Environmental activists have some serious beef with beef.
Whether it’s claims that cow flatulence is rapidly accelerating global warming or dubious assertions that a pound of beef requires absurd amounts of water to produce, environmentalists paint a pretty bleak portrait of American cattle cultivation.
Their portrayal, thankfully, is a load of bull.
Talking heads within the world of liberal media like to echo the concerns brought forth by these activists, the most common being that cows emit far too much greenhouse gas to be a sustainable part of our diet. If we are to avoid the ever-looming climate crisis, they argue, we’re going to have to put down our hamburgers.
However, some scientists have provided contrary evidence.
One projection found if all Americans went vegan, greenhouse gas emissions would only decrease by 2.6%. While this may seem a borderline significant figure, one must consider that universal veganism being achieved in the United States is more than unlikely. If we could increase the number of vegans in the U.S. fifty-fold, from 0.5% to 25%, we would only reduce emissions by about a half percent.
For reference, U.S. carbon emissions fell by 2.8% in 2019.
A change in lifestyle as drastic as dropping meat cannot possibly be justified by such meager returns relative to our existing emission reduction trends.
What about the argument that beef cultivation is inefficient? Does a pound of cow meat really take 1,800 gallons of water to produce?
Though technically true, the figure is misleading. Threats to our water supply are driven primarily by the depletion of freshwater reserves — and cattle rearing hardly touches those.
More than 90% of the water used by the average cow comes in the form of rainfall. In other words, the vast majority of water that went into your burger would have fallen regardless of whether there were cows around to use it.
Beef haters also fail to realize that cows, in some ways, make our agricultural system more efficient.
Upwards of 90% of cattle feed is inedible to humans, much of that being food byproducts that would otherwise go to waste. So the argument that cows are eating food that could go to humans pretty much falls flat.
Further, many cow farmers use land unsuitable for traditional crop production, which expands our capacity for food production. If a smug, lifelong urbanite ever tells you that cows are hogging our land, remind them you can’t just grow anything anywhere.
Holistically examining the impacts of cattle agriculture, it becomes clear that the practice is relatively harmless. On the other hand, there are many positive things at stake if climate activists get their way and people start eating less beef.
What would America be, after all, without burgers, milkshakes, and lard-fried french fries?
Beef is deeply ingrained in the fabric of our nation’s culture, and a lot of Americans really like eating the stuff. Placing a tax on the sale of red meat to reduce its consumption, as some have proposed, would inflict an unnecessary cost on meat-eaters.
Attacks on beef are also attacks on the hundreds of thousands of people who rely on the industry for work.
Reducing U.S. beef production and consumption will not fix any of the issues activists claim it could. Rather, it would serve to erode several important cultural fixtures, threatening workers’ livelihoods in the process.
