[billg]

Some real leadership from the United Nations...

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/06/02-7

UN Urges Global Move to Meat and Dairy-Free Diet
Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says
by Felicity Carus

A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.

As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.

It says: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

Professor Edgar Hertwich, the lead author of the report, said: "Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels."

The recommendation follows advice last year that a vegetarian diet was better for the planet from Lord Nicholas Stern, former adviser to the Labour government on the economics of climate change. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has also urged people to observe one meat-free day a week to curb carbon emissions.

The panel of experts ranked products, resources, economic activities and transport according to their environmental impacts. Agriculture was on a par with fossil fuel consumption because both rise rapidly with increased economic growth, they said.

Ernst von Weizsaecker, an environmental scientist who co-chaired the panel, said: "Rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and dairy products - livestock now consumes much of the world's crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilisers and pesticides."

Both energy and agriculture need to be "decoupled" from economic growth because environmental impacts rise roughly 80% with a doubling of income, the report found.

Achim Steiner, the UN under-secretary general and executive director of the UNEP, said: "Decoupling growth from environmental degradation is the number one challenge facing governments in a world of rising numbers of people, rising incomes, rising consumption demands and the persistent challenge of poverty alleviation."

The panel, which drew on numerous studies including the Millennium ecosystem assessment, cites the following pressures on the environment as priorities for governments around the world: climate change, habitat change, wasteful use of nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilisers, over-exploitation of fisheries, forests and other resources, invasive species, unsafe drinking water and sanitation, lead exposure, urban air pollution and occupational exposure to particulate matter.

Agriculture, particularly meat and dairy products, accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use and 19% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, says the report, which has been launched to coincide with UN World Environment day on Saturday.

Last year the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation said that food production would have to increase globally by 70% by 2050 to feed the world's surging population. The panel says that efficiency gains in agriculture will be overwhelmed by the expected population growth.

Prof Hertwich, who is also the director of the industrial ecology programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said that developing countries – where much of this population growth will take place – must not follow the western world's pattern of increasing consumption: "Developing countries should not follow our model. But it's up to us to develop the technologies in, say, renewable energy or irrigation methods."

[dsula]

Real leadership should work towards REDUCING the population. To levels that everybody can eat as much meat and chicken as they please.

Picture a world with only 100 Millon. Everybody can eat, consume and pollute as much as they want. THAT SHOULD BE THE GOAL. (And now I'm throwing another burger on the BBQ...)

[billg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dsula', 'R')eal leadership should work towards REDUCING the population. To levels that everybody can eat as much meat and chicken as they please.

Picture a world with only 100 Millon. Everybody can eat, consume and pollute as much as they want. THAT SHOULD BE THE GOAL. (And now I'm throwing another burger on the BBQ...)

[dbruning]

Not sure he's advocating genocide but I am willing to bet 10 years from now we'll find the condom program just didn't satisfy the issue.

It's not an easy problem to fix....if a solutions gets mandated you get free will people up in arms. If you leave it to the people, we chose sex over abstaining. If you leave it to mother nature, she waits until she can get a really good swing in. Not one solution is a win-win, so we put it off hoping the problem will go away.

[dsula]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('billg', '
')Arrogant egocentric response.
The UN has in fact addressed the population issue, but not in terms of the genocide you recommend.

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('billg', 'A')rrogant egocentric response.

[billg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TWilliam', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('billg', 'A')rrogant egocentric response.

[billg]

Where there is a will, there is a way. The so-called missing nutrients can be obtained from vegan sources (like Omega 3 from flaxseed, and B12 from nutritional yeast). Many books have been written about how to do a vegan diet successfully.

Bottom line...eating vegan requires a supportive social environment and certain level of emotional discipline that most people don't have...which is not a judgement.

[AgentR]

Vegan for all you peons! That is my command!

I'll have the T-Bone, very rare, please.

[Fishman]

Billg, wow!
"Arrogant egocentric response" was just what I was thinking of your attitude telling me what to eat. Has the UN adapted their own recommendations to their dining facilities? Have they adopted these recommendations to their own refugee supplies? Does the word hypocrit mean anything to these clowns?

[Maddog78]

I will continue to support my local butcher and his wife who have been running the same shop for 20 years and buying their beef from the same 3 ranchers for about the same time.

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dsula', 'R')eal leadership should work towards REDUCING the population. To levels that everybody can eat as much meat and chicken as they please.

Picture a world with only 100 Millon. Everybody can eat, consume and pollute as much as they want. THAT SHOULD BE THE GOAL. (And now I'm throwing another burger on the BBQ...)

[dsula]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Narz', '
')This type of fantasy-land garbage ("oh, well if only the population was 100 million we wouldn't have to care for the Earth") makes this site look bad.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dsula', 'R')eal leadership should work towards REDUCING the population. To levels that everybody can eat as much meat and chicken as they please.

Picture a world with only 100 Millon. Everybody can eat, consume and pollute as much as they want. THAT SHOULD BE THE GOAL. (And now I'm throwing another burger on the BBQ...)

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('billg', '
')The Lungs of the Earth (The Amazon) are being sliced and diced due to the need for more land to raise cattle to satisfy man's rapacious hunger for bovine flesh and fluid.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Maddog78', 'I') will continue to support my local butcher and his wife who have been running the same shop for 20 years and buying their beef from the same 3 ranchers for about the same time.

[aldente]

It is simple to be a vegetarian, even more simple to be a breatharian...
Nevertheless, the world is either a place that is deliberatly screwed up so that all participants can work on attitude or it is something completly else, left open for further definition.

[eastbay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'O')ur alimentary anatomy (short stomach, long intestines), metabolism (insulin pathways), nutritional demands (CLA's etc.), dentition (incisors, canines), paleontological evidence et. al. all tells us we are carnivores.

Industrial grain-based confinement meat production is an environmental and healthy calamity. But there is no chance for local agriculture, because we have covered it up with sprawl.

Solution none.