If people want a glimpse of what the world will be like with global-warming hysterics in charge, Lord Stern of Brentford lets the veil slip in an interview with the Times of London.  Stern admits that the upcoming Copenhagen talks would produce a pact on energy usage that would send the cost of meat “soaring.”  That suits Stern just fine, because he wants to push the world into vegetarianism anyway:

People will need to consider turning vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.” …

Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

He predicted that people’s attitudes would evolve until meat eating became unacceptable. “I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating,” he said. “I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student. People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.”

Climate change is just another lever for the same old busybodies to run people’s lives.  Lord Stern explains that his tastes and philosophy have changed since he was a student — and assumes therefore he has the right to dictate everyone else’s choices.  Global-warming hysterics want to use this as an excuse to gain control and power for their idea of a benevolent despotism.

The health-care overhaul debate in the US has the same dynamics.  Its advocates want to control the delivery of health care and make it more public in order to use it to insert themselves into private choices.  Call it “creeping elitism,” but it’s creeping from all directions these days.

Seven hundred years ago, man farmed and raised cows and pigs on the entire island of Greenland.  When they do that again, perhaps I’ll worry about bovine flatulence as a global threat.  Until then, I consider creeping elitism from horse’s asses a much more elitist threat than methane from cow’s butts.