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With his Inconvenient Truth as just a part of his crusade against global warming and non-renewable energy, Al Gore is now more widely known for environmentalism than being a vice president. But how committed is he to the cause? Would he give up meat if he recognized it was a problem? In a response to a commenter recently, he said:
One of the factors right now in the global trends of the food crisis is the increasing meat intensity of the diet in countries like China, that are imitating the diet the US has long had. It is true that it would be healthier for us as individuals and as a planet if we consumed less meat. I acknowledge that. There's an undercurrent in the question, and you didn't say it, of why it hasn't been a more prominent part of the conversation so far. I plead guilty, and I guess I'd say there is only so much that we can do at once. I myself am a meat eater, and maybe that's had some effect. But I want to acknowledge forthrightly that this is a significant part of what needs to be done, but we have to walk before we can run.
A lot of activists and environmentalists live near mass transportation and have stores within walking distance. From that position, it’s easy to imagine a world where we get around on bicycles and trains, and the streets have no cars. Some have visions of solving our global oil usage and pollution with cleaner cars that run on water or hydrogen. And most people think that we can stop an oil crisis by building windmills and negotiating with OPEC. But how many of our environmentalists are vegetarians? Not that many. I can’t imagine a technology like hydrogen cells or windmills reducing the farmland, fresh water, and carbon footprint of farming and mass animal processing for cheap food, and no amount of negotiation will make it easier on the environment. It disturbs me that Gore just tries to dismiss this subject. Vegetarianism is not "running before walking," and the analogy is just his attempt to relieve his own duplicity. He contradicts himself by not living what he preaches, and there is nothing preventing him from living cleaner by not eating meat. He was called out, and he deserved it. Eating meat in mass quantities is unquestionably a strain on our land, fresh water, and energy resources. Part of the problem Gore fails to acknowledge is that the price is artificially lower than it would be in a free market. With government subsidies going to farmers raising livestock and farmers growing corn to feed the livestock, buying meat is amazingly inexpensive. When you pay your taxes, you are paying for meat. A vegetarian who hasn’t eaten at a McDonald’s is still giving factory farms money to make cheeseburgers more affordable. Gore has told us that the rising price of oil will equalize the market and make alternate energy affordable by comparison. Let that happen with the meat industry too. Remove these subsidies. Stop the government from manipulating the market price, and make meat cost the real price of meat. The price of dollar-cheeseburgers will go up to the actual cost, but taxpayers will save the money going into these subsidies. Then people can compare the real prices of food and buy what they feel is more responsible. If people just eat a little less beef, our environment and country would be better for it.
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