The following report is a very comprehensive and interesting read.
UK Food Strategy and Net Zero (thegwpf.org)
Here are one or two highlights:
In 2019, the total CO2
emissions from the UK (i.e. production, not consumption figures) amounted to 369 million tonnes. In 2020, emissions dropped to 329 million tonnes. These figures ignore land use. In 2020, this represented just 0.95% of global emissions, down from 2.64% in 1990 (world CO2
emissions totalled 36.7 billion tonnes in 2019). Consumption-based emissions for the UK in 2019 (the most recent year for which data is available) were 520 million tonnes, bringing the country’s contribution to 1.4% of global emissions.
Achieving Net Zero for the UK would be effectively a rounding error in global emissions, which continue to increase. China, far and away the world’s largest CO2
emitter for over a decade, will not compromise its economic growth in the cause of climate change mitigation.
Look at what the UK has achieved in recent decades. Total emissions have fallen very significantly, now standing at about the same level as in late Victorian times. This is for a country of 67 million, compared to about 31 million in 1870.
To re-engineer the UK’s agricultural sector and food supply chain will inevitably have a massive impact on farmers, the countryside and diets, whether or not people conform to policymakers’ expectations and move to plant-based diets or whether they simply eat more imported meat and dairy produce. Decreeing the effective end of much livestock farming would be devastating. Doing this for the sake of 10% of the country’s overall emissions of greenhouse gases would be pure folly.
via climate science
September 2, 2023 at 01:44AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 