Recent scientific research confirms meat production plays a huge role in increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Comment in The Guardian newspaper UK suggested reducing your carbon footprint may mean having to give up steak.
Don’t worry. It’s not true. It’s just slack journalism from The Guardian. All we actually need to do collectively is eat less of it. If we all did that, even as little as 10% less, not only would we be a lot healthier and our countryside and water tables no longer awash with oceans of ordure, but we could reclaim much of the world’s wide open spaces for nature, recreation and as carbon sinks. I mean the prairies of North America, vast tracts of the Amazon basin, all the land around the planet despoiled not just to graze cattle, but even more costly to our environment, to grow the corn to feed them.
Ranchers and farmers are coddled in far too many ways by our governments to do this. The raising of beef is too destructive to our environment for it to continue, we should pay the true cost of eating beef and eat less of it. We should insist our governments stop pandering to the cattle lobby at public expense.
I don’t eat meat myself, but that doesn’t negate what I say to you carnivores. I’m not vegetarian because I do eat fish. While the industrial raising and killing of advanced mammals on such a massive scale is a tragic error of epic proportions, which is already coming home to haunt us, I do not say people should not kill and eat animals. What I do say is that we should do less of it and it should be free range. I’d actually prefer to see you having to kill and butcher it yourself, but I guess that’s too much to ask.
This latest research in the form of a survey of surveys from a number of scientific institutions confirms what we already knew. Producing meat causes substantial amounts of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) and other pollutants. In addition to GHGs, mostly methane from belching livestock but meat production also releases fertilizing compounds that wreak havoc with river and lake ecosystems. Production 1kg of beef releases GHGs with warming potential equivalent to 36.4kg Co2. It also leads to fertilising compounds of 340g sulphur dioxide and 59g phosphate, and consumes 169 megajoules energy. Carbon emissions are equal the amount of Co2 released by the average car every 160 miles, and energy consumption is equal to a 100W bulb left on for 20 days.
But the total environmental impact will be much higher than these studies suggest because calculations do not include emissions from managing farm equipment and transporting meat, plus the huge amount of energy spent producing and moving cattle feed.
Lastly, a Swedish study conducted in 2003 showed raising organic beef on grass rather than feed, reduced GHG emissions by 40% and consumed 85% less energy.
In other words, do yourself and the rest of us a favour, let the poor bloody cow have a decent life before you eat it. Insist on grass fed beef not chokka with hormones and, while you’re about it, consider eating 10% less of it.
It’ll taste a lot nicer and you’ll be doing your bit for the planet.
The Month in Gaia
Franny Armstrong’s 10:10 Campaign
The latest lady to step up to the eco-plate to have each and every one of us do our bit and reduce our personal carbon footprint is UK documentary film maker Franny Armstrong with her 10:10 campaign launched in Britain this month. The campaign’s objective is to cut the UK’s carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. Politicians, celebs, business moguls, fashion mavens, writers and philosophers are falling over themselves to leap on Franny’s bandwagon and sign the nation up. The PM Gordon Brown and his entire cabinet are signed on, so are the Tory shadow cabinet and the Lib Dems.
The Confederation of British Industry, the Royal Mail, National Heritage Society, the calendar girls of the Women’s Institute, and the British Fashion Council are all aboard, as are philosopher Alain de Botton, author Ian McEwan, actor Colin Firth and designer Vivienne Westwood, to name a few.
For those who don’t know of her, Franny Armstrong is a determined woman. Her first film “McLibel” 1997 took on a litigious-crazed MacDonalds who, true to form, fought tooth and nail to stop the film being shown. Her most recent film “Age of Stupid” was premiered earlier this year in a solar powered tent in London’s Leicester Square. It tells the story of an old man in the devastated world of 2055 watching archival footage of 2008 and wondering why in hell we didn’t do something to prevent climate change when we had the chance.
Did you Measure Your Carbon Footprint yet?
Last month I reported on my experience going to the GreenAsia website (www.thegreenasiagroup.com) and measuring my carbon footprint. It was easy and rather fun. Having done my bit, I then urged y’all to go do the same. If some of you tried and found it hard to find the site that’s because my fat fingers botched the site address. The correct address is as above.
I worked out in 20 minutes my carbon footprint was some 70 tons (70tC02e) which means I’d have to stump up about US$1,050 to go carbon neutral. So, because I’m a bit pushed right now, rather than that I’ve decided to sign up with Franny Armstrong and reduce my carbon emissions by 10% in 2010, just like the politicians. Actually I reckon I can do better than 10% so I’m going to aim higher as I don’t want the angst of not stumping up for going neutral come 2011. By my reckoning, quite apart from reduced utility bills, I’ll have saved myself US$105.00 in offsets. Can saving the planet really as easy as this, I ask myself?
If any of you do go to the Footprint Calculator I’d love to know how you did and if you’ve any questions how to reduce or anything else, let me know and I’ll bounce them off the GreenAsia folks.
“ It’s Worse,” says Top UN Scientist
With barely 100 days to go before the world hopes to seal a global climate treaty the UN’s top climate scientist says it’s worse than we thought and we need to do more.
In its benchmark 2007 report the IPCC chairman Prof. Rajendra Pachauri said the key to preventing catastrophic global warming was to keep Co2 concentrations below 450 ppm and prevent global temperatures from increasing more than 2º by the end of the century. Privately he now says this won’t do it. “What’s happening and what’s likely to happen convinces me we must move to a target of 350 ppm”, he told the press, while expressing disappointment and the lack of progress with talks so far.
Even at current levels of 385 ppm to 390 ppm, severe impacts from climate change, rising sea levels, drought, violent storms have started and are likely to get worse. Many scientists worry that Co2 pollution has damaged the Earth’s capacity to absorb Co2 and has triggered events, the shrinking Arctic ice cap, decay of the Greenland ice sheet, methane release from perma frost, events which will drive global warming on their own.
Indonesia to slash carbon emissions
In the run-up to the key climate change talks in Copenhagen this December the Indonesian environmental agency, the government-backed National Climate Change Council (NCCC) has set out an ambitious roadmap to adopt forestry, energy, transport, industrial and agriculture policies that would slash carbon emissions to as little as 1.3 gigatons by 2030. In 2005 the nation’s emissions stood at 2.3 gigatons or 10 tonnes per Indonesian and which are currently forecast forecast to reach 3.6 gigatons by 2030.
Most of the reduction needs to be focused on the forestry, peatland and agriculture sectors, where there is the greatest potential to cut emissions resulting from deforestation, forest fires, drainage of peatland.
