Don't Stop Driving, Kill the Cows?

Way back in December I blogged a conversation between my husband and youngest son, blaming environmental changes not on the trees cut down, but on the cows farmed for the burger industry, where those trees once were, all farting methane.

This week a bunch of scientists in Maryland are reported as wanting to produce meat-like cell growth in sheets, to use as faux meat. I guess this is the cutting edge of genetic engineering and the article, here, mentions the increased demand for meat, the benefits of engineering the meat sheets to be full of omega 3 (plant based oil) instead of omega 6, etc. Lots of lovely rationalisations.

Heres the one that really caught my eye, about two thirds down the page:

Writing in this month’s Physics World, British physicist Alan Calvert calculated that the animals eaten by people produce 21 percent of the carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity. He recommends that people switch to a vegetarian diet as a way to battle global warming.

“Worldwide reduction of meat production in the pursuit of the targets set in the Kyoto treaty seems to carry fewer political unknowns than cutting our consumption of fossil fuels,” he said in a statement.

Hmm, I have absolutely no comment. Do you?