India’s environment minister Jairam Ramesh has urged the West to stop eating beef. According to the Telegraph he said “The solution to cut emissions is to stop eating beef. It leads to emission of methane which is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide.”

Most people in India are Hindu and believe that cows are sacred. Ramesh said “What India has going for it is the fact that we are not a major beef eating nation.”

This message from India is a reminder that climate change is not just an environmental issue but one of social justice too. The way we live our lives in developed countries directly impacts the lives of others. Eating meat causes climate change; climate change causes extreme weather, rises in sea levels, droughts and food shortages - and those that suffer the most are those least responsible for climate change.

Read the Telegraph article here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/6615422/India-tells-West-to-stop-eating-beef.html

Jeremy Paxman interviewed Al Gore on Newsnight last night, to ask him about Copenhagen but also about the changes he’s made in his own life to reduce his carbon footprint.

Paxman asked “you suggest that tackling this problem will involve huge changes in human behaviour, how have you changed our behaviour?” Gore replied that he had changed his lightbulbs and windows, dug geothermal wells, switched to a hybrid car and covered his roof with solar panels. He said he was “walking the walk, not just talking the talk” and that he had “long since committed to this path and am proud to have done so”.

But on one question, the story is a little different.

Paxman: Have you become a vegetarian?

Gore: No, I have not, although for health reasons, along with climate reasons have reduced the amount of meat in my diet, of course, as we all know it’s much healthier to have more vegetables and fruits instead of meat and actually the growing meat intensity of diets around the world is a legitimate issue where climate is concerned.

Paxman: We should become vegetarians if we’re concerned about the planet, shouldn’t we?

Gore: I don’t plan to, I respect those who do, but it’s a personal choice and will remain so.

So, to tackle climate change we all need to make huge changes to the way we live, but that is just a personal choice? Considering the devastating impacts of climate change already occuring in the world today and the massive implications for future generations, is it not a moral obligation? What is it with meat? Why is it that Gore, like so many others, is prepared to do everything else but not stop eating meat?

It’s all very well for those with plenty of spare cash to invest in new technology such as solar and geothermal energy and hybrid cars, but for all the rest of us, this just isn’t even remotely possible. What can we do? Going vegetarian is one of the most effective and cheapest ways to reduce our carbon footprint, whilst also being healthier - just think of the additional energy savings in the carbon intensive hospitals and pharmaceutical companies if we all ate more fruit, veg and wholegrains instead of meat! Cutting down on meat seems to be doing Gore some good at least, he’s clearly lost weight.

UK residents can watch the Gore interview online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/newsnight

All over the press today is news that Lord Stern has urged people to stop eating meat to save the planet. Big news, is the message finally getting through?

Times: Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet
Guardian: Vegetarian diet is better for the planet says Lord Stern
Daily Mail: Save the planet, go veggie, says climate chief Lord Stern
Telegraph: Lord Stern: ‘People should give up eating meat to halt climate change’

While some organisations are trying with all their might to avoid talking about consumption, it is refreshing to see yet another voice bringing this issue in to the main stream media. He follows the likes of government advisor on climate change, Jonathan Porritt and chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri. WWF have also recently released a report which aims detailing how we might reduce the world’s meat consumption. Earlier this week WorldWatch Institute released a report estimating that animal agriculture is responsible for 51% of all the world’s greenhouse gas emmisions. Evidence and debate is mounting, it’s time for us all to think seriously about the impacts of our choice in foods; and make the right decisions.

Turns out the much quoted Livestock’s Long Shadow vastly underestimated the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the world’s production of meat and dairy. Forget 18%, a new study suggests it is actually over half of the world’s GHG emissions.

The Worldwatch Institute, an indepedent research body based in Washington, have just released the study Livestock and Climate Change in their November/ December edition of World Watch, which finds that animal agriculture accounts for at least 32.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions.

So what went wrong with the Food and Agriculture’s report, Livestock’s Long Shadow? The report explains that some GHG emissions were “obvious but underestimated, some are simply overlooked, and some are emissions sources that are already counted but have been assigned to the wrong sectors”.

This new report challenges the FAO’s Livestock’s Long Shadow on several issues. Firstly, FAO completely excludes the carbon dioxide produced by animals breathing.

FAO only counts the emissions from changes in land use but not the vast amounts of potential carbon absorption by trees which has been lost by converting forests etc to grazing and growing animal feeds. If the land was not used for animal agriculture, it would regenerate and “could potentially mitigate as much as half (or even more) of all anthropogenic GHGs”. FAO does not take this in to account; considering 26 percent of land worldwide is used for grazing livestock and 33 percent of arable land for growing feed, clearly there is huge potential for carbon absorption if this land as converted back to forest and other natural habitats.

The FAO used an outdated figure for methane’s Global Warming Potential (which compares it’s potential for global warming to that of carbon dioxide), which means that it is grossly underestimated.

Livestock’s Long Shadow also ignores the fact that meat and dairy is accountable for more emission than plant based foods due to more; fluorocarbons, which are used to cool animal products; production, distribution and packaging (including of products such as leather, feathers, skin); cooking; disposal of liquid waste and disease, such as zoonotic diseases (such as swine flu) and other diseases cause by animal products, such as heart disease and cancer, which require carbon intensive medical treatment.

They conclude “By replacing livestock products with analogs [ie meat and dairy alternatives], consumers can take a single powerful action collectively to mitigate most GHGs worldwide”.

I have to say, I did suspect for a minute that there might be an animal group behind this report, perhaps there’s a hidden agenda? But no, the report was written by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang. Goodland worked at the World Bank for 23 years and was a lead environmental adviser (he’s since spoken out about how the World Bank is “damaging the planet and punishing the poor“), he also received an award from IUCN for outstanding contributions to environmental conservation. Anhang is a research officer and environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation.

You can read the report on the World Watch Institute website here.

The Royal Agricultural Society of England report predictably attempts to evade the inevitable conclusion it cannot accept – We need to drastically cut the animal farming industry.

The Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE) has published a report by Dr David Garwes in which it attempts to downplay the British animal farming industry’s role in producing Greenhouse Gases (GHG). Using the titles “Reducing Emissions from Livestock” and “Stock May Safely Graze (and contain Greenhouse Gas Emissions)”, the report’s launch has been interpreted by the industry as it was intended; as a “robust challenge” to the vast body of scientific evidence and mounting political and public awareness of the critical role that animal farming has in causing climate change.

The report hangs on two arguments; the claimed benefits of the industry in the context of “local food” and land use in Britain and past and possible future decreases in emissions through scientific and technological advances.

The argument that (in the face of climate change) the need for locally produced food means that animal farming in Britain is in one sense “good” is too simplistic. While some land may not be suitable for growing crops it is misleading to ignore two facts which more than cancel any benefits of “local” production; firstly that large amounts of feed are imported into Britain to feed our animals (even those animals that are seen to be grazing for part of the year) and secondly the animals produce the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide.  Studies have shown that eating vegetarian for just one day a week is better than switching to a local diet which includes meat. (more…)

Animal feed is often imported from large mono-crop plantations in places like the Amazon, for which rainforest has been cleared and indigenous communities have been coercively displaced. So not only is there an negative impact due to the transportation of the feeds but also the deforestation itself contributes significantly to climate change (deforestation accounts for 20% of GHG emissions). There is simply not enough land to raise enough animals to fulfil the demand without importing feeds.  The shipping of feed across the world is often forgotten in arguments that see animal farming in Britain as “local” and therefore positive. The fact that producing animal products requires vastly more resources and produces substantially more pollution than plant-based foods also makes this a flawed arguement.

The report claims that the absence of animal farming from some land areas would mean that “those natural resources would be abandoned and the landscape would soon change beyond recognition” are confused, emotive and unclear in relation to the primary issue of GHGs. Land no longer used for animal agriculture would certainly change, but if that resulted in increased vegetation or forestation, which would absorb carbon dioxide, this would be hugely beneficial in our fight to stop climate change (more…).

The other major focus of the report is its argument that emissions have been cut in proportion to the number of animals being farmed, and that through various scientific or technological “developments” these cuts could be continued. These arguments and proposals are full of problems. The claimed cuts are far from adequate as we face catastrophic climate change and its consequences, with possible tipping points in less than a decade. A gaping hole is seen with the total absence of cuts from GHG emissions from cows slaughtered for beef in the period 1988-2007.

Garwes is very much focussed on technological/scientific fixes, like breeding animals which “produce” far more product, such as meat or milk or eggs, as individuals. Even if we totally ignore the awful consequences of this on the welfare of animals, this reliance on manipulating the anatomy of animals to the extremes required to mitigate the environmental impact of this industry clearly does not stand up as a proposal. RASE’s excited claim that “production efficiency has increased steadily over the past 30 years, dramatically reducing the environmental footprint of UK livestock farming” is totally unrealistic. There are limits to how much an animal can be manipulated to “produce” more and already our farmed animals are mutated, unhealthy forms of their former selves.  In terms of GHGs, the cuts need to be massive, and the solution, for so many reasons, can only be to address the root of the problem; the massive size of this industry and the increasing demand for it.

Considering the the UN Food and Agriculture report of 2006, which revealed that the animal farming industry, which is rapidly expanding internationally, produces 18% of global GHGs, the RASE comment that “there have even been calls to stop eating meat and dairy products in order to reduce livestock numbers. This is a gross exaggeration that must be met with a robust challenge and corrected” seems misjudged.

Ultimately, this report comes from the industry itself and it’s no surprise that they attempt to avoid the conclusion that animal farming, as a major contributor to climate change and wider environmental problems, needs to drastically and rapidly decrease. The agenda and interests behind this report, as well as the very limited horizons within which its thinking is formed, are clear. Its confused message is a predictable effort to avert the growing attention to the necessity of cutting back this unnecessary and hugely harmful industry.

Greenpeace activists boarded a cargo ship in New Zealand yesterday in protest against the damaging impacts of the palm industry. New Zealand farmers feed palm kernels to their dairy herds, which contributes to the demand for palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia which is fuelling the destruction of the forests.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said “it’s a waste product, in my opinion it’s not leading to deforestation and on that basis I have no intention of intervening.” Whilst the primary demand for palm is for palm oil, which is used in one in ten supermarket products, the use of palm kernels to feed animals is a major, and growing, factor in the continuing demand for palm planatations.

The protest followed a Greenpeace investigation in to the dairy giant Fonterra.

Last year New Zealand imported a whopping one quarter of the world’s Palm Kernel Expeller production - a figure confirmed by the United States Department of Agriculture. For such a small country it’s shocking to learn that we have such a major role in sourcing this destructively produced animal feed.

Figures also show that in the last decade our imports have grown 2700 per cent from 400 tonnes to over 1.1 million tonnes. The reason? To feed New Zealand’s growing dairy herd.

Read more about Greenpeace’s campaign on their website; www.greenpeace.org/new-zealand/news/fonterra-exposed

Today the Guardian published a useful guide on how to cut your carbon emissions by 10%; which is about 1.5 tonnes for the average person. It’s a long list of 51 different carbon cutting measures and right at the top of the list, beaten only by ‘never fly’, ’sell the second car’, and ‘cut your annual car mileage in half’ is ‘go vegan three days a week‘, which will result in a cut of 0.5 tonnes of carbon emissions per year. ‘Change to an almost entirely vegetarian diet, using mostly unprocessed wholefoods such as grains, seeds and nuts’ will also result in the same saving.

Going vegan for just 3 days a week will save five times more carbon emissions than regularly washing over the sink instead of taking showers or getting rid of your freezer, and over twice as much as installing a solar hot water system or buying a wood burning stove.

Asking people to change their eating habits is always a tough ask, by when you look at the huge impact reducing your meat and dairy consumption can achieve, how can anyone who cares about the future of our planet not at least give it a try?

To see the full list, in order of greatest CO2 saving first, go to;

How to cut your carbon footprint

Today I was contacted by Planeat who are currently making a new movie about the meat industry and it’s impacts on health and the environment.

Sypnopsis
A group of leading international scientists, doctors and professors have spent their lives trying
to find out what is the best way to eat. A pattern has begun to emerge in their research, which shows that our animal-based diets are the cause of our most challenging health and environmental problems. Having to battle against their own beliefs, and those of the institutions they worked for, they have come up with a solution that will change people’s lives forever. They share their ideas on how we can not only prevent prevalent diseases like cancer and heart disease but also cure them. And also how applying the same principles can dramatically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, at the same time as providing more food for the planet. In accordance with this scientific evidence, pioneering farmers and chefs around the world are discovering new ways to produce and prepare the food we should be eating.

This is exciting news; more and more individuals and groups are realising the impacts of the meat industry and taking action - the movement is growing rapidly!

Watch the trailer on their website and sign up for updates.

This week Kofi Annan, President of the Global Humanitarian Forum and former UN secretary general, warned the world of the severe consequences of not taking strong enough action against climate change; which includes millions more people falling in to poverty, loosing their homes and their lives.

The report, titled Human Impact Report: Climate Change – The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis gives some frightening statistics…

Climate change today accounts for over 300,000 deaths throughout the world each year (equivalent of an Indian Ocean Tsunami every single year)
By 2030, 500,000 will die from climate change per year.

Climate change today seriously impacts on the lives of 325 million people.
By 2030, 660 million people will be seriously impacted by climate change, making it the biggest emerging humanitarian challenge in the world, impacting on the lives of 10% of the world’s population.

Economic losses due to climate change already today amount to over $125 billion per year (this is more than the total amount of international aid to developing nations each year).
By 2030, the economic losses due to climate change will be $340 billion annually.

To avert this severe threat to humankind, we must act now. While we all wait for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen and hope that the lobbying efforts of hundreds of thousands of people around the world will ensure the right decisions are made, let’s not forget that we can all take action ourselves regardless of what they decide. Animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions; by making the right lifestyle choices we can make a difference.

Everyone’s talking about cows this week. In the US, plans commenced to produce an environmentally friendly cow, which will produce less methane. If they are successful in creating this ‘cow of the future’, I’d be interested to hear what they’re going to do about the other impacts of the dairy industry, such as deforestation to grow soy feeds, water pollution and of course, the male dairy calves – the often forgotten rejects of the trade who end up in veal crates or killed at birth as their flesh in not good enough for human consumption.

Here in the UK, Blade Farming think they may have the solution to the male dairy calf problem. They have launched a breeding scheme with eight of their top Holstein bulls who produce cows suitable for the dairy industry but also bull calves which are suitable to be used for beef. Farmers can buy semen from specially chosen bulls and the offspring will be tagged with an orange tag to identify them. Blade have said they would ‘love to buy the calves’ to raise for beef and their main customers, Tesco and McDonalds, are supporting the scheme. Compassion in World Farming apparently are pleased since the scheme may reduce the number of calves shot at birth.

The whole problem is that we have selectively bred cows for years to create those which produce high quantities of milk and those which produce what we deem to be high quality beef. All our messing with nature has created suffering and waste. Blade Farming’s scheme will only make the unsustainable and environmentally damaging dairy and meat industries more profitable, driving prices down and fuelling higher consumption.

It seems we are always looking for ways we can maintain the status quo and we keep coming up with all these crazy ideas when the answer is staring us in the face; it’s all about consumption. We cannot maintain the status quo, we need to consume less if we are to create sustainable societies. According to a report released by Canadean Ltd, global milk consumption is down 0.5% from last year, so it looks like we’re heading in the right direction at last!