"Spanish should eat less meat to limit climate crisis, says minister"

[Photograph: Denis Doyle/Getty Images]

  I completely agree with him...

"Alberto Garzón wants public to recognise impact of megafarms on the environment and change its eating habits.

Eating less meat will play a key role in helping Spain mitigate the effects of the climate emergency, slow the process of desertification, and protect its vital tourism industry, the country’s consumer affairs minister has said.

Alberto Garzón said people in Spain needed to realise the huge impact that eating meat – particularly beef raised on industrial megafarms – had on the environment, and to change their eating habits accordingly.

“People here know about the part that greenhouse gases play in climate change, but they tend to link it to cars and transport,” Garzón told the Guardian.

“It was only very recently that everyone started to look at the impact of the animal consumer chain and, especially, at the impact of beef. Other countries were pretty advanced on that but in Spain it’s been a taboo.”

The minister said that the country’s geography made it profoundly vulnerable to climate change, adding the Spain people know and love is in danger of disappearing forever.

“If we don’t act, it won’t just be climate change we’re dealing with – it’ll be the triple crisis: the loss of biodiversity; pollution, and climate change,” he said.

“It would be the end for a country like Spain. Spain is a country in the Mediterranean basin – it isn’t the UK or Germany – and desertification is a very serious problem for our country, not least because it depends so much on tourism. Visiting a desert isn’t quite as attractive as visiting the Costa del Sol.”

Read more from source at The Guardian here.