Heed The Words of a Wise Vegetarian

Bjorn Lomborg, whom I've written about so many times, is my favorite gay leftist Danish vegetarian:

Around the world, we’re being told to stop eating meat. Headlines, think tanks and activists all ask us to change our diet to combat climate change. 

The Washington D.C.-based World Resource Institute suggests that resource management will require Americans to cut their average consumption of beef by about 40%, and scientists from Manchester University just claimed that “a typical summer barbecue for four people releases more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than an 80 mile car journey." One of the professors points out that “the production of a 100g medium-sized beef burger releases enough greenhouses gases to fill more than 60 balloons.”

The scientists propose a solution: we all need to replace our burgers with “veggie sausages,” swap the cheese for half an onion and replace the butter with “vegetable spread”. Voila: half the emissions. 

I’m a vegetarian myself for ethical reasons, but the climate scientists’ barbecue prescription leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth — and it is not just the vegetable spread...

In a first world setting, the reality is that going entirely vegetarian for the rest of your life means you reduce your emissions by about 2%, according to a study of the environmental impact of Swedish vegetarians...

Going vegetarian can help a little bit, but it's both an unrealistic and inefficient policy to push on people across the world. We should focus on research to develop cleaner, maybe artificial, meat and cheaper clean energy. And while we do so, we can have our summer barbecues without being told they destroy the planet.  link

Nothing is worth giving up that barbecue bacon burger I had a couple nights ago!