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Norway's Army Battles Global Warming By Going Vegetarian

Posted by samzenpus on from the Erik-the-red-meatless dept.

cold fjord writes "It looks like no more spam, spam, spam for Norway's warriors... at least on Mondays. The Daily Caller reports, 'Norway's military is taking drastic steps to ramp up its war against global warming. The Scandinavian country announced its soldiers would be put on a vegetarian diet once a week to reduce the military's carbon footprint. "Meatless Monday's" has already been introduced at one of Norway's main military bases and will soon be rolled out to others, including overseas bases. It is estimated that the new vegetarian diet will cut meat consumption by 150 tons per year. "It's a step to protect our climate," military spokesman Eystein Kvarving told AFP. "The idea is to serve food that's respectful of the environment." ... The United Nations says that livestock farming is responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Cutting meat consumption, environmentalists argue, would help stem global warming and improve the environment." — The Manchester Journal reports, "The meatless Monday campaign launched in 2003 as a global non-profit initiative in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University to promote personal and environmental health by reducing meat consumption.'"

13 of 495 comments (clear)

  1. Stop Pumping up OIL!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If Norway was really going to make a dent in Global Warming, they would stop pumping up oil.

    1. Re:Stop Pumping up OIL!!! by Chrisq · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The classical pusher-argument. If I didn't sell smack someone way more evil than me would.

      Except in this case its true. If Western countries stopped pumping oil then prices would rise and Muslim countries would have more money to support terrorism. I don't like it, but its a fact. The best thing would be to switch as much energy production as possible to nuclear and renewables and make up the rest from Western sources,

    2. Re:Stop Pumping up OIL!!! by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Fact is, christianity is about as much a "religion of peace" as any other large organized religion, be it buddhism, islam, hinduism, thaoism or any other.

      For your information, Hinduism is not an organized religion. There is no hierarchy of clergy. They don't evangelize, (except for Christianity influenced Hare Krishna movement) there is no official ceremony to become a Hindu, Anyone can call himself/herself a Hindu and practice as much or as little as one wishes to. Hindu godmen have not had government backing or support for centuries. It is a mass religion, as many versions of Hinduism exists as there are clans and tribes.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    3. Re:Stop Pumping up OIL!!! by dunkelfalke · · Score: 4, Interesting

      We had tried pebble bed reactors in Germany. They did not work. AVR is now one of the highest contaminated reactor sites in the world, THTR was plagued with numerous technical problems, broken pebbles among other things and was prohibitively expensive to operate. The AVR technology was then sold to China and THTR technology to South Africa.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    4. Re:Stop Pumping up OIL!!! by Zibodiz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The key difference is that, with Christians, most modern non-Catholics do not consider Catholics to be 'Christians' in the same group as Protestants or Reformed. The violence was done by the Catholic church, and since the Protestants (btw, look that word up) opposed many things about the Catholics (including the violence, which, incidentally was also directed towards them), they don't feel that they need to be grouped with them. Most Christians today are Protestant or Reformed (look that one up, to); hence we do not consider the actions taken by the Catholics as being thing's "we've" done. And no, it's not just semantics; imagine if the state of Texas declared war on all of the other states, and Canada. 50 years later, after the dust settles, would a resident of Montana honestly be able to say "Yeah, back in '13, when we were at war with Canada"? Of course not; the history of a separate, somewhat connected group is not necessarily yours. Especially if your group has always been famous for being 'of peace', and opposed the actions of the offender.

    5. Re:Stop Pumping up OIL!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think the food at Kolsås is actually pretty good... and with the exception of a baker and a pathetic excuse for Sushi, there's no restaurants anywhere near there.

      I think what people really need to understand is :
      1) There are about 15,000 people total on military payroll in all of Norway. So this had no impact.
      2) The cost of food in Norway is insanely high. People find it profitable to drive for hours t buy meat from Sweden. Sweden has built entire cities on their borders whose only financial means is selling Norway meat, tobacco and alcohol at above normal prices for Sweden, but less than half price for Norwegians.
      3) Norwegian restaurants are absolutely shitty at best. There are probably a small handful worth paying to eat at.
      4) Norwegians claim to "Eat to live, not live to eat".
      5) They prefer bread over just about anything else. They treat bread like homeographs treat water. They simply leave the essence of flavor on the bread. To a Norwegian, it is socially acceptable to pay $8 for a slice of bread (which if not served as food can be used for building houses and parking garages), a slice of yellow cheese, a single thin strand of red bell pepper, and a quarter of a cherry tomato. Then to wash it down (which is mandatory as you would choke without something to dissolve the bread a little) a half liter bottle of Coke or Pepsi for the bargain price of $4.
      6) Many Norwegian military bases use external companies to run their canteens. The people staffing these canteens DO NOT want to work late on Fridays, early on Mondays or during the weekend. So, preparation of a meal with meat will be VERY difficult for them. If you visit any Norwegian company cafeteria which doesn't operate on huge budgets (unlike Telenor's yummy), Monday is generally brown salad left over from the week before, something frozen which can simply be slapped in pans and baked, extremely low hassle and generally terrible value. Therefore a vegetarian Monday starts making excellent sense.

      So, "environmentalism" is utter nonsense since Norway is one of the absolute worst countries in the world regarding insane amounts of waste from producing food in boxes or plastic containers which almost always becomes landfill. The amount of food the average grocery store throws away in Norway probably is equal to a country 10 times its size which doesn't prepackage everything and instead uses butchers in their stores. Want to make a difference? When you're feeding an army, instead of serving 800 individually wrapped frozen dishes or what not 3 times a day, try getting a big ass barbecue and roasting a whole animal.

  2. An example to follow by Camembert · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder what the impact would be if everyone in the world would have a meatless monday. Of course, in some regions in the world not that much meat is eaten already now, but I expect that the total would be a significant difference.

    1. Re:An example to follow by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 5, Interesting
      :) I wonder what the impact would be if everyone in the world stopped pumping up oil and stopped burning coal in power plants.

      Maybe just on Monday...

    2. Re:An example to follow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      People would starve. Mostly the poor in "rich" countries, though.

      Recall that there is a bit of distance between where the food comes from and where it is eaten, and how it bridges that gap.

    3. Re:An example to follow by Jarik+C-Bol · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Mondays are terrible enough already, there is no reason to make them worse by removing my comfort steak from them.

      --
      I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
    4. Re:An example to follow by Bongo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Also, the sort of grand experiment with our food chain is something I'm not a fan of. Original Nations who ate meat and fat (all grass fed), and were to some accounts quite healthy, good teeth, good bones, compared to the high carb, high sugar, highly processed foods, high soy, low fat yoghurts packed with hidden sugar, etc. etc. substitutes which, according to some reports, we're starting to see the outcome in how even children now get diabetes, whilst still in the womb. It takes a few generations to see the results.

      I would much rather save energy on other stuff than on foods, which leads to massive health costs. I would rather continue to get the bus to work, never own a car (have never owned a car), not have too many kids (actually have no kids), and to appease the CO2 people, never fly (I fly once in 10 years), and keep the heating low and wear furry fleeces around the house. I'd insulate but the house is way too old for that, so I settle for better glazing. But food? Mess with that and may as well not be living in a first world country.

  3. Re:ridiculous... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I agree, the problem should be solved in a different way. did you know that an average USian uses double the energy than an average German (with similar living standards). Maybe it is time that you start having proper insulation in your homes and start investing in quality public transport. I understand that the distances in US are very big (I also come from a very big country), so the contamination associated to the transport is also higher, but if you do proper urban planification those things can be mitigated.

  4. Vegetarianism makes it a lot worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Vegetarianism is a great threat to the environment precisely because it is more efficient at providing food. The argument is a bit counter-intuitive, but bear with me.
    Being more efficient, it allows to feed more people with the same land. Alternatively, one could feed the same number of people with less land.
    The problem is that in whole human history, any increase in efficiency has not been used to reduce the human footprint, but simply to increase the number of people until any advantage created by the increased efficiency is lost. A larger number of people don't just need the same land as before, but, they also need more water, more metals, cause more emissions and generally consume a lot more. Therefore, the final effect, just for the increase of people, will be a worsening of environmental conditions.
    This is exactly what has happened quite recently. The book "The population bomb" is often derided for inaccurately predicting mass starvation.
    This wasn't so much because the calculations were wrong but, rather, because a massive increase in efficiency of food production, the so called Green Revolution.
    The Green Revolution would have allowed the same number of people to live with a much smaller footprint but, guess what happened ?
    The population grew instead to match the new capability and the environment is in more in trouble than ever. Plus we now have a much bigger population to maintain, with ever growing expectations.
    This is applies to any increase in efficiency, not just food and vegetarianism. When you are urged to save more water, food or energy, whatever is saved never goes to a better environment (it might, temporarily, until the population grows to match the new limit), it just goes to grow more people and make matter worse.
    So, please, waste more, it is very damaging to the environment, but the alternative is far worse.