“A family barbecue creates almost as much air pollution as doing a 100-mile car trip, scientists claim,” according to The Sun, a UK news company.
By “pollution,” the author means greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, the gas used by plants to make food and release oxygen. A beefburger barbecue is claimed to be responsible for 23,048 grams of CO2, compared with 12,648 g from a chicken barbecue, and 8,236 g from a veggie sausage barbecue.
“Experts…claim by simply switching from cheese-topped beefburgers to chicken, families could nearly cut their carbon footprint in half. Not only do cows need lots more farmland than poultry, they scoff large amounts of grain and also burp greenhouse gases as they chew.”
Of course, one barbecue is completely insignificant; it’s about symbolism or perhaps the “optics.” The Green New Deal is part of UN Sustainable Development goals that include a war on meat. Some proclaim that meat consumption should be less than 1 oz per day. We are said to need a “Great Food Transformation” because “civilisation is at risk.”
When politicians call for “fundamental transformation,” find out what this means for the way you live.
For more on the Green New Deal, see Civil Defense Perspectives, January 2019.
For the effect of a drastic reduction in atmospheric CO2, see Climate Change IQ Question #5.