Climate advocates are praising the Chinese government’s new dietary guidelines designed to cut meat consumption in half—which would reduce the country’s livestock-related carbon emissions by 1 billion tons by 2030. The average person in China currently eats 63 kilograms (138 lbs) of meat every year, which amounts to 28 percent of the world’s meat. The Chinese Nutrition Society (CNS), in partnership with the advocacy groups WildAid, Climate Nexus, and My Plate My Planet, is now advocating that consumers reduce that to 27 kg (39 lbs). That would prompt a 1.5 percent drop in global emissions, more than France and Belgium’s entire yearly output combined. Notably, the average person in the U.S. eats twice as much meat as the average person in China.
The campaign, launched with the tagline “Less Meat, Less Heat, More Life,” comes after more than 170 nations signed the Paris Agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions and keep global temperature rise to under 2°C. It also coincides with a report by WildAid showing that livestock emissions account for 14.5 percent of total global greenhouse gas output.
— source commondreams.org