The world leaders let us down in Copenhagen. So, (as usual) if we want the job done right, we’ve got to do it ourselves. One place to start may be to substitute high-emission meat with low-emission meat on the dinner table.
Some animals do a lot more burping and farting than others. To give you a feel for who’s who in the zoo, here’s a chart:
The only environmentally friendly (and humane) choice is vegetarianism, or better still, veganism.
It’s not just the carbon emissions. Factory farming of animals means massive doses of antibiotics for the hapless creatures imprisoned in these place, (with obvious consequences for bacterial resistance in the humans who consume them), discharge of huge amounts of waste into the waterways, and consumption of lots of animals who died sick, not to mention suffering.
Check out Eating up the World, the environmental consequences of human food choices. available free in .pdf format, at
http://www.vnv.org.au/site/htmfiles/eatinguptheworld.htm
and http://www.savebabe.com
and pardon a pig this Christmas!
Kangaroo is good eating. Nice soft feet, high iron, low fat, plenty of them around…
Whilst your suggestion has merit David, why not also suggest substituting meat with plant food options? Not only are they much lower in ghg emissions, but also significantly lower in water use (why not do a chart on that too?), land and energy use per kilo of end product. There are also the health benefits from a reduction in meat and increase in variety of nutritious tasty plant foods, with a plethora of great vego recipes in books and websites to try. And in terms of promoting compassion at Christmas time, I’d recommend a pre-Christmas visit to an intensive piggery, battery egg farm, broiler shed and of course an abattoir. But of course I understand why most people dry retch at that suggestion. Isn’t it ironic.
This doesn’t seem to give an entirely useful basis for comparison. You really need to scale it to kg-CO2-equiv per kg-meat-produced. Clearly the amount of meat available from a single chicken is significantly less than that available from a single cow, and some animals would need to be kept for more longer than others too.
It’d be interesting to see the same graph with cats and dogs added…