No one needs reminding that Dallas is a steakhouse holy land. But there are also a lot of folks here who embrace the anthropogenic global-warming hypothesis and its concomitant pieties and hysterics. Don't look now, but Dallas is sitting on a powder keg.
As I've said before, it takes roughly seven barrels of oil to bring a steer from nursing veal controversy to prime porterhouse cardiac threat. In fact, the United Nations says the meat industrial complex generates 18 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transportation sector -- you know, Hummers and the Hollywood Gulf Stream Air Force and stuff? Even PETA has entered the scrum (go figure), taunting Al Gore about his inconveniently meatless Academy Award-winning drama, what with the meat industry allegedly being the largest single contributor of greenhouse gas emissions.
So why is Big Meat getting a pass while Big Oil and Big Coal are cast as lecherous demons from hell?
How come Dallas' green activists, who foamed and frothed over those proposed TXU power plants, aren't sweating great global warming beads and picketing and leafleting in front of our treasured steak houses? It's not as if there aren't plenty of locations at which to park all of the Priuses driven by the earnestly concerned.
At the same time, how come our own planet-conscious chefs who promote sustainable agriculture practices aren't ripping meat from their menus en mass (like they do swordfish and sea bass in times of trouble) and touting the glories of wet-aged, exquisitely marbled tofu rib eyes?
Could it be that tackling the menacing Dallas steak cabal would be biting off a little more than even an Al Gore could chew? Just wondering. It's only the planet that's at steak stake. --Mark Stuertz
