Climate change and environmental breakdown: are our food habits the problem or solution?

Eat less red meat? white meat? dairy? fish? Eat more veg? fruit? Even ‘go vegan to save the planet’. The food we choose to eat, and the farming systems producing it, have a huge impact on climate as well as on soil, water and biodiversity.

Tim Benton, Professor at Chatham House and Ilkley resident, will give an authoritative national and global perspective followed by questions and discussion.

Professor Tim Benton is the director of the Energy, Environment and Resources Department at Chatham House. He joined Chatham House in 2016 as a distinguished visiting fellow, when he was also dean of strategic research initiatives at the University of Leeds. From 2011-2016 he was the “champion” of the UK’s Global Food Security programme which was a multi-agency partnership of the UK’s public bodies (government departments, devolved governments and research councils) with an interest in the challenges around food. He has worked with UK governments, the EU and G20. He has been a global agenda steward of the World Economic Forum and is an author of the IPCC’s Special Report on Food, Land and Climate (2019), and the UK’s Climate Change Risk Assessment.

Doors open at 19.15 and the talk will start promptly at 19.30.

This talk is supported by Climate Action Ilkley, the Wharfedale Naturalists Society and the Ilkley U3A environmental forum.

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