Part 2: The IPCC’s Argument
In 2008, the UN issued a paper urging us to
eat less meat to curb global warming. This was
no surprise as the IPCC is an arm of the UN
The UN’s Food and Agriculture
Organization estimated that meat production
accounts for nearly a fifth of global
greenhouse gas emissions. These, they said, are
generated during the production of animal
feeds; while ruminants, particularly cows, emit
methane from both ends. The UN went on to warn
that meat consumption was set to double by the
middle of the century, and that methane is 23
times more effective as a global warming agent
than carbon dioxide.
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, and, according to The Observer, the
‘world’s leading authority on
global warming’, although his PhDs are
in economics and engineering, said that people
should have one meat-free day a week if they
want to make a personal and effective sacrifice
that would help tackle climate change.[4] He
then said that people should go on to reduce
their meat consumption even further. It would
be relatively easy, Dr Pachauri said, to change
eating habits compared to changing means of
transport.
‘In terms of immediacy of action and
the feasibility of bringing about reductions in
a short period of time, it clearly is the most
attractive opportunity,’ said
Pachauri.
But Dr Pachauri is a vegetarian Hindu. He
not only used highly tendentious figures to
promote his cause, he managed to forget to
mention the methane contribution made to global
warming by India’s 400 million sacred
cows. No doubt they would they still be free to
expel methane even if humanity were reduced to
eating veggieburgers.
The animal welfare group, Compassion in
World Farming, which is also composed of
vegetarian lobbyists, said it had calculated
that if the average UK household halved meat
consumption that would cut emissions more than
if car use was cut in half. They called for
governments to lead campaigns to reduce meat
consumption by 60% by 2020. Campaigners also
pointed out the ‘health benefits of
eating less meat’. (Now, while I
admitted in my introduction that climate change
is not my main area of expertise, nutrition is
– and I cannot think of any benefits to
our health which would accrue from eating less
meat. It’s eating less meat that has
given us the many chronic degenerative diseases
we suffer today. But that’s the subject
of another book.[5]) The average person in the
UK eats 50g of protein from meat a day,
equivalent to a chicken breast and a lamb chop,
which is hardly excessive for a carnivorous
species.
On the other side, on May 14, 2008,
Congressman Rohrabacher spoke in the US House
of Representatives about Global Warming and
made a very telling point for sanity.
After talking about how the global warmers
would like to ban cattle because of their methane
flatulence emissions he said:
‘I would like to point out that
before the introduction of cattle, millions
upon millions of buffalo dominated the Great
Plains of America. They were so thick you could
not see where the herd started and where it
ended. I can only assume that the anti-meat,
manmade global warming crowd must believe that
buffalo farts have more socially redeeming
value than the same flatulence emitted by
cattle. Yes, this is absurd, but the deeper one
looks into this global warming juggernaut, the
weirder this movement becomes and the more
denial is evident.’
So who is right? Before we go down this road
with its huge implications not just for our
health, but also for our economies, just how
important a greenhouse gas is methane? We
really need to look at the science.
Part 1:
Introduction | Part 2:The IPCC’s
Argument | Part 3: Methane chaos | Part 4
Science and references
|
