Crunch carrots, cut climate change

We really need to be redoubling our efforts to tackle climate change. Just look at the blog entry before this one, where Stern says the problem is far worse than he'd previously described in his highly influential report - and the entry before that on government giving the cold shoulder to action on climate. Many think of efforts to tackle climate change in terms of flying less, driving less, using renewable, low carbon energy sources, insulating our homes, recycling materials...but adjusting our diet is not so commonly mentioned.

Changing to a lower meat, higher fruit and veg diet can in fact be one of the most effective ways of lowering carbon emissions and tackling climate change, especially if beef consumption is reduced or eliminated. Consider the estimated total eco footprint of meat compared with fruit and vegetables: 6.9 to 14.6 hectare yrs per tonne for meat (calculated using average global yield and embodied energy data - the range is due to pasture-fed vs grain-fed animals); as against 0.3 to 0.6 hectare yrs per tonne for a range of fruits, roots and vegetables (calculated using average global yield for a range of veg, with an allowance for transport, processing and energy for farming).

These estimates from the book Sharing Nature's Interest by footprint experts Chambers, Simmons and Wackernagel (2000) show the the environmental impact of meat is 11 to 49 times higher than fruit and vegetables. This chimes with the basic science because the food chain for meat is obviously longer, with many vegetables and grains being grown for use as animal feed. [Meat impacts are 1.5 to 8.5 times higher than grains and pulses too.]  Beef farming has a very high climate impact due to: rainforest clearance to create the farmland, perhaps by burning; grain feeding the animals; methane released by the cows metabolism, (and dont forget the long distance trade in frozen meat).

In short: crunch carrots more, eat meat less and you will contribute to cutting climate change! Whether the fruit and veg are chemically grown abroad, or locally and organically grown, they're going to have lower climate impact than any kind of meat. There are other benefits too as lower meat diets are cheaper and healthier. Carrots for instance - given that it was National Carrot Day on 3 Feb and that it will be International Carrot Day on 4 April  - have the highest vitamin A content of all veg and are loaded with vitamin B6, vitamin C and potassium too. Find out more from this amazing, if somewhat bizarre site: http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/    

Food and clothes prices: much more than narrow economics

For me there has never been any such thing as cheap food and clothes because someone or something, somewhere is paying the costs or suffering the consequences of 'low' prices such as in our supermarkets...joined up, systems, thinking shows this. However, even those who have formerly had other perspectives are increasingly saying that the era of 'cheap' food and clothes is over (see the link to the Daily Express article and Primark comments below).

Fascinating interview on Radio 4 today about this (see link below). World demand for meat is up and so is demand for wheat and other grains to feed the animals, land that could or did grow food is being taken for energy crops or other purposes, human population is rising, climate change is cutting yields in key locations - factors like these are increasing demand whilst also lowering supply and that means the dominant overall trend in food prices over time is definitely upwards. Adopting greener lifestyles would over time moderate the upward prices trend.

BBC News - Today - 'Upward long-term food cost trend'

The rising cotton and food prices are driving fears that our weekly shopping could soon become more expensive.

Natalie Berg from the research group Planet Retail examines whether consumers would have to bear the brunt or whether companies would be able to absorb any price rise.

See also:

http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/199383

Friends of the Earth - Join the MOOvement

Friends of the Earth - Join the MOOvement

Put your hoof down for rainforest-free meat and dairy
This autumn, MPs will be voting on a new law to break the hidden link between animal feed in factory farms and wildlife and rainforest destruction in South America.
Please join our MOOvement today - together we can make sure they support UK farmers to feed their animals a diet that doesn't cost the planet.

Animal welfare

Had an email announcing the launch of the International Fund for Animal Welfare election manifesto today (copy below). I was asked to consider posting my views so I sent this statement...As a Green I stand for improving animal welfare, whether wild or domestic animals, at home and abroad. I’m for a significant reduction in animal exploitation for commercial purposes, for habitat protection and help for all animals suffering distress.

I’ve always been a very strong supporter of all IFAWs work eg on phasing out commercial whaling, on reducing ocean noise pollution, on enforcing the EU ban of commercial trade in seal products, on protecting UK seals more effectively, on supporting elephant and tiger conservation, on combating the internet wildlife trade and on effective enforcement of the law banning fox hunting.

I’d also stress that Greens want: all animal experiments replaced with more reliable non-animal alternatives; an end to factory farming, and an end to the promotion of factory farming abroad; the encouragement of low meat consumption. We would: ban live animal exports; end the genetic treatment of animals; ban bloodsports; end badger culling; and ban the use of animals in circuses

_______________________________________________

Dear...

In your role as a candidate at the next election, I wanted to make you aware of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) election manifesto launched today.

The manifesto sets out IFAW's vision of the responsibilities and challenges that face the next UK Government on key animal welfare issues. The manifesto looks at areas such as whaling, commercial seal hunting, trade in endangered species and hunting with dogs, and makes recommendations in these policy areas.

You can read the foreword and summary of recommendations here.

Or you can view the whole manifesto on IFAW in Action’s election website or by clicking the report image on the right.

A hard copy will also be sent to you in the post in the next few days.

In the coming weeks, we will be asking our supporters to contact you and other candidates in their constituency to seek candidates’ views on animal welfare and conservation issues.

We will also post candidates’ responses on our website. We would be very grateful if you would consider posting your views (and specifically on areas such as whaling, commercial seal hunting, trade in endangered species and hunting with dogs). You can do so on the form at the link below:
http://e-activist.com/ea-campaign/clientcampaign.do?ea.client.id=15&ea.campaign.id=6016

I am sure you appreciate the depth and strength of public feeling in these areas. I hope, therefore, you will take the time to view our recommendations and post your views on our site.

Yours sincerely,
Robbie Marsland
Director, IFAW in Action

Bristol City Council: where's the beef??

Its very odd that the public and other organisations, the Soil Association aside, have not been asked by the council for their views on their plans to run their own cattle farm on Stoke Park (front page story 'Pull the udder one', Post, March 26). Why the distinct lack of information and wider discussion?There are serious questions as to whether a council should be farming at all, with all the core responsibilities they already have for education, transport, housing and so on.

Even more odd to go for beef farming because its hardly a green option and apart from that it could be dogged by all sorts of problems especially in the event of disease outbreak. If the council was to run a farm far better for it to be at arms length, for it to be a mixed one, perhaps with fruit orchards (great for birds and bees), perhaps with areas set aside for schools to conduct environmental education, perhaps with areas set aside for Bristol's people to grow their own food at very low cost....like another city farm. This makes more sense to me than beef farming and the methane emissions that come with it.

The Posts comment on this issue echoes my MP Kerry McCarthy and correctly makes the point that this particular farm would be pretty small and so the impact of this enterprise on its own is not great. However, there is nowhere near enough emphasis on the greenhouse gas methane as one major cause of climate change and the council should be encouraging low meat diets. I'm not a veggie or a vegan but its certainly more environmentally friendly to eat less meat whilst at the same time being cheaper, healthier and more ethical.

Do the facts show that a low meat diet is more ethical...?

Got involved in the online debate on the 'Bristol MP calls for cow flatulence debate' story in today's paper. My contribution drew quite a bit of response, including the one below from Grahame P. Thought it was worth posting on it here to invite responses on the ethics issue. To me it seems absurd to say that ethics is not part of this, and perhaps all, debates and wrong to say that you cant have a reasonable debate with someone who says that his moral position is backed by the facts - but what do readers think??

My post was addressed in reply to Glenn Vowles who said "....the facts show its healthier, more ethical and more ecological to freely choose to eat a lower meat diet..." Whilst I'd agree with his very first assertion, the argument that it's somehow more 'ethical' to eat less meat rankles because how can the facts show eating less meat is more ethical? Ethicality is a moral assertion, individually subjective, and therefore the 'facts' can't show anything of the sort!

(Grahame P, Central Bristol).

My reply:

Dont agree Grahame. The more people eat a low meat diet then - the more animals can be farmed in a non-intensive, healthier and higher animal welfare way; the fewer animals need to be farmed, leaving less forest cleared, which helps save species and save our climate; the more likely each person is to stay within a sustainable carbon budget, leaving nature less harmed for future generations. Isn't the result of all this that a low meat diet is more ethical??

Cowculating the impacts of council-run herd

Received this online invitation to comment on todays Post story that 'Bristol City Council wants to run its own herd of cows to provide beef for the city's schools and posh restaurants....'

'Don't cows produce lots of pesky methane? You know, that 'greenhouse gas', 20 times more potent than CO2, responsible for all that anthropomorphic (bovomorphic?) global warming? Hardly very responsible, is it guys? What do you think, Glenn Vowles? '(Mark, Scrabble Champion...)

Still working out the figures on my cowculator Mark! Moooo-re on this later perhaps.

Cows, cars and climate

Letter writer Gil Osman is right to indicate that there is nowhere near enough emphasis on the greenhouse gas methane as one major cause of climate change (here). It is generated in very large and rapidly growing amounts by human activity, beef and dairy farming in particular, because cows produce many litres every day (Gil says 40 litres but some estimates go into hundreds of litres)! Pigs, chickens and other farm animals make a significant contribution also (and methane is also generated in landfill sites and by growing rice and is released to global warming by various means eg as permafrost melts).

The figures Gil gives are certainly credible estimates, with the greenhouse gas contribution from animals raised for food (18%) being higher than the greenhouse gas contribution from all transport (13%). Its not just the methane emitted by the animals that is the problem - meat production makes intensive use of fossil fuels, chemicals, drugs, land, plus money, and the international trade in meat only makes this worse! http://www.vegsoc.org/environment/index.html

Meat production is inherently inefficient. A food chain involving meat is longer, with more links. The ecological rule of thumb is that there is a 90% energy transfer ‘loss’ (used for the organism's life processes or lost as heat to the environment) at each link in the chain! On average a meat eater’s diet uses twice as much land per person as a vegetarian’s and five times as much as a vegan’s. Over two thirds of UK land is used for farming, most of this being used for meat. Around two thirds of the vegetable crops grown in the UK are fed to farm animals.

http://www.vegansociety.com/environment

According to the book ‘Sharing Nature’s Interest’ the ecological footprint of meat is 6.9 to 14.6 hectare years per tonne, depending on the type of animal rearing (pasture-fed animals have a lower footprint than grain-fed ones). Comparable figures for other foods are: non-aquaculture fish 4.5 to 6.6; fruit and vegetables 0.3 to 0.6; milk 1.1 to 1.9; grain such as wheat and rice 1.7 to 2.8; and pulses such as beans and peas 3.6 to 2.8. Even allowing for the fact that these are broad estimates the comparison is stark and is rooted in basic science.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s figures show that meat consumption has tripled since 1961. World meat consumption is now well over 230 million tonnes per year. By 2020 demand for meat will surge nearly 60%. Meat consumption has been and still is a feature of a ‘developed’ country given that someone living in a developed nation consumes three times as much as someone in a ‘developing’ one.

Put the facts on methane emissions and land/energy/chemical use from meat production together with fast rising meat consumption and you can see that we have trouble – not just in terms of climate change but also in economic terms, with food and fuel prices reaching very high levels during 2008 helped by high and rising demand. You’ll note that I’ve not even touched on the ethical/animal welfare issues or the health and disease issues involved in eating animals in large quantities!

So when Gil writes ‘Perhaps governments should be encouraging people to cut down on their meat consumption…’ I’d agree (although this should be in addition to tackling the environmental impacts from transport, energy generation and use, and so on which are many, varied and significant). It is especially important to tackle a meat industry parts of which, as Gil says, are clearing forests to create farmland for cattle rearing, boosting climate damage from cow methane, releasing carbon dioxide from the soil, rapidly releasing carbon dioxide when forests are burned and cutting the extraction of carbon from the air by forests simultaneously (more here).

I’ve spent some time describing the evidence and the problems. Solutions wont be easy. Action is needed across a wide range of policy areas, from environmental and health education informing personal food choices, to UK and EU action on personal and household carbon budgeting, to international agreements on deforestation and global trade…Would I advocate that we all go vegetarian or vegan? No, and I’m not a vegetarian myself, though I would strongly advocate that people consider a low meat diet, making dietary choices to stay within a carbon budget, and taking into account health, disease and animal welfare issues. Its certainly environmentally friendly to eat less meat whilst at the same time being cheaper, healthier and more ethical.

Christmas with a lower impact

Even in this time of recession its likely that during Christmas billions of pounds will be spent on food, drink and presents in the UK. Waste levels rise by 20% at this time and include food, energy, wrapping paper, cards and of course Christmas trees. We can enjoy ourselves without abandoning green concerns however with a little prioritisation and organisation. The following wont transform us into a sustainable society of course but whilst campaigning for the required leadership, policies, institutions and decision-making processes continues, they are positive steps I think are worth taking now on cards, decorations, trees, wrapping presents, chocolate and turkey...!!

Billions of Christmas cards are sent every year, many not made of recycled card and many thrown out rather than recycled. You could send an e-card instead or watch out for cards made from recycled material or make your own cards from previous ones! Bristol is well set up for recycling card, so its easy for us to use this system.

Old colour newspapers and magazines can be used to make decorations like paper chains. Paint, glitter, card from boxes or old Christmas cards, glue and a bit of wool or string can be used to make tree decorations. These activities will keep kids happy and occupied doing a creative task that really involves them in Christmas. Far better this than buying sparkly decorations made in a far away sweat shop by child labour then flown thousands of miles across the globe.

Millions of Christmas trees are bought, often to be thrown out, each year. There is enough tree waste to fill the Albert Hall more than three times! The best thing you can do if you have a tree is buy one with roots - it can be planted out and used year on year. If you choose a tree without roots make sure you use the local schemes for turning used ones into mulch for parks and gardens.

You may not think of all that sticky-tape securing wrapping paper as plastic but it is. It wont rot and is single-use. String and wool are both more biodegradable and reusable and so are much the better option for securing wrapping paper. String/wool does not mess up the paper it secures and leaves it in a state where it, with a little care, can be retained and reused – close to ten thousand tonnes of paper is used to wrap UK presents every year. If you have paper that cant be reused put it out for recycling in your black box!

Hundreds of millions is spent on chocolate for Christmas. If you buy fair trade chocolate you will be supporting cocoa farmers, their families and communities much more. They get a fair price for their cocoa beans. Rights, pay and working conditions are much better under fair trade.

Ten million or more turkeys are eaten during the festive season in the UK. Millions of these birds are reared intensively in huge windowless buildings containing crowds of thousands. Selectively bred and anti-biotic treated for maximum growth these birds cannot express natural behaviours and cannot mate without human intervention. I’m just not hungry for this kind of food at all and its ecological footprint is very high. If you don’t want to avoid turkey at Christmas altogether its worth paying more for one reared to much higher animal welfare standards.


More information/ideas: http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=2024

Biofuels, food prices, biodiversity, Spiderman, meat - or the connection between them all??

I've wondered, should I decide to post today, world environment day, just what I would write about.

Perhaps the latest warnings about biofuels causing higher world food prices as discussed at the UN food summit in Rome, featuring strongly on the BBC news this evening?

Or the recent report 'The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB)', described as the first major report to outline the economic impact of cutting the variety of life (severe impacts on the worlds poorest and costs of up to £40 billion every year, 7% global GDP decline by 2050 if ecosystem damage is not tackled...) ?

How about saying that Alain Robert, the French Spiderman, has today been in New York City climbing a huge skyscraper to promote the message that we need real leadership on climate change from the G8 countries meeting next month (According to him "The Solution Is Simple":
1 – Stop Cutting Down Trees. Plant More Trees. 2 – Make Everything Energy Efficient. 3 – Only Make Clean Energy.).

I'm conscious that I've not posted much on the subject of diet and environmental impacts, in particular the amount and type of meat eaten, so perhaps something on this topic, reasonably well discussed on Newsnight a few days ago following comments from the head of the UN climate agency, Yvo de Boer, who is attending UN-led climate talks in Germany this week that we should all become vegetarians. After all in times of high food prices should we, at great environmental cost, be feeding grain to cows and pigs instead of people?? I really like meat but its a highly inefficient food to produce and consume and I acknowledge the very strong ethical, ecological, economic and health case for vegetarianism and veganism (I try to keep my meat consumption right down - I'm not a veggie).

Interesting how intimately intertwined issues of environment, energy, economics, food, climate and personal choices/behaviour are isn't it.