Go veggie to fight global warming, says expert
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Reddit
Google
Stumble Upon
Fark
Newsvine
YahooBuzz
Bebo
Twitter
Independent Minds
One of the world's leading climate change gurus urged people to become vegetarian today, to help beat global warming.
Nicholas Stern, the author of an influential 2006 review of climate change, said methane emissions from cows and pigs were putting "enormous pressure" on the world and people needed to think about what they ate.
He told The Times: "Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It put enormous pressure on the world's resources. A vegetarian diet is better."
The former World Bank chief economist was speaking ahead of the climate change conference in Copenhagen this December, which is expected to be attended by thousands of delegates from around the world.
Lord Stern said a successful conference would result in higher costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.
He also compared his stance on meat to the change in attitudes to drink-driving.
"I think it's important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating," the London School of Economics professor 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."
Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and it has been estimated that livestock accounts for a fifth of the global warming impact.
In his interview with The Times, Lord Stern said if business continued as usual then temperatures could increase by 5C by early next century.
"These kinds of changes will have huge consequences - southern Europe is likely to be a desert; hundreds of millions of people will have to move. There will be severe global conflict."
His 2006 review warned that if the world did not act on global warming, the cost would be at least 5 per cent of GDP "now and forever".
"Climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response," he said.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.
- Print Article
- Email Article
-
Click here for copyright permissions
Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited
Reduce your global impact.
Comments
It would be sufficient to save the world and universe if the Americans applied some corrective actions.
- Massive food wastage
- Their road transport system clocks up something like 4.5 billion miles a year.
- Big cars, big trucks
- Many aspects they could down size
- International invasions
and many other forms of wastage
Here is a fact, 1 acre of natural forest gives off more methane than a 1 acre field of cows.
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/N
Over-consumption is the real problem here, even partially solving that will likely do enough to prevent climate change.
We face the global challenge of feeding a growing world population using a fixed land resource while reducing inputs such as water, fertiliser and fuel and limiting green house gases.
Meat is part of that balance.
All agriculture depends on the land resource and climate conditions prevailing at the time to be successful. Around 60% of the UK farmland is best suited to growing grass. Ploughing grassland to grow crops would result in loss of carbon sequestered in soil. Grazing animals – cows or sheep- are the best way to use this land resource to produce a food suitable for people. This is repeated world-wide, where there are large tracts of marginal land which are best used to support grassland and livestock production. If we did away with all livestock we could not utilise this for resource-use efficient food production.
A significant proportion of animal diets are also made from co-products produced during the manufacture of human plant foods. Maize and rapeseed meal are co-products of oil production, citrus pulp is a co-product of juice production and sugar-beet feed is a co-product of sugar production – all the products would be waste if they were not used as animal feeds. Livestock make use of a resource that could not otherwise contribute to the human food supply.
The challenge is to produce meat more sustainably – which is already happening in countries such as the UK which is leading global thinking in this area.
High quality research has led to great strides in the improvement of productivity of farmed livestock and one consequence of this is a reduction in GHG per kg of meat produced. That work continues. Genetic selection of animals that produce less methane is starting to happen and selection methods are improving as molecular genetic techniques are applied. Improving grass and clover varieties through genetic selection makes them a feed for ruminants that has a lower GHG cost of production. Simple things like managing grass height at the time of grazing can improve feed quality and so reduce the GHG cost of a kg of milk or meat.
Livestock and meat production has an important role in feeding the world in the decades ahead, it is not logical to suggest otherwise. Lord Stern’s main point, and I agree with him, is that we all need to reassess the way we live our lives.
Professor Ian Crute
Chief Scientist
Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board
Only deniailsts pretend that global warming has been disproved, because that's what they want to believe. The vast majority of CLIMATE scientists agree that it is a fact.
Do your science, and stop being so irresponsible and short-sighted.
Only warmists believe that global warming is proven, because that's what they *want* to believe.
[The vast majority of CLIMATE scientists agree that it is a fact.]
The vast majority of climate scientists know that questioning the 'consensus' on global warming would mean no more research funding and professional suicide, so it's not surprising that they all fall into line with global warming dogma. And the vast majority of climate scientists do not want to admit that their climate models are based on faulty mathematical assumptions, and therefore cannot be relied upon to give accurate predictions. (Google 'Ferenc Miskolczi').
[Do your science, and stop being so irresponsible and short-sighted.]
You do YOUR science (assuming you are scientifically educated at all - otherwise you have no right to lecture others about doing their science, have you?.), and stop being so goaddam smug, preachy and condescending.
He's an economist whose views and methods do not enjoy universal support even in his chosen field while his title derives from the heyday of Labour's manipulation of the perage system.
Is the argument for AGW really so bankrupt that its adherents are reduced to propagating this nonsense?
By the way, is there any chance that the Independent and the rest of the MSM will inform the public about the detail of the draft Copenhagen Treaty that is generating this constant alarmist bilge? We know that real environmental issues such as rain forest preservation have been quietly dropped but, so far, there has been nothing about the proposals for global governance and swingeing taxes that are due to be imposed on Europe and the US.
It is no secret, of course, that a disproportionate number of Greenies and eco-fundies are vegetarian - a diet/philosophy/lifestyle they usually adopt for predictably self-righteous, moralizing, human-hating ideological reasons. How incredibly smug and self-righteous these tofu-and-nut-roast-munching weirdos must feel if they believe they can now claim that their self-imposed asceticism and dietary self-denial is *saving the world*, while the hedonism and dietary self-indulgence of everyone else is threatening to destroy it!
We KNOW that raising cattle the way we currently do is environmentally damaging and not sustainable. But this does NOT mean that we all have to become vegetarians; it simply means that we have to find better ways of rearing cattle, or switching to other sources of meat protein that are less environmentally damaging (and there are many choices).
And I would suggest that converting the human population to a vegetarian diet would be unlikely to solve the methane problem associated with cattle; I mean, have you never noticed how much beans, lentils and other veggie foods make you *fart*?! We would simply be replacing the bovine methane problem with a human one.
"At the heart of the environmental lobby lies an unease at progress and change, and a veneration of a calmer, slower lifestyle. It goes hand in hand with a disregard for the material goods which extend choices in the rich nations, and even for the economic growth which offers the poorer ones a ladder out of subsistence. Although 'saving the planet' is advanced as the reason why these lifestyle changes must be implemented, it sometimes seems as if the simpler life is an end in itself, and that global warming is a convenient excuse to force acceptance of it. "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/enviro
Many of the comments following the article are worth reading, too.