PETA Teams Up With Glenn Beck to Bash Al Gore

Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet at 5:39 PM on November 6, 2009.

I know it's easy to get jealous when someone's got an Oscar, a Nobel, and some pretty big job titles on their resume, but really, the Gore bashing has got to end.

The New York Times took a swipe at Al Gore and his new book this week and now Glenn Beck and PETA's Ingrid Newkirk are teaming up. In some ways it is a perfect match between two people who seem to thrive on generating controversy.

Beck chastised Gore for not giving up meat eating altogether (even though he's admitted to cutting back a lot) and told him it was time for soy milk and tofurkey. Then he invited Newkirk on the show to tag team even though Beck admitted that he doesn't agree with a thing PETA says. Although he did give PETA and the NRA a shout out for not catering to special interests (huh?), so I guess Newkirk should feel good about that.

I know that PETA's main task seems to be to get people really pissed off, but I still think it's a shame to see Newkirk sinking so low as to cozy up to Glenn Beck. The truth is though, what they're talking about is actually a tough issue. There's a lot of really good evidence that eating meat -- at least the way we mostly do it in factory farms -- is bad for the planet. If you've ever seen a factory farm (or smelled one) that would probably seem like a no-brainer.

But there's also some good evidence pointing out that growing soy -- at least the way we do it but slashing rainforests and piling on the pesticides -- is actually bad for ecosystems, water, climate and the whole shebang. And some of that soy we area eating (actually in the US 87 percent of it is genetically modified), some of it is being used for biofuel and some of it is being fed to livestock. But mostly all of it is an environmental disaster.

Umbra Fisk from Grist breaks down a lot of the research and writes:

"There is some indication in these studies that sustainably raised, locally procured meat-based diets can hold their own, environmentally, against heavily processed, far-shipped veggie diets. So I prefer to believe that eating my local bacon is better than eating frozen veggie burgers, not just gastronomically but ecologically."

(He's another good voice on that who's a farmer).

There are going to be lots of vegetarians who may not agree with that, but I think it at least warrants a dialogue a little more sophisticated than then antics of Beck and Newkirk.

One small highlight in their banter though is watching Newkirk trying not to loose her shit when Beck says that he'd be happy making a suit out of giraffe because he really he cares that little about animals and the planet. Maybe PETA may begin to rethink the notion that all publicity is good publicity.

You can watch it to the right, if you can bear it.

Tagged as: global warming, climate change, glenn beck, al gore, vegetarianism, peta

Tara Lohan is a senior editor at AlterNet.