This text is taken from our newsletter “Le Courrier de la Planète” of May 3, 2022. To subscribe, click here. The question was posed by Marshall Govindan.
Should we change our diet to hope to fight effectively against the climate crisis? For the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the answer is clear: yes.
Its most recent report, published in April, thus underlines the need to turn to a “plant-based” diet, and therefore to significantly reduce our consumption of meat and other products of animal origin.
It must be said that agriculture as a whole accounts for around 20% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. And nearly half of the sector’s emissions are attributable to livestock farming. A large part of the emissions come from ruminants, which produce methane, a GHG whose warming power is 80 times greater than that of CO2 over a 20-year period.
What’s more, the use of agricultural land to feed livestock monopolizes large areas that eat away at natural environments, including the forests needed to sequester carbon. In the Amazon, for example, almost 75% of the vast natural areas lost have been lost to the production of meat or the cereals needed to feed animals.
In a context of climate emergency, a study published in 2019 in the magazine Nature therefore estimated that the inhabitants of the planet should reduce their consumption of red meat by almost 75%. For Canadians, this decline would be more of the order of 85%, assuming that they would switch to a single meat-based meal per week.
On paper, the findings are clear: the production of a single kilogram of beef generates 32.5 kg of CO2, according to data published in Nature. For lamb, the balance is estimated at 33 kg per kilogram produced. Conversely, the balance is 0.1 kg for soybeans, 0.06 kg on average for vegetables, 0.7 kg for nuts and 1.18 for rice.
tricky question
Since scientific evidence militates in favor of reducing our consumption of animal products, how is it that our governments promote it so little? asks a reader of Planet Mail.
For economist François Delorme, a specialist in climate issues, it is very likely that governments consider this question to be too delicate. Even if the climate crisis requires us to take significant action, questioning our diet is not part of climate strategies in Quebec and Canada, he says.
The Government of Quebec’s Plan for a Green Economy 2030 simply mentions the desire to “offer food products with a lower carbon footprint on local and export markets, in a context where citizens are increasingly concerned about environmental impact of their lifestyle and diet”.
Mr. Delorme believes that we should go much further and set up a tax on products of animal origin, for example red meat, which would take into account its climatic impacts. After all, he points out, the federal government has implemented carbon pricing.
Agriculture and food systems analyst at Équiterre, Carole-Anne Lapierre believes that the status quo is partly due to our agricultural model, which is largely based on livestock farming and on an agriculture that is primarily used to produce the food necessary for the fattening of animals. In Quebec, for example, more than 80% of the grains produced are for animal feed, according to government data.
All the scientific signals, and even those of public health, demonstrate the need to reduce the share of products of animal origin in our diet, explains Ms. Lapierre. She also reminds us that the most recent version of Canada’s Food Guide precisely emphasizes the need to turn more to vegetable proteins. A choice that is beneficial for the climate, but also for human health.