Dear politicians: let’s pull the climate emergency brake on meat & dairy companies

Recently I learned a new word – “permacrisis” – a frightening concept of the endless loop of problems the world faces today, like being on a rollercoaster that never stops. And here I was, just getting used to the term “polycrisis”, capturing the multiple fires the world has to put out day in and day out. While the climate, economic, geopolitical, and biodiversity crisis are here to stay, we do have some good news.

Greenpeace Nordic activists shroud the air at meat company Danish Crown headquarters with pink, natural-based smoke to visualise how methane looks on infrared camera. The activists are protesting against Danish Crowns’ large-scale meat production and the resulting emissions of methane.
© Michael Hedelain / Greenpeace

Reasons to be optimistic

Greenpeace Nordic has recently released a groundbreaking report, showing how we could slow down the heating of the planet. The proposed demands in the report are our best chance to activate the necessary changes that have the potential to save millions of lives and livelihoods in our lifetime and beyond. How? With a fossil fuel phase out? Yes! But there is also something else: politicians must pull the climate emergency brake on methane emitted by global meat and dairy companies and transition to a new food system. 

Methane: a threat and an opportunity

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, 80 times more powerful  than carbon dioxide (CO₂ ) in warming the planet over 20 years. Methane emissions are rising faster than ever, and they heat up our planet more rapidly than other gases, causing a lot of damage to our climate. Animal agriculture is the single largest human-made source of methane emissions. The good news is that while carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for centuries, methane disappears in 12 years. If we stop emitting more of it and start reducing what is already there, this could trigger a cooling effect on rising temperatures.

The cooling effect of methane 

Greenpeace Nordic’s report showed some shocking but also encouraging numbers. If overproduction of meat and dairy continues based on current projections, and the wealthier countries and populations continue to overconsume,  emissions from meat and dairy alone could warm the climate by 0.32°C by mid-century.  In contrast, if we cut meat and dairy production in half we could achieve a cooling effect of rising temperatures of 0.12°C due to methane emissions disappearing from the atmosphere. In times where every decimal of a degree counts, this gives me hope, especially when we are bombarded by negative news every day. In effect, it could mean that as many as 410 million people globally could be spared impacts of extreme heat by the turn of the century.

Photos handed to Greenpeace showing chained-up cows on different farms that supply the Bärenmarke Dairy Hochwald (Hesse) in Germany. The cows can hardly move, let alone walk around or feed from the pasture. Greenpeace demands that this type of farming is made illegal as it does not fulfil animal welfare requirements.
© Greenpeace

Big Meat & Dairy blocking change

Unfortunately, meat and dairy companies have little apparent interest in changing how much they produce. They conveniently  “pass the baton” to farmers and consumers, financially squeezing the former and gaslighting the latter. To make matters worse, Big Meat and Dairy actively lobbies politicians to avoid or at least delay any regulation of methane emissions from animal agriculture. This is Greenpeace activists have taken action around the world against the meat and dairy giants. We want to make the methane these companies are emitting visible to everyone and demand politicians to act.

This is where you come in

You do not need to be a Greenpeace activist to help stop meat and dairy companies from standing in the way of hope. You can ask politicians, currently packing their bags to attend the climate summit (COP29) in Azerbaijan, to pull the climate emergency brake by signing this petition. There needs to be stricter regulations of  meat and dairy companies’ emissions to stop their unrestrained growth of industrial animal farming. This way we can start breaking through the state of permacrisis and kick start the transition to a new food system with people, farmers, and nature at its heart.

Alessandro Saccoccio is a campaign strategist at Greenpeace International