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Climate guru: Stop eating meat...cows harm the planet
Mark Blunden27.10.09
Eating meat could become as socially unacceptable within a generation as drink-driving, a senior government climate change adviser said today.
Lord Stern believes dietary shifts are crucial to halve damaging greenhouse gases caused by methane-producing livestock, such as cows and pigs, within 20 years.
He told The Times: "Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. A vegetarian diet is better."
The peer undertook the 2006 Stern Review, commissioned by the Government to assess economic challenges of climate change. 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 food."
Lord Stern said greenhouse gases must be halved by 2030. He believes a consensus on tackling global warming at this December's UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen could lead to soaring meat prices.
Jonathan Scurlock, of the National Farmers Union, said: "Going vegetarian is not a worldwide solution. We don't have a methane-free cow or pig available to us."
Reader views (15)
Meat consumption is wasteful of resources including water and land, not to mention secondary considerations like the increased medical costs associated with eating a meat-based diet. We'd all be better off giving it up!
There are entire cultures representing millions of people who have lived and thrived for centuries without meat, which is enough evidence that humans do not "need" it to satisy their taste buds or to survive and thrive.
In fact, the evidence weighs heavily in the other direction: the hazards of a meat and dairy diet and the benefits of a vegan diet are well known in the medical and scientific community. Health, animal cruelty, and environmental issues could be alleviated if everyone ate a vegan diet.
* U.N. scientists have determined that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, SUVs, trucks, and planes in the world combined.
* Researchers at the University of Chicago determined that switching to a vegan diet is more effective in countering climate change than switching from a standard car to a Toyota Prius.
* According to Environmental Defense, if every American substituted vegetarian foods for chicken at just one meal per week, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than a half-million cars off U.S. roads.
And it's just plain barbaric to breed, confine, and slaughter animals for food. Give up meat and dairy for your health, for the animals, and for the environment!
- Patty, Florida
Climate guru: Stop eating meat,you say/
Another stupid idea is this. For as the entire output from the UK of co2 is approximately only 2 per cent of the total Global production of co2.
Hence if the UK ceased to exist it would make very little difference at all.
This wild speculation as to Co2 is only a new form of Tax, nothing more, nothing less.
Signed Carl Barron Chairman of agpcuk
- Carl Barron, Christchurch, Dorset
Forget the methane. This muppet is spouting enough hot air to destroy the planet single handed.
- Reuben Camara, Morecambe Compound, EUSSR
Aren't soybeans a flatulent? If everyone on the planet is farting 24/7, will we be better off? REALLY?
- Cyndi, Los Angeles, USA
So if we all go vegan (because just being vegetarians won't be enough to eliminate methane production - & by the way we call if "farting" down here in the country)we will have to eliminate our herds of sheep and cattle. Mass slaughter of most of our farming herds, and a landscape managed in a way that hasn't been envisaged since before the agricultural revolution. Is this what animal-loving vegetarians really want?
- Mary Watson, bodmin, UK
Maybe we should consider eating these tree-hugger nutbags . . . the fewer of them there are, the less methane and other hot gasses we will have to contend with . . . seems like win-win all round.
- Eoin Mcgreeghan, Derry, NI
the only carbon content of food most of us are interested in is the amount of charred bits of steak left on the BBQ! Whys don't all these green, climate change eco warrior vegetarians just up sticks and move to a small island somewhere, wher they all drink their foul soya milk, eat lentils and rice and knit yoghurt whilst chanting yogic mantras - then the rest of us can get on with living our short 80 year span, and having fun without these self righteous do-gooders moanning everytime someone eats a burger or drives a rangerover!
- Gary, amesham
Just because one muppet wants to stop us eating 'methane-producing livestock',doesn't meen we have to stop eating meat. You could eat roo steaks, Kangaroos don't produce methane!!! Just goes to show how indepth this muppets review was. Better stop peaople having baths as well, just in case they break wind whilst they are in there.
- Alan, carlisle uk
It's a good job the North American Bison were killed off or the world would be finished by now.
- Norman Bird, London UK
Let me guess - he's a vegetarian too. No bias. Nope - not a bit of it. Surely....
- Rogan, Irving
Patrick, milk is (naturally) made for baby cows, not for adult humans. There are plenty of other sources of calcium, and also plenty of non-soy "milk" alternatives available.
- Lisa, London
Patrick, less soya will be needed than is currently produced - most soya is used to feed cattle.
Space Bisbee - you'd be in a good position to recognise a nut job when you see one, living in a country that voted Dubya president - twice.
- Austen, London
It is course not only meat you will have to forgo when cattle are dispensed with. There will be no milk either, so acres of soya will have to be planted to replace this.
- Patrick, Dalston
Climate Guru? Sounds more like a nut job then anything else. Me thinks, we have a waste of good air on this one, I just hope there is enough sane people in England to counter this bull, if you know what I mean.
- Space, Bisbee, USA
Yes, only the rich should have meat on their tables and you untermenschen can go bare foot too. Best not forget to doff your caps when your lords and masters are passing either.
No, he's not that old, even when he was a student most sane people thought those who drink and drive were a menace.
- Threaded, Roskilde, Denmark
