Why Blue-NG is proud to generate electricity from vegetable oil

George Monbiot was wrong to criticise Blue-NG for its use of vegetable oil – we use UK-sourced rapeseed oil and not palm oil, writes chief executive Andrew Mercer
Andrew Mercer
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 October 2009 11.55 GMT
George Monbiot was wide of the mark when he criticised Blue-NG for its use of vegetable oil as a fuel to generate electricity and heat. This emphatically does not include palm oil, which we regard as unsustainable. But in combination with recycled vegetable oil (RVO) and biogas from waste, Blue-NG will use UK-sourced rapeseed oil (OSR). This is crude, unrefined vegetable oil sourced as close as possible to our generating plants. It should not be confused with biodiesel, which is a heavily processed and refined high-carbon product, mixed with 95% fossil fuel diesel. The Green party toured the country this summer during the European elections campaign in a bus fuelled by UK-sourced rapeseed biodiesel. Blue-NG believes that the best use of OSR is to generate renewable electricity and heat for our homes and industry, not to prolong our love affair with the internal combustion engine.
One of our combined heat and power (CHP) plants will power about 45,000 homes or keep 80,000 electric cars on the road. Over a year, it will produce 153,541MWh of electricity. It will save between 45 and 61,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum compared with the current grid mix of fuels. Its electrical efficiency ranges between 65% and 80%, making it one of the most efficient electrical generators in the world. Add in the heat and it tops 90% overall efficiency.
One tonne of biodiesel in cars reduces CO2 emissions by 1.235 tonnes. One tonne of crude OSR in our CHP plant produces savings of 2.304 tonnes. One hectare of land yields 1520 litres of crude rapeseed oil and 1445 litres of heavily refined biodiesel. So, twice as much land is needed to achieve the same CO2 savings if OSR is used to make biodiesel for the Green party’s bus, rather than to generate power and heat. Both the renewable transport and energy sectors receive subsidies from the taxpayer to encourage take-up. It is over £50 a tonne cheaper to reduce CO2 via CHP than it is with cars.
There are millions of hectares of land lying idle across the EU. OSR and cereal crop prices have declined from last year’s spikes. OSR and wheat are roughly the same price that they were 10 years ago. So, by using British-sourced OSR, already a long established “break crop” grown in rotation with cereals, we do not pose a threat to world food supplies or prices. The UK has surplus OSR and this year, British farmers lost money growing it. (They lost money growing wheat as well.)
For every 100 tonnes of OSR that we grow, only 13 tonnes is used to provide our fuel. The rest goes back into the food chain. 70 tonnes is ploughed back into the soil to replenish it for next year’s cereal crop (alternatively it could be burned as biomass) and 16 tonnes is turned into animal feed (thereby reducing demand for imported soya) only 1% of the plant is waste.
What’s more, our emissions have been modelled as being “negligible” which means that our plants can operate safely even in air quality management zones in cities.
We are proud to be a sustainable, low-carbon, clean, decentralised, local power and heat provider, that supports British farmers.
• Andrew Mercer is the chief executive of Blue-NG

Rare marine turtles get help

An intensive care clinic for marine turtles in French Polynesia is trying to help save the endangered species from extinction by nursing sick and injured animals back to health.

Lyndee Prickitt reports for Reuters:

Source:
Reuters, “Rare marine turtles get help“, accessed October 27, 2009

International palm oil strategy falters as producers question emission cuts

Insiders say international initiative to set environmental standards for palm oil production is ‘on brink of collapse’
David Adam
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 October 2009 11.36 GMT
The Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an initiative of companies and campaigners, is divided over the need to control carbon emissions and could break up within days, insiders say.
The move could have significant implications for the UK government, which is relying on the project to defuse criticism that Britain’s biofuel policies will help destroy rainforest and worsen climate change.
Ministers last year introduced a demand on fuel suppliers to replace 2.5% of petrol and diesel sold with biofuel, at least 8% of which is currently palm oil, though the volume used is expected to increase as biofuel use expands. Palm oil is one of the cheapest biofuels and several UK power stations that could burn it to generate electricity are in the pipeline.
The RSPO was established to set and enforce environmental standards for palm oil production, but has run into trouble after palm plantation companies in Indonesia and Malaysia blocked efforts to curb their greenhouse gas emissions.
“If this issue is not resolved and greenhouse gas emissions are not included in the standard, then I don’t see how the RSPO can continue to act as a certifying body,” said Marcus Silvius of environment group Wetlands International, who sits on the RSPO’s working group on greenhouse gases. “It’s a crucial moment. If we don’t get agreement on this, then I think a large number of stakeholders will consider withdrawing.” The issue will be discussed again at an RSPO meeting this weekend, and needs the support of the companies to be approved.
Tim Killeen, who represents Conservation International on the roundtable, said: “Failure to reach a compromise would be a serious blow to the credibility of the RSPO. I find it hard to believe that in 2010 people will accept a definition of sustainability that does not explicitly address the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
RSPO representatives from the Indonesia and Malaysia palm oil firms would not comment. A position paper from Malaysia’s Sarawak Oil Palm Plantation Owners Association (pdf) attacks RSPO plans to ban new plantations on peatland, which produce significantly higher greenhouse gas emissions. It says: “Peatlands worldwide, including those from temperate countries, are being utilised for commercial purposes, so why can’t we allocate part of our precious resources for oil palm to generate revenue for local people?”
The Indonesian Oil Palm Research Institute said: “Unfortunately the work of the [RSPO working group on greenhouse gases] has solely covered environmental issues and totally missed out economic and social aspects. In addition, we found many gaps in current research findings which create uncertainties.”
Under plans to be discussed at UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December, tropical nations such as Malaysia and Indonesia could be compensated if they leave such forests standing, rather than replacing them with planted oil palm. But this so-called Redd scheme is yet to be finalised, and there is no guarantee that the Copenhagen talks will set up the financial mechanisms required.
Johan Verburg, who represents Oxfam in the RSPO, said global brands, retailers and banks have not yet given a clear signal on if or how they will value efforts by palm oil producers to address carbon emissions.
“Realistically, it was an illusion to think that producers would voluntarily commit to short-term measures in the absence of global compensation mechanisms,” he said. “Although results as yet are disappointing, I believe it is too early to speak about a failure. However, the current situation shows it is even more urgent for palm oil sourcing companies in the UK and elsewhere to express their need for sustainable palm oil.”

Climate change is a feminist issue

Granting women control over their own reproduction would combat overpopulation and reduce carbon emissions

Mary Fitzgerald
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 October 2009 16.30 GMT
When it emerged earlier this year that Obama’s science tsar John Holdren had once, back in 1977, co-authored a textbook discussing possible methods of population control, among them sterilisation, America’s rightwing fury machine triumphantly seized upon it, dubbing him Obama’s “science fiction tsar”.
Yet with the climate change conference in Copenhagen approaching, how fictitious is the need for population control? As Alex Renton noted in November’s Prospect magazine, if the world’s population continues to grow at present rate, by 2050 the globe will need the resources of a second Earth to sustain it. And if you throw in the projected effects of a warming planet, the problem starts to look as apocalyptic as it did to Holdren, and many others, back in the 1970s.
However world leaders might try to spin this problem, nearly all the ways of tackling climate change involve taking rights away from people – be it their right to fly, to drive, or to heat their patios. The one thing that would do the opposite, that would empower human beings, would be to give women across the world control over their own bodies. Plenty of them want it: according to the UN, there are currently more than 200 million women worldwide wanting but unable to get contraception. So forget ghoulish 1970s notions of compulsory abortions – as Michelle Goldberg points out, feminism has already vanquished these – we can start “controlling” population simply by providing women with basic rights. In short, population control, and by extension climate change, are feminist issues.
Wherever women have adequate access to contraception, education, the right to work, equality before the law, the birth rate plummets. And this is where western liberal proclivities towards cultural relativism start to break down. However much we might want to respect other cultures, those that deny women these rights are directly harming all of us, even if our own society is an equitable, gender-blind utopia. Unless we want a world ravaged by droughts and floods, we are going to have to start demanding women be treated as equal citizens – everywhere. In fact, you don’t even have to call it feminism. You could call it calculated self-interest.
Population control is not something the “developing world” alone needs to wise up to, either. Quite the opposite. The one-child policy of China, the world’s fastest developing country, is infamous, yet as a result we already have 300-400m fewer people on the planet. (Interestingly, China is doing a lot more on climate change in other areas than we assume too). That’s not to suggest that we import China’s birth control policies wholesale – the People’s Republic, after all, is not widely known for its regard for anyone’s rights, female or otherwise. But we have to do something: one British child pollutes more than 30 children in sub-Saharan Africa do. And, unlike in Britain, there are pressing economic reasons why women in sub-Saharan Africa need children.
True, many women in rich countries already choose to limit their families; Britain’s average birth rate per family is a modest 1.97, roughly average for the developed world. But this means a vast number of women are still having more than three children and, given the disproportionate bulk of their carbon footprint, they need to be persuaded not to. This doesn’t have to take the shape of draconian legislation, but rather positive incentives. We should not deny women autonomy over their own bodies (as many pro-life campaigns seek to), but we could make child benefits for smaller families much more generous. We could also offer middle-class families generous tax breaks if they have two children or less. This isn’t taking away people’s rights, it’s just weighting the options differently – and, in turn, better protecting the rights of others who share this planet.
You don’t even have to believe in global warming to come to this conclusion; you can still have your head firmly in the sand about the fact that humans are having an effect on the temperature of this planet. The population question exists outside this issue. It’s simply a matter of maths: the Earth can only host a finite number of people. And surely educating and bettering the lives of the world’s women, for whatever purpose, is no bad thing?

Indian engineer ‘builds’ new glaciers to stop global warming

A retired Indian engineer is waging his own one-man battle to stop global warming melting away the Himalayan glaciers: He claims he has discovered a way to create new glaciers.

By Dean Nelson in New Delhi Published: 6:00AM GMT 28 Oct 2009
Chewang Norphel, 76, has “built” 12 new glaciers already and is racing to create five more before he dies.
By then he hopes he will have trained enough new “icemen” to continue his work and save the world’s “third icecap” from being transformed into rivers.

His race against time is shared by Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister who called on the region’s Himalayan nations, including China, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan, to form a united front to tackle glacial melting.
The great Himalayan glaciers, including Kashmir’s Siachen glacier, feed the region’s most important rivers, which irrigate farm land in Tibet, Nepal, Bangladesh and throughout the Indian sub-continent. The apparent acceleration in glacial melting has been blamed for the increase in floods which have destroyed homes and crops.
Chewang Norphel, the “Iceman of Ladakh”, however believes he has an answer.
By diverting meltwater through a network of pipes into artificial lakes in the shaded side of mountain valleys, he says he has created new glaciers.
A dam or embankment is built to keep in the water, which freezes at night and remains frozen in the absence of direct sunlight. The water remains frozen until March, when the start of summer melts the new glacier and releases the water into the rivers below.
So far, Mr Norphel’s glaciers have been able to each store up to one million cubic feet of ice, which in turn can irrigate 200 hectares of farm land. For farmers, that can make the difference between crop failure and a bumper crop of more than 1,000 tons of wheat.
The “iceman” says he has seen the effects of global warming on farmland as snows have become thinner on the ground and ice rivers have melted away never to return.
His own work has now been recognised by the Indian government, which has given him £16,000 to build five new glaciers. But time is his enemy, he told The Hindustan Times. “I’m planning to train villagers with instruction CDs that I have made, so that I can pass on the knowledge before I die,” he said.

First change the pig’s diet, then change ours

The environmental damage caused by our appetite for meat is immense. We must end our wasteful ways of rearing animals
Tristram Stuart

Tesco will soon carry carbon labels on its meat products. These will show that beef and cheese are vastly more costly in terms of carbon emissions than alternatives such as lentils and chicken. It would appear that Tesco knows how to sell things to the public — even climate-change induced dietary shifts — rather better than hairshirt-wearing environmentalists.
The furious response to Lord Stern of Brentford’s comments about meat consumption suggests that many believe he was calling for a Soviet-style imposition of strict vegetarianism on the entire population. He wasn’t. He was simply reiterating the point he has been making since the 2006 Stern report: that it would be much cheaper and more beneficial to address climate change now, rather than waiting for global warming to wreak havoc.
When it comes to food production, Lord Stern points out that people must pay for the true cost of their choices. Take the world’s remaining tropical forests. They are valuable habitat for innumerable species of plants and animals, and they store billions of tonnes of carbon, which if released, would harm everyone. And yet, millions of acres of forest are cleared every year, largely to produce soy and grassland to satisfy the soaring global demand for meat and dairy products.
Deforestation and forest degradation is costing the world’s economy €1.3 to €3.4 trillion every year. But no one is paying this bill. Although these costs are real, and constantly rising, the world economy currently has no mechanism for billing those responsible for them.

Lord Stern’s view is that we should put a price on these costs. This would mean that those who wished to buy the most polluting items would be free to do so: but they should pay for it. It is inequitable to expect others — including our descendants — to pay that bill for us.
Promoting vegetarianism to save the climate would be a tactical error. For the carnivorous majority it is an alienating concept and, more to the point, it is by no means necessary to save the planet. The V-word was invented in the 1840s to provide a label for those who wished to build a barrier between their own pure diet and the meaty meals of the majority. Society responded by pigeon-holing vegetarians as sandal-wearing faddists and then ignoring most of what they said.
There has been a turnaround in attitudes in the past two or three years. Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suggested last year that cutting down on meat was “the most attractive opportunity” for making simple and swift reductions in emissions. Jonathon Porritt, founder of Forum for the Future, has long put his name to the “eat less meat” campaign. Now Nicholas Stern has joined his voice to theirs.
These initiatives have largely been in response to the mounting evidence about the harmful effects of modern meat production. In 2006 the UN concluded that the livestock sector produces 18 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions, from a noxious combination of methane emissions, fossil fuel consumption, nitrogen fertilisers and deforestation.
About 40 per cent of the world’s cereals are used to feed farm animals, mainly for the satisfaction of the world’s richest consumers. This seems greedy when there are nearly a billion people in the world who can’t get enough food for themselves. Of the 700 million tonnes or so of wheat, rice and maize fed to livestock, only a third of the calories in the feed ends up being converted into useful meat or dairy products. The rest is turned by the animals into faeces, heat and inedible tissues. In the US, livestock give back only 20 per cent of the food they consume. About a third of the meat and dairy products produced is then wasted, so only around 13 per cent of the calories in the original arable harvest is actually consumed by people.
This level of profligacy is also reflected by the amount of water used in meat production. It takes 500–4,000 litres of water to grow a kilogram of wheat. But a kilo of meat takes 5,000–100,000 litres. Meanwhile, water scarcity is one of the most serious threats to human survival in parts of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
There is enormous scope for reducing emissions by changing the way animals are reared. When humans first domesticated livestock they did so because they could contribute to the food supply. Sheep and cattle ate grasses and shrubs that were otherwise useless to humans; pigs and chickens foraged for leftovers. It is only in the past several decades that livestock have been turned into consumers of vast quantities of grains.
Some meat is still produced in the industrialised world without this inordinate reliance on feed concentrates: British hill-sheep farming relies on extensive grazing.
One big obstacle to producing meat sustainably is the EU ban on feeding food waste to livestock. Since the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001 it has been illegal to feed swill to pigs, even though swill can be rendered safe simply by heat-treating it. The UN has calculated that if we fed livestock with food waste and agricultural residues, we could feed three billion additional people. Feeding food waste to pigs could also save millions of tonnes of carbon emissions by avoiding the need to produce conventional feed.
Lord Stern was brave to confront the dramatic changes we will all have to accept if catastrophic climate change is to be averted. It may seem unfeasible to expect rich countries to forgo their meaty, dairy-lubricated diets any time soon. But is it any more realistic to expect global meat production to burgeon without causing irreversible damage to the environment?
Tristram Stuart is author of Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal (Penguin)

Taiwan wind blows SeaEnergy’s way

Published Date: 28 October 2009
ABERDEEN-BASED SeaEnergy, the firm formerly known as Ramco, yesterday unveiled a deal with the Taiwan Generations Corporation to develop offshore wind farms off the Taiwanese coast.
Joel Staadecker, SeaEnergy Renewables’ chief executive, said: “Taiwan represents an opportunity to internationalise quickly in an environment where a project can be consented at a reasonably early date and at reasonable cost.”The Aim-listed company’s renewables subsidiary is made up of the team that developed the Beatrice offshore wind farm in the North Sea. The firm is working with Scottish & Southern Energy and RWE on projects off the UK coast.

Europe puts figure on green aid to push climate change deal

David Adam, environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 October 2009 20.34 GMT
Europe is to breathe life into the faltering search for a new global deal on climate change by pledging billions of pounds in financial support for poor countries, the Guardian can reveal.
European heads of state will formally recommend this week that rich countries should hand over around €100bn (£90bn) a year to nations such as India and Vietnam by 2020 to help them cope with the impact of global warming. The pledge is expected to come at the end of a two-day summit of European leaders on Thursday and Friday, and before negotiations on a new climate treaty in Copenhagen in December.
The move marks a victory in Brussels for the UK and Gordon Brown, who appears to have won arguments with member states including Germany over whether Europe should commit to climate funding ahead of the Copenhagen talks. Brown was the first western leader to put hard figures on the table when he said in a speech earlier this year that rich countries needed to provide $100bn (£61bn) a year by 2020.
A draft copy of the European summit’s conclusions obtained by the Guardian spells out that a “deal on financing will be a central part of an agreement in Copenhagen” and that Europe is ready to “take on its resulting fair share of total international public finance”.
The document says: “It is estimated that the total net incremental costs of mitigation and adaptation in developing countries could amount to around €100bn annually by 2020, to be met through a combination of their own efforts, the international carbon market and international public finance.”
It adds: “The overall level of the international public support required is estimated to lie in the range of €22bn to €50bn per year by 2020 … this range could be narrowed down in view of the Copenhagen summit.” The document does not specify how much money Europe is willing to provide, though previous estimates have put their likely contribution at about €10bn-€15bn each year. That could land European taxpayers with a bill of about €5bn-€7.5bn each year.
The European move marks the first formal recognition that rich countries will need to pick up the climate change bill prior to Copenhagen. Developing nations such as China and India have stressed that serious financial assistance is a prerequisite for any deal in Copenhagen.
The draft European position says: “All countries, except the least developed, should contribute to international public financing … based on emission levels and on GDP to reflect both responsibility for global emissions and ability to pay.”
Such a move would leave the US with a bill running to tens of billions a year, unlikely to go down well in Washington.
The European move comes amid gathering pessimism on the chances of a meaningful deal at Copenhagen. Hanne Bjurstroem, Norway’s chief climate negotiator, became the latest senior figure to express doubts when she told Reuters today: “I don’t believe we will get a full, ratifiable, legally binding agreement from Copenhagen.”
Joss Garman of Greenpeace said: “This document has a big number but as soon as you drill down there’s no plan for how to raise the money. Europe needs to push for a levy on shipping and aviation which could raise tens of billions to finance low carbon development in poor countries, and the means to adapt to climate change. Solving the question of finance for the developing world is the key to success in Copenhagen.”Some experts have said the true costs to the developing world of tackling climate change could be much higher than what will now be pledged – perhaps up to $200-300bn a year. China and India have called for rich countries to hand over 1% of their GDP.

Senate Democrats push for climate bill ahead of Copenhagen

• Obama administration warns of cost of inaction• Move met with opposition from Baucus and Inhofe
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 October 2009 19.54 GMT
The epic confrontation about how America will power the economy of the future formally got underway today amid stark warnings from the Obama administration of the costs of inaction on energy reform.
Today’s hearing, the first of three blockbuster sessions in the Senate, marks a last heave by administration officials and Democratic leaders to advance a bill to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions before an international climate change meeting at Copenhagen, now just six weeks away.
They were met with strong opposition from a powerful Democrat as well as Republicans on the environment and public works committee.
With the clock running down to Copenhagen, the administration wheeled out four top officials to make the case that failure to act now on climate change would relegate America to lower tier status in the global economy. “When the starting gun sounded on the clean energy race, the United States stumbled,” Steven Chu, the energy secretary, told the environment and public works committee. “If we don’t choose to begin the development of this new technology, China and other countries will.”
American legislation on climate change is seen as essential to reaching a meaningful deal at Copenhagen. But the White House held up action in the Senate on a climate change bill to focus on healthcare reform. The proposed law, which now stretches for more than 900 pages, would cut America’s greenhouse gas emissions by 20% over 2005 levels by 2020 and encourage the development of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. Democratic leaders in the Senate are now struggling to advance a bill - which does not have solid support even among their own party - before the meeting in Copenhagen.
In an ominous sign for those prospects, Max Baucus, who ranks second on the environment committee and chairs the finance committee which will also review the bill, said the proposed 20% reduction target was too steep. “I have some concerns about the overall direction of the bill,” he said. “We cannot afford the unmitigated impacts of climate change but we also cannot afford the unmitigated effects of legislation.”
For weeks, the White House, Democrats, and environmental organisations have lobbied hard to frame the bill as an economic opportunity.
Obama picked up the theme again in a visit to a solar plant in Florida where he announced $3.48bn in government grants to projects modernising America’s electrical grid. In introducing the bill today, Barbara Boxer leaned heavily on an analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency that showed the shift away from oil and coal would cost just 22 to 30 cents a day.
Global warming isn’t waiting for who is a Democrat or who is a Republican. Either we are going to deal with this problem or we are not,” she said.
John Kerry, who co-wrote the bill with Boxer, said it would usher in a technological revolution akin to the rapid growth of the internet in the 1990s. “We are going to create the equivalent of five or 10 Googles and that is going to drive the economy of our country,” said John Kerry, the former presidential candidate who is the other co-author of the bill.
But their arguments appeared to make little headway with Republicanson the committee. James Inhofe, the Okalahoma Republican who notoriously declared global warming a hoax, called the bill a “temple of doom” which would cost Americans up to $400bn a year.
Some Republicans pressed for investment to build 100 new nuclear plants over the next decade, or to expand offshore oil drilling to meet America’s future energy needs. Others argued that America would be damaging its own interests if it embarked on costly energy reforms - while emerging powers like India and China did not.

Go green, go vegan

It may not be his only concern, but Lord Stern’s suggestion that changing our diet would help slow climate change is important

Chris Goodall
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 October 2009 15.30 GMT
Clearly irritated that his argument in an interview in the Times had been boiled down to a “go veggie to save the planet” headline, Nicholas Stern has issued a clarifying statement:
I think that once people understand the great risks that climate change poses, they will naturally want to choose products and services that cause little or no emissions of greenhouse gases, which means ‘low-carbon consumption’. This will apply across the board, including electricity, heating, transport and food. A diet that relies heavily on meat production results in higher emissions than a typical vegetarian diet. Different individuals will make different choices. However, the debate about climate change should not be dumbed down to a single slogan, such as ‘give up meat to save the planet’.
Without representing his position as advocacy for veganism, Stern’s point on food is correct: the average western diet makes a very substantial contribution to climate change. Rough calculations suggest that food production is responsible for between 15% and 20% of total UK greenhouse gas emissions. Food miles are important and the electricity consumption of a big supermarket might surprise you. But the really serious issue is the intensive farming of livestock, particularly cows and sheep, which generate as much as a half of the total emissions. One study from 2007 suggested that the CO2-equivalent emissions of global warming gases from beef production could be as much as 50 times the weight of the meat itself.
There are three elements to the problem: farmed livestock eat large quantities of grain, they belch methane and they use land that might otherwise be forest. To get a kilo of beef, the animal typically eats about eight kilos of grain. That corn or wheat took energy to grow, required a lot of artificial fertiliser and then needed to be processed into a cake for cattle. Some of the fertiliser applied to fields breaks down into nitrous oxide, a far more powerful global warming gas than carbon dioxide. Cows and sheep emit methane as bacteria in their digestive tracts digest the cellulose in plants. And, worldwide, the gradual increase in the consumption of meat creates pressure to cut down forests to create new pastureland and cropland for grains to help feed the livestock.
As countries get more prosperous, their populations tend to eat more meat. So unless we do something, the impacts of livestock farming are probably going to get worse. And, by the way, it isn’t just meat. The same arguments apply, albeit with less force, to dairy products as well. The best diet from a climate point of view is probably a mixture of dried plant-based foods, such as beans and nuts, with large quantities of locally grown seasonal vegetables and fruits. It may also be best for our health and it would certainly save us money. In fact, the simplest and cheapest way of largely meeting your commitment to the 10:10 campaign would probably be to eat vegan foods for half the week. To many people this will seem a less demanding challenge than not flying for a summer holiday.
Nevertheless, the reaction to Lord Stern’s statement has been unpleasantly vicious. People have seen his views as another illustration of how “climate change” will be used as an excuse for the elite to limit the choices of ordinary people. We are already being told to drive less, not to fly and to buy dim lightbulbs. Stern’s comments suggest a future campaign to reduce our hamburger consumption.
Unfortunately, the many stresses on the world’s ecosystems mean that either we eat less meat or change our farming and food manufacturing methods. The greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, food manufacturing, transport and retailing are now about two tonnes a head, about as much as we can afford to emit from all our activities in 2050. Either we decide to eat a very different diet, as Stern suggests, or we try to change agriculture so that it becomes a helpful part of our drive to reduce emissions. Instead of depleting the soil and abusing animals in pursuit of cheap meat, we could put our weight behind schemes for using agricultural soils to sequester CO2. A new campaign, called Climate Friendly Food, may offer us a way of continuing to eat some meat and looking after the global atmosphere at the same time.