From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
Britain must cut its meat and dairy consumption by up to 50pc to meet the latest net zero targets, the Government’s climate watchdog has said.
The Climate Change Committee said in an ideal scenario, meat and dairy consumption should halve by 2050 and products be substituted with plant-based options.
The proposals are part of new net zero targets that have been recommended to Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary.
In a letter to Mr Miliband, the committee said the Government must cut CO2 emissions by 81pc by 2035 when compared to the benchmark year of 1990. This would amount to a reduction of 200m tonnes from the current level of 384m tonnes.
Piers Forster, the CCC’s chairman, said persuading British consumers to change their diets would play a key role in achieving such massive cuts.
Mr Forster did not specify how the UK could reduce meat eating but options could include reducing subsidies for livestock, taxing meat products and a clampdown by regulators on advertising.
The committee has urged the Government to cut livestock numbers, especially sheep and cattle, because they argue the methane produced by these animals is a key cause of climate change..
The UK has just under 10m cattle and calves plus around 32m sheep and lambs.
David Handley of Farmers for Action, who keeps 500 sheep and 100 cattle on his Monmouthshire farm, said: “The amounts of methane produced by farming are tiny compared with the emissions from transport and other sectors.
“But these rules and regulations are devastating the sector along with the UK’s ability to produce its own food.”
.
Do they really think that people are so concerned about Net Zero that they will give up meat?
Of course, we all know that when they say “persuade”, they really mean “compel”.
In their zealotry, they don’t seem to care about the effect their policy will have on the rural economy. In England alone, livestock and dairy farms employ more than 120,000 people, and meat production is valued at £9bn a year, according to DEFRA.
Industry estimates suggest that you can triple the number of employees, when indirect jobs and jobs in the meat processing industry are added in.
Worse still, the rural economy in some parts of the country could be wiped out if livestock and dairy farming is ended. Shops, pubs , garages and other local businesses could not survive such a catastrophe.
To even contemplate such an outcome would be thoroughly reckless. And this is why Piers Forster, climate academic, is totally unfit to be in charge of climate decision making.
And as is ever the case, while we are trying to cut our meat consumption, the rest of the world eats more every year. Our consumption is barely 1% of the world’s.
https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare
None of that matters to Piers Forster though. All he cares about is the UK’s Net Zero targets.
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Ok as a NZer may they produce less meat by fiat but buy as much by choice, long live our meat industry.
Idiots!
Force farmers out of business. What could go wrong?
First that comes to mind is a string of obscenities directed at the CCC stating what they can do with their suggestion. They’ve definitely gone too far out into left field.
Ask how much lobbying William Gates III has had done for his interests with the CCC.
Great News here.. Our little town may have a real butcher shop by the end of the year.
Won’t have to buy pre-packaged supermarket meat.
There’s a local cafe here that sells meat. Very good meat. The cafe is on a cattle farm. I suppose in the UK it would be called a farm shop. Now there’s another reason to buy theor meat.
It’s not the eating of meat or dairy that causes climate catastrophe, it’s the live animals. Hence a prohibition on consumption does nothing. The cows themselves must be eliminated. And if consumption is banned, the cows must be slaughtered in the pastures and left to rot, or be buried, or burned, any and all of which would necessarily result in more emissions.
That’s what the CCC is proposing, kids. Kind of gory. That and the end of ice cream.
Funny, l don’t see any climate catastrophe.
I’m a post-modern vegan.
I eat meat, but only with a twist of irony.
(channelling my inner Bill Bailey)
Meat is a good source of irony.
very good
Shouldn’t that be “meaty is a good source of irony”?
“I’m not a vegetarian, but I eat animals who are”
Groucho Marx
This could create a situation where small aggregate farms arise to raise your own meat then you are buying no meat but still consuming it. Say 10 households raising 10 head of cattle to supply meat for the following year.
They can stop that easily by making it illegal to slaughter stock except in an abbatoir, then close the abbatoirs. Thank goodness for democracy, it gives us citizens a chance.
That is already the case except for meat that you consume yourself, or is shot, like venison
Do they allow for religious “Sacrifice”?
All meat is carbon neutral – every carbon atom in a farm animal has come from the atmosphere in the first place. In fact, farm animals sequester carbon in their often brief lives (NB the plants they eat keep growing). Methane! they cry. Methane breaks down quickly in the atmosphere to CO2.
BTW, those grazing properties can’t necessarily grow as much crop as they grow meat. Crops need better quality land, the lesser quality land grows grass effectively. Meat is how we humans eat grass.
Memo to self: start eating more meat.
All meat is also vegan food once removed.
The grass that decays on the ground releases the same Methane.
I had a big vegetable salad with chicken for dinner tonight but all this talk of meat makes me hungry. Steak tomorrow.
Typical poms totally brainwashed Methane is not a problem the frequency that methane affects is covered by water vapor
The people aren’t brainwashed, the wastrels in UK politics are gormless cretins accepting the shekels of William Gates III and other criminal billionaires.
Meet
Piers Forsteroops sorry, meet Piers Forster.Christ on a bike. Is that thing real?
Typical vegan academic, weedy.
I will eat less meat if they eat my shorts.
NASA reports that the concentration of methane is currently 1.929 ppmv. One cubic meter of air contains 1.4 milligrams of methane. The reason for the low concentration of methane in air is due to the initiation of its combustion by discharges of lighting. Everyday there are thousands of lightning discharges especially in the tropics.
Methane is slightly soluble in cold water. One liter of ice cold water can contain
35 mls of methane. That is not very much methane, but cold oceans are enormous.
The methane eventually diffuses to the bottom of the ocean. There in the cold water and under high pressure it forms a solid clathrate known as methane ice.
We do not have to worry about the emission of methane into the air.
The Climate Change Committee was established by the Climate Change Act. It was intended to give impartial scientific advice to the government about how the objectives of the act could be achieved. Unfortunately, it was staffed from the start with science denying climate alarmists and fantasists who haven’t the slightest clue about how the real world operates. Hence this latest proclamation.
What climate change? To determine if climate change has occurred, about 60 years of weather data needs be analyzed from many weather stations located from all over world. This has never been down’
Have you experienced any warming and climate?
I don’t think the Climate Change Committee was ever intended to give impartial scientific advice.
Indeed it argued that attempting a cost benefit justification of net zero was “not a sensible approach”
Meanwhile the Office for Budget Responsibility used RCP 8.5 to back the Government line
and
the Energy Act 2023 gives the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (OFGEM) a statutory duty to carry out its functions in a way best calculated to promote the net zero objective
Jonathan Brearly, OFGEM CEO, said
“The net zero mandate……underlines that net zero is the best option not only from a climate perspective, but to ensure a low cost energy future”
We’re screwed!
Net zero for the heavy industries and heavy transportation systems is never going to happen. What are these guys thinking?
It was established to ensure that elected representatives could not frame government policy, ensuring that political apparatchiks could be paid lots to be unaccountable.
And to appease the unholy CO2 molecule, the priests doth sayeth, render unto us the choicest of sirloins, and the tenderest of lambs, and we shall see to it they are consumed by flame as an offering. And if our bellies appear round, while yours remaineth empty with all thy ribs clearly visible, it is merely the price we payeth for our devotion. Yea, verily, we say unto thee, we shall take all thy carbon sins upon ourselves in a selfless manner. And if thou hast doubts concerning our moral fortitude, well, here, take this plank…
Which one is Mickey Mann ?
Soak untreated cedar planks in water and use them to cook salmon on a grill with lemon+butter+honey+Dijon. Delicious.
It’s a bit woody. I tried it once but it was very hard to chew.
The committee has urged the Government to cut livestock numbers, especially sheep and cattle, because they argue the methane produced by these animals is a key cause of climate change..
And from the imbedded link
methane, while shorter lived than carbon dioxide, is 28 times more potent in warming the atmosphere.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Once again, climate science nor the press never says how much warming of the planet methane will cause. The most likely reason for that is because the warming caused by methane in the coming decades would be unmeasurable. Probably less than a tenth of a degree.
Its an extraordinary thing about the UK, the questions which are not asked or even mentioned.
Like, how much difference will it make to global temperatures if UK meat consumption is halved? The answer is obviously none. So tell me again, why do we have to do this?
When the net zero plans were put to Parliament (and waved through in the last iteration without even a vote) no-one ever asked how much it was all going to cost and, again, by how much it would lower global emissions and what effect it would have on global temperatures.
Again, the answer is obviously none.
It is really collective insanity on the part of the political and media classes in the UK.
The best thing is that the legacy media reading numbers are falling off a cliff. So no-one will take any notice of stuff they don’t read any more.
Some are making a lot of dosh out of it
At some point, people will notice that reducing cattle and sheep for “net-zero” policies did not affect atmospheric CO2 concentrations at all. Of course, everyone who pushed to accomplish it will be dead by then, so the effort will be called a “great try, but its worse than we thought”. Just like every other “great try” for the last 40 years.
We should put the CCC itself on the menu.
Burn a Green for baby Jesus
Too thick to be digestible.
Hah…This image comes to mind
The CCC is guilty in the cladding crisis – it managed to get away with that one – and it does nothing but come up with ways to hit the little guy and dictate what they can and cannot do, eat etc etc etc
Professor Julia King, a member of the CCC, said in May of 2012 that ‘local authorities have the potential to impact significantly on the UK’s scale and speed of emissions reduction’. At the top of King’s list for action were ‘energy-efficiency measures for existing buildings’ – insulation, such as cladding, and new boilers. While local authorities struggled to get funding for other things, austerity did not apply to the CO2-reduction scheme.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2017/06/26/grenfell-clad-in-climate-change-politics/
No conscience at all.
Actually, making houses warmer in winter has nothing to do with carbon dioxide, it’s about human health, mate. You should try living in a poorly insulated house which you struggle to heat. You’ll be ill far more in the winter than in a well-insulated one.
I do however think that the CCC is a joke, a political satire.
The cladding was put on large blocks of flats where most individual dwellings only have one external wall.
Given that the Tories are in favour of Net Zero, at the moment at least, that suggestion should wipe out the Tory, Labour, Green and Lib Dem vote in rural constituencies. Unfortunately, it won’t. Those that continue to vote for these parties are like turkeys voting for Christmas. However, out of the 100+ local Council by-elections held since the General Election, Reform have put up candidates in only a small fraction so most voters don’t have much of a choice.
Story Tip
“UK needs big emissions cut, climate watchdog says”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62jrn55n6yo
This is a priceless quote
“If the government commits to the suggested target, it would represent a significant advance on the UK’s current international pledge to cut emissions by 68% by 2030.”
Aye, we’ll make all the difference of 1/1,000,000 of a degree!
The biggest contributors to Carbon & Methane are the CCC themselves. They should be closed down to save the planet.
Since Piers Forster is a meteorologist perhaps he can tell us exactly what causes unseasonable temperature changes in the UK, past, present and future with examples of long term accuracy in predicting such events. Weather people are always wise after the event but seldom before it. Settled weather is usually very predictable but change just doesn’t cooperate in a professional manner in the British Isles. Jet stream data has improved some facets of forecasting in the UK but we still have far too many misses perhaps because of climate change agendas influencing stuff.
It cannot be an imposition to ask him for a season by season regional guide to our weather in 2025. We can then better judge him as next year pans out..
Cut the number of UK peers by half, cut the salaries of all MPs and Civil Servants in half, criminalise any MP using executive jets, flying on any flight outside Europe or within Britain. Cut the allowable use of electricity and gas by MPs at home by 50%.
Make these charlatans set the country an example by putting their own corrupt lives under the spotlight.
See if they still think this is worthwhile in 2030 after 5 years of it, eh?
An overlap between Climate Change fanatics, vegans, and animal rights activists.
You know who won’t be cutting their consumption of meat? The people who are dictating that we cut our consumption of meat.
Ha! I thought the graph in the essay was Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations — looks exactly the same.