Charly Frisk
Corrie Grosse
Intro to Environmental Science
Cowspiracy PDP: Against Cowspiracy
Brief Introduction In the documentary Cowspiracy, Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn seek to expose the impact of the agricultural industry on global climate change. However, the documentary deceives audiences of the real contribution of agriculture to global warming, Anderson and Kuhn negatively portray environmentalists and lose credibility themselves, and Cowspiracy fails to realize the consequences a global, vegan lifestyle would present. Cowspiracy unsuccessfully argues the problems of the agricultural industry and vegan lifestyle.
Argument: Get the Number Right Central to the argument of Cowspiracy is the shocking contribution of the agricultural …show more content…
In efforts of proving that the “fact” is largely unknown, Andersen goes out to various environmental institutions and questions them on their knowledge of the importance of agriculture to global climate change. As previously stated, agriculture accounts for only part of the 24% of greenhouse gas emissions. Due to the smaller part that the agricultural society plays in society, many of the environmental institutions have little to no knowledge of the environmental impacts. Many of the people that he interviews (besides the environmental institutions that are pro-vegan/pro-vegetarian) are left to speculate or guess on the agriculture issues. In many of the interviews, the person responds with an “I think...” statement, followed up by “but, I don’t really know,” thus giving image to how little environmentalists know about the whole “agricultural” situation that Andersen is allegedly unveiling. Their lack of knowledge should be indicating to the audience that if head of corporations do not even recognize this problem, then the problem must not be that much of a contributing issue - at least not to the extent that the documentary portrays it to …show more content…
While many people can witness that the agricultural industry does have some problems, few will actually change, thus becoming vegan will not be able to stop climate change. The behavioral patterns are too hard to reverse. People, though in theory may think the idea of being vegan is good, when rated against other important food issues, it ranks last. Nathanael Johnson’s article Can we actually make a difference by changing the way we eat? provides a graphic of a survey done in the U.K. in which consumers rate the environmental aspect of food last. Johnson states, “If a survey-taker asks them whether ethical food is important, most people say yes. But when they have to rate how important that is against other issues … it becomes relatively unimportant. Wallets always take the top spot, and preaching is pretty ineffective.” One of the only ways to have others turn vegan/vegetarian would be to have forcible governmental intervention in which people are forced to refuse meat. However, as Sunita Narain states, in her article Why I would not advocate vegetarianism, “But the most important reason I, as an Indian environmentalist, would not support action against meat is that livestock is the most important economic security of farmers in our world.”1 Cowspiracy calls for radical changes in the way we eat food - we must get rid of the meat industry
Corrie Grosse
Intro to Environmental Science
Cowspiracy PDP: Against Cowspiracy
Brief Introduction In the documentary Cowspiracy, Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn seek to expose the impact of the agricultural industry on global climate change. However, the documentary deceives audiences of the real contribution of agriculture to global warming, Anderson and Kuhn negatively portray environmentalists and lose credibility themselves, and Cowspiracy fails to realize the consequences a global, vegan lifestyle would present. Cowspiracy unsuccessfully argues the problems of the agricultural industry and vegan lifestyle.
Argument: Get the Number Right Central to the argument of Cowspiracy is the shocking contribution of the agricultural …show more content…
In efforts of proving that the “fact” is largely unknown, Andersen goes out to various environmental institutions and questions them on their knowledge of the importance of agriculture to global climate change. As previously stated, agriculture accounts for only part of the 24% of greenhouse gas emissions. Due to the smaller part that the agricultural society plays in society, many of the environmental institutions have little to no knowledge of the environmental impacts. Many of the people that he interviews (besides the environmental institutions that are pro-vegan/pro-vegetarian) are left to speculate or guess on the agriculture issues. In many of the interviews, the person responds with an “I think...” statement, followed up by “but, I don’t really know,” thus giving image to how little environmentalists know about the whole “agricultural” situation that Andersen is allegedly unveiling. Their lack of knowledge should be indicating to the audience that if head of corporations do not even recognize this problem, then the problem must not be that much of a contributing issue - at least not to the extent that the documentary portrays it to …show more content…
While many people can witness that the agricultural industry does have some problems, few will actually change, thus becoming vegan will not be able to stop climate change. The behavioral patterns are too hard to reverse. People, though in theory may think the idea of being vegan is good, when rated against other important food issues, it ranks last. Nathanael Johnson’s article Can we actually make a difference by changing the way we eat? provides a graphic of a survey done in the U.K. in which consumers rate the environmental aspect of food last. Johnson states, “If a survey-taker asks them whether ethical food is important, most people say yes. But when they have to rate how important that is against other issues … it becomes relatively unimportant. Wallets always take the top spot, and preaching is pretty ineffective.” One of the only ways to have others turn vegan/vegetarian would be to have forcible governmental intervention in which people are forced to refuse meat. However, as Sunita Narain states, in her article Why I would not advocate vegetarianism, “But the most important reason I, as an Indian environmentalist, would not support action against meat is that livestock is the most important economic security of farmers in our world.”1 Cowspiracy calls for radical changes in the way we eat food - we must get rid of the meat industry