Climate benefits of changing diet

Reducing global meat consumption would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cut the costs of climate policy substantially. This is the result of a PBL study published in Climatic Change. Apart from a reduction in methane and N2O emissions, vast agricultural areas would become unused, mostly as a result of reduced cattle grazing, and could take up large amounts of carbon. Shifting worldwide to a healthy low-meat diet would reduce the costs of stabilising greenhouse gases at 450 ppm CO2 eq. by more than 50%.