Agriculture and food consumption are identified as one of the most important drivers of environmental pressures, especially habitat change, climate change, water use and toxic emissions.
The use of fossil energy carriers for heating, transportation, metal refining and the production of manufactured goods is of comparable importance, causing the depletion of fossil energy resources, climate change, and a wide range of emissions-related impacts.
The impacts related to these activities are unlikely to be reduced, but rather enhanced, in a business as usual scenario. This study showed that CO2 emissions are highly correlated with income. Population and economic growth will hence lead to higher impacts, unless patterns of production and consumption can be changed.
Furthermore, there are certain interlinkages between problems that may aggravate them in the future. For example, many proposed sustainable technologies for energy supply and mobility rely for a large part on the use of metals (e.g. in batteries, fuel cells and solar cells). Metal refining usually is energy intensive. The production of such novel infrastructure may hence be energy-intensive, and create scarcity of certain materials, issues not yet investigated sufficiently. There is hence a need for analysis to evaluate trends, develop scenarios and identify sometimes complicated trade-offs.
In the online description, they use the terms "agriculture and food consumption." But listen to what they have to say in this video, mostly filmed at the launch of the report. Please share this with your friends and climate change adversaries alike (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQlekfaPyaA).
Sir — well, now Lord — Nicholas Stern, of the-economics-of-climate-change fame, has said that people may have to go vegetarian to save the planet. Reports say that Stern is advocating a vegetarian diet because it is lower in carbon emissions.
“Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better. I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating.” — Lord Stern
Farmed ruminant animals, including cattle and sheep, are thought to be responsible for up to a quarter of “man-made” methane emissions worldwide, the article says. [Me: Once you add in the emissions for trucking, processing, and all the lost carbon sinks when forests are cut down to grow feed for livestock, that number rises.] Stern explains that a successful deal at the Copenhagen climate talks in December would massively increase the cost of producing meat.
Stern says that eating meat could become as socially unacceptable as drinking and driving because of the impact it has on global warming. People’s concerns about climate change would lead to meat eating becoming unacceptable, he predicted.
The British really are leading the way in the fight to safeguard the future.
Here is a short, excellent overview of the climate change emergency and why going veg is a vital and urgent first step in mitigating the still-increasing global greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. (Note how many of the speakers are British.)
Today, my husband and favourite climate hero will speak at a seminar called Creating a Healthy Planet with a Plant-Based Diet, which is sponsored by the Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association of Victoria, British Columbia.
If there's one leader on this planet who understands the urgency of the climate change emergency, it's Supreme Master Ching Hai. However she's done it, she knows — deeply, intuitively, scientifically — what's happening, and how we can — each us, by choosing what we put on our plates and in our mouths — influence the mitigation of climate catastrophe.
Supreme Master Television is focusing many of its programs on stopping the methane menace that comes with the animal breeding and slaughter industry. Here's just one of numerous videos on this crisis:
For more information on climate change and vegetarianism, visit Supreme Master Television. And remember, this is something you can do. You can control what food you buy and what food you eat. Moving to a plant-based diet will radically reduce your carbon footprint and the CO2 and especially methane emissions for which you are responsible.
With the help of GreenHeart Education's climate change research analyst, I have been working to understand the importance of methane emission reductions in our fight to safeguard the future. There is no question that stopping the emissions of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (or N2O, which comes from burning fossil fuels, from chemical fertilizers, and from manure, which forms ammonia, which converts to N2O in the atmosphere) will give us the most reward for our efforts. Because the eating of industrialized meat is a huge producer of methane and nitrous oxide emissions — and because what we put in our shopping carts and our mouths is something that we have total control over — I will continue to strongly suggest lowering meat consumption / going vegetarian as the most important compassionate climate action that individuals and families can take. And as spiritual leader, Supreme Master Ching Hai, points out, the more people who go vegetarian, the more time we give ourselves to get to zero carbon emissions. "Stop killing animals, stop producing meat, stop eating meat," she advises. Okay, here's the science of this issue (please see The Green Grok if you need more information):
Even though CO2 has caused more warming over the long term, reductions in CH4 or N2O emissions will provide a lot more climate relief in the short term than reductions of CO2.
This is because reducing methane emissions by one ton is equivalent to reducing CO2 emissions by 25 tons; thus, its CDE (carbon dioxide equivalent) is 25.
Because its carbon dioxide equivalent is 298, reducing our emission of nitrous oxide by one ton is the equivalent of 298 tons of CO2. So almost 300 times the bang for our buck!
The above figures are based on the 100 year global warming potential of the greenhouse gases. If we use the IPCC's global warming potential figure over 20 years, the benefit of reducing methane is even more dramatic.
Over 20 years CO2 is 1, methane is 72 and nitrous oxide is 279.
So 1 ton of methane emissions prevented = 72 tons of CO2. Each ton of nitrous oxide prevented = 279 tons of CO2. Nitrous oxide emissions last in the atmosphere for 114 years and so these emissions must stop — because they are so persistent and cumulative. I really hope that explaining this science and math to people will help them understand the climate-change-fighting power of going veg, switching just one habit. After all, it's not that we're asking people to stop eating altogether. We're simply asking them to make a dietary choice that is delicious, nutritious, healthier (do it right!), cheaper, more fun, definitely more compassionate, and a gift to their children's future. So the case for closing down the livestock industry is overwhelming - it's a matter of our survival. If slaughtering and eating other animals does not stop, humanity is dead.
Short and sweet tonight. My action today is sharing with you the following excellent audio/visual learning resources on climate change.
Changing the Chemistry of the Atmosphere is a slide show created and narrated by Dr. Holmes Hummel. She is an expert in climate change policy, based at the University of California, Berkeley. This first segment of the Climate Policy Design Pro-Series is a new and clearly explained 9-minute "primer" on climate change.
Goldilocks and the Greenhouse: Science and Climate Change is a 6-minute video that asks, "What makes Earth habitable?" This LiveScience original, redited to Dave Brody at IMAGINOVA STUDIOS, explores the science of global climate change. By the way, the temperature is indeed poised to rise as high as Arrhenius predicted, if we don't get our greenhouse gas emissions down to zero and start removing CO2 from the atmosphere. There is a time lag of about 30 years between emission of CO2 and its felt impact on the Earth's climate.
With vegetarian followers all over the world, perhaps it is not surprising that Supreme Master Ching Hai truly understands the climate change threat. This spiritual leader is now focusing much of her energy on this emergency. Here, from Supreme Master Television, is a dramatic 5-minute video called SOS Climate Change. (Scroll down on that page if you'd like to watch SOS 2.)
For less than 20 minutes of online "watching," you'll gain a much deeper understanding of the climate change emergency. Please pass these resources on, and watch for them on the GreenHeart Climate Change Primer webpage.
I believe that compassion will be what saves us ... compassion for all those who are the most vulnerable to the impacts of global warming, compassion for our children, compassion for all the children of all species, compassion for the rest of Nature.
This is my gift to all life on this very precious planet.
Please visit GreenHeart Education for more information.
