FOX News and Animal Advocates on Meat-Eating Environmentalists

I'm not a fan of conservative commentator and Fox News host Glenn Beck. No surprises there--he has been offensive on more fronts and occasions than I can count, and one of his pastimes is trying (futilely) to show that the human activities we know are causing global warming aren't really. And I don't think for a second that in talking about the connections between global warming and a meat- and dairy-loving diet--and the prominent environmentalists who eat that diet--he's hoping to get people to rethink their eating habits. He's just looking for a way to show hypocrisy in his liberal foes (e.g., Al Gore and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.). However, in his efforts to do that, he has, on at least two occasions now, had Matt Prescott from PETA on his show to discuss the global warming impact of meat and dairy consumption and the problem with prominent environmentalists calling for immediate, important changes in the way we live and then refusing to make such an immediate, important change themselves.

How can global warming activists accept and acknowledge that animal agriculture is responsible for roughly 20 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and that switching to a vegan diet does remarkably more to decrease a person's greenhouse gas contributions than, say, switching to a hybrid vehicle or CFLs and then not make that change, a change that is relatively easy to make, that is beneficial on multiple other levels, and that can be made immediately? When we are learning more every day about how dire the climate change situation is, when we are learning and reporting every day that we must pull out all the stops and make enormous changes now, and when we know that animal-based diets are a shockingly significant contributor to global warming, how is it possible that all serious global warming activists aren't making the transition to a plant-based diet and advocating that diet, immediately and often? These are the questions Beck asks, and for one bizarre moment, (conservative) Beck and (predominantly progressive) vegan activists are asking the same questions. (By the way, yes, this is a blog on animal rights, not climate change, but I'll say again what I have said before and will say again--I was an environmentalist before I was an animal rights advocate, and all these issues are, obviously, inextricably tied up together. Exploitation of animals for food is a cause of global warming, pollution, and other environmental destruction; global warming, pollution, and other environmental destruction destroy habitats and kill off other animal species; and on and on it goes.)

Whatever you or I think of some of PETA's tactics and campaigns, we have to give kudos to Prescott for his excellent handling of this interview and previous ones. Erik Marcus at Vegan.com says, "I often slam PETA for their counterproductive publicity efforts, but they do have some great people working for them. Prescott did an outstanding job on Beck’s show. In the last 30 seconds Beck just couldn’t hold out any longer and reverted back to his neocon reactionary schtick, but all in all this video is surprisingly great." Erik is right--it's an excellent interview (right up until Beck transforms back into a jerk by mocking his guest). Watch it below. There's a transcript here, but the video is better.

Image: Animal Aid

Among the many resources on this topic are "Diet and the Environment" at FARM and the "For Our Earth" section at ChooseVeg.com. See also (again) the great Audubon article "The Low-Carbon Diet."

For other global warming information and coverage, see Change.org's Global Warming blog.