| CCF posted its article on its site, titling it It's Time to Call Out the United Nations' Food Agenda. Oh my, look at that fake outrage. Cute.
Debunking the Numbers
First the article goes into "debunking" the idea that 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions come from meat. Let's take a look at his sources.
He uses quotes and numbers from 3 people: James Panton, Steve Dubé, and David Martosko. Of the three, only Dubé seems like he might not be an asshole with an agenda.
James Panton:
James Panton is a tutor in politics at St John's College, Oxford and co-convenor of the Battle of Ideas. He is co-founder of the Manifesto Club and sits on the steering committee of Pro-Test, the Oxford-based group which campaigns in defence of vivisection. - Source
Vivisection is one of the sickest practices I've ever heard of, up there with waterboarding. I checked out the site of the Manifesto Club - more on that in a minute. The article by Panton CCF quotes from is Why I've Got a Beef With Going Vegetarian. (Note that Panton claims the UN wants him to go veg, whereas the suggestion of the UN was merely to give up meat one day a week voluntarily.)
Over the past few years, we have all got used to being hectored by the environmental lobby about the 'small sacrifices' we should make to our daily routine in order to reduce our carbon footprint: take public transport, think about 'holidaying at home', don't leave your TVs and computers on standby, wash your clothes at a lower temperature, and so on. But surely things are getting surreal when the head of the UN's Nobel Peace Prize-winning climate science project starts demanding that we should all turn veggie?
If you read through the Manifesto Club's manifesto (quoted below), you'll notice that they take issue with environmentalists:
Environmentalism has developed from a fringe political movement to a mainstream worldview that informs policy at the highest levels. This worldview characterises humanity as an arrogant, destructive force, wantonly despoiling the planet and incapable of managing its long-term affairs. It assumes that any interference in the 'natural order' of things will bring the whole fragile edifice crashing down.
We are told that the key to the good life is living in harmony with nature. 'Ethical living' guides warn against everything from wine to flowers, from certain types of fish to foreign holidays. The good life in these terms means counting carbon credits and making as little impact on the world as possible. These mean-spirited prescriptions take the joy out of life.
Environmentalism fosters a hostile attitude towards other human beings. The aspirations of the Chinese people are cast as a threat to the delicate balance of the ecosystem; discussion of the 'population problem' presents humans as a plague that should be limited. Some environmentalists casually consider the prospect of the extinction of the human species. In turn, they present the present generation as the curse of future generations.
There is no pristine state of eco-harmony to which we can return: the history of the Earth has been defined by change and extinction. Furthermore, we are not and never can be just another 'part of nature'. It is in our nature as human beings to inhabit a world increasingly of our own making.
Working to ensure that the world I inherited will support life when future generations arrive is meanspirited and hostile? If you say so.
Panton does a good job citing his sources. He got his numbers from a Welsh journalist, Steve Dubé (farming editor at a leading Welsh paper, Western Mail):
But a closer look shows that one-third of that 18% is accounted for by the effects of destroying the Amazon rain forest to produce just 1% of the world's beef. That means the rest of world livestock farming accounts for about 12% of greenhouse gas emissions. In Britain the true figure for meat and dairy farming is just 8%.
In contrast, UK transport accounts for 33% of emissions. It's a pity figures like Dr Pachouri and Mr Benn don't check their targets before casting their stones.
I've emailed him to ask where he gets his numbers but got an auto-reply that he's out of the country until October.
The third source is CCF employee David Martosko, who claims that the US's emissions from meat may be as low as 2.4% of all emissions. That comes from another article on the CCF site. Letter to the Editor he wrote:
While the United Nations claims that global livestock production may account for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, data from the Environmental Protection Agency show that here at home, domestic meat production only contributes 2.4 percent. Since American farmers are far more eco-friendly than their counterparts overseas, eating home-grown meat is a great way to be "green."
So - throwing out the number cited by Martosko but keeping in mind that perhaps Dubé might be right, CCF has talked the threat of domestic meat production on our global climate down to about the level of cars, planes, boats, and trains. I'm not quite so certain that the 6% attributed to deforestation of the Amazon can be discounted that easily, but whatever. (70% of previously forested land in the Amazon is now used for grazing... no doubt some of that meat is to meet the demand of first world nations.)
Even if meat were equal to cars, etc, that would still mean we need to curb our meat habit if we're going to solve the global warming problem, right? Giving up 20% of the meat in your diet is like switching from a sedan to a Prius, and nobody thinks buying a Prius is a dumb idea.
Attacking Based on Jobs
That nasty U.N. obviously forgot about the 1.3 billion people who make a living off the land when they asked us to cut back on meat. That's the next argument CCF makes. Are they freaking kidding me?
This one came from a Boris Johnson quote in a UK newspaper (he's the conservative mayor of London). I can give it a quick and easy response. In developing nations in which people live off the land the same way their ancestors did generations before, I don't think anyone is attacking their production of meat or asking them to stop. They are raising animals sustainably, as humans did from the start of civilization until about 50 years ago.
And what about the jobs for people who are raising animals unsustainably? Well, I don't think anyone will mourn the disappearance of low paying, nasty, dangerous slaughterhouse jobs. The green economy is about creating jobs - sustainable ones - to replace and add to the unsustainable ones we're doing away with. And meat's not going anywhere. If you're so well paid that you get to whine about your love for meat in a top newspaper, then no matter how high the price of meat gets you can still gorge yourself on it day in and day out.
But Meat is Nutritious!
Ah yes. It's nutritious. We evolved to eat it. Of course, that is true. When you look back in our family tree you find some herbivorous human ancestors and they went extinct. Fair enough point.
I'll just shoot back that we didn't evolve to eat this much meat. Per capita meat consumption doubled in the last 50 years. I could go on about this as I work in health care and I get to see the consequences of the average American crap diet day in and day out and they are heartbreaking. But I'd rather address the actual quote cited by CCF, just because it is SO stupid that I can't help it:
University of New Mexico researchers, among others, have... stat[ed] that [our] prehistoric dietary shift to meat led to the unique qualities of human existence, including increased brain capacities, an extended juvenile period in which to furnish the brain, and a much longer lifespan.
Do you love how they are attributing our large brain to meat eating? Let me explain. The herbivorous Australopithecine species had absolutely massive jaws and very large temporalis muscles that attached from their jaws to the tops of their skulls. Some species even had crests atop their heads (sagittal crests), right along the line where the muscles attached. For example, Australopithecus robustus:
A. robustus had a body similar to that of africanus, but a larger and more robust skull and teeth. It existed between 2 and 1.5 million years ago. The massive face is flat or dished, with no forehead and large brow ridges. It has relatively small front teeth, but massive grinding teeth in a large lower jaw. Most specimens have sagittal crests. Its diet would have been mostly coarse, tough food that needed a lot of chewing.
In the course of evolution, these guys lost out. Without all of that extra bone and muscle that our veggie relatives had, the species that evolved into humans ultimately evolved a large brain (I think I've heard some say the need for the large brain was due to hunting - and therefore meat eating).
To say that we didn't evolve to eat meat would be stupid, but to say we require it in our diet in order to have a large brain as this CCF article implies is equally stupid. The brain's already here. We've got it. For the most part, humans aren't evolving any more. If we did, perhaps we'd evolve smaller brains because lord knows we aren't subsistence hunters anymore (most of us, anyway).
You need a different argument if you want to say that we need meat for nutrition reasons. And here's my response to that. At some point, humans need vitamin B12, and that comes from animal products (unless you take supplements or drink fortified soy milk). Other than that, the flexibility of the human diet has served us very well over the course of our existence. When it makes sense to eat meat, we can. But if meat is scarce, we can do without it.
About 4 to 6 oz a day can be a good thing in your diet, but more than that isn't necessary and in many cases isn't even healthy. It's not just about whether or not the meat is good for you, but it's also about what you're not eating. If your diet is mostly meat, then you probably aren't getting enough of everything else - fruits, veggies, nuts, whole grains, etc. Ketchup isn't a vegetable anymore, so at some point you need to eat something other than meat.
For comparison, here's the fair and balanced coverage of the UN's request to go meatless once a week from Fox News. After reading CCF's skewed view of the world, Fox News actually does seem fair and balanced. |
