Conservatives must lead on climate — with cows!
This whole cow-bashing thing has gone way too far. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched the laughable attack on cow flatulence, then tried to say she did not plan to ban all cows (though that is exactly what she proposed!).
The Netherlands, Ireland, and Belgium have now implemented programs to exterminate hundreds of thousands of cows to “save” the planet, and “climate envoy” John Kerry says this is necessary in the United States.
In truth, this is an effort to dominate all food production for power and profit, while polluting the planet even more rapidly with patented meat substitutes than cows could ever cause.
Nothing exposes the folly of fake climate alarmism more clearly than efforts to exterminate cows. John Kerry and AOC want to help the climate by reducing cow herds much as PETA wants to protect animals: by killing them.
But killing cows would accelerate climate damage.
The attacks on cows are premised on a series of falsehoods (lies) that are easily exposed and countered. Consider:
– Statistics for cow-bashing are based on CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), where cows are crammed together, fed a diet heavy in corn and other soil-destroying monoculture crops, and their manure collected in lagoons. Pasture-raised cows, in contrast, eat no grain, deposit their own manure back to the ground to rebuild soils, and harvest much of their own food without tractors.
– Cow manure rebuilds soils that are rapidly eroding due to intensive tilling practices and microbiome-damaging chemical applications, including synthetic fertilizers. Cow manure replaces commercial urea (manufactured from natural gas: methane) while populating soils with the vital microbes that are killed by industrial chemical augmentations.
– Cows moved back to pasture would quickly sequester more carbon dioxide than all renewable energy manufacturing combined. In fact, it is reckoned that in merely a decade, returning just some of America’s 94.5 million cows to pasture would sequester all the carbon released since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
– The synthetic meats we are told will replace cows are fabricated in massive factories that pollute in their construction, and then process plants harvested using destructive chemical and tilling practices into faux meat that is unhealthy for both humans and the ecosystem. Soy is the favored vat-meat constituent, but what will be used to fertilize the soy — synthetic urea manufactured from natural gas, because the cows are all gone?
– Cow manure literally replaces lost soils. About 92 million acres of corn is planted in the United States annually, losing several tons of topsoil per acre each year to erosion. How will climate alarmists replace lost soils without cows?
– Since humans don’t desire to eat the proposed replacements for burger (made from insects or plants), the meat production stifled by WEF initiatives will be replaced elsewhere — perhaps by more clearing of rainforests in Brazil. Shutting down efficient dairy or beef farms will spike food prices, threaten shortages or even famine, and incentivize farming practices more destructive than those being displaced.
– As Americans become more dependent on foreign foods shipped thousands of miles, their food security (and national security!) is precariously placed. Supply systems are vulnerable to disruption, trucks are dependent on imported diesel exhaust fluid, industrial fertilizers are imported, trains derail, and Chinese inspection regimens are dubious. A local burger is a time-tested, reliable food source.
– Cows on pasture help plants retain more nutrients, and also much more water. Soy replacements saturated with chemicals will damage soils further, decrease water retention, and amplify water pollution. The nation is on the verge of a water crisis, fueled by agriculture that favors almonds over cows and oat milk over bovine, but these alternatives require much greater water resources than cows.
– What will solar panels and E.V. cars do for soil and water retention? How many chemicals are discharged in their production, compared to cows? Where do these technological gadgets go when they are obsolete, mounding up landfills instead of rebuilding precious soils?
Climate alarmists are peddling environment-destroying policies that increase corporate profits and globalist domination; they propose amping up on steroids the industrial hegemony that has precipitated environmental peril. Conservatives must protect the environment from such shills by returning cows to the land, not shipping them to the abattoir.
Attorney-farmer John Klar hosts the Small Farm Republic Substack and podcast from his Vermont farm. His new book is Small Farm Republic: Why Conservatives Must Embrace Local Agriculture, Reject Climate Alarmism, and Lead an Environmental Revival.
Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License.