According to a study conducted by Chatham House and the University of Glasgow, people would be willing to reduce their meat consumption for health reasons and to lessen their environmental impact.
Can (what we consider) our lunch contribute to pushing the planet into the abyss? Yes, if our meal consists of meat. Livestock farming produces more emissions than the entire transport sector; livestock farms generate 32 billion tonnes of CO2 a year, 51 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, while the dairy and meat industries use 30 per cent of all the world's fresh water.
Poor public awareness of the impact of meat is the main obstacle to tackling the problem. Governments have taken important steps to curb deforestation and reduce the impact of transport, while there is an enormous gap when it comes to the livestock sector.
This phenomenon could be partly curbed by taxing meat, increasing vegetarian food in schools, hospitals and the armed forces, and cutting subsidies to farmers, all supported by information campaigns.
According to research conducted by Chatham House, an independent British organisation, and the University of Glasgow, citizens would readily accept these restrictions if regarded as being in the public interest, such as the ban on smoking indoors. The research involved twelve countries, including the United States, Brazil, China and the United Kingdom, and was carried out using surveys and focus groups.
"Our research shows that any fears on the part of governments about interventions of this kind are unfounded," said Laura Wellesley, the study's author. "Citizens expect policy to be able to pursue solutions that are in the global interest."
It is estimated that at current levels, if there is no reversal of the trend, meat consumption will grow by 75 per cent by 2050. This growth would make it virtually impossible to achieve the goal of keeping the rise in global temperature below two degrees Celsius.
In developed nations, meat consumption is already well above levels defined as "healthy" and is linked to rising rates of heart disease and cancer. Last October, the WHO also added processed red meats to its list of carcinogens.
According to the research, if the world's population reduced its consumption to around 70 grams a day, carbon emissions would be cut by an amount equivalent to the annual output of the United States, the world's second largest emitter.
The forthcoming UN climate summit in Paris could provide the appropriate setting in which to address the climate impact generated by certain dietary habits. According to the study, drastically reducing meat consumption would be the simplest and least costly way to cut CO2 emissions, yet actions to achieve this goal are currently non-existent.
A footnote: none of the study's authors is vegetarian or vegan, yet it is necessary "to make the public understand that industrial meat production is not only harmful to one's own health, but to human ecology as a whole," explained Greg Philo, a researcher at the University of Glasgow.