Climate change

I went to a talk last night (part of a series being run by Winchester Cathedral and University) on climate change by Professor Sir Ghillean Prance of the Eden Project. His main thrust, being a botanist, was the disastrous consequences of destroying the Amazon rainforest. Just 7% of the original forest remains along the Atlantic coast of Brazil and Argentina. Only last week, there were 15,093 fires burning there. Deforestation causes 23% of total carbon emissions and he's also very concerned about the plants and species which are being lost. One of the points raised was that much of the cleared land is being used to grow soyabeans which are used to feed livestock which produce methane. This point is raised in an article about China in today's FT.
China feeds 22% of the world's population with 7% of the world's farmland. As the Chinese become wealthier, their diet is shifting from rice, vegetables and pork to more meat, eggs and dairy products. The urban population is growing by 15-20m people a year and eats three times more meat than the people in the countryside. 70% of China's corn and soyabean crop is used to feed livestock. It is now a net importer of soyabeans and will soon become the world's largest net importer. So China is responsible for a double whammy of climate change: not only is it encouraging deforestation but it's also building a massive amount of coal-fired power plants. No wonder they're having to shut down the power plants and ban driving temporarily for the Olympics:the smog's so bad over there that the spectators wouldn't be able to spot the winners.