"Something's stinko in the city of Denmark." Archie Bunker
Since everyone likes to embrace the word "hope" these days, allow me to share with you a little about what I'm hoping for. It has to do with environment, hope-impresario Barack Obama, nearly 200 of his international counterparts, and the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. I hope something comes of it. I hope it's not just theater. I hope "developed" nations the biggest transgressors in terms of climate change accept responsibility and help less developed nations who are paying the price for our avarice. I hope their agenda is broader than just factories and cars (though the importance of these greenhouse gas-emitters can't be overstated). And I hope agriculture particularly the manufacture of meat is a topic they choose to take seriously.
But there's a limit to my hope, and it's a limit imposed by historical precedent. For some reason, the environmental devastation wrought by factory farms is the bloated Frankencow in the room nobody's talking about. Well actually, a lot of people are talking about it, but none of them are politicians. Despite endless research that proves factory farms are some of the biggest culprits in methane emission, soil degradation, and water contamination (mind you, these three links are just from one publication), it is the one environmental issue about which governmental officials remain willfully ignorant.
Combating the deleterious effects of factory-farming is repeatedly ignored, even though it is a well-known fact that livestock (especially cattle) emit dangerous amounts of greenhouse gasses. But Congress an unequivocal enemy of the environment does not just passively ignore the problem. Congress knows about this problem and they actively maintain an obstructionist stance on the issue. In the farcical 2009 House Energy Bill a 932-page document whose putative goal is "to create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy" Congress plainly states that the methane emitted by factory farms will not even be considered. The following sentences appear on pages 590 591 (the entire document can be downloaded here):
à ‚¬ËœÃ ‚¬ËœThe Administrator shall include in the inventory under this paragraph each source category that is responsible for at least 10 percent of the uncapped methane emissions. Notwithstanding any other provision, the inventory required by this section shall not include sources of enteric fermentation. The list under this paragraph shall include industrial sources, the emissions from which, when added to the capped emissions from industrial sources, constitute at least 95 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions of the industrial sector."
"Enteric fermentation". Translation: the methane production that takes place inside the millions upon millions of cow guts in this nation. Further translation: let's take a look at the biggest producers of methane"except for the biggest producer of methane!! How can anyone take our legislative body seriously when they bury their heads in the sand like this? When convenient little clauses like that are hidden within hundreds of pages of legalese, mocking any serious attempt at facing our biggest problems, you have to wonder why. Well the "why" isn't very difficult. Big agriculture is big money and the Farm Bureau and its lobbyists are the bulls pounding away at the heifers in Congress. There is simply no reason other than profit to produce the amount of meat this country does. It's certainly not healthy not for people, not for the environment (and obviously not for the livestock). Profit is nice but the whole reason that climate change is such a difficult challenge for governments to face is that the lust for profit must be scaled back in order to preserve what's left of the planet. Profiteering and the fight against global warming are mutually exclusive. Right now, our livestock factories are producing way more than our soil, air and waterways can sustain, and way more than the human body can healthily process. So yes, money is nice (I guess), but surely it's less important than our health and the health of our planet.
Say what you will about Bill Maher, he's got it totally right when it comes to the environment, and for a long time he has been shining a light on the effects of American livestock factories. In October 2009, he got the chance to sit down with Lisa Jackson, the current EPA Administrator. What follows is a transcript (my own, done without "ums" and "ahs", but you can listen to the whole thing here, starting at 11:00) of the chief environmentalist in the country dodging the question about meat in the lamest way possible:
BM: Why don't [the President and Congress] ever talk about meat? I mean it is a fact that raising beef causes more global warming than all the cars and planes in the world, and you never hear a peep out of them about meat.
LJ: Well, here in this country our addiction to driving the wonderful automobile, our addiction to power, the fact that we do want to grow our economy and we know we're going to need more electricity of course oil refineries, big oil all of those are huge segments of our greenhouse gas profile. We're different than the rest of the world, so I think what's really important here is that the Obama administration you know the president announced the clean car, sorta peace treaty"
BM: Whoa whoa whoa what happened to my meat question?!
Laaaaame, Ms. Jackson. Or is it? Perhaps I should give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Ms. Jackson doesn't feel like engaging with the question because it's a bunch of granola-eating balderdash. Maybe the EPA has bigger problems than cow farts. Maybe...but the facts say otherwise. When it comes to US methane output, enteric fermentation is the EPA's single biggest problem. Consider the following chart taken from the EPA's website. Yes, that EPA"as in the administration Lisa Jackson is in charge of.
Lisa Jackson then engaged with Maher's questioning in an ever-so-slightly less lame way. That is, she mentioned the word meat, but was no less vague. She just kept referring to "huge opportunities for greenhouse gas emissions in meat" (a phrase I find a bit confusing, actually for the entire interview she comes off as a highly intelligent, competent person, so why all of sudden this black hole of Palin-esque babble?)
I'm sure everyone reading this has heard the expression "meat is murder." This of course refers to the taking the life of a cow, pig, chicken, etc. Personally I think it has some value as a rallying cry, but is a little over-the-top and unhelpful in its tendency to polarize. But meat is murder to the environmental movement. It is killing our air, killing our water, and the profits of all this gluttony are killing any incentive politicians might have to do a damn thing about it. Hybrid cars are worthless, as is raising gas mileage standards to 35 mpg by 2016 (my '02 Civic already gets better than that, and yet these are the things Congress puts in the Energy Bill and then pats itself on the back for). These initiatives sound nice but are little more than a band-aid on a hemorrhaging aorta. Driving 100 mph into a stone wall will kill you"but so will driving 99 mph into that same wall. Meat production is not the be-all-and-end-all of climate change talks. Not by any means. But the other major contributors are at least on the global radar. So although there are a variety of enormous challenges ahead in the fight against climate change, I hope the Copenhagen summit is an opportunity for learning and not just grandstanding. There are many lessons the U.S. must learn in regards to responsible meat farming: the reality of global warming demands that we mature, and quickly at that. Our national appetite for meat is nowhere near sustainable. Just like effective gas mileage standards would necessitate giving up the big, comfy living-rooms-on-wheels we enjoy, so too does responsible methane control necessitate scaling back the enormous meat output of this country and others.
So to all those dignitaries in Copenhagen: I never thought I would day this, but can we please put meat on the table?
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