Global Warming and Meat: A Debate with a Bite

Writing about the clean-energy potential of pig manure yesterday got me thinking: We've been writing frequently over on the sustainable food blog about the growing consensus that the meat industry is a major contributor to global warming. More and more people are saying what a lot of others don't want to hear: eating a low-meat diet is one of the most effective ways of shrinking your carbon footprint.

The most high-profile figure to expound this idea is the UK's Lord Stern of Brentford, a leading figure in climate change studies, who recently told the Times of London that "Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Stern himself is not a strict vegetarian, which is a great illustration of an important point in this debate: You don't have to disavow meat entirely to start using your eating choices to make a difference on climate change.

According to Grist, if all of the US cut meat out one day a week, it would have the equivalent effect on emissions as taking 8 million cars off the road. A "Meatless Monday" movement is starting to make headway; Baltimore City recently became the first US school system to take on the challenge.

Of course Stern's comments have raised the furies of industry leaders, Big Sky Country elected officials and generally misinformed crazies. The Times article notes that UK's pork industry is up in arms, angered that they aren't getting credit for putting emissions-cutting technological advances in place. US News and World Report tells us that South Dakota Senator John Thune called the meat-reduction theory a bunch of bull, stating that the last thing the US meat industry needs right now is "elitist lecturing."

Then there's the hair-brained climate change deniers like Christopher Booker, who writes in the UK's Telegraph today that "even by the Green lobby's standards of self-deceiving absurdity, this must be a front-runner for the most fatuous proposal so far."

Booker claims, without citing any sources whatsoever, that all of agriculture, including meat production, is responsible for a mere 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, most of it from growing rice in China and India. Meanwhile, Worldwatch Institute, a respected think tank, recently came out with a new figure for emissions caused by livestock: 51 percent. The gulf between these two statistics is so wide we could all jump in and drown. Maybe we will once the sea level rises enough.

So what gives? Ironically, Booker himself gives us a clue to this debate. "Livestock farming," he writes, "is not some unnecessary consumer indulgence. When properly managed, it is a vital part of the natural cycle of the land."

The two key words here are "properly managed." And because of those two words, I would generally agree with what he says. I imagine, however, that we might be talking about different things. By "properly managed," I mean "included as part of a solar-energy-powered polyculture small farming environment." Industrial meat production is not properly managed meat production.

All these people saying meat is hard on the environment are making this same point; meat in the quantity we consume it produced the way we produce it in the Western industrial farming system is not environmentally sustainable. The sooner we can all see that, the sooner we can all get on with saving ourselves from destruction.

Photo courtesy of Alex E. Proimos via flickr