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A climate change conference is compromised by absurdity and outright fraud, thus undermining the legitimate case for action.
Dr. Gurminder Singh is an active and you might say ever present member of the Los Angeles green community. Among other roles and ventures, he is co-chairman of the Green Technology Institute. Today, Dr. Singh sits on a stage in a West Hollywood theater. He is a featured guest for the SOS Climate Change International Conference, which is being promoted and organized by EcoFoodprint.org. In addition to Dr. Singh, the panel includes Dr. Jim Stewart of the Sierra Club and Professor Ryan Galt of UC Davis, and they are laying out the case for climate change action.
Dr. Singh starts by claiming we’ve already crossed the tipping point, which is a pretty controversial position. On a screen above the stage, the event’s special honored guest is attending via live webcast and cell phone. She disagrees with Dr. Singh. In fact, according to Supreme Master Ching Hai, we are exactly three years and four months (or was it four years and three months?) away from the climate change tipping point. How does she know this? Because she meditated on it.
For most reasonable adults, that’s the cue to find the nearest exit. But we stay and listen to Doctors Stewart and Galt make their respective cases. Both emphasize the contribution livestock makes in terms of greenhouse gases, especially methane and nitrous oxide. In the aggregate, livestock has a greater impact on global warming than the entire transportation sector i.e. planes, trains, and automobiles. Which means that simply eating less meat can potentially reduce your carbon footprint more than driving a Prius. Professor Galt presents plenty of excellent data about the energy and fossil fuel inputs that go into growing feed grains, raising livestock, and delivering meat to the dinner table. The panel then opens to questions from the audience.
Do they ask the scientist about his data? No. Do they ask the policy expert about policy? No. Each question is directed to the so-called Supreme Master, who is more than happy to pull answers out of her ass and feed them to her “followers” like so much genetically modified feed to cattle.
You can see where we’re going with this. Who the hell is Ching Hai, and what qualifies her as a Supreme Master? Is she the Reverend Moon of green? Is she building a LEED-certified Jonestown? Should we steer clear of the Kool-Aid? That’s certainly the way it seems, and it does nothing but undermine legitimate efforts to combat climate change. Fortunately, it doesn’t appear that her reach amounts to much. She was preaching to the choir in this theater of a couple hundred, and her website gets about 12K unique visitors on its best month according to Compete.com. Hai’s lemming followers will defend her humanitarian efforts, which are legitimate. However, it does not excuse, nor do we have a tolerance for, blind following and cult-like behavior, regardless of it’s otherwise noble aspects or whether it’s a couple thousand people or a cool billion. Especially when it attempts to co-opt science for its own twisted agenda.
That said, we can still have a reasonable debate about the impact of the agriculture industry as a whole on global climate change, human health, and our economy.
One of the problems with this event in general is that the “vegan elite” have adopted global warming as just another way to push their “meat is murder” agenda. We have no problem with vegans and vegetarians. These are virtuous ways to live. But we do have a problem with zealotry and dogma. We touched on this a bit with Green & Clean Mom about environmentalism as a religion. It’s a dead end. The “vegan elite” wants to push its agenda based on moral grounds, but that doesn’t hold water. Because not only would they make the consumption of meat illegal, they’d also ban any type of medical testing. Which leaves two choices: test on humans or don’t test at all and eliminate any prospect for cures to cancer, AIDS, malaria, etc. Sorry, but these diseases will not be cured by a vegan diet alone. (Though we do acknowledge these diets to be very healthy ways to live.) Since livestock just happens to be a source of greenhouse gases and since global warming has spurred a global consensus, the “vegan elite” find it convenient to hijack climate change for their own ends. We’re not buying it.
So let’s not confuse the issues. If a vegan wants to argue that eating meat is immoral, go for it. But if they want to argue that eating meat is bad for our health and the planet, it’s another set of issues with a different set of implications. The former necessarily leads to a vegan lifestyle. The latter leads to more sustainable farming practices and more balanced diets, much of which can be accomplished through awareness and good policy.
The MC of the event, local television news journalist Jane Velez-Mitchell, questions why Vice President Al Gore doesn’t advocate for vegetarianism or veganism in his efforts. We can only speculate, but since Gore is a politician at heart he knows how that would go over. It would undermine his credibility and his message. He’s practical and realistic. Plus, his diet probably includes reasonable amounts of meat. After all, Gore doesn’t support a ban on driving or flying. He supports driving less in more efficient cars where the full price of pollution is priced into every gallon or megawatt and where we have clean alternatives available. Which brings us to Mr. Howard Lyman.
Lyman is the keynote speaker for the event, and he makes an impressive speech. He’s a cattle-rancher-turned-vegan, and his story is quite inspiring. Lyman is a walking library of information about farming and agribusiness. His central claim is that “chemically based agricultural production methods today are unsustainable, and therefore ecologically disastrous.” Which is true across the agricultural board. One of his more sobering claims is that euthanized dogs and cats are ground up to feed beef cattle. And that’s only the most troubling claim. However, this still does not imply nor prove that livestock cannot be raised sustainably and ethically. As with energy, it’s not all or nothing. But many things have to change.
The first question for Lyman was concerning a carbon tax on beef. His response was that not only should there be a tax, but we should end excessive farm subsidies. Just as the taxpayer picks up a percentage of every gallon that Exxon sells, we also foot part of the bill for every Big Mac. As with energy, this has a direct impact on the environment, our health, and our economy because the true costs of raising and consuming beef–especially fast-food beef–are not factored into the price. A 99-cent burger should cost five to 10 times as much. Some of that would take the form of a carbon tax (or its methane equivalent), which is politically difficult, but just as much would come from ending corporate welfare, which shouldn’t be difficult at all. When meat becomes more expensive, people will have no choice but to look to cheaper (and healthier) alternatives. We’ve already seen this happen as a result of high gas prices.
We essentially find ourselves squarely in the middle of this debate, ready to call bullshit when either side steps over the line. On one side you have agribusiness that wants to deny that their practices do harm. In fact, they want the government to pick up a large part of the bill. On the other, you have the vegan elite that would make meat consumption illegal across the board. The latter is prone to following false prophets in its quest for meaning, while the former seeks false profits in its quest to gain wealth at everyone else’s expense. Neither is right.
Our position was largely articulated in Food Crisis: The American Story. In particular, we tend to align with Mark Bittman, who makes an excellent case for reducing our personal meat consumption and doing so in a more healthy and sustainable way. He’s not specific in terms of policy but he doesn’t have to be. Eat less meat. Choose your food sources more wisely. For the individual it’s that simple. For government and business, it’s more complex and challenging. When all parts are working together and when we rely on science to guide us, that’s when real change can happen.
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5 responses so far ↓
1 Bernard Brown // Jul 28, 2008 at 4:54 am
It’s incumbent on the mainstream environmental movement to advance “reducing our personal meat consumption and doing so in a more healthy and sustainable way.”
It’s my impression that they’ve avoided the topic of animal product production’s effects on the environment and left the vacuum for what you call the “vegan elite,” to define the issue as status quo vs. abstinence.
Bernard Brown
The PB&J Campaign
2 Jenn Savedge // Jul 28, 2008 at 6:58 am
Superb article. I don’t think the green movement is served well when it is hijacked by zealots who can’t see past their own agenda. That said, I think veganism and vegetarianism are virtuous ways to live…and certainly better for the environment. However, a vegan lifestyle is not the end-all-be-all answer to climate change. And trying to convince folks otherwise damages the cause. Thanks for the insight!
3 John C. // Jul 28, 2008 at 10:59 am
I agree with many of your points regarding blind adherence to dogma. It may even be possible to raise livestock “sustainably”. But I disagree with your contention that livestock can be raised ethically. Ask yourself the tough question about what gives rise to moral standing in any reasonable ethical system, and you may find yourself realizing that sentience, not rationality, entitles a being to at a minimum immunity from suffering. A bolt to the head is a bolt to the head, no matter what type of farm the animal is raised on. Step away from the scent of bacon to realize your brother is burning, brother.
4 Heather Chandler // Jul 28, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Given the current size of the human population, and understanding that it’s only projected to increase, can you really have ethical “sustainable meat”? Couldn’t we go a long way toward alleviating world hunger if we used the land dedicated to animal husbandry for growing grains, beans, vegetables and the like?
5 Ryan Galt // Dec 18, 2008 at 2:07 pm
To say it bluntly, this conference was not what I expected. I had heard of a number of people who were presenting, including Howard Lyman (of Mad Cowboy and Oprah-swearing-off-hamburger fame) and John Raatz (maker of What the Bleep Do We Know?). I heard it would be broadcast via satellite, but thought that would be a side benefit rather than a dominant feature that structured all portions of the conference. Plus, how often does one get invited to Hollywood to give a talk? For these reasons I participated.
As an event in Hollywood, I was hoping that the conference would highlight the issue of animal agriculture’s contribution to global warming. I’m thankful for your honest coverage of the conference, including the important question of environmental and policy strategy.
I’m by no means a vegan, but I am a vegetarian. One of the main reasons for my choice is the inefficiency involved in converting feed to meat in industrial meat production systems. I cannot personally justify converting 16 pounds of grain into one pound of beef [1]. Nor can I justify emissions of about 36 pounds of CO2 equivalent for a pound of beef [2], especially relative to 0.68 pounds CO2 equivalent for the production of a pound of dried peas [3]. Other meats are more efficient than beef generally, but much less so than vegetable protein.
But the way in which animals are raised makes a large difference relative to environmental impact. In terms of sustainable meat production, one of the most impressive things going on is a movement to get back to how humans used to use animals. We used to raise animals in order to convert energy and nutrients that were not readily available to humans – e.g., grazing them on low productivity land that could not be farmed, or feeding them near-rotting food or not easily digestible food by-products. In doing this, humans received meat and also a concentrated form of nutrients (manure) to use on our crops. Humans are smart – this arrangement makes a good deal of sense and has been used by many cultures for millennia. And recently we’ve seen a dramatic increase in this kind of production in the US, such as grass-fed beef based on rotational grazing systems [4]. As part of an overall approach to wise land use decisions for food production, it makes sense to use at least some of the least productive land for grazing [5]. Even with this more sustainable form of meat production, I’d say we in the US still need to greatly reduce our overall meat consumption for both health and environmental reasons, and that only a relatively small amount of meat can be raised in this more sustainable fashion (one reason for its higher price).
The overall point of my presentation was that we need to consider food choices as equally important to our transportation choices in dealing with global warming, both as individuals and as a society that is attempting to tackle the challenge through policy and economic change. Everyone needs to know this, especially those of us in the industrialized world who produce far more than our fair share of global warming gases. One benefit of the conference is that it gave me an opportunity to voice this to an audience larger than an academic conference (including the chance to discuss the issue on this here blog). For that I am thankful. However, I agree with you that vegan elitism and dogma without regard to empirical evidence are not promising ways forward.
References
[1] USDA ERS, cited in Lappé, Frances Moore. 1991. Diet for a small planet. 20th Anniversary ed. New York: Ballantine Books.
[2] Ogino A, Orito H, Shimada K, Hirooka H. 2007. Evaluating environmental impacts of the Japanese beef cow-calf system by the life cycle assessment method. Anim Sci J 78:424–432.
[3] Carlsson-Kanyama, Annika. 1998. Climate change and dietary choices: how can emissions of greenhouse gases from food consumption be reduced? Food Policy 23 (3-4):277-293.
[4] Hassanein, Neva. 1999. Changing the way America farms: Knowledge and community in the sustainable agriculture movement. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
[5] Peters, C. J., J. L. Wilkins, and G. W. Fick. 2007. Testing a complete-diet model for estimating the land resource requirements of food consumption and agricultural carrying capacity: The New York State example. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 22 (02):145-153.
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