The Poetry, Essays and Personal Journals of Larry L. Dill
Let’s face the Music and Dance
As I was standing in line to see Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, for the second time last summer, someone was handing out postcard size leaflets about something or other, something about the importance of vegetarianism in the battle against global warming. Being a vegetarian myself, it seemed like a no-brainer. I put the card in my coat pocket and it wasn’t until I was walking out of the movie, which, as I said, I was seeing for the second time, did it suddenly dawn on me why someone would be handing out leaflets about vegetarianism outside a movie about global warming. I took it out and looked at it again. It listed six reasons to become a vegetarian, including this one: “Going vegetarian reduces personal annual greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5 tons.”
Al Gore went to great lengths in An Inconvenient Truth to point out that when his father, Senator Albert Gore, Sr., realized that the tobacco he raised on his farm in Tennessee caused cancer, and may have been the cause of his own daughter’s death, he stopped growing it. But he went on raising cattle and his son, Al Gore, Jr., the star of this film on global warming, and arguably the most consistently environmentally conscious public figure in America today, made no mention in the film of the fact that for the sake of human health and the health the planet, farmers ought to give up raising cattle, for ethical reasons, just as his father had given up raising tobacco.
It is a serious flaw in Gore’s academy award winning film even if you acknowledge that vegetarianism for environmental reasons is an issue that is usually only addressed by people on the periphery of the environmental movement and the broader American culture in general. It’s an inconvenient truth within An Inconvenient Truth.
In fairness to Gore’s project, though, he does mention the contribution to global warming made by cattle at the end of his lavishly illustrated companion book to the documentary film. The book goes by the same name, An Inconvenient Truth, and contains, on page 317, the following two paragraphs.
Modify your diet to include less meat
Americans consume almost a quarter of all the beef produced in the world. Aside from health issues associated with eating lots of meat, a high-meat diet translates into a tremendous amount of carbon emissions. It takes far more fossil fuel energy to produce and transport meat than to deliver equivalent amounts of protein from plant sources.
In addition, much of the world’s deforestation is a result of clearing and burning to create more grazing land for livestock. This creates further damage by destroying trees that would otherwise absorb carbon dioxide. Fruits, vegetables and grains, on the other hand, require 95% less raw materials to produce and, when combined properly, can provide a complete and nutritious diet. If more Americans shifted to a less meat-intensive diet, we could greatly reduce CO2 and also save vast quantities of water and other precious natural resources.
So Gore knows the truth and states the facts in no uncertain terms; and then adds that you can get more information about cows and global warming by visiting the websites, earthsave.org and epa.gov. When you go to the earthsave website you find a devastating report that concludes that the methane gas emitted by the world’s cattle production actually creates more global warming than all the various forms of CO2 emissions combined! But when I went to Gore’s own website, climatecrisis.net, the closest thing I could find to the brief acknowledgement in his book of the importance of cattle in the global warming equation was this even briefer two sentence statement.
Eat less meat
Methane is the second most significant greenhouse gas and cows are one of the greatest methane emitters. Their grassy diet and multiple stomachs cause them to produce methane, which they exhale with every breath.
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Gore has claimed that he has no plans to run again for president. But how else can you explain his having left cattle raising, a major problem for global warming, out of his movie all together and made only the most cursory mention of it in his book and on his website, unless he is keeping his options open to run for president and he believes it would be political suicide to entertain a personal ethic that strongly called for the elimination of meat from the diet. Putting anything stronger than the two sentences above on his website would surely bring the right-wing bloggers out in droves. Mentioning it in the movie might have caused thoughtless film critics to associate Gore with radical animal rights activists, some of whose activities are clearly illegal and even seen by some to be terroristic.
I can’t help but think of Whole Foods founder and CEO, John Mackey (see “John Mackey’s Vegan Dreams” elsewhere on this website) who claiming to be, personally, “near” vegan, argues that if he were to eliminate meat sales in his national chain of natural food stores, they would fold up and his employees would all be out of work.
And then this: a New York Times editorial (that’s right: editorial!) called Meat and the Planet (December 27,2007), recognizing the importance of a United Nations report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” said,
Global livestock grazing and feed production use “30 percent of the land surface of the planet.” Livestock – which consume more food than they yield – also compete directly with humans for water. And the drive to expand grazing land destroys more biologically sensitive terrain, rain forests especially, than anything else.
But what is even more striking and alarming is that livestock are responsible for about 18 percent of the global warming effect, more than transportation’s contribution. The culprits are methane – the natural result of bovine digestion – and the nitrogen emitted by manure. Deforestation of grazing land adds to the effect.
But like Gore’s minimalist coverage of this major piece of the global warming puzzle and John Mackey’s self-serving corporate rationalizations, the Times editorial wimped out in its final paragraph:
There are no easy trade-offs when it comes to global warming – such as cutting back on cattle to make room for cars. The human passion for meat is certainly not about to end anytime soon. As “Livestock’s Long Shadow” makes clear, our health and the health of the planet depend on pushing livestock production in more sustainable directions.
What the hell does anything in this closing paragraph mean? What does “cutting back on cattle to make room for cars” mean? Why not just say, “After what we’ve just reviewed, the handwriting on the wall suggests that we’re just gonna have to get over eating meat and anyway we’ll all be better off for it.”? Is the New York Times afraid of the meat lobby in this country as it appears Al Gore is? Is John Mackey actually afraid of his meat eating customers? What would you call a cross between myopia and paranoia? Myanoia actually sounds like it could be the Greek word for an inconvenient truth.
In the end, those who believe in the rights of animals not to be slaughtered for food, can be duly outraged by the fact that new scientific evidence that cattle raising is a significant contributor to global warming, is being significantly minimized by Al Gore, global warming’s most outspoken Cassandra. Why? Go figure. Maybe he and John Mackey and the New York Times editorial staff and their constituents just need to read The Rugged Vegetarian…and face the music... and dance.
--Larry L. Dill
Rabbit Rock, North Carolina
April 1, 2007
Also In this Issue of the New Hope Journal:
The Rugged Vegetarian : Cowboy Cookery without the Cows
by Larry L. Dill (Tenth Anniversary Reprint of the Original Essay)
The Veganist: Struggles on a Road less Traveled
By Deborah Gaddy
Language is not Love: Three New Poems by Larry L. Dill
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References for the essay Meat Eating and Global Warming:
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, Al Gore, Rodale Press (Emmaus, Pa), 2006.
www.farmusa.org
www.earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm
www.epa.gov/methane/rlep/faq.html
www.climatecrisis.net
Gila Wilderness, New Mexico,1995
Complete Site Index
larrydill@newhopejournal.com
www.newhopejournal.com
copyright 2007 by Larry L. Dill