We already know that we should eat less meat for the sake of the planet – the United Nations has said reduced meat consumption would help curb greenhouse emissions. While many ardent environmentalists are vegetarian, initiatives like Meatless Monday are trying to encourage all of us to do our part, as well.

So meat production helps cause global warming. But did you know that climate change might also affect the quality of meat? According to New Scientist: “Pork chops will become soggier and paler as the world warms, while steaks could be dark and smelly”.

It’s all to do with the effects of heat on the animal’s energy, or glycogen, reserves. The flesh from pigs that become heat-stressed on the way to the slaughterhouse will acidify more quickly, so the meat resembles “soggy white blotting paper”. While heat-stressed cows run out of glycogen before slaughter, darkening their meat.

It all adds up to less “mmm” and more “hmm”.

Millions of cattle and sheep make long sea journeys every year in cramped, over-heated conditions as part of the livestock trade. So far the best solution scientists have been able to come up with has been to spike the drinking water with sports energy drinks. But if we are to keep eating meat in a climate-changed world, we are going to have to come up with a better solution.

We could start by scaling back meat consumption – most of us could handle more plant foods in our diet anyway – and focusing on quality over quantity. Then we could decentralise the meat industry, rear livestock in natural conditions on farms, transport them to a local abbatoirs only a few miles away and eat them close to where they were raised. Doesn’t it just make sense?

Image: The Busy Brain

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It’s one thing to read about how some of the most amazing natural treasures in the world are endangered due to environmental degradation, or learn specifically about the dangers global warming poses to our national parks. It’s another thing to see it firsthand.

I was hiking in the Rockies earlier this month and saw for myself large swaths of dead, rust-colored Lodgepole pine trees throughout the forest (see gallery below).  Witnessing the actual damage done by human folly is heart wrenching in a way that is difficult to verbalize. For me, there’s a huge sense of loss and missed opportunity and a knot of pure anger in my stomach at the shortsightedness and power of denial in us humans.

At the same time, there’s a strange gratitude in the moment of experience at the fact that I’m lucky enough to stand surrounded by such inspiring beauty (despite the visible damage). Then there’s the feeling of awe and appreciation at the incredible beating nature is able to take before showing signs of wear.

The trees’ deaths were caused directly by an insect called the mountain pine beetle and indirectly by climate change. Pine beetles have always fed on certain species of trees, like the Lodgepole pines in the Rockies, but cold winters have kept the beetle’s population under control and plenty of water made the trees hardy and resistant to the beetle’s attacks.

Enter drought and successive years of warm weather. The population of beetles explodes, the trees are weakened and unable to secrete the resin that kills the beetles, and the trees die – to the tune of millions upon millions of trees. According to this National Parks Conservation Association Survival Guide, Forestry officials estimate that all mature Lodgepole pine forests in Colorado will be dead by 2013.

This all sounds hopeless and it is, especially for the Lodgepoles and the many birds, animals and fish that directly or indirectly depend on them for survival. So many dried, dead trees make the specter of devastating wildfires a sure bet.

Experts agree that the damage is irreversible. The only way to think positively is to ponder the new forest that will eventually grow up in this one’s place. Luckily, nature does have amazing powers of regeneration. But that doesn’t mean we can excuse the damage already done. To appreciate both the beauty and the scale of loss people need to see these places and truly experience them firsthand. That’s the only way we are ever going to save them.

Though heavy visitation has its own deleterious impacts on our national parks, I believe it is only through experiencing nature’s awe-inspiring beauty and mystery that humankind will muster the desire to live more lightly in hopes of saving what we still have.

Images: Vanessa Barrington

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