Vegan author George Monbiot sees roadblocks; Union of Concerned Scientists chief sees way forward for lessening meat consumption
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates––The twenty-eighth annual Conference Of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, COP28 for short, did not totally cop out from confronting Big Meat Agribusiness, but many of the parties were disappointingly timid about doing it, contrary to pre–COP28 hype.
(Facebook photo)
Glass half empty or half-full?
Perspectives on what the conference accomplished range from the cynicism of Guardian environment columnist George Monbiot to the optimism of Union of Concerned Scientists deputy director Karen Perry Stillerman.
Both George Monbiot and Karen Perry Stillerman hoped that COP28 would forthrightly endorse plant-based diets as the way of the future for the affluent, meat-chomping developed world, as well as the less affluent global south, whose human populations mostly eat less than 25% of U.S. per capita meat and dairy consumption.
Both George Monbiot and Karen Perry Stillerman were disappointed, but where Monbiot saw a glass at least half empty, Stillerman saw a glass at least half full.
(See COP28 conference on global warming expected to tell world to eat less meat.)
Monbiot: “Nothing meaningful came of it”
COP28, wrote George Monbiot two days after COP28 concluded in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “was meant to be the first climate summit at which the impacts of the food system were properly considered. But by the time 120 meat and dairy lobbyists had done their worst, nothing meaningful came of it.
“The United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization [FAO] unveiled a report at the summit that greatly underplayed the impacts of the livestock industry,” Monbiot alleged, “and proposed nothing but a series of feeble technofixes to address it, including some that have been wildly overhyped, such as feeding seaweed to cows to limit the amount of methane they produce.
“Where was the discussion about reducing livestock production or consumption?”
“Where was the discussion in this report about reducing livestock production or consumption?” Monbiot asked.
“On the contrary, it proposed that for nutritional reasons, the poor world should be eating more meat and dairy.
“The FAO’s chief economist, Maximo Torero,” Monbiot charged on, “explained that the way forward was for countries that are ‘very efficient in producing livestock,’ such as the Netherlands and New Zealand, to produce more meat and dairy and then ship those products across the world,” a process which would actually increase greenhouse gas emissions both at the production end and at the transport end.
FAO “has a long & shameful history”
Continued Monbiot, “The FAO, as the Guardian has documented, has a long and shameful history of suppressing awareness of livestock’s massive impacts. Scientists at the organization who tried to raise the alarm about the environmental impacts of livestock production in 2006 and 2009 were vilified, censored and sabotaged by senior management.
“The meat industry also hobbled the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” Monbiot reminded. “Earlier this year, delegates from Brazil and Argentina – major meat exporters – managed to block its recommendation that we should shift towards plant-based diets.”
“Briefly mentions eating less meat”
Associated Press climate and agriculture writer Melina Walling on December 9, 2023 issued a similar assessment of the FAO report.
“It briefly mentions eating less meat, but mostly highlights ways the meat industry can improve productivity and efficiency,” Walling said.
The FAO report, Walling indicated, took the view that it is “more realistic for people in wealthier countries to eat red meat a little less, rather than having everyone give up meat altogether.”
“People in the global north cannot be lecturing people in the global south about eating less meat,” Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition executive director Lawrence Haddad told Walling.
“The Diet Impact Assessment model”
The following day, however, December 10, 2023, the FAO introduced what it called “a ground-breaking plan that looks to transform the world’s agrifood systems from a net emitter to a carbon sink by 2050, with the goal of transforming “agrifood systems – which encompass how the food we eat is farmed or raised, how it is transported, and how and where we dispose of it –– from net emitters to into a carbon sink by 2050.”
Central to the FAO plan is The Diet Impact Assessment model: a tool for analyzing the health, environmental and affordability implications of dietary change.
Commissioned by the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, published on November 6, 2023, The Diet Impact Assessment model opens by acknowledging that, “Unhealthy diets are a leading risk factor for noncommunicable diseases and are responsible for one in five deaths globally. In addition, about two billion people are overweight and obese, two billion have nutritional deficiencies, and affording healthy diets continues to be a persistent challenge for households on low incomes.
“Agriculture is responsible for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions”
“The environmental impacts of food production are similarly daunting,” The Diet Impact Assessment model says.
“Agriculture is responsible for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions, occupies about 40% of the Earth’s surface, uses 70% of all freshwater resources, and over-application of fertilizers in some regions [chiefly to produce fodder for livestock] has led to pollution of surface and groundwater, and to dead zones in oceans.
Urges adoption of “more plant-based diets”
“Many of these health and environmental impacts are expected to intensify as the global population is projected to grow from the current seven billion to close to 10 billion by mid-century.
“This growing population is also expected to increasingly demand foods with greater health and environmental impact,” The Diet Impact Assessment model warns, “such as meat, dairy products, and processed foods.
“Without dedicated food-system changes, including the adoption of healthier and more plant-based diets, there is little chance of avoiding dangerous levels of climate change and staying within key planetary boundaries,” The Diet Impact Assessment model states.
Seaweed
Monbiot appears to have been only half right about the COP28 emphasis on seaweed as a proposed solution to global warming.
According to UN News, “Vincent Doumeizel, senior advisor on oceans to the United Nations Global Compact, “highlighted the enormous ability of seaweed to absorb carbon and be a sustainable substitute for plastics.”
Doumeizel also noted, UN News said, “that despite being nutrient and protein-packed, almost all of the very little seaweed we eat today is gathered on the beaches.
“He said seaweed farming in East Africa has already proven its ability to create jobs and empower women in East Africa where ‘80 percent of the revenues go to women.’”
Note the words “we eat.”
Doumeizel appears to have been speaking not of feeding seaweed to cattle, but rather of producing and processing seaweed for human consumption.
“I believe that if we learn to cultivate the ocean,” Doumeizel concluded, “we will be remembered as the first generation on the planet that will be able to feed the entire population while mitigating climate change, while restoring biodiversity and alleviating poverty.”
Whether or not cultivating seaweed for human food and as a replacement for petrochemicals in manufacturing plastics actually has the potential that Doumeizel thinks it does, seaweed farming is a plant-based industry, producing vegan food ingredients.
No binding commitments
“The final COP28 agreement didn’t include any binding commitments on food or farming,” Union of Concerned Scientists deputy director Karen Perry Stillerman acknowledged.
“Still, throughout the two-week meeting, those topics took a higher profile than usual. The organizers touted so-called 1.5°C-aligned menus served at COP28—centered on plant-based foods as evidence of a new commitment to climate-friendly food and farming.
“The United Arab Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action was also a welcome surprise,” Karen Perry Stillerman said.
“The declaration isn’t legally binding, and it avoids any mention of the outsize contribution of heat-trapping emissions from the meat industry.
“An important first step”
“Still, it is an important first step. As such, it should give the U.S. Congress a lot to think about in the food and farm bill that it must write and pass by the extended deadline it gave itself, September 30, 2024.
“What stands in the way of potential progress is the agribusiness lobby,” Karen Perry Stillerman cautioned. “A lot was written during COP28 about the presence of fossil fuel lobbyists in record numbers. But big agribusiness interests—including the chemical fertilizer industry—were also there.
“Big Food names you know, like McDonald’s, Nestle, and Pepsico, were there hobnobbing with country delegations.
“So was Tyson Foods, aka Big Chicken. And there were other names you probably haven’t heard of, like the International Fertilizer Association, and Nutrien, a Canadian company that is the world’s largest fertilizer producer overall and the third-largest producer of nitrogen fertilizer specifically.
“That’s important,” Karen Perry Stillerman concluded, “because production and overuse of petrochemical-based nitrogen fertilizer,” to grow fodder to feed cattle, pigs, and poultry, “is a major contributor of heat-trapping emissions.”
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Here in the U.S. alone we annually consume an estimated 10 BILLION animals (not counting fish), most of whom never see the light of day, or touch foot to earth, and pumped full of pharmaceuticals, a true “Crime Against Nature.” We know better. Now we need to DO better.
My lifelong observation is that those with the most money (and those who want to project the image of having the most money) are eating more and more meat and dairy while scoffing at and belittling anyone who takes exception to that or chooses not to participate in it.
Sharing with gratitude.
Plant-based and also people producing their own food in their gardens would go a long way to saving precious Life on Earth. We should do this, make the necessary sacrifices, in the name of compassion, justice for all sentient beings, and the future of our beautiful Living Earth!