Next week is National Vegetarian Week, so be prepared for a larger than usual number of examples of people seeking to inform you of the environmental, health and ethical arguments in favour of eating less meat.
If you’re interested in looking at some of the detailed scientific outline about the severe greenhouse impacts of meat and dairy production, I recommend this submission to the Garnaut Review, by Geoff Russell, Prof Peter Singer and Prof Barry Brook, who is the Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide (and has his own blog on the topic at bravenewclimate.com)
I mentioned around the time of Earth Hour that going without meat for a week has far greater greenhouse benefits than turning your lights off (although every bit of positive behavioural change helps of course). Rajendra Pachauri, the Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), recently gave an explicit message to this effect during a speech in London.
“The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that direct emissions from meat production account for about 18% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions,” he told BBC News. “So I want to highlight the fact that among options for mitigating climate change, changing diets is something one should consider.”
5 Comments
Andrew, if you expect Australians and the rest of the world to stop eating meat in order to minimise carbon pollution, then you are, perhaps, more delusional than I would have thought.
Actually, I should say that carbon is not pollution, but a necessary atmospheric gas preventing the earth from lurching into an unending ice age.
I don’t ‘expect’ anything, Generic P (other than displays of ridicule and mock horror whenever I raise the suggestion people might possibly consider modifying their diet).
I’m just drawing attention to the fact that reducing consumption of products from livestock will undoubtedly assist in reducing greenhouse emissions. You may not think there is a need to reduce greenhouse emissions, but a majority of Australians do.
People don’t have to ’stop eating meat’ any more than they have to stop driving cars, but changing their behaviour to significantly reduce their consumption of both will be needed if there is to be any chance of getting atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases to levels that most climate scientists believe are needed to stop major rapid climate change.
I don’t know if people will change their behaviour once they are aware of these facts or not, but that’s no reason not to mention them.
No 3
Dave, people aren’t going to alter their intake of red meat for the purpose of greenhouse gas abatement. Any such suggestion is farcical!
Who is Dave?
Good post AB. And GP, I happen to be one person who changed their diet for the sake of ethics, if only by not eating meat until the evening, but a small sacrafice that makes a very small difference but, I would like to think, a good example. Not too farcical is it?