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Extinction Rebellion protesters outside the Dáil earlier this year. Rollingnews.ie

Opinion Irish people must reduce meat and dairy consumption and production to tackle emissions

Ireland is the third worst country in the EU for tackling climate change.

THE CLIMATE CHANGE Performance Index 2019 might yet prove to be a watershed moment in the campaign to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius. 

Its publication, along with the civil protest movement led by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, has caught the attention of the public, many of whom responded by voting for green parties in the recent European Elections.

The green wave that surged across Europe has left established political parties scrambling to highlight their environmental credentials.

After the election, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar spoke about how the public wanted the government to “act faster” on tackling climate change amid speculation that the Green Party could potentially hold the balance of power after the next general election. 

However, behind the rhetoric and political manoeuvering lies a monumental task, the scale of which has been heightened by the limited action that has been undertaken thus far. 

Already ranked as the worst country in the European Union on climate action, Ireland has little chance of meeting its 2020 or even 2030 emissions targets.

Ireland had the third highest greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per capita in the EU in 2017. This position has been compounded by the country’s inefficient consumption and production behaviours, which were ranked the lowest in the EU during 2017.

If Ireland is to stand any chance of substantially reducing emissions, a complete change in consumption and production behaviour will be required. Working toward responsible consumption and production (goal 12 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals), will be central to that shift. 

However, with a Sustainable Development Goal 12 (SDG12) score that ranks among the bottom five EU nations, this is another area where Ireland lags behind other countries.

Consequently, if we are to meet our internationally agreed obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet SDG12, we will need to completely alter how we both produce and consume food.

Customers driving demand

To date, much of the discourse around this issue has centred on the production side of the debate.

Time and again, we have heard how the agricultural industry accounts for one-third of Ireland’s GHG emissions, without much consideration for the consumer’s indirect contribution to those figures.

The agricultural industry has found itself under scrutiny, but consumers have been very slow to change their behaviour.

Although there has been an upsurge in the number of people embracing vegetarian or vegan options, at least on a limited basis through campaigns such as meat free Mondays, global demand for meat and dairy products is expected to rise by 76% by 2050. 

We are already seeing the consequences of this in Brazil, where president Jair Bolsonaro has loosened environmental regulations to allow farmers to engage in deforestation in order to increase agricultural production.

Consumers are driving much of this demand and a lot of the product is going to waste. 

Between 25-30% of all food produced globally is either lost or wasted, according to the most recent Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change report.

This comes at a time when two billion adults are classified as being obese or overweight, and 820 million people go to bed hungry.

Our insatiable appetite for meat has created a situation where a third of the world’s agricultural land is used to grow feed for livestock – not humans.

In other words, we are destroying forests and ecosystems that can capture carbon and replacing them with crops used exclusively to support a meat industry that produces carbon.

This juxtaposition has created a situation where the world’s top three meat companies, JBS, Cargill and Tyson, emitted more greenhouse gases than all of France, and nearly as much as some of the biggest oil companies like Exxon, BP and Shell.

When it comes to agricultural emissions, we are effectively burning the candle at both ends.

For some, the solution lies in producing lab cultured so-called clean meat to curb the impact of the industry’s Co2 emissions and to meet the demand of the globe’s growing population.

However, such solutions ignore the lessons learned from the green revolution that gave birth to genetically modified organisms in the 1970s. Even today, people are hesitant to knowingly purchase or engage with genetically modified foods due to the lack of research on their long-term impacts.

Although there is a great deal of promising research being undertaken that could potentially lower the amount of methane produced by farm animals, either by adapting their diets or genetic make-up, it is not yet clear how much of an impact those projects would have in arresting agricultural GHG emissions. 

In any event, even if the agricultural industry became carbon neutral, we would still be left with the issue of over production and waste, which is hardly ethical.

Global meat companies would continue behaving the same way, prioritising production over all other considerations.

This is the case in Ireland, where programmes like Food Wise 2025 were developed to assist the agricultural sector in increasing its primary production by 65%.

Such growth strategies are completely incompatible with the ambitious carbon reduction targets laid out in the government’s own Climate Action Plan.

As tempting as it might be for us to exclusively denigrate climate strategies and multinational meat producers, doing so ignores the fact that we in Ireland waste one third of the food we purchase.

If we are serious about cutting emissions, we must consider the environmental impact of the food we purchase. We must realise that everything has a carbon cost, particularly if the land used to produce our food was cleared to make way for agriculture.

We need to stop treating production and consumption in isolation, but rather see them as having a symbiotic relationship which we can influence as individuals.

Our collective future lies in sustainable production and consumption: treating them in isolation will, in part, hasten the effects of climate change.

Disrupting the current patterns of production without dealing with problems associated with our rates of consumption, is like projecting two parallel lines that will never meet on a graph.

There needs to be a deliberate focus on changing the norms, attitudes, cultures and values surrounding our consumption pattern, which, in turn, will lead to sustainable production and consumption.

Dr Stephen Onakuse is a member of the faculty at Cork University Business School. He is currently working on a project designed to understand the social norms or behavioural characteristics toward responsible production and consumption in Ireland. 

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    Mute Maurice Danaher
    Favourite Maurice Danaher
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:28 PM

    Current national debt is circa €190B. Is Noonan giving up on getting the ECB to finance the Bank debt and get it deducted from the €190B. This was one of FG’s election promises. The real national debt figure is probably close to €500B if we were to accrue all PRSI pension liabilities. Yesterday’s article in the Sunday Times is frightening on this.

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    Mute Winston Teardrops
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:33 PM

    Why would they include future liabilities? At that rate you could bring future expected revenue into the equation!

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    Mute Emily Elephant
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:40 PM

    Because as from 2017, we have to account for unfunded liabilities to give a true picture of national debt. Just as companies have had to do for years. There’s no real difference between a bond you have to repay and a pension you’re committed to paying, except in accounting terms.

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    Mute Maurice Danaher
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:01 PM

    Well said. Couldn’t have put it better myself.

    19
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    Mute Kate Ellen Egan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:04 PM

    Where will the money to fund these early repayments come from ? I know it’s a stupid question but does anyone know the answer ?

    11
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    Mute Robin Tobin
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:11 PM

    Maurice the minister is doing lip service for the next election. Europe is in receivership and has told Noonan no to what you have noted. It would be nice but our politician didn’t talk hard they were the good boys in the class. So Europe expects them to keep paying.

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    Mute Alien8
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:15 PM

    They will be coming from 15 year loans/bond issues so the banks will be lending this money to repay them back early.

    10
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    Mute VoiceOfVanguard
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:23 PM

    Wait ’til Ireland doesn’t get the retroactive bank recapitalization.

    And when – not if – new international corporate tax rules take effect from 2016 (OECD), at least €50 billion, or half the annual value of services exports will be vapourized.

    Plus, some multi-nationals have also said they will leave when that happens i.e. when they have to start paying a lot more corporation tax back home on top of high wages in Ireland.

    Hold on to your tin hats.

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    Mute Richard Rodgers
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:28 PM

    Emily
    Perhaps now the penny might drop when we consider the point John Bruton was making when discussing such liabilities recently.!
    He was massively abused on this site when his opinion about defaulting by the State on pensions etc when the alternative was bankruptcy .
    How quickly we shoot the messenger in Ireland rather than trying to deal with realities.

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    Mute SeanieRyan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:14 PM

    Still think that a debt deal will have to be done.

    The EU live in a fantasy world where real economic reality is denied and put on long finger.

    They blew their chance to resolve the Euro crisis.

    11
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    Mute Ben Gunn
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:32 PM

    That would apply to unfunded civil service pensions but not to PRSI pensions. That liability is subject to year by year legislation and, in theory, could be reduced or abolished by a new Finance Act. It won’t happen of course, but the possibilty means that it is not a reckonable long term debt.

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    Mute Stephen Brady
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:47 PM

    What do you mean give up, they didn’t even ask for feck sake

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    Mute Kerry Blake
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 9:48 PM

    ohhh I feel another seismic shift coming on….

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    Mute Huggy Bear
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    Sep 8th 2014, 9:12 AM

    Property tax
    Water charges
    USC
    ….any if these terms familiar to you????

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    Mute IrishGravyTrain
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:21 PM

    No financial penalty for paying off loans early. Ha ha. We should be getting a discount for paying early.

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    Mute Winston Teardrops
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:30 PM

    Don’t get into finance. I can tell by this one comment that it’s not for you.

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    Mute Tony Skillington
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:51 PM

    We should never have had them in the first place…ffs

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    Mute Peter King
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:23 PM

    Getting a bit annoyed with this sycophantic attitude the government has with Europe.

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    Mute John Deegan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:38 PM

    What, you feel no surge of patriotic pride when our minister begs the faceless financiers to kindly allow us to give us a big ball of cash?

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    Mute John Deegan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:39 PM

    * you a big ball of cash *

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    Mute Mike O Neill
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:00 PM
    7
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    Mute Richard Rodgers
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:39 PM

    Peter.
    What a brain and what a genius. Please tell us how yo can save the State a cool three hundred and seventy five million Euro a year as proposed by Minister Noonan so that we don’t have to politely ask our creditors for agreement to vary the terms of our Bailout.
    You must be a whizz with figures and I envy the confidence with which you stride across these pages.
    I showed your comments to a colleague and I could see straight away that he misunderstands you. In tact what he said about you couldn’t be printed here but all great men Peter suffer from such slingshots!

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    Mute Paul Mc
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:09 PM

    @Rodgers as per usual your wisdom knows no bounds you and your comments are wasted on the journal.
    Its time you took up your true vocation and that in my humble oppinion is that of chief Fine Gael ass wipe.

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    Mute Richard Rodgers
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:22 PM

    Paul
    Thanks! Your opinion in your own words is indeed humble and it is quite clear that you never aspired beyond that though instinct probably told you that there was enough material in you to heft a Sinn Fein shovel but you would need to be told what to do after that.
    The world needs simple folk Paul and at least you have recognised that!

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    Mute Stephen Grehan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:37 PM

    Well said Paul Mc. When Rodgers is in the company of Edna its like a scene from the film The Human Centipede.

    13
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    Mute Thomas Newell
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 9:09 PM

    hows life as the chief arse kisser and male cheer leader to enda and his brigade richard cos clearly you are one of them patriots big nose hogan was on about

    10
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    Mute Kerry Blake
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 9:54 PM

    So Richard hows that seismic shift of Enda the statesman performing these days?

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    Mute Richard Rodgers
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    Sep 3rd 2014, 12:01 AM

    Kerry
    Whaaaaaaaaat?

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    Mute E=MC2
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:58 PM

    When the cost of Noonan’s very generous minster’s pension to which he does not contribute a cent is added to the debt it could be the last straw that breaks the taxpayer’s back.

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    Mute Phillip Hogan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:23 PM

    Wow, we are so lucky.

    25
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    Mute Alien8
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:53 PM

    Looking at the returns, it is all rosy for Noonan – revenue’s new mantra is to suck every last penny of savings and profit out of small business and their employees and to present it as a gift to some unelected ex-politicians and expect a pat on his obnoxious head.

    “Look what I brought you – someone else’s debt, maybe I’ve ruined a few small businesses and taxed earnings and savings from Irish people to the hilt, but as long as we’re all happy let’s make this look like good news to the ‘media’ – you’ll print it like that, you property funded news website”…

    36
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    Mute Ger Ryan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 7:29 PM

    At the end of the 1st 1/4 2008 this country was heading towards a deficit of 22bn euros. In d last 5 yrs we have undertaken a huge social experimenr in how to balance d books without strikes/riots etc and we have nearly made it. There is huge credit due to fg and lab and enormous credit due to d dept of finance and public expenditure.

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    Mute Stephen Brady
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:52 PM

    Why should lab and fg get any credit. Ff told them what to do before they got booted out.

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    Mute Colin Mccormack
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    Sep 3rd 2014, 3:53 AM

    How is it any credit to them, it’s a credit to the irish people not the politicians. The politicians didn’t stop riots they hid away in Leinster house and quietly stripped us of our pride and dignity and left most of us demoralised and close to bankruptcy. Suicides are through the roof, let’s see these magnificent politicians of yours deal with that elephant in the roof. Crime.? It’s bandit country in ireland again, those shower deserve no credit for anything.

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    Mute Ger Ryan
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    Sep 3rd 2014, 7:22 AM

    The simple fact if the matter is that this country of 4.5million people withdrew over 16bn from circulation over the past 5 years. Politicans put their names forward as spokespeople for that. You didnt. You come on forums and talk abt how bad it is. Pokiticans arent stupid or even greedy anymore. They all know the suicide numbers, the high taxes, the unemployment but they still put their names forward. You didnt. it is easier spew vitriol from d sidelines

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    Mute Alan O'connor
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:06 PM

    More bad news for the Shinners. Tax take up. Ahead of forecast.

    Where are the Shinners anyway?

    I suppose it’s hard for them to spin positives into negatives. Especially when there’s an election coming up. Just doesn’t appeal to voters.

    But it’s all they have.

    21
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    Mute Thomas Newell
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 9:13 PM

    so anyone that has a different opinion to them muppets in power are shinners………explains the mental state of the cheerleaders for the likes of the FG/LB/FF crowd on hear…..deluded one trick ponies who believe anything that comes out of the lot in the dail

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    Mute John Hartigan
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:08 PM

    Election spew has started

    21
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    Mute Nosmo King
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:11 PM

    ” Noonan ” and ” charm ” in the same sentence !! . It is just so wrong, Jack Horgan-Jones. Just so, so wrong.

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    Mute VinHeffer89
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:05 PM

    Will Mr Noonan be dancing suggestively for Mario Draghi et al as well?

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    Mute Susan Adair Farrelly
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:54 PM

    Charm?? God help Europe…

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    Mute Jarlath Murphy
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:41 PM

    Jam?………………………………..
    ‘…………………………?…………….
    ……..?………………………………….

    NEVER!

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    Mute DM
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    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:16 PM

    Why was my two comments deleted?

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    Mute Brehon Law
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    Sep 3rd 2014, 8:16 AM

    Just in time for the general election!

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