AUGUST 24 2019 LISTENER 13
A
t Parliament’s environment select commit-
tee something unexpected is happening.
Even the high-emissions submitters seem-
ingly can’t embrace the Zero Carbon
legislation fast enough. Indeed, there’s talk
of not just meeting but exceeding lower
greenhouse-gas targets. There are schemes
to optimise nutrient-to-resource ratios,
sequester carbon, decimate emissions and a vow of tens of
millions in new green-tech investment
from one fertiliser co-operative alone.
When dairy, sheep and beef farmers
and fertiliser companies are as fluent in
enviro-speak at the select committee as
the likes of Greenpeace and Forest and
Bird, it can sound as though the Cli-
mate Change Response (Zero Carbon)
Amendment Bill is a new green dawn, with just a few pesky
details to settle. At the very least, the Prime Minister’s
self-avowed relentless positivity appears to be catching.
Little did last week’s submitters know that the very next
day would come a massive blow to their campaign to keep
on the right side of public opinion. Mainstream scientific
opinion was about to draw within striking distance of
ordaining we should all go vegan.
A leaked copy of the latest report from theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
advised eating drastically less animal protein and dairy.
It didn’t say “go vegan” in so many words – and critics
have accused it of pulling its punches to avoid spooking
business – but the panel’s conclusion, if understated, was
hardly ambiguous. Climate-change mitigation will require
a massive reduction of land being used for stock, a cor-
responding transfer to cropping, and still more returned
to carbon-sequestering flora such as trees and grassland.
People could assist by limiting their
consumption of meat and dairy and
moving towards a mainly plant-based
diet.
This was the IPCC’s first report to
contain an everyman call to arms.
Where most individuals’ green
habits can seem paltry in the face
of the melting ice caps, disappearing rainforests and the
Chinese steel industry, the equation that just by eating
a lot less meat and dairy individuals can actively help
mitigate climate change has a powerful “news you can
use” component.
Just to spell it out more plainly, the EAT-Lancet Com-
mission, an influential international medical project, has
totted up the land-use change the IPCC has been advocat-
ing and translated it to a dietary road map for the averageWHAT’S
FOR
DINNER?
With consensus building between the Government
and dairy, beef and sheep farmers on carbon
emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change has lobbed a grenade into the
debate, advocating a worldwide movement
towards a plant-based diet. by JANE CLIFTON & SALLY BLUNDELL
GE
TTY (^) I
MA
GE
S
The new “IPCC diet”
means counting the
carbon-offset points
on our plates.