Speaking of meat...
Bill Maher is asking some good questions of Democratic presidential candidates in the HuffPost and Yahoo candidate mash up. Here's a question he asked John Edwards:
"Senator Edwards, you've suggested that Americans should give up their SUVs for the sake of the environment, but a recent UN study found that deforestation for the purpose of creating grazing land for cattle and methane emissions from cattle generated more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars and planes in the world, so it's not just the SUVs, it's the C-O-W-S. Taking a shot at SUVs was gutsy. Do you want to take a shot at meat?"
Edwards does a little shuffling and dancing at the beginning - no doubt he knows how the cattle industry went after George McGovern in the 70s and Oprah in the not too distant past and was thinking about how he can avoid making them angry - but he wraps up with a pretty good comment:
I do think we need a president who actually says to America "you have to be willing to sacrifice." Who calls on Americans to sacrifice, instead of just making a bunch of promises about what the president is going to. Who says to America: "if you love your country, you need to be patriotic about something other than war. You need to say I'm willing to drive more fuel efficient vehicles, I'm willing to conserve in my home, I'm willing to conserve in my workplace." Because all of us have to do this together. I mean, that's real patriotism.
I'll tell you why politicians aren't asking Americans to sacrifice. Because of the baby boomers. Bush is a baby boomer, and like many of his fellow baby boomers, he doesn't believe in sacrifice. That's for people who lived through the Great Depression and World War II. And the children of baby boomers, who will be forced to deal with the debt they've rung up, the devastation to the environment, etc. But not for baby boomers.
