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This freelance writer is a former Detroit Free Press reporter who also wrote “The Green New Meal.”
By Michael Betzold
Tom Ferguson, my mentor in legitimate journalistic journalism, was the one who taught me about WHOGAS in the 1970s. WHOGAS stands for “Who Gives A Shit?,” and every story, Tom claimed, must meet it.
Climate change is the best thing to meet the WHOGAS standard.
These days, I receive many emails from climate groups informing me to donate to their work. They care about global warming, and they are right to assume that I do. However, almost all of their pitches fail another test that is better suited for a courtroom context: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but it.
I support bold and immediate climate action. The stakes couldn’t be higher. The world must end its reliance on fossil fuels — yesterday, if not sooner. But that’s not all we must do as a human civilization facing the increasing risk of cooking ourselves to death. It’s not the whole truth.
We aren’t going to save human civilization for the next generations if we continue to ignore a major part of the problem: greenhouse gas emissions from animal agriculture, including methane, at least 25 percent more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Cow burps are the main source of rapidly rising methane levels in the atmosphere.
That’s not my opinion. It’s the conclusion of the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change. In Its most recent reportThe IPCC made this clear in its August 2008 report, which was based on a lot of solid research. It’s scientific fact — much like the fact that the earth orbits the sun.
However, for some reason, most climate groups, and more importantly, governments, leave it out of their climate action agenda.
Why? I’m not sure. Do their funders have connections to major meat processors? Not that I’m aware of. Are these leaders more passionate about hamburgers than their children or grandchildren? This is very doubtful. Is it difficult to find the truth about greenhouse gas emissions? No, it’s easily accessible on the phone in your pocket.
I have struggled to find an analogous situation — where activists and advocates on a big issue, many of them tied to major governmental or academic institutions or think tanks or interest groups, don’t want to discuss a key aspect of the problem and the solution. A part that doesn’t require a major policy change and can be acted on right now by anyone, voluntarily and effectively.
There’s no need to be vegan
The good news is that we can limit greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently by simply consuming less meat and dairy as well as implementing all the better-known remedies of the “green new deal.” And taking such a step doesn’t require any less attention to those other necessary measures. Plus, it’s no great mental or moral leap. Everyone can take actions today that will collectively make an impact, like turning down the thermostat at nights or getting more gas mileage.
Plant-based cooking is delicious (File photo)
It’s obvious to me that no story is bigger, no set of facts clearer or more persuasive. You don’t need to read the UN documents or plow through reams of technical info to grasp this. You can find the In my new book, “The Green New Meal,”I will condense and refer to all of that for you. I’ve been a journalist all my life, and a meat-eater for most of it. I know how to summarize and present information; I’ve been doing that for half a century on topics ranging from Jack Kevorkian and assisted suicide to the Catholic Church and sexual abuse.
This topic passed the WHOGAS test. You may think the climate crisis doesn’t affect us much in Detroit; we aren’t on fire or underwater yet. But climate refugees will be coming to the Great Lakes region in coming decades, fleeing the heat and fires in the Southwest and the rising seas in Atlantic and Gulf Coast cities, and we’d better be prepared for them. We’re all in the same boat.
And as long as there’s a KFC or a McDonald’s on every corner, the Detroit area is part of the problem, so it is incumbent on us to be part of the solution.
This doesn’t mean you have to become a vegan tomorrow. Do your part by reducing the amount of meat and dairy products you eat.
Collective action begins with individual action. Here in the hometown of Rosa Parks, we should be well aware of how powerful one person’s choice can be. Although her actions were courageous, a shift in perspective that is based on a clear view of the bigger picture is all that is required to make a diet change.
It is already beginning to happen. Because many food companies respond to consumer demand, there are now more plant-based foods on supermarket shelves. If climate groups started pushing for an end of billions in government subsidies to animal agriculture, this market change would be more rapid. People can demand the truth.
Generations to come can’t keep hearing empty promises and inadequate solutions. Their lives are at stake.
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