'Reduce lamb and beer to save the earth'

The UK government's senior climate change official confirmed that greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced if people cut off lamb and beer during their daily meals.

"Lifestyle changes, including diet, will be one of the essential factors to cut carbon emissions. We do not say that every citizen should only eat vegetables and stop drinking beer, but reducing the amount of meat and alcoholic beverages in the daily diet not only helps us improve health, but also reduces greenhouse gas emissions , " said David Kennedy, head of the Committee on Gas Change. post-subordinate to the British government, speaking.

A study of harmful emissions funded by the British government showed that to have 1 kg of meat, sheep must release 16.6 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the amount of CO ₂ for 1 kg of tomatoes and potatoes is 9 kg and 0.45 kg, respectively.

Lamb produces a lot of CO ₂ because sheep burp a lot of methane, one of the most powerful greenhouse gases. Cows also release a lot of CO ₂ (16 kg for 1 kg of meat). Many previous studies have demonstrated that the amount of methane that 200 cows emitted per year harms the amount of carbon dioxide that a car emits after running 160,000 km.

The study also found that alcoholic beverages also contributed significantly to the greenhouse effect. The process of growing, processing hops and malt into beer, whiskey produces 15% of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK.

The UK government has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from now until 2050. More than one third of the methane gas that the country emits into the atmosphere comes from cattle farms. With the same mass or volume, methane has a capacity to hold 20 times more heat than CO2. Therefore, it is the most powerful greenhouse gas. But in the atmosphere, CO ₂ accounts for a much larger proportion than methane.