Untold suffering, major transformations, much-needed human plant food, vitally important, drastically reduce: these are the words, and in sentences with the commensurate tone, that we need to employ. Otherwise, we’re simply fooling ourselves and others into believing that tweaking our portfolios or getting drunk with cheese pizza are “doing our bit” to save the planet. I would say it is time to get serious—except we may not even have the time for that.
Two nights before Halloween this year, I attended “Food System Risks and
Opportunities,” a panel discussion hosted by FAIRR at the investment company
Neuberger Berman on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. FAIRR, which stands for Farm
Animal Investment Risk & Return, describes itself as “a collaborative
investor network that raises awareness of the material ESG [environmental,
social, and corporate governance] risks and opportunities caused by
intensive animal production.”
Over the last few years, I’ve increasingly found myself at conferences,
seminars, and expos among the money managers, VC mavens, product developers,
and techno-utopians of the new food economy. It’s a mostly young,
well-heeled, and shiny-eyed crowd, full of newly minted MBAs, PhDs, and/or
budding entrepreneurs wanting to grasp the opportunity to “disrupt” the
“food space” and make some money into the bargain. It’s a world of acronyms,
pitch decks and financial leverage, and strategic interests and market
solutions, one that avoids moral exhortations in favor of personal choice
and taste-price-convenience. It rarely includes those who pick the food,
slaughter the animals, or grow the corn. That the FAIRR seminar took place
in an aerie high above the rain-swept streets of Manhattan only rendered its
overview even more magisterial.
On my ascent to the upper echelons of high finance, the elevator’s
television scrolled through a series of factoids. The first informed me that
new research had increased the number of people currently vulnerable to
coastal flooding from 110 to 150 million by 2050, with a possible increase
to 340 million by 2100 should climate change and sea-level rise be more
severe. The second notified me that 75 percent of American men were either
overweight or obese, which paralleled an equally alarming statistic I’d
learned earlier that current trajectories suggest that half of all U.S.
teenagers will be overweight or obese by 2030.
The speakers at FAIRR were, to a person, informed and knowledgeable about
the risks that investors in industrial animal agriculture faced of lower
returns should other investors switch from animal-based agriculture to more
sustainable, plant-based portfolios. They noted the exposure insurers might
face should governments internalize the currently externalized costs of
animal agriculture. Panelists were bullish on investments in greener
technology—especially given that more companies were hearing ESG concerns
from shareholders, customers, and consumers.
Yet, as I listened to the presentations delivered and heard by sleek and
BMI-appropriate professionals, I couldn’t shift from my mind the picture of
inflated Americans bobbing in the waters of downtown Miami or the FDR Drive.
Nor could I get past the chasm between these news items, delivered in
palatable nuggets as the elevator slid between floors, and the deliberative
tones that accompanied the panelists’ strategic financial advice. When one
told us that his company took a long-term perspective of three to five years
in their investment decisions, I bit hard on my tongue. Three to five years!
And when, after we broke for the evening, an investor informed me that he’d
gone vegan and had felt fantastic, but had recently returned to eating meat
because he’d gotten drunk and had craved cheese pizza, I offered my
condolences and fled onto the streets of New York City.
The one question that occupied my mind as I headed home was, When are we
going to get serious about climate change? I don’t doubt for a minute the
intentions of FAIRR in seeking to divert capital from animal agriculture. I
don’t question the aspirations of my pizza-loving, booze-befuddled financial
titan. The food at the FAIRR event was plant-based, and it’s possible that
the elevator’s messages are tailored precisely to scare away complacency in
the tenants.
But, to my mind, seriousness means looking at the future beyond investment
strategies of five years, let alone quarterly reports, shareholder
dividends, and hockey stick–shaped ROIs. Pending the ending of a capitalist,
extractive economic system that externalizes true costs and fails to
internalize the damage to natural capital, we need carbon-pricing and an end
to subsidized amber waves of high fructose corn syrup and soy-fattened
flesh-burgers that are making our fellow citizens as sick and
antibiotics-dependent as the animals they consume.
Seriousness entails shifting the discussion of veganism from a
virtue-signaling personal choice reflective of moral purity (or addictive
shame) to default practices and commitments in policy and investment.
Seriousness means a reimagination of a food system to privilege quality over
quantity, diversity over sameness, and closed energy loops over waste, junk,
and fat-sugar-salt in combination with taste-price-convenience.
A week after the FAIRR event, 11,000 scientists signed on to a declaration
published in BioScience to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the First
World Climate Conference in Geneva. The scientists noted, that in spite of
forty years of numerous meetings and publications rich with documented
evidence on the destruction to life on Earth, we were set on a course for
warming far beyond two-degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the
end of the century. The scientists emphasized the need for “an immense
increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere . . . to avoid
untold suffering due to the climate crisis.” They called for “major
transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with
natural ecosystems.” The paragraph on food was especially damning:
Eating mostly plant-based foods while reducing the global consumption of
animal products . . . , especially ruminant livestock . . . , can improve
human health and significantly lower GHG emissions. . . . Moreover, this
will free up croplands for growing much-needed human plant food instead of
livestock feed, while releasing some grazing land to support natural climate
solutions. . . . Cropping practices such as minimum tillage that increase
soil carbon are vitally important. We need to drastically reduce the
enormous amount of food waste around the world.
Untold suffering, major transformations, much-needed human plant food,
vitally important, drastically reduce: these are the words, and in sentences
with the commensurate tone, that we need to employ. Otherwise, we’re simply
fooling ourselves and others into believing that tweaking our portfolios or
getting drunk with cheese pizza are “doing our bit” to save the planet. I
would say it is time to get serious—except we may not even have the time for
that.
The Vegan America Project (VAP) is an ongoing research undertaking and act of imagination: to think what the United States might look like as a vegan country in 2050. You can learn about the origins of this project, and why veganism might be useful as a way to contemplate the future of the U.S by clicking About. In addition to the various research areas associated with VAP, you can read ongoing thoughts about the Project in the blogs featured in the right-hand column of this website.
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