Actions putting a squeeze on planet

The May 7 story 'Climate change will affect animals” might well be subtitled 'The definition of insanity on steroids.”

It's hard to know where to begin. The fact that 'efforts to reduce carbon emissions (are) lagging” means that changes in climate threaten to imperil animal agriculture's bottom line, leading to the disbursal of 'millions of (federal) dollars” to help prop it up, even though it helped cause the problem to begin with! (Among its many other affronts, by the way, Big Ag has persuaded its BLM cronies to illegally remove mustangs from our public lands and ship them to slaughter.)

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack unselfconsciously underscored the ironies, gravely intoning that 'we are dealing with ... difficult weather conditions at the same time we have to massively increase food (I guess he means 'meat” here) production” to accommodate the population increases that will, unchecked, only make the original problem even worse.

All these frenetically-whirling feedback loops combine to form a Gordian knot that is inexorably squeezing the life from our beautiful planet, of course.

In reality, as guest columnist Gary Siegwarth writes 'If feeding the world was the true mission of American agriculture, then the first step would be to eliminate the use of feed grains for ... livestock production, and send grain directly to the hungry” ('Simple ways to curb erosion,” May 10). The madness must end!

Cindy Adhikari

Cedar Rapids