section_path: Environmental impact/Climate change
section_name: Climate change
paragraph_text: Climate change
  
  The rising global consumption of carbon-intensive meat products has "exploded the global carbon footprint of agriculture," according to some top scientists. Meat production is responsible for some 35% of global emissions of greenhouse gases, and 60% of the greenhouse gases attributable to food production.
  
  Some nations show very different impacts to counterparts within the same group, with Brazil and Australia having emissions over 200% higher than the average of their respective income groups, driven by meat consumption.
  
  According to the Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production report produced by United Nations Environment Programme 's (UNEP) international panel for sustainable resource management, a worldwide transition in the direction of a meat and dairy free diet is indispensable if adverse global climate change were to be prevented. A 2019 report in The Lancet recommended that global meat (and sugar) consumption be reduced by 50 percent to mitigate climate change. Meat consumption in Western societies needs to be reduced by up to 90% according to a 2018 study published in Nature. The 2019 special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called for significantly reducing meat consumption, particularly in wealthy countries, in order to mitigate and adapt to climate change.