The United Nations’ Global Summit on Climate Change (which we discussed here) has begun, and already the delegates from the 187 nations are taking on some pretty important issues.  The New York Times reports that talks have begun to figure out what exactly to do with emissions that come from eating meat.

This may not seem like such a big deal, but it turns out that eating meat is pretty awful for the environment when not done properly (oh, look, another link to one of our posts discussing just that).  Sayeth the Times (I’m going to just go ahead and run two quotes together from way different parts of the article together in this pull, just go with it):

The trillions of farm animals around the world generate 18 percent of the emissions that are raising global temperatures, according to United Nations estimates, more even than from cars, buses and airplanes…Producing a pound of beef creates 11 times as much greenhouse gas emission as a pound of chicken and 100 times more than a pound of carrots.

And, that 18 percent is guaranteed to rise, by quite a bit, because meat consumption around the world is skyrocketing as countries such as India, China, and Brazil get richer and have more money to spend on food.

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Michael Klare’s latest book “Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy” just came out. It’s a great look at the changing world and the role that energy plays in shifting politics and the future of the planet.

For those you wanting to read up on energy without leaving your computer or going to the bookstore (you should def order it though - the amazon link is above), I recommend you head on over to TomDispatch.com to read a new essay by Klare called “The End of the World as You Know It”and the Rise of the New Energy World Order.” It gives a nice overview to the topics he covers in the book.

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When you’re a socially conscious, citizen-activist-kind-of-celebrity, you get to do cool stuff like redirect that blinding media glare to spotlight your own pet causes. The thing is, though, once you make a name for yourself as a champion of, say, animal rights, or fighting global warming, you can’t just talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk.

So Laurie David really shouldn’t have been so shocked to get a call from Paul McCartney the other day, explaining why she, producer of An Inconvenient Truth, should think about eating less meat. As Laurie blogged over at Huffington Post, Sir Paul told her about “a big trend happening in Europe called “Meat Reducers” where, along with recycling and not taking plastic bags, people are eating meat at least one day less a week. A simple thing everyone can do to lower their own carbon footprint.”

See, when you’re a famous vegetarian, you get to call up famous climate change activists that you don’t personally know out of the blue and point out that if they’re serious about fighting global warming, they need to cut back on the burgers.

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