Is This a Good Idea? Do we all need to become vegetarians to fight global warming?

November 10, 2009

After you get done marveling at the record-breaking 185-pound cheeseburger cooked and garnished earlier this year by a Detroit-area sports bar, consider the controversial change in our diets recently advocated by Professor Lord Stern of Brentford, the economist who formerly served as the UK government’s top advisor on the impacts of climate change. He’s the same Lord Stern whose ominous 2006 report predicted that global warming’s unabated effects would eat up 20 percent of the planet’s economic output and cause millions of people to go hungry. In a provocative interview with the Times UK newspaper, Stern argued that raising animals for meat is a significant contributor to the greenhouse effect that causes global warming. He pointed out that animal waste and flatulence releases vast quantities of methane, a gas that is even more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat. If we want to stave off the impending climate catastrophe, Lord Stern said, we soon will have to give up meat completely, and switch to a vegetarian diet.

He predicted that people’s attitudes would evolve until meat eating became unacceptable:

“I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating,” he said. “I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student. People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.”

But Lord Stern isn’t content to wait for the public to embrace the environmental virtues of vegetarianism. He’d like to see the upcoming UN climate change conference in Copenhagen put taxes on meat--and other foods with a high carbon cost--that would discourage people from eating them.

If you want more background on Lord Stern’s reasoning, here’s a sobering report on the environmental effects of meat cultivation and consumption by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Lord Stern’s proposition immediately provoked an outcry on both sides of the Atlantic. The Times web site was inundated with hundreds of scathing comments from carnivorous Brits outraged at the prospect of giving up bangers and mash, steak-and-kidney pie and the other bizarre items that pass for cuisine on their island. Columnist Christopher Booker of the conservative Daily Mail newspaper in the UK accused Lord Stern of vastly exaggerating the amount of methane from cattle flatulence, and proclaimed that “the claims of all these veg-obsessives don't stand up to scientific scrutiny.” In the US, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck ranted that the Copenhagen conference could mean “the end of U.S. sovereignty,” and depicted Stern’s proposal as part of an international anti-animal protein cabal that also included Baltimore school officials who recently began offering “Meatless Monday” vegetarian meals in school cafeterias once a week. To Lord Stern, Beck offered this impassioned riposte:

"Good, eat your carrot. I’m going to have a steak. Americans love our steaks, we love our chops, we love our burgers, and I ain’t gonna stop till you throw me in jail, my last meal will be a giant steak!"

But it wasn’t only global warming pooh-poohers like Beck who disagreed with Lord Stern. A New York Times op-ed article by rancher Nicolette Hahn Niman, author of the book “Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms, pointed out that vegetarian diets can also contribute to global warming. The soy substitutes upon which many non-meat eaters depend for protein sometimes are grown on land carved out of the Amazon rainforest, and carbon dioxide is emitted transporting them from Brazil to U.S. consumers.

Moreover, Niman wrote, carnivores don’t have to feel guilty about accelerating global warming, so long as they stop buying meat from animals crammed into pens in giant factory farms, and instead dine on meat from small local farms, whose proprietors raise animals with in an old-fashioned, less environmentally destructive fashion.

"To a rancher like me, who raises cattle, goats and turkeys the traditional way (on grass), the studies show only that the prevailing methods of producing meat — that is, crowding animals together in factory farms, storing their waste in giant lagoons and cutting down forests to grow crops to feed them — cause substantial greenhouse gases. It could be, in fact, that a conscientious meat eater may have a more environmentally friendly diet than your average vegetarian."

So what’s the truth here? Is Lord Stern a visionary savior of civilization, or a supercilious tofu-monger? Is Glenn Beck right that eating big slabs of marbled beef a matter of personal choice, or are future generations going to revile him as an enabler of the self-centered,short-sighted gluttons who helped devastate the planet? Or is Niman correct in saying that there’s an environmentally conscious way to consume meat?

If you’re expecting me to take a side, well, I have to confess that I’m feeling a bit conflicted here. I switched to a mostly vegetarian diet a few years back -- not because of concerns about climate change, but because I felt increasingly uncomfortable taking one cute, loveable species of mammal for a walk in the park, and sticking another, equally cute and loveable species between halves of a sesame seed bun slathered in mayonnaise. On the other hand, I have a wife who needs an iron-rich diet, and a 10-year-old son from Vietnam who has what may be a hereditary craving for pork ribs. (You can imagine how complicated it gets at mealtime in my household.) So just tell me what you think, below. Don’t be bashful.

Comments

[Lyn Silarski]

I think it would be best to enlist the methods of Pavlov rather than tax meat. It would be quicker and humans would get a taste of what it's like to be an animal headed for slaughter.

And besides humans aren't that cute either! ;-)

[Astroboy]

I like burgers!

[Mothra]

No, I think that it's the sort of rampant consumption and factory farming that's the problem. ..people who raise meat on an old fashioned farm, where the animals are not raised in horrible conditions, and land isn't misused, aren't the problem.

[Mothra]

No, I think that it's the sort of rampant consumption and factory farming that's the problem. ..people who raise meat on an old fashioned farm, where the animals are not raised in horrible conditions, and land isn't misused, aren't the problem.

[Susan Shepherd]

Our family tries to eat healthy. We do not eat much meat but probably serve it maybe 2-3 times a week. As a women I find I definitely crave meat - most likely for the iron. I would prefer to (but don't lways) get my meat from small local farms as opposed to factory farms. I feel this way mostly because I don't like the abuses of factory farming. I must be honest - I don't really consider the environment much when purchasing meat.

[elfuego1957]

The future generations will have plenty to revile Glenn Beck over. As for me & meat: "From My Cold Dead Hands!!"

[OergonMJW]

McDonalds, as an example, and several other worldwide burger purveyors get a lot of their meat product from places like Brazil. There, they've relentlessly cut down forest to provide more ranch land. Sure the cattle are grass fed, but entire "countries" worth of precious oxygen producing subtropical forest is gone, together with all of it pharmaceutical value, all of its living creatures - many endangered. Next time you bite into a piece of fast food meat, mark down an acre; an acre of ground on the face of the globe that YOU probably helped strip of life. Oh, and while you’re at it, let's mark down another 1/2 acre at least for the paper products the meat is surrounded by. Fries with that?

[Carol Clayton]

Although every time I eat meat raised the "big collective" way I think I should go veggie, this isn't the answer. I believe raising animals humanely, letting cows eat grass, not grain, is the way to go. If you think about it, buying organically and humanely raised meat and dairy products carries its own tax-that goes to the people who raise it. From all standpoints meat free would suit most people-and yet I love the taste. Go figure. But I eat roughly 25% of the meat I ate growing up, and so do my children.

[Gabriella]

Astroboy: Clever remark. I'm impressed.
Carol: Meat production is still not really good for the environment no matter how "humanely" (strange word really) they are raised.
To everyone: It takes a much smaller area to grow a certain amount of vegetable protein as it takes to grow the same amount of animal protein. How will we address the problem with feeding earth's growing population without reducing meat production?

[Converned Omnivore]

I agree with Carol. One big problem with going totally vegetarian or vegan is that most of those people are reliant upon soy protein. A lot of our soy is grown on deforested land in Brazil, so they're contributing to global warming without even realizing it. If you give up beef, which is the most resource-intensive meat, and replace it with chicken or turkey raised in free-range fashion on local small non-factory farms, you're probably doing as much or more to protect the environment.

[Astroboy]

Meat is murder!

[\##@$$$%%]

Astroboy is a real MEATHEAD.

[Recent Convert]

1) A vegetarian diet is very good for your health (see The China Study by Thomas Campbell)
2) A vegetarian diet is good for the climate (see above)
3) A vegetarian diet is good for the animals (duh!)
4) A vegetarian diet is very good for your conscience (see 1, 2, and 3)

[Astroboy]

Meat is good, too, especially with barbeque sauce.

[Caffeine Driven Stress Magnet]

I think Lord Stern has a point. We've got to start thinking about the environmental consequences of our consumption patterns. I am trying to reduce my use of animal products to the point where I'm a complete vegan. I already feel much healthier too.

[Caffeine Driven Stress Magnet]

I think Lord Stern has a point. We've got to start thinking about the environmental consequences of our consumption patterns. I am trying to reduce my use of animal products to the point where I'm a complete vegan. I already feel much healthier too.

[Natural Man]

Humans have been eating meat since prehistoric times. The problem is factory farms and our unnatural industrial society. Everybody should go back to raising chickens and goats in their backyards, and butchering them and eating them themselves. That's what people still do in many parts of the world.

[Gary Warner]

Locally grown is more of an answer than a complete ban. When it is profitable for someone to bring e coli infested entrails up from Brazil to be mixed in hamburger that would eventually be sold to Sam's Club and make people sick (see NYT cover story a few Sundays ago), then something is vastly wrong with the economic food chain.

[Gary Warner]

Excuse..entrails were from Argentina, not Brazil.