Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney has a beef with world leaders' efforts to battle global warming, but the vegetarian's solution — eat less meat — was not to everyone's taste as he joined a debate at the European Parliament on Thursday.
Ahead of global talks on climate change starting in Copenhagen on Monday, the 67-year-old took his international campaign for 'Meatless Mondays' to Brussels — hoarse from the start of his first major live tour in five years in the historic Beatles haunt of Hamburg, Germany.
McCartney was joined by Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the joint 2007 Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the pair issued a declaration alongside the parliament calling for a political step change.
They called on governments worldwide "to adjust their agriculture, development, environment and public health policies to reflect the role of livestock production in climate change."
The music legend cited a 2006 United Nations report which said livestock production is responsible for more harmful emissions — 18 percent of the total — than the entire transport sector, on 13 percent.
"I would be glad if this weren't true, and we could just carry on as we are forever quite happily and not bother with this whole subject," he said.
"But I've got a nasty feeling that this is true."
McCartney cited a raft of harmful side-effects attributed to the beef industry, from deforestation through pressure on scarce water resources to trapped cattle wind swirling around the atmosphere for decades, and offered a simple solution.
"Our campaign says 'try one meat-free day in the week'," he said, adding that as a young Catholic boy growing up in Liverpool he had routinely done much the same thing.
"It's very do-able. Once, for instance, we didn't recycle — we weren't interested, but now it's an accepted part of our lifestyles," he argued.
Nevertheless, McCartney's vision of "Strawberry Fields Forever," as one critic put it, drew protests even before the autograph-hunting had died down.
Echoing farmers' concerns in Britain in the run-up to his appearance, UK Independence Party deputy Paul Nuttall told the debate that McCartney had been "duped."
Richard Ashworth MEP, a former dairy farmer, said the singer was "selling vegetarianism on the basis it can save the world," and said his statistics were "muddled, misleading and wrong."
McCartney, who has lived on an organic farm in Scotland and whose late wife Linda's name adorns a range of ready-made vegetarian meals, said it was up to governments to "help the farmers to adapt to new practices."
Meanwhile Pachauri, who complained that the livestock issue is not high on the Copenhagen agenda, suggested that a surcharge on beef would also help focus minds.
"I think a tax would make a lot of sense — in Japan, beef costs a lot more than white meat or fish," Pachauri said.
"It's something we should think about seriously."
Share This Article With Planet Earth
