Why campaigns to ban meat send the wrong message on climate change

WeWork, the co-working mega-giant, recently instituted a new policy at its office spaces across the world: No more meat. Amid some backlash, the company said the decision was an attempt to reduce its carbon footprint and overall impact on the environment. And while this is a truly noble mission, if you take a deep dive into the science of climate and carbon emissions, the policy starts to look half-baked. For one thing, it perpetuates a ubiquitous myth in climate change messaging that individual decisions are more important than the actions of industry.Worst of all, the growing campaign against meat is shifting the focus away from the world’s worst carbon emitter — the fossil fuel industry. (One popular Netflix documentary in particular has gotten a lot of attention, despite its egregious factual errors.) Caring about the planet — and trying to do something about it — is a noble cause. But with the stakes as high as they are, accuracy in messaging is important. But according to renowned climate scientist Michael E. Mann, who has worked on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Assessment Report — the report that gives a status report on the global climate — the way WeWork has framed its message is misleading. “It let’s fossil fuels off the hook. It’s implicitly accepting the notion that climate solutions are voluntary measures,” Mann told me. “They’re important. But it’s really frustrating to me when they say eating less meat. When it's framed as if influencing the political process isn’t part of the constellation.”