Meditation on Meat, Part 4
(Dan Wright photo: antique manure spreader.)
There's one aspect of livestock production often overlooked by its opponents (and often even its proponents): its potential to help free us from our addiction to fossil fuels. I'm not referring here to the manure-to-methane applications that create electricity from emissions that would otherwise enter the atmosphere, though such plants have become more widespread not only in liberal states like Vermont and among Native American tribes, but even in the American heartland and conservative states like Texas. The concept makes economic sense— and it turns a damaging waste product into a source of renewable energy. But that's not the topic I'll reflect on today.
If we all became vegetarian, all those crops would require fertilizer— fertilizer that currently comes primarly from fossil fuels. In fact, 5% of the world's natural gas production (2% of the world's total energy production) gets converted to ammonia from which nitrogen fertilizer is made. Wheat, corn, and soy (our staple vegetarian foods) all require high concentrations of nitrogen.
What about composting? Compost is great, but any farmer or gardener will confirm that putting back into the soil only the unused portions of what we grew can't maintain soil fertility. As we take nutrients out of the soil in the form of food, they must be replaced if we're to maintain yields year after year. And those nutrients must come from somewhere. (Many sewage plants offer free composted waste, which would replace the nutrients we removed, but most people object to using that on plants for human consumption— though I have heard that the end product of a composting toilet produces incredible tomatoes.)
Given a choice, I much prefer organic fertilizer to fossil-fuel-originated stuff. Wiki lists typical organic fertilizers as "manure, slurry, worm castings, peat, seaweed, sewage, and guano." You may note, as I did, that aside from peat and seaweed, both of which are geographically limited, these fertilizers come from animal sources. Add to these manufactured "organic" fertilizers: blood meal, bone meal, fish meal, and feather meal, and you have a veritable livestock buffet.
There are also "green manures," plants like alfalfa and hairy vetch that fix nitrogen in the soil as they grow. But there's little use for alfalfa unless you have animals to feed.
Though I haven't found any reliable figures, I have little doubt that the amount of manure currently generated by the meat industry is far beyond our fertilizer needs. Rest assured, this is not an argument for increasing meat production. On the contrary, we eat too much of it and our environment (and our health) pays the price.
Some may object that because the "meat industry" is currently so environmentally destructive, both meat and dairy should be eliminated from our diet. But such a view is shortsighted: with reduction and improvement in practices, livestock-based farming can be (and in the case of sustainable, organic livestock farms already is) an asset to the environment. My point is, if we are to wean ourselves from fossil fuels, we can't cut out livestock completely without permanently damaging our agricultural land. Livestock as currently produced commercially uses more fossil fuel than it saves, but that's an argument for change, not elimination: it need not and should not be that way.
This is a case where a little-used term in our language applies: balance. Somewhere between the black-and-white extremist thinking, between the Puritan ideal of denial and the Capitalist ideal of excessive consumption, lies a balance between too much animal products and none at all. And I'll be the first to acknowledge that the balance point is far, far lower than where we currently are.
When confronted by the fact that the newspaper industry is incredibly destructive, an editor replied, "I'm all for the environment, but freedom of the press trumps it".
When confronted by the fact that the green issue of Vanity Fair used virgin paper, the editor replied that they are progressive when it comes to the environment, but using recycled paper doesn't make economic sense to its publication, even if it was the best thing the company could do for the environment.
When confronted by the fact that his movie The Beach (rather horrible even by Hollywood standards) destroyed an incredible area, Leonardo Dicaprio replied, along the lines, that moviemaking is too important of a craft to worry about some beach.
When environmentalist Arianna Huffington was confronted by the fact that her personal jet did a lot more harm than an SUV, she refused to give up using it, and instead talked up her hybrid.
And when Al Gore was confronted by the fact that his home consumed 221,000 kWh of energy in one year, he brushed it off and talked about carbon credits.
It's too bad that those who talk up CO2 reduction make few changes to their own lives. When it comes to eliminating the aspect of their lives that contributes most to the destruction of the environment, lame excuses are their only answers. And it's funny to think that the same people who aren't smart or dedicated enough to make these changes to their own life, believe they are smart and dedicated enough to create laws and contrived economies to save the earth.
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I agree. I trust you're not overlooking that my wife and I have reduced our carbon footprint by 50% over the past year-- cutting 12 tons of CO2 from our energy use and offsetting or sourcing from renewables all of our usage plus another 2 tons. And we're not done. I believe a reasonable goal, even for rural dwellers like us with no mass transit (and transportation is by far our largest source of emissions) even with current technology, is 4 tons per person per year. I'd like to get to 2 tons, but at this point that would take more money than we have.
In addition, we've cut our diet-related emissions by an estimated 90% from the typical American diet. Sure we could reduce it by another 5-7% (50% or more from where we are now) by becoming vegan, but quite frankly I'm not willing to make the sacrifice for such a small return.
We're not perfect and we're still a long way from our goal, but we've already reduced more than most people in this country.
And again, I'd like to suggest that if we're only satisfied with perfection-- whatever that looks like-- we'll never get the vast majority of Americans on board, and all our personal changes will be dwarfed by the lack of change by everyone else. It's a good way to have someone to blame ("them"), but not a good way to get people to change their habits.
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