The founding United Nations (UN) charter of 1945 called for “maintaining international peace,” and developing “friendly relations among nations based on the respect for the principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.”
How did we get from “international peace,” “equal rights” and “self-determination” to a UN body telling Americans to cut back or quit eating meat, what we should drive to work and play, if we have a car instead of public transportation and how we should heat our homes and generate electricity?
The UN Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) is recommending that meat-eating countries reduce their consumption to remedy their inflated claims of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Sometimes what seems a temporary problem becomes a watershed event. For the beef industry, that was the publication of “Livestock’s Long Shadow” (LLS) published in 2006 by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and based on false data later withdrawn and admittedly miscalculated. It was up to University of California, Davis scientist Dr. Frank Mitloehner to point out the errors in the report and force retraction.
But the damage was done. Media and activists around the globe trumpeted the false calculation that livestock production was the No. 2 source of GHG emissions worldwide.
From the LLS report: “The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent. This is a higher share than transport.”
Transport meaning all the cars, trucks, planes and trains globally. That figure was faulty, and in the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency said livestock account for 3% and beef 2.2% of emissions, compared to 26% for U.S. transport, 14% global transport and 31% for U.S. energy production.
The LLS report also claimed: “Although economically not a major global player, the livestock sector is socially and politically very significant. It accounts for 40 percent of agricultural gross domestic product (GDP). It employs 1.3 billion people and creates livelihoods for one billion of the world’s poor. Livestock products provide one-third of humanity’s protein intake and are a contributing cause of obesity and a potential remedy for undernourishment.”
They consider animal products an obesity contributor and yet still a potential remedy for the undernourished, but arrogantly propose mandating major change for billions and their livelihoods.
As for grazing: “Extensive grazing still occupies and degrades vast areas of land…”
Activists and leftist governments have been seeking or passing laws and regulations designed to restrict livestock production, to use cattle as a sacrifice in their climate change crusade. The firms manufacturing fake meat have quoted the LLS justifying its invention to help save the planet.
It is obvious that the UN is dominated by far-left countries without the economic and cultural benefits of Western civilization. It is the world organization for redistributing Western wealth. Climate change has become a primary redistribution tool.
That involves inhibiting and controlling basics like energy, food and nutrition that the West has in abundance and non-free-market countries lack.
Obviously, the UN FAO has little comparative knowledge of U.S. and Canadian beef production systems and those in Europe, Asia and Africa. Emissions on a per pound basis—from our energy and resource efficient, time-compressed and combination grazing and feedyard beef production—are nothing like the rest of the world. Global comparisons are like comparing bicycles to motorcycles.
Similarly, Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA), along with a German member of Parliament, and a Canadian senator, have been circulating a letter to UN members and attendees, calling for the U.S.—the No. 1 producer (24%) of global natural gas—to stop new development of gas drilling and transport infrastructure, according to Fox News Digital. Lawmakers from Western countries and the EU concur, pushing a “fossil fuel phase-out.”
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairwoman Kathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA-05), referred to fossil fuels in a way also applicable to the meat industry and nutrition.
“We should instead be working to build on our remarkable legacy, which has transformed the human condition, helped lift people out of poverty and raised the standard of living.”
Allysia Finley’s op-ed, “First They Came for the Cars, Then the Cows,” in the Dec. 5 edition of the Wall Street Journal, expressed what we believe many Americans are beginning to understand. Regulations in the Netherlands and California (Proposition 12), for example, have the ultimate purpose of driving farmers out of business and making meat and eggs more expensive. The climate lobby knows that restricting or eliminating meat eating would be unpopular, even unconstitutional in many countries, Finley said.
“Instead, they urge that governments use regulation, taxes and subsidies to reduce the supply and increase the cost of meat, as they are doing with fossil fuels.” — Steve Dittmer, WLJ columnist
(Steve Dittmer is the author of the Agribusiness Freedom Foundation newsletter. Views in the column do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of WLJ or its editorial staff.)
