29th August
2007
“switching to a plant-based diet does more to curb global warming than switching from an S.U.V. to a Camry,”
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It’s not so much the carbon emissions alone that concern the modern environmentalist. It is the dependence on foreign energy.
I think there are some excellent points in this article, and I think that agra-fuels are not the right solution either. But I think that more needs to be done on the hybrid market (as well as the “super-hybrid” something that would use fuel cells, modern batteries, and fossil fuels). I think we need to do more in the way of “micro” generation like they do in Germany with solar farms, or perhaps more wind generation and off shore combination tidal and wind plants… There is sooo much we can do beyond becoming a vegan.
When I was in high school I was in debate. Every weekend we’d skip friday’s and travel to some nearby podunk town in kansas to toss theoretical insults and randomly strewn together facts at each other in the hopes of swaying the mind of some community judge that really didn’t even know where her truck was parked, let alone what the fuck we were talking about.
Sometimes things got sticky. Sometimes we almost lost.
During these extreme moments of life or death high school extracurricular activities we’d pull out a universal argument as a last ditch effort to win the round.
Alternate Causality.
AC Arguments (jargon) attacked the harms of the case. Harms are presented as problems, the case the solution. The thing is that if you are addressing the wrong problem, you can’t fix it. So sometimes we’d go in and prove that the thing the other team was saying was wrong by completely sidestepping actual argumentation, which would normally win us the round.
This is that. An alternate causality argument.
I would say that this little gem actually was produced to discredit the “environmentalist” propaganda by pointing out there are worse things than auto emissions.
By pointing out this universal truth (everyone eats) they are essentially saying there’s a larger reason for carbon emissions/runoff/end of the world scenario than cars. It’s those damn dirty people who are eating in a very omnivorish way.
A sort of look-over-here tactic for people targeting the clean, wholesome, fiscally sound auto industry.
If you want something interesting that’s closely related do some research on the agricultural implications of moving to ethanol as an alternate fuel source. Some of that shit is downright scary.
It wasn’t my intention to pose the issue as an either/or scenario. There are many things that need to be done to slow global warming appreciably. Reducing the gasoline you use - either by driving a car with decent efficiency or driving less. Riding your bike or walking wherever you can. Reducing your electricity use. Sorry folks, but eating less meat does need to be put on the list of personal choices that can reduce global warming.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. put out a report in 2006 on the environmental impacts of livestock, called Livestock’s Long Shadow. Below is an excerpt of their magazine’s report summary.
“Using a methodology that considered the entire commodity chain, FAO estimated that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport. It accounts for nine percent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, most of it due to expansion of pastures and arable land for feed crops. It generates even bigger shares of emissions of other gases with greater potential to warm the atmosphere: as much as 37 percent of anthropogenic methane, mostly from enteric fermentation by ruminants, and 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide, mostly from manure.”
http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm
The FAO is a well respected international agency. Their reports I read on global fisheries issues are always based in good science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fao
I don’t agree with some groups (PETA for example), that is using this as a claim that animal products should never be food. Some animals are needed on a sustainable farm. I am just saying that the amount of meat that this country and many others consume is unsustainable for many reasons - one of which is the effect on global warming. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan and Diet for a New America are great books that cover these issues.
Global warming is a tough issue - mostly because it requires very abrupt changes in Americans’ behaviors. We have to reduce our personal impact a lot to make up for the increasing population worldwide and the increasing footprint of developing nations. And then reduce even more to send global warming backwards. Add to that the positive feedback loops involved in global warming and it becomes apparent that some changes need to occur today. That’s why I found this so interesting - it is a change a person could make very quickly. We can’t go on with business as usual while we’re waiting for long-term governmental or industrial changes.