Posted on 08/04/2007 10:05:01 AM PDT by Maynerd
Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.
Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.
The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.
“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”
Mr Goodall, Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon, is the latest serious thinker to turn popular myths about the environment on their head.
Catching a diesel train is now twice as polluting as travelling by car for an average family, the Rail Safety and Standards Board admitted recently. Paper bags are worse for the environment than plastic because of the extra energy needed to manufacture and transport them, the Government says.
Fresh research published in New Scientistlast month suggested that 1kg of meat cost the Earth 36kg in global warming gases. The figure was based on Japanese methods of industrial beef production but Mr Goodall says that farming techniques are similar throughout the West.
What if, instead of beef, the walker drank a glass of milk? The average person would need to drink 420ml – three quarters of a pint – to recover the calories used in the walk. Modern dairy farming emits the equivalent of 1.2kg of CO2 to produce the milk, still more pollution than the car journey.
Cattle farming is notorious for its perceived damage to the environment, based on what scientists politely call “methane production” from cows. The gas, released during the digestive process, is 21 times more harmful than CO2 . Organic beef is the most damaging because organic cattle emit more methane.
Michael O’Leary, boss of the budget airline Ryanair, has been widely derided after he was reported to have said that global warming could be solved by massacring the world’s cattle. “The way he is running around telling people they should shoot cows,” Lawrence Hunt, head of Silverjet, another budget airline, told the Commons Environmental Audit Committee. “I do not think you can really have debates with somebody with that mentality.”
But according to Mr Goodall, Mr O’Leary may have a point. “Food is more important [to Britain’s greenhouse emissions] than aircraft but there is no publicity,” he said. “Associated British Foods isn’t being questioned by MPs about energy.
“We need to become accustomed to the idea that our food production systems are equally damaging. As the man from Ryanair says, cows generate more emissions than aircraft. Unfortunately, perhaps, he is right. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should always choose to use air or car travel instead of walking. It means we need urgently to work out how to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of our foodstuffs.”
Simply cutting out beef, or even meat, however, would be too modest a change. The food industry is estimated to be responsible for a sixth of an individual’s carbon emissions, and Britain may be the worst culprit.
“This is not just about flying your beans from Kenya in the winter,” Mr Goodall said. “The whole system is stuffed with energy and nitrous oxide emissions. The UK is probably the worst country in the world for this.
“We have industrialised our food production. We use an enormous amount of processed food, like ready meals, compared to most countries. Three quarters of supermarkets’ energy is to refrigerate and freeze food prepared elsewhere.
A chilled ready meal is a perfect example of where the energy is wasted. You make the meal, then use an enormous amount of energy to chill it and keep it chilled through warehousing and storage.”
The ideal diet would consist of cereals and pulses. “This is a route which virtually nobody, apart from a vegan, is going to follow,” Mr Goodall said. But there are other ways to reduce the carbon footprint. “Don’t buy anything from the supermarket,” Mr Goodall said, “or anything that’s travelled too far.” dkennedy@thetimes.co.uk
Shattering the great green myths
— Traditional nappies are as bad as disposables, a study by the Environment Agency found. While throwaway nappies make up 0.1 per cent of landfill waste, the cloth variety are a waste of energy, clean water and detergent
— Paper bags cause more global warming than plastic. They need much more space to store so require extra energy to transport them from manufacturers to shops
— Diesel trains in rural Britain are more polluting than 4x4 vehicles. Douglas Alexander, when Transport Secretary, said: “If ten or fewer people travel in a Sprinter [train], it would be less environmentally damaging to give them each a Land Rover Freelander and tell them to drive”
— Burning wood for fuel is better for the environment than recycling it, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs discovered
— Organic dairy cows are worse for the climate. They produce less milk so their methane emissions per litre are higher
— Someone who installs a “green” lightbulb undoes a year’s worth of energy-saving by buying two bags of imported veg, as so much carbon is wasted flying the food to Britain
— Trees, regarded as shields against global warming because they absorb carbon, were found by German scientists to be major producers of methane, a much more harmful greenhouse gas
Sources: Defra; How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, by Chris Goodall; Absorbent Hygiene Products Manufacturers Association; The Times; BBC
Ya beat me to it mylife!
ROTF!!
For some reason I thought of this song.
In the year 2525, if man is still alive
If woman can survive, they may find
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lie
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today
In the year 4545
You ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing to chew
Nobody's gonna look at you
In the year 5555
Your arms hangin' limp at your sides
Your legs got nothin' to do
Some machine's doin' that for you
In the year 6565
You won't need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube
In the year 7510
If God's a-coming, He oughta make it by then
Maybe He'll look around Himself and say
"Guess it's time for the judgement day"
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake His mighty head
He'll either say "I'm pleased where man has been"
Or tear it down, and start again
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin' if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing
Now it's been ten thousand years, Man has cried a billion tears
For what, he never knew, Now man's reign is through
But through eternal night, the twinkling of starlight
So very far away, maybe it's only yesterday .
They make Kotex pads?
L
Lawrence Solomon's "The Deniers" (a series of articles on the view of scientists who have been labelled "Global Warming Deniers"):
Other References:
Nothing to complain about then.
For the liberal minded, is it possible even after life?
As I read this I was thinking that it’s a good thing the writer was not standing next to me. Otherwise I don’t know if I could have resisted shooting him in the knee cap and smiling as he topples over.
I really need to go burn off some aggression. Hypocritical, control obsessed morons really piss me off.
Don't exercise and double your credits!
Just goes to prove once again that NO ONE knows causes global warming. It could be just a natural phenomenon. Yet, this Congress and this Administration are willing to dump billions of taxpaying dollars into a subject that no one knows nothing about. The fraud that will be perpetrated will be beyond anyone’s comprehension.
So... in order for all life on earth to survive we must kill off all life on earth.
Beware for huddling doesn't come cheap. ; )
Perhaps I should be put in suspended animation.
I have a SIL who reguritates this stuff every time I am unfortunate enough to see her. She has no muscle tone, is white as a sheet, her skin seems to hang off of her bones, her hair has gone totally silver at a relatively young age.
The last time she was telling me and my husband how to 'eat healthy', I responded something like ... "you mean if I eat these things I can be in the same shape that you are?" (in a totally amazed and innocent tone of voice). I thought my husband was going to bust a gut before he left the room.
We are outdoor people that are fairly fit and tanned. We eat what we please, and she never fails to lecture us on how to mend our ways.
If you get the chance to pummel, please get in a lick for me!
I don't even want to talk about what happens when I eat cabbage....and apples are even worse.
I suppose they will all come up with an anti-emissions rig to be worn 24 hours a day. The chip they implant will tell them if we exceed maximum allowable emissions. If we do, we will be taxed on the excess and the money will make the earth all better.
What idiots people can be...and unfortunately, they do it with government grants.
I think the more people exercise, the fitter they become, and few ambulances are needed to take them to the emergency room, after their heart attacks or strokes.
What’s that humming noise? Do you all hear that? Oh, darn my tin foil hat fell off. Hold on a sec.
Oh, yeah, that’s better. Whoa, that was close. I almost did something Al Gorish.
It proves again the basic point and motive behind all the push - there are too many people on the planet.
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