Emma Bryce writes:

The climate impact of livestock is so powerful, that if we phased out the consumption of meat over the next 15 years, we could start stabilising greenhouse gas emissions from 2030 onwards. This would require a difficult culinary sacrifice — but it would get us more than halfway to achieving the emissions reductions laid out by the Paris Climate Agreement.

These bold findings come from a recent study published in PLOS Climate, which joins several recent papers that have looked at the power of dietary change to achieve our climate targets—whether by encouraging more plant-based diets in rich nations, or by exchanging red meat for poultry.

What this new paper brings into the mix is that it zooms in on the climate potential of removing ambitious amounts of methane and nitrous oxide from the atmosphere over relatively short time scales, through the way we eat.

These two greenhouse gases are products of livestock farming and feed production, and they are also exceptionally potent—with warming potentials dozens of times more powerful than carbon dioxide. But the silver lining is that methane and nitrous oxide also degrade more quickly than other gases in the atmosphere. So if we eliminate these gases, it could have a rapid climate-cooling effect. [Continue reading…]