I am frankly exhausted by the wailing coming from the British agricultural sector this week. We are currently witnessing the worst bluetongue season on record sweeping through the nation's livestock, and once again, the rural working class is demanding our unearned sympathy. For decades, we have begged these pastoral holdouts to voluntarily reduce their herds, to curb their methane output, and to take the climate crisis seriously. They dragged their feet, citing frivolous concerns like feeding the country and generational livelihoods. Now, an African viral disease has migrated as far north as Aberdeenshire to do the job for them. We asked for a reduction in the carbon footprint of British agriculture, and the biosphere has generously stepped in to provide one.
The symptoms of this current strain are, admittedly, visually striking. The infected cattle and sheep suffer from intense fevers, severe oral ulcers, lameness, and a massively swollen head, before their tongues turn a vivid, necrotic blue and protrude permanently from their mouths. It is an undignified end for a ruminant, certainly. But is it really any more undignified than ignoring our global emissions targets? I look at a Scottish pasture full of lame, ulcerated livestock gasping their final breaths, and I do not see a tragedy. I see stranded assets finally being forcibly written off the planetary ledger.
The fact that this virus originated in Africa and has now comfortably settled in the Scottish Highlands is being framed by the media as an ecological disaster, rather than the triumph of a borderless global community that it clearly is. We have warmed the planet through our own hubris. The midges that act as the vector for bluetongue have simply expanded their operational footprint to capitalize on the balmier northern climate. It is sheer protectionism to suggest that British sheep should be immune from the exact same global market forces that every other sector has had to weather. The midges are merely being entrepreneurial.
Just last month, over a remarkably sourced sea-bass luncheon at a COP summit with the head of sustainability for a major fossil fuel conglomerate, we discussed this exact scenario. We agreed that the transition would be messy. The public simply is not ready for the realities of enforced agricultural degrowth, he told me, right before ordering a second bottle of Sancerre on his corporate card. He was absolutely correct, and his bravery in saying it out loud has stayed with me. The public wants the aesthetic of a green future without the swollen, blue-tongued realities of actually getting there.
The sheer scale of animal suffering is unprecedented in modern farming, and the fact that warming temperatures have allowed this horrific pathogen to reach Scotland should be a source of national shame.
Exactly, Dr. Hallows. A source of national shame that we should have transitioned away from pastoral farming years ago. It is refreshing to see the veterinary community finally catching up to what I have been saying in this column since the Paris Agreement. If the farmers had simply liquidated their herds and planted government-subsidized Sitka spruce plantations, as the market dictated, not a single sheep would be suffering from a protruding blue tongue today. The blame for this suffering rests entirely on the stubbornness of the men and women who insist on breeding them.
We must also address the sheer hypocrisy of the farmers who claim this year’s outbreak—which has already surpassed the past three years combined—is somehow unfair to them financially. Unfair to whom? To the atmosphere? A dead cow does not belch methane. A sheep that has succumbed to a catastrophic fever is a sheep that has finally achieved true net-zero status. Let that sink in. Instead of begging the government for emergency bailouts, these farmers should be registering their mass graves as high-quality carbon offsets and thanking the climate crisis for the new revenue stream.
I recently tried to explain this to a man who had lost his entire Aberdeen Angus herd to the outbreak. He was standing in a rural pub, weeping into a pint of heavily subsidized ale, complaining that his family had worked that land for four generations. I patiently outlined to him that his personal financial ruin was, in the grander scheme of the Holocene, a rounding error. I suggested he view his rotting cattle not as a loss of livelihood, but as a mandatory contribution to the upcoming national ESG report. He asked me to leave the premises. It is this exact kind of aggressive, anti-intellectual hostility that has stalled the environmental movement for a decade.
We must stop treating the climate crisis as an enemy to be fought with vaccines and quarantine zones, and start recognizing it as a highly motivated restructuring consultant. Yes, the methods are a bit aggressive. Yes, the visual of a bloated, blue-tongued herd collapsing in the mud is a public relations challenge for the sustainability sector. But progress is rarely pretty, and the earth is finally healing itself by eliminating the middleman. I, for one, plan to sleep perfectly well tonight, knowing that somewhere in the Scottish mist, a swarm of midges is doing the hard regulatory work that our politicians are simply too cowardly to attempt.