Re: McCartney's muddled

On Dec 4, 4:32 pm, richforman <rforma...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 4, 1:34 pm, BLACKPOOLJIMMY <Blackpoolji...@xxxxxxx> wrote:





POLITICIANS UNIMPRESSED WITH MCCARTNEY'S VEGETARIAN CAMPAIGN

SIR PAUL MCCARTNEY's plan to use vegetarianism to help combat global
warming has been met with mixed reactions from European politicians,
with one minister labelling the proposals "muddled, misleading and
wrong."
The animal lover and longtime vegetarian spoke at the European
Parliament in Brussels, Belgium on Thursday (03Dec09) to promote a new
drive to encourage the public to go meat-free at least once a week.
The former Beatle argues that if more people spend just one day in
seven eating only vegetables, greenhouse gases can be reduced by up to
80 per cent.
He told the house, "I would be glad if this weren't true, and we could
just carry on as we are forever quite happily and not bother with this
whole subject. But I've got a nasty feeling that this is true. Our
campaign says 'Try one meat-free day in the week.' It's very do-able.
Once, for instance, we didn't recycle - we weren't interested, but now
it's an accepted part of our lifestyles."
But MCCartney's speech didn't go down well among some Members of the
European Parliament (MEPs).
British MEP Richard Ashworth, a former dairy farmer, condemned the
singer's plans, accusing the music legend of "selling vegetarianism on
the basis it can save the world."
He also branded MCCartney's statistics "muddled, misleading and
wrong."

Some of these people seem to be really scared by what seems to me to
be a pretty non-controversial more-than-moderate suggestion by
McCartney.  They must think he's really something that threatens
them.  

Of course it threatens them. Just notice that the politician quoted
(and then used by the journalist as proof that politicians in general
were "unimpressed" by what Paul said) was a dairy farmer.
It's economically threatening to them because less meat consumption
means less money to them. Reducing the meat intake reduces the
greenhouse gases because there's less demand, therefore less offer,
tehrefore less animals raised for meat (and therefore, for the dairy
industry).

How could they be so staunchly against the idea of people just
eating veggie ONE DAY A WEEK?  And there's seems to be a good amount
of evidence that consuming less meat could indeed be really good for
the world.  It's like with gay rights or cigarette-smoking, or
marijuana law reform, the tide is slowly turning and the old guard
can't stop it.  I eat meat but less than I did growing up as a kid.
For health and weight-watching reasons, and I am aware of the
environmental and (cumulative/global) economic benefit of cutting
down.  Many people are (aware of these issues), the information is out
there.

richforman- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Of course, all of this isn't "McCartney's plan", animal rights groups
have been saying this for a while already. Even the UN had some
report about it relatively recently.
.

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