Paul McCartney says that the biggest single thing that anyone can do to combat climate change is become a vegetarian.
The McCartney household must have been a right barrel of laughs when he was still married to Heather Mills – it wasn’t that long ago that Heather Mills suggested we should drink rats milk.
What he says has some truth about it. Cattle produce a lot of methane and other “greenhouse” gases so the more beef we eat, the more gas they produce. However, it will take a damn sight more cattle than are eaten at present to match the amount of carbon produced by the biggest carbon “polluters” on the planet – ants. Should we take up a diet of nuts, berries and ants?
The biggest problem with cattle, though, is the rate at which the Chinese (yes, them again) are adding it to their diet. It takes 10 times as much water to keep a cow as it does to grow a ton of grain and it also takes 5 tons of grain to keep a cow leading to a shortage of cereak crops.
Humans have evolved to become omnivores. The natural diet for humans is a mixture of meat and plants and turning vegetarian means you’re not getting the correct diet your body requires. And for what? A vain attempt to stop naturally occuring climate change happening as it has done for thousands of years?
Technorati Tags: Vegetarians, Climate Change
McCartney is a totally crazed rambling old fart.
Is that not the problem if we all join cows in eating grass no the green kind in a filed kind, would we also add to the methane problem. Obviously if Cows eat lots of green grass and we eat lettuce the gas would become an even more serious problem, steak and chips please.
Are carbon dioxide, methane and the smelly aspects of eating too much cabbage not bad green house gasses?
Are we getting mixed messages here?
“turning vegetarian means you’re not getting the correct diet your body requires.”
Thats rubbish. I’m a vegetarian and i am very healthy. Probably much healthier that you!
In a sense McCartney is right. If we had less demand for cattle emmissions from cattle would fall. atm cattle account for 14% of emmissions (mostly methane which is worse than CO2 for the envrionment), the same emmissions as cars & aeroplanes combined.