Planning a BBQ? Not if you want to save the planet

(Reuters News, 17 Jul 2019) Reducing the numbers of burgers the biggest eaters consume could help cut climate changing emissions and protect forests, researchers say.

Meat sizzling on the barbecue might be synonymous with summer, but consumers should re-think their menus to save the planet, a U.S.-based research group said on Wednesday.

If the biggest beef and lamb consumers reduced their weekly intake to 1.5 burgers by 2050, it could cut greenhouse gas emissions and save forests from becoming farmland, the World Resources Institute (WRI) said.

Currently, Americans and Europeans eat double this amount and Brazilians three times, Timothy Searchinger, lead author of the WRI report and a researcher at Princeton University, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"This is the most promising and most realistic solution," he said, adding that it would be harder to reduce the world's overall meat consumption.

Diners in the United States, Canada, Europe, Latin America and the former Soviet Union make up a quarter of the world's population, but ate more than half of the world's meat from ruminants - such as cattle, sheep and goats - in 2010, WRI said.

Agriculture accounts for 11% of planet-heating global emissions, according to the United Nations, most of which comes from gases emitted by livestock during digestion and in manure.

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Reuters News, 17 Jul 2019: Planning a BBQ? Not if you want to save the planet