In the News: UN recommends less meat to reduce climate change

Vegetarians around the world are shaking their heads and saying "told you so!" this week, as the UN confirms what most vegetarians and vegans have known for decades: eating meat is bad for the environment. Although the UN has long recognized the negative environmental impact of meat production, this is the first time (that I know of) they have connected individual meat consumption to global warming, a move that the meat industry in the UK is predictably up in arms about.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, UN economist and chair of the Nobel prize winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends that individuals should start by omitting meat from their diet one day a week, then progress towards a plant-based diet from there. While the media that picked up this story focuses mostly on greenhouse gases and methane emissions, this completely ignores the myriad of other reasons that eating meat is bad for the environment, including (but certainly not limited to!) water pollution and consumption, land usage, rainforest depletion, and more. There's simply no arguing the fact that eating a plant-based diet of locally grown foods is the optimum diet for reducing our carbon footprint.

I doubt that this will inspire too many people to go vegetarian (though I'd love to be proven wrong!), but it's still nice to see this validation from such an authoritative body as the UN.

News link: Eat less meat to combat climate change, UN warns
See also:

• Meat and the Environment
• Drive too much? Go vegetarian!
  
• Go green by going veg