Eating less meat will play a key role in helping Spain mitigate the climate change emergency, slow desertification and protect the vital tourism industry, the Minister of Consumer Affairs said.

Alberto Garson said that people in Spain need to realize the huge impact that eating meat, especially beef from industrial mega-farms, has on the environment, and change their eating habits accordingly.

“People here are aware of the role that greenhouse gases play in climate change, but they tend to associate it with cars and transport,” Garzon told The Guardian.

“It's only very recently that everyone has begun to pay attention to the impact of the animal food chain and especially the impact of beef. Other countries are far advanced in understanding this issue, but in Spain it was taboo. "

The minister said the country's geography makes it highly vulnerable to climate change, adding that Spain, which people know and love, is in danger of extinction forever.

“If we don't act, we will not only be dealing with climate change - it will be a triple crisis: loss of biodiversity, pollution and climate change,” he said.

“This would be the end for a country like Spain. Spain is a country in the Mediterranean basin - this is not Great Britain or Germany - and desertification is a very serious problem for our country, not least because it depends a lot on tourism. A visit to the desert is not as attractive as a visit to the Costa del Sol. ”

Garson says that the Spaniards do not need to give up meat altogether, but he encourages them to eat much less and ensure it is of good quality for the sake of their health and the environment. He contrasts cheap mass-produced meat with conventionally grown meat.

“Extensive farming is an environmentally sustainable way of raising cattle that is widespread in parts of Spain such as Asturias, parts of Castile and León, Andalusia and Extremadura,” he said.

“It's stable; but what is not at all stable is these so-called mega-farms ... They find a village in a deserted corner of Spain and they drive 4,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 head of cattle there. They pollute the soil, they pollute the water, and then they export the poor quality meat of these animals that are mistreated. ”

The minister also pointed to a recent report that says 20 livestock companies are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than Germany, Britain or France.

Garson, an economist who is the coordinator of the United Left alliance in Spain's socialist-led coalition government, made headlines when he urged people to cut meat consumption in July.

He noted that the average Spaniard eats more than 1 kg of meat per week, although the country's food agency recommends that people eat between 200 and 500 g, and that Spain consumes more meat than any other EU country, slaughtering 70 million pigs, cows, sheep. goats, horses and birds every year to produce 7.6 million tons of meat.

I propose to put this guy into meat. Will be much more use for humanity.

It is necessary to eat much less fish and red meat, and to plant the vacant pastures and fields with forests.

Annually, the world produces 71 million tons of red meat and 83 million tons of fish on farms. Production of 1 kg of red meat costs 62 kg of CO2e in greenhouse gas emissions. Production of 1 kg of farm fish - 30 kg. Thus, in total, red meat and fish cost 6.9 Gt CO2e emissions per year. This is 19% of the total 36 Gt. This compares with the total emissions of all world transport, or with the total emissions of all world industries. A lot, but not enough to call the reduction of meat and fish consumption a major step towards global sustainability?

The calculation above does not take into account that the land, which is now used as pasture or for growing food for cows, can not only be idle, but also overgrown with forest. Now it is 40 million square meters. km of land. For the scale, let me remind you: the area of ​​Russia is 17 million square meters. km. With a complete rejection of red meat and fish, it would have to be replaced with other types of meat (feed for pigs and chickens also needs to be raised somewhere) or vegetable proteins, but, offhand, about 10 million square meters would be enough for this. km. Thus, with the global abandonment of red meat and fish, we get 30 million square meters. km of "extra" land.

Instead I propose to collect all capitalists and their cars, yachts and gold fields and annihilate them. It'll save us around same amount of wasted resources.

The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change (UKHACC) urges the UK government to impose a climate tax on food producers by 2025 - unless private industry takes voluntary measures to limit their carbon emissions.

In the report published on Nov. 4, titled "All-Consuming: Building A Healthier Food System For People And Planet," UKHACC outlines that the climate crisis cannot be resolved without reducing food that causes high emissions, such as red meat and dairy products.

In particular, red meat consumption will need to be cut by half if the food system is to stay within sustainable environmental limits.

Adding that, "changing our diets in this way will not only help to mitigate climate change but will also improve our health: there is also clear evidence that is replacing animal protein with plant-based protein results in lower rates of stroke, heart disease, diabetes, and overall death rates."

http://www.ukhealthalliance.org/all-consuming/

We need public mass executions of this green guys. I think any other methods won't stop them.

Btw they themselfs do not plan to reduce their meat consumption, quite reverse.

Danon head of board of directors predictions

• 50% meat consumption reduction, due to extreme mass propaganda and leading corporations restrictions and censorship
• 20% milk consumption reduction due to same things

He proposed that people must consume some cheap replacement things made from plants and how nice it is for company profits.

Note that consumption numbers here are totals, as company plans that food quality in developed countries must drop much more, as they also need to share with fast growing meat and milk consumption in China and Africa.

Sorry Vitaly but that just reads to me like colourful political rhetoric rather than the precise careful words of someone who loves Science (as I believe you do). Anyway thanks for keeping this site interesting and current -and for all the work you did on the hack of the GH2 which, when recently I had to use it as a backup, surprised me once again with its performance.

@Vitaliy Perhaps if you knew Michael Mansfield's history you would be less willing to criticize him. He is a top QC who has taken on many difficult cases here - very often against the government. And I would leave Climate Change denial in the hands of Trump who, as he has told us, has a very good intuition for science.

So you don't believe the scientific evidence of climate change, caused by mankind?

I believe that all human history we are changing nature around, I also believe science facts that show that current temperature fluctuations are below similar fluctuations that happened in past thousands of years (I am not even talking longer time).

I also believe that capitalist science act in the economic interests of certain classes, and that all this "climate change" alarm thing somehow started after countries started passing peaks of their energy resources. So, it is attempt to hide obvious things from public and present energetic failures of capitalist science as achievements.

In my definition, free society instead of Government controlled.

It is some fuzzy talk, What is exact definition of "free society" according to you? You can start from definition of freedom and later go into exact definition of society, as well as definition of the state and government.

But bans don't work well in a free society.

What exactly is "free society"? Select imperialist countries?

In "free society" previous bans, like famous ozone hole anti-scientific thing worked quite good.

@alcomposer

Well, actually that you wrote is literally impossible to do in capitalism.

And btw. banning meat is in the interest of the ruling class, as each meat calorie actually needs 10-25 calories from the vegetative calories. So if you will be able to teach people how "nice and perfect" such food is and meat is horrible danger - you can get more profits if you do it well.

Btw, each ruling class and each religion always had some serious ban on meat - pork in Islam, abstinence time in various Christian religions, I won't even go into India things :-)

Many fast food chains are pushing Beyond Meat substitute, soon Soylent Green ( people meat!)

A Swedish scientist has caused a stir by advocating that in order to stem the ill effects of climate changes, humans need to start eating each other. Of course, he's not calling for all-out cannibalism like it used to be practiced throughout history. Rather he thinks that if we just get over some very obvious taboos, we might consider eating human corpses.

While talking about the Gastro Summit focused on "food on the future" on Swedish TV, the behavioral scientist and marketing strategist Magnus Söderlund from the Stockholm School of Economics proposed that in order to truly take on the effects of climate change, we must "awake the idea" that eating human flesh should be discussed as an option in the future.

Söderlund used his tv interview on the State Swedish Television channel TV4 to give a powerpoint presentation entitled "Can you Imagine Eating Human Flesh?" It included such topics as "Is Cannibalism the solution to food sustainability in the future?" and "Are we humans too selfish to live sustainably?"

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/swedish-scientist-eating-humans-climate-change?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1