Time for environmentalists to go green

Imagine the following hypothetical: Your friend Judy is concerned with saving the whales. To achieve this goal, Judy started a "Save the Whales" group at her school and lobbies her congressperson to pass laws banning the poaching of whales. But Judy fuels her lamps with whale oil because she likes the glow that whale oil lamps emit. You find Judy to be inconsistent and this troubles you.

We feel the same way about meat-eating environmentalists.

Just as Judy dismisses the impact of whale oil on her beloved whales, meat-eating environmentalists dismiss or choose to ignore the impact of meat - the number-one cause of global warming - on the earth.

We all have competing values: Here at Princeton, there is a common tradeoff between spending time with friends, doing well in courses and getting enough of the ever-elusive luxury, sleep. Meat-eating environmentalists have two values that interest us: the environment and the "tastiness" of their diet. It follows from their decision to eat meat that they believe the gustatory benefits of eating meat outweigh the costs to the environment.

We can't say for sure just how much "tastiness" you would give up by switching to a meat-free diet, but we can tell you from experience that it's probably far less than you would expect. Most vegetarians we know get far more excited about food than the average meat-eater - just come to one of Princeton Animal Welfare Society's vegan dinner parties. What we do know for sure is that meat-eating environmentalists significantly underestimate the marginal cost of meat consumption on the environment.

In 2006, the United Nations reported that the livestock industry contributes more to greenhouse gas emissions than all trucks, planes, trains and cars combined. According to the Animal Science Journal, the production of a pound of beef releases 36.4 pounds of carbon dioxide, the same amount as driving a car at 50 mph for 155 miles. Princetonians would do more to reduce their carbon footprint by going vegetarian than by the celebrated change of switching modes of transportation.

The environmental impact of meat extends far beyond the hot topic of global warming. Meat production is inherently inefficient because instead of eating grains directly, we are eating animals that have eaten the grain. It takes 12,009 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef and only 240 gallons of water to produce a pound of soybeans. Greening Princeton has advocated for free-range beef that comes from cows that eat grass. While this saves some energy and gives the cows marginally better lives, the inefficiency of meat production is still glaringly obvious.

On Nov. 10, Greening Princeton hosted a dinner titled "Policy and the Environment." The dinner featured a "sustainable menu" including chicken and mushroom goat cheese strudel. Sure, the dinner was slightly better than an average meal in that the chicken was free-range and the ingredients were organic. But the dinner would have been exponentially more sustainable had it been devoid of carbon-emitting, energy-inefficient animal products altogether.

Greening Princeton and other environmental groups push for radical shifts in the way we think about transportation and energy, but they have yet to tackle the most effective change we could make. We understand that it may not be politically feasible to advocate vegetarianism, but there is no excuse for ignoring the issue of meat altogether. Environmental organizations should make eating less meat one of their primary recommendations.

It's time for Greening Princeton to face up to its inconsistencies and lose the whale oil. It's time for environmentalists to truly go green.

Jenny Palmer and Sam Fox Krauss are the president and the treasurer, respectively, of PAWS. They can be reached at jspalmer@princeton.edu and samfox@princeton.edu.