British People Can Make It Happen!

Feeling defeated from the findings from the last post, I have decided to look at the situation for the Europeans and see what difference it makes if dietary changes are made to reduce meat consumption. Also, I will again try to put the findings into context when compared to the overall carbon emission and other forms of carbon mitigation strategy.

The results from this review of many studies show that the potential to reduce GHG emissions from food consumption through dietary change can be substantial in regions with affluent diet. The reduction potential seems mainly to depend on the amount and type of meat and animal products included in the diet. Diets in which all animal products (vegan), meat (vegetarian) or ruminant meat are removed have the lowest GHG emissions. See figure 1. This confirms the general consensus that going vegan is good. But how effective is this in reality? 

Percentage wise, going vegan in EU has a greater impact on its overall GHG emission than the US. The review shows that food consumption accounts for 15-35% of European climate impact whereas in the US it is less than 10%. (This is based on the following figures. The CO2 emissions per capita per year is around 0.9-1.7 for processes of production and 1.4-3.2 tons if including transport and retail. According to EEA (2012), each EU citizen is responsible for 9 tons of CO2 emission every year). If the whole of EU undergoes dietary change to adopt either vegetarian or vegan diet or even just avoid eating beef and lamb, there could be a 4-20% reduction in GHG emissions per capita. This is very exciting and promising indeed!

For example, according to the committee on climate change in the UK, we have done extremely well so far. Not only has the first carbon budget target been met, the reduction rate currently also means we may deliver even more reduction in the second and third phase. However, the projection shows that we are not on track to meet the fourth, which covers the period 2023-27. 

To be able to meet the target of fourth carbon budget, there needs to be a reduction of 594m tons of CO2 in total, which is equivalent to an annual reduction of 118.8m tons. Given the population will increase to around 70m in 2025, a reduction of 4-20% of GHG emissions per capita means dietary change could help meet 21%- 106% of the required reduction! Therefore, at least for the UK alone, dietary change is indeed very promising!