(LibertySociety.com) -The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is gearing up to reveal its road map for global food systems during the COP28 climate summit. The United Nations has endorsed a plant-based diet for many years, but previous summits have focused more on reducing emissions in manufacturing and transportation.
Global power production will also be spared during the summit, with leaders expected to encourage Americans and other Western nations to consume less meat to reduce emissions. Ahead of the summit, FAO Office of Climate Change Director Kaveh Zahedi said that the solutions that have already been developed for the industry “can also support the sustainable use of biodiversity, as well as help with food security.”
A study released in 2021 claimed that the 18 billion tons of carbon dioxide produced by the global food system was responsible for 34 percent of the world’s emissions. The Biden administration’s climate envoy, John Kerry, used the study during a speech back in May at the United States Department of Agriculture’s AIM for Climate Summit. He faced backlash from Republican lawmakers for targeting the emissions produced from feeding the world. Kerry claimed that “the food system alone” would raise the earth’s temperature by half of a degree by 2050.
Pennsylvania Republican Representative Glenn Thompson, who also chairs the House Agriculture Committee, provided a statement to Fox News ahead of the summit. He said that “the world needs American farmers and ranchers more than the UN.” He criticized the organization for its attempts to regulate American food producers to death, which he said would only shift production to adversarial nations that pollute the world at a much larger scale than the United States.
Beef and pork production emissions have decreased significantly in recent years, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. The agricultural industry in the United States only accounts for 1.4 percent of global emissions. Overall, agriculture produces the lowest emissions out of any industry in the United States.
Copyright 2023, LibertySociety.com
