PARIS, France (Reuters) — Many people who believe in climate change would be furious if someone tried to take away their steak.
That’s why activists at this year’s United Nations climate summit in Paris are taking a gentle approach to tackling the world’s greenhouse gas-intensive love affair with meat, ranging from offering lookalike plant burgers to suggesting a gradual weaning off animal protein.
“This is one of the most delicate issues with climate protection be-cause we all have our habits, and diet is something quite holy for some people, not to be meddled with,” said Jo Leinen, an omnivorous German member of the European Parliament.
Read Also
Ag In Motion 2025 site hub of activity
day before Ag in Motion preview.
Negotiators from nearly 200 countries are focused mainly on reducing carbon dioxide output from industry to limit global warming, rather than on diet.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector is responsible for 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities. Other studies report lower amounts, such as a 2009 study from the University of California at Davis that credited livestock production with three percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
Nevertheless, livestock is often an easy target for emission reductions.
On the sidelines of the summit, one American firm proposed an answer in the form of its “Impossible Burger,” Made entirely from plants, the patty is intended to look and taste identical to beef and produces a similar smell when grilled.
Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown said the burger, which costs about $5 a pound to produce but should become cheaper, would help many Americans give up meat.
The company is partly funded by Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates and Google Ventures. Google co-founder Sergey Brin previously helped fund a $300,000 beef burger created in a test tube at Maastricht University in the Netherlands in 2013.
Elsewhere, a delegation from the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation was attempting to promote Jan. 11, 2016, as a Day of Meatlessness.
“It is just one day, but it will help people think about the environmental, ethical and health issues around meat, and maybe it will grow,” said volunteer Lori Chen.
It is often a question of social norms.
“In France, they take offence if you don’t eat meat, like you are rejecting their culture,” said Chen.
“In China, you are emasculated if you only eat plants,” added Hanford Lin, who works for the foundation’s fundraising arm.
One person at the conference who is decidedly not emasculated — actor, bodybuilder and former California governor Arnold Sch-warzenegger.
“I have seen many bodybuilders and lifters who are vegetarians and get strong and healthy,” he said. “I think it is a good idea, but … you have to start slowly, you can’t just convince people to stop eating meat altogether.”
However, meat consumption continues to rise in the United States, China and elsewhere despite health warnings, most recently a World Health Organization report that found eating too much processed or red meat increased the risk of developing cancer.
The British think-tank Chatham House said merely applying existing recommendations from health bodies to limit meat consumption would generate a quarter of the remaining emissions reductions needed to keep global warming below 2 C, a key target of the Paris talks.
