NYT: Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html

Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler

By MARK BITTMAN
Published: January 27, 2008

A SEA change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil.

It’s meat.

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Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

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I'll do what I can.

have you seen the price of meat lately? I'd love to say that I am doing it out of concern for the planet. But frankly it is harder for me to afford it.

Of course, I'll have to figure out a good way to keep my dogs away from them.

My rottweiler adopted from the pound seemed compleletely bored by chickens. So was the mini-pinscher I fostered for 2 months...she didn't give a rip about any birds, she was totally bored. The older collie-mix we adopted is uninterested by the chickens, instead she just likes to chase the stray cat that comes around.

My young Australian Shepherd / Border Collie mix is a good boy, and although he harrassed the chickens when he was younger, he knows better now. He's a good dog, and he doesn't bother the chickens. The only time he harrassed a chicken recently, was when "his people" were all working outdoors, and were ignoring him. He turns bratty when he's ignored.

Neighbor dogs or stray dogs, you may have to be suspicious about.

Or avacadoes from Chile brought here by diesel spewing ships....

:P

and since I live in an area that's not good for much else than raising beef and I buy ONLY locally range feed beef I don't feel too bad

I need to add some chickens to the place for eggs and meat.

and I support my local dairy too.

I am trying very hard to 'eat locally' and, for the most part, am doing pretty well. but I realize we are the exception.

A pound of hamburger lasts me about 2 weeks maybe when I use it.

who still enjoys a good rare stake and using my grill and smoker to cook ribs and other meat and who just a few years ago was eating meat probably at least 3 times a week (more really if you count processed meat) never thought I could cut down.

Now if I have meat once a week that's a lot. And more often than not the meat is chicken, and when I eat beef or pork I go to one of the local farms (or to the farmer's market) that use sustainable practices.

I'm using tofu, making more use of beans, etc...

It can certainly be done and ENJOYED even by someone with my eating history (I still use the grill and smoker but it has become more of an "occasion" I know I have to spend more for it and I do because that reflects the real cost and value) the odd thing is...I'm gaining weight :) I've been trying to put on some weight for a while and not really getting anyway until I cut down so much on meat. Maybe there was something to that Atkins thing :)

when I do, I get the GOOD stuff.

Top round steak for making Beef en Daube being a recent case in point. Well worth the cost (sadly, it went on sale two days after I bought it, lol) for its superb flavor and tenderness.

I'll be getting another roast soon for the crockpot, cooked until it practically melts. Maybe in Feb.

The biological carbon cycle and the geological carbon cycle are separate but overlapping. We are removing carbon that was sequestered in the geologic cycle and injecting it into the biosphere. Many of the inputs into the geologic cycle originate with carbon uptake by biological organisms, but that is only relevant if the remains are somehow sequestered as might happen if a sea shell falls to the sea floor to be buried after Sally sells it.

Livestock production is intensified with the use of petroleum products. However, all analysis I've seen treat the entire carbon footprint of the livestock as if it were a product of geologically sequestered carbon. That is hogwash (hehe).

Now, there are a lot of resource use issues related to livestock production, and I myself eat only the .mall amounts of meat and cheeses needed to obtain my dietary requirement of high quality proteins.

But so far, I've yet to see an honest analysis of the climate change impact of livestock production that isn't a disguised piece of vegan propaganda. They are probably out there, but I haven't seen it yet.