The Random Yak

You’ve been warned.

The hot air out of Britain this morning (aka Lord Stern of Brentford) warns us that unless all human beings become vegetarians, we will never conquer climate change.  The proposed solution?  Raise the price of meat until people’s attitudes change and they realize that vegetarianism offers the best-and-only solution to the current climate crisis.

First off…I’m inclined to think the climate will change regardless of what I eat.  In the winter, it gets cold whether I had burgers or beans, and I hadn’t noticed a reduction in the summer heat on the days when I grill squash.

More importantly, however: I’m not sure vegetarianism will ever offer the “best solution” on a practical level.

Case in point:  the article claims that “direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases.”  Why, you ask, do cows and pigs produce so much methane?  Because they eat vegetables.  That’s right – methane emissions come from happy cows, and happy cows are vegetarians.  Now, what do you think will happen when people stop eating cows and start eating what cows  eat?  (Warning…”accurate but inappropriate”commences below the fold.)

People become a significant source of greenhouse gases.  That’s right, folks.  When you stop feeding roots and twigs to cattle, and start feeding them to people, the people produce the methane instead.  Only they do it in your office, in your house, and in your personal space.

Do you know where you’ll be when your greenhouse gases kick in?

Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.

Now, I have no evidence proving that vegetarians are *cough* more directly emissive than the rest of us (though I’ve heard rumors to that effect, some of them from vegetarians).  But this much I do know: you don’t solve a methane emission problem by shifting the vegetarian diet from cows to people.  We have many, many more people than we have cows, and it only takes a fractional share of the cow’s gastrointestinal output from each to equal the current environmental load.  All the beano in the world won’t change that reality.

And furthermore…Lord Stern may not mind shifting the emissions from the open field to the enclosed office, but as far as I’m concerned that’s a 21st century tragedy of the commons waiting to happen.  Between cigarette smokers, coffee drinkers (yeah, guilty as charged), smelly-lunch eaters and ladies who bathe in perfume, fresh air in most offices is a limited resource as it is.  And don’t tell me this isn’t a case of people acting in their own self-interest to the detriment of all.  The next time you’re about to pass out in an elevator, I’ll remind you of your wise decision to shift the burden away from the happy cows.  Who, for the record, are happy because they resolve their kerfuffles in the field.  Where they belong.

I’ll grant that meat production consumes more resources than vegetarian foods.  I’ll even acknowledge that meat should cost more than carrots and leafy greens.  (Oh, that’s right…it already does.) But you can’t solve “global climate change” problems by getting rid of all the cows, any more than Mao solved China’s public sanitation problems by trying to kill all the sparrows and flies.  (History check: it didn’t work and it only created more problems he didn’t anticipate to begin with.)

And another thing: You can’t legislate personal responsibility, particularly when the people making the laws don’t believe in it to begin with.  Lord Stern himself admits he’s not a vegetarian.  He doesn’t practice the global warming gospel he so earnestly preaches.  And the last time I checked, a man truly committed to something tends to do it himself.  Unless, of course, it’s just what he wants for the rest of you – the masses too stupid to act in your own self-interest.  You know who you are.  The pigs who want to keep eating meat instead of doing what Big Brother says you should do.  The sheep who’ll follow along, because you trust that someone in power must know better.

In a word…The happy cows.