Comfortably Unaware

August 13, 2012
Oppenlander’s powerful message—that “our current food choices detrimentally affect climate change and global warming more so than do all the cars, planes, trucks, buses and trains used worldwide,” and therefore veganism is the key to our survival—isn’t well served by his presentation. While he appears to have shocking facts on his side (“80 percent of the world’s starving children live in countries where food surpluses are fed to animals that are then killed and eaten by more well-off individuals in developed countries”), he makes gratuitous arguments that undermine his own credibility. Rather than simply applaud Al Gore’s work on the risk that energy consumption poses for Earth’s future, the author accuses him of avoiding truths inconvenient to him, because of “ties to the current livestock industry”—an allegation that Oppenlander admits is only speculative. More serious is Oppenlander’s glossing over the pragmatics of how any politician could make headway on the issue in a post–Citizens United political landscape. The billions of dollars the meat industry would pour into opposing any effort to ban meat consumption goes unaddressed, as does the challenge of changing the thinking of people whose ancestors have been carnivores for hundreds of thousands of years. Agent: Jenée Arthur, Jenée Arthur Agency.