Fight Climate Change with Diet Change The most effective action an individual can do to cut emissions
Every day, we make ethical and responsible choices for the environment by cutting down our carbon emissions. We recycle, reduce and reuse because we know that resources are precious. We use more energy efficient appliances so as to conserve energy. However, there remains one powerful choice that sometimes gets overlooked – changing our diet, something which scientists believe is the best thing we can do in terms of individual action.
Rajendra Pachauri is the U.N.'s top climate scientist. He leads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which every five years produces the authoritative assessment of climate science. Their last report, in 2007, helped set the target of 450 ppm (parts per million of CO2) that many environmental groups and national governments have adopted as their goal for Copenhagen. As you all know, that number is out of date. When Jim Hansen and other scientists looked at phenomenon like the Arctic ice melt of the last two summers, they produced new data demonstrating that 350 is the bottom line for the planet.
The efficient WWF Malaysia machinery was immediately felt when I started getting a series of text messages regarding transport, hotel accommodations and our overall visit to Kudat from Betty of the WWF KK office. Then Sofia Johari, the CEPA or Community Education and Public Awareness Officer of Kudat-Banggi PCA left me a message that she was going to coordinate our Kudat trip, and boy, did she just. Upon our arrival, she gave us a professionally prepared powerpoint presentation which in an hour gave us an idea of what the Kudat area was like and what WWF projects there were.
Trees are the epitomy of life on earth. Over millions of years of evolution of the earth's different organisms, trees are culmination of life that the randomness of earth's many creatures, environments, and climate and endless cycles of birth and rebirth have created to be the most perfect creatures of the world. They grow endlessly upward against earth's gravity, some reaching to enormous heights that the tips of their leaves see a different climate from the roots that nourish them. They feed directly from the earth and harness the power of the sun to create life. They are the homes for many who fly, jump, swoop, and walk through its canopy, from the tiniest of bacteria to the largest of birds they are nature's megastructures. Why then do we build buildings instead of trees?
The Mission is to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis - the focus is on the number 350 -- as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. But 350 is more than a number--it's a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.
Fight Climate Change with Diet Change
