DELINGPOLE: No, Vegetarianism Won’t Save the World from ‘Climate Change’

Vegetarians and vegans have been getting very uppity of late. One reason for this is that some idiot told them they hold the key to saving the world.

According to the (rampantly vego-loon) Humane Society “your diet could save the planet”.

According to Yvo de Boer, the former head of the UN climate agency, “the best solution would be for us all to become vegetarian.”

And according to George Monbiot in the Guardian: “The best way to save the planet? Drop meat and dairy”.

All this nonsense has gone to the grass-eaters’ nutritionally-challenged heads.  Instead of being a bunch of pale, anaemic, meat-shunning losers who have to keep taking vitamin B12 to stop themselves being blown over every time they go for a walk in their plastic shoes, they have now convinced themselves that they are like Frodo, Neo from the Matrix, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter all rolled into one.

Why do they believe this rubbish?

Because if you only read the left-wing media, as vegans do, all you ever get to see is hysterical drivel like this (from one of the house eco-loons in the Guardian):

Huge reductions in meat-eating are essential to avoid dangerous climate change, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of the food system’s impact on the environment. In western countries, beef consumption needs to fall by 90% and be replaced by five times more beans and pulses.

Even formerly conservative newspapers have fallen for this nonsense. According to columnist Bryony Gordon in the Guardiangraph (formerly the Telegraph), the reason “we” dislike and fear vegans is that we know in our hearts that they are right:

We know that adopting a vegan lifestyle is better not just for our bodies but also for the planet; we are aware that the harvesting of animals for our convenience could one day kill us all.

I’m trying to envisage a scenario in which “the harvesting of animals for our convenience” could ever kill us all. Bacon poisoning? Cows and pigs and chickens accidentally breeding with sharks or polar bears and stalking us like clucking, mooing, oinking velociraptors? I don’t know what Bryony is eating right now but whatever it is, it clearly doesn’t involve enough of the meat we all need to stop us from turning into vegetables.

Basically, Bryony and all the other hacks that have bought into this bollocks are being played. Man-made global warming theory is a busted flush so, in order to keep the scam going, the climate industrial complex has been desperately seeking new ways to bolster its Enron-style business model. One of these is to use veggies and vegans as their useful idiots to keep the climate scare going.

In fact, if we all went veggie or vegan it would make next to no difference to the climate. As Bjorn Lomborg, himself a vegetarian, points out here, the claim is based on cherry-picked data.

Almost all articles on this topic suggest going vegetarian could achieve emission cuts of 50 percent or more. But these figures are never a reduction of total emissions, just those emitted from food. This is an important distinction because four-fifths of emissions are being ignored. The real impact is five times less.

Anyway, a systematic peer review of studies shows vegetarian diets likely reduce an individual’s emissions by the equivalent of 540 kg (1,190 lbs.) of CO2. For the average person in the industrialized world, that’s the equivalent of cutting emissions by just 4.3 percent.

Vegetarian diets are also slightly cheaper, and saved money will be spent on goods and services that emit more CO2. A new Swedish study shows a vegetarian diet is 10 percent cheaper, freeing up about 2 percent of an individual’s budget. The extra money would likely be spent proportionally on existing purchases.

This boosts one’s carbon emissions by about 2 percent. So eating carrots instead of steak means you effectively cut your emissions by about 2 percent. This won’t save the planet.

Lomborg’s article triggered two researchers at Cambridge University, who quibbled with his statistics because, obviously, being at joyless, Cromwellian, tofu-munching Cambridge, they didn’t suit their green narrative.

To get an idea of where they are coming from, read — or cringe, rather, at — this paragraph:

However, poorer countries stand to benefit from widescale adoption of a plant-based diet. Mortality linked to strokes, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer could fall by 5m to 6m avoided deaths and trillions of dollars could be saved in healthcare costs and by preventing productivity losses.

Here are two Cambridge PhD students trying to tell us, straightfaced, what they think is best for the poorest, most nutritionally deficient countries in the world, where starvation is a way of life and where meat is almost never an option. More calories, maybe? A bit of animal protein now and again? Nope. What these countries could really benefit from, according to these deluded prigs, is a “plant-based diet.” (Just like they’ve got already whether they like it or not. So that’s handy, isn’t it?)

Lomborg explains how they’ve got it wrong in this thread, summed up in this chart:

So in order to reduce global CO2 emissions by an amount so small it’s barely noticeable, a bunch of salad munching eco-fascists want us to abandon the following: t-bone steaks; foie gras; calves liver with onions; hamburgers; bacon, sausage and eggs; Thai green chicken curry; Rogan Josh; roast shoulder of lamb; shepherd’s pie; beef casserole; Wiener schnitzel; fish and chips; kedgeree; pulled pork; I could go on…

I speak with some feeling on this issue because I am myself currently enduring a vegan diet for medical reasons. Do you have any idea how boring a vegan diet is? Very, very, very, very, VERY boring indeed, whatever gleaming-eyed advocates of “plant-based” food may tell you. Food without butter or cheese or meat or eggs in the ingredients isn’t really food at all, I’ve decided.

So when my diet comes to an end, round about Christmas, how do you think I’m going to respond if some cream-faced loon in a chunky knit sweater knocks and my door and says: “Hi I’m George Monbiot and as part of my holy mission to save the planet I’d like to invite you, yes you, to forgo your turkey and sausages and trimmings this yuletide, or EcoKwaanza as I prefer to call it…”

Well, he’s not going to get himself invited in for my homemade sloe gin and mince pies, that’s for sure.

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