Seth Meyers' speech to the National Resources Defense Council isn't very funny. Which might be why I noticed that a 1:40 or so he offhandedly mentions the dinner -- a $2,000-a-plate fundraiser -- was vegetarian.
This wasn't always the case. It's long been a complaint of food-oriented enviros that the movement steadfastly refused to admit the connection between meat and carbon. PETA has made something of a cottage industry out of posting the menus of international confabs, like the July G-8 dinner where an 18-course meal of 18-course meal including caviar, milk-fed lamb, and kelp-flavored beef (?) preceded the announcement of an international effort to halve carbon emissions. In recent years, though, more attention has been paid to the role of meat in climate change. A 2006 U.N. report found that livestock accounted for 18 percent of world emissions -- more than the transportation sector. And a study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon found that the average U.S. consumer could do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by switching out one day of red meat for chicken, fish, or poultry than buying all local, all the time. Last year, Ben Adler did a piece on meat and the environmental movement. "We haven't taken a position [on meat]," Elizabeth Martin Perera, a climate-policy specialist at the NRDC, told him. "There's no reason not to; we just haven't gotten around to it." A quick glance at their issues page suggests they still haven't. Indeed, they still tout eating local rather than reducing meat consumption, an odd choice given the carbon impact of the two. But the fact that their fundraising dinners are now vegetarian suggests they're feeling some pressure on it. Preemption: And yes, I know I post meat-heavy recipes on the site sometimes. I basically buy into the Mark Bittman approach to meat consumption, if not the Mark Bittman theory of meat consumption. Like him, I'm a lot better about meat than I used to be. Unlike him, I still feel pretty ethically conflicted over even minimal meat consumption.
