A Climate For Change

May 21

This past Monday, Hawaii News Now aired parts 3 & 4 of their series, A Climate for Change, a four-part series created by Green Island films. Each episode takes a look at the issues in Hawaii such as the devastating bleaching of reefs, homelessness, the disastrous rail project, COVID-19, Hawaii’s dependence on food and goods from the continent, and a lack of infrastructure to produce our own food. More on that in a moment. I watched the trailer skeptically for parts 3 & 4, as I always watch these things, waiting for the anti-meat propaganda to come. I had hoped that the filmmakers would take a balanced, nuanced approach to diet, nutrition, consuming meat, agriculture, and the environment. They didn’t. But the most alarming aspect of it, given where we are as a country, society, is that the filmmakers promote an idea of one diet, one way to eat. This tactic is so deeply rooted in colonialism that it begs the question - Have they been asleep?

The film starts with a terrifying and accurate assessment of Hawaii's lack of preparedness in the face of a natural disaster. Whether an isolated event such as Hurricane Lane, or the effects of the global pandemic, Hawaii’s reliance on outside resources for food, water, and all other basic life necessities is staggering. If not for the tireless work of incredible human beings, the plight of Hawaii’s most vulnerable citizens would have been much worse. Community leaders like Alicia Higa, Director of Health Promotion for Waimea Coast Comprehensive Health Center; Chad Buck, owner of Hawaii Foodservice Alliance; and our Lt. Governor Josh Green continue to show the true spirit of aloha and dedication to those most in need. If the film had continued along with this narrative it would have served as a stark warning of how much worse things could get, while offering solutions to ensure Hawaii’s resilience in the face of a natural disaster. It did not. At around the 36-minute mark, the film took an abrupt turn into full-on anti-meat propaganda.

Joseph Poore, a researcher from the University of Oxford, makes some startling claims regarding livestock, land usage, crop production, and how difficult the information is to find, but in the same breath mentions over 750 studies, representing 40,000 farms around the world in 120 countries. That’s a lot of studies, farms, and countries. But the most telling revelation is his assessment that converting grass into meat is like “converting coal into energy” These things are nothing alike. Let me be clear, there is nothing that mimics nature more, than the cyclical process of a cow eating grass and converting sunlight (photosynthesis that grows the grass) into energy. In turn, this becomes an efficient source of bioavailable nutrients for us. This process has been performed by ruminants long before we got here. This is in complete contrast to the extractive linear process of removing coal from the earth to burn for energy. Poore’s entire premise is based upon an often-cited myth that all land is suitable for crop production. The FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization) of the United Nations estimates that only ⅓ of all agricultural land is suitable for crop production. Of the remaining land, more than half are forests, ironically lands that were once cropland. The remaining land is split between protected areas and cities. To imply that we could simply take all agricultural land, convert the remaining ⅔ from grasslands to cropland would almost ensure our demise by destroying natural habitats, killing biodiversity, and releasing staggering amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Taking those lands used for grazing livestock to instead produce peas (a much-needed crop in the plant-based meat world), as Poore mentions, completely ignores everything we know about land usage as well as nutrition, assuming that the nutritional benefit of a pea is equivalent to the nutritional value of meat. As if the above wasn’t misrepresentation enough, Poore, along with Mary Allan, Creative Manager of the Good Food Institute, make the assumption that there is only one type of animal livestock production and ignore regenerative livestock production. They make the claim that switching to a vegan diet would eliminate suffering. The ethics and morals surrounding the killing of animals for food have been debated for centuries and most recently by the likes of Peter Singer, Jonathon Safran Foer, and more. And while this topic could encompass an entire film on its own, I will say this: we as westerners have an uncomfortable relationship with the natural world, death being a part of that world. Whether you consume meat, are a vegetarian, pescatarian, or flexitarian -if you eat food, death will be a part of it. The only choice you have in the matter is what degree of separation you are comfortable with. To chose not to consume it, I argue, is a waste of a precious resource.

As the film progresses it enters what I like to call its emotional response stage. We meet school children in Brooklyn, NY participating in Meatless Mondays, which on the surface isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but belies the real issue, in that the Standard American Diet is what has made us and the environment unhealthy. Simply avoiding meat for one day, then returning to our usual consumption patterns will do very little in correcting our current crisis. One of the recurring themes during this segment as the filmmakers move back to Hawaii and focus on school children and farmers markets, is the idea that fruits and vegetables are the keys to reducing many of the negative impacts of the Standard American Diet, mainly obesity. Again, not necessarily wrong. I have often said (although I don’t take claim for the phrase) medicine is medicine, but food is medicine too. Anything we can do to reduce our consumption of highly processed foods is a great thing. But to eliminate meat from that conversation is to conceal the fact that animal protein is one of the most efficient means of bioavailable nutrients accessible to humans --not to mention more satiating. You eat less and feel fuller thus having to buy less. The intent to elicit an emotional response is clear: shocking visuals of community members lying in bed, legs amputated due to diabetic neuropathy. A young man recounts how both his parents died prematurely due to dietary-related diseases. These not uncommon stories are horrible reminders that something is wrong with what we are eating and the way we are eating. The filmmakers would have you believe that as the young man who lost his parents says, we are dying because of our addiction to meat. This attempted connection is faulty and scientifically inaccurate, and we have Ancel Keys to blame. Keys single-handedly created the widespread bias against fat and changed the course of US and global food policy. Keys headed a study in the 1950s that looked at the connection between dietary fat intake and heart disease called the Seven Countries Study. He cherry-picked data that supported the outcome he wanted, which was that saturated fat and coronary heart disease were associated even though the study itself showed no relationship with total fat intake. Several factors would change during the course of the study, such as the impact of WWII and the reduction of sugar and more reliance on locally grown and raised food, but supporters remained steadfast in their belief that improved health was solely a result of reduced fat intake. It is the basis of his work that underlines the US Government’s recommendation of a low-fat diet. All this is based on the work of a man who cherry picked his data to support the outcome he wanted to and attacked anyone who dissented. There would be other studies that would attempt to understand heart disease and its causes, all attempting to link it to dietary fat, but the devil is in the details. While these studies were conducted by more scrupulous individuals, they are no less controversial. To this day we try to draw comparisons to what other animals eat to our own diets. But therein lies a great fallacy: animals have largely different diets from one another, and the physiology and nutritional requirements of all of them are different. Even us as individuals have different dietary requirements and a specific diet for one person could cause serious problems for someone else.

So perhaps it’s not the meat in the diet of the double amputee (it isn’t) or the burgers that took the young man’s parents too soon. It is more realistically, everything but the meat. The highly processed and enriched wheat bun, the ketchup full of HFCS, the fries cooked in seed oils, and of course the high sugar content drinks to wash it all down all contribute to a decline in health.

If all of this misinformation wasn’t damaging enough, some of the most anti-science, propaganda-infused moments come from a doctor. Dr. Tara Garnett is the Acting Director of Table at the University of Oxford, which sets out the evidence, assumptions, and values underpinning different viewpoints on food system controversies. Dr. Garnett’s segment in the film is brief, but she manages to fill her time with statistics and sound bites that, without further investigation, would make even the staunchest supporter of grass-based, regenerative livestock farming change their ways. Quoting debunked statistics regarding greenhouse gases (GHG) from livestock to positing to the viewers that all GHG act the same in our environment would be enough to discredit her, but it is the following that exposes her true misunderstanding of how the natural world works, specifically soil. She illustrates how grazing animals can stimulate the grass to grow which in turn stimulates the grass to put down deeper roots, which then results in a drawdown of carbon, locking it away, only to quickly say, “The science doesn’t back it up.” Dr. Garret equates the soil to a sponge, in that it will reach a saturation point where it can’t hold any more, releasing all that supposed sequestered carbon into the atmosphere. To Dr. Garrett, livestock production, “Contributes to the problem more than any solutions that they may provide.” This completely disregards the nutritional advantages of consuming meat. Her statement is so fundamentally wrong in that her whole argument is contained in a vacuum, completely negating what actually happens in the natural world. Her premise is that the soil we have is what’s there, never anymore and only capable of doing so much. This premise and many others were posited in a report titled “Grazed and Confused: How Much Can Grazing Livestock Help to Mitigate Climate Change”, published in October of 2017. Dr. Garret’s and the other authors' findings concluded that while there can be other benefits to grazing livestock, solving climate change isn’t one of them. A conclusion so preposterous in that never has anyone claimed that grazing cattle will fix climate change. In fact, if we really wanted to fix climate change Dr. Garret and the other authors would have fixed their gaze upon the transportation sector. The more genuine argument would be: can grazing livestock be a carbon neutral or even carbon negative process? And the answer is yes. This has been proven by Will Harris and the work being done at White Oak Pastures. But back to Grazed and Confused and the anti-science approach to its conclusions. In their March 2018 response to Dr. Garret, et al, Regenatarianism, compiled the latest data on soil science and presented it under the title “It’s the Soil Biology, Stupid!” highlighting that while Dr. Garret looked at soil types, never mentioned soil microbes or soil biology. And it’s in those details that soil scientists have begun to understand the huge role soil microbes play in carbon sequestration, methane mitigation, soil fertility, and a host of other beneficial environmental outcomes. It would appear, as it did above in the Keys study, that while this information was available, its inclusion in Grazed and Confused did not suit the intended outcome. In fact, what the study did was to perform a meta-analysis of older soil science data ignoring newer data showing that carbon sequestration, as well as other cycles, are driven by the microbes in the soil. And as noted above Dr. Garret and the other authors didn’t seem to understand that as long as photosynthesis occurs, soil continues to make more soil, thus capturing more carbon. So, by ignoring new science on microbiology and continuing our industrial agriculture ways of plowing and planting monocrops in different soil types and doing nothing to improve the diversity of the soil microbiology, with the exception of applying fertilizer, you will never be able to obtain meaningful carbon sequestration. By utilizing this old data, what is never shown is how using methods to improve soil microbiology, such as diverse plant covers, no tilling, reducing chemical inputs, and integrating properly managed livestock you can enhance carbon capture and sequestration. I’ll repeat that last method for those in the back: INTEGRATING PROPERLY MANAGED LIVESTOCK. It’s almost as if Dr. Garret supports the types of industrial agriculture that are necessary to much of the plant-based meat and plant-based processed food world.

It is my hope that this writing sparks a conversation. That it challenges those unable to look past personal bias, established thinking, and outdated science to go further, look deeper. As you read this, don’t take my word for any of it. Look to the research, follow the science, and when you think you know it, look again. To the creators at Green Island Films, I challenge you to offer opposing views. We have all seen the damage that occurs when we ignore the facts, create our own, and distort the truth. However difficult it can be to admit one is wrong, misspoke, the real danger is in not holding yourself, ourselves accountable. Ultimately, we all want the same things, a more resilient, self-reliant, healthy Hawaii. It is my hope that the above fosters a continued conversation and a connection between us all.

If you’d like to further educate yourself on meat, the environment, nutrition, and other planet-saving (and self saving) ideas, take a look at these resources either mentioned above or just because they are awesome

Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production -

Nicolette Hahn Niman

https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/defending-beef-pb/

Cows Save the Planet: And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth

Judith Schwartz

https://www.judithdschwartz.com/cows-save-the-planet

Sacred Cow: The Case for (Better) Meat

Dianna Rogers and Robb Wolf

https://www.sacredcow.info/

Eat to Beat Depression and Anxiety

Dr. Drew Ramsey

https://drewramseymd.com/