At the COP21 Climate Change Conference that took place in Paris from November 30 through December 12, 2015, the most prominent objective was to reach “a new international agreement on climate change, applicable to all, to keep global warming below 2°C.” Last year’s report by Chatham House, a London-based independent policy institute, stated that “consumption of meat and dairy produce is a major driver of climate change” and that it would be extremely difficult to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius without a dramatic shift in dairy and meat consumption.

The Climate Deal was finally signed on Saturday, yet it contained glaring omissions. While 195 countries pledged to pursue “efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius” and gradually reduce emissions of the heat-trapping gases that are warming the planet, no acknowledgement was made of animal agriculture being responsible for over half of those emissions. The deal called for the preservation of forests, but ignored the fact that over 80 percent of deforestation in the Amazon and about 14 percent of the world’s total annual deforestation is the result of cattle ranching. Search the document‘s 31 pages and you won’t find any presence of words like “meat,” “methane,” “animals” or any mention of human eating habits.

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