The chair of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that eating less meat could cause a decrease in global warming.

The IPCC, chaired by Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, was awarded a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Al Gore was a co-recipient.

According to the UN, meat production accounts for almost 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, most of it from flatulent cows emitting methane.

According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in contributing to climate change, and nitrous oxide, found in cow manure, has nearly 300 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide. The agency also warned that meat production is set to double, reaching more than 500 million tons worldwide by 2050.

The alleged threat to public health caused by the emission of carbon dioxide was the reason given by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius for repeatedly vetoing legislation that would have allowed the expansion of a coal-fired power plant in western Kansas. Energy prices have already started to rise in the state.

Sebelius also established the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Group though an executive order in March.

But she is not interested in Pachauri’s advice.

“This is not something we’re looking at – at all,” Sebelius press secretary Nicole Corcoran told KansasLiberty.com. 

Pachauri, a vegetarian from India, said the IPCC's recommendation is the most effective means of reducing greenhouse gasses. "In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity," Pachauri told a British newspaper, The Observer. "Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there," he said.

According to the EPA, livestock are the third-largest source of methane for human-related activities in the United States. A press release issued by PETA, which supports the IPCC recommendation, said substituting vegetarian foods for chicken once a week would cause the same decrease in carbon dioxide as taking half-million cars off the road.

Joyce D’Silva, ambassador for Compassion in World Farming, said the average United States resident consumes approximately 273 pounds of meat per year.

“This is the highest consumption rate in the world to my knowledge,” she told KansasLiberty.com. D’Silva said Compassion in World Farming supported Pachauri’s recommendations.

“If fewer farm animals were raised, their impact on global warming would be reduced, their welfare could be upgraded as CAFOs [concentrated animal feeding operations] could be replaced with more benign outdoor systems,” D’Silva said. “Experts from the World Cancer Research Fund recommend a mainly plant-based diet and associate high levels of red meat consumption with raised levels of colon cancer. This could be a win-win situation for animals, people and planet.”

Brenda Ekwurzel, climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that it was important to look at the aggregate effects of different activities before assessing the total influence.

“Cattle and eating meat is certainly a part of the problem,” Ekwurzel told KansasLiberty.com. “But you have to consider you can eat meat that was shipped, flown and frozen or you can eat meat from around the corner. So certainly cattle and livestock contribute to global warming as do many other sources.”

Scarlett Hagins, communications program manager for the Kansas Livestock Association said the UN recommendations are based on global data.

“This does not apply to the United States because it is more broad in that livestock production is much more efficient here as our producers work every day to be more environmentally friendly,” Hagins told KansasLiberty.com. “The U.S. is made up of a lot of grassland that can’t be used to grow crops so cattle can come in and graze that and then humans are getting a benefit from the beef production.”

Hagins also said cutting out meat from a person’s diet would make it more difficult to attain nutrients found in red meat such as protein, zinc, vitamin b12, selenium and phosphorus.

The Kansas Livestock Association does not provide any guidelines on how to feed or care for cattle in a way that may decrease the production of emissions, but Hagins said she feels Kansas farmers already work toward that goal. There are 6.7 million cattle and calves in Kansas, according to the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service.

“Producers are very conscious of their environment because if they don’t maintain it they don’t have a livelihood so they work very hard at maintaining good animal health, land and water quality and they hit every aspect of that to sustain the bottom line so they can continue to do what generations before them have been able to do,” she said.

Legislators and others who had fought against the Holcomb plant expansion citing environmental reasons felt a little differently about the IPCC's recommendations. Rep Harold Lane, D- Topeka, and owner of Lane’s BBQ, said he did not think the UN’s recommendations should be considered in Kansas.

“I just don’t think that would be good for Kansas as there are a lot of beef producers here and it’s a big and important part of our economy,” Lane told KansasLiberty.com.

Rep Cindy Neighbor, D-Shawnee, also voted against the Holcomb expansion. She said she wasn’t opposed to the meat-reducing plan but thought it was important to look at improving the environment through a blend of conservation efforts and clean energy.

“There are a lot of ways we can save and its going to require lifestyle changes and it may require some dietary changes as well,” Neighbor told KansasLiberty.com

Carey Maynard-Moody, chair of the Wakarusa group of the Kansas Sierra Club chapter, said while the Sierra Club did not discourage the IPCC's meat-reducing recommendations they were not promoting them either.

“It seems like it is not possible to produce as much meat as people want to eat and the amount that we crave seems to force extreme production in corporate farming and that is really harsh on the environment. So if [beef producers] are not able to meet the demand and be kinder to the environment the only recourse is to reduce the demand for meat,” Maynard-Moody told KansasLiberty.com.

Despite scientists' claim that methane is much more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, Maynard-Moody said the Sierra Club’s focus would remain on reducing coal-fired energy plants. 

“I think it is much more important to burn less coal as it is the most egregious emitter of CO2,” she said.

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 - Holly Smith

Resources:

• PETA: http://www.peta.org

• Environmental Protection Agency: http://www.epa.gov

• Compassion in World Farming: http://www.ciwf.org.uk

• Kansas Livestock Association: http://www.kla.org

• Kansas Sierra Club: http://kansas.sierraclub.org/

• Union of Concerned http://www.ucsusa.org/

• NASS http://www.nass.usda.gov

The Week in Review