George Monbiot in The Guardian:
We can’t keep eating as we are – why isn’t the IPCC shouting this from the rooftops?
The official carbon footprint of people in the UK is 5.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person per year... if we counted the “carbon opportunity costs” of our diet, our total footprint would almost triple, to 14.4 tonnes.
Why is this figure so high? Because we eat so much meat and dairy... the carbon cost of chicken is six times higher than soya, while milk is 15 times higher and beef 73 times.
One kilo of beef protein has a carbon opportunity cost of 1,250kg: that, incredibly, is roughly equal to driving a new car for a year, or to one passenger flying from London to New York and back...
Are we prepared to act on what we know, or will we continue to gorge on the lives of our descendants?
Why is this figure so high? Because we eat so much meat and dairy... the carbon cost of chicken is six times higher than soya, while milk is 15 times higher and beef 73 times.
One kilo of beef protein has a carbon opportunity cost of 1,250kg: that, incredibly, is roughly equal to driving a new car for a year, or to one passenger flying from London to New York and back...
Are we prepared to act on what we know, or will we continue to gorge on the lives of our descendants?
By George, that is incredible !
Were his calculus correct, fossil fuel production could be offset entirely by just 12 of the 17 billion kilos of beef protein eaten annually. Just as well it's not --
The Vegan Zealotariat would have a cow if chicken'n cheese-eating omnivores turned the world carbon-negative by beefing up Big Macs & bangers with Miracle Meat and shooting more game: by Monbiot's reckoning, putting a deer in the larder is like taking a Range Rover off the road.
