What is Farm Progress’ standard for journalism? It is hard to see how Alan Newport’s rant in the October issue of Michigan Farmer (bit.ly/BeefClimate) meets any criteria to be worth printing.

He gives no references to support his statements; just “look on the internet.” Well, there you can find that President Trump is competent; vaccines cause autism; and Obama was born in Kenya. Likewise, in Newport’s points against climate change, I see arguments that are political without facts, have a monetary benefit to climate change deniers and are outdated.

His logic is faulty. HSUS and PETA predate climate change by decades, being founded in 1954 and 1980, respectively. If they did not use climate change as a tool to use against beef, they’d use something else.

He is wrong on facts. “All climate change entities and reports have direct ties to unelected tools of global elitists” is a smear on science, while ignoring that only countries influenced by (Rupert) Murdoch’s media empire have climate change-denial politicians. The Murdochs are unelected global elitists, as are the CEOs of the fossil-fuel industries that have been funding the climate change-denial conspiracies.

Newport does acknowledge that human activity has degraded the environment. If he believes that individual actions are more effective than governments in solving those problems, he should apply the same methods to climate change, rather than rant against it — because “Outrage is not a solution,” which was an editorial I recently read in a beef magazine. For a smarter, insightful analysis of problems facing the beef industry, search for “Cool Whip and CAFOs,” by John Phipps. And John Wilkinson, who told a Senate subcommittee, “American beef production and consumption is a climate change solution.” Cursing the darkness is a way to vent, but it hasn’t changed the darkness, and neither will Newport.

Wendell Miller,
Richlo Dairy Farms,
Engadine, Mich.