November 2009 printable subscriber newsletter

Ecologist

30th October, 2009

In this month's newsletter we take a look at a radical new approach to fish-farming, document the human and environmental cost of soya production for cheap livestock farming, examine the technologies which promise to make shipping green, and ask how we can tell which companies are really green. To download, log in and scroll to the bottom of the page...

Most environmentalists begrudingly admit that it took an economist, (then Sir, now Lord) Nicholas Stern, to finally give climate change the international attention it desperately needed.

Whether you agree with the Stern Review’s methods for putting a price on the economic impact of climate change - and let’s not forget it did involve costing out the value of human lives - few can doubt that that the previously little-known, grey-suited economist translated the threat of global warming into the mother tongue of the corridors of power with great success.

So I was hoping that Stern’s comments on meat eating during a recent interview with The Times would receive similarly serious attention:
‘Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.’

Predictably, after a backlash by the right-wing press (which had fair choked on its claret to read of anyone daring to challenge the sovereignty of the Sunday Roast), Stern was forced to beat a retreat.

‘I did not, as your front- page headline (Oct 27) suggested, tell people to “give up meat to...

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