Dear Editor,

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the cartoon at the top right hand corner on page 4 of the March 14, 2018 edition of the Methow Valley News is worth at least that many–depending on how it’s interpreted. In case you missed it, the drawing featured a wide-eyed, fearful pig, fish, cow, goat, bear, deer and other allegedly delectable and destroy-able beings on a cracker, being shoveled into the gaping mouth of a ginormous human head.

Though it’s caption was, “Bite of the Methow,” it seemed to symbolize the ‘Bite of Humanity,’ as in the chunk that meat-eating is taking out of this once vibrant planet.

If you can’t find it in yourself to care about cruelty issues, you might at least consider your food choices in regards to the fact that animal agriculture is the “third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, after the energy and industrial sectors,” according to “The Case for a Carbon Tax on Beef” by Richard Conniff in the New York Times, March 17, 2018.

And as Chatham House, an influential British think tank, points out, livestock production is responsible for more greenhouse gas “ than the emissions produced from powering all the world’s road vehicles, trains, ships and airplanes combined.” Conniff adds, “including grazing, the business of making meat occupies about three-quarters of the agricultural land on the planet.”

Call it food for thought, but what you eat is actually affecting our weather these days.

Jim Robertson