I wonder how much we all paid for this BS:
UN says eat less meat to curb global warming | Environment | The Observer.
People should have one meat-free day a week if they want to make a personal and effective sacrifice that would help tackle climate change, the world’s leading authority on global warming has told The Observer
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which last year earned a joint share of the Nobel Peace Prize, said that people should then go on to reduce their meat consumption even further.
I also wonder how much the environment would be helped if we eliminated the UN? What with all of their cars and jets and paper-wasting reports. Plus, do you have any idea how large the carbon footprint is of a UN refugee camp rape victim? Let’s just say that there is a lot of yelling and that yelling emits carbon. Very bad for the environment. Perhaps if the UN aid workers clamped their victims’ mouths shut with a non-leather strap? That would cut down on output.
Sorry, but I can’t help but see this as yet another UN-prescribed attack on the western lifestyle. They don’t care about the environment, just poisoning people’s view of gun-toting, bible-thumping meat-eaters.
Does the UN report account for all of the extra gas humans will be outputting as a result of increasing other foods to replace the meat?
I can’t wait until they put out the report that says we can all save the environment by killing ourselves.
Are you serious? The whole point of this report is that the amount of energy spent on producing a meat-based meal is tremendously higher than the amount spent on a vegetable-based meal. That’s it. And it’s true. No amount of wishing is going to make it not true. No one’s even suggesting eating less food. Just less meat. Is that really that outrageous? What is it eating about a steak dinner that makes people think they’re reinforcing some ideological position or affirming their personal values or proudly participating in some imagined “western lifestyle”? That’s ridiculous. It’s not your religion. It’s not your testicles. It’s dinner. Just relax and take amount to consider whether or not your behavior is having negative consequences for the rest of the world.
Please forgive my typos. I got a little overheated.
There are two issues here and one is about the freedom to eat what you want without some external body telling you that you are somehow wrong. If you want to eat a vegetable based meal because you think it is a better choice for you, power to you. You’ll notice that I won’t comment on your lifestyle choice.
The other issue (and it is related to the first) is this nonsense issue about man made global warming. Based on a shaky theory that cow farts and a handful of other evil market driven carbon sinners are responsible for the size of polar ice caps, we are all supposed to curb our consumer life style. Sorry, but from the agency that puts Libya and Cuba in the chairmanship of the human rights committee, I smell a rat.
Further, I will not be lectured to about what I eat by an organization that doesn’t even have the slightest control over it’s own institutions.
That’s all.
Hey, of course. Who does want to be lectured to? I don’t think that’s really the best way of characterizing what the UN is doing here, though.
This recommendation comes from just bare, factual research that tallies up the amount of energy required to produce a certain quantity of meat calories versus a certain quantity of vegetable calories, and it turns out that way way way less energy is required to produce the same number of edible, nutritious plant-based calories as equally edible, nutritious meat-based calories.
Now, if you’re the kind of person who denies that there is such a thing as man-made global warming, then it doesn’t really matter to you what they say in the first place. But, for those people who do think that there is a climate crisis (or even just an energy one) and that human behavior makes a difference, this just puts out a relatively simple way to make a pretty big difference. That’s all it is.
As for your comments about the UN itself, does that stuff really apply here? Do you also hate the USDA’s food pyramid? It, too, is a research-based set of recommendations for your personal food choices that comes from a branch of a big, sprawling bureaucracy that sometimes does stupid things, namely the U.S. government.
Even if you don’t buy into Global Warming (and I still can’t quite believe you don’t), there are plenty of other environmental reasons to cut back at least a little on meat – that growing dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico from the fertilizer running off all the fields on which we grow livestock feed, all the water it wastes, the land it wastes, the local environmental problems caused by factory farms, livestock-wildlife conflicts out West. You can still stick to your meat-eating lifestyle, just ease back a bit. What’s so scary about that?
Bernard, Don’t be thick. I do not just swallow the fad du jour that man made global warming is beyond all debate. The earth has been warming since the end of the last ice age. I tend to think that our obsession with our impact on the environment is not much more than a thumb sucking exercise in homage to our desire to be in control of things we are not in control of.
Anyway, I do not begrudge you your decision to eat in a way that you deem appropriate for you for whatever reasons you choose. Do me the honor of allowing me the same freedom to choose. And pay attention to that previous statement about the FREEDOM TO CHOOSE.
You see, I don’t share all of your morals. I have my own set and people who tell me that their morals are somehow better than mine because I like to eat meat at least once a day, kind of make me want to puke.
It smacks of socialism to suggest that I should eat less meat for the greater good. The greater good can kiss my ass, not because I don’t appreciate the greater good, but because one man’s greater good is another man’s terrorist. You see, it is all subjective, and not at all empirical, no matter how many former vice-presidents tell me it is so.
[...] that being vegan one day a week would greatly improve the health of the planet. Other than this douche bag, maybe everyone else will start to realize what a good idea that is. [...]