One of the silliest arguments against eating meat offered by vegan zealots is that cattle cause global warming.\u00a0 Their argument boils down to two (incorrect or meaningless) points:<\/p>\n
1. Trees are cut down to produce the crops required to feed cattle.<\/p>\n
2. Cow farts add so much methane to the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect is amplified.<\/p>\n
Trees may indeed be cut down to produce crops, but of course vegans consume crops \u2013 where do they think their whole-wheat pastas and soybean burgers come from, anyway?\u00a0 As Lierre Keith argued so eloquently in The Vegetarian Myth<\/a>, it’s monocrop farming that’s damaging the environment, and vegetarians regularly consume the products of monocrop farming:\u00a0 corn, wheat, soybeans, etc.<\/p>\n I once responded to a vegetrollian who accused me of ruining the planet with my carnivorous diet by spelling out two scenarios:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 A local farmer raises cattle on grass.\u00a0 During their lives, the cattle produce new topsoil by pooping on the ground.\u00a0 They require no fertilizer to grow, and they fertilize the soil naturally.\u00a0 When it’s time to turn the cattle into burgers and steaks, they’re driven a short distance to a local slaughterhouse, then the meat is driven a short distance to a local store, where I buy some of it and take it home to my freezer.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 A farmer somewhere in Iowa grows soybeans, which requires massive amounts of fertilizers made from oil shipped in from the Middle East.\u00a0 The soybeans also require pesticides.\u00a0 The fertilizers and pesticides run off into local streams and rivers, poisoning the water and killing the marine life.\u00a0 The soybeans are then piled onto a gas-guzzling truck and shipped a long distance to an Archer Daniels Midland plant, where they’re processed into soy burgers.\u00a0 The soy burgers are then placed on another gas-guzzling truck and shipped to a grocery store in California, where our vegan buys them and convinces himself he’s saving the planet by eating them.<\/p>\n The vegetrollian never responded to my two scenarios.<\/p>\n The cow-fart issue is, of course, simply ridiculous.\u00a0 In response to yet another vegetrollian who raised that issue, I mentioned two points:<\/p>\n 1. The Great Plains were once home to millions of buffalo, yet their methane production somehow failed to push the planet into a permanent warming cycle.<\/p>\n 2. Given that vegetarians live on grains and beans, they’re probably major methane producers themselves.\u00a0 I certainly was during my vegetarian days \u2026 although it never occurred to me that I might be warming the planet.<\/p>\n Once again, no response from the vegetrollian.<\/p>\n As illogical as these beliefs are (especially the cow-fart issue), I’m not surprised that so many vegans have adopted them.\u00a0 As I’ve said before, many vegans are akin to religious zealots, and their beliefs are essentially religious.\u00a0 Raising cattle for the purpose of eating them is evil, so there must be evil consequences.<\/em> The only problem is that those beliefs don’t hold up to science.<\/p>\n