Lord Stern, author of the 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, predicts that eating meat could in the future become as socially unacceptable as drink driving.
If there ain’t no cows crapping then there ain’t no fertiliser for organic farms is there?
And of course meat eating ain’t all of it: no more milk or cheese either.
Back to the medieval peasantry folks! Pease pudding and turnips for all!
13 responses so far ↓
1 Lovegoats // Oct 27, 2009 at 9:30 am
Worse than that – nothing pulling the plough.
2 JuliaM // Oct 27, 2009 at 10:06 am
‘Socially unacceptable’ where…? Islington?
Sorry, Stern, that isn’t the whole world. Never will be.
3 Ed Snack // Oct 27, 2009 at 10:07 am
Stern is, quite simply, a fuckwit. No other word quite encompasses the idiocy that the man displays. It’s almost enough to get me to support the death penalty for such buffoons, as an object lesson to all and sundry.
4 Brian, follower of Deornoth // Oct 27, 2009 at 10:41 am
Is it curtains for all those sacred cows in India, then?
Thought not.
5 So Much For Subtlety // Oct 27, 2009 at 10:42 am
Well we can put women to the plough, peasants can carry us gentry around in sedan chairs, we can put human excrement straight onto the fields and have a diet of potatoes and turnips all winter.
Sounds like paradise.
6 JuliaM // Oct 27, 2009 at 10:53 am
It seems like only yesterday they were urging us to switch from pet cats and dogs to chickens.
Now, we can’t even eat those? Morons…
7 Ed // Oct 27, 2009 at 12:34 pm
If the methane farts and burps of our cows, pigs and sheep are so bad for the environment, shouldn’t the eco-idiots also want to get rid of all the wildebeest, antelope, rhinos, elephants, zebras etc?
8 AntiCitizenOne // Oct 27, 2009 at 3:12 pm
That’s obviously “different” natural and harmless methane.
9 Peter Risdon // Oct 27, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Some do seem to want us to get rid of wild animals too.
I might blog this in more detail, but livestock form part of a closed loop. Grass etc sequestrates carbon, they eat grass, release CO2 and methane, methane quickly breaks down in atmosphere into CO2 and other products, grass sequestrates carbon.
Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, so there’s an effect bubble while methane is breaking down. But it’s not overall a net release of CO2 at all.
However, converting pasture to crop does release large quantities of CO2 from topsoil, where it has been sequestrated slowly over centuries. Equally, converting crop land to pasture begins this slow sequestration process.
In brief, going vegetarian makes almost no difference. It’s a non-issue. Veggies are bandwagon jumping.
10 Peter Risdon // Oct 27, 2009 at 4:52 pm
BTW, I wrote the UK’s reference carbon profiling tool for farm and estate use, launched by Hilary Benn last year. The irony here is that the stewardship schemes this software has just been expanded to include do recognise the sequestration benefits of pasture topsoil.
11 Harry Haddock // Oct 27, 2009 at 8:21 pm
It also means that as oil dries up, and thus fertilizer cannot be produced cheaply, that we all starve to death. It also means that most of the land presently used for animals will be useless (raising animals on land is less profitable than growing protien, thus it is only done where you cannot grow soya, wheat, etc, such as moore land), so thats a bit less food.
That’s assuming we don’t all die of boredom from eating shite food.
12 HunkyMale // Oct 27, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Not getting the exact figures, but the greenies/Veggies/Lentalists have often spouted crap about how many Kg’s of food a beef cow needs in order to produce a single Kg of Meat (I think it was 95Kg to 1Kg?), but they always ‘forget’ to mention the 90+Kg of ‘fertiliser’ that is produced as a by product. Its quite nice that I am not the only one to notice this!
13 Canada Guy // Nov 3, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Organic farming methods offer several benefits for the environment and human health as a whole, but unfortunately, there are many misconceptions and falsehoods being spread regarding organic food and farming methods, both by proponents and detractors. Here are the facts about what organic methods can do for us and what they can’t.
http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/11/organic-myths-and-realities.html
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