McCartney's Meat Free Mondays: Letting a Few Bad Apples Kill the Entire Tree

Paul McCartney has backed a campaign that calls for people to give up meat one day a week. Meat Free Mondays, the well-known vegetarian suggests, will help reduce livestock greenhouse gas emissions and help feed impoverished nations.

McCartney made his case to the European Parliament earlier this month, meeting in Brussels with Rajendra K. Pachauri, head of the United Nations' global climate change panel. Production of food accounts for 20 to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, he said, and livestock production is responsible for around half of these emissions.

Some members of the European Parliament took issue with McCartney's claims; one told him that he had been "duped." The British National Farmers Union and Irish Farmers Association weren't amenable to McCartney's suggestion, either.

McCartney admitted his flights from London to Brussels and then to Berlin later that night had certainly contributed to global warming -- surely a lot more than the hamburger I ate today did.

"They haven't invented microphones that work on candle power," he said in response. "I do everything I can. If I go for a car, I go for a hybrid. I recycle."

How about just picking up the telephone? That might have been a more environmentally friendly way of voicing his support for the initiative. His choice of traveling in a proven mass polluter casts doubt on his credibility on the issue. In fairness, hypocrisy seems to be a toxic emission that could use some capping among the global-warming crowd. We all know about how much Al Gore personally contributes to the problem, and during the "summit to save the world" in Copenhagen this week, leaders from around the world used 1,200 limos and 140 private jets to get them there in style (no Priuses?).

If McCartney, Gore and the others truly believe in the apocalyptic forecast they predict, why aren't they changing their own lifestyles accordingly?

In McCartney's case, one explanation might be that the environmental appeal is just the latest vehicle in his obsession with making us all vegetarians and destroying one of the oldest and largest industries in the world. At Meat.org, McCartney narrates a video for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in which he says: "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian." He describes how livestock "endure almost unimaginable suffering," as the video depicts images of dead animals.

But should we really cut down the entire tree as a result of a few bad apples? The former Beatle, it seems, would answer "yes."

McCartney likes to point out the environmental benefits of a world without meat, but he fails to point out the consequences. Essentially, what he calls for is a boycott of the livestock industry. Such a campaign would wreak havoc on the market, and the livestock industry could eventually die. Long before that, however, the price of meat would inevitably go up and jobs would be lost. Economics, overall, would take a back seat, or more accurately, be thrown in the trunk.

Green Gone Bad

One only needs to take a look at the state of California to see how much damage can be done at the hands of an environmental movement that disregards the economic consequences of its proposals: the state is essentially broke. After discovering a shortfall totaling almost $60 billion, state legislators enacted the largest state tax increases in American history, leaving California with the highest sales and personal income tax rates in the country. The state, having made deep cuts to education, health and social services, is now paying for goods and services in IOUs, and has made a failed attempt to beg the federal government for financial assistance. Not to mention that the state's employee pension systems are about $300 billion in the red.

Who's to blame? Environmental extremism, partially, National Affairs writer Troy Senik points out.

From his article, "Who Killed California?":

Even as union pressures have brought absurd concessions and excessive spending, California's leaders have also engaged in shameless preening on environmental issues -- sapping the state's economic strength, undermining growth, and drying up desperately needed sources of revenue.

The last several decades have seen the emergence of no-growth ­environmentalism in California -- advanced by activists intent on restraining economic development, and championed by politicians eager to appear enlightened. Admittedly, this impulse has legitimate origins in the state's unique character: After all, millions have chosen to make California their home precisely because of its abundant natural beauty, and it is easy to see why they would want to preserve it. But today's environmentalism is a long way from old-fashioned conservation. The mindset that began with John Muir's efforts to turn Yosemite into a national park has devolved into a reflexive urge to impede the gears of commerce at every turn.

In 1972, the California Coastal Commission was created by ballot initiative to regulate development of the state's coastline. The legislature later made it permanent with the California Coastal Act of 1976. What began as a watchdog for environmental protection soon turned into a bureaucracy run by authoritarian extremists who employed bullying tactics to enforce their agenda. The CCC regularly attempted to deny permits to property owners along the coastline unless the owners gave up parts of their land for government use, until one owner sued. The case was taken all the way to the Supreme Court, where the property owner won in 1987. In his majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the commission's practices were "an out-and-out plan of extortion." In the 1990s, scandals were revealed involving bribes, and in 2001, a California judge found that the commission's ability to carry out executive, legislative and judicial functions answerable to no one was unconstitutional.

The CCC hasn't since let the 1987 Supreme Court loss cramp its style, Brian Doherty writes on Reason.com. Not only is the CCC chugging along as if the Supreme Court had ruled in its favor, California legislators tried last spring to give the CCC even more authority, including the independent power to levy $5,000 to $50,000 fines for violations without any judicial involvement. The votes weren't available at the time, but the bill could come up for a vote next year.

Off the coast are an estimated 10.5 billion barrels of untapped oil reserves, enough to allow the state to be self sufficient for 30 years. Drilling leases haven't been granted in the state in about 40 years. In arguably one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world, California's Central Valley, environmentalists' efforts to protect a species of fish have left farmers without access to more than 150 billion gallons of water, Senik writes. As a result, as much as 85,000 acres of farmland are out of production. California's response to global warming resulted in the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, which calls for greenhouse emissions to be lowered to 1990 levels by 2020. "With the state expected to add 15 million new residents in that 30-year period, California is unlikely to meet its reduction targets without massive economic regression," Senik writes. "Estimates of the plan's eventual costs to California families have been as high as $3,800 a year. Yet California's politicians continue to insist that the Solutions Act will be an economic boon, sparking a revolution in 'green jobs.' Such is the fate of Californians: to live in a state where environmentalism is a religion and economics a superstition."

Is that our collective fate? Is California a bellwether of what new-age conservation will do to the world?

A Cautionary Tale

The beginning trends of anti-economic environmentalism seem to be appearing on a federal level today, as well. Congress's Cap and Trade bill would do the same thing by causing the price of heating American homes to go up by 20 to 50 percent over the next 15 years, during the largest economic downturn in this country since the Great Depression. Does this really make economic sense at this point in history? Green jobs initiatives are being touted by the president as a way to jump-start job creation, but if there's no market for the materials, there will obviously be no jobs.

Several years ago in my hometown of Coshocton, Ohio, the state poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a new ethanol plant that it said would create 40 to 50 new "green" jobs. The plant was built and 45 people were hired, some of whom quit their other local jobs. These "green jobs" didn't last long, however. Within a year the brand new plant shut down because no one was buying the product. With its closure as well as the closure of several other ethanol plants in the state, millions of tax dollars were flushed down the john. The Ohio Department of Development has not sought refunds because it says the plant, among others closed, could reopen under new ownership. Some of the workers who quit their old jobs to take new ones at the plant were unable to get their old jobs back and are still unemployed.

Global climate change is occurring, and that fact is not debatable. Parts of the Earth are heating, and parts, in fact, are cooling. Our planet has repeatedly gone through heating cycles, which are inevitably followed by dramatically quicker cooling. What is questionable is how much we, as humans, are contributing to the changes. I'm not attempting to dispute that carbon emissions contribute to warming, because they do. But I'm not saying our emissions are the only thing contributing to our changing climate, either.

What I am saying is that the devastating economic costs far outweigh the proposed environmental benefits at this point. The tendency for environmentalists to overlook the major consequences of their proposals is something to fear. Clearly, some activists feel there is no cost too great to pay in the name of curbing emissions. This is reckless and irresponsible. Perhaps even more disturbing is the success that people like Gore and McCartney are having in attracting support. Many would follow McCartney off a cliff if he told them it was good for them, but still others, like politicians, are jumping on board with environmental extremism as way of appearing enlightened.

Ignoring consequences and backing a mindless ideology of economic self-destruction isn't the only way to support the environment. It is indeed possible to be an environmentalist while also being economically practical at the same time. The two are not mutually exclusive, and that's a simple tune we don't hear quite enough.

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