livesets.nu / CC

I got my first vegan pancake recipe from Moby when his berry flapjacks were featured way back when in Seventeen magazine.

He could have stopped there, but it seems like Moby keeps coming up with ways to win my animal-loving heart.

In a recent blog entry, Moby goes the extra mile for animals and the planet by calling out "environmentalist" Al Gore over his refusal to ever mention that animal consumption is the leading cause of climate change. Moby says:

i asked al gore about why he didn't mention this in an 'inconvenient truth' (as animal production is responsible for more greenhouse gases than every car, bus, truck … plane, boat on the planet COMBINED). he answered honestly, basically saying that getting people to drive a hybrid car isn't that difficult. getting people to give up animal products is almost impossible. i appreciated his honesty. so i guess i'll be talking about climate change tomorrow, and i guess i'll have to mention the most inconvenient of inconvenient truths, that you can't talk seriously about climate change and global warming without looking at the role of animal production (animal production being responsible for 24% of greenhouse gas emissions and also the #1 cause of deforestation in the rainforest).

Gore should have named his movie Sorta-Inconvenient Truths if he didn't want to cover the environmental destruction that his meaty diet causes.

Posted by Shawna Flavell

My gas is so bad that it’s making the ice caps melt. CosmosMagazine / CC

The world's foremost authority on global warming, the chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said that if people want to help decelerate climate change, they should "[g]ive up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there." Media reports have called this "the most controversial advice yet."

Wait, the U.N. Panel on Climate Change is controversial for recommending Meat Free Mondays?!? Hi, Media, have we met? We're PETA. And we want you to go vegan.

Not only does the meat industry produce more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined , it's also relatively easy to change your eating habits compared to changing your means of transport. So, is it that much of a leap to suggest that the way to decelerate global warming is to cut meat out of our diets? Well, to U.N. Chair (and vegetarian) Dr. Rajendra Pachauri and PETA, it ain't controversial—it's common sense. And it's what we've been saying all along.

Want to see how much a change in your diet could change your impact on the environment? Answer a few short questions, and our calculator will determine roughly how much carbon-dioxide equivalent you could prevent from polluting the Earth if you switch to a vegan diet right now. Go ahead, give it a try!

Posted by Carrie Ann Harris

Al Gore admitted to an audience at a political blogger conference that he may, indeed, be bad for the environment and guilty of contributing to global warming. Why? Because he just can't seem to stop eating meat, which is more harmful to the global warming crisis (which Gore is known for being a teeny bit fanatical about) than all of the world's cars, trucks, SUVs, and planes combined!

According to Ezra Klein at Prospect.org, Gore said, "It is true that it would be healthier for us as individuals and as a planet if we consumed less meat. I acknowledge that. … I myself am a meat eater and maybe that's had some effect" (emphasis mine). How did he go from acknowledging that vegetarianism is better for individuals and the planet to saying that maybe his choice to eat animals has some negative effect?

Without committing to any changes in the present, Al Gore explains that he "plead[s] guilty" and that we must "walk before we can run." Seriously? He doesn't know how to walk the walk on this issue? Have we not been clear enough with this guy? We'd love to love you, Al, but please stop clinging to the one thing that is so devastating for the world while asking everyone else to drop their bad habits.

What's next, M.A.D.D. beer cozies sized to fit in your car's cup holder? Ugh.

Posted by Sean Conner

The guy’s leading the charge to invigorate global warming advocacy, he’s consistently getting attention for the issue in the mainstream media, and he’s setting the agenda by which people think about global warming and its effect on our lives. So why the hell is PETA publicly rebuking him? Well, honestly, it’s for pretty much those same reasons. It’s great that he cares —; it really is — but for him to leave factory farming (i.e., the number one cause of the problem in the first place) out of the debate just because it doesn’t seem particularly convenient to him to have to reevaluate his lifestyle is irresponsible to a degree that’s almost unfathomable in light of the influence that he has on public opinion about this issue.

Of course, if you’ve been reading this blog more or less regularly, you will have already heard variations on this theme—but I’m bringing it up again today to highlight a really fantastic article by PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich in yesterday’s Huffington Post. Here’s an excerpt:

“Personal choices can only be allowed to go so far. For example, most environmentalists would agree that people shouldn't have the personal choice to dump their motor oil in a river. And if our choices involve direct support for the number one human cause of global warming—and a refusal to even mention the meat industry when telling people what they can do to decrease their global-warming footprint—at what point is someone's oversight on such a crucial issue cause for publicly calling them out on it?”

I think Bruce nails it with this one, so be sure to check out the full article here, and feel free to comment with your perspective. I know this issue’s a bit controversial, but it’s a vitally important discussion to have.

-Jack

In an exclusive interview with PETA, Sir Paul McCartney has a lot to say about why eating meat is the worst thing you can do for the environment. I just want to say this one more time, so I can relish the moment: Exclusive. Paul McCartney. Interview. OK, I’m going to shut up now, and let the man talk.

What do you think is the most personal change a person can make in their own lifestyle to help the environment? Some people often think recycling and taking shorter showers is all they need to do. What would you add?

I think the biggest change anyone could make in their own lifestyle would be to become vegetarian. Although this may seem to some like an unusual answer, the Global Meat Industry and the land & water required to service it is one of the major contributors to Global Warming. This surprising fact has emerged in research over the past few years. So I would urge everyone to think about taking this simple step to help our precious environment and save it for the children of the future.

What do you think about the fact that most major environmental organizations and the most prominent environmental advocates are omitting vegetarianism from their list of the top ways to help curtail global warming?

I think it's very surprising that most major environmental organisations are leaving the option of going vegetarian off their lists of top ways to curtail global warming. Of course there are many powerful businesses which would wish to resist this idea but it is becoming clearer that a simple change in peoples' lifestyles could make a major difference to our environment. What is interesting is that nowadays it is so easy to become vegetarian and so many people are reducing meat in their diet. That is a simple but extremely effective step that many people could take to help the environment and improve their own health at the same time.

How do you feel about the disappearance of birds, other wild animals and natural places around the globe?

It is such a pity that the wildlife and natural places of this beautiful planet we inhabit are being destroyed by thoughtless industrialization. This scandal can be halted and there are hopeful signs that people are starting to realize that this must be done to secure a brighter future for our children and theirs.

What do you feel is the best step for a person who is concerned about over-fishing, marine pollution and the clear-cutting of the ocean floor by commercial fisheries, to take?

Unfortunately many people seem to think that vegetarians eat fish but this is not so and when you consider the over fishing, the marine pollution and the huge damage to our precious oceans that are caused by commercial fishing it becomes obvious that a vegetarian lifestyle would greatly improve our environment and help to save our oceans. The surprising thing is that even though many of us, including me, were brought up as traditional meat and fish eaters, it is a simple matter these days and an exciting one to consider changing your diet to a healthier one which not only brings benefits to the person who does it but also to the planet as a whole.

Here’s how this works: By neglecting to address the number one cause of global warming, Al Gore—as one of the world’s most prominent environmental advocates—is arguably doing a fair bit of damage to his cause. So if he’s not going to set an example by boycotting the industry that generates 40 percent more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, ships, and planes in the world combined … well, somebody needs to pick up the slack.

Which is where OffsetAlGore.com comes in. Visitors to the site can learn the full extent of the meat industry’s role in causing global warming, and actually do something to help stem the tide by taking a pledge to go vegetarian for 30 days. That's enough time to prevent the release of more than 270 pounds of carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere, and a more effective way of combating pollution than giving up driving every weekday for the same amount of time. As PETA VP Bruce Friedrich puts it:

"Visitors to OffsetAlGore.com can undo some of the damage that Al Gore is doing to the environment every time he sits down to a steak. Mr. Gore's own addiction to meat is adding to the very crisis he's devoting his life to stopping."

Anyway, check out the site, take the pledge (if you haven’t already), and let me know what you think of the campaign. We’re big admirers of Al Gore’s work here, but it really seems like the guy is doing his own cause a serious disservice by avoiding the single most important issue facing the environment today.

Yesterday, one of my colleagues dressed as a chicken and drove a Hummer round the State Department building, where the Meeting of Major Economies on Energy Security and Climate Change was taking place, to make the point that a meat-based diet is responsible for more greenhouse-gas emissions than driving a gas-guzzling SUV. And yes, in case you're wondering, sometimes it does take a giant chicken in a Hum-V to get certain people to pay attention. Here's a pic:

In case you thought we were just kidding when we wrote to Al Gore urging him to go vegetarian to help stop global warming, maybe this ad will clarify our position for you.

The evidence is in, and though it may be a little inconvenient for Mr. Gore to hear, the facts don’t lie. This U.N. report shows that animals raised for food generate more greenhouse gases than all cars and trucks combined, and goes on to say that meat is "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global," including land degradation, air pollution, water shortage and pollution, loss of biodiversity, and of course climate change. And according to a recent University of Chicago study, switching to a vegan diet is more effective in countering global warming than switching from a standard American car to a Prius. We even went so far as to offer to cook him faux “fried chicken” as an intro to vegetarian meals, since, no matter how many of those cool little energy saving light bulbs you put in, the reality is that there just isn’t such a thing as a meat-eating environmentalist.

This story about the whole issue ran in The New York Times today, but Gore declined to comment. Mr. Gore, you’ve done so much good by putting yourself out there as the face of the anti-global warming movement, and you’re so right on so much of it, but come on, it really is high time to put some substance behind it by leading by example and doing the single most effective thing you can do to address the issue: simply going vegetarian.

Sometimes, when you have serious concerns about the way something's being done, you just have to take it to the top. And PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich, who takes in all the latest political happenings with his bran flakes and soymilk every morning, has no qualms about doing exactly that. Bruce just dashed off a letter to President Bush offering a "modest proposal to help you win over your critics" about global warming. As Bruce puts it:

"It is past time for all those involved in the debate over global warming to acknowledge that what we eat has far more impact on the climate than the cars that we drive or the light bulbs that we use."

The letter, which you can read here, details a comprehensive plan of action for fighting climate change by going straight to the source—the meat i

Bruce Friedrich

ndustry. As I may have pointed out before, any debate about how to deal with the crisis of global warming will be stymied at the outset unless it includes a serious discussion of the environmental devastation caused by the meat industry—an attack on the Earth's resources that is far more dangerous than anything else you can think of, including the usual suspects: SUVs, jumbo jets, power plants … all those bad boys. Anyway, the point is that if we want to get serious about combating global warming, we need to stop squeezing ourselves around that big ol' elephant in the room, no matter how powerful their lobby is.

Bruce's arguments are much more cohesive than mine, though, so you should definitely check them out here. Note how he slips in a vegetarian starter kit for the President to peruse when he has a free moment. Love it.