Recently in the news, there has been a lot of controversy about the “free trade” agreements between Canada and the US.  When free trade was first mentioned to us about twenty years ago, we thought good, we won’t have to pay duty when we cross the US-Canada border.  Were we wrong!

The governments meant that “free” trade was whatever benefitted the big corporations, it had little to do with us little guys. Now it seems that Canada wants to produce more dairy products than it needs and sell them to the US, but the US farmers want to produce more that they need, selling their surplus to Canada.

Our Earth is now facing potential disaster for humans, the average temperature, which has remained absolutely stable over millions of years, is now getting hotter, threatening much of life, including human life.  We have been clever enough to figure out what is making earth hotter, our own activity, spewing out too much carbon dioxide and methane, but so far, we have ignored how to stop it.

Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, has been the hero of making energy for humans for two hundred years.  Now we are seven billion humans, more than earth can manage, so we have to learn to slow down.

Methane is a gas that is just a tiny part of earth’s atmosphere, but it is ten times worse than carbon dioxide to global warming.  Thus just a small increase of methane can do a lot to head us to global disaster.  Guess what, the biggest increase in methane is from cows and other large animals.  Did you know that there are more cows than human beings on earth? That’s billions, way more than our earth can reabsorb.

As I mentioned in my first blog, one of the three ways we can help earth (and our children) is to eat less meat.   The number of cows and meat animals has to decrease, significantly, now!  That doesn’t mean go vegan, or vegetarian.  It means some days you eat beans instead of meat, other days you eat three ounces of meat, not eight ounces.

How will the number of cows decrease?  Not an easy question.  The climate may already be handling that.  I read recently that there is such an extreme drought on the prairies, that the cattle farmers are considering not buying more calves, as they won’t have enough feed.

Look at Argentina, one of the biggest beef producers until recently.  Now they are producing less beef, and clearing all the land to grow soy beans.  That would be great, BUT.  They are burning down their rain forest in the north, in order to grow soy.  Then they export the soy to the USA–in order to feed cattle!  Wouldn’t the soy be better to feed the forty million hungry people?

Let’s imagine a few situations.  Suppose everyone eats much less meat.  Then the farmers won’t be able to sell their meat.  Does that mean the prices will come down, hoping to increase the demand? If people still won’t eat so much meat, then the farmers will produce less, and prices go up again.

Suppose that the farmers decide first that raising cattle becomes so expensive that they start producing less.  Then the prices would go up, and people would eat less meat.

We can only wonder how it would happen, but we do know that there are too many animals on earth emitting methane.  In the mean time each of us has to consider what WE can do to prevent global catastrophe.  Take out the cookbooks, learn how to make alternate meals with beans and nuts (yum), let’s see if we can halve our consumption of meat.  Don’t cry “What can I do!” just do it.     Satya Brown

 

 

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