Alarmism!!!
This is a pretty alarming article. “Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’” is a great title. A title like that gets people reading.
I’m not sure where to start with it, though. I really don’t want to complain - the article does bring up some good points that people should think about, although it gets there in a fairly misleading way.
First off, humans in general aren’t the most efficient vehicles - that’s not exactly news. We can do a lot of different things, although not very effectively compared to a specialized device. In terms of calories (or whatever energy unit) spent per mile, a car should be a more efficient way of getting you to the store. For this to be a ‘newsworthy’ calculation by a leading environmentalist casts some doubt on how reputable the source is here.
Also, the premise of using beef as the human energy source is disingenuous. It’s old news that beef is one of the most energy intensive foods consumed. Was the intent here to create the most unbalanced statistics for the report? Or was it to cause the most alarm - what could cause more fear than hinting that we might lose our precious cows? Even, and especially, the organic cows? Ouch!
It’s always good to consider the energy requirements of everything we do - there’s another article coming on that topic, don’t worry. But consider these factors responsibly, there’s no need to mislead people!
Consider the other side of the equation here - put simply, people who have a surplus of calories in their diet will hold onto that surplus as long as they can. That’s fairly hard-wired into our brains. If there’s a lot of extra food, we’re going to eat it. Calorie restriction diets might prove to be the best way to live to 120, but 99% of us won’t do it willingly. (Count me out!)
So what do you end up with? Easy - you get people ingesting extra calories every day. After a while, a calorie surplus becomes (surprise!) fat. Lots of fancy diet plans try to get around this fact, but if you take in more energy than you use, over time, the body stores it as fat.
When the fat builds up, people go to work it off. This energy is almost entirely wasted - all of that beef was sliced up, frozen, shipped, cooked, eaten, and stored as fat, only to be lost on a treadmill. (Unless you work out at one of those neat gyms in Hong Kong.) This isn’t going to change. So why not walk places? If you’re going to overeat, and need to burn off the energy anyway, why not put it to actual good use?
If you’re interested in efficient energy usage, and can accept the fact that the food is going to be consumed anyway, let’s just focus on putting it to good use. Walking to the store is a pretty good way to start.
All of this assumes that there’s no magic formula to make everyone go vegan - that would go a long way in avoiding the energy issue. I don’t think that’s possible, though - even if there is, vegan cheese is proof that it’s a very long way off.