My beef with Stern

I must admit that I despaired this morning when I heard that Nick Stern was arguing that meat eating should become socially unacceptable because of climate change. Those of us who think that climate change is happening and that human activity is a part of it have a big enough case to make without people thinking that they won’t be able to have a Sunday roast or a reviving steak if the green lobby gets its way.

People are, understandably, not going to accept being told that they can’t fly, eat meat or have the heating on. The solutions to the problems posed by climate-change have to be technologically led. A hair-shirt approach will simply not have public support and won’t be accepted by every country. There’s little point in the Sterns stopping eating meat if the Chinese are continuing to massively expand the ownership of petrol-powered cars.