PETA to Al Gore: Please Go Vegan
Looks like PETA is asking Al to go Vegan. They’ve been emailing him letters alleging that the meat industry is the largest contributor to greenhouse gases, and if steps were taken to reduce the level of meat consumption in the U.S., the level of CO2 would - in comparison - drop.
Do you think Al should go Vegan? Would you go Vegan?
Jackie Troche said,
March 14, 2007 @ 12:08 am
They are saying they are watching Mr Gore’s weight to see if he will run. I am a person who has always voted republican, however, I believe him more at his heavier weight. Please don’t buy into the “american Norm” I would vote for a heavy Mr Gore because I believe him, the skinny thin version is only a politician…… don’t loose weight to win votes…. be your self… be happy… be YOU!!!!!!!
roberta sinclair said,
March 26, 2007 @ 9:21 am
The man who should have been president is only speaking the truth about the mess human mankind is making on this planet. In the name of technology, we have managed to ruin some rainforests, pollute the air, create horrific storms throughout the world. Scientists do agree that hurricans, tornadoes are stronger than ever, the air is not fit to breathe in some areas. What does it take to wake up Americans?
Go Al, Go!!!!!!
Shalom Shick said,
March 26, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
I voted for Al, and would vote for him again, either way. However, PETA has a point. I would love to see Al become a vegan to help support his message as well as for his health. I am a vegan, and 85% raw to boot (only 15% cooked food), aspiring to 100%. I know from experience that this is a better, healthier, and more compassionate way of eating.
I vote YES to a vegan Al Gore!!!
Jeanna Gollihur said,
April 16, 2007 @ 1:46 pm
Going vegan is not necessary. Letting the cows out to graze is the solution.
If the issue about global warming is so urgent. We can help but we need private grants to help us get the farmers in Idaho to use our bio-diesel product.
I’m not talking about building a huge facility for big profit. I’m talking about small personal bio-diesel and bio-gas facilities. Put bio-diesal grants in the subject line if you are rich and want to help save the world.
Please help.
Tim Prellwitz said,
April 23, 2007 @ 2:20 am
You’d think we have bigger issues than meat producing CO2. I have no idea what level it truly might be yet I’d bet it’s insignificant as compared to other items that produce CO2. Besides, this makes as much sense as forcing farmers to inject Beano into their bean crops because of all the methane-farts beans cause. I’d suspect we have but a few big culprits to conquer in our quest to reduce CO2 levels. I really doubt meat is significant but who knows? Maybe stats show otherwise.
Molly said,
April 24, 2007 @ 4:19 am
letting cows out to pasture does nothing to deal with the amount of waste and gases they create.
factory farms and stockyards surpassed create more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation combined (cars, buses, airplanes, etc). by going vegetarian or vegan, you have more of a positive impact on the environment than you would had you traded your car in for a hybrid.
i don’t mind al gore, but it seems hypocritical for someone so passionate and active about the environment to still support the largest environmentally destructive industry on the planet.
Christopher B. said,
May 5, 2007 @ 2:01 am
I have two suggestions:
1. Go(re) Vegan! This makes so much sense. Yes! Go vegan, Mr. Gore.
2. But before you do go vegan, issue a challenge back to Peta that would be the equivalent of requesting from them a “matching grant.” (see below for details)
Over at Peta’s blog (http://blog.peta.org/archives/2007/03/the_peta_challe.php#comments), a woman named Jennifer left a comment where she used a wonderful phrase, saying that if Al Gore went vegan, then he would truly be an “icon of consistency.”
An icon of consistency, indeed.
If Al Gore could go vegan, he would indeed solidify his place in history as one of the world’s great defenders of all life on earth.
And, there are many, many brave people in this world — people doing vegan outreach, animal advocates, people who run sanctuaries for rescued farm animals — would be totally emboldened and aided if Al Gore went vegan. It would validate their efforts in a paradigm-shifting kind of way. The cascading effects of such a change in one very famous, influential person’s diet could be enormous.
As a car-less vegan myself, I wish I had that kind of influence!
But, frankly, I really wish that someone OTHER than Peta had written that letter to Gore, for one simple reason:
I worry about the way that Peta leverages celebrities to the point that one gets the impression that “one ought to do what movie and tv stars do,” as if Hollywood really has any a priori moral authority.
Celebrity culture itself is a product of the entertainment industry. And let’s face it, that industry is the single largest marketing force for the sales of animal products on the planet. Hollywood is as much in the business of exploiting cows, pigs and chickens as anyone else. The lowest-paid undocumented immigrant slaughterhouse worker and Tom Hanks are literally profiting off the same cow! Only difference is the slaughterhouse worker is a bit lower down on the “slaughter chain” than Mr. Hanks, (or Mr. Spielberg).
Which brings me to my second suggestion for Mr. Gore:
Mr. Gore could issue a Challenge Letter via Peta to its oft-featured vegan (and not-really-vegan) celebrities: You guys stop making tv and movies with carnivorous marketing tie-ins and advertising, and I’ll go 100% vegan.”
Seriously, I was thinking about it the other day: we’re all hypocrites! If you live in a meatocracy, all of us could do something different to reduce our “meat footprint.” And, unfortunately, in many case, it might require that we quit our current jobs and do something else for a living. (As many vegans do!)
For instance, from what I’ve read, Tobey Maguire seems like a total saint. A vegan for many years and a person of conscience. Peta (and many other animal rights groups) applaud him for his veganism — regularly.
Mr. Maguire is also the lead actor in one of the biggest movie franchises in the history of the movies.
So, can you imagine what he could do for the planet, both in terms of reducing greenhouse gases and reducing animal suffering, if one day Mr. Maguire announced that he’s decided not to play Spiderman or any big movie again because he refuses to sign a contract that involves promoting the sale of the gajillion pounds of meat and dairy products which are sold throughout that fabulous meat-marketing machine also known as the multiplex.
This would be the “shot heard round the world.”
Thousands of newspapers from LA to Timbuktu would report something along the lines of “Spiderman Quits Movies Of Vegan Values.”
What a sacrifice it would be, of course. And yet, if quitting my preferred job or turning down a lucrative contract could contribute significantly to SAVING THE WORLD (really saving it), what a blessing it would be to have that kind of power.
Most of the 6 billion of us won’t ever have that much power.
So, I say: Go Vegan, Mr. Gore!
But also answer Peta’s letter with a Challenge Letter back to them to get their celebrities to take a good look at their own industry and think about ways they can become “icons of consistency” too.
Christopher B. said,
May 5, 2007 @ 10:50 am
I think Gore going vegan is a great idea!
(I submitted a longer, more thoughtful comment a few hours ago, but it was deleted for some reason. Kind of disappointing, in that I made an earnest point that Peta is made a great point, but that they are sort of supporting a similar kind of hypocrisy among the Hollywood celebrities who regularly appear on their site.)
Dasha Gaian said,
June 15, 2007 @ 10:01 am
I absolutely believe Al Gore should go vegan. If this shift feels way too sudden and radical, he should at least pledge to gradually decrease his meat and dairy consumption over time - eventually all the way down to zero.
Now, there are a few reasons for this:
1. This way he would restore his credibility and show that he really does what he preaches.
2. This would motivate millions of others to do the same, and the world would become a lot greener and healthier. (More facts on this here: http://www.earthsave.org/environment/foodchoices.htm)
3. This would help Al Gore personally to live a much longer and healthier life and have a lot more energy to do exactly the kind of work he is going right now.
So, Mr. Gore, please Go Vegan!
Collin Riley said,
July 1, 2007 @ 11:05 am
I read a quote that said “A meat eater on a bicycle leaves a bigger environmental foot print than a vegan in a Hummer.” The data I have read, supports this. The energy in bringing one pound of beef to your plate appears to be equivalent to approximately 24 gallons of gasoline.
Pork is apparently more resource intensive. In 2005 the meat consumption in United States per person was about 200 pounds per person per year. Using the beef rate as an average, thats about 13 gallons of gasoline per person per day in the US. I fill up my car with 15 gallons of gas per week, personally. That is way less of an energy drain than eating an average amount of meat. I am not independently qualified to corroborate these numbers, but they seem to be the concensus of the community that studies animal energy.
“While producing a relatively small proportion — about 9 percent — of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), livestock was responsible for large quantities of other important greenhouse gases, according to the FAO.
Livestock produced 35-40 percent of methane emissions and 65 percent of nitrous oxide which had almost 300 times the global warming potential of CO2, the report said.” (http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39230/story.htm)
The impact on water is huge too. Nitrite pollution of water sources from concentrated feces and other byproducts of concenrated animal farming and processing is a big problem in many places where these industries go on.
I was impressed with Al Gore’s film, but the part that seemed to show his pastoral “Gore Farms” footage, I bristled a little. First because it seemed a little “advertisingey” and second, animal farms are huge polluters and since there is so much of it going on, they are perhaps the biggest offendor in the global warming discussion. Al Gore must have come across some of this information in researchiong the movie, and for sure in his life-long acquaintance of this topic, since college. No mention, I saw, was in the movie about livestock farming as a contributor of greenhouse gasses. This is typical in politics where the real issues are not entirely addressed but “at least its something” and “awareness is raised, “It is a good first step.” Probably a lot of truth to all those things. Global warming is a problem. Reforestation, mitigating of animal farms, and perhaps modification of animal diets more consistent with reforestation are major issues and ignored completely in an “Inconvenient Truth”.
It is a difficult topic. I personally have opted for a compassionate, vegan lifestyle. I feel way better, and come to find out, I was developing heart problems, had gall stones real bad, had become obese, had over 15 pounds of excrement in my body at all times from a heavy meat, eggs and dairy, high protein diet. I don’t know that iveganism is for everyone, even the Dalai Lama is not vegan, so there you go. But!!!! Do not think for one second that a 1/2 pound or pound of meat every day, with a world population of 6,602,224,175 is even remotely okay.
We wonder why we kill each other in wars, but we are taught the wholesale use of pesticides, and doctrine of mass animal slaughter from birth. I realize that these doctrines fall within the realm of the “pursuit if happiness”, which is an important liberty, but the Buddhists have a good idea of respect for all sentient life. One does not need to believe literally in reincarnation to look at an animal and say “I am like that animal, that animal’s welfare and how me and my people treat that animal is how we are treating ourselves.”
We are neighbors and co-habitants of earth. It is not that far of a stretch to call animals brothers and sisters. Ultimately, these are the conclusions we reach. In the meantime animal farming contributes to pollution and global warming and is arguably a bigger problem than all the trucks trains and automobiles combined. Mr. Gore made a good movie and he has the power to do much more good for the planet by discussing the animal farming topic in relation to greenhouse gasses and global warming. You can discuss it on many other ethical, spiritual and environmental fronts too, it always ends up on the wrong side of things.
Laura said,
October 12, 2007 @ 10:39 am
So Gore isn’t veg already?! Meat is devastating for the environment (water, global warming etc), he can’t ignore it.
He seems motivated and his movie is good (except he didn’t talk at all about meat, couldn’t believe it, he can’t ignore this and should have at least given the information to the audience, many people don’t know anything about the environmental effect of what they eat). He should definetly adopt a vegan diet, it’s so easy nowadays, can’t believe he isn’t veg already. Imagine if everybody went veg or reduced greatly their consumption, would be nice.