Where are the Environmentalists?

Last May, business executive, engineer, activist and author James Morris Hicks presented a Vegan Society of Hawaii lecture about the impact of animal ag on climate change.  He restated an established, but widely underappreciated fact:

“On a per calorie basis, animal-based foods require over ten times as much land, water and energy as do plant-based foods. So, if we cannot take the animal out of the equation when it comes to feeding ourselves, we will never learn to live in harmony with nature, thereby placing the future of our civilization and our species in serious jeopardy.”

Hick’s research led to a pretty grim assessment: “We have way too many people on planet.  Most are eating the wrong food, which requires us to destroy more of nature.  Hundreds of species go extinct every day.  We’re consuming way too much ‘stuff’ and running out of time to save ourselves.”

For decades we’ve known that animal agriculture is highly inefficient and destructive, but how much does it contribute to climate change?

A lot.

“Livestock and Climate Change,” an article by World Bank researchers Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang (World Watch, November/December 2009), found that livestock accounts for at least 51 percent of annual worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

A decade later, Sailesh Rao, Ph.D., Founder and Executive Director of Climate Healers, confirmed that Animal Agriculture is the Leading Cause of Climate Change, concluding that animal ag accounts for at least 87% of annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet, Hicks notes, the dominant role of animal agriculture in climate change is rarely mentioned by the United Nations and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “Most know that climate change is a huge problem,” Hicks observes, “but no one in authority is sounding the alarm about its number one cause, our love affair with animal-based foods.”

Given the climate emergency, you might conclude that the big environmental organizations are leading the fight to transition to plant-based agriculture.

You would be wrong.

Are they MIA because they just can’t give up their bacon and cheeseburgers?  Maybe there’s a little of that, but inaction may be due to darker motivations.

Hicks recounted a revealing incident during a meeting he attended in southern California nine years ago. The meeting host, an advocate of plant-based eating, asked two top executives from environmental organizations why their websites did not mention a single word about addressing the leading driver of climate change -- animal agriculture.  “You guys claim to be the environmental specialists,” remarked the host. “What gives?   

One of the environmental leaders sheepishly replied, “If we got to be known as anti-meat, it would destroy our fundraising.”

That occurred in 2013. How about today? Are major environmental groups finally on the plant-based bandwagon?

We looked at the websites of some leading environmental groups and the federal agency charged with protecting the environment.

* The Union of Concerned Scientists advocates so-called “sustainable agriculture.” “Integrating livestock and crops makes farms more efficient and profitable.”

* The Sierra Club acknowledges that “livestock are the major source of greenhouse gases from agriculture.”  But the organization advocates for more climate-friendly management of animal ag, not its replacement with plant-based farming.

* The Environmental Defense Fund holds that “Agriculture, a major source of climate pollution, will need to supply 50% more food by midcentury to feed a growing population. A transition to climate-resilient food production could meet that demand on existing agricultural lands.”  Like the Sierra Club, its idea of “climate-smart agriculture” does not call for replacing livestock with plant-based farming.

* The Nature Conservancy offers a short video on “A Natural Solution to Climate Change.” The narrator wisely acknowledges that replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy is important, but not sufficient. Stopping deforestation, planting more trees and “smarter farming” is its answer.

*  The World Wide Fund for Nature believes that the use of fossil fuels, (not animal agriculture), is the biggest contributor to climate change.

* Greenpeace also sees the elimination of fossil fuels as the solution to the climate crisis.

*  The US Environmental Protection Agency advances seven initiatives to fight climate change. You guessed it: phasing out animal ag isn’t one of them.

The big takeaway from the environmentalists is that we should make animal agriculture more “climate-friendly,” not end it.

Are big environmental bureaucracies too financially beholden to meat, fish and dairy donations, in denial of the critical impact of animal agriculture on climate change, afraid of backlash from powerful lobbyists and the carnivorous public, or all of the above?  This is worthy of further investigation.

For now, one thing is certain: new, independent and bold coalitions must emerge quickly if we are to save ourselves and the planet.