What with the whole fantastic Greta Thunbergery, dressing us down internationally, giving all of us Boomers the stink-eye and telling us to shove our platitudinous horsesh*t, I have been ruminating about what I, as an individual, can do to stave off our descent into Climate Armageddon.
Our Facebook friends urge us to teach the Fossil Fuel Industry (FFI) a lesson, by God, by refusing to buy gas on Fridays. But I suspect the FFI doesn’t give a rat’s ass about when we buy their product, as long as we continue to buy their product, and to utilize every horseless piece of machinery that runs on it.
How about de-funding the FFI? If you have a 401(k)or a 403(b) or an IRA or any other type of mutual fund held and administered by somebody who is not you, chances are pretty good that said mutual fund is at least partially invested in a Fossil Fuel-affiliated company (money-men, suppliers, refiners, transporters, etc). Call your fund manager, like I did, and see for yourself. If you want to go to a “green” portfolio, your returns are pitiful, at least until America takes renewable energy funding seriously. Divestiture in the FFI is intentionally intractable. Picture tentacles, perhaps a spiderweb.
So what are we, as concerned citizens, to do?
I would have said the most important thing we could do to affect Climate Change would be to collectively fund the further exploration of bio-fuels, a carbon tax, the sun, the wind, The Green New Deal. Sadly, we are not allowed to redirect our individual tax dollars away from border walls and detention centers and such.
Then I read Tad Friend’s provocative article, “Value Meal” (New Yorker, 9/30/19), in which he postulates that
“[G]iving up meat and dairy [is] the most powerful environmental act any individual could make.”
“The hell you say,” said I, a lifelong consumer of all things cow and pig and chicken. In doing so, I learned that I have been adhering to a millennium of carnivorous genius:
“Eating animals added so much nutrition to our diets that we no longer had to spend all our time foraging, and we developed smaller stomachs and larger brains.”
Friend has done his research and makes a compelling argument.
“Agriculture consumes more freshwater than any other human activity, and nearly a third of that water is devoted to raising livestock. One third of the world’s arable land is used to grow feed for livestock, which are responsible for 14.5% of global greenhouse-gas emissions.”
(Friend’s bathtub full of bovine belches explanation is not to be missed).
Quoting a former Secretary of Energy, Friend writes:
“Every 4 pounds of beef you eat contributes to as much global warming as flying from New York to London – and the average American eats that much each month.”
(I eat maybe 1 pound a month, but still).
Luckily for us humans, who seem bound and determined to destroy the planet, one happy meal at a time, free-market capitalistic entrepreneurship has a plan for that. A “tortuous workaround for human selfishness”, if you will.
Friend cites the efforts of Pat Brown, founder and CEO of Impossible Foods. He’s the guy who intends to “wipe out all animal agriculture and deep-sea fishing by 2035”, starting with the Impossible Burger, created from vast amounts of research and millions of dollars, utilizing a molecule called heme, which it produces in tanks of genetically modified yeast. Yeah, you heard me: GMOs, motherf*cker. As unpalatable as the thought of GMOs in your food is (as unpalatable, say, as a meatless burger), it’s got to be a skosh better than destruction of our planet on a heretofore unimaginable scale. So there’s that.
Alternatively, Ethan Brown (no relation) of Beyond Meat, has spent similar millions in creating a plant-based concoction “derived from peas, mung beans, and brown rice, enriched with coconut oil and cocoa butter”. And Josh Tetrick of Just, Inc. is in the process of developing a cell-based chicken nugget and a ground beef from muscle cells grown in a lab. Yeesh. This approach “may eventually provide meat using a tiny fraction of the land and water that livestock use.” Even Nestle(the Incredible Burger) and Kellogg (Incogmeato, I sh*t you not) are getting into the act.
But Big Meat cannot be allowed to continue to simply co-exist with the new technology. Without these efforts to replace the status quo, the future looks dire indeed. Friend references a World Research Institute report released in July 2019 titled, “Creating a Sustainable Food Future”, wherein the author makes some mighty bald assertions: If we stay the course, providing enough food to sustain the planet’s population by 2050
“will entail clearing most of the world’s remaining forests, wiping out thousands more species, and releasing enough greenhouse gas emissions to [exceed all targets of the Paris Agreement] – even if emission from all other human activities were entirely eliminated.”
And, come on, let’s get real:
“The chance that 10 billion people will suddenly stop driving, cooling their homes, and manufacturing anything is, of course, zero.”
Then the lead researcher went there:
“There were times writing [this report] when I thought, Euthanize your children – we’re all doomed.”
These brave, new entrepreneurs know their audience. “Lecturing people doesn’t work. This is a technology problem.” And Impossible Burger, at least, thinks they’ve solved it with their business model of “unrepentant bovicide”. They also know their adversaries: not only carnivorous Doubting Thomases like myself, and an extremely powerful beef industry, but also environmental and animal activist groups – a formidable combination of bedfellows.
GMO-based, plant-based or cell-based, it’s crystal clear that we need an alternative to mainlining meat.
As a spokesman for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association puts it:
“A lot of people like to throw rocks at us, but they do so while driving down the road at 70 miles per hour in an air-conditioned car.”
It’s everything. It’s all of us. It’s time for an intervention.
My fellow carnivores and I can and should continue to bring our own bags to the store, compost and recycle our waste, strike for the climate, shop second-hand, take the bus and grow our own. While it will be painful, we can begin to pare down – to the point of elimination – our consumption of meat and dairy. Me, I pledge to taste test both an Impossible Burger and a Beyond Burger, and to buy even less beef and pork in 2020. Chicken is a responsible, short-term option (“poultry production has about one-eighth the climate impact of beef production’’). And almond milk isn’t so terrible…
Oh yes, and vote. I’m not even going to say please.
All this, plus keeping our feet on the necks of the industries that are unrepentant in destroying our only home. It’s not much, but it’s not nothing. We all need to feel a little more pain now. More pain than merely gassing up the Prius on Thursday night.
