World leaders from developed nations will be pressured to “curb their excessive appetite for meat” during the United Nations’ upcoming COP28 annual climate conference, Bloomberg News reported Saturday. “Nations that over-consume meat will be advised to limit their intake while developing countries — where under-consumption of meat adds to a prevalent nutrition challenge — will need to improve their livestock farming,” wrote Bloomberg Journalist Agnieszka de Sousa.
The UN’s anti-meat agenda is part of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) COP28 “roadmap” for limiting the rise in global temperatures by 1.5C, per the Paris climate agreement.
The FAO insists the meat industry is responsible for destroying the planet via methane and nitrogen emissions. However, contrary to the UN’s suggestion, the science is not “settled” on livestock emissions. For example, a group of UC Riverside researchers discovered this year that methane traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere and creates cooling clouds that offset 30 percent of the Earth’s surface warming. In other words, livestock farming is likely cooling the planet, therefore counteracting global warming.
Despite the unsettled science, FAO plans to create “transformative change” in the food industry. The FAO is also committed to aiding countries in implementing the “Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action,” a food “transformation” pledge.
These food “transformations” aim to drastically limit or eradicate meat consumption, among other things. “If we don’t tackle the livestock problem, we are not going to solve climate change. The key problem is overconsumption,” said Dhanush Dinesh,
