LETTER: Will sacrifice be worthwhile?
A reader discusses giving up meat.
I gave up smoking 50 years ago and I gave up alcohol six years ago, but I am finding it much harder to give up meat. I believe that I would improve my life chances and that I would be causing less methane to enter the atmosphere which in its shorter life traps heat more effectively than CO2 which stays in the atmosphere for a very long time.
However, we have less than the life of methane to tackle climate change. Meat eating has been a natural part of human life for a very long time. We haven’t always smoked and I doubt that we have drunk alcohol for anywhere near as long as we have been eating meat.
I like salads and greens, but I have to have at least some meat with it. I have found meat replacements tasteless, so I will try eating more fish but is that as bad? I don’t know.
As for giving up dairy products, I just can’t see it happening. I no longer have young people around me on a daily basis, but if I did I would ensure they ate meat less regularly and that would naturally have to apply to me.
What I do know is that people in the developed countries must be the ones to give up meat, because those in poorer countries would starve without it. I will make a determined effort, but will enough people do it to make my sacrifice worthwhile?
Roger Watts, Walsall
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