The low-hanging fruit in the climate battle?
Cutting down on meat
Gaby
Hinsliff
Eating fewer animal products and less dairy would make
a huge difference to carbon emissions
Fri 30 Apr 2021
07.00 BST
This week,
the American recipe website Epicurious announced that, for environmental
reasons, it wouldn’t publish any new beef recipes. No more steaks, burgers or
creative ways with mince; no more juicy rib. Since about 15% of global
greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock farming, with beef responsible for
nearly two thirds of those, it wanted to help home cooks do their bit.
All this
seems guaranteed to trigger the sort of people who get very emotional about
roast beef and yorkshire pudding, particularly in the same week that the White
House had to quash some wild scare stories about Joe Biden banning burgers to
save the planet. (Spoiler alert: not happening.) But the twist in the tale is
that Epicurious actually stopped publishing beef recipes a year ago without
telling anyone, and it says its traffic numbers show the vegetarian recipes
offered instead were gobbled up. Those who scream loudest don’t, as ever, speak
for everyone.
Cheap and
relatively painless ways of tackling the climate crisis are rare, as Boris
Johnson may discover once he actually spells out the detailed implications of
Britain’s ambitious pledge to cut carbon emissions by 78% by 2035. Swapping gas
boilers for environmentally friendly heat pumps will cost thousands, and they
won’t be suitable for every home; so far, an awkward silence hangs over what
the owners of those houses are supposed to do.
The
Treasury, meanwhile, has still yet to rule on the potentially politically toxic
question of introducing pay-as-you-go road charges, to replace the fuel tax
that the increasing number of electric or hybrid drivers won’t be paying.
Johnson’s preferred green solutions are ones that magically allow life to carry
on much as before, while new technology does all the heavy lifting – a strategy
he described at last week’s climate summit as “cake have eat”. But that was his
Brexit strategy, too, and we’ve all seen how well that worked out. Dietary
changes, however, are one of the few climate change measures where the biggest
obstacle to change isn’t economic but cultural, and where doing the right thing
potentially saves rather than costs individuals money.
People hate
being told what to eat, which is why social media is still full of furious
Republicans shouting at Biden to “get out of my kitchen”. But the Epicurious
episode suggests it’s the idea of being nagged or lectured that really hurts;
the actual reality of eating other things instead of meat can be surprisingly
palatable. Progress may, in short, be easier than it sometimes sounds.
Eating
habits are already changing, if not fast enough for climate scientists then
faster than angry burger warriors suggest. One in eight Britons claim to be
vegetarian or vegan and another one in five flexitarian, eating meat-free
sometimes; and although meat consumption rose over the last decade the big rise
was in chicken, not red meat. Going veggie for the sake of the planet, rather
than the animals, might have sounded eccentric a generation ago but it barely
raises a millennial eyebrow now. By the time generation Z are their age,
counting dietary carbons may seem no stranger than counting calories.
As a
lifelong carnivore, even I’ve been slowly reducing red meat for a while. It
started with one vegetarian day a week, then substituting fish for a couple of
meat meals, then swapping in more chicken, and so far none of the family has
actually noticed. (Like Epicurious, I’ve chosen not to advertise the strategy
until someone complains.) We still eat beef and lamb sometimes, but it’s
becoming more of an occasional treat, less of a routine midweek spag bol.
Taking it gradually, meanwhile, has made the whole thing feel doable rather
than daunting.
True, if
the entire planet went vegan by 2050, we could save nearly eight billion tonnes
of CO2 equivalent a year, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. Realistically, that’s not going to happen, but even the 4.5 billion
tonnes saved by everyone eating according to healthy dietary guidelines (more
fruit and veg but less sugar, meat and dairy) or the three billion plus saved
on a “climate carnivore” diet that replaces three-quarters of red meat
currently consumed with alternatives such as chicken, would be worth having. As
with any diet, avoiding making the perfect the enemy of the good means people
are less likely to give up halfway through, as does encouraging rather than
hectoring.
Ministers
have shied away from calls for a “carbon tax” on red meat for not entirely
illegitimate reasons; taxing food is toughest on low-income households, because
they spend proportionately more of their income on it. But if this government
or its successors are reluctant to wield the big stick then they must dangle
juicier carrots, starting with a public education campaign making the
connection between healthy eating – something Johnson has finally agreed to
push, after a near fatal brush with Covid shocked him into losing weight – and
helping the climate. (Research commissioned by the Department for Environment,
Farming and Rural Affairs found carbon emissions could fall by 14% if everyone
in Britain stuck to healthy eating guidelines, which would also help reduce
heart disease and cancer rates – although some cattle and sheep farmers would
need financial help to find alternative uses for their land, with their markets
taking a potentially painful hit.)
And that’s
just the start. A handful of restaurants are now experimenting with carbon
labelling on their menus to highlight environmentally friendly choices. There’s
no reason that couldn’t be extended to food sold in supermarkets, encouraging
producers to cut unnecessary carbon emissions and earn better ratings. The food
industry will protest, but it’s that or stiffer tax and regulatory changes in
years to come, which they’ll like even less.
Even tiny
changes such as putting the veggie dish at the top of restaurant menus, rather
than at the bottom like a reluctant afterthought, can shift ordering habits –
as could a few primetime TV shows on climate-friendly cookery, fronted by the
kind of celebrity names capable of causing a run on ingredients. A plant-based
menu for heads of state at this year’s Cop26 climate crisis summit, showcasing
adventurous meat-free cooking, should be a no-brainer, and so should providing
more communal spaces to grow our own fruit and veg, building on a surge of
enthusiasm for allotments in lockdown. In a culture war it’s soft power that
ultimately counts, and progressives may hold more of it than they know on this
one. “Let them eat chickpeas” may not be a winning electoral strategy. But nor
is burning down the planet just to make dinner.
Gaby
Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
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