Archives for: June 2009
2009-06-17
The whinge of (some) meat-eaters
Sir Paul McCartney is [url=http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5h4Z1sVCFYUNwtkLV9CXcjCCHzchg]urging people to stop eating meat one day a week[/url], for environmental reasons. Predictably enough, Internet readers are reacting with blubbering anger, both in English and in French; comment sections in the news are filled with their moronic, furious and irrational rejection of the idea. Part of the press are doing the same; an opinion piece in [i]The Telegraph[/i] is whining about McCartney "taking the meat out of our mouths". Yet another example of the idiocy of the masses; no big surprise there. The meat-eating fundies are out for blood.
In this particular case, however, idiocy takes the familiar form of selfish denial. Denial of the obvious environmental benefits of vegetarianism is oh-so-similar to climate change denial. Along the lines of "the truth would force me to make sacrifices in my selfish and unsustainable lifestyle, so the truth can't be true". The ability of irrational and selfish minds to convince themselves of the absurd (or rather, to reject the obvious) will never cease to amaze me, or appall me. It's basically the same mental mechanism as the one behind literal creationism: reject the truth if it challenges one's irrational preconceptions or intrudes on one's comfort zone.
Philosophers used to say that human beings are creatures of reason. I think not. Some of us are, or try to be despite our limitations; most human beings are not, and make no attempt to be.
No wonder our planet's future looks bleak.
As a reminder, McCartney is, of course, entirely correct. The impact of the meat industry on the environment is devastating. And not only because of methane gas. Animals for the slaughter are produced in their billions, and need to be fed. Forests are chopped down to use land for agriculture - not to feed human beings, but to feed animals destined for the slaughter. Deforestation is due, in great part, to the meat industry.
And there's another tragic irony. Agriculture produces more than enough food to feed every human being on the planet. Yet people are starving. Why? Two reasons. The first is economic: there's no profit in feeding them, so the capitalist "ethos" dictates that they should starve. The second is that we prefer to divert food away from them and use it on cows and other animals instead, to keep meat production going.
Leaving aside, for a moment, the horrific cruelty of the meat industry -in which cows sometimes have their hooves chopped off and their skin boiled off before they're actually dead- ; eating meat destroys the ozone layer, increases global warming and accelerates deforestation.
McCartney was well aware that he wouldn't be heard if he suggested vegetarianism. So he's simply pointed out that cutting back on one's meat intake just a little bit would be a positive step towards helping the environment. It's not much to ask, and it should have appealed to every rational person's understanding of the obvious.
Instead, it's brought the frothing morons out to whinge.
