KeepGreenGoing

Check out the current issue of SEED Magazine (Science is Culture) for a sharp analysis of the universal consequences brought on by our consumption of meat.

Carnivores Like Us is by journalist Paul Roberts, a Harper’s regular. His last book, The End of Oil, highlighted problems with the energy economy, chastised American energy (over)use, warned of global implications and encouraged a shift in the way we approach energy. Here, he does the same thing with food.

For decades, anyone who argued that humans should be eating less meat, or none at all, did so largely on moral grounds such as animal rights or for religious reasons — arguments that the rest of society was free to ignore.

Now the idea that meat-eating is purely an individual choice, and the costs affect only the individual, has been blown wide open. Just as chuffing on Marlboros or driving a gas-guzzling SUV — as Michael Specter recently put it — have become the modern-day equivalent of wearing a scarlet letter, so too has meat-eating graduated from the category of lifestyle choice to that of collective responsibility.

Read it also for a large section detailing the huge increase in China’s meat production/consumption in recent years. Hearing about the environmental/health problems this has caused is deeply troubling, but it’s made even more so by the realization that all they’re doing is catching up to us. Carnivores Like Us is adapted from Roberts’ upcoming book, The End of Food.

As an aside, I’m always reluctant to link to full content unless a print version isn’t easily available. This is especially true in regard to magazines; I love and respect the medium. In this case, SEED gives me no choice anyway. Content from the latest issue is still largely absent from their site. So, go find it if you can — not sure what their distribution’s like but odds are good your local bookstore/magazine stand stocks it.