Potshots at Pot Roast
In a Candidate Mashup (whatever that is) at Yahoo! News, funny-man Bill Maher asks John Edwards:
Senator Edwards, you've suggested that Americans should give up their SUVs for the sake of the environment, but a recent UN study found that deforestation for the purpose of creating grazing land for cattle and methane emissions from cattle generated more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars and planes in the world, so it's not just the SUVs, it's the C-O-W-S. Taking a shot at SUVs was gutsy. Do you want to take a shot at meat?Ouch. That's a tough one for any candidate, and Edwards dodges it none-too-artfully. But the question isn't bound to go away. In fact, the medical journal, The Lancet, has just taken up the issue, with experts writing that curbing red meat consumption would not only reduce emissions, but also improve public health. Man, whatever happened to a "chicken in every pot..."?
11 Comments:
Bill doesn't care about party affiliationor politics... he gets straight to the point. Edwards., a typical politcian, won't tackle this one.
to be annoying -- isn't chicken a white meat? :-)
but seriously, if Guiliani is elected, there'll be red manly meat on your table every dang night of the week. and you'll like it too. the republican party has moved beyond chickens. chickens are for democrats.
Regarding the first comment: Right, Bill's not trying to get elected. So, question is: Could Edwards, or anyone else, advocate for reduced meat consumption and still hope to be elected president of the United States?
Or another way of asking the question: Given political realities, how *should* Edwards have answered?
Regarding #2: Is chicken the same thing as pollo?
he should have invited Maher to discuss the issue over barbecued ribs
I bet Rudy isn't the only steak eater in t5he political field. I wonder if Obama and Hillary eat red meat LOL.
This quip is the result of a PETA campaign, where PETA is actually driving around in a Hummer.
Sounds like a nice activist prank, but its fairly dangerous. Cow based global warming emissions are biogenic and are NOT the issue. The issue is fossil fuels!
Wow what a crummy answer he gave. He didn't even say the word "meat".
A different question is what could a president do at all? Are we talking about advocating or setting a legislative agenda?
As a platform plank, I believe a president would be laughed off the stage, and probably rightfully so (I can't imagine legislating our diet quite like that).
He could have said, aimply, that if people ate less red meat, or even no meat then we'd probably be better off. That our meat consumption is part of a larger pattern. What are some ways we could encourage or discourage practices. How much do we subsudize the meat industry? etc...
I wonder how vegetarans rank against aetheists in terms of who americans trust? (to your point about electability)
It's amazing that we insist the public listen to the reports from those telling us how bad global warming is and that we need to do all we can to fix it, but when a report comes out indicating eating red meat is the biggest or one of the biggest problems, we poo-poo the idea because we don't agree w/ it or don't want to quit eating cows. Excuses excuses -
Weaning humanity off meat isn't anything that is bound to happen anytime soon. In fact, things are trending the opposite direction. meat consumption in china tripled in the last 20 years.
Edwards is a fake. He builds a huge energy consuming home, had $16M invested in a fund related to sub prime mortgages and forclosure lawsuits (he recently sold it once it was made public), and was no help to the ticket in 2000. Give me Bill Richardson over him any day (or even Hillary, she's not much better but she can win, I don't think Edwards can).
Pat, chicken is more like poulet.
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