Apocalypse Cow.
President Obama and a man who loves little red Corvettes snuck out of the White House for a hamburger lunch Friday, indulging their taste buds at the expense of planetary health. The duo dined at Shake Shack, an East Coast burger joint, each ordering at least a patty and fries. (Vice-President Biden’s meal was even more bovine, with cheese on his burger and a milkshake on the side).
Research indicates that such meals are helping turn Earth into a furnace. According to a 2006 report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), “It turns out that producing half a pound of hamburger for someone’s lunch — a patty of meat the size of two decks of cards — releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles,” wrote Scientific American.
(Drive a sedan, eat a burger — it’s entirely up to you.)
What’s more, the White House’s own climate action plan includes steps to reduce methane emissions from the dairy industry. Recognizing that it’s as bad to pump gas as it is to pass it, the administration’s crackdown on cow flatulence and belching aims “to reduce U.S. dairy sector greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020,” according to a White House fact sheet.
Stunts like Friday’s Shake Shack excursion work against the cause.
As the following diagram prepared by Red Alert Politics economists’ shows, an increase in the demand for cows leads to an increase in the quantity of cows supplied, meaning more cows flooding the market and their world-ending gasses flooding the air. (World-ending for their odor, really.)
“But,” one might ask, “what effect on the aggregate demand of cows — their meat, their dairy — do only two men really have?”
These aren’t just any two men. They are President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden, the most powerful and the 942nd most powerful men in the world, respectively. McCain-Palin might have “Game Change.” Obama-Biden are game changers. They set the example.
And like Michael Jordan made every kid want to wear a pair of Nike sneakers, there’s no telling what the rush on hamburgers will be after word of this feast reaches the rest of America through its right-wing blogs, journalism outlets, and FOX News, because lord knows MSNBC won’t touch it, and CNN won’t, either, until it realizes the burgers went missing from Obama and Biden’s lunch trays.
