you eating the corn itself because energy cannot be created. usually if you want 1 calorie from eating your cow, the cow has to consume 10 calories. (10% of energy is transmitted each level in the food chain as a rule of thumb).
so organic farming etc. doesn’t help—it is not inefficiency in farming, rather the inefficiency of animals converting what they eat into their meat that is standing in your way. it could be that it is impossible to raise food for human consumption in a particular area, which means you may land up going the animal route if you want to eat local. or you could trade with places that do grow food, in which case you add up costs of transport. now it is not 100% clear what is good.
on the other hand, if the meat industry were not subsidized so heavily, economics would take care of the environmental cost. that would be a sustainable option, but then you wouldn’t be getting hamburgers for 99c either. meat would be expensive, and rightly so. as would lychees imported from china.
there is a point peta has here. just not as simple as make everyone vegetarian.
And exactly whom was this gem for?
Sorry to be joining party unfashionably late.
Some idiots have claimed that walking produces more greenhouse gases than driving. Yes, you read that right. Here’s the quote: