For the sake of argument, let us suppose that it would be a Good Thing to rapidly reduce the rate of emission of anthropogenic carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The political problem is do so without damaging the industrial and organisational structures of The World As We Know It. I’m not pretending that TWAWKI is idyllic or anywhere near optimal, but in the wise words of my navigation instructor “always begin from where you are - then you won’t get lost before you start.” So let’s consider a minimal change to the status quo.

Fossil fuel consumption is now about 1500 watts per capita. The distribution is far from even or equitable, but it does produce a known standard of living, enjoyed by some and aspired to by most others, and it powers a global society which we understand even if we don’t necessarily endorse. All the energy is derived from the oxidation of carbon and hydrocarbons to produce CO₂ and H₂O.

The quiescent power dissipation (basal metabolism) of the human body is around 150W. We derive our energy from the oxidation of fats and carbohydrates to CO₂ and H₂O: slightly different chemistry but exactly the same physics.

Now the average human eats roughly his own mass of bird and animal carcasses in a year (I’m talking about “live weight”, including skin, bones, etc). Considering the age distribution of farm animals, from newborns (too small to eat) to breeding stock (too valuable to eat) , we can see that we maintain about three times our own weight of  farm animals, to provide us with meat.

Enzyme chemistry fixes the operating temperature of birds and animals at around

35 - 45°C. The specific metabolic rate of  large mammals and flightless birds is fairly consistent: practically every warm-blooded creature that we eat dissipates about 2W/kg to stay alive, just like us (thanks to the surface/volume relationship, chickens dissipate more, cows less, but the weighted average of our prey species is fairly close to the human value). In short, we use animals that oxidise organic chemicals to CO₂ and H₂O, at the rate of 450W per human, to sustain our carnivorous habit.

So farm animals actually generate about 23% of the CO₂ that can be attributed to human activity. Could we abolish them, and thus reduce anthropogenic CO₂ emission?

As we want to minimise the impact of any change on our quality of life, we must consider contraindications to health or wealth. Wholly vegetarian sects in the Far East are no less healthy than any control cohort. Individual vegetarians in the West are no less prosperous than their meat-eating friends and colleagues. Vegetarians and carnivores perform indistinguishably in academic and athletic tasks, and in the arts. Away from the dining table or the pathologist’s slab, it is hard to tell human vegetarians from human carnivores at all. There is no evidence of harm.

Could we phase out meat production over, say, five years? We would need to alter the balance of food crops a little, abandoning animal fodder in favour of plant protein production, but subsequent added-value links in the food chain (advertising, packaging, preservation, transport, hygiene, preparation, service) would be almost unaffected: vegeburgers and nut roasts place no special demands on the grower, shipper, wholesaler, restaurant manager, cook or waiter. In fact the handling and keeping properties of vegetable protein are better than those of meat - soya is a less suitable breeding ground than steak for human pathogens.

The land area  required to produce a given quantity of fat and protein is much smaller (perhaps 60% less) if we eat plants directly instead of using animal intermediaries. If we cultivated the same fields, the world would be in food surplus rather than shortage, and we could grow significant  quantities of biofuel crops to replace fossil sources, pushing the CO₂ reduction beyond 30% without reducing food output.

No new technology is needed. All the knowledge and equipment exists, and has been adapted over millennia for every cultivable terrain. We may need a few more ploughs and bean harvesters, and a few less fodder cutters, but nothing that hasn’t already been invented and proven, and can’t be pulled by existing tractors and oxen (the net CO₂ contribution of multipurpose animals is left as an exercise to the reader!)

Animal rights? Nearly all farm animals are scheduled to die within the next five years anyway. We can retain some breeding stock just in case the experiment doesn’t work, but by restricting their reproduction to replacement levels we won’t need to slaughter any more animals that we already intend to, in order to reach the target of negligible meat production within 5 years.

Will the public accept such a change? Easily! In my youth, biryani was considered exotic by the British, ox tripe was Monday’s school dinner, and nobody had ever sold a hamburger in China. Nouvelle cuisine is so “last year”. Five years is several gastronomic half-lives!

I am not a vegetarian or an animal rights advocate, nor am I convinced that CO₂ is a significant contributor to climate change. But a worldwide reduction of meat production seems to carry fewer unknowns than reducing fossil fuel consumption, and appears to offer genuine benefits. It’s a simple, reversible experiment that can be initiated by redirecting agricultural policies and subsidies, monitored in real time, and abandoned at any stage. Should we try it?

Alan M Calverd PhD MInstP