What we’re seeing is eco-primitivism.
A new front in the war against beef has been opened: the war against where beef comes from — cows. The Dutch government (and the EU) want to see fewer cattle in the country’s farms (and they also want to see fewer farmers), something that is leading to political pushback.
But that pushback may not have deterred the Irish government.
Jamie Blackett, writing in the Daily Telegraph:
The collateral damage of net zero is now getting uncomfortably close to home [the U.K.]. First Dutch farmers were threatened with compulsory purchases to satisfy EU emissions targets, fomenting a new revolt in the process. Now it’s Ireland’s turn, where the government is reportedly looking at plans to cull around 200,000 cows to meet its climate targets. The scheme would be a bit like voluntary redundancy, with farmers offered financial inducements to give up their cows.
British beef and dairy farmers are now very jittery. It seems increasingly clear that there is an eco-modernist agenda to do away with conventional meat altogether. It’s not just the Extinction Rebellion mob, either; many of the world’s politicians are on board.
I wouldn’t use the term “eco-modernist” in this context. If anything, what we’re seeing is eco-primitivism. The apocalypticism that runs through current climate policy is just another example of the millenarian thinking that has bedeviled humanity over the centuries. And the relentless insistence that we must all make do with less “to save the planet” is just another example of the pointless asceticism that has been a feature of countless philosophies, religious or otherwise, for a long, long time. I had not, however, expected animal sacrifice to have made its way into climate fundamentalism, but here we are — old habits and all that.
Animal sacrifice never, I suspect, ever persuaded any deity to offer a helping hand or, for that matter, hold off from some act of wrath. Likewise, the killing of the cows won’t achieve anything other than to act as a demonstration of control by those managing climate policy. Will it make any material difference to the climate? Almost certainly not.
In fact, Blackett argues that it could be counterproductive:
Spending vast sums of taxpayer’s money on destroying productive animals would be a perfect summation of the net zero madness infecting the West. The Irish Department of Agriculture has said that the report was just a “modelling document”, but no sane government would even get to the point of including such a plan in “a deliberative process”. Why? Because it is irrational.
Dutch and Irish politicians have failed to recognise that regenerative farming techniques allow livestock farmers to help mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon in the soil. The technology needed to measure soil carbon accurately has recently been developed by a British company, Ecometric. The results are startling. Some British livestock farmers are now being paid for the net carbon sequestered into the soils after the methane from their burping cows has been accounted for. It would mean changing the way we farm to embrace holistic methods; mainly replacing cereal-based cattle diets with grass, but it can be done.
And we should be embracing the energy-creating capacity of cows. Tallow from British cattle is already being turned into biodiesel – a one tonne animal produces enough for around 180 litres. And thanks to Somerset-based start-up, Biofactory, new anaerobic technology is already available to turn the methane in their manure into usable electricity and heat. The manure itself is converted by this process into a more nutritious digestate that can substantially reduce the need for harmful artificial fertiliser. My own dairy farm is investing in these new green technologies and we hope to be carbon neutral and net exporters of energy in just a few years.
Wreaking havoc on livestock farming families in the name of climate science is also very short-sighted. By the time, if ever, lab food technology, which uses huge amounts of energy currently, is efficient enough to replace the edible fats and proteins from animals, we will probably be using hydrogen technology instead of fossil fuels, and no one will be remotely worried about carbon.
Blackett’s last point touches on a key failure of current climate policy, the failure to anticipate technological change. The panicked insistence on doing something dramatic now (however flawed and/or destructive) takes little or no account of future economic or technological development. A far better approach would be to encourage the economic growth that could help make it easier to fund research into more effective technologies and, for that matter, pay for the adaptation measures that would help us to live with whatever the climate may bring. Instead, we plan to cull cows and spend billions on, to take just one example, wind turbines that are not ready for prime time.
Note too Blackett’s reference to the amount of energy used to make lab food.
There’s more on that here, from a report published by UC Davis:
Lab-grown meat, which is cultured from animal cells, is often thought to be more environmentally friendly than beef because it’s predicted to need less land, water and greenhouse gases than raising cattle. But in a preprint, not yet peer-reviewed, researchers at the University of California, Davis, have found that lab-grown or “cultivated” meat’s environmental impact is likely to be “orders of magnitude” higher than retail beef based on current and near-term production methods.
Oh dear.
Next, there will be claims that electric vehicles are not so environmentally friendly as claimed.
Meanwhile, in a later story, the Daily Telegraph reports that opposition is beginning to surface to the proposed cownage:
One Irish politician described the plan as “absolute madness” and there are warnings that some farmers will refuse, and others will leave the sector, if an order is introduced.
The Irish government says that no final policy decision has been taken and that any cull would be voluntary as part of a “retirement exit scheme” for farmers.
So far, much of the net-zero agenda has been implemented in small doses, or structured so that the real damage will become visible beyond the immediate political timetable. And so far, that has worked. The water in the pot is getting warmer, but most of the frogs haven’t noticed. But as the pace picks up, what net zero really means will become more and more painful and impossible to ignore.
Somehow, I don’t think voters will like it, whatever they are saying now, and what that mean for politics will be . . . interesting.