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September 29, 2019 05:34 pm

'We Can't End Climate Change Without Changing Our Eating Habits'

Saturday the Guardian published a call to action by the author of the new book, We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast: [W]e cannot save the planet unless we significantly reduce our consumption of animal products. This is not my opinion, or anyone's opinion. It is the inconvenient science. Animal agriculture produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transportation sector (all planes, cars and trains), and is the primary source of methane and nitrous oxide emissions (which are 86 and 310 times more powerful than CO2, respectively). Our meat habit is the leading cause of deforestation, which releases carbon when trees are burned (forests contain more carbon than do all exploitable fossil-fuel reserves), and also diminishes the planet's ability to absorb carbon. According to a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, even if we were to do everything else that is necessary to save the planet, it will be impossible to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Accord if we do not dramatically reduce our consumption of animal products... There is a place at which one's personal business and the business of being one of seven billion earthlings intersect. And for perhaps the first moment in history, the expression "one's time" makes little sense. Climate change is not a jigsaw puzzle on the coffee table, which can be returned to when the schedule allows and the feeling inspires. It is a house on fire. The longer we fail to take care of it, the harder it becomes to take care of, and because of positive feedback loops -- white ice melting to dark water that absorbs more heat; thawing permafrost releasing huge amounts of methane -- we will very soon reach a tipping point of "runaway climate change", when we will be unable to save ourselves, no matter how much effort we make... The four highest impact things an individual can do to tackle the planetary crisis are: have fewer children; live car-free; avoid air travel; and eat a plant-based diet... [E]veryone will eat a meal relatively soon and can immediately participate in the reversal of climate change. Furthermore, of those four high-impact actions, only plant-based eating immediately addresses methane and nitrous oxide, the most urgently important greenhouse gases.... We cannot keep eating the kinds of meals we have known and also keep the planet we have known. We must either let some eating habits go or let the planet go. It is that straightforward, and that fraught. Beef has the biggest "greenhouse gas impact," according to a recent article in the New York Times (followed by lamb and then "farmed crustaceans.") While there's also some impact from pork, poultry, farmed fish and even eggs, their table suggests it's a small fraction when compared to the climate impact of beef and lamb.

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