Our Grandkids Will be Vegans

A couple of years back, I read some startling figures on the sustainability of cattle production and the bleak long-term outlook for beef as populations grew, living standards rose and more and more humans were increasing the amount of meat in their diet. It didn’t take much to see that when it came to a world in which everyone adopted the meat-heavy American diet, the math didn’t add up. The amount of land required (not only for the cattle but to grow their feed), along with the vast amount of water involved in the process, simply made it impossible.

Meat has been an American staple all of my life. Statistically, per-capita meat consumption has grown steadily over the past four decades and the average American now eats around 280 pounds of meat per year – or 155 pounds more than the USDA recommended annual maximum from the entire protein group (including meat, eggs, nuts, etc.). That’s nearly triple the amount of the average intake per person if you combined what someone in Turkey and Egypt eats.

While meat consumption in the United States is uniquely high, it continues to rise elsewhere, especially in developing countries. There’s only one problem. When you look at the numbers, there’s not only no question that the trend cannot continue infinitely, but it becomes clear that meat will, in all likelihood, ultimately be relegated to a rare delicacy in the human diet.

That sounds rather alarmist, I know, especially since there seems to be almost no dialogue on the subject. That is what some filmmakers seek to address in Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret. Co-director Kip Anderson, a self-proclaimed environmentalist, narrates the film.

Anderson describes the cognitive dissonance he experienced upon learning that the environmental footprint of animal husbandry dwarfed that of fossil fuels, and the ensuing revelation that the environmental groups he supported were doing exactly nothing about it. For the film, groups like Greenpeace and Sierra Club were surprisingly disinterested in addressing the topic, and the film is filled with blank stares and you could hear a pin drop moments when the subject is brought up.

In fact, Anderson and co-director Keegan Kuhn focus most of the film’s energy on this seeming hypocrisy, asking how the groups could possibly work so hard to promote certain sorts of sustainability (mostly related to fossil fuels) while ignoring this much larger and arguably more easily resolved issue.

The answer may be in the obvious conclusion one has to draw when taking a hard look at the process. Here are just a few of the alarming statistics used to illustrate the dilemma:

¥ The amount of freshwater required in the complete process of producing a single beef patty for a hamburger is equivalent to 2-months worth of showers.

¥ The meat and dairy industries use over ? of all freshwater consumed in the world today.

¥ Animal agriculture is the number one driver of deforestation, especially in the rain forest, where the leading cause of destruction are livestock and feed crops.

¥ Animal agriculture produces far more greenhouse gases than all transportation combined.

¥ Animal agriculture is the leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, water pollution and habitat destruction.

So, what is a culture to do? Give up meat? That seems unlikely, at least willingly, which is probably why so little conversation on the subject exists. As a meat eater, I’ll admit that watching the documentary was a bit uncomfortable, as the calculus of the issue certainly seems to dictate that one who is not part of the solution, is indeed part of the problem.

Anderson and Kuhn do a remarkable job of presenting audiences with a little known and rarely examined issue in an honest, no-punches-pulled manner. One of the film’s participants notes on several occasions, "you can’t call yourself an environmentalist if you eat meat.“ Watching the film, it’s very hard to argue with him.

It does seem inevitable that in the relatively near future, nearly the entire human race will be vegan, eating foods that return a much greater calorie per acre and H2O ratio, with a much lower carbon footprint. If not, we'll run out of drinkable water, even before we run out of land. The only question is when and how we will transition. Like most things, the longer we wait, the more painful it is sure to become.

Anderson and Kuhn's point seems to be that we are approaching the cliff right now, largely unaware that the cliff even exists. The filmmaking duo say they ran up against a lot of resistance while broaching the subject and even lost their funding when backers got nervous about the blowback the film was getting before it was even completed. They ultimately used a crowd-funding platform to finish the project, which has production value on par with any popular documentary of recent years.

Cowspiracy is in limited release at theaters. There is no word yet on whether it will be coming to local markets, though it seems like just the sort of film that would be up Burns Court Cinema's alley. You can, however, watch it online by buying a digital copy at the website for $9.99, or even ordering a DVD for $19.99. I went with the digital copy and then watched it on my TV through my Hulu account, following the easy instructions on the site. Trust me, you’ll never look at a steak the same way, but this is hardly an issue for which it would be prudent to keep our heads buried in the sand.