The BBC and NPR have been launching a series or articles based of the pros and cons of going vegetarian these last few weeks, with roughly a month more to come. That said, I’ve opted to re-post an old piece of mine that closely follows the topic. With the release of Jonathan Safron Foers new book, Eating Animals it seems timely enough.
Last week, President Obama told the world he was looking for advice from “Democrat, Republican or vegetarian”, in yet another plea to gain support across the aisle, plausibly for his filibuster proof green machine. This may seem like a throw-away reference, and I’m fairly sure it was, but the idea of Obama actually giving some thought to vegetarians as a whole seems like a good idea if you ask me. Roughly 3.7 percent of Americans live on a completely meat free diet, which would be a comparable voting bloc to deal with the might that at least was the Evangelical Right in the 00’ and 04’ elections. I’m not the only one who thinks so, either. Engrid E. Newkirk, PETA President and sea kitten lover (also famous for disliking animal testing even though her VP is a type 2 diabetic and survives only due to pig tested insulin technology she denounced but not looks past) has sent an open letter to the President. In the letter, Newkirk requests more vegetarian and vegan meals in schools and goes firmly to the expected animal cruelty alley that PETA has made so famous by comparing the slaughter of chickens to the Holocaust. Her request, while mostly insane, brings at least the idea of government encouraged vegetarianism. In the new America of stimulus packages and a proposed 3 million green renewable jobs, why not look to people who’ve been green for decades? This will also include heavy inspection of the ethanol industry, a chief suspect in increasing food costs and wasted taxpayers money. A few bulletins should help me get the ball rolling.
- Every year, a person who eats meat consumes six acres worth of food due to feed costs attached to mostly cattle. Vegetarians use half an acre, and vegan’s a third.
- Over half of all US water is used on livestock.
- It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat. Chicken processing plants use up to 100 million gallons of water per day.
- Ethanol is 54X more subsidized then gasoline and less efficient by a third, costing taxpayers 3.6 billion dollars in 2006 alone, before last years hikes.
*Please note here that nothing regarding health or animal cruelty came up in these references. To make any kind of purely rational case, appealing to the heartstrings should be left out. This is a fiscal issue and intended to make a healthier economy, not population.
The most clear target of rethought “green” policy would be to remove wasteful spending so it can be allocated in either better places or used to counter tax cuts, seeing as how in my mind tax cuts are the only thing that could keep green policy on the books after 2010. This leads to ethanol. It still takes 1.2 gallons of gas to make one gallon of ethanol, and is less potent then the weakest gasoline on the market. Not to be a broken record, but there are also 54x more subsidies allocated to ethanol production then to gasoline production, even though only a minutia of cars actually run on it. For the humanitarian cause, we are in a global food crisis. Rice futures are on the rise, we’ve had bread riots in Cuba, Egypt and Zimbabwe, and we are using an easy to grow crop on fuel, not food. To run with the subsidies ball for a minute, lets think about the cattle and dairy industries. 73.8% of all funds given to farmers of any sort go to meat and dairy, the most wasteful in the food pyramid. Between these two hogs, we’re creating no new jobs and wasting literally billions of dollars we don’t have on weak business practices. This is a free market, and we should treat as such. Propping up ethanol and the cattle industry only weakens them to competition.
The solution? Give the same amount to ethanol providers you give to gasoline providers. If President Obama has his way, and I hope he does on this, there will be a windfall gas tax put in place. We could save 3.6 billion dollars by not giving a hand out. Save the money and use it for tax breaks on things like water or funding for better technology into peat moss or algae, which actually are renewable on a short term basis and are cheaper to grow.
The next monster to slay is water use. Literally half of all water in the US goes to livestock, namely cattle. With California in a drought, the southwest in a constant battle to see who gets what water and who’s Big Straw takes it, giving away half of our water supply to badly run farms sounds like a foolish idea. Here’s my idea for that; for every percent less cattle or livestock, give them an equal tax credit for their water. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat. Chicken processing plants can also use up to 100 million gallons of water per day. 2,200 people use 100 million gallons of water in a year, but a chicken farm uses it in a day. Similar incentives could be used for feedstock, as well. A Swedish study conducted in 2003 claimed that raising organic beef on grass rather than feed, reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 40% and consumed 85% less energy.
After water, the largest ecological threat is global warming. Regardless of your beliefs, the world thermometer going up is kind of a big deal right now, and it’s shocking how little those out front on the issue are mentioning it (I’m looking at you, Al Gore). 18% of all green house gasses come from cattle. Turns out that four chambered stomach they told us so much about in grade school is a methane machine, which turns out to be 23 times more reflective a green house gas then carbon dioxide (even though there is testing being done on a garlic pill for cows that could reduce that issue). The amount of beef that goes just into our hamburgers in this country creates enough green house gas to match 19.6 million Hummers hitting the road. With plans in step to work on getting every car in America’s MPG higher, this could start to remedy itself, but it doesn’t help the fact that a fifth of emissions come from cattle, which is simply not a good enough excuse.
He Thinks It
A big part of the new green pull is the new jobs. Well, lets assume that these things start to happen. Lets say that we cut off money to ethanol makers, cattle ranchers lower production in favor of better over all profit, we stop wasting water and pumping our methane. Where do the new jobs come in? We still need the food those people were eating, we still need the fuel they one day might have been consuming, and will have a massive amount of badly spent money we can use as leverage to create new government works programs or payroll tax cuts, being the biggest complaint of the many things left out of the stimulus bill. Lets also say that the smarter use of water allows for proper levels of agriculture in California, which is among the hardest hit states these days. In the chance of single payer/universal health care catching on, being able to avoid nearly 90% of heart disease by taking on a vegetarian diet would be a pretty good idea if the system were in place. Then, we could offer tax breaks for and farmer or vendor who only dealt in vegetarianism, and even the Republicans would be on board!
