UK govt energy and food strategies at odds with IPCC advice

Boris Johnson’s energy and food strategies on collision course with IPCC advice

Commenting on the IPCC’s latest report published today, Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist Dr Doug Parr said:

“The message from the world’s top scientists is clear. If we want to stop our descent into climate hell we need to urgently tackle our addiction to industrial meat and fossil fuels.

“Fossil fuels are driving the climate crisis, funding Vladimir Putin’s war and other conflicts around the world as well as clobbering UK households with rocketing bills. Meanwhile, the industrial food system is taking up vast amounts of land to feed factory farms instead of people, destroying climate-critical forests like the Amazon and threatening Indigenous People.

“This IPCC report is clear on what the solution is: cut meat consumption, cut energy waste, dramatically cut fossil fuel use and turbocharge homegrown renewables and clean transport. Yet Boris Johnson’s new strategies on energy and food are on a collision course with this advice. The government energy plan is set to double down on fossil fuels, bet heavily on expensive and slow-to-build nuclear, and ignore our energy-wasting homes, while its food strategy may not even mention meat reduction.

“The solutions to the climate crisis come with many other benefits – affordable bills, energy security, more land to grow healthy, nutritious food and restore nature. But we’re only going to reap them if our government gets it right.”

Commenting on the IPCC recommending “shifting to balanced, sustainable, healthy diets”, Greenpeace UK’s head of forests Louisa Casson said:

“A significant proportion of greenhouse gas emissions come from food production, with the majority of those coming from meat and dairy. If we’re to end the climate crisis and limit global warming below 1.5C, changing what we eat and how it’s produced is just as urgent as cutting fossil fuels.

“Meat and dairy production uses 83% of the world’s farmland but provides just a fraction of the calories and protein we need in our diet. It’s inefficient and unsustainable. Right now, industrial meat companies are destroying climate critical forests like the Amazon to grow animal feed for factory-farmed meat.

“By ending factory-farmed meat, land use needs for food production would fall dramatically. We would have plenty of land to produce healthy, nutritious and affordable food for everyone while climate critical forests like the Amazon could be protected for generations to come. Factory farmed meat has no place in a 1.5C world.”