Clear-Cutting With a Knife and Fork

Worried about climate change? The vanishing rainforest? Are you unwittingly part of the problem?

Consider this: 2700 square miles of rainforest were lost between August and December of 2007, the months when rain usually prohibits clear-cutting. The Brazilian government is so concerned, they declared a state of emergency.

Activists have pulled out their pens and keyboards trying to mobilize citizens to care. Maybe they need to take away everyone's steak knives instead. Why? Because the cleared land in Brazil is used almost exclusively to grow soybeans and graze cattle. Brazil, second only to the U.S. in soybean exports, is a major source of soy used to fatten cattle for consumption by the wealthier among us (and in America, with its beef addiction, that's most of us, regardless of income). By exporting our eating habits, we've contributed to more than just worldwide obesity.

In an article in the New York Times, Mark Bittman, the cookbook author, lays out the cost of our fixation on meat -- beef, chicken, pork -- as the center of the American diet. Bittman recently published a huge tome on vegetarian cooking. Not a vegetarian himself, he has come to realize that if he continues his large consumption of meat protein, he will accelerate global warming more than through almost any other single individual act. As Bittman notes:

"Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation."

So, before you rush out to buy that hybrid car, maybe you should make an effort to reduce your consumption of meat. I didn't say 'eliminate'. Americans aren't going to stop eating meat protein any time soon. But today we each eat 50 pounds more meat each year -- 200 pounds -- than people ate 100 years ago. Currently the 'average' person eats about 3 oz of animal protein a day, excluding eggs and dairy. Personally, everyone I know, who can afford to eat meat, is eating much, much more than that. If we each made a commitment to cut our daily consumption of animal protein in half we'd make significant inroads in improving personal health, the environment and, not insignificantly, in reducing the fossil fuel demands that keep the cycle going.

This isn't easy. I'm retooling my own dietary habits aiming for a goal of eating meat only a couple of days a week. Once you start this, the first thing you notice is that you've been eating a hell of a lot more meat than you thought you were. Once you examine what's on your plate, you realize how much animal protein is central to a meal. If you don't have any, you think you are deprived, or that you haven't had a ''full meal". Next, it hits you that you are clueless about how to meal plan and cook differently. Everything changes: your pantry, the contents of your freezer, your shopping habits. This is a really hard shift, no question about it. But the argument for changing my lifestyle has become too compelling to ignore.

I'm slogging along, doing my best to embrace a new way of eating, increasingly conscious of how my food choices impact the planet and my grandchildren's future. Check out the evidence yourself. That $25,000 hybrid may be too much for your budget today, but you can change the way you eat right now. Think about it.