AGRICULTURAL NEWS - Climate change is the greatest challenge to human health, according to the recent Lancet Commission report which calls for action to protect the global population.
The report says that tackling climate change could deliver huge public health benefits, largely through phasing out coal, embracing renewable energy, and moving to a low-carbon economy. There is however one crucial issue the report fails to address: meat.
The commission's recommendations are all based on solid evidence about the link between greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and human health. Focusing only on energy policy, however, will not be enough to head off climate change successfully.
Calls for action that do not include reduction in the world's livestock production and meat consumption will not be able to protect public health from the effects of climate change.
The livestock sector is a large source of global greenhouse gas emissions, with estimates of its overall contribution varying between 18% and 51%. Even in the smallest estimate, the livestock sector emits more greenhouse gas than the world's transport networks.
According to one set of projections, by 2050 this sector will singlehandedly account for 72% of the total "safe operating space" for human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, 88% of the safe operating space for biomass use, and 300% of the safe operating space for the mobilization of nitrogen compounds in soils and elsewhere.
This would lead to irreversible changes, irrespective of any efforts to mitigate climate change in other sectors of the economy.
The livestock industry does not just generate carbon dioxide - it adds to the full spectrum of major greenhouse gases. It is the primary (and growing) source of methane and nitrous oxide - gases estimated to have 84 and 264 times respectively the global warming potential of CO2 on a 20-year horizon (see page 87 here).
On the positive side, however, methane dissipates the most rapidly of all greenhouse gases, and so changing what we eat would have an also immediate effect on climate change.
Moving away from meat would also help farmers to use nitrogen more efficiently, which would have the dual impact of causing less pollution while also helping people get more nutrition from the foods they grow.
