No Meat Allowed

[MACH1]

Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet


People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.

In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.

Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.

He predicted that people’s attitudes would evolve until meat eating became unacceptable. “I think it’s important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating,” he said. “I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student. People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.”

He also issued a clear message to President Obama that he must attend the meeting in Copenhagen in person in order for an effective deal to be reached. US leadership, he said, was “desperately needed” to secure a deal.

He said that he was deeply concerned that popular opinion had so far failed to grasp the scale of the changes needed to address climate change, or of the importance of the UN meeting in Copenhagen from December 7 to December 18. “I am not sure that people fully understand what we are talking about or the kind of changes that will be necessary,” he added.

Up to 20,000 delegates from 192 countries are due to attend the UN conference in the Danish capital. Its aim is to forge a deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to prevent an increase in global temperatures of more than 2 degrees centigrade. Any increase above this level is expected to trigger runaway climate change, threatening the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Lord Stern said that Copenhagen presented a unique opportunity for the world to break free from its catastrophic current trajectory. He said that the world needed to agree to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to 25 gigatonnes a year from the current level of 50 gigatonnes.

UN figures suggest that meat production is responsible for about 18 per cent of global carbon emissions, including the destruction of forest land for cattle ranching and the production of animal feeds such as soy.

Lord Stern, who said that he was not a strict vegetarian himself, was speaking on the eve of an all-parliamentary debate on climate change. His remarks provoked anger from the meat industry.

Jonathan Scurlock, of the National Farmers Union, said: “Going vegetarian is not a worldwide solution. It’s not a view shared by the NFU. Farmers in this country are interested in evidence-based policymaking. We don’t have a methane-free cow or pig available to us.”

On average, a British person eats 50g of protein derived from meat each day — the equivalent of a chicken breast or a lamb chop. This is a relatively low level for a wealthy country but between 25 per cent and 50 per cent higher than the amount recommended by the World Health Organisation.

Su Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Vegetarian Society, welcomed Lord Stern’s remarks. “What we choose to eat is one of the biggest factors in our personal impact on the environment,” she said. “Meat uses up a lot of resources and a vegetarian diet consumes a lot less land and water. One of the best things you can do about climate change is reduce the amount of meat in your diet.”

The UN has warned that meat consumption is on course to double by the middle of the century.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6891362.ece

Next they'll tell us we can't have a horse and buggy because the horses fart to much.


While they're at it we should exterminate all the wild animals too. They just add to the fictional problem.

[Vincent]

Originally Posted by MACH1

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6891362.ece

Next they'll tell us we can't have a horse and buggy because the horses fart to much.


While they're at it we should exterminate all the wild animals too. They just add to the fictional problem.

Please oh environmentalists. Come to my house and try to take my greasy ribeye from me. Please.

If these ninnies were to bring this idiocy to pass what would the NFL look like?

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-oline-...teelers-Week-6

[revefsreleets]

If you give these nitwits and inch, they'll demand 100 miles.

This is what happens when common sense is tossed out the window in favor of pseudo-scientific fads...

[MACH1]

Originally Posted by Vincent

Please oh environmentalists. Come to my house and try to take my greasy ribeye from me. Please.

If these ninnies were to bring this idiocy to pass what would the NFL look like?

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-oline-...teelers-Week-6

They'll have to pry my steak knife out of my cold dead hands.

[revefsreleets]

I know I'm going to catch Hell for this, but we will actually start to see the population DECREASE in the next 30 years or so (rapidly declining birth rates support this)...this alone will go a long way toward alleviating many of the alarmist fears of the fringy eco-terrorist types overly concerned about man-made global warming.

And even though we have plenty of fossil fuels to last us for centuries, we probably will move, at leats for the most part, away from petro-based fuel over that same rough equivalent of time.

In support of my above claim, I'm posting an excerpt from George Friedman's "The Next 100 Years":



1) "The entire global system has been built since 1750 on the expectation of continually expanding populations." However, "the single most important fact of the twenty-first century [will be] the end of the population explosion. By 2050, advanced industrialized countries will be losing population at a dramatic rate." Additionally, the ratio of workers to retirees will be significantly decreasing. The combination of these two factors will result in severe labor shortages in most if not all of the so-called industrialized countries.

2) The ramifications of the end of the population explosion and the resulting demographics will result in immigration into industrialized countries changing from prevention to encouragement. The wall between the United States and Mexico will likely be nullified long before its finished, and will probably be torn down in the fashion of the Berlin Wall.

3) Massively declining populations in the world (including notable increases in the average age of the population) -- especially in Europe, Russia, and the Far East -- will have major impacts. Europe, for example, may see its current population decline from 728 million people to between 557 and 653 million by 2050 (with the prediction of less than 600 million more likely). "The United States will be short of workers no later than 2020 and accelerating through the decade, and will need immigrants to feel the gap." "The crisis will come to a head", probably "in the presidential election of either 2028 or 2032."

4) "Birthrates are plunging. The question is why." On the one hand, there is a decline in infant mortality, and secondly, an increase in life expectancies. However, with the sophistication of technology advances, "the economic value of children declined." "Ten children in eighteenth-century France might have been a godsend. Ten children in late-nineteenth-century France might have been a burden. Ten children in late-twentieth century France would be a catastrophe." "The decline in economic necessity removes a powerful stabilizing force in marriage." Curiously, "The United States has a vested interest in the destruction of traditional social values."

5) "Genetic science will continue to extend life expectancy, and will eradicate or bring under control a series of genetic diseases. This will lead to increasing social instability. The radical shifts that have wracked Europe and the United States, transforming the role of women and the structure of the family, will become a worldwide phenomenon. Deep tensions -- between supporters of traditional values and new social realities -- will become intense throughout the second-tier countries, and all major religions will be wracked by them. Catholicism, Confucianism, and Islam will all be arrayed with traditional understandings of family, sexuality, and the relations between generations. But the traditional values are going to collapse in Europe and the United States, and they will then collapse throughout most of the rest of the world."

The idea of an "end of the population explosion" is not a slam dunk in terms of convincing a lot of people that were raised on Paul R. Ehrlich's prognostications of immiment doom due to The Population Bomb, that there are not in fact already too many humans on the planet, and that worse yet, things are not getting worse at an ever increasing rate. Exponential increases in population does in fact sell a lot more doomsday extracts.

Reality, and statistics of reality, however, must be occasionally reviewed with an open mind. Because of this, the reality of greatly reduced birth rates does strongly suggest that things are indeed getting worse, but at a slower rate. Instead of the world going to hell next month... we're more likely going to be able to postpone population armageddon until next year. And if in fact we are rapidly moving toward a time when there will be fewer people on the planet one year than there were the previous year... this does not mean necessarily that we will no longer be overpopulated.

[MasterOfPuppets]

haha...i thought this would be a thread about lesbians...

[Steelerstrength]

Personally, I haven't had red meat for 18 years. Don't really miss it much either. During my competitive years, I ate red meat 3-5 times per day, top round & sirloin, to hit 265 lbs., and I'm just under 5'9". ( had good abs at that bodyweight too.) Guess you can say I ruined my digestive system with the over-consumption of red meat. It definitely is slow to digest.

I believe less people should choose to eat red meat, and enjoy a healthier lifestyle. Plenty of those obese individuals are the reason my insurance is over 1K per month just for my wife & I. Physically active people can eat it in moderation without any issue.

[tony hipchest]

do fish fart?

[devilsdancefloor]

[MasterOfPuppets]

Originally Posted by tony hipchest

do fish fart?

wouldn't that explain the mysterious bubbles that rise to the surface ?