Breakfast, lunch and dinner

The COP is a bit of a circus – activists, lobbyists, businesses, all jostling for access to negotiators and the media. High tech communications are everywhere, people move fast and talk, talk, talk. It’s a long way from our everyday lives but, last night, I went to a meeting which brought home to me, much closer than ever before, what the COP is really about.

The Climate Action Network International presented the view from their southern hemisphere country representatives and the most striking message came from a representative of the Federated States of Micronesia – a collection of mainly low lying islands in the South Pacific. Marstella Jack is a lawyer there, but has become a key environmental speaker for these vulnerable states. They face two major challenges – first, they are in the front line of global warming. If the seas rise, many of their islands could be swamped. Secondly, they face real food security challenges. Marstella said that, for the islanders like many others, food security is not a complex concept – it’s about breakfast, lunch and dinner – enough food to have three meals a day. Climate change poses a major threat to their agriculture if flooding becomes a real issue.

So what does this have to do with animals? Well for me it brought home, as hard as a slap in the face, the human consequences of the decisions we make about farm animals. If we, as a world, choose to eat ever more meat, there really will not be enough to feed everyone, as our latest report ‘Eating the Planet’ shows. The starkest effect though is not just food security, but combating climate change. With livestock production contributing more than transport to human-made greenhouse gas emissions, we really can dramatically reduce our impact on our environment by cutting down on meat and dairy consumption. The benefits to the environment are real and have been scientifically proven, as revealed in the latest report released yesterday from the Dutch Assessment Agency for the Environment, PBL (http://www.pbl.nl/nl/publicaties/2009/Wat-is-nodig-voor-de-2-C-doelstelling_-Van-klimaatdoel-naar-emissiereductie-maatregelen.html). What we feed ourselves, in our everyday lives, really can help determine whether those at the edge of the rising seas, or the edge of hunger, get what they need. It’s not rocket science that treating animals well, caring for their welfare, and eating responsibly is good sense – but when you can look into someone’s eyes and they tell of the threats their people face in everyday life, the human dimension is brought right home.