Last week we had a people in New Zealand saying we need edible pets. This week we have England’s “premier climatologist” saying we need to give up meat. You first, me Lord. However, this sort of tactic risks marginalization of his cause. Poll numbers are already falling. What’s really needed here is “steak watch”. Since as we’ve seen with many prominent people who give worldly advice, they often don’t follow it, we need some British paparazzi at restaurants and public banquets to see if Lord Stern follows his own advice. When in Japan, maybe someone can offer him the new Windows 7 Whopper to try. Why no “OSX Snow Leopard” Burger? – Anthony
From the London Times: Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet
by Robin Pagnamenta, Energy Editor
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.”
Lord Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank and now I. G. Patel Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, warned that British taxpayers would need to contribute about £3 billion a year by 2015 to help poor countries to cope with the inevitable impact of climate change.
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.
Read the rest of the article at the London Times: Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet
Richard Briscoe (10:21:14) : Rather reminds me of the old joke.
If you laid all the Economists in the world end to end, you still could not reach a conclusion…
Barry Foster (10:33:36) : People DO need to give up meat, but not because of any climate nonsense, but because of the land and resources required to provide for animals.
This fails on two counts. First off, take corn. You can not eat the stalks and leaves. A cow can. For maximum yield of “food per acre” you run a mixed farm with ruminants to turn the cellulosic stuff into usable stuff. Anything else results in less food per acre, not more.
But we don’t do that very much, you say? Yes, which brings up point number two. We have so much excess land that millions of tons of straw, stems, leaves, et. al. are just left to rot. There simply is no reason to “conserve” because we can produce at least 10 times more food than we do today if we needed to. So there is no reason to deprive yourself, since there is no shortage of “stuff” and that includes food supply; present and future.
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
In the future everyone WILL be almost vegetarian. Meat will be an expensive luxury. Admittedly that time is quite a way off, but it WILL come.
Not in my lifetime. Not in my children’s lifetime. Not in my grandkids lifetime. Not in 200 years. Not in…
This is craziness #2. Lots of number left o get the rest of them.
😉
The two things that you cannot get enough of in a vegan or vegetarian diet are B-12 and iron. I have a cousin who is a vegan (would like to say she is not a blood relative but she is) who has to get B-12 shots. I have not asked what her iron status is. What I do know is that she is obese and unhealthy. On the other hand I have no problem with eating vegetarian a couple of nights a week. Being an omnivore means some animal protein. You can get vegetable protein with beans and rice or corn and beans. But at some point you need meat, not chicken or fish, red meat.
Can I eat Lord Stern,with or without veg?
Used to raise beef critters. Mostly Brahma mix with Angus and scrub cattle This was in Florida where he soil was sandy that most nutrients leached below the root level so fast that it was impractical to do much improvement other than to remove some of the rougher vegetation. Our beef was grass fed and we found the best time to slaughter for consumption was usually around early to mid June. that was when the fastest growth cycle of the animal occurred. For personal use we processed only yearling stock. The flavor and taste were quite good. On the other hand if you were to early the “dry season was in full force and if to late the hot season was in full force” causing the meat to be tough and stringy. It is all in the growth rate of the critter.
The removal of the buffalow wasn’t for its meat or skins. it was for the bounty. the skins was an added extra and the meat was wasted although it is much better quality than beef. The destruction of the buffalo was for the purpose of starving the indian tribes into submission. It worked.
Makes one wonder why some one would propose veggie only diet when most folks nowadays wouldn’t know how to grow a bean.
By the way Roger Sowell if you get the chance and are near El Paso Tx. try the El Paso Land and Cattle Co. It is a great place to get any cut of beef you want. The last time I was out there it was moved out of town east on Interstate 10- about 30 miles. Great food and very friendly staff.
One of my favorites is Pork loin marinated over nite in red wine and injected before roasting with a mix of red wine and honey. Try it some time salt and pepper with lemon to taste.
Bill Derryberry
Get ready for a heat wave, folks. I’m ordering some steak at Outback tonight.
Ron de Haan (16:43:24) : You and worldometers are caught up by science and technology already. New crop production techniques have been developed and they can be applied indoors. These techniques not only generate a very high yield per square meter but also optimize the use of water and fertilizer.
Not only can, but have. Tomatoes for canning and sauce are still field grown, but in California the tomatoes for sale whole are largely hot-house. Same thing for a lot of the zukes and cukes. Specialty lettuces are often hydroponic too. Basically, you get 3 to 10 time the yield per acre, much lower pesticide costs, less water cost, better quality with fewer blemish rejects, and more.
In the “no shortage of stuff” link there is a section on food. My favorite is the links to the Disney World hydroponic / aquaculture / aeroponics exhibit. The produce from it is used in the hotels on property. This is not sci-fi, it is commercial on very large scale today. One of the largest operations is a sand bed system in Saudi Arabia. I’ll let you guess why 😉
One of my favorite systems was developed by NASA. It is about the size of a kitchen table – about 7? feet high, but has a bunch of layers each about 9 inches high. They developed a special 6 inch grain (wheat?) to grow in it. in tests, it produced enough salad stuff for a space station full of folks. Don’t remember the yield of other foods. Basically, if you can build a high rise apartment to live in, you can produce enough food in part of the space to feed everyone. We don’t do it because we have cheaper alternatives.
Just think about all those doomsayers like the Club of Rome
As I understand it, there is some link showing them to be behind the AGW thing too. On my someday list is to investigate just who funds those loons.
David S (17:33:05) : All this talk of food is making me hungry. I think I’ll drive my SUV down to that nice steak restaurant on the other side of town and order a T-bone.
Silly person. Everyone knows that’s a bad choice. The Porterhouse is far superior!
Stefan, it sound like you are doing great. The extra energy and your ability to climb the stairs 20 times came from the lost weight. You do not have to lug around the big heavy body anymore so you have more energy and can do more. That is a good thing. Get your animal protein down to no more than 6 oz a day and your body will let you know if you need more food. Listen to it. It will also tell you when you are no longer hungry.
You do not have to eat potatoes and pasta. As I said, eat only food items you have to chew hard and take a while to eat. I think pasta just slids down, no chewing necessary. If you eat potatoes only eat them baked. Check the fiber content of everything and only pick carbs with over 4 grams of fiber a serving
Cf. Pohl and Kornbluth, The Space Merchants, where meat was provided by a gigantic living block of in-vitro animal muscle called “Chicken Little.” It was located somewhere like Puerto Rico, as I recall (it has been many years, but the image stayed with me). Sounded plausible to me.
/Mr Lynn
That’s what we need, for sure. I tried to interest Mitt Romney in the role, but never even received a form letter from his staff in reply. Maybe Sarah Palin could lead us out of this wasteland. Or better, someone not currently in politics, like General Petraeus. . .
/Mr Lynn
What’s with all these Lords, do they just appoint themselves to whatever title they like?
“Maybe Sarah Palin could lead us out of this wasteland.”
As a Brit., I’m hoping for a Palin/Bolton ticket for ’12. Her drive and his sophistication would be a powerful force.
Eve, thanks again for the feedback. Just for the record, I was never overweight, I was just starting to add a few kilos over the years, and I wanted to stop that trend. So I’m still curious about the extra energy—I wasn’t a big guy lugging around lots of weight—seems more like my body was stressed somehow, and cutting out stuff provided relief.
Norm/Calgary (20:31:29) :
You can buy titles if you want:
http://www.elitetitles.co.uk/
Effectively you buy a square foot (or somesuch) of a titled estate and you get to call yourself Lord/Lady of . One of the secretaries at work is Lady Tracey of Tattingstone. I notice she was promoted in the last year … this stuff must work!
Patrick Davis (19:27:57) :
Wow… the Brits really have lost the plot… I feel your pain.
As others have said humans are omnivores. Our teeth are designed for such a diet. Our body chemistry requires it.
The main thing it’s not possible to get in a strict vegan diet is the B vitamin group, especially B-12. The human body can store quite a lot of those vitamins but when not replenished they’ll run out.
Look up B vitamin deficiency diseases. Among them are brain and nerve damage. Let it go long enough and the damage is permanent.
There’s no such thing as a healthy vegan diet. You MUST take supplements of the vital chemical compounds only meat can naturally provide. Most forms of supplements are a poor substitute because they’re not in the same form as the natural versions in meats and are harder for your body to utilize.
When researching vegetarian stuff, check to see whether or not the diet is promoted for children. If whomever is pushing vegetarian or vegan eating for children, don’t take their advice at all.
A child’s developing and growing body needs meats and fats to obtain the compounds for proper muscle, brain and nerve growth.
Lately I’ve been seeing many instances of people feeding dogs a vegetarian diet. Dogs are omnivores, their dietary requirements are much like humans. Feeding a dog a vegetarian diet is animal cruelty.
One of my favorite quotes from a book;
“What do you want on your vegetarian pizza?”
“Dead pigs and cows, they’re vegetarians.”
A vegetarian diet is better? But isn’t that really saying eat more meat…? Okay, so change the words to avoid being cannibalized, and you’re left with “eat a vegtable diet”, which implies that we all abstain from vegtables, and thus, presumably, eat more meat!
Burger King, as always, was way ahead on this one 🙂
People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.
I want carbon in my food! Carbon is food, and food is carbon! It is the central element in the food chain, and without it, life does not exist.
It could easily be argued that the free distribution and ease of movement of CO2 is the only reason life has flourished at all – without such a compound, it would be extremely hard for any decent ecological cycle to perpetuate.
“Bulldust (20:48:20) :
Patrick Davis (19:27:57) :
Wow… the Brits really have lost the plot… I feel your pain.”
Fortunately, I dodn’t live there anymore however, what madness appears there seems to filter, some of it atleast, downunder, eventually.
“Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases.” if you ignore the fact that the food they eat absorbs co2 and its part of the “contemporary co2 cycle” i.e. no extra co2 is added to the atmosphere (methane converts to co2 in the atmosphere after a short period). Given the complete lack of scientific basis for the claims of cow farts contributing to global temperature, this must simply be a trick to make us all vegies. Why do scientists sit quiet when they hear such misleading claims?
Cows do not produce methane. Neither do termites. The actual agents are the cellulose-digesting microbes in the stomachs of cows and termites.
Cellulose-digesting bacteria are ubiquitous — in no way limited to the stomachs of insects and ruminants.
Cellulose, a product of photosynthesis, is going to get digested one way or another, or combusted, whether there are many cows or few cows on the planet.
Lord Stern may eat carbon-free food. After all, Stern means “star” in German and stars are mostly composed of hydrogen and helium.
But what about the other mortals, such as Gore which means “blood and flesh”? 🙂 Can they survive without carbon and steaks?
michel (11:31:03) :
: There is however a lot of truth in Stern’s view. It is true that if we really do want to reduce carbon emissions to around 20% of their present levels, one of the things we will have to do is totally reform the way we eat. We will have to go to more or less organic agriculture, which means that fertiliser will come from compost, we will use green manure, animals will be grass fed and graze not corn and soy fed in stalls. We will do a lot more hand weeding and hoeing. We may even go back to horse drawn transport. Chemical agriculture will have to stop totally. It will be back to 1870 or so in food production. Use of tractors will be limited, cars and planes will be abolished.
Problem is that would increase the carbon “hoofprint”
eg Abstract
A common perception is that pasture-based, low-input dairy systems characteristic of the 1940s were more conducive to environmental stewardship than modern milk production systems. The objective of this study was to compare the environmental impact of modern (2007) U.S. dairy production with historical production practices as exemplified by the U.S. dairy system in 1944. A deterministic model based on the metabolism and nutrient requirements of the dairy herd was used to estimate resource inputs and waste outputs per billion kg of milk. Both the modern and historical production systems were modeled using characteristic management practices, herd population dynamics and production data from U.S. dairy farms. Modern dairy practices require considerably fewer resources than dairying in 1944 with 21% of animals, 23% of feedstuffs, 35% of the water and only 10% of the land required to produce the same one billion kg of milk. Waste outputs were similarly reduced, with modern dairy systems producing 24% of the manure, 43% CH4 and 56% N2O per billion kg of milk compared to equivalent milk from historical dairying. The carbon footprint per billion kg of milk produced in 2007 was 37% of equivalent milk production in 1944. To fulfill the increasing U.S. population’s requirement for dairy products it is essential to adopt management practices and technologies that improve productive efficiency allowing milk production to be increased while reducing resource use and mitigating environmental impact.
http://jas.fass.org/cgi/content/abstract/jas.2009-1781v1
Stephan, it does not take much weight loss to feel better. Usually 10 lbs or 4 kg will do it. That 10 lbs takes 40 lbs off your knee every time you use it. No wonder you were able to manage the stairs better. When I was playing raquet ball, I could notice a lb difference in my game.
If we didn’t eat meat how will John Kerry’s wife Mrs Heinz Baked Beans sell any ketchup?
Last time I brushed my teeth I noticed I have a nice set of meat ripping incisors.
Thats how I’m made, no loony Lord is going to tell me not to eat meat. The guy is an idiot.