The Long Emergency: The petty and the existential

While it is true that fossil fuel interests have been the most important force behind climate change denial and effective policy responses, they aren ' t the only one. The meat industry, as far as I know, hasn ' t invested a lot in denialism but they are scared that people will stop eating their product. Obviously plant based foods are also produced by farmers but the overall demand for agricultural products is several times as high in a carnivorous dietary regime than it would be if people mostly ate a plant based diet.The result issome really ridiculous state laws. Yes, state legislatures are trying to ban labeling vegetarian foods with labels historically associated with meat and dairy. Arkansas wants to ban labels such as " veggie burger " and " soy milk. " This is downright silly because, obviously, nobody is going to actually buy veggie burgers thinking they are hamburgers, and if people want to eat veggie burgers they ' ll probably do so no matter what you call them. But I imagine it could slow down marketing of these items if it ' s harder for the manufacturers to explain what they are to consumers. At least that ' s what the meat purveyors must be thinking. Anyway, as the Vox article explains, these laws probably won ' t pass constitutional muster.As lapsed economist Duncan Black explains, there is also just the foible of human nature that people don ' t like their habits disrupted. It ' s actually not a problem to take reusable shopping bags to the supermarket -- in...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs