As I write, the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen (“COP15″) is focusing our attention on global warming. We’re right to be anxious about our future, our children’s and their children’s future, and the environment we’re leaving for them. Nonetheless, here are just five recent developments that give me hope.
ONE: Defra commissioned the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) to produce a report for government to achieve its objective of a “sustainable, secure and healthy food supply.” The report, Setting the Table: Advice to Government on priority elements of sustainable diets, concluded that
“reducing meat and dairy consumption, reducing consumption of food and drink of low nutritional value and reducing food waste… would have the most significant positive sustainability impact.”
TWO: The SDC message of “less meat and dairy means improved health and stronger environmental protection” is increasingly voiced by some of the world’s most influential people. For example, Paul McCartney took his message of ‘Meatless Mondays’ to a European Parliament conference in Brussels earlier this month and wrote in the Parliament Magazine.
THREE: The less meat message is increasingly part of the global warming debate. For example, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also spoke with Paul McCartney at the European Parliament conference, “Global Warming and Food Policy: Less Meat = Less Heat.” Dr Pachauri, who was our 2008 Peter Roberts Memorial speaker, said in Brussels, “Cutting meat down to five or six days a week will certainly make a difference.” Dr Pachauri also took the eat less meat message to the Climate Change events in Copenhagen, repeating the message at a huge convention of business leaders and at a conference organised by the Asian Development Bank.
Again, at the European Parliament conference, Paul McCartney read out a statement from former US Vice President Al Gore, which said, “Meatless Mondays is a responsible and welcome component to a strategy for reducing global pollution.”
There is a film of the event with an excellent intervention from Caroline Lucas MEP at 10.56 minutes and my colleague Joyce D’Silva at 11:06:18.
In addition to Paul McCartney, Dr Rajendra Pachauri and Al Gore, Prince Charles also recently spoke out in support of sustainable agriculture.
“If an industrialised approach to animal husbandry – which increasingly treats animals as machines in an ever more "efficient" system – carries no risk, then why are we seeing e-coli outbreaks in the United States from cattle raised on feedlots, fed on corn (when their stomachs were designed to cope with grass and leaves) and processed in ever-decreasing numbers of abattoirs as big as car factories? If every technological innovation to increase the productive capacity of industrialised animals far beyond what Nature intended is considered safe, then why did the European Union decide to ban antibiotics as growth promoters in animal feed after they had been in use for fifty years?”
FOUR: Independent research commissioned for Compassion and Friends of the Earth by the Institute of Social Ecology in Austria and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and published in our report, Eating the Planet, showed that:
“feeding the world in 2050 is possible without using the most intensive forms of animal and crop production or a massive expansion of land for farming. Also, humane methods of farming animals can provide sufficient food to feed a growing world population. Further, there would be sufficient food for all if rich countries adopt healthier, lower meat-based diets and food is distributed more equally and without further deforestation.”
FIVE: The prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, published a series of articles, The Health Benefits of Tackling Climate Change (PDF), which said that reducing adult consumption of animal products by 30% would lead to a 15% reduction in heart disease in the UK alone. Further, the report stated
“Achieving a substantial cut in greenhouse-gas emissions will depend on reducing the production of food from livestock and on technological improvements in farming. A reduction in consumption of animal source foods could have great benefits for cardiovascular health.”
While the final outcome of COP15 is unknown there can be no denying that these five recent developments indicate that a groundswell of scientific research, public policy and public opinion is steadily moving away from the old regime of factory farming with all of its negative consequences, toward a positive future in which the world is fed with humane and healthy food while simultaneously protecting the environment. As always, the choice is ours.
