Guest essay by Eric Worrall
You would think in a country where poverty leads to thousands of deaths every winter, where far too many people go hungry every night, government advisory bodies would have the sense to avoid suggestions which could put pressure on food supplies.
‘Cut lamb and beef’ to fight climate change
By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analystThe number of sheep and cattle in the UK should be reduced by between a fifth and a half to help combat climate change, a report says.
The shift is needed, the government’s advisory Committee on Climate Change (CCC) maintains, because beef and lamb produce most farm greenhouse gases.
The report foresees an increase in the number of pigs and chickens because these produce less methane.
The farm union NFU said it supported more diverse land use.But environmentalists say the recommendations are too timid.
The CCC says a 20-50% reduction in beef and lamb pasture could release 3-7m hectares of grassland from the current 12m hectares in the UK.
The un-needed grassland could instead grow forests and biofuels that would help to soak up CO2.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46214864
The CCC report is available here.
The report authors claim that reduced production due to farmland lost to “afforestation” could be compensated by increased consumption of fruit and vegetables, indoor agriculture under grow lights, and improvements to agricultural practices, though they admit using grow lights is expensive.
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Eric,
Both to you and “Moderately Cross”: show me the bodies, along with proof of death caused by real poverty, not misguided spending.
“thousands of people die each year from exposure or starvation”. Really? In Britain in 2018 with our welfare system combined with charities and the country-scale organisation called the NHS? Sorry, simply don’t believe it. A few here and there – inevitably. Thousands who die of starvation and/or fuel poverty? I don’t believe it.
“with our welfare system”
Now that’s funny.
Ian. Here is an extract from the “independent climate think tank” ESG which works as a partner of National Energy Action describing part of the problem. The U.K. performs very poorly on fuel poverty compared to most of Europe – Poland does markedly better for example, which may be considered surprising. You can find plenty more evidence.
Table 3, taken from report. Living in the poorest quality housing causes places health at risk and leads to premature death. In 2016/17 there were 37,020 excess winter deaths in the UK, the second highest number in five years. 11,110 of these deaths were attributable to cold homes. Ill health caused by poor housing is an even bigger problem. Treating the health impacts of cold homes, including cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, falls and injuries and mental ill health, is costing the NHS an estimated £1.36 billion each year.
Table 3: Excess winter deaths considered attributable to cold housing conditions
[4] See ‘Cold Man of Europe’ briefings:
Guertler, P., Carrington, J. & Jansz, A. (2015) The Cold Man of Europe – 2015.
Guertler, P. & Royston, S. (2013) Fact-file: The Cold Man of Europe.
Sorry, Roger, old mate. Not going to happen. We like our meat too much. Nice try though. It’s WE THE PEOPLE who decide, not you.
Housing is a more serious problem in the UK than food shortages. This is largely because of our EU membership, which forbids us from excluding any EU member citizen who wants to live here. The addition of numerous countries with relatively low wages and limited employment to the EU has led to an influx not unlike that of Mexicans into the Southern USA. Except that is mostly illegal, whereas the UK influx is legal and there is therefore little we can do about it. The pressure on housing has pushed both house prices and rents up to the point where those on low income just can’t afford them.
Actually it isn’t the house that’s worth the money, a bare plot can cost almost as much as a house. Unless it’s land that you can’t get permission to build on, in which case it’s worth peanuts.
We have a project called CFine round here which collects near end-of-date food from stores and provides it to the poor. This is a win-win arrangement because the stores have to pay for the unwanted stuff to be landfilled otherwise, so it cuts their disposal costs and helps the needy. Only thing is we’ve had one or two chancers selling the free food. But then any such scheme is bound to attract its share of profiteers I guess. It still does a good job.
Yes, I also suspect that the UK draws relatively more immigrants than many other countries because of the near-universality of English as a second language. While it can be argued that that is an economic boon, it does put extra pressure on housing, benefits&social services, and the tax base. An overall economic “boon” does not affect everyone equally, and many of them are (Brexit) voters.
I’m all for it.
I only eat Manx beef & meat.
See a 50% cut in British beef should mean 50% less bullshipt.
Somewhere, someone made a bet that they could get England to eat Bug McNuggets on a regular basis.
That would be Francis Urquhart.
Gummer’s ludicrous Committee has to produce stuff to justify its existence
. I am waiting for its reaction to the IPCC’ s 1.5degrees paper. I have just read most of it and was a painful exercise. Such motherhood and apple pie with no practical answers on top of a lot of the usual alarmist lies – pages and pages and pages. 792 actually. BUT right up Gummer’s political and alarmist street . BUT such self-evident nonsense that the CCC dare not reference it nor support it. What a dilemma for Gummer !
Where are all these fruits and veggies going to come from?
”Where are all these fruits and veggies going to come from?”
Tesco’s silly.
Growing up in England in the 1950s and 60s, I never (probably “hardly ever”) ate British-grown beef or lamb. Beef came from Argentina and lamb came from New Zealand. The meat came in refrigerated ships (not freezer ships) and so it was well aged and tender when it appeared on the butchers’ slabs. My mother told me we couldn’t afford British meat, apart from bacon, pork and ham and the (occasional, expensive) chicken. The EU ended all that.
Perhaps after Brexit Britain can go back to doing business with our relatives and (sometimes) friends across the oceans.
You seem to overlook the possibility that our friends and relatives may have found other outlets for their produce, since we threw them to the kerb in 73 ? And this fondness for the 50’s and 60’s does seem a little overdone ? Those decades from memory, and in comparison with today, were not really as good as many would have everybody believe, Come to that the 70’s were pretty crap also 🙂
I’m also bemused by the antagonism against fellow Europeans being able to enter dear old blighty without let or hindrance. It never seems to occur to those expressing such a view that a successful Brexit will simply replace Johnny Polacki with Gee Gee Boy Patel, and other sub continentals. No doubt should such a state of affairs come to pass, the everyman will look back at the days of European influx in the same nostalgic way that decades past are viewed.
Remember, a lot of “environmentalists” think there are way too many other people.
The people have no meat? Let them eat pine cones.
Can any of our British friends explain something to me.
We vacationed in England last spring. We spent two weeks driving around rural areas so that we could tour Stately Houses and Gardens.
Everywhere we went we saw sheep, hundreds and thousands of sheep. Yet we only saw lamb on the menu in a couple of restaurants and never mutton.
What do they do with all those sheep?
Not sure the answer would get past CTM.
You win the site for today.
Hey, he specified England, not Wales …..
Which reminds me of a story (told here before but perhaps there are those who missed it):
An American tourist walked into a pub in Cardiff. He saw three buxom women sitting at a table enjoying a pint or two. He went over and said to them “I always love listening to the way you ladies from England speak”. The larger woman replied “It’s Wales you idiot! Wales!” The American says” Oh, I’m sorry, I always love listening to the way you whales from England speak”.
It took 3 weeks for him to get out of the hospital.
Wool?
Actually it always surprises me how few sheep there are to the acre.
i think most British lamb is exported to the EEC,it also tends to be kg/kg more expensive than beef ,(depending on the joint or cut),hencewhy it’s exported .Pork is cheaper than both .Mutton is hardly ever heard of in the uk,but some may be sold under the name of ‘lamb’ .I heard that if a leg of lamb weighs more than 5kg ,it’s not lamb.
In Scotland we have mutton pies, very tasty too. I like Baked Beeans with mine. I got this recipe from the internet
Ingredients
For the filling
600g/1lb 5oz mutton mince
¼ tsp ground mace
¼ tsp nutmeg
5 tbsp gravy or stock
salt and white pepper
For the hot water crust pastry
½ tsp salt
120g/4¼oz lard
360g/12½oz plain flour
1 free-range egg yolk, beaten, for glaze
Count them Walter, very tiring business.
It will be intriguing, from an experimental point of view, to watch an entity (country) shoot themselves in both feet, and then monitor their recovery period. How smart will their worldly smart scientists appear to be in a few years, when their greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, instead of fall?
Great news for American beef farmers….English beef is horrible anyway, been there and done that. We can ship them beef or let them starve.
If burning hardwoods from the Carolinas at Drax Power in UK is “neutral” and the trees take 80yrs to regrow, then emissions from cattle and sheep burning grass, which regrows in a few weeks, is several orders of magnitude greener than the Drax case. Why aren’t knowledgeable people making this case loud and clear?
Grass absorbs CO2, cows eat grass\ release methane, 7 year half life gives water \CO2 – cycle begins again. Where’s the CO2 production? Humans eat cows then eventually die and are buried- looks like CO2 sequestration to me! (grumpy morning comment before coffee)
‘You would think in a country where poverty leads to thousands of deaths every winter, where far too many people go hungry every night, government advisory bodies would have the sense to avoid suggestions which could put pressure on food supplies.’
Ahhh – but that’s no contest compared to the warm fuzzy all these elites get off on.
And I’m pretty sure none of these elites are among the starving.
Besides, human beings are killing the planet, right? So it all serves the cause.
WaPo story: “High-tech farmers are using LED lighting in ways that seem to border on science fiction””
https://getpocket.com/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fclassic-apps%2Fthe-cutting-edge-tech-that-will-change-how-we-feed-ourselves%2F2018%2F11%2F06%2F775ac684-ce66-11e8-a360-85875bac0b1f_story.html%3Futm_term%3D.332eb8ea9a3e%26wpisrc%3Dnl_rainbow%26wpmm%3D1&formCheck=43daa9f905ef489cde4af2f119000d6b
Duh, like, where does the power for these ‘grow lights’ come from?
‘The report authors claim that reduced production due to farmland lost to “afforestation” could be compensated by increased consumption of fruit and vegetables, indoor agriculture under grow lights, and improvements to agricultural practices, though they admit using grow lights is expensive.’
Perhaps a nice shiny new coal-fired electric plant could power all those grow lights.
I’ve lived in the UK all my life and travelled much of the world as well, including the good ole US of A. As I’ve visited parts of Oregon, Idaho, Alabama (I could go on), I have noticed that there is just as much (if not more) “extreme” poverty in the so so called land of opportunity as there is in my country. Mr Worral’s completely unwarranted at digit at a country “where poverty leads to thousands of deaths every winter” didn’t even quote the link accurately. It referred to fuel poverty, not lack of food, medical care and shelter (incidentally, I’m just about to get my £200 fuel allowance from the UK government so that helps to refute his dig) . Most of those I’ve seen living in trailer based shacks in the outskirts of many US towns don’t seem to me to be getting much in the way of fuel allowances, adequate medical care and shelter so I suggest Mr Worral takes a drive and opens his eyes (and mind) a little.
If there existed a network of stations throughout the World measuring atmospheric CO2 levels there might be a better grasp of the origin of the atmospheric CO2. Governor Brown of California might be surprised by learning that CO2 levels were higher in the forested areas of his state than in the cities.
Livestock do not produce CO2 and CH4! Grass and trees do. And that’s after they absorb the required atoms,C,H,and O from air and water.
All Graziers in Australia will be standing by, ready to take up the new opportunities for meat export to the British Market pf desperate meat lovers.
And to think this stuff is comming under a supposed conservative government.
Imagine what will happen when the socialists get back in power
Who said it was a British government plan? It’s merely a daft recommendation to the British government. Read the article and absorb it properly before spouting off.
Once the population of the UK passed 20 million, they had to import food. The Germans almost won WW2 by the use of U boats to sink inporting shipping.
So the likes of Australia will gain by exporting food to the UK as they used to do before they embraced the EU. Back then it was a economic union, later it grew to become a government of all of Europe. So a hard Brexit will long term be a good thing, but short term it twill be hard times.
France had a fear, justified, of Germany again taking over Europe, so volla make a one government Europe. Napolian would be proud.
MJE
“Fight climate change?” What climate change? Why don’t these people grow up and realize that CO2 is not the cause of global warming?