From
GIVE UP BEEF AND SAVE THE PLANET
By
There is a big debate about global warming and
carbon foot prints in the Group of Twenty (also known as the G-20 or G20) and
other forums and India listens to western lectures on dangers of coal and
emissions etc.
So far the discussion is only on fossil fuels and items like concrete constructions but not on eating habits of people. The latter contributes much more to global warming and Ecological destruction. We often do not bring that to the top of the table since all discussion is essentially West determined.
An interesting report in Scientific American says
Most of us are aware that our cars, our
coal-generated electric power and even our cement factories adversely affect
the environment. Until recently, however, the foods we eat had gotten a pass in
the discussion. Yet according to a 2006 report by the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO), our diets and, specifically, the meat in them
cause more greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and
the like to spew into the atmosphere than either transportation or industry. (Greenhouse
gases trap solar energy, thereby warming the earth’s surface. Because gases
vary in greenhouse potency, every greenhouse gas is usually expressed as an
amount of CO2 with the same global-warming potential.)
Further it is suggested that
Curbing the
world’s huge and increasing appetite for meat is essential to avoid devastating
climate change, according to a new report. But
governments and green campaigners are doing nothing to tackle the issue due to
fears of a consumer backlash, warns the analysis from the think-tank Chatham House.
The global livestock industry produces more
greenhouse gas emissions than all cars, planes, trains and ships combined, but
a worldwide survey by Ipsos MORI in the report finds
twice as many people think transport is the bigger contributor to global
warming.
More importantly it is to be noted that the study shows red meat or beef dwarfs others for environmental impact,
using 28 times more land and 11 times water for pork or chicken.
Beef’s environmental impact dwarfs that of other
meat including chicken and pork, new research reveals, with one expert saying
that eating less red meat would be a better way
for people to cut carbon emissions than giving up their
cars.
The heavy impact on the environment of meat production was known but
the research shows a new scale and scope of damage, particularly for beef. The
popular red meat requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken,
11 times more water and results in five times more climate-warming emissions.
When compared to staples like potatoes, wheat, and rice, the impact of beef per
calorie is even more extreme, requiring 160 times more land and producing 11
times more greenhouse gases.
“The biggest intervention people could make towards
reducing their carbon footprints would not be to
abandon cars, but to eat significantly less red meat,” Benton said. “Another
recent study implies the single biggest intervention to free up
calories that could be used to feed people would be not to use grains for beef
production in the US.” However, he said the subject was always controversial:
“This opens a real can of worms.”
Prof Mark Sutton, at the UK’s Centre for Ecology and
Hydrology, said: “Governments should consider these messages carefully if they
want to improve overall production efficiency and reduce the environmental
impacts. But the message for the consumer is even stronger. Avoiding excessive meat consumption, especially beef, is good for
the environment.”
Why is rearing meat so bad for the environment?
- Livestock production accounts for 14.5 per cent of global greenhouse emissions, the same amount produced by all the cars, planes, boats and trains in the world. “A single cow can belch up to 500 litres of methane every day”, writes the BBC’s Dr Michael Mosley, a gas that is 25 times more potent than a carbon dioxide. “Multiply that by the 1.5 billion cattle we have on our planet and that’s a lot of gas.”
- It
is inefficient. It takes, on average, 3kg
of grain to produce 1kg of meat and two thirds of all agricultural land is
used to grow feed for livestock, whereas only eight per cent is used to
grow food directly for human consumption. These are “basic laws of
biophysics that we cannot evade,” says the study’s lead researcher, Bojana
Bajzelj from the University of Cambridge.
- It
places pressure on dwindling freshwater supplies
and destroys forest and grasslands, which are turned over for
grazing. Soil erosion, soil and water pollution from fertilisers and
animal waste are other ways the meat industry impacts the environment.
- Scientists
also argue that we need to stop wasting so much
food, as on average, 7.2 million tonnes of food is wasted in the UK
each year.
In conclusion, we should put forward arguments and
turn the debate on its head by
asking the West to close down steak houses and consume less red-meat/ beef rather
than meekly accepting their arm twisting.
