Great Reset: Eat Less Meat to Meet Green Goals, Says UK Climate Change Committee

The United Kingdom’s Climate Change Committee has called for society-wide behavioural modification to meet the government’s green agenda goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century.

Despite the UK accounting for less than one per cent of global emissions, official advice to the government from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), a quango established under the previous Labour government in 2008, argued that British citizens will need to eat at least 260 grams less meat per week in order to meet planned emissions reductions.

The independent non-departmental public body said in its “seventh carbon budget” this week that this would equate to around two large doner kebabs, two 6oz steaks, or two cooked breakfasts.

“We are absolutely not saying everyone needs to be vegan. But we do expect to see a shift in dietary habits,” Emily Nurse, head of net zero at the Climate Change Committee, said per The Guardian.

The government should also seek to disincentivise the public from flying internationally, claiming that the aviation industry accounts for a growing area of carbon emissions. The CCC proposed a range of different taxes that could be applied to make air travel more expensive, such as a tax on fuel.

The panel also suggested that a “frequent flier” tax could be imposed on those who take a large number of flights. Noting that such people tend to travel for business and typically earn higher incomes, the CCC said that “tax rates would need to be sufficiently high to manage demand”.

Additionally, the CCC said that the government should adopt “nudging” policies, a politically correct term used in Britain to denote subtle but effective behaviour control techniques and other methods deployed by the state to influence people into conforming to the government’s agenda, such as forcing the airline industry to label the emissions of every flight or placing restrictions on air miles benefits programmes.

On top of eating less meat and flying less, the quango said that people should be urged or compelled to drive less and use more public transport. They also called for a country-wide effort to switch to heat pumps over gas boilers in houses.

While the CCC claimed that polling and a “citizens panel” suggested that most people in Britain backed their proposals, other surveys have thrown into question just how much support the green agenda actually has.

When asked whether the government should prioritise economic growth or achieving net zero by 2050, seven in ten Britons said that the economy was more important, compared to just 24 per cent saying the green agenda was more important, a poll conducted for City AM by Freshwater Strategy found earlier this month.

Responding to the recommendations from the CCC, Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice wrote on X: “FORGET IT… Climate Change Committee hermits say eat less meat, ditch the car, install heat pumps and forget holidays abroad… the road to Net Stupid Zero.

“They can clear off… I will eat more meat, drive more miles, use more heating gas [and] fly more.”

In contrast to both establishment parties in Britain, Nigel Farage’s Reform party has called for the net zero pledge to be scrapped, for the country to lift the ban on fracking, embrace nuclear energy, and for the government to impose a windfall tax on so-called renewable energy firms to make up for the cost to the taxpayer of investing in the green agenda.

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