The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emphasizes the need for people to change their lifestyle and consumption patterns in three key areas: eating fewer animal products, transportation, and heating/cooling of our buildings.
If individuals aren’t actively making the changes needed today, we are actively making the problems worse; these are the facts thinking people must internalize. See What the new report on climate change expects from you. Here is the report’s bottom line on food:
“Eating less meat is one of a number of mitigation strategies suggested by the IPCC to overhaul agricultural and land-use practices, including the protection of forests. The livestock sector is estimated to account for 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions globally, more than direct emissions from the transport sector.”
The good news is that we know what to do to and can do it so long as we act now as explained by new Nobel Prize winner Paul Romer in his CBC radio interview this week:
Just hours before William Nordhaus and Paul Romer won a Nobel Prize on Monday for their work on the economics of climate change, the UN issued a dire warning about global warming.
…But Romer — whose work focuses on adapting economic theory to take better account of environmental issues and technological progress — says this crisis can easily be averted through economic policy.
The economist from New York University’s Stern School of Business spoke with As It Happens host Carol Off.
Here is a direct audio link to part of their conversation.
