Want to Save the Planet: Stop Eating Say UK Profs.

British climate researchers are saying that the UK population must become more lean, like the people of Vietnam, to reach the government's 80% carbon reduction targets. Heavier people eat more. Agriculture is said to be a major carbon emitter. Also, heavier people use more fuel in their cars and on public transit than leaner people do. So apparently obesity also destroys the planet. They claim to meet this goal, Brits would have to cut their food consumption by 20%. UK based technology magazine The Register offers some interesting calculations to show how ludicrous the eating less plan actually is. The problem is that obesity is measured by body mass index (BMI), a division of height by weight. Vietnamese people by this measure are indeed less "fat" than British people are. However, they are also significantly shorter.

And we fat/heavy Brits eat more food than people do in Vietnam, that's true. But we aren't just fatter and heavier than Vietnamese people - we're taller too. Le Nguyen Bao Khanh of the Vietnamese School and Work Nutrition Department says that Vietnamese youngsters tend to stop growing early due to malnutrition, and "many are dwarfish". The Vietnamese government, indeed, are embarking on a national programme intended to raise the average male height to 5'5" from its current 5'4".

The Register concluded by saying...

Well, maybe. Us Brits emit almost ten tonnes per head a year, though. In order to meet the government's stated goals, much more serious efforts would be required: we'd have to halve the British population and shrink the average UK male to a height of 3'3" to achieve Mr Miliband's 80 per cent pledge, according to our calculations*. That's about the average height of a Hobbit, if we've recalled our Tolkien correctly.

The UK population needs to achieve 8 times the carbon savings suggested in the study to meet current government targets: thus they must lose 8 times as much weight, which would require vanishing altogether and then some. If numbers are cut by half, however, each person needs to lose only 80 per cent of their body volume. This equates to reducing all physical dimensions by 40 per cent, eg average UK men should become approximately 3'3".

Britain seems to be an endless source of harebrained schemes to reduce their carbon emissions to stop climate change, such as making monsters out of people who have more than two kids. The plans already imposed by the Blair/Brown government have pretty much destroyed the British economy. I've never seen such lunacy in my life. The UK is charting itself on a self-destructive course; and they said climate action wouldn't be detrimental to our society.

Source: The Register