Yesterday’s Baltimore Sun published an editorial written by Dr. Robert Lawrence, in which the author argues that you should “eat less meat to save yourself and save the earth.”
Pinning all sorts of public health concerns on “the American diet” (and meat in particular), he insists that “our vast agricultural system” is vulnerable to the sorts of epidemics we’ve seen in Europe.
Lawrence’s credentials include the directorship of the Center for a Livable Future (CLF) at Johns Hopkins University.
Although CLF is largely run by Public Health professors, it officially operates as a project of Johns Hopkins’ environmental division. CLF’s web site is full of links to all of the usual anti-business suspects: the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Union of Concerned Scientists, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, and Environmental Working Group.
The CLF page on “What you can do to help” instructs web surfers that changing their diet will help save the environment. Two links are offered: “Why?” (which links to an EDF page about factory farming) and “How?” (which links to a vegetarian cooking page).
