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Posted: (October 01, 2008 11:06 am)
Cutting down on meat and milk consumption can help cut greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a new study from the Food Climate Research Network. The four-year study focused mainly on the U.K., concluding that dramatically cutting the average Briton's weekly meat and milk intake could help reduce emissions since about 8 percent of the country's greenhouse gases come from meat and dairy production. The study also boldly recommends citizens cut alcohol from their diet -- which has little nutritional value but contributes some 1.5 percent of overall emissions -- as well as sweets and chocolate that also contribute unnecessarily to the GHG intensity of British diets. But the report also points out that voluntary personal actions are not terribly effective at reducing emissions and, anyway, people like to eat what they want. "Food is important to us in a great many cultural and symbolic ways, and our food choices are affected by cost, time, habit, and other influences," the report says. "Study upon study has shown that awareness-raising campais alone are unlikely to work, particularly when it comes to more difficult changes."
Comments On This Blog Article
Recycle
Posted: (October 01, 2008 12:35 pm)
A couple problems with this study... Its unclear that man-made CO2 emissions are causal to global warming, and while we're debating that, hurting meat and dairy farmers hardly seems prudent. As an aside, I hunt deer which provides roughly 50% of my family's meat requirements for about 6 months of the year so I wonder if deer emit co2 and if so, whether hunting plays a significant role in its reduction. Any study that recommends reducing alcohol, meat, milk, sweets and chocolate will have a hard time gaining traction in the U.S. To me, the bottom line with the global warming debate is fairly clear. We don't have a scientific consensus on causation or statistical veracity (is it really even getting warmer, if so, is it cyclical, man-caused, etc...). The bottom line is we all know we are a wasteful society. It isn't hard to recycle and be prudent with our energy useage. We know our waterways are dirty and our air is contaminated. Anything that improves our air and water quality, especially those things that don't cost anything, is a good thing. One other aspect of this study I find off-putting... weren't there millions of co2 emitting bison roaming the plains of America during and after the last ice age?
