How to cool the planet? Eat less meat

EATING less meat and removing gas boilers from homes are among the ‘far-reaching’ changes needed to stop the Earth overheating, a major climate change report warns today.

The International Panel on Climate Change has set out a raft of recommendations on how to limit global warming to 1.5C and prevent rising sea levels, melting icecaps, drought, damage to crops and the spread of diseases that favour warmer climates.

As well as a radical change in diet – because meat production produces more CO2 than growing vegetables – a switch to electric cars and extensive planting of forests to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere will be needed, the panel’s report warns. We will also need to stop burning fossil fuels to generate power, and no longer use gas boilers to heat homes.

The report – backed by the United Nations – says the scale of the challenge is vast.

Overall, the Earth has to reduce the amount of CO2 produced each year by 45 per cent by 2030 – and reduce CO2 production to zero by 2050.

To illustrate how far off this is, CO2 levels rose about 3 per cent a year between 2000 and 2013, and by about 0.4 per cent a year between 2013 and 2016.

The world will also have to develop technology to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and also allocate more land to growing crops for fuel.

The panel said: ‘Limiting global warming to 1.5C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.’