PHA-Exch> An intersting note

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel at gmail.com>
Subject:  Is Being Overweight a Climate Problem?
crossposted from: "[enviro-vlc discussion group]" <enviro-vlc at anu.edu.au>,

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/is-being-overweight-a-climate-problem/

Is Being Overweight a Climate Problem?
By JAMES KANTER

Associated Press


It may be worth taking a look at the results of a report in latest issue of
the
International Journal of Epidemiology.

Ddownload the article at:
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/dyp172v1

The study concludes that being overweight or obese “should be recognized as
an
environmental problem” because of its contribution to climate change from
additional food and transport emissions.

Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical
Medicine
found that a lean population, like the Vietnamese, consume about 20 percent
less
food and produce fewer greenhouse gases than a population in a country like
the
United States, where about 40 percent of people are obese.

The authors also found that transport emissions will be significantly less
in
countries with healthy average body weights because it takes less energy to
transport slim people.


Many people already are aware that driving an S.U.V. or traveling by plane
can
dramatically increase an individual’s carbon footprint, and the study seems
to
support the idea that some of the most effective ways of reducing emissions
begin with changes in individual lifestyles.

Governments around the world are beginning to tax and regulate those
activities
on the basis that doing so will help protect the climate. But the
implication is
that attention could start to focus on the size of waistlines — and that
could
raise the specter of discrimination on the basis of weight.

(Such discrimination on the basis of body weight has been the subject of
controversy in the transport sector in past years. The Irish no-frills
airline
Ryanair announced on Wednesday that roughly one-third of respondents to a
company poll had voted in favor of a so-called fat tax. “The revenues from
any
such fat tax will be used to lower the airfares for all Ryanair passengers
yet
further,” the airline said.)

“Humankind — be it Australian, Argentinian, Belgian or Canadian — is getting
steadily fatter,” the London researchers said in their study. “We need to be
doing a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness, and recognize
it
as a key factor in the battle to reduce emissions and slow climate change.”
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