To Fight Global Warming, Ditch Those Burgers
With the presidential campaign in full gear, an article called “Meat of the matter” says meat eating is a political issue.
The article claims,”To fight global warming, don’t just drive a Prius, ditch those burgers” and follows up with:
“[N]early every aspect of the huge international meat trade has an environmental or health consequence, with global warming at the top of the list. If you never thought that eating meat was an environmental (and by extension, political) issue, now is the time to rethink that position.” [...]
“[F]ood grown for animals could be feeding people. Raising livestock consumes 90 percent of the soy, 80 percent of the corn and 70 percent of the grain grown in the United States. David Pimentel, professor of entomology at Cornell, points out that ‘if all the grain currently fed to livestock in the U.S. was consumed directly by people, the number who could be fed is nearly 800 million.’” [...]
“Meat is an economically important product in most parts of the world in 2008, and it has powerful lobbies and enormous vested interests. There’s just one problem: It’s hurting the planet, and wasting huge resources that could easily feed a hungry world.”
Eating meat is certainly a “political issue” - it’s a statement. It’s not only vegan advocacy attempting to propagate a message as many in this society would want us to believe. The article makes a good argument.
Alex, you’re right. A lot of people assume that meat-eating is politically neutral, but it’s not. Meat-eating is the promotion of certain political ideas.
The main political idea that meat-eating promotes is that humans ought to treat animals as resources, not as individual beings with their own interests and rights. But the idea in this article is regarding climate change and the environment. Meat-eating promotes global warming. Eating meat is a vote against protecting the environment.
Right, taking the political issue further, continuing to eat meat promotes the idea that the wider Earth ought to be used instrumentally for humans’ ends. And finally, questions questioning the ethics of this ideology are said to be baseless due to our “natural” supremacy, as shown by our continued degradation of the environment merely because we enjoy the taste of flesh.
Al Gore is certainly guilty of this. If one is not even willing to change their “tastes” in light of the evidence proving the environmental destruction that is occurring because of these tastes, that is a political message indeed.
~ Recent blog post: The issue of "unnecessary suffering" at http://www.not-quiteright.net/tvg ~