Washington - A Washington analyst who has the knack of plain speaking when it comes to the environment urged Wednesday that people eat less meat as a way of reducing carbon emissions. Lester Brown, president and founder of the Earth Policy Institute, released his annual warning of the impending global crisis with his new book, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
Brown has been ahead of the global warming crisis for years, urging more use of wind power, calling for fossil fuel subsidies to be dropped and noting the huge number of new roads being built in places like China to accommodate the increasing number of cars.
This year, the advice that jumps out from his book is for human beings to move "down the food chain" to reduce the amount of fuel used in growing and transporting meat products.
Brown says that the energy used to provide the typical American diet is "roughly equal" to that used for personal transportation.
"A plant-based diet requires about one fourth as much energy as a diet rich in red meat," Brown said in a statement. "The reduction in carbon emissions in shifting from a red meat-rich diet to a plant-based diet is about the same as that in shifting from a Chevrolet Suburban SUV to a Toyota Prius hybrid car."
In the book that sweeps across all current energy, ecology and political issues, including those of failing states, Brown points out that even vegetables have their environmental cost.
Most Americans have come to take for granted fresh strawberries shipped 4,800 kilometres from the West to East Coast, fresh green beans from Kenya and fresh mangoes from Mexico. All consume huge amounts of fuel for transport, contributing to the carbon emissions blamed for global warming.
His book strikes a particularly strong chord this year after the UN panel on climate change released its most alarming series of reports to date projecting massive social and environmental costs if carbon emissions are not reduced.
Brown calls his ambitious book a "comprehensive plan" for reversing the trends that are "fast undermining our future."He calls for climate and population to be stabilized, poverty to be eradicated and the earth's damaged ecosystems to be restored.
