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Rio Conference Should Ban Meat to Save the Climate
More than 50,000 U.N. officials, scientists, environmental advocates and a few heads of state will gather this coming week in Rio de Janeiro for a conference on sustainable development. They're assembling 20 years after the first Earth Summit was held in the same city, and the goal now, as it was then, is to figure out how to So who is setting the example? Gore? No one really believes that the Rio+20 meeting will result in a new agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. In that case, the best thing the conference could do for the climate is to remove meat from the menu -- and to make a big deal about it. Everyone at that meeting should know that meat is a major contributor to climate change. It is also one problem that can be solved more quickly than others. Cutting out meat would do more to help combat climate change than any other action we could feasibly take in the next 20 years. Starting with the authors of this piece, I daresay. A 2006 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, "Livestock's Long Shadow," called raising animals for food "one of the top two or three most significant I bet the coal guys are glad to hear that! More conservative estimates say that meat accounts for about a third of greenhouse gas emissions. If the United Nations and all the national delegations and activist groups at Rio+20 were to insist on eliminating meat at all the buffets, private dinners, embassy receptions, luncheons and breakfast briefings, people might start to think that the United Nations takes seriously the damage that human activity is causing to the planet. What about videoconferencing, you hypocrites? At a recent U.N. meeting that one of us attended, one speaker, who was from a top environmental organization, spoke fervently about the need to reduce population growth. Then, at the meal that followed his speech, he enjoyed several helpings of osso bucco. Asked about the unsustainable aspects of a high-meat diet, he unabashedly said that he "could never give up" his meat. There is clear evidence that reducing meat production and consumption would limit greenhouse gas emissions and possibly stave off these tragedies. However, after multiple revisions and weeks of negotiating, the word "meat" does not appear in the draft conference document for the Rio meeting. Instead, the paper discusses the need to reduce production and consumption of other products that cause global warming, without singling out that key culprit. Global climate leaders will have a lot of pressing challenges on the table at the Rio+20 conference. It's time to take the meat off their plates. Amen! Let's start with their plates. I'll be somewhere in the second half of those who give it up. Posted by: Bobby 2012-06-17 |
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