No One Is Taking Your Hamburgers. But Would It Even Be a Good Idea?
Summary
Republicans are claiming that the Green New Deal climate policy that is being proposed is cutting out beef from people's diets. This is absolutely false as the proposal doesn't mention hamburgers, beef, or even cows at all. Cows have been a focus in the climate discussions because of their methane production, but even the politicians know that it would be impossible to get rid of cows. The politician leading this charge, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York believes that it isn't about cutting out the agriculture from the policy, but that it should be more of a personal focus where we don't support factory farming by eating beef products at every meal. Statistics from the World Bank show that agriculture is the fifth largest producer of greenhouse gases, but scientists say that removing cows from the world wouldn't be as beneficial as we believe. The reduction of greenhouses gases would be modest at best, and humans would suffer from dietary problems. The agriculture industry would be disrupted because the crops and animals grown are niche, meaning each crop has a reason, and a use after it is harvested. In the end, we do know that eating less meat will be beneficial to the growing population, but we do not know how much less meat and how quickly we must act to change it.
Analysis
The article was written on Friday, March 8th, 2019. I already knew that methane from agriculture was a major source of greenhouse gases, but I didn't know that there was this much debate over the reduction of cows/beef. This relates to the early 1900's during the two World Wars when the government had to decide how to ration foods and other supplies. This rationing probably sparked tensions between society and government as well as the different political parties in the government. The audience of this article is everyone in the United States as well as the world because everyone is effected by climate change. The author is Kendra Pierre-Louis who covers climate change at the NYTimes, so she is very knowledgeable about this issue. This article was written to keep society informed about the climate change issues and how the government is trying to fix the earth. This is important because we need to stay informed about how the government is effecting the planet we live on.
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I think it is interesting to see how much of the agricultural industry would be disrupted by a cut down of beef. Hopefully some laws are passed to lessen beef consumption, even though it is unrealistic to imagine all beef being eradicated.
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