Sir Paul McCartney’s looking for help making a statement to the world’s leaders. The once-Beatle, sometimes Kurt Cobain stand-in posted a video Thursday asking fans to take the “Meat Free Monday Climate Pledge,” in which one commits to a weekly meat-free day as a statement of support to progressively addressing environmental issues.
The Meat Free Monday campaign was launched earlier this month by the McCartneys and Rt Hon Gregory Barker MP, Climate Advisor to David Cameron, and arrives ahead of the September 23 start of the United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen. The hope is that the international leaders will commit, at the summit, to agree on an ambitious climate treaty at next year’s COP 21 Conference in Paris with the subject of meat reduction on the agenda.
McCartney’s video is pretty low on information or facts. (Watch it above.) Mostly, it’s just a plea to go and do-do-do as he says, which is excusable since, one, he’s a knight; two, he’s a Beatle; three, Wings had some good songs too; and, four, it’s a noble cause.
“I need your help,” he says in the clip. “Let’s send all these pledges to the politicians and then they’ll do something about it.” Normally it’s not that easy, but Macca’s got the chutzpah to make it happen, we’d guess.
If you needed a reason to sign the pledge, other than Warren Buffett’s buddy telling you to do so, there are some explanations included on the YouTube page. Meat production is responsible for a whole lot of global greenhouse gas emissions and requires increasingly unsustainable levels of limited resources such as land, water, and energy. It is, overall, a major contributor to global environmental degradation.
The page also sites that 30 percent of all Earth’s land is already used for livestock and feed production, so as the global population grows meeting the current meat-heavy diets would bring disaster to our planet. Plus, i’s estimated that if every one of the world’s citizens ate as much meat as Westerners, we would need at least four more planets to sustain our species.
Even if all that’s true, we think we know McCartney’s real reasoning behind this campaign. Ever since Morrissey out-PETA’d the world’s richest bassist with a meatless Staples Center show last year, we’ve suspected he’s been looking to one-up the Moz. Well, here you go.
