Memorial Day with Climate Change Ignorers

Beef on the BBQ, Gives Me a Beef

A fitting metaphor for climate change?

Every Decision Counts

Climate change is an overwhelming subject. It is both frightening, and seemingly beyond your control and mine. Yet, this is not completely true. Yes, there are powerful people and forces in the world over which we little control. However, that is not the same as no control. Every decision you or I make counts. Where our money goes counts. Keeping our money in our pockets and choosing to consume as little as possible counts. Planet destroying billionaires can only exist by extracting our wealth. Many of our expenditures are discretionary. We can control those choices.

Although I live simply compared to most in this “advanced” industrialized nation, I cannot hold myself up as a paragon of virtue. There is always more I can do. I try. I don’t consume much beyond my basic needs. Most of my possessions were purchased decades ago. Many were antiques, or second-hand, which I restored. I stopped eating beef six years ago, and pork about four. That means I ate them most of my life, which I regret. Beef production is the single biggest agricultural contributor of greenhouse gasses. Defenders of beef will tell you it’s a small fraction of greenhouse gas emissions compared to electricity, industry and transportation. That’s true, but it’s not an honest narrative. Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest is driven by cattle grazing and clearing the forest for feed. The Amazon is one of the critical climate tipping points on our beleaguered planet. The US bought more than 320 million pounds of Brazilian beef in 2021. We’ve been doing that forever. Love of the hamburger, Ray Kroc and the rise of the McDonald’s empire, it turns out, is a tragic story. Kroc wasn’t evil, he likely had no idea what his fast food empire would do to the planet. I doubt Henry Ford did either.

The cows themselves are, of course, treated miserably. I have a problem with that. The grain and land livestock are raised on could feed many times more people with proper crops occupying the acreage. I learned that in grade school. Yes, grade school. What has changed since? I have a problem with that. Pigs are slaughtered as babies, around six months. Actually, most of the animals we eat are slaughtered as babies. I have a problem with that. In both cases, the animals are raised and killed inhumanely, aware death is coming from screams and smell of blood. Sometimes, when pigs are gassed in chambers, they don’t die completely. They suffer terribly either way. I have a problem with that. I have a problem with animal concentration camps.

Eventually, awareness changed my behavior. I no longer crave either beef or pork. I eat vegetarian a few days a week. However, I eat a bit of cheese and occasional eggs. I should stop. Dairy also involves greenhouse gasses and cruelty. Female cows are separated from their babies after just a day or two. The industry doesn’t want to “waste” milk on the calves, even though the mamas have been bred to produce over four times as much milk as in the 1950s. The mothers often bellow in distress for days. The calves are given formula made from slaughterhouse blood products. Now that is admirable capitalist efficiency. Male calves are sold for veal, kept in crates for their entire lives, and slaughtered at just months of age. Cows can live for 20 years. The mothers are slaughtered at four years, after spending their short lives as 24/7 milk machines. Only a quarter of them ever see the outdoors, a pasture.

As for eggs, male chicks are killed at birth, deemed as worthless by the industry. 300 million chicks in the US are killed by having their necks broken, electrocution, maceration, asphyxiation, and suffocation in plastic bags. These egg producers supposedly don’t kill chicks: United Egg Producers, M.P.S Egg Farms, and Michael Foods, but I would have to research this. Those organic free-range eggs I buy? Turns out they kill the male chicks, too. So much for feeling good about my egg purchases.

I need to be better. Maybe writing this article will put me over the top. I did eliminate milk. I use oat milk for cereal now, not almond. Almonds require twice the amount of water as compared to oats per season. It takes 1,300 gallons of water for every pound of almonds produced in drought-stricken California. They might need that for water fighting wildfires at this point. Soon. Summer is here.

I still eat fish and fowl. I have a problem with that, too. 65,000 wild salmon died from drought in British Columbia last October. Farmed salmon is raised in tanks of antibiotics. Antibiotics used in industrial agriculture has been reducing their effectiveness in people. This has been known for decades. As for fowl, avian influenza (H5N1) is decimating both wild birds and domestic poultry. As of May this year, nearly 60 million cases of H5N1 in poultry in 47 states have been identified. Last year, 59 million commercial birds were culled in the US. Nearly seven million wild birds are known to be infected.

There is concern this virus could jump to people. In fact, the first person in the US caught H5N1 in April 2022. There is concern existing vaccines could be ineffective. Two recent cases in Cambodia, a father and a daughter, may indicate human to human transmission is possible. It’s unknown. The World Health Organization (WHO) is concerned. Although only six of cases, and two deaths, have occurred since the start of 2021, from January 2003 to January 2023 there were 868 cases of human infection from avian influenza around the world, 457 of which were fatal.

So I have more work to do. How can I justify collapsing salmon populations, chicken genocide, and the potential outbreak of another devastating virus, if I have already rejected eating beef and pork, on moral and environmental grounds? Does not responsibility come with awareness? Clearly, I’m a doomer for speaking truth.

It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. It’s everyone’s fault, yet no one’s fault. It’s a system whose costs have been carefully hidden until now, that can’t be hidden anymore. I want to feel good about how I live in this world, even if it turns out to be futility. Every step creates momentum to do more, and helps me sleep at night.

Talking to People is Hard

I spent part of Memorial Day weekend with family and friends. They are aware of my blog, but won’t read it. I have pushed my views occasionally, and as generally liberal people they seem to agree with most of what I have to say. Yet, they are reluctant to engage. They feel helpless to do anything of significance. I understand. I was there just a few years ago.

Climate change is here and happening now (it’s absurdly hot in Buffalo as I write), and they know it, yet there was beef on the charcoal BBQ (my writing inspiration it turns out), and the host and hostess have long-owned a monster V-8 powered Jeep Cherokee (I won’t get into my beef with that name here), and a six-burner gas stove. To be fair, it was just revealed how bad gas stoves are. And the host and hostess are lovely, good-hearted people, who have done much for others at personal sacrifice, which adds to my frustration somehow. In fact, I love the entire group. Yet, even here with some of my dearest and closest, talking about climate change is a near impossibility. None of them believe their actions will make a difference, so they do nothing. Their defeatist attitude can only help fulfill their pessimism. Ironically, they would never call themselves doomers. They would likely they call me one for talking about it. Yet, talking is where change starts.

Yes, we are in trouble, but the fight is far from over if we get our asses in gear. We’re at 1.1°C of warming now over pre-industrial temperatures, and clearly witnessing the first consequences. Limiting warming to 1.5°C as established in the Paris Climate Accords is for good reason. That’s the mark responsible scientists have established as the beginning of serious consequences for #ClimateChange. That’s the mark that puts four of sixteen tipping points in danger of being crossed. That leaves twelve others we could mitigate, if we deal with the first four. If we act with urgency, we can limit our damage, and improve the chances of young people inheriting a world that hasn’t collapsed into chaos. There are as many reasons as there are people, and innocent animals to be aware, make personal changes, and bravely broach this conversation with those around you.

You’re brave enough to read me, so I know you can do it.