Vegan

from the article:

Paul McCartney has urged COP30 to go vegetarian, arguing that serving meat at a climate summit is “like handing out cigarettes at a cancer prevention conference”.

I'm criticizing Paul McCartney for arguing the conference should go vegetarian and not vegan. The cows that make the dairy are treated terribly, are slaughtered well before their natural lifespans, and most important to the context, contribute significantly to the climate problems with methane emissions (just like cows grown for meat do).

Here's a good breakdown of differences between vegan & vegetarian diets in terms of climate impact: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w

Emissions:

• Vegan:............. CO2: 2.16, CH4: 04.39, N2O: 0.71
• Vegetarian:........ CO2: 3.33, CH4: 20.21, N2O: 0.98
• medium meat-eaters: CO2: 5.34, CH4: 40.88, N20: 1.73
• high meat-eaters:.. CO2: 7.28, CH4: 65.40, N2O: 2.62

So vegans have 30% of the emissions as high-meat-eaters, and the differences between vegans and vegetarians are significant with regards to their emissions.

Also should be noted that there is a big gap between biodiversity impact between vegans and vegetarians, with vegetarian diets causing nearly double the number of species extinctions per day than vegan diets.

Arguing they should serve cheese, eggs, etc. but just not meat is like arguing they should offer smokeless tobacco but not cigarettes at a cancer conference - meat has similar climate issues as dairy, and McCartney seems to either lack knowledge of this, or is aware of his hypocrisy but chooses it as a more moderate position because he's hoping it will be more persuasive or likely to succeed.

To your point, the conference should probably go vegan just because they should be advocating for that kind of thing even if it won't solve the fact that 80% of emissions came from just 57 companies. Even if like electric cars, veganism won't save us from the climate disaster, you would think it would at least be part of their gimmick to show people what actions they can take (short of the guillotine, for the 57 company heads, as a part of a larger revolution that successfully replaces our economic and political system with something more egalitarian and less death-cult-y, though good luck on that; people don't tend to get stabby until they've missed meals, and once they've missed meals the basis of a good future civics goes out the window and it's more about the killing and retribution than about setting up a stable, but better, government).

Like I initially said, despite my criticism, I'm all for McCartney supporting vegetarianism, even if veganism would be better. Vegetarianism is still a massive improvement, especially when you are primarily looking at climate impacts, and it might be more likely to be implemented and supported socially.