Bruce Bisset: Oh no! The vegans were right!

Bruce Bisset

As a serious meat and dairy consumer, I was disgruntled at the findings of the major international biodiversity report released this week, because in essence it said the vegetarians and vegans are right – we need to eat a lot less meat and dairy product if we want to save the world.

Now, don't get me wrong: I like my veges, despite having to digest insipid masses of them as a child under the watchful eye of my mother, who would chant the mantra "Think of the starving children in Biafra", or wherever was the famine hotspot of the time, until the plate was clean.

I'm not sure what sort of twisted guilt trip that imbued, but I do know these days when I can pick and choose from the amazing variety available that I suffer from fat man's compulsion: if it looks smells and tastes good, what the hell; consume!

It's a major failing for someone who espouses green politics and despairs at the state of the planet. Not that I'm alone; the growing obesity epidemic fuelled no doubt by the background "growth is good" maxim of capitalism, shows most people throw food down themselves without stopping to read the label.

And that's the problem. Because to support this unthinking voracious habit, vast swathes of the Earth's surface have been transformed – at enormous cost to biodiversity.

The impacts of land use change and direct exploitation of animals and plants has many eminent scientists saying it's a bigger crisis than climate change.

Humanity has doubled in number since 1970 and the global economy has grown four-fold, accelerating the loss of finite resources.

About 200 million hectares of tropical forest have been cleared since 1980 - an area eight times larger than New Zealand. Mainly for cattle and dairy farming, or palm plantations – which in part support the animal farms.

Indeed animal farming now makes up around 70 per cent of all agriculture.

There are vicious feedback loops at work too. Animals such as cows emit staggering tonnes of methane – a greenhouse gas 2-300 times more potent than CO2 – so the more there are, the more global warming increases; the more the temperature goes up, the greater impact on native plants and animals through loss of habitat and disease.

So far the Earth has lost a quarter of its productivity due to soil degradation.

At sea, at least one third of fish are harvested at unsustainable levels, and live coral cover on reefs has halved.

Overall natural ecosystems have declined by 47 per cent and the global biomass of wild animals has fallen by 82 per cent.

Currently these changes are threatening one quarter of all life on Earth. At least a million species could become extinct by 2050, the report says, unless we change our ways.

The lead authors call for "transformative change" in the way the world works at government and industry level, while stating individuals can make a difference by reducing consumption of meat and dairy products.

I'm committing to having at least one meat-free day per week.

"We know that the way people eat today is often unhealthy for them and for the planet," said Dr Kate Brauman, one of the report's authors. "We can become healthier by eating more diverse diets, and we can also make the planet healthier by growing that food in more sustainable ways."

Given the facts, it's a call that can't be ignored. So this dairy child is committing to halving my dairy input immediately, and having at least one meat-free day per week.

A small step, but if we all took similar action, we might stand half a chance of surviving this mass extinction event.