Carnivores for Climate Change

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development begins on Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro. This is the latest in a long series of global warming confabs whose main purpose is to provide plush vacation travel for government and NGO bureaucrats. Most people stopped paying attention to these events long ago, but a few still take them seriously. Like Frances Kissling and Peter Singer, who wrote in the Washington Post: “To fix the climate, take meat off the menu.” Their theme is that we could cool down the globe if only we were all vegetarians:

More than 50,000 [!] U.N. officials, scientists, environmental advocates and a few heads of state will gather this coming week in Rio de Janeiro for a conference on sustainable development. They’re assembling 20 years after the first Earth Summit was held in the same city, and the goal now, as it was then, is to figure out how to cut dangerous greenhouse gases and help the 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty. …

But what we want to know is: What’s on the menu? Specifically, will this large gathering on climate change be serving meat — whose production and consumption are major contributors to climate change?

We tried to find out.

The first answer to our e-mail inquiries ignored the question and pointed with pride to the event’s effort to be green. …

Pressing further, we found out from another U.N. spokesperson that priority will be given to “organic foods in catering services.” Which sounds nice enough, except that “organic” cattle typically produce even more methane per pound of beef than their less-well-treated brothers and sisters.

The authors argue that if the climate alarmists were really serious about averting global catastrophe, they would all be vegetarians:

Everyone at that meeting should know that meat is a major contributor to climate change. It is also one problem that can be solved more quickly than others. Cutting out meat would do more to help combat climate change than any other action we could feasibly take in the next 20 years.

The real agenda, I suppose, is to force the rest of us to be vegetarians. The hoaxers and bureaucrats who stir up global warming hysteria would no more stop eating filet mignon than they would give up their private jets. They just want power over the rest of us. Thankfully, hardly anyone is silly enough to believe that humanity can regulate the Earth’s climate by eating tofu instead of bacon. Still, next time you are in a restaurant, it might be fun to order a 32-ounce Porterhouse. In addition to all the usual reasons, you will be defying some of the world’s most obnoxious busybodies.

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