Green Drinks NCCS Climate change Strategy Discussion held at TAB, Orchard Road. ( 27 Oct )

On 27 Oct, Green Drinks Singapore, a famous local green group, organized a large 10-member panel discussion forum to gather feedback from business/ community/ academia/ NGOs on Singapore's National Climate Change Strategy 2012. The discussion was specially organised in consultation with the National Climate Change Secretariat (in the Prime Minister's Office).

The panel members include representatives from Biosphere Foundation, A*STAR, NUSDNV Clean Technology Centre, Halcyon Group, Alpha Biofuels, evHUB, Low Carbon SG / Green Future Solutions & Singapore Environment Council.Ms Jessica Cheam from Straits Time is the moderator of the forum.

Global Warming Study group attended the meaningful public forum to join in the discussion.

During the discussion, Mr Low posed a question on Green Diet:
“A lot of the time, the debate (on climate change) is centred around the energy issue. There’s another side of the issue, which is agriculture. The green and sustainable Economy needs green energy, but also a green diet. Meat production causes a lot of greenhouse gases and it is an inefficient way of using the world’s resources. Meat production causes about 20% of Global Green house gas emissions. Climate scientists like the Director of NASA, Dr James Hansen, and UN IPCC Chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri have asked people to adopt a plant based diet, saying it is the fastest action each individual can do to make an impact. Meat production also uses a lot of water, food and land. Meat production uses 20 to 80 times more water and 2 to 8 times more food compared to vegetable production. 1 hectare of land can feed 1 omnivore or 80 vegans. Thus, a lot of people are adopting Meatless Monday or Meatless Thursday to help reduce green house gas and reduce resource consumption. I would ask the panel your views on that.”

Mr Eugene Tay from Low Carbon SG/ Green Futures Solutions, answers:
“Going vegetarian should be a personal choice. It cannot be forced top down, but bottom up, and so we’ve seen movements like Meatless Monday or Veggie Thursday. Beef is the most carbon intensive of them all. If you can’t go vegetarian, just don’t eat beef.”