Earth Day Special: A Lazy Person's Guide to Being an Environmentalist. Plus, PETA's New Strategy

Every once in a while I have a recurring conversation with friend X that goes something like this:

Friend X: “Have you heard about widespread abuse of animals in food industry Z?”

Me: “No.”

Friend X: “It’s really awful, you should read about it.”

Me: “I’m sure it is awful. But I’m playing Scrabble. If it’s something that keeps you from getting sleep at night, there’s one really great, fool proof way to ensure you have a clean conscience. Stop eating meat.”

(Author’s Note—obviously this isn’t “fool proof” in the strictest sense. There may be other indirect ways you are supporting the industry: owning stock, supporting legislators, etc. . . but let’s keep it simple).

Friend X: “I like meat. I just want to make sure that the practices are humane.”

And then that’s it. We go on with our lives. Friend X gets to be concerned with animal suffering, AND she gets to eat her meat with a clean conscience because she says “Yeah, it should definitely be done humanely.” Essentially, she gets to have her meat and eat it too.

I’ll have a similar discussion with friend X about substitutes for meat. It goes something like this:

Friend X: “I wish I could stop eating meat, I think it’s a good idea for (insert reason here: health, environment, responsible management of resources, waste, animal treatment concerns, etc), but I just love eating steaks. I couldn’t live without my steak.”

Me: “I agree. Meat is tasty. But what if scientists were able to create a meat substitute that was indistinguishable, not just to your senses, but molecularly as well, from that steak you’re eating now. Surely you’d choose the substitute because of concerns ( health, environment, animal treatment, etc.) that you cited above, right?”

Friend X: "I don’t think that would be possible."

Me: "Ok. But assuming it was, surely because of the considerations above you would choose the substitute, right? Keep in mind that it is molecularly indistinguishable. The ONLY difference is that we didn’t use a shit-ton of feed (usually around a 10 to 1 calorie ration) and loads of land and water, and that there was never an animal alive to feel pain, to be slaughtered, or even, admittedly, to feel happiness." (For those of you who disagree with that last bit, I doubt you’ve spent any significant amount of time in a pasture in Spring, hanging out with your best friends, chewing away on a big old mouthful of cud as the sun warms your hindquarters. It’s absolute HEAVEN).

Friend X: "I don’t think that’s possible. I can’t imagine a substitute like that."

I swear to God I’ve had this conversation with people. I won’t say who (my mother), but this exact conversation has taken place. That’s what’s kind of weird, even people who are sympathetic to the cause are reluctant to concede that “given an indistinguishable substitute” they would prefer it.

Now, I’ve never been convinced that a real, indistinguishable--molecularly or otherwise-- substitute would be available, so it was with a great deal of interest that I read in the NYT today, that PETA is offering 1 million dollars to the first company to come up with commercially viable fake meat at competitive prices by 2012.

This article was insane. I figured when it came around, this indistinguishable fake meat would be the product of soy, red food coloring, lots of taste scientists working their magic, and maybe an atomic hyperaccelerator somewhere on the West Coast. It turns out I’ve got a lot to learn about the fake meat industry. Here’s a paragraph from the NYT article:

“For several years, scientists have worked to develop technologies to grow tissue cultures that could be consumed like meat without the expense of land or feed and the disease potential of real meat. An international symposium on the topic was held this month in Norway. The tissue, once grown, could be shaped and given texture with the kinds of additives and structural agents that are now used to give products like soy burgers a more meaty texture.”

Tissue cultures. I should have known all along. Here’s another quick quote from someone who appears to be engaged in a reasonable search for the truth:

“Henk P. Haagsman, a professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and an in vitro meat research pioneer, said he welcomed the prize competition.

But he said he would not like to see the field dominated by the animal welfare issue, since environmental and public health issues are such important ‘drivers for this research.’ The Netherlands has put $5 million into in vitro meat studies.”

Right on, Professor Haagsman.

If all goes well, being environmental might just get a whole lot easier, and tastier, for those of use who try not to eat meat.

Now, my views aren’t completely in alignment with PETA. For example, I don’t think that animal suffering should be the driving force behind a push for a less meat heavy diet. Sure, there’s an argument to be made there. If I have the option between kicking the shit out of a dog. . . and not doing that. . . . I tend to opt for the latter. Most people I speak to tend to be in agreement on this point. So at least at some level, when given the option between inflicting pain and not, humans think that the unnecessary infliction of suffering is at the very least, less preferable than the alternative.

But protecting animals just isn’t my number one priority. Why? Like I told friend X, I’ve got other stuff to do. Like what? Well, like playing video games, for one. Or (God forbid) studying for finals. Or, here’s one that’s pretty appropriate for Earth Day: deciding how we humans want to manage OUR own resources to ensure the comfortable survival or OUR species. At its heart, I believe that the argument for reducing the meat that we consume should be framed like this “What can we humans get out of it to make sure that our lives are comfortable?”

You see, deep down inside, I’m a speciesist. I love humans. I count some of them among my dearest friends, family, and neighbor acquaintances. If I’m sitting in a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with two buddies and a dog. The dog goes overboard. Did I say overboard? I meant eaten. No questions asked. He doesn’t get a seat at the table, he doesn’t draw straws with that non-opposable thumbed paw of his. He gets, IF HE’S LUCKY, the least painful vicious murder we can give him.

If it’s me, one buddy, my arch nemesis (Hi Jerry!), and a dog are in the raft? The dog still goes. But it’s a closer call.

So, no, I agree with Professor what’s-his-name from above, animal suffering should not be the primary force compelling humans to consider a less meat-heavy diet.

So what should be? Should health concerns be the driving force? Well, it’s true that there are substantial benefits to be had, but those aren’t really my main concerns either. If they were, I would have given up binge drinking long ago.

In fact, the driving force behind my own efforts to cut down on meat eating (a practice I prefer to call “intermittent vegetarianism," or "doing my best"), is based on two important reasons: 1) I suffer from a severe guilt complex of the Woody Allen variety, and 2) I’m lazy.

If you suffer from either of these symptoms, you might find this rationale helpful. Let’s start with,

GUILT COMPLEX

Here is a basic syllogism

1. Our Earth has a finite amount of resources.

2. To ensure our present and future comfort, we should manage these resources in a responsible way with an eye toward global sustainability and an ever-increasing population.

3. Meat, being about the most inefficient, soil eroding, waste producing, resource eating (literally), rain forest destroying, pollutant emitting way imaginable to produce food, does not ensure that we are managing our resources responsibly.

4. Therefore, people should try to eat less meat.

So, back to our lifeboat example:

This time I’m in a lifeboat with my friend, a dog, and about 100,000 calories worth of sandwiches. My friend requests one of the sandwiches. I say I would prefer to give them to the dog to “beefen” him up and eat him at a later date. My friend, aware that this is a horrible calorie trade off, and unwilling to use our limited resources in this way, scoffs and begins to gnaw on the most supple part of my calf. Do you see the tragedy here? The choice to feed the sandwiches to the dog would be stupid because, even if we survived, I’d never play basketball again.

Now, let’s change that hypothetical just a bit. Let’s pretend that the lifeboat, instead of being in the Pacific Ocean, is in the Milky Way. And instead of me and my friend and a dog on it, there are billions and billions of people and livestock on it. Oh, and we’re pretty sure we’re not going to be picked up by an ocean liner any time soon. We need to start deciding what we want to do with those sandwiches.

So there's the guilt complex bit.

Now, we move on to,

LAZINESS AND LETHARGY

Having accepted the above premises as being true, but generally lethargic and unmotivated, what am I to do? I’ve taken the one step that takes absolutely no effort on my part to do; I’ve tried to reduce the amount of meat that I eat. Does this make me better than you? Probably. But that’s only part of the reason that I do it. The fact is that it happens to be the most effective legal environmental non-action that any single human being could do is a nice little perk too.

PARTING THOUGHTS

Pursuant to this lazy, guilty mentality, long ago I made a studied, conscious decision to do two things that I would urge all lazy/environmentally concerned people to do to both maximize their environmental impact and assuage the dirty, guilty conscience that comes with living in a modern, resource hungry world:

1. Reduce the amount of meat you eat.

2. Only have one child each for you and your life mate/cosmic partner.

Go for it; do everything you want, recycle, clean up trash, plant a couple trees in your yard, lobby your congressman, write letters to the EPA, march in green protests, ride your bike to work every day, join the sierra club, spend more money on a hybrid. There is no way you will be able to match the enormous impact that these two non-activities have in reducing your carbon, environmental, resource use, etc footprint. It just can’t be done. You could spend every waking hour recycling every little piece of plastic that you’ve ever used, and you know what? If you have that 9th kid it’s all wasted. That’s one more mouth to feed, one more body to heat, Nintendo controller to be used, refrigerator to power, gas guzzling car to fill, and so on. . . for an average or 77 YEARS. How much did you say they gave you the last time you took your cans back? $2.35?

I thought so.

And do you know what these two non-acts take? Nothing. No affirmative act on your part at all. It takes two sacrifices:

1) Eating meat with less frequency. This is obviously a sacrifice because meat is tasty.

2) Not having that one extra bundle of joy you thought you were going to have. This, depending on your view of bundles of joy, isn’t even a sacrifice at all.

See how easy it is to be environmental? Eat great pasta and get an appropriately timed vasectomy. That’s it. You’re already doing a lot better than most other humans. And you’re probably doing a lot, lot better than most other Americans.

And on last note,

FOR THE CYNICS

Obviously, if you don’t have a raging guilt complex, this advice might not be very useful to you. I’ll admit that the alternative philosophy, “Why do I care what happens to the Earth after I’m gone. . .Let’s Party!” is an appealing one. Doubly so considering that I am expecting no moral evaluation at the end of my life by God or Zeus or the EPA or my offspring. If I was a bigger man, perhaps it’s the route I would choose.

But for some reason I can’t do that. I think in the end it comes down to my trouble with waste. Maybe it was the fact that my parents always had me clean my plate or were always encouraging me to turn off the lights, or turn off my stereo when I wasn’t in the house. Maybe deep down I just can’t stop hearing my mother’s voice. But that’s probably a good thing. After all, to ignore all that advice, to forget all those words, to not hear that voice telling me to turn off the lights, well. . .

That would just be a waste.