transport and the UN's   top climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggests people should consider eating less meat as a way of combating

global warming .

Dr Pachauri has just been re-appointed for a second six-year term as chairman of the Nobel Prize-

winning IPCC, the body that collates and evaluates climate data for the world's governments.

"The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that direct emissions from meat

production account for about 18% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions," he told BBC News.

"So I want to highlight the fact that among options for mitigating climate change, changing diets is

something one should consider."

Transport accounts for 13% of emissions according to the IPCC.

The FAO figure of 18% includes greenhouse gases released in every part of the meat production cycle -

clearing forested land, making and transporting fertiliser, burning fossil fuels in farm vehicles, and

the front and rear end emissions of cattle and sheep. 

Dr Pachauri will be speaking at a meeting organised by Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), whose main

reason for suggesting people lower their consumption of meat is to reduce the number of animals in

factory farms.

CIWF's ambassador Joyce D'Silva said that thinking about climate change could spur people to change

their habits.

"The climate change angle could be quite persuasive," she said.

"Surveys show people are anxious about their personal carbon footprints and cutting back on car

journeys and so on; but they may not realise that changing what's on their plate could have an even

bigger effect."

Ms D'Silva believes that governments negotiating a successor to the Kyoto Protocol ought to take these

factors into account.

"I would like governments to set targets for reduction in meat production and consumption," she said.

"That's something that should probably happen at a global level as part of a negotiated climate change

treaty, and it would be done fairly, so that people with little meat at the moment such as in sub-

Saharan Africa would be able to eat more, and we in the west would eat less."

Dr Pachauri, however, sees it more as an issue of personal choice.

"I'm not in favour of mandating things like this, but if there were a (global) price on carbon perhaps

the price of meat would go up and people would eat less," he said.

"But if we're honest, less meat is also good for the health, and would also at the same time reduce

emissions of greenhouse gases."

no-one washes or kisses the bleeding  feet of the Jesus of Palo Alto
his lower legs are swollen beyond belief

he sits speared by poverty outside mervyns
in a pool of his own body fluids
mary magdalen must have been  too busy checking out the sale items
- 25% of selected designer labels -
besides the raven haired man from the living Diego Rivera mural 
is  from the wrong tribe
and is  medically uninsured
no-one genuflected before this labor day passion on the camino real
all the same the guy could  be suffering for everybody
a shopping mall messiah or empath
as the whole country is up against the fucking elements now
assailed at every turn by low pressure systems and corrosive media cycles
at the micro level
we're all particle colliders          
wearing away and hormonally ageing into oblivion
and at the macro level
lost to the angry talk radio static , machiavelian promises from the political elite
and of course the subliminal get rich quick schemes
broadcasting non stop from a hundred millon electronic devices in a universe of dark energy
ensuring that consciousness revolves around the material
rather than ever contemplates
that the material may be- just some of the time - a by product of consciousness

A court in Havana, Cuba, has fined Gorki Aguila lead singer of Cuban Punk band Porno Para Ricardo $30  for public disorder but  a more serious charge of ' social dangerousness ' which carries a 4 year jail sentence was dropped.

Porno Para Ricardo is known for songs that ridicule Cuba's communist government. 

Shortly before the hearing Cuban prosecutors decided to drop the 'social  dangerusness ' charge and hit Aguilla with the public disorder rap instead for playing his group's music too loud while they were recording their new album.

He was then ordered to pay a $30 fine and released.

Speaking to reporters at his home after the hearing the unrepentant  Punk rocker said  it was clear that the  international interest in his case was responsible for prosecutors dropping  the ' social dangerousness ' charge and he vowed to continue criticising the Cuban authorities  and its communist leaders insisting that  nothing could ever be gained by remaining silent. Johnny Rotten lead singer of the Sex Pistols still seems to agree with this Punk philosophy  as he has put his newfoind career as a reality tv celebrity on hold to reform the Pistols  again .

Climate change and efforts to deal with it are being pushed down the political agenda by fallout from the global economic downturn and increasing concerns about energy security.

The credit crunch and global fuel and food crises were bound to distract attention away from the environment to some extent but Russia's recent invasion of Georgia , which sits on a key East/West energy supply route , has generated serious concerns bordering on paranoia about the security of energy supplies so at a time when protection of the environment requires maximum co-operation at the global level the competing  political blocs and nations are now simply focussong back on solutions to their own energy demands and security problems in the same old Devil take the hindmost way.

flor de muerto by autotelic

Inequities are killing people on a "grand scale" reports WHO's Commission

28 August 2008 | GENEVA -- A child born in a Glasgow, Scotland suburb can expect a life 28 years shorter than another living only 13 kilometres away. A girl in Lesotho is likely to live 42 years less than another in Japan. In Sweden, the risk of a woman dying during pregnancy and childbirth is 1 in 17 400; in Afghanistan, the odds are 1 in 8. Biology does not explain any of this. Instead, the differences between - and within - countries result from the social environment where people are born, live, grow, work and age.

These "social determinants of health" have been the focus of a three-year investigation by an eminent group of policy makers, academics, former heads of state and former ministers of health. Together, they comprise the World Health Organization's Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. Today, the Commission presents its findings to the WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan.

"(The) toxic combination of bad policies, economics, and politics is, in large measure responsible for the fact that a majority of people in the world do not enjoy the good health that is biologically possible," the Commissioners write in Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity through Action on the Social Determinants of Health. "Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale."

The Atlas of Global Inequality  

is an online resource that enables people to  graphically see global  inequalities relating to  disease , income, GDP,  AIDS, life expectancy , etc. and understand the degree to which social inequality and injustice are killing people on this  planet.