Please, Eat Less Meat

Pachauri Urges Less Consumption and Vegetarian Diet. By Marlowe Hood, IPS, January 15, 2008. "Don't eat meat, ride a bike, and be a frugal shopper -- that's how you can help brake global warming, the head of the United Nation's Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change said Tuesday. The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), issued last year, highlights 'the importance of lifestyle changes,' said Rajendra Pachauri at a press conference in Paris. 'This is something that the IPCC was afraid to say earlier, but now we have said it.' A vegetarian, the Indian economist made a plea for people around the world to tame their carnivorous impulses. 'Please eat less meat -- meat is a very carbon intensive commodity,' he said, adding that consuming large quantities was also bad for one's health... Pachauri praised the system of communal, subscriber-access bikes in Paris and other French cities as a 'wonderful development'... Another lifestyle change that can help, he continued, was not buying things 'simply because they are available.' He urged consumers to only purchase what they really need... At 67, Pachauri said he has not yet decided whether to take on a second five-year mandate as IPCC head. Elections take place in September. On the one hand, he said, the experience he has acquired would serve him well. But the advantage of retiring, he said with a smile, is that his carbon footprint -- the amount of C02 emissions generated by all this travels -- would be greatly reduced."