Oh the hypocrisy.
Democrats running for the 2020 presidential nomination have been moaning and whining about meat-eaters, who they claim are somehow destroying the environment with their diets. You see, farting cows add methane to the atmosphere and that’s causing global warming, they say.
“Listen, we’ve got to address factory farming,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in February. “Maybe we shouldn’t be eating a hamburger for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Like, let’s keep it real,” said the 29-year-old former bartender, who Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez has called “the future of the party.”
But that didn’t stop 17 of the 19 remaining candidates from descending on Iowa on Saturday to participate in the Polk County Steak Fry.
“Organizers grilled 10,500 steaks for attendees on Saturday, along with 1,000 vegan burgers. There is only one vegan candidate in the presidential race: Senator Cory Booker,” CBS News reported.
Many of the White House hopefuls donned aprons and grabbed spatulas to flip steaks at the grills.
Somehow, a photographer — apparently inside the grill — snapped a bunch of photos.
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The candidates were also super-excited to be there, dancing with attendees.
Even tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang got in on the act, despite his stance on meat.
Yang is not a meat-lover. During a climate change forum hosted by MSNBC on Thursday, Yang was asked by an audience member about what “policy adjustments” he’d make to “curb expansion and reduce the environmental impact of the cattle industry” in order to “reduce demand.”
“Cattle is very energy-consuming and energy-expensive. And if you project forward on what we would need to do to reduce emissions, you would want to modify Americans’ diets over time,” Yang said.
“Now, some of that is happening naturally through education. I do think it’s difficult to regulate diets. So what you would want to do again is you’d want those cattle producers to have to internalize the cost of emissions. Because if your cattle ends up polluting a lot, which they do, just naturally — we don’t hate them for it. I mean, they’re just big animals. Don’t hate the cattle, hate the — whatever.
“So then, what that would naturally do, and some people are going to hate this, but it would probably make those products more expensive. And that is appropriate because there’s a cost to producing food in that way. And so if you were to make it more expensive, then you would end up changing consumption patterns over time.”
Several other Democratic presidential contenders have been taking aim at meat. In another climate change forum earlier this month, several said laws need to be changed.
Sen. Kamala Harris of California was asked if she supports changing “dietary guidelines to reduce the consumption of red meat in light of the impact of climate change.”
“The answer is yes,” she said. “The balance that we have to strike here, frankly, is about what government can and should do around creating incentives and then banning certain behaviors,” she said.
But Harris also said: “To be very honest with you, I love cheeseburgers from time to time. I just do.”