Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
How have we allowed the public debate to conflate 100% plant-based diets with saving the planet? And in so doing, how on earth has the humble cow come to have taken 90% of the flak for global warming?
I can see big advantages, both environmental and ethical in reducing the production and consumption of grain-fed meat, be it chicken, pork or beef. But there is an overwhelmingly important case why we should continue to produce and eat meat from animals predominantly reared on grass, especially when it is species-rich and not fertilised with nitrogen out of a bag.
The only practical way to produce human-edible food from grassland without releasing large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere is to graze it with ruminants, and with the increasing global population it would be highly irresponsible to stop producing meat, milk and animal fats from grassland, since this would cause even more rainforest to be destroyed to produce soyabean oil and meal, as well as palm oil.
How long it will take the food shipping industry to achieve zero emissions is uncertain, but it needs to happen sooner than later…Government would need to provide more incentives and institute more stringent regulations to speed up adoption of zero-emissions trucks.
The Associated Press released a scathing new report on environmental degradation driven by American biofuel policy on Tuesday — which promptly got it into an online brawl with Fuels America, a group representing much of the U.S. biofuel industry.
