WSJ August 18, 2014 By Jayson Lusk (Commentary available to subscribers only)
The next targets of the climate change enforcers will be livestock and all Americans who eat meat.
The documentary film "Cowspiracy," released this week in select cities, builds on the growing cultural notion that the single greatest environmental threat to the planet is the hamburger you had for lunch the other day. As director Kip Andersen recently told the Source magazine: "A lot of us are waking up and realizing we can choose to either support all life on this planet or kill all life on this planet, simply by virtue of what we eat day in and day out. One way to eat takes life, while another spares as many lives (plant, animal and otherwise) as possible."
James McWilliams, vegan author of the 2013 book "The Politics of the Pasture," argues that modern agricultural, and the cattle industry in particular, are part of a global food-supply system so damaging that the only moral solution is to give up eating meat entirely.
Each to his own you might say. But these ideas are working their way into government policy proposals. For example, Angela Tagtow, a self-described "environmental nutritionist" formerly with the Minnesota Institute of Sustainable Agriculture,* was recently tapped to head the U.S. Department of Agriculture's effort to revise federal dietary guidelines. This is a sign that the new recommendations are likely to go beyond nutritional science to incorporate environmental considerations. Many observers believe that meat will be specifically targeted for scrutiny.
More broadly, the argument that modern agriculture is a leading cause of global warming is tenuous at best. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that U.S. Agriculture, including livestock production, accounts for only 8% of total greenhouse-gas emissions in the country.** Livestock in the U.S. Have lower greenhouse-gas footprints than in other parts of the world.
We would never trust a group of experts to set the price of beef, milk, or automobiles. We rely on a decentralized marketplace to aggregate disparate information unknown to any single person or expert committee. And yet there is a belief among some that public-health experts can accurately divine a single true and just cost for a hamburger that will help prevent the melting of the polar ice caps and save millions of lives and billions of dollars in health-care costs.
We may be able to reduce our impact our impact on the environment by eating less meat, but we can do the same by using science to make livestock more productive and environmentally friendly.
Mr. Lusk, a professor of agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University, is the author os "Food Police: A Well-Fed Manifesto about the Politics of Your Plate" (Crown Forum, 2013).
* MISA at the University of Minnesota: "One of MISA’s goals is to facilitate the internalization of sustainable agriculture into the University so that the concepts permeate teaching, research and extension. To that end, MISA supports programs that provide students with the opportunity to interact with faculty involved in sustainable agriculture research; with practitioners who are applying sustainable principles on their farms; with organizations and agencies that work on myriad aspects of sustainability in agriculture."
USC Note: A good agriculture program uses science to learn best practices. This type of political organization starts with policy and concepts and then applies shaky science that eliminates findings that disagree. That this organization's concepts are to "permeate" teaching and research at the university is beyond disappointing, but not surprising. A good rule of thumb is that when the word "sustainable" is used, the issue is political, not science-based.
** USC Note: Greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture include vehicle emissions from farm equipment, transport vehicles, energy used on farms, etc. Livestock production is only a part of the 8% total. Grass-fed, local or organic beef results in lower productivity, higher cost to consumers (less affordable to those with low-income), increased use of water and land and a greater carbon footprint.
No comments:
Post a Comment