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.

A report written for MPs by Christopher Barclay, a research specialist in the House of Commons Library, has been released today which acknowledges the need to reduce meat and dairy consumption.

A section titled ‘Are diet changes needed?’ in the report ‘How UK farmers could reduce greenhouse gas emissions’ describes the finding of two important studies regarding meat consumption. The section is reproduced below.

“A report in 2008 from Tara Garnett of the Food Climate Research Unit at the University of Surrey assessed GHG emissions from the UK’s agricultural production, food processing and distribution sectors. It concluded that while technical change would partially reduce the food and agriculture sector’s contribution to GHG emissions, only a radical change in food consumption in Europe and other developed countries would make any major difference. The report calculated that the meat and dairy sectors together accounted for over half of total food sector emissions. A vegetarian diet including milk was not necessarily less GHG-intensive than a meat-based diet.

A German report reached a similar conclusion. Agriculture was emitting almost as much GHG as road traffic in Germany, and if consumers wanted to see this output fall, the best thing they could do would be to reduce their consumption of milk and beef – particularly organic beef.

Consumers often believe that they are benefiting the climate by choosing organic products, but this is not always the case, the researchers found. For example, organic crop production can emit up to 60% more CO2 than non-organic. Organic crop production is some 60% lower in greenhouse gas emissions, due to the avoidance of artificial fertilisers, and if all German agriculture were converted to organic, there would be a 15-20% drop in emissions. However, this is not a practical possibility as it would require 70% more land – some 10m hectares – which is not available either in Germany or Europe.

The report stresses the need to reduce consumption of milk and beef. In addition:

The biggest contribution to reducing CO2 emissions, however, would be to restore German wetlands which have been dried out and used for farming. These areas account for over 30% of all agricultural emissions, although they occupy only 8% of the total agricultural area. Organic farming has a greater detrimental effect in these areas because it uses more land per kilogram of food produced. ”

The big question is, what’s this report for? Who will read it and what will the outcomes be? It’s fanstastic news that more and more people are finally acknowledging that a massive reduction in meat and dairy is necessary to make a real impact on the carbon footprint of the agricultural sector, but words are not enough, when will there be some action? When I find out, I’ll let you know!

Farmers in New Zealand now have an added incentive to switch from animals to growing crops. Levels of methane and nitrous oxide emitted from farms (from cows and sheep) will soon be capped, forcing farmers to find ways to reduce the levels.

Farmers could offset methane and nitrous oxide through emissions trading or planting trees, but these schemes are frowned upon by many environmental organisations as they are not seen to be a solution to the problem.

Attempts to reduce the amount of methane that cows and sheep produce through diet have so far only resulted in inconsequential reductions, so farmers will need to consider bigger changes - such as switching to growing crops!

Read more

According to forecasts by Cambridge Econometrics, UK carbon emissions will be just 15 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 - far less than the 26-32 per cent interim target proposed in the Draft Climate Change Bill. Read more here.

According to the Nature Conservancy carbon footprint calculator, if a person reduces their meat consumption from eating meat at every meal to only ‘rarely’ they could cut their carbon footprint by 4.4 tonnes of Co2 equivalent. If the entire population of the UK did this, that would be a reduction of 267,415,447 (267.4 million) tonnes of greenhouse gases (Co2 equivalent) per year, which equates to a cut of 34.7% of the 1990 levels of 770,300,000. See 1990 figures here.

We know that the meat industry is responsible for high levels of greenhouse gases, especially methane and nitrous oxide, so why isn’t this part of the UK government’s climate change strategy?