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Greenhouse Weekly Round-Up

Sally Hill | 20.08.10

One hundred days into the coalition leadership, Richard Black has analysed the UK government's claim to be the greenest-ever government and asks: if the government says it's green, how has it been measured?

How does this 'greenest-ever' claim weight indicators of success or failure such as a reduction in carbon emissions, or a rise in the extinction rate of farmland birds? With the decision not to back a third runway at Heathrow, but also to close the Sustainable Development Commission.

There was also an interesting discussion on the Guardian blog about the Government's willingness to demote the importance of the environment in favour of spending cuts and political expediency. Leo Hickman argued that the current cuts are in a long line of policies that are seeing short-termism failing the environment.

Here are the links we loved this week:

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climate change, biodiversity, government, coalition, meat, global warming, uk, greenest-ever, extinction, population

Meatout

Anna Guyer | 19.03.12

Fancy free food? This week, The Vegan Society will be giving out free food as part of Meatout, an international vegan campaign that promotes a meat free diet. On or around March 20th each year, Meatout supporting organisations attempt to get consumers to go meat free for one day and try out vegetarian and vegan foods. The UK Vegan Society is organising this year’s UK events.

Meatout is part of the USA not-for-profit organisation FARM’s campaign to end the use of animals for food. And FARM is not adverse to openly bribing consumers in order to attract them to their campaign: their Pay Per View van tours the USA, paying people one dollar to view a four minute film that documents some of the worse treatment animals have to suffer in a modern factory farm. The campaign also publishes how many people watched the film at each event the van visits.

FARM has also set up Meatout Mondays, a campaign that supports consumers to…well, the title says it all. This simple idea has its roots in the Meatless Monday campaign, set up by marketer Sid Lerner to be part of the Monday Campaigns (there is also Man Up! Monday, which supports young men to have STI tests, and Move It! Monday, which supports people to be more active). The Meat Free Monday campaign, set up by Paul McCartney, has a similar aim and the idea seems to be a core principle of the Green Party.

Regardless of how you feel about animal ethics, Meatless/Meatout/Meat-Free days have a positive affect on the environment. According to the United Nations, emissions of CO2 created by the livestock industry could account for 18% of global emissions. While meat production does not in-of-itself lead to environmental destruction (if done properly, it can lead to environmental biodiversity), our demand for cheap beef is leading to widespread rainforest destruction, as forests are cleared for new grazing ground for industrially farmed cattle. The meat industry can be wildly inefficient in terms of resources: for feedlot beef, it takes 33 calories of energy from fossil fuels to make just one calorie of energy for food.

So if you’re going to choose a day to go without a Big Mac…today would be the day.

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green living, food, meat, vegetarian, meatout, vegan, meat free mondays, meatless mondays