Progress in reducing emissions has been made, but as targets get tighter we may have to look to our plates
by Leo Barasi / September 11, 2017 / Leave a commentJeremy Corbyn’s dietary habits made headlines recently when he said he was considering going vegan. This would represent a next step for the Labour leader, who has long-been a committed vegetarian. It is welcome that Corbyn is open to having the conversation about cutting down on meat and animal products more generally. As for the rest of us, we can’t keep putting it off. Not if we want to tackle climate change.
Campaigners have of course been trying to persuade the public to eat less meat for ages. It’s more than four decades since Peter Singer’s consciousness-awakening book Animal Liberation was published. The Vegetarian Society has been going four times as long. Over those years, there have been countless exposés of cruelties in factory farms and of the damage that farming can do to the local environment, and doctors increasingly warn of the risks of eating too much meat.