Brouhaha Over Meat’s Impact on Climate

The discussion of reducing meat consumption as a means of fighting climate change is ruffling some high-profile feathers in several places. This attention is good news for those of us concerned with sustainable food: clearly the message is gaining widespread traction if people in positions of power are up in arms.

UK’s Times newspaper reported a couple days ago that Lord Stern of Brentford, I. G. Patel Professor of Economics and Chair of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, recommended cutting back on meat intake as an effective method of mitigating climate change.

“Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases,” he told the Times. “It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Not surprisingly, industry leaders and their allies were outraged.

British meat industry anger flared in part because Stern’s comments came on the eve of an important breakfast in the House of Lords, where they showcased the many climate-related improvements in the pig industry for Farming Minister Jim Fitzpatrick, himself a vegetarian, the Times reported in another article. The technology that the industry is using to reduce its carbon footprint includes large-scale anaerobic digestion of manure.

Lord Stern’s shot across the meat industry’s bow was heard all the way cross the pond, where South Dakota Republican Senator John Thune called it hogwash and accused Lord Stern of not being a vegetarian himself, which is true.

"With falling beef prices, higher costs of production, and onerous cap-and-trade legislation looming, the last thing ranchers and employees of America's meat industry need right now is elitist lecturing and misinformation," Thune told US News and World Report.

Well the bellyaching is all very well, but according to Stern, people might soon be forced into a decision on their high-impact dietary ways: if the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December produces a workable agreement, the price of meat and other high-emissions foods will skyrocket, he declared.

Stern believes that the process of weaning ourselves from meat will be a matter of reexamining our priorities and doing the right thing. “I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student,” he told the Times. “People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.”

Methinks the winds of change are a-blowing, but be ready: out in Big Sky Country, they won’t go down without a fight.

Photo courtesy of imnop88a via flickr