mootral (www.mootral.com) - Boris Johnson, mayor of London, today wrote a scathing and slightly derogatory/sarcastic article in The Telegraph criticising 2008 Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr Rajendra Pachauri, (head of the UN's climate change scientific body), for his call to eat less meat in order to curb climate change.

In his article, Mr Johson, writes that the real cause of global warming, is not that people eat more meat, nor is it the cows' fault, but the rising global population. He, therefore, concludes that he will not heed to his call and, "suggest that we flaunt our defiance of UN dietary recommendations with a series of vast Homeric barbecues".

What pertubs mootral is not his so-called "UN defiance", or call-to-arms to defend freedom of liberties. What is worrying is that his assesment of the root cause of the problem is wrong and therefore, his gratuitous attack on the UN body lacks vision and purpose.

The issue at hand should not even be Dr Pachauri's call to action to eat less meat. Turning billions of meat-loving people into vegetarians overnight is, well, impractical and impossible. Furthermore, dairy cows produce as much greenhouse gases as cattle raised for their meat, therefore, what Dr Pachauri should have said is to eat less cow-derived products (meat, milk, cheese etc...).

Both Mr Johnson and Dr Pachauri are wrong in their assessment of the livestock problem, and therefore are offering us meaningless and somewhat irresponsible solutions.

This might seem too obvious for leaders of that stature, but the root cause of the problem are the cows themselves. To illustrate the problem, picture this: there are more than 1billion cows on earth, each releasing 500litres of methane per day. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that more than 500 billion litres of methane are released each day by cows. Because methane is 23 times more potent than CO2, this gas is accelerating the greenhouse effect by a factor of 23.

Is overpopulation responsible for this? Will eating less meat solve the problem?

No, the real solution to this problem, is not overpopulation or eating less meat. The real solution is to find new products and technologies that will reduce emissions from the cows themselves.

Therefore, Dr Pachauri and Boris Johnson should stop making unfounded remarks. Instead they should start encouraging scientists, entrepreneurs, companies and investors to get together and develop carbon reducing technologies for the livestock industry. Now that, will create change of Homeric proportions.