The current issue of Audubon magazine includes a terrific and accidentally animal friendly column about the impact of diet on the environment. Why do I write accidentally animal friendly? While there is a common assumption that environmentalists are concerned with animal suffering, the assumption is too often false. The Audubon Society is the perfect case in point. In Thanking the Monkey I refer to the group as the "Audubowhunt Society" as my tribute to the method that was chosen to remove 60 deer who were damaging Audubon's 285 acre reserve. While the decision to remove the deer may be a more complex ethical issue, there is no ethical grey area around bow hunting. The percentage of clean kills is low, with at least one study documenting that only 50% of deer shot in bow hunts are recovered by the hunter. Bow hunting is not a practice that shows concern for animal suffering.

The Audubon society, however, like many environmental groups, helps save countless millions of animals as it protects their habitat. So like the article featured in this DawnWatch alert, the group is accidentally animal friendly -- just as one might say that many people who chose a plant-based diet strictly for ethical reasons find themselves accidentally fantastically healthy!

The article, in the Viewpoint section, is headed "The Low-Carbon Diet" and sub-headed, "Change your lightbulbs? Or your car? If you want to fight global warming, it's time to consider a different diet." The writer, Mike Tidwell, discusses in length how much he loves the taste of meat. And he writes:

"My carnivore's lust goes beyond the DNA level. It's in my soul. Even the cruelty of factory farming doesn't temper my desire, I'll admit. Like most Americans, I can somehow keep at bay all thoughts of what happened to the meat prior to the plate."

Then he proposes a change in diet that mercifully could spare billions of animals the horrors of factory farming and the slaughterhouse, even though that is not the concern that drives him.

Tidwell writes,
"So why in the world am I a dedicated vegetarian? Why is meat, including sumptuous pork, a complete stranger to my fork at home and away? The answer is simple: I have an 11-year-old son whose future-like yours and mine-is rapidly unraveling due to global warming. And what we put on our plates can directly accelerate or decelerate the heating trend."

In the discussion that follows we read about the melting of the Antarctic sheet. We are told that warming greenhouse gasses from livestock constitute "more than the emissions of all the world's cars, buses, planes, and trains combined." We learn that "half of all the grains grown in America actually go to feed animals, not people" and "that means a huge fraction of the petroleum-based herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers applied to grains, plus staggering percentages of all agricultural land and water use, are put in the service of livestock."

Tidwell writes, "Here's the inconvenient truth about meat and dairy products: If you eat them, regardless of their origin and how they were produced, you significantly contribute to climate change. Period. If your beef is from New Zealand or your own backyard, if your lamb is organic free-range or factory farmed, it still has a negative impact on global warming....Even poultry, while less harmful, also contributes."

Tidwell tells us that many Americans seem to think that giving up meat is not an achievable aim, yet he writes:
"But as a meat lover at heart, I've been a vegetarian (no fish, minimal eggs and cheese) for seven years, and trust me: It's easy, satisfying, and of course super healthy. With the advent of savory tofu, faux meats, and the explosion of local farmers' markets, a life without meat is many times easier today than when Ovid and Thoreau and Gandhi and Einstein did it."

The article is one of the most succinct and compelling I have read about the impact of animal product consumption on the environment. Please check it out and spread the word. You'll find it on line at:
http://www.audubonmagazine.org/features0901/viewpoint.html

Then please thank the Audubon society for turning its attention to this vital issue of environmental protection. While Tidwell has written that the cruelty of factory farming never tempered his desire for meat, other Audubon members who read the magazine may feel differently, so please do include a reference to the moral issue of animal cruelty if you are so moved. If you are new to animal advocacy and know little about factory farming, please go to Farm Sanctuary's site www.FactoryFarming.com to learn more and to see the photos, which will tell you more than I ever could on the written page.

The Audubon Magazine takes letters at editor@audubon.org and asks that you include your name, city and state.

Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)

Please go to http://tinyurl.com/9mve9r if you would like to see an NBC news piece on Karen Dawn's new book, "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals" or go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com for reviews and a fun celeb-studded promo video.