Paul McCartney, already an activist in the fight for climate change, is urging leaders at COP26 — the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference — to acknowledge the part that animal agriculture is playing on our quickly deteriorating planet.
McCartney — with the support of his family — is calling on COP26 delegates to adopt the Plant Based Treaty to accompany the Paris Agreement, the 2015 international agreement settled on at COP21 that covers climate change mitigation, adaptation and finance. “We believe in justice for animals, the environment and people. That’s why we support the Plant Based Treaty and urge individuals and governments to sign it,” the McCartneys said in a joint statement.
“Around the world, scientists, government representatives, faith leaders, and now celebrity voices are calling for a halt to the expansion of animal agriculture and deforestation, a shift to a plant-based food system, and reforestation and rewilding of land,” Anita Krajnc, Plant Based Treaty Global Campaign Coordinator, explained in a statement. “Increasingly people are recognizing that meat, dairy and egg consumption are driving carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions, the three major greenhouse gases – now we need COP26 delegates and other leaders to acknowledge it.”
McCartney has been a proponent for reducing the strain on agricultural resources before urging COP26 to adopt the Plant Based Treaty — in 2009, alongside daughters Mary and Stella, Paul founded the Meat Free Mondays initiative to “encourage people to help slow climate change, conserve precious natural resources and improve their health by having at least one plant-based day each week.”
The former Beatle’s McCartney III Imagined topped the Top Albums Chart in early August, and his recently released memoir Paul McCartney The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present debuted at No. 1 on Amazon’s best-selling rock books list.
