Eating As If the Climate Mattered Greenpeace vs. Sea Shepherd

January 23, 2008

Eating As If the Climate MatteredBy Bruce Friedrich, AlterNet. Posted January 23, 2008. Changing what we eat can help alleviate one of the most serious global environmental problems.Last week in our nation's capital, the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) held a climate change conference focused on solutions to the problem of human-induced climate change. And in Paris the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is sharing the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, held a press conference to discuss to discuss "the importance of lifestyle choices" in combating global warming. Notably,

all food at the NCSE conference was vegan, and there were table-top brochures with quotes from the U.N. report on the meat industry, discussed more below. And the IPCC head, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri declared, as the AFP sums it up, "Don't eat meat, ride a bike, and be a frugal shopper."full story: http://www.alternet.org/environment/74605/note: At the end of the article, Bruce credits GreenPeace with being the ONLY large environmental group that "ensures that all official functions are vegetarian." That is not quite accurate.I called Greenpeace today Ashley Lauth, media relations, said they try "to cater to everyone and every taste" and choose

organic/local/free range and humanely raised foods. She referred me to Sarah Montrone, facilitator for menu planning for events, who added, There is no official GreenPeace policy on what food is served at official functions. She said she didn't think veganism is the best way to go, and that locally-humanely raised eggs/milk/meat can be better environmental choices. Soon after I asked what her thoughts were about humane slaughter, she hung up on me. On Monday's Go Vegan Texas! our guest, Capt Paul Watson founder of Sea Shepherd and founding director of GreenPeace, whose ship Steve Irwin is in the South Antarctic waters with the GreenPeace ship Esperanza ,trying to halt the Japanese whale hunt, said only Sea Sheperd is an all vegan ship. He pointed out the hypocricy of green groups, like GreenPeace eating fish and even whale meat in Japan "to show the Japanese, they had nothing against the

Japanese culture" for their food choices. Additionally, Capt Watson pointed out that we are overfishing the oceans to supply food for factory farms. Pigs are the leading consumer of marine life and said the best thing we could do for the environment is to give up both meat and fish. Janice Blue The question is not,Can they reason? nor,Can they talk? but,Can they suffer? Jeremy

Bentham