Finnish novelist Risto Isomäki has recently written a book “Meat, Milk and Climate – why it is absolutely necessary to reduce the consumption of animal products“.
The issue is an important development dilemma as reducing the global consumption of meat is very crucial for ending hunger, preventing catastrophic freshwater shortages and influenza epidemics, for slowing down the development of bacterial strains resistant to all known antibiotics and for protecting biodiversity.
However, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) still speaks about increasing the world production of meat by two or two and a half times before 2050. It is important to prevent something like this from happening, because even according to FAO’s own assessment animal production already causes something like 18 per cent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. According to Isomäki’s book the real figure must be even larger, because there are a number of important sources of greenhouse gas emissions that are, to a major extent, caused by animal production but which have not been taken into consideration in FAO’s calculations. According to Isomäki these include eutrophication-induced methane and nitrous oxide emissions from reservoirs, lakes, ponds, rivers and shallow seas, as well as the carbon dioxide emissions from over-grazed pasture and forests used as pasture.
The book’s publisher Into Kustannus allows the PDF form of the book to be shared and distributed free of cost. You can download the book (without cover page) from here. The paper version is being sold and the royalties for it will be donated for Animalia, an important Finnish animal welfare organization.