Meat must be rationed to four portions a week, says report on climate change

[whopis01]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/30/food.ethicalliving

People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns.

The report, by the Food Climate Research Network, based at the University of Surrey, also says total food consumption should be reduced, especially "low nutritional value" treats such as alcohol, sweets and chocolates.

The report goes much further than any previous advice after mounting concern about the impact of the livestock industry on greenhouse gases and rising food prices. It follows a four-year study of the impact of food on climate change and is thought to be the most thorough study of its kind.

Tara Garnett, the report's author, warned that campaigns encouraging people to change their habits voluntarily were doomed to fail and urged the government to use caps on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon pricing to ensure changes were made. "Food is important to us in a great many cultural and symbolic ways, and our food choices are affected by cost, time, habit and other influences," the report says. "Study upon study has shown that awareness-raising campaigns alone are unlikely to work, particularly when it comes to more difficult changes."

[lakeguy]

1. i'm fine with dropping meat but booze???

come on!

[nebenaube]

2. well

that may be true with budwieser and such but my thick-n-chunky beer has plenty of calories!

[kestrel91316]

3. Nobody is gonna touch my CHOCOLATE!!!!!

[iamahaingttta]

5. YOUR chocolate?

So... you're willing to admit that you will openly be part of the problem because you need your gratification, and the rest of the planet be damned?

M'Kay...

[kestrel91316]

11. I've made a hell of a lot of personal sacrifices in the interests of making the world a

better place. Probably haven't eaten 10 lb of beef in the past 10 years, raised most my own veggies (organically) over most of the past 15 years (can't really call that a sacrifice), lived frugally and humbly my entire adult life, got off the consumer bandwagon 20 years ago, have driven the same car (Honda Accord) for TWENTY YEARS, lived 3 miles from work for the past 17 years. Need I go on? There's more.

I and my fondness for the occasional piece of organic fair trade dark chocolate are the LEAST of the world's "problems".

I guarantee you have a lot bigger resource footprint than I do. Almost everybody does.

You may kindly go f--- yourself.

Edited to add: I will make a few more sacrifices only when I see some evidence that the rest of America is taking the world's resource depletion and environmental problems as seriously as me.

[chupacabranation]

14. You're certainly being the change you wish to see in the world. How Gandhi of you.

Inspirational, really.

[kestrel91316]

17. Well, I doubt Ghandi would be impressed by how ANGRY I get at

some of these FLAMING ASSHOLES.

[Seldona]

15. You took this bs seriously?

To the point of yelling at some lady for eating CHOCOLATE???

:silly:

[kestrel91316]

16. Some people on here have just got to be FLAMING ASSHOLES.

Like they have nothing more productive to do.

[Marie2]

23. Maybe we don't believe

that if we have meat and chocolate the whole planet will be damned.

You'd have a hard time convincing me.

[pansypoo53219]

4. does this include leftovers?

tho more boullion less meat is ok for me.

[Captiosus]

6. "one litre of milk a week" is gonna kill my best friend

Milk is all he drinks. I do mean ALL.

He goes through a half-gallon a day, every day, and has for the last 17 years that I've known him.

[vinylsolution]

7. But If I eat salad instead of meat....

... then my own personal greenhouse gas emissions rise dramatically.

As we don't have a 'cap and trade' policy or any meaningful carbon offsetting system here at work, my co-workers must suffer the awful consequences of giant Subway subs.

It's a lose:lose scenario. Bummer.

[Recursion]

8. Nonsense. We need to change industrial farming, not meat consumption

Industrial production of cereals isn't any better for the environment than industrial animal raising.

[whopis01]

9. You need a lot less of it to provide food for the same number of people. n/t

[chupacabranation]

12. Definitely. It costs 800 calories of grain to produce 100 calories of meat. It's wasteful. n/t

[Recursion]

19. Only if you grain-feed the stock

I buy grass-fed beef, myself.

[chupacabranation]

20. Unfortunately, not the mass way of production...although I still object that the taste of an animal

is worth more to you than that animal's right to a life free from cruelty...

...and the fact that "one kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home..."

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19526134.500-meat-is-murder-on-the-environment.html

(only 2/3 of that is grain production/transport energy, a lot of the rest is methane production).

To each his/her own, I suppose.

I prefer to keep it simple...

[whopis01]

25. Even grass fed beef still takes vastly greater amounts of energy to produce than does grain.

Sure, it is better than grain fed beef, but it is still far from efficient in the amount of fossil-fuel energy used to produce it.

[Enthusiast]

22. No problem.

After a McCain/Palin administration can Soylent Green be far away?

[Captain Sensible]

10. Can someone explain to me ...

why the temp has not increased one single degree in 8 yrs before i have to stop eating meat.

By the way solar activity is more of a factor to any climate change up or down in my opinion.

[chupacabranation]

13. Solar activity counts for a VERY small part. The dominant cause is C02.

According to a NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) press release, "...the solar increases do not have the ability to cause large global temperature increases...greenhouse gases are indeed playing the dominant role.."

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html

Most respected climate scientists believe that C02 is contributing the lion's share of the warming that we're experiencing.

Temperatures in the last 8 years not going up? Are you getting this from somewhere? Because the trending of the temperatures of the earth shows an definite increase.

You don't HAVE to stop eating meat. The question is, do you feel compelled to, knowing the situation we're in. If you do, you do. If you don't, you don't.

[MISSDem]

18. An inconvenient truth that even Al Gore won't utter

is that becoming vegatarian is the number uno thing we can each, easily, do to save the planet. But no wine. On my!!

[Marie2]

24. So has Mr. Gore become a vegetarian?

Because he hasn't put the walk in the talk so far with his personal behavior.

I can't help but suspect that the powers that be, if they ever restrict my candy bars, will have plenty of candy for themselves.

Like that UN conference on hunger where they dined on oysters, foie gras and champagne.

There is an elitism to these campaigns and dire statements that I find offensive.

[Enthusiast]

21. This is how Republicans win.

They point out that some 'liberal' nut says we have to cut down on meat to protect the climate from warming. The uneducated don't understand the logic so they support the Republican candidates. Can you imagine telling Archie Bunker he had to cut down on meat to save the planet?

Most Americans won't embrace this idea. Since we want as many votes as possible things like this should be put on the back burner.

[tama]

26. Isn't democracy wonderfull? n/t

[cornermouse]

27. In order to effectively reduce climate change

we're going to have to effectively reduce attempts to overpopulate the world with people. The bovine industry is just another red herring.