Cut meat consumption to two burgers a week to stop worst of climate crisis, report urges

Meat consumption needs to be slashed to roughly two burgers a week in order to prevent the worst of the climate crisis, according to a new report.

Experts on systems change warned there needed to be a faster shift towards a more sustainable diet to deal with the scale of the challenge.

They took a look at climate action around the world and assessed whether it was keeping pace with targets to slash emissions.

They broke this down into 40 indicators of progress. The sobering report found none were on track to achieve a target to keep global warming below a 1.5C increase by 2030.

The State of Climate Action report assessed how much efforts in each area needed to be sped up to avoid “increasingly dangerous” and sometimes “irreversible” impacts of the climate crisis.

One of these was reducing the consumption of meat.

According to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation, meat and dairy consumption accounts for 14.5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The new report said: “Shifting to healthier, more sustainable diets must occur five times faster by reducing per capita consumption of ruminant meat to roughly two burgers per week across the Americas, Europe, and Oceania.”

Statistics show per capita consumption of beef, lamb and goat meat across high-consuming regions fell by 1.5 per cent to 91 kilocalories per person per day between 2015 and 2019.

The report by the World Resources Institute’s Systems Change Lab said this rate of decline needed to be faster to hit the 78 kilocalories per person per day target by 2030.

Earlier this year, the UK government was accused of being “on the fence” when it came to recognising the climate impacts of meat consumption.

The meat and dairy industries were also warned their profits were at risk if they did not slash their carbon footprints.