It's time for another edition of Adorable Liberals Coming Up With Cute Ways To Fix Real Problems. You see, California ain't got no water, because of a drought, because there are too many people living there for the meager water supply to keep up, and because other reasons, like pagans stealing water and giving it to fish, and also abortion. Oh, and there's that thing about how all the Richie Riches are like "Fuck you, God gave me the right to a lush green lawn, it's in the Constitution." So dancey electronica music guy Moby is doing the spokes-celebrity thing for a new initiative that wants you to Skip Showers For Beef. We assure readers that this is not a clever way to distract noses from the riverine stench of vegan farts. This is SCIENCE.
In the video above, Moby explains that the water footprint for producing beef is huge, so if you need your meat bits so bad, you should skip showers. How many showers? "If you skip 37 showers, that will make up for one quarter pounder." Thanks, Moby! This is very practical and will work. Moby explains that he will not be skipping showers, because he is not a dirty meat eater, but you should. Here are moar numbers:
The project’s premise is a simple one — by the creators’ calculations, every four ounce hamburger requires roughly 450 gallons of water to produce. To offset those gallons, the average Californian would need to skip 26 showers. [...]
According to a UC Davis study cited by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, it takes about 441 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef. In a slightly higher estimate, the Water Footprint Network puts the amount of water needed to produce a pound of beef to closer to 1,845 gallons. By the beef industry’s estimates, California used more than 78 billion gallons of water to produce the beef slaughtered in April of 2014 — by the Water Footprint Network’s, it used over 326 billion gallons.
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It's even worse than that, because the alfalfa what feeds the cows uses a LOT of water, hundreds of millions of gallons, and that's not just feeding California cows. In fact, an expert quoted by the BBC estimates that California is actually sending away 100 BILLION gallons of water per year, by exporting half of its alfalfa to China. So maybe stop doing that before preaching at people about how they should stop showering for the month if they want to order steak for dinner one night, just maybe?
Of course, people ARE going to have to work together, and silliness aside, this is indeed a very real problem, so Skip Showers For Beef has some tips for how not to smell like a vegan fart cloud, if you want to participate in their program. These are real tips, translated into Wonkese:
Don't eat spicy foods that you like, because that will make you sweat.
Stop sweating, actually, could you stop doing that?
Instead of showering, just use a dry dirty washcloth on all your grundle bits, that'll make you smell fresh when your lover decides to visit your downstairs hole.
Put your jeans in the freezer to kill all the bacteria and make them smell friendly again.
Rub your body parts with sandpaper to get rid of all the stinky bad skin, ooh, that feels good.
????
Crisis solved! And somehow PROFIT!
Also, there is this video, featuring Jason and Kiki, who claim to have kicked their showering habit, in service of their beef habit. If this wasn't real, we'd swear The Onion came up with it:
Now do everything Jason and Kiki and Moby and Vegan Jesus say for a month, and then you can go through the In-N-Out drive-thru, one time, when you're drunk. Saving the Earth is fun!
I thought it was 4 gallons. Maybe I misread.
Just like Rob Ford!