Australian red meat sector sets 2030 carbon neutral target at Alice Springs producer forum

Research and marketing group Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) says the country's red meat industry could be carbon neutral by 2030.

Richard Norton says the target will prove farming
 red meat is environmentally sustainable.

The challenge was set for the cattle and sheep sectors by managing director Richard Norton during his address at the MLA annual general meeting in Alice Springs on Wednesday.

It follows the start of a CSIRO research project in the past 12 months, funded by MLA, to identify ways the industry could become carbon neutral.

In 2015, a separate study by CSIRO found cattle and sheep produced almost 70 per cent of Australian agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions.

Read the ABC News story - “Australian red meat sector sets 2030 carbon neutral target at Alice Springs producer forum.”

(The idea that Australia’s red meat industry - particularly red meat from sheep and cattle - will ever be carbon neutral is fanciful as all the evidence points precisely in the wrong direction - Robert McLean)

Diet, Including Eating Less Beef, Dropped Americans' Carbon Emissions by 9%

Giving up meat help Americans cut
their carbon dioxide emissions.

The carbon footprint of the average American's diet has shrunk by about 9 percent, largely because people are eating less beef, according to a new report.

Changes in the American diet—lower consumption of not only beef, but orange juice, pork, whole milk and chicken—meant that the average American's diet-related greenhouse gas emissions dropped from 1,932 kilograms in 2005 to 1,762 in 2014.

The analysis "just shows that small changes in our diets have impacts," said Sujatha Bergen, a food specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There's a very concrete association between reduced red meat consumption and reduced emissions.”

The biggest contributor to the reduction was a decline in beef consumption of about 19 percent over the course of the decade, adding up to a cumulative reduction of 185 million tons of climate change pollution. Total emissions cuts from dietary changes were 271 million tons. During that time, overall U.S. greenhouse gas emissions averaged more than 6 billion tons a year.

Read the Inside Climate News story - “Diet, Including Eating Less Beef, Dropped Americans' Carbon Emissions by 9%.”