Ok, it's paraphrased. Actually, I saw that bumper sticker 10 years ago while walking into a steakhouse in Nashville, TN. (You know the place, peanut-shell strewn floors & wait staff jossling each other to hand demo-tapes to the biz pigs in the corner booth.) So it's no wonder that my fav enviro-savior Al Gore cops to being a part of the problem when it comes to eating meat unrepentantly. Here's how Al responded to a question from Orange Cloud at Netroots Nation last weekend (1st round of questions, 3/4 the way thru the Cspan video).
It is true it would be healthier for us individually & the planet if we consumed less meat. ...I myself am a meat eater and maybe that has had an impact on my definition of the problem.
Yes, he knows the sizzle in that steak bears a heavy carbon-load. Follow me over the fold to find out what meat eaters like me and Al, and even you can do about it...
From the fertilizer that grows the corn in its unnaturally grass-free diet, to the diesel fuel spent speeding its assorted butchered parts to a bargain bin at a Walmart near you, the consumption of each unhappy head of cattle contributes more than it's share of climate changing ills. The least of which includes massive amounts of shit, so much that methane capture & sequestration qualifies as a clean & green energy production method.
What's the meat eating world to do? While Gore's going after the (ahem) low-hanging fruit of zero carbon electricity in 10 years, other committed civilization-huggers have sworn off the animal flesh. Sure, I've experimented, but I'm no vegan. (Not that there's anything wrong with it!) Such & so enviro group encourages us to take a weekly break from meat, but that feels like a token CFL in the carcass-littered industrial food darkness. Yet this year, I've seen a light breaking thru the clouds of the meat/carbon/guilt cycle. Let's see if Al & I can find a way to walk together quickly to solve this problem.
I'd invite Al to take that walk with me into a sustainable agriculture/organic farmer's market. I'm sure there's one or two where you live, too. Here in Nashville, we've a downtown market that is in a perpetual struggle to balance producer run stalls with the obligatory white-tube-socks-flea-market ganache. While I send love and light for their success, I slide across the river to the East Nashville Farmer's Market on Wednesday evenings.
Not just the obligatory arugala & brocolli rabe, there's sustainably grown natural meat from several vendors. It's a real alternative to grocery store meat pickings both in it's environmental/ global warming impact and personal health. I took the plunge and bought into a meat CSA. That's Community Supported Agriculture, and for me it's a guilt free way to lug home a hefty bag of cuts once a month. I'm supporting the local food security system and doing an end run past the industrial meat complex.
More and more often, those of us seeking antidotes to our species' lunge toward climaticide find solutions that thread a delicate needle. There are no silver bullets, and there are no simple answers. Our challenge as humans is to use our very big brains to analyse the outcomes of each of our actions. Each biteful's dilemma, the fuel choice of each mile driven, each light switch thrown begs the question: if we have awakened to find ourselves the accidental destroyers of our planet, can we resolve to become purposeful shepherds? Let's do more than think about it.