Mon 2 Sep 2019, 09:04 AM | Posted by editor
LETTER from Bob Edwards, Harlow Labour Party member.
The car and fuel lobby are extremely powerful. They are clutching at straws by paying attention to meat-eating as a source of carbon emissions. Most CO2 production has taken place in the last 70 years and in the USA, where there already was a very high meat consumption. I agree that they might be eating more, but there are parts of the world where there is little meat consumption. Meat consumption may have gone up, but it doesn’t explain the doubling of CO2 production. That has been overwhelmingly due to cars, cars, cars… And that’s not taking your family to the seaside, like in the 1950s, but cars with just a single driver. The carbon dioxide is mainly due to coal, gas and above all OIL and petrol use. Capitalism is trying to blame workers and their families by eating meat. It’s an excuse.
The EDITOR replies:
Bob is right to highlight the discrepancy between the effects of oil and meat consumption (see figures below). But we would argue, nevertheless, that long-term, meat consumption at the level currently prevailing in the west (also taking into account an expected and hoped-for levelling up of living standards world-wide) is not sustainable.
The following quotation is a taken directly from the website www.skepticalscientist.com/
Animal agriculture is responsible for 13–18% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and less in developed countries (e.g. 3% in the USA). Fossil fuel combustion for energy and transportation is responsible for approximately 64% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and more in developed countries (e.g. 80% in the USA).
The burning of fossil fuels for energy and animal agriculture are two of the biggest contributors to global warming, along with deforestation. Globally, fossil fuel-based energy is responsible for about 64% of human greenhouse gas emissions, with deforestation at about 18%, and animal agriculture between 13% and 18% (estimates from the World Resources Institute, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and Pitesky et al. 2009).
So, animal agriculture and meat consumption are significant contributors to global warming, but far less so than fossil fuel combustion. Moreover, fossil fuels are an even bigger contributor to the problem in developed countries, which use more energy and have increased livestock production efficiency (Pitesky et al. 2009). For example, in the United States, fossil fuel-based energy is responsible for about 80% of total greenhouse gas emissions as compared to about 3% from animal agriculture (estimates from the World Resources Institute and Pitesky et al. 2009).
