Fake meat and regime change
By Dr. Harold A. Black
blackh@knoxfocus.com
haroldblackphd.com
I am a deer hunter and since 1971 I have not eaten any red meat except venison. I have no explanation except that since I can hunt and take enough game to last from the end of deer season to the beginning of the next, I see no need to eat beef or pork. I do eat fish, chicken and turkey, and also am a turkey hunter. I have a fairly healthy diet and cannot recall the last time I have eaten fast food – although I have stopped for an early morning biscuit on the way to a hunt. I eat very little processed foods.
All this is to say that I do not understand fake meat. What’s the point of consuming a food like substance that is processed to imitate meat with its texture and smell? Wouldn’t it make more sense just to consume the plant and not all the other stuff that is added to it? Consider that one of the products imitating meat contains 22 ingredients. I would not feed it to my dog – and I bet my dog wouldn’t eat it. My dog is fed raw venison at each meal and venison has no added ingredients.
I presume that the fake meat industry arose from a combination of climate change and PETA activists who seek to decrease the consumption of meat. The PETA folks have been protesting meat consumption for years and have just been silly in their protestations. The climate alarmists want to decrease meat consumption because they note that cow’s farts are a major source of methane in the atmosphere. Scientists report that methane has a warming potential more than 28 times that of carbon dioxide meaning that cows may pose a bigger threat to the environment than internal combustion engines. Who knew? The anti-cow lobby got a boost from the recent UN climate change conference in Dubai (of all places) where the delegates arrived in private jets, ate expensive cuts of beef and recommended that we, the great unwashed, go green and eat green.
A country that has taken seriously the threat to cows destroying the planet is Denmark with its large agriculture footprint and dairy farms. There it is estimated that “total methane emissions from Denmark’s approximately 570,000 dairy cows today amount to 2.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents annually. Likewise, the total pig production results in methane emissions equal to 1.45 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per year.” A tonne is 1,000 kilograms. The Danes are experimenting adding algae to animal feed to reduce methane claiming that the algae are not harmful for human consumption. However, the Danish government has other ideas showing that governments think alike regardless of location. It is proposing a farming emissions tax on cows to force farmers to decrease the size of their herds and substitute non-animal products. The politicians in Denmark have obviously ignored the reaction of the farmers who are loudly protesting the proposed tax. In the Netherlands and New Zealand where similar taxes were proposed farmers staged protests that often turned violent.
In the Netherlands, several political parties united to fight the government edicts and its prime minister declared a political crisis. The end result was a collapse of the government and the election of a conservative leader that shook the left-wing media and entrenched European politicians.
The question is whether America will reach that point with some governments which seems intent on banning all internal combustion engines (ICE). Their war on stuff is getting absurd with some states proposing fines and jail time for operating gas powered lawn movers and weed eaters.
The banning of ICE comes at a cost. “Renewable” energy is highly inefficient and more costly than fossil fuels. The demands on the electric grid will cause brown outs and black outs. Energy will be more costly, reducing consumers real incomes and having an adverse effect on the poor. What is particularly vexing is that the banning of ICE has been shown to have a negligible impact on total carbon dioxide emissions. When Americans come to realize that the climate change efforts costing over $1 trillion is either to make the left feel good or to transfer public funds to the green industry and their friends, perhaps they will follow the lead of the Netherlands in voting for a regime change.
