Philip Bowern on Wednesday Restaurant protests leave a sour taste
THERE could be any number of reasons for staging a protest in one of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants. To complain at the eye-watering prices, maybe, or make a stand against Mr Ramsay’s foul-mouth rants which were once a feature of his TV shows.
But targeting his three Michelinstarred establishment in Chelsea to make a point about climate change seems to me to make very little sense. It serves as yet another example of the woolly-headed thinking of those engaged in supposedly highlighting the climate emergency.
The members of Animal Rebellion – who turned up at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, sat down at reserved tables and held up mock menus highlighting the so-called “environmental cost” of items like steak and veal – said they were campaigning for a plant-based food system.
Aside from the fact that the evidence for abandoning all meat as a way of reducing the climate crisis is scant, at best, choosing to target a smart restaurant over, say, a fastfood chain makes this protest more about class and wealth, than the warming planet. Mr Ramsay almost certainly sources his meat from suppliers with impeccable environmental credentials. Pound to a penny it is grass fed, slow growing and just about as ‘green’ as any meat can be. At Mr Ramsay’s prices, it needs to be.
Of course, serving meals at £155 a head when two million people are relying on food banks is an example of the inequalities in the world. But that, too, has nothing much to do with climate change or the fight to lower the world’s carbon footprint.
Taken to its logical conclusion, Animal Rebellion, Extinction Rebellion and all other splinter groups from the climate emergency protest groups need to rail against ever single aspect of modern life – including their own lives – if they are using a London restaurant as an example of why the earth is warming. And they need to look far beyond Britain’s shores if they are to identify the real culprits, who are still burning coal and expanding their fossil fuel industries while Britain makes significant progress in reducing emissions, year-by-year.
Animal Rebellion is, pretty clearly, an animal rights organisation that wants to end meat eating, the production of milk and shut down other industries that rely on animal products. That’s been a well-trodden cause for decades – but don’t confuse it with work towards limiting global warming.
The fact that another protester, this time in Weymouth, Dorset, had to be dragged from a smart fish restaurant where she was trying to barrack no less a person than Sir David Attenborough for daring to enjoy dinner, underlines the point.
Few people have done more than Sir David to highlight the dangers of climate change and bring home to the masses the impact that humankind is having on the planet.
He understands that forgoing a fish dinner would not make a jot of difference to the climate battle and that there are many sustainable species of fish that can be enjoyed with a clear conscience. Others should follow his lead.
From the demonstrators who climb gantries over busy motorways, preventing ordinary people from going about their business, to those who ‘occupy’ restaurants and rail against diners enjoying a meal, these climate protests are making more and more people angry and increasingly disengaged from the issues at hand.
The crisis is real, the measures being taken to ameliorate it – on a global scale – too slow and the reasons for that are obvious. We have built a world on fossil fuels and to go cold turkey at too fast a rate would cause as many problems as failing to act at all.
The focus must be on genuine measures that will work, both to slow the rate of warming and prepare the world for what’s coming. It might be fun for a few rebels to make a stand against expensive meals in smart restaurants and highlight the excesses of a few wealthy diners.
It’s not got much to do with global warming or saving the planet, however.
These climate protests are making more and more people angry and increasingly disengaged from the issues at hand