New Word Discovery

Today I discovered a new word. It describes me pretty well. C L I M A T A R I A N

A brand new term for me.

I’m not a dedicated vegetarian as I eat white meat.  I’m not a pescatarian as I eat chicken. I really love eating wholesome healthy food, with a dash of chocolate and wine on the side! However I cannot eat red meat without feeling a sense of dread. Also now after so many years I don’t like the texture or taste. I will eat a little so as to not offend my dinner host, or inconvenience them if they have no options. Maybe once every 3-4 years that happens.

My everyday diet is red meat free and that means I’m a climatarian: A climate conscious way of eating.

No sheep. No cows. This decision happened gradually about 10 years ago. My climate change consciousness was raised when two of my children converted to veganism.

One of the main reasons to eat less red meat now is because cattle and sheep both generate so much greenhouse gas.

“To produce one kilo of protein from beef generates the greenhouse gas equivalent of 300 kilos of carbon dioxide, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN,” he says. “By comparison cow’s milk, chicken and pork produce less: The greenhouse gas equivalent of below 100 kilos of carbon dioxide. But eating less animal food isn’t only good for the environment : We’d also reduce the costs to the health system because there would be benefits for our health.” source

Not New News

I am a member of the community that is starting to become more and more alarmed about the changes to the climate.  Temperatures ARE rising, storms intensifying, coral reefs dying; this is not new news.

Recently I learnt another new term: ‘climate trauma’.  In my work with trauma survivors I had not contemplated the psychological issues that are increasing as more people are becoming deeply troubled by our own government’s inaction.

We see many of the big nations committing to huge changes in their practices. China has reportedly reassigned over 60,000 soldiers to plant trees in a bid to combat pollution by increasing the country’s forest coverage. India has followed suit. However here in Australia we feel that the efforts are not massive enough to impact or reverse the global warming.

Climate change is a pervasive continual assault on the global biosphere – threatening mass extinctions.  This is overwhelming our emotional capacity.  As in some cases of abuse, the body shuts down, dissociates and tries to make the experience disappear.  Are people shutting down and therefore denying that there are actually irreversible changes occurring? Is climate change actually better renamed ‘climate trauma’?  You can read more about this burgeoning field of thought here.

Effective Action

One of the ways that people survive difficult times is by taking effective actions.  A study from Oxford University says that if we stick to the basic dietary guidelines of eating smaller amounts of meat and more vegetables we can shrink food-related greenhouse gas emissions by a third – not to mention save a few million lives along the way thanks to healthier eating.

Another article states that if globally we switch to diets that rely less on meat and more on fruit and vegetables could save up to 8 million lives by 2050. This would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two thirds, and lead to healthcare-related savings and avoided climate damages of $1.5 trillion (US) source

“What we eat greatly influences our personal health and the global environment,” says Dr Marco Springmann of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, who led the study.

“Imbalanced diets, such as diets low in fruits and vegetables, and high in red and processed meat, are responsible for the greatest health burden globally and in most regions. At the same time the food system is also responsible for more than a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore a major driver of climate change.”

“We do not expect everybody to become vegan,” he adds. “But climate change impacts of the food system will be hard to tackle and likely require more than just technological changes. Adopting healthier and more environmentally sustainable diets can be a large step in the right direction. The size of the projected benefits should encourage individuals, industry, and policy makers to act decisively to make sure that what we eat preserves our environment and our health.” source

If you need more ideas about what you could do here is a list. Me? I’ll recycle and re-use as much as I can, take my soft plastics down to Woollies, carry my ‘keep cup’ for coffees on the run and 100% refuse to use disposable cups or buy water.  We have a worm farm, they eat kitchen scraps and I send leafy green waste over the road for the neighbour’s chooks. I’ll keep practicing being a climatarian one meal at a time.

By Jane Macnaught

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Jane Macnaught

E: counsellor@tranquilloplace.com  M: +61 425 152 490

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