THE REAL INCONVENIENT TRUTH: ‘Climate Activists Who Dismiss Meat Consumption Are Wrong’
Despite a growing scientific consensus that animal agriculture must be massively reduced, many climate advocates have resisted working meat and food into the conversation.
JAN DUTKIEWICZ: Last month, the United Nations set off a furor in the climate community when it clumsily tried to raise awareness about the global problem of meat consumption. “The meat industry is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the world’s biggest oil companies,” it wrote on Twitter. “Meat production contributes to the depletion of water resources & drives deforestation.” The U.N. then implored its 12.7 million followers to “eat less meat” because “every climate action counts.”
The tweet triggered meat industry spokespeople, government officials, and a few academics, who pointed to consensus estimates showing that the livestock industry contributes 15 percent of global emissions, while the largest oil companies generate considerably more. Influential climate scientist Michael Mann called the tweet “not true by any defensible accounting”… But the U.N. didn’t cite its sources and, rather than debate the matter, deleted the tweet…
The broader discussion of meat’s environmental toll—the two-thirds of the tweet that was indisputably right—thus disappeared in an uproar over a questionable calculation. You could not find a more perfect illustration of the problem with modern climate discourse. All too frequently, activists, politicians, and scientists reduce the all-consuming crisis of global warming to a question of greenhouse gas emissions: what drives them up, and how best to bring them down. The natural world and its nonhuman inhabitants are reduced to a series of models and equations…
The Canadian political theorist Will Kymlicka has called those who champion animals’ interests “orphans of the left.” They are also orphans of the climate movement. Despite a growing scientific consensus that animal agriculture must be massively reduced as part of a comprehensive climate strategy, many prominent climate advocates have resisted working meat and food politics into the climate conversation…
Agriculture gets sidelined in climate conversations—reduced to a laboratory for emissions-reducing tweaks—in part because it emits less than the energy and transportation sectors. But the discomfort with discussing meat also reflects the climate movement’s shift, as seen with Michael Mann and others, away from the language of personal “sacrifice.” Virtuous personal choices, the argument goes, aren’t enough to save the world: What’s needed is comprehensive policy, which voters presumably won’t support if they think it involves giving something up…
The climate carnivores’ analysis of the beef industry—which contributes 6 percent of all global greenhouse gases before you even get to the carbon released when forests are cleared for grazing—has been, to quote Mann again, “We don’t need to ban burgers; we need climate-friendly beef.” In the service of this goal, a growing chorus has cheered so-called regenerative grazing, which advocates claim can make beef and dairy production carbon-neutral. A scientific cottage industry has also sprung up to reduce conventionally produced cows’ methane emissions, leading even progressive climate champions to suggest growing algae monocrops for cow food…
Today’s climate pragmatism offers a frustratingly narrow vision of reform. Rather than challenging the instrumental view of nature that led us to this pre-apocalyptic moment, it asks us to imagine a world much the same as our current one, minus the climate change. That’s grim news for the other species with whom we share this beautiful, fragile planet.
From the 80 billion land animals and trillions of sea creatures killed annually for food, to unchecked deforestation displacing habitats and migrations routes, to biodiversity loss and accelerating rates of extinction, the Anthropocene has made the world hell for earth’s other inhabitants. Rapacious consumption by the world’s wealthiest humans has driven countless ecosystems into disorder. Runaway climate change may drive one out of every three plant and animal species to extinction over the next 50 years…
Climate politics should broaden our horizons… Climate campaigners don’t need to accept the mindset that nature is just a series of resources for us to use, or deny that some sacrifices might actually serve the common good. We need to decarbonize and fight the oil giants. But we can also think bigger, challenging the instrumental, utilitarian view of nature that brought us to this point. Radical new imaginaries of a less anthropocentric earth hold out the promise that if we do manage to save the world, we will have built a world worth saving. SOURCE…
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