Just as electric cars have no environmental impact related to emissions until you think about the faraway coal fired power plant that produced the energy to charge the vehicles and the energy that got lost along the way during transmission.
OP’s domicile, Western Australia, is like 8% coal themselves. It would probably be a better use of their time attempting to get that number down rather than spreading FUD.
Well I used coal as an example of a source of energy that adversely affects the environment in well understood terms. The point was that looking at numbers in isolation paints a picture much rosier than it actually is.
It depends, maybe ? I live in a country where energy come from 69% nuclear power, and about 10% hydro, 10% solar/wind, 10% gas. The nuclear plants are evenly spread over the populated area.
an EV has a near future potential for being fueled by green energy, especially since during peak power production for types such as solar, most of us are at work with cars potentially plugged in and ready to make use of that abundance.
a fossil fuel ICE on the other hand is decades if not centuries away from workable green alternatives.
It would be really useful if there were some way to take that into account. If an electric car is charged with a typical mix of electricity sources, how much gasoline would you have to burn to put out the same amount of CO2?
Perhaps the EPA should put out some sort of miles per gallon gasoline equivalent, or MPGe for short.
I think this is pretty obvious when you look at the simple caloric in/out of creating veg vs. meat.
What isn't obvious *but should be* is that this isn't the way to save the environment; I'm all for encouraging behavior shifts, don't get me wrong – but food is as much a part of human culture as language or family is. You can't change that – and those who have tried are typically villains.
> What isn't obvious but should be is that this isn't the way to save the environment
It is very probable that this is the most important thing we could do. There are possibly hundreds of studies proving that. Ask, and I shall provide. Animal agriculture is the leading driver of environmental destruction, eutrophication, deforestation, and biodiversity loss.
As for villains...hmm... every year, over 92 billion land animals are killed, up to 3 trillion marine animals, 1 million species are facing extinction. Meat and dairy are not even a necessity, not in this day and age, not for the majority of people consuming most of it.
1. Plenty of animals get killed in the creation of vegan diets so that isn't an argument you want to make.
2. I think maybe you missed the point I'm making about dealing with reality as it comes. Food is as inexorably connected to human identity as religion; no top-down law, rule, or diktat will ever work – and anybody who tries it will be overthrown.
Crop fields do indeed disrupt the habitats of wild animals, and wild animals are also killed when harvesting plants. However, this point makes the case for a plant-based diet and not against it, since many more plants are required to produce a measure of animal flesh for food (often as high as 12:1) than are required to produce an equal measure of plants for food (which is obviously 1:1). Because of this, a plant-based diet causes less suffering and death than one that includes animals.
2. It's enough to remove massive subsidies for animal ag. - the market would take care of the rest. Subsidies make 90% of profits (IIRC) for meat corps.
The U.S government spends $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, but only 0.04 percent of that (i.e., $17 million) each year to subsidize fruits and vegetables.
> Because of this, a plant-based diet causes less suffering and death than one that includes animals.
In many cases zero more plants need to be produced to raise cattle, and how much suffering that's experienced by their death seems to be a personally attributed value, but slaughtering systems have been continuously developed to alleviate that as much as possible.
If I had to get my calories from plants alone, I'd be broke, and rather bored.
Among 9,179 meat burgers competing for first place at Peru’s recent BurgerFest 2022 edition, the plant-based burger, Not A Common Burger, made with fresh pulses, was crowned as the public’s favorite.
Almost any recipe can be made vegan. Fat, salt, acid, temperature, spices. World is full of good vegan foods. See Indian, Ethiopean or Mexican cuisine for example. Many foods in Greece/Italy are vegan.
> Almost any recipe can be made vegan. Fat, salt, acid, temperature, spices. World is full of good vegan foods. See Indian, Ethiopean or Mexican cuisine for example. Many foods in Greece/Italy are vegan.
Those are all lovely, but what about chicken breast?
I often enjoy seitan and soy, but pretending they're the same is disingenuous. Moreover, it's pointless — meat production is by itself carbon neutral, and there is no fundamental reason meat can't be enjoyed from time to time. It might need to get more expensive to better reflect its true cost, true, but it's different from "everyone needs to be vegan forever to save the planet".
After all, spices are just as "unnecessary" as meat, yet we grow them because they are nice to have.
When I was growing up, we had cows simply grazing wherever there was grass. We harvested wood for other reasons, because they weren't our livestock, and that provided for a few small clearings. They kept the grass short, and while they made the ground quite bumpy, they also fertilized the land which grew like crazy after my grandfather told the owner to get the cows out.
Now, I don't eat meat excessively, and do enjoy it more than ever, but it's definitely more expensive and involved to even temporarily switch. $6 for two sizable frozen chicken breasts, or $6 for a few tomatoes and peppers, $6 for 2lb of carrots. Usually it's a combination of a few things that have varying levels of environmental cost, like nuts, fruits, vegetables, beef, chicken, some grains, which seems sensible to me. If that cost dramatically increases, which it probably will, I'll adapt, but I doubt it will get to the point where I'll be considering no meat at all, because of the sheer amount of other stuff I'd need to eat and how expensive it can be. I'm not terribly interested in what global averages seem to be according to some website, it's not how I make decisions about how to allocate my small amount of food budget.
How many people were on this rock then? Was it anywhere near 8 billion people as it is now, or was it a fraction of the number?
> it's definitely more expensive and involved to even temporarily switch
The price of meat and healthy whole foods in the US is heavily distorted by lobying [0] and by subsidies ($38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, but only 0.04 percent of that (i.e., $17 million) each year to subsidize fruits and vegetables) [1].
For comparison, US meat market revenue is about $125bn [0] and dairy is about $41bn [1]. Which means a rise in meat prices if subsidies are rebalanced towards veg, but not an orders of magnitude rise.
> a rise in meat prices if subsidies are rebalanced towards veg
Good to know ... let's do it then.
But those are just the subsidies ... we're still ignoring the negative environmental and health externalities of meat production. What price should we put on that?
It is carbon neutral by definition. You don't add carbon to the biosphere by raising cows, slaughtering, and eating them, that's what "carbon neutral" is. The total amount of carbon in the cycle stays the same.
It doesn't really matter, truffles are expensive, yet are still widely consumed. No one argues for complete abandonment of truffle consumption purely because they're expensive.
Spices are even more unnecessary than meat as they provide zero caloric value. If you accept the need for food to be a pleasure and not just pure calories, and the resulting environmental impact (there is no free lunch, spice plantations could be reforested instead), you have to do the same for meat. "You can replace meat" is not true, there's no replacement for a steak taste wise. If you mean "you don't really need a steak" (regardless of its price), what's different about chilli peppers or vanilla beans? Surely you don't need them either, we can stop growing them and rewild the plantations instead?
I don't really have time to discuss this any longer, so I'll use some shortcuts (and you'll surely know what helpers I'm using), before I leave this discussion, sorry.
Your argument overlooks several important factors:
- Methane Emissions: Cows and other ruminant animals produce methane (CH4) as a byproduct of their digestion. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, about 28-36 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a 100-year period. This means that the methane cows produce significantly contributes to global warming.
- Land Use Change: Livestock farming often involves deforestation to create pasture or grow feed crops. This process involves burning or decomposing trees, which releases stored carbon into the atmosphere. It also removes forests that would otherwise absorb CO2, reducing the Earth's capacity for carbon sequestration. This isn't a factor in the carbon cycle of individual animals, but it's a significant part of the carbon footprint of meat production.
- Fossil Fuels: Modern livestock farming uses significant amounts of fossil fuels, for example in the manufacture and transport of feed. Burning these fuels releases additional CO2 into the atmosphere.
When these factors are taken into account, it's clear that while livestock farming is part of the carbon cycle, it is not carbon neutral.
Livestock Farming:
- Carbon Storage: In livestock farming, carbon is stored primarily in the bodies of the animals themselves. This is a temporary storage, as the carbon is released back into the atmosphere when the animals respire or decompose after death.
- Carbon Sequestration: Livestock farming does not contribute significantly to carbon sequestration. In fact, it often results in a net release of carbon, as forests are often cleared to make way for pasture or to grow feed crops, releasing stored carbon.
- Other Emissions: Livestock farming, particularly cattle rearing, produces a significant amount of methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse gas. This contributes to climate change much more effectively per unit than CO2.
Reforestation:
- Carbon Storage: Forests store carbon in the biomass of the trees and other plants, as well as in the soil. This storage is long-term, as trees can live for many years and the carbon they store is not released until they die and decompose.
- Carbon Sequestration: Forests are effective at sequestering carbon. They absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into biomass via photosynthesis, effectively removing it from the atmosphere for as long as the forest remains intact.
- Other Benefits: In addition to sequestering carbon, forests provide other environmental benefits. They support biodiversity, regulate local climates, protect water resources, and can help to improve soil health.
> It doesn't really matter, truffles are expensive, yet are still widely consumed. No one argues for complete abandonment of truffle consumption purely because they're expensive.
Hm ... that's strange argument. I was talking about "expensive" in the sense of us being unable to properly value the destruction of the environment, biodiversity with extinction of milions of species and pollution.
How would you put into the price of meat extinction of a specific animal, which we could study in the future and from its genetic information learn how to cure widespread diseases or an recipe for an eternal life (for example).
> Spices are even more unnecessary than meat as they provide zero caloric value
While it's true that neither spices nor meat are strictly necessary for a nutritionally adequate diet, it's important to look at the broader impacts of each. In terms of environmental footprint, the land use, water, and emissions associated with livestock farming far outweigh those related to spice cultivation. In fact, the World Bank estimates that livestock farming uses 80% of all agricultural land, and the FAO states that it contributes to about 14.5% of all human-induced greenho...
It's incredibly rude to not just "I'll have the last word and won't engage any further", but also to sprinkle some LLM dross on top. This kind of thing should not have place on HN.
Sorry for coming out rude ... I'm spending more time than I should here, refuting same misconceptions and mistruths again and again.
Call it dross if you will ... if it was somehow more valuable were I to write it alone and spend 30 minutes instead of 10 on it, than maybe (please) pretend that I did.
> This kind of thing should not have place on HN.
I also expected HN to be quite different, more open minded, more interested in solving our (environmental) problems ... can't have it all.
If you dumped the bottom out of animal ag you'd have much worse than a riot. If you doubt me, try going down to the local NASCAR track and swapping out the hotdogs with Beyond Sausage.
Not saying it's right, just saying your argument isn't realistic outside of a mathematically perfect – or authoritarian – bubble.
Authoritarian? Our society is already far from perfect.
IPCC: We must change food production to save the world, says leaked report. Cutting carbon from transport and energy ‘not enough’ IPCC finds. Among the measures put forward by the report is the proposal of a major shift towards vegetarian and vegan diets.
How Meat and Fossil Fuel Producers Watered Down the Latest IPCC Report. Scientist authors recommended more plant-based diets and phasing out all fossil fuels. But those recommendations didn't make it into the final report.
I think those links often miss the forest for the trees. Meat production, disregarding energy (that has to become carbon neutral anyway) and in steady state, is carbon neutral. It might require more agricultural land, true, but equating potential one-off carbon capture of reforesting with ongoing fossil emissions is just wrong.
Good point. You're right that, in theory, meat production could be carbon neutral. But the real world isn't that simple. Current animal farming emits a lot of methane and nitrous oxide (N2O), both potent greenhouse gases (over 100 year period methane is 28-36 times more potent than CO2, N2O is 265-298 times more potent than CO2).
Also, when we talk about reforestation for carbon capture, it's not just a one-off event. Yes, a new forest can sequester a substantial amount of CO2, especially in its early years when tree growth is fast. But as long as that forest continues to grow and mature, it's going to keep pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere. It's an ongoing process, not just a one-time event. So when we choose to use land for farming instead of allowing it to reforest, we're not just missing out on an initial large absorption of CO2, we're also giving up all the future CO2 that those trees could have continued to sequester throughout their lives.
Plus, we shouldn't forget about the carbon storage potential in the wildlife that would populate these reforested areas and in the soils those forests would help enrich and expand.
Sure, we need to make our energy production carbon neutral. But it may not happen for many decades, and until then, the high energy needed for meat production and distribution is a concern.
It is literally carbon neutral. Methane and N2O do not increase the amount of carbon in the ecosystem and do not change the climate in the steady state, unlike fossil fuels. Putting them in the same category is disingenuous.
I don't understand your point about forests. "As long as that forest continues to grow and mature", surely that's still a one time event? There is no growing over what was previously a farm being reforested, and the "maturation" is effectively limited to soil generation (normally fractions of mms a year), which captures a tiny amount of carbon, the rest being cycled by scavenging (micro)organisms? It is, for all intents and purposes, a one time carbon capture event. The overall body mass of mice, foxes, and deer is absolutely ineffectual for carbon capture, and again more or less constant after the first few years.
"We should become vegan for a couple decades" then? I don't think it's a reasonable idea to sell to the public.
> Methane and N2O do not increase the amount of carbon in the ecosystem and do not change the climate in the steady state
Not true ... warming potency, bio sources (like fossil fuels), deforestation, energy use, animals' inefficiencies in converting plants into calories/protein
> surely that's still a one time event
Not true ... deforestation for pasture or farmland (carbon into atmosphere), cleared land doesn't store carbon as much as forest do, reforestation mean not only carbon capture while forest is growing, mature forests still serve as carbon sink, sequestration potential is not only about animals, but also vegetation and soil, which is capable of storing 3x more carbon than the atmosphere, harvested wood for architecture keeps carbon stored for decades, centuries even. It's not one time event.
> The overall body mass of mice, foxes, and deer is absolutely ineffectual for carbon capture,
Not true.
The climate crisis and biodiversity crisis can't be approached separately, says study
> Not true ... warming potency, bio sources (like fossil fuels), deforestation, energy use, animals' inefficiencies in converting plants into calories/protein
It doesn't matter. If you run a fixed number of coal fired power plants for a hundred years, your hundred first year will make the climate change worse, because you added extra carbon to the atmosphere. If you run fixed amount of meat production for a hundred years, hundred first year does nothing to the climate, because the system as a whole is in a steady state (methane and NO2 are settled at their levels set by decay/production ratio and there's no new carbon added to the cycle).
It is still categorically different, you're talking of one-off events vs constant in/out flows.
> mature forests still serve as carbon sink
The only way it can happen is if carbon gets stored somewhere. Where do you think it gets stored? In other words, for it to be true, purely from conservation of matter perspective, you should see a material difference after fully logging a hundred year forest vs a fifty year forest. It's not the volume of wood itself, it's fairly constant after a while between wildfires and rotting. It's not the soil, it only accumulates a fraction of mm per year [0] and not all of it is carbon. Where do you think the carbon goes?
> Not true.
What do you mean "not true"? Here's a random article [1] estimating all wild animal biomass at 20Mt, of which more than half is water, and even if all of the rest is carbon we're talking at most 10Mt of carbon stored in all animal bodies. For comparison, total yearly CO2 emissions are over 34 billion tonnes per year. Any CO2 stored in animal biomass of a new forest is not even a drop in the bucket.
I'm not sure why do you feel the need to be sarcastic about substituting LLM musings for your own thoughts, especially after saying that you don't have time to engage.
You're still focusing on carbon and carbon only, and ignoring other aspects of the problem (like increase in warming due to much potent greenhouse gases, pollution etc. etc.).
> Where do you think the carbon goes?
I'm talking about difference between pastures and forests. Old-growth forests may seem stagnant, but they still store massive amount of carbon in the wood, soil, dead wood and litter that slowly decomposes, and below-ground biomass (massive trees with extensive roots = massive microbiome).
When a mature forest is logged for animal ag, not only it releases the carbon stored in the trees' biomass, but it also disrupts the soil and can result in substantial carbon emissions.
The rate at which mature forests continue to absorb CO2 is a topic of research, some studies argue that older forest continue serving as significant carbon sinks, other that they don't. But both camps see their value due to large amounts of carbon they store and the biodiversity they enable.
> It's not the soil, it only accumulates a fraction of mm per year
I thought we're talking about carbon storage, not soil formation.
> CO2 stored in animal biomass of a new forest is not even a drop in the bucket
Sure, because wildlife has no value except as being a storage medium for CO2. /s
I'd have guessed parking lots and sprawl are more destructive in total and on an ongoing basis than farming. Agricultural land may be more vast, but doesn't necessarily destroy all habitat that'd otherwise be there.
Half of all habitable land is used for agriculture. 80% of that is animal agriculture.
This leaves only 37% for forests; 11% as shrubs and grasslands; 1% as freshwater coverage; and the remaining 1% – a much smaller share than many suspect – is built-up urban area which includes cities, towns, villages, roads and other human infrastructure.
> doesn't necessarily destroy all habitat that'd otherwise be there
Animal ag is enabled by deforestation. 50+% of all pastures are deforested lands. The difference in biodiversity in a forest vs pasture is huge (pasture is a biodesert compared to a functional multi-level old growth forest).
Animal ag is e.g. a leading driver of amazon deforestation, either for pastures or production of feed. 80% of all soy produced world wide is animal feed, same as 35-40% of corn (and biofuels, less than 13% is for humans).
Notice: this doesn't account for historical deforestation (existing pastures deforested between last 10000 years)
If those pastures were afforested, we could store our entire 1.5C carbon budget in those forests and soils (thus stopping climate change and extinctions / biodiversity loss).
Those numbers may or may not be true, but they're extremely low-resolution and draw false dichotomies. Prairie grasslands that are used for cattle and a tremendous amount of other plant commodities were not once old-growth rainforests, and continue providing (albeit probably somewhat degraded) useful habitat for many species. Meanwhile 100% of whatever is covered by parking lots and McMansions is essentially useless for everything except temporary fairgrounds, parking SUVs, trapping heat, causing floods, and killing the appeal of urban landscapes. If all of a sudden we forested the areas that aren't, it would not be a good thing. You can't refer to what's happening in the Amazon and then point a finger at an arbitrary person and be like "See, if you didn't eat meat, this wouldn't be happening". It's probably not even relevant to Argentina.
There are questions to be raised and numbers to be thrown around, but world-level numbers aren't really that interesting.
This is not a reply I'd expect at all @ hacker news.
If world numbers are not good enough for you, do you want numbers specifically for argentina or the us? Or some other from those 200+ countries that exist? From a random stranger on the internet, instead of doing your own research? In the age or google etc? Just so you'd reject those for some arbitrary bullshit reason again?
In the 1830s, the sheer abundance and diversity of plants and animals in Argentina -- whether on land or in the water -- astounded British naturalist Charles Darwin during his famed tours of South America ...
If we could put a satellite image from 200 years ago next to one from today, we would see that the forested area has diminished in size and quality. The wooded areas left are much smaller and with less variety of species,' he said ...
For the last 200 years, this South American country ... has seemed to be bent on destroying its forests ...
In 1915, Argentina had 100 million hectares of forest - nearly a third of the national territory. Although there are doubts about the veracity of this official figure, there is no question about the magnitude of the destruction ...
By 1937, the agricultural census determined that the total area was 37.5 million hectares, and by 1987 it was 35 million. Ten years later, the area covered by forests had been reduced to 33 million hectares.
Deforestation accelerated to make room for intensive farming. Currently, more than half of the cultivated area in Argentina is planted in transgenic soy, which China buys in massive quantities to feed its livestock.
Animal agriculture uses land that can't be farmed all over the world.
Meat has much higher quality protein delivery than veggies and vegans have well documented health problems because it's absurdly difficult to be healthy on a vegan diet.
Plant-based diets were protective against cancers of the digestive system, with no significant differences between different types of cancer, a meta-analysis based on 3,059,009 subjects
It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.
NHS UK
A vegetarian or vegan diet can be suitable for everyone, regardless of their age.
British Dietetic Association.
[I]t is possible to follow a well-planned, plant-based, vegan friendly diet that supports healthy living in people of all ages, and during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
World Health Organisation
For adults, protein from two or more plant groups daily is like to be adequate.
The culture of food actually changes very rapidly; fast food and espresso cafes has found much expansion overseas, and fundamentally changed diets, driving up obesity and other major health issues. Considering the slop that fast food kitchens serve, I'd say that if marketed right and with the right flavors and price point vegan slop can replace fast food.
The wild fish we eat in various dishes has changed rapidly as the ecology has changed due to fishing. Many people change their diets according to seasonal availability.
"The culture of food actually changes very rapidly; fast food and espresso cafes has found much expansion overseas, and fundamentally changed diets, driving up obesity and other major health issues."
Yea, because people like those things (fast food and espresso).
Getting people to do less of something they really like? (Eat meat) Not likely, no matter how great your vegan slop tastes.
It’s doable if you substitute it with something equally good, which vegetarian food can be. India and the Mediterranean has amazing vegetarian food. Eating Indian food is an upgrade in my book.
It’s also important to consider that you can simply eat less meat and not quit it altogether. You might not get people to give up meat, but you can get them to eat 30% less without feeling like it’s a sacrifice.
Btw, when you become vegan, you realize you've been taking something that wasn't yours to take in the first place. And vegan food can be extremely tasty and filling. You can't just take meat out of a recipe and think you have vegan food.
It's a lot of habits that you must break, a lot of flavours that you must forget. There is a lot of amazing vegan food, but the vegan version of what people know is often a pale substitute. You might convince people with curry, but likely not with vegan sausage.
I think that it's more realistic to get people to massively cut their meat and dairy consumption than to really go vegan. Do what you can, but cheat sometimes.
In other words, I think it's better to accept that most people will get halfway there, and to make that easy.
I'm just culturally more familiar with meat prep, that's all. I've had my mind blown by good vegan food, but it was very far from what I was exposed too while growing up.
I think that's the idea. We need to get more people exposed to good vegan food. Someone get Jamie Oliver!
It may not matter. I'd sooner give up heat, air conditioning, or having children than beef, and that's barely hyperbole. Pretty sure there's a large minority that feels similarly passionate about brisket and sausage.
I've worked on traditional cattle ranches with open pasture grazing and am roughly aware of what goes on in the factory farms, feed lots, and dairies that were nearby us. Even traditional ranching has certain brutal aspects to it - dehorning and castration are quite painful even with some effort to minimize pain. But the cows suffer less and for a much shorter time than they would at the hands of a natural predator or their other natural ends such as starvation or exposure. I'm not sure what lead has to do with anything.
The "suffering equation" is to me the weirdest rationalization.
Whether that is true or not, I think it's more important to keep in mind that it's not our place to judge that, unless you hold some biblical belief that animals were put on earth by god to feed us. The cost of freedom must be taken into account too, it's a value not only relevant to humans.
A lot of the suffering in the world comes about because humans have an inflated sense of moral agency over things outside their scope. We have the tools to affect many beings and many lands, but not the wisdom to see the immediate and long term effects. We just see our current behavior, and then employ all kinds of mental gymnastics in order to perpetuate it. We'll go to great trouble to change the world, just so we don't have to admit we need to change our selves.
> The cost of freedom must be taken into account too, it's a value not only relevant to humans.
In my mind sentience is a spectrum and cows aren't very far along it. I spent my childhood working with cows and I can tell you they're dumb as rocks. They have little memory of the past and zero concept of the future. They were always happy to see us and had no concept of their freedom being restricted or that we would eventually auction them and their offspring to the slaughterhouse. People that are worried about cow rights have usually never spent time with them. Goats are further down the spectrum, but still dumb. Certain other cattle like pigs are said to be quite intelligent so there's more of an argument to be made.
There are human beings further down the intellgience spectrum than these animals, so this line of reasoning doesn't get very far as justification for their exploitation and killing.
>People that are worried about cow rights have usually never spent time with them.
Well, dub? People who spend a lot of time with cows are presumably working in the meat or dairy industries. It's rare for a person to believe their own actions are wrong.
Is the alternative breeding millions of cows and pitting them against their natural predators, or leaving them to starve? If not, then I'm not sure what relevance the comparison has.
Traditional cattle ranches are much different than factory farms. Cattle that grazes on open pastures are generally much healthier. An animals quality of life determines how healthy they are—and subsequently, how healthy they are to eat.
Factory farms are where most people get their meat in America.
Imagine how healthy you’d be if all you ate was oatmeal, a hormone cocktail (to make you grow faster), and some vitamins. Then imagine living in a cage with dozens of other people, having scarcely three feet between you and the next person. Would you be healthy?
You don’t necessarily need to give it up, just eat less. It’s much cheaper, too!
Cooking nice vegetarian food is more time consuming and you do need to learn new techniques but they are just as delicious and fulfilling.
I will say there is a certain visceral feeling with eating meat off a bone which I do occasionally miss (I have been vegetarian, except when I travel, for 8 years).
Vegetarian food can be astoundingly good for sure. I do have veg meals a few times a week, especially after finding an amazing Indian place nearby. Beyond meat cravings, I can't replace many meals with veg because no matter how much I eat I'm hungry again in half the time without meat in the mix. As you say veg can be cheaper to cook, but besides my local Indian place good veg food seems to only be available at overpriced restaurants.
Definitely it can feel like restaurants are taking the piss charging the same for a vego main despite much much cheaper ingredients being used.
My partner used to have the same complaints about vego food! The right recipes can be just as filling (a lot you come across incidentally may be designed to be “healthy” and therefore lower calorie). If you’re interested, “Flavour” by Yotam Ottolenghi is full of really excellent vegetarian food which is filling and isn’t very demanding on your cooking skills. But unavoidably, it does take more time to make a passable meal than a meat dish.
IDK a single telegraph cucumber here is $4-6, tomatoes anywhere from $8-16.
1kg of chicken is $12 and you get order of magnitude more calories.
Admittedly NZ had bad flooding recently hence the insane vegetable prices and you can find some cheap stuff, but it's hard. I've gone days without eating a single vegetable and feel my health going down the drain, but what can you do?
Tomatoes and cucumbers are both summer vegetables so they’re out of season in NZ. Pumpkins, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, beetroot, carrots and potatoes are in season right now in the southern hemisphere.
Our (2 person) grocery bill is around au$60-$70 per week which is less than half of what I hear from regular meat eaters.
The 2023 Farm Bill is projected to spend $700 billion over the next five years, with powerful industry lobbyists directing funds to enrich themselves at the expense of agricultural communities, human health, animal welfare, and environmental sustainability.
Most Americans have never heard of this massive omnibus bill, which Congress reauthorizes every five or so years, yet it impacts us every day. It shapes our food system–from subsidizing factory farms to funding food and nutrition programs, and it is why burgers are artificially cheap and salads cost more than they should.
> You don’t necessarily need to give it up, just eat less. It’s much cheaper, too!
This is honestly what turns me off about not eating meat the most. Dude literally said he would freeze in winter and sweat in the summer and give up his firstborn and you're like "it's cheaper yay !".
It feels like a telemarketer on my phone trying to sell me something after I told them a resounding no.
judging the headline: comparing two extremes of the spectrum is hardly useful for the average person. Or surprising.
Edit: after reading the article I know exactly as much as before. there are some superficial talking point without any hint of how this study was conducted or which nuances have been considered. There is nothing of substance and smells like a pure opinion piece.
also that methane from cow farts gets counted but if me pounding beans to produce protein at a fraction of a cows efficiency while farting up a storm is somehow carbon neutral?
Running the numbers on this, it seems as though one cow produces as much methane as 7000 of you (500L per day vs .07 L methane if random internet sources are to be trusted)
Napkin math and unvetted reference warning but here goes:
there is about 1B cows, there is about 8B humans. Fart composition matters as well, if we're counting methane as worse, more plant ingestion means higher fraction of methane.
humans produce around 0.5g methane per day
average beef cow of 500kg produces around 0.265g methane per day, average beef cow weighs ~1000kg, so lets say we're around on par for methane.
So, if we get rid of cows and instead ingest plant matter directly, we would need to see a increase of methane production of no more than 11.11% to break even.
however, if top google hits continue to be (if they ever were) reliable, we will see an increase of about 7 farts per day, from a 13-21 average for a male. This is an increase of about 33-54% so if in all the error that will exist arising from my franken-data and all the assumptions made along the way don't significant impact general accuracy, then we're not even close to breaking even.
Perhaps. But keep in mind, the water that runs off a farm is reusable, so to speak. On the other hand, run off from cows or pigs is all but toxic until it's treated.
Australia is an outliner. Factory farming in The West is an entirely different - and much uglier - story.
Pastures? Do you nonot know what *factory farming* is and does? What you're talking about - at least in the USA / The West - is a fraction of total production.
There's a reason they want to make "meat" in a lab. Hint: It's not because of traditional pastures.
> Ripping up these ecosystems to grow nuts and beans would be "worse" for the environment.
No, you could reforest/rewild those lands and stop droughts and and biodiversity loss and repair microclima and soil health etc. etc.
And by growing nuts it would be worse for the environment? Growing nut trees is co2 positive. How could forests with nut trees be worse than pastures with dried out grass?
If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares (and free up an area as big as Africa for rewilding / reforesting)
"If the world adopted an [x] diet" is blue-sky thinking my friend. Human behavior – on such an intimate and culturally-important thing – is practically immutable – and probably should be.
The higher-order requirements of 'Four Pest' policies are incompatible with human rights. There's ways to attain equilibrium with the planet without using thumb screws.
>And by growing nuts it would be worse for the environment? Growing nut trees is co2 positive. How could forests with nut trees be worse than pastures with dried out grass?
Because the nut trees would need massive amounts of irrigation.
If you have a place with pastures of dried-out grass, what makes you think there's enough rainfall there to sustain a forest of nut trees?
It could be so. The theory is that if we were to implement that, we should start at the coasts, establish dense forests there, and then continue planting inland.
Mainstream climatologists predict a 15% fall in rainfall over the Amazon if it is stripped of its rainforest. But the 'biotic pump' theory, rooted in conventional physics and recently confirmed by experiment, shows that the interior of a forest-free Amazon will be as dry as the Negev desert
Soaring deforestation coupled with the destructive policies of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, could push the Amazon rainforest dangerously to an irreversible “tipping point” ... After this point the rainforest would stop producing enough rain to sustain itself and start slowly degrading into a drier savannah, releasing billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, which would exacerbate global heating and disrupt weather across South America.
The consensus used to be that ecosystems are merely a product of prevailing weather patterns. But in the 1970s, the Brazilian researcher Eneas Salati proved that the Amazon, with its roughly 400 billion trees, also creates its own weather. On an average day, a single large tree releases more than 100 gallons of water as vapor. This not only lowers the air temperature through evaporative cooling; as Salati discovered by tracking oxygen isotopes in rainwater samples, it also gives rise to “flying rivers” — rain clouds that recycle the forest’s own moisture five or six times, ultimately generating as much as 45 percent of its total precipitation. By creating the conditions for a continental swath of evergreens, this process is crucial to the Amazon’s role as a global “sink” for carbon.
Many scientists now fear, however, that this virtuous cycle is breaking down.
>It could be so. The theory is that if we were to implement that, we should start at the coasts, establish dense forests there, and then continue planting inland.
While I certainly agree that chopping down the Amazon is terrible, I think you're vastly oversimplifying things with this theory. Some things just don't grow well in some places, and soil is important too. You can't just plant a bunch of trees in the desert: there's no soil there, just sand. Sure, you could start small at the coast and move inland as the ecosystem changes and soil quality is improved, but this is something that would probably take many centuries or longer.
Grasslands, savannas, etc. have been around for far, far longer than human civilization; they're not something we created with deforestation, and ruminants like cows(' ancestors) have been around far longer than us, grazing in these places. Chopping down forests to make more places for cows obviously is a bad idea, but I'm not convinced that it's feasible to take places that have been grazed by animals for millennia and somehow turn them all into nut tree forests.
> Grasslands, savannas ... they're not something we created with deforestation
Mongolia for example was much more forested in the past. Apx. 50% of current age grasslands and savannas were previously forests. Also, natural grazers prefer different plants than cows, so the compositions and storage capacity of pastures and grasslands differ extremely.
> I'm not convinced that it's feasible to take places that have been grazed by animals for millennia and somehow turn them all into nut tree forests
We don't have to. Just afforest those pastures and rewild the rest. It would protect the biodiversity for future generations.
Farming has it's own costs and tradeoffs as well. If everyone started to eat only vegetables we quickly run out places to grow the types of crops we recommend.
"reforest", "rewild"? Are you sure that these would apply to this specific part of Australia? A very important part of agriculture is suitability of crops in the environment. Australia is not known for its very hospitable agricultural environment. I would at least ask myself if the effort of planting and growing things there at scale could be higher than the benefits.
That’s pretty great, being able to use natural pasture is a wonderful thing and Australia is very lucky in that regard. In the US (the country that consumes more beef than any other) only 1% of beef is produced in this manner. Much of the water usage is feed and much of the the feed is grown on irrigated land.
Possible Dupe? Just searching "vegan" I see this 4 times in the last few days.
I am really curious what exactly "high meat" means. I am very curious since the difference between "low meat" and vegetarian is minimal at best and even between low and vegan is still not that drastic.
I would also really like to see how the dietary enviromental impact relates to a persons entire environmental impact (as in, ok we see a 30% impact change based on dietary impact but how much of a change is that on a personal level really?)
There are just a lot of information missing here that would paint much better (or not better depending on what you are trying to argue) picture.
I am also curious how this changes based on where you live and how far your food has to travel to get to you within the same country. Like rural vs urban in the US.
> I am also curious how this changes based on where you live and how far your food has to travel to get to you within the same country. Like rural vs urban in the US.
You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local
... the results of a study which looked at the footprint of diets across the EU. Food transport was responsible for only 6% of emissions, whilst dairy, meat and eggs accounted for 83%.
Many of the foods ... are ... transported by boat – avocados and almonds are prime examples. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO2eq in transport emissions. This is only around 8% of avocados’ total footprint. Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products.
Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%.
Many believe that air-freight is more common than it actually is. Very little food is air-freighted; it accounts for only 0.16% of food miles.9 But for the few products which are transported by air, the emissions can be very high: it emits 50 times more CO2eq than boat per tonne kilometer.10
So maybe the study answers it but that is a lot to read through for one answer, but my big question that you did not quote is still.
> I would also really like to see how the dietary enviromental impact relates to a persons entire environmental impact (as in, ok we see a 30% impact change based on dietary impact but how much of a change is that on a personal level really?)
That is information I am struggling to actually find. 30% of one of impacts is a decent amount but I also don't own a car. How much of my entire environmental impact is my diet?
They also seem to be grouping all meat together. Like Beef and Chicken. According to https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food there is a massive difference between the impact of Chicken vs Beef. I searched that report for chicken (never came up) and Poultry (came up twice). So I am very curious how they are actually coming to these numbers when all of the types of meet vary wildly in their impact.
> So maybe the study answers it but that is a lot to read through for one answer, but my big question that you did not quote is still.
I don't know whether there is an official answer, but if you look at your link there, it says, e.g. 1 kilo of poultry creates 10 kilos of CO2. The average american produces 14k Kilos of CO2/yr, so if you ate a kilo of chicken a day, you're looking at about 3k Kilos of CO2, or something like 20% of your carbon.
If you eat a kilo of beef it's like 250% of the average carbon footprint a year. That is a LOT of meat, but overall, you can guesstimate this is like 10-20% of your carbon footprint if you eat a lot of chicken, and maybe the bulk of it if you eat a lot of red meat. It seems like chicken is better than fish is wayyy better than red meat.
> It seems like chicken is better than fish is wayyy better than red meat.
You're right, but only if you count carbon footprint. You also have to count in destroyed/damaged/polluted ecosystems, elimination of wildlife, deforestation, energy, etc. etc. if you WANT to have a complete picture.
For CO2 numbers, you can see the original study
Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers
Environmental impact of food production of tomatoes would depend on the method of production and the season. Growing tomatoes in the winter in non-insulated greenhouses heated by coal energy would be very bad, obviously. Importing tomatoes by ship could be better in that case (CO2 tranport budget is usually under 10%), obviously seasonal produce is best.
Meat is not CO2 only, though. Other impacts of animal agriculture:
- Greenhouse gas emissions
- Deforestation (50% of pastures used to be forests)
- Land degradation
- Water pollution
- Water overconsumption
- Loss of biodiversity
- Antibiotic resistance
- Ocean dead zones
- Inefficient land and resource use
- Ethical concerns
- Contribution to zoonotic diseases
- Air pollution
- Eutrophication
- Soil erosion
- High energy consumption
- Chemical runoff from pesticides and fertilizers
- Destruction of habitats and ecosystems
- Inequality in global food distribution
- Public health risks from foodborne illnesses
- Nutrient pollution
- Strain on waste management systems
- Overfishing (40-70% of plankton gone, sharks 90% gone, fish almost gone in 2040's)
A whole lot more people don't eat meat than you realize. Some of us don't go around advertising that fact because we're tired of being ridiculed, but we still show up in surveys. I don't think some 5-10% of people on the street are "running up to people they don't know to announce shit like this".
This isn't where we fix the problem. All love and respect for Vegans, but there is no chance we can save environment by making everybody else miserable like this. Most people would hate a Vegan diet, to the point of simply not complying and preferring Global Warming/Climate Change.
Also, there is little point in adopting a Vegan diet while ignoring the much bigger opportunity of Nuclear Energy.
I love how some people think we wouldn't rather have war to thin out numbers than to all agree to eat vegan.
Like obviously people would choose war.
It's the same with "climate refugees": if we get to that stage there won't be razor wire and a fully deployed military who will shoot on sight. Same with "let's all get rid of our cars": the public would complain but we'd easily engage in all our warfare to maintain a standard of living. Its cool if individuals want to opt out, but most won't.
I will never inconvenience myself in the name of fighting climate change. Anti-nuclear diehards can assume that responsibility if they want to keep hamstringing the only thing that is going to make a real difference.
We have too many cows, but the answer isn't going vegan. Five hundred years ago the ecosystem supported 30-60 million bison in the U.S. Today we have over 90 million cows. Eating less meat and grazing less cows would restore balance to the ecosystem.
average Human uses 2000 kcal of food per day (~10MJ) which is 2,32 kWh, that's what an EV uses to drive 10km (6mi). Using a Diesel car that much energy will drive you 1km (0.8mi).
I think we're not looking in the right direction if we want to reduce environmental impact of humanity.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 247 ms ] threada fossil fuel ICE on the other hand is decades if not centuries away from workable green alternatives.
Perhaps the EPA should put out some sort of miles per gallon gasoline equivalent, or MPGe for short.
What isn't obvious *but should be* is that this isn't the way to save the environment; I'm all for encouraging behavior shifts, don't get me wrong – but food is as much a part of human culture as language or family is. You can't change that – and those who have tried are typically villains.
It is very probable that this is the most important thing we could do. There are possibly hundreds of studies proving that. Ask, and I shall provide. Animal agriculture is the leading driver of environmental destruction, eutrophication, deforestation, and biodiversity loss.
As for villains...hmm... every year, over 92 billion land animals are killed, up to 3 trillion marine animals, 1 million species are facing extinction. Meat and dairy are not even a necessity, not in this day and age, not for the majority of people consuming most of it.
And vegans and scientists are the villains? ;)
2. I think maybe you missed the point I'm making about dealing with reality as it comes. Food is as inexorably connected to human identity as religion; no top-down law, rule, or diktat will ever work – and anybody who tries it will be overthrown.
Crop fields do indeed disrupt the habitats of wild animals, and wild animals are also killed when harvesting plants. However, this point makes the case for a plant-based diet and not against it, since many more plants are required to produce a measure of animal flesh for food (often as high as 12:1) than are required to produce an equal measure of plants for food (which is obviously 1:1). Because of this, a plant-based diet causes less suffering and death than one that includes animals.
2. It's enough to remove massive subsidies for animal ag. - the market would take care of the rest. Subsidies make 90% of profits (IIRC) for meat corps.
https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavi...
The U.S government spends $38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, but only 0.04 percent of that (i.e., $17 million) each year to subsidize fruits and vegetables.
In many cases zero more plants need to be produced to raise cattle, and how much suffering that's experienced by their death seems to be a personally attributed value, but slaughtering systems have been continuously developed to alleviate that as much as possible.
If I had to get my calories from plants alone, I'd be broke, and rather bored.
Meat does not grow from co2 alone.
> slaughtering systems have been continuously developed to alleviate that as much as possible
See for yourself how much is possible. https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch
> my calories from plants alone
We already get 82% of calories and 63% of proteins from plants.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
> I'd be broke
A vegan diet was found to have the lowest average cost per person for a healthy diet across all countries globally
-- The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020 | FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO
https://preview.redd.it/ml4ynrjcm34b1.png?width=968&auto=web...
> and rather bored
It's possible you never had a good vegan meal.
Among 9,179 meat burgers competing for first place at Peru’s recent BurgerFest 2022 edition, the plant-based burger, Not A Common Burger, made with fresh pulses, was crowned as the public’s favorite.
https://vegconomist.com/company-news/meet-not-a-common-burge...
Almost any recipe can be made vegan. Fat, salt, acid, temperature, spices. World is full of good vegan foods. See Indian, Ethiopean or Mexican cuisine for example. Many foods in Greece/Italy are vegan.
Those are all lovely, but what about chicken breast?
Try seitan with chicken spices.
After all, spices are just as "unnecessary" as meat, yet we grow them because they are nice to have.
Now, I don't eat meat excessively, and do enjoy it more than ever, but it's definitely more expensive and involved to even temporarily switch. $6 for two sizable frozen chicken breasts, or $6 for a few tomatoes and peppers, $6 for 2lb of carrots. Usually it's a combination of a few things that have varying levels of environmental cost, like nuts, fruits, vegetables, beef, chicken, some grains, which seems sensible to me. If that cost dramatically increases, which it probably will, I'll adapt, but I doubt it will get to the point where I'll be considering no meat at all, because of the sheer amount of other stuff I'd need to eat and how expensive it can be. I'm not terribly interested in what global averages seem to be according to some website, it's not how I make decisions about how to allocate my small amount of food budget.
How many people were on this rock then? Was it anywhere near 8 billion people as it is now, or was it a fraction of the number?
> it's definitely more expensive and involved to even temporarily switch
The price of meat and healthy whole foods in the US is heavily distorted by lobying [0] and by subsidies ($38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, but only 0.04 percent of that (i.e., $17 million) each year to subsidize fruits and vegetables) [1].
[0] https://fortune.com/2023/07/21/why-healthy-food-so-expensive...
[1] https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavi...
[0] https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/food/meat/united-states
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/196420/us-farm-income-fr...
Good to know ... let's do it then.
But those are just the subsidies ... we're still ignoring the negative environmental and health externalities of meat production. What price should we put on that?
Not really true, see above.
> more expensive to better reflect its true cost, true, but it's different from "everyone needs to be vegan forever to save the planet"
Not many people would be able to purchase it if it would reflect all its negative externalities in the price.
> spices are just as "unnecessary" as meat
Spices are plants, efficient, sustainable and necessary. Meat is not sustainable.
And you can't replace spices (what would you use instead?), but you can replace meat (many sustainable options exist).
It doesn't really matter, truffles are expensive, yet are still widely consumed. No one argues for complete abandonment of truffle consumption purely because they're expensive.
Spices are even more unnecessary than meat as they provide zero caloric value. If you accept the need for food to be a pleasure and not just pure calories, and the resulting environmental impact (there is no free lunch, spice plantations could be reforested instead), you have to do the same for meat. "You can replace meat" is not true, there's no replacement for a steak taste wise. If you mean "you don't really need a steak" (regardless of its price), what's different about chilli peppers or vanilla beans? Surely you don't need them either, we can stop growing them and rewild the plantations instead?
Your argument overlooks several important factors:
- Methane Emissions: Cows and other ruminant animals produce methane (CH4) as a byproduct of their digestion. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, about 28-36 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a 100-year period. This means that the methane cows produce significantly contributes to global warming.
- Land Use Change: Livestock farming often involves deforestation to create pasture or grow feed crops. This process involves burning or decomposing trees, which releases stored carbon into the atmosphere. It also removes forests that would otherwise absorb CO2, reducing the Earth's capacity for carbon sequestration. This isn't a factor in the carbon cycle of individual animals, but it's a significant part of the carbon footprint of meat production.
- Fossil Fuels: Modern livestock farming uses significant amounts of fossil fuels, for example in the manufacture and transport of feed. Burning these fuels releases additional CO2 into the atmosphere.
When these factors are taken into account, it's clear that while livestock farming is part of the carbon cycle, it is not carbon neutral.
Livestock Farming:
- Carbon Storage: In livestock farming, carbon is stored primarily in the bodies of the animals themselves. This is a temporary storage, as the carbon is released back into the atmosphere when the animals respire or decompose after death.
- Carbon Sequestration: Livestock farming does not contribute significantly to carbon sequestration. In fact, it often results in a net release of carbon, as forests are often cleared to make way for pasture or to grow feed crops, releasing stored carbon.
- Other Emissions: Livestock farming, particularly cattle rearing, produces a significant amount of methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse gas. This contributes to climate change much more effectively per unit than CO2.
Reforestation:
- Carbon Storage: Forests store carbon in the biomass of the trees and other plants, as well as in the soil. This storage is long-term, as trees can live for many years and the carbon they store is not released until they die and decompose.
- Carbon Sequestration: Forests are effective at sequestering carbon. They absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into biomass via photosynthesis, effectively removing it from the atmosphere for as long as the forest remains intact.
- Other Benefits: In addition to sequestering carbon, forests provide other environmental benefits. They support biodiversity, regulate local climates, protect water resources, and can help to improve soil health.
> It doesn't really matter, truffles are expensive, yet are still widely consumed. No one argues for complete abandonment of truffle consumption purely because they're expensive.
Hm ... that's strange argument. I was talking about "expensive" in the sense of us being unable to properly value the destruction of the environment, biodiversity with extinction of milions of species and pollution.
How would you put into the price of meat extinction of a specific animal, which we could study in the future and from its genetic information learn how to cure widespread diseases or an recipe for an eternal life (for example).
> Spices are even more unnecessary than meat as they provide zero caloric value
While it's true that neither spices nor meat are strictly necessary for a nutritionally adequate diet, it's important to look at the broader impacts of each. In terms of environmental footprint, the land use, water, and emissions associated with livestock farming far outweigh those related to spice cultivation. In fact, the World Bank estimates that livestock farming uses 80% of all agricultural land, and the FAO states that it contributes to about 14.5% of all human-induced greenho...
Call it dross if you will ... if it was somehow more valuable were I to write it alone and spend 30 minutes instead of 10 on it, than maybe (please) pretend that I did.
> This kind of thing should not have place on HN.
I also expected HN to be quite different, more open minded, more interested in solving our (environmental) problems ... can't have it all.
Back to work, have family to feed. Sorry.
Not saying it's right, just saying your argument isn't realistic outside of a mathematically perfect – or authoritarian – bubble.
IPCC: We must change food production to save the world, says leaked report. Cutting carbon from transport and energy ‘not enough’ IPCC finds. Among the measures put forward by the report is the proposal of a major shift towards vegetarian and vegan diets.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/03/ipcc-lan...
IPCC: Slashing Emissions From Meat Crucial to Climate Action
https://sentientmedia.org/ipcc-report-food-system/
Plant-Based Lifestyles Now ‘Imperative’ For Survival, IPCC Climate Expert Says
https://plantbasednews.org/news/plant-based-lifestyles-imper...
How Meat and Fossil Fuel Producers Watered Down the Latest IPCC Report. Scientist authors recommended more plant-based diets and phasing out all fossil fuels. But those recommendations didn't make it into the final report.
https://www.distilled.earth/p/how-meat-and-fossil-fuel-produ...
The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet
https://qz.com/ipcc-report-on-climate-change-meat-industry-1...
Also, when we talk about reforestation for carbon capture, it's not just a one-off event. Yes, a new forest can sequester a substantial amount of CO2, especially in its early years when tree growth is fast. But as long as that forest continues to grow and mature, it's going to keep pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere. It's an ongoing process, not just a one-time event. So when we choose to use land for farming instead of allowing it to reforest, we're not just missing out on an initial large absorption of CO2, we're also giving up all the future CO2 that those trees could have continued to sequester throughout their lives.
Plus, we shouldn't forget about the carbon storage potential in the wildlife that would populate these reforested areas and in the soils those forests would help enrich and expand.
Sure, we need to make our energy production carbon neutral. But it may not happen for many decades, and until then, the high energy needed for meat production and distribution is a concern.
I don't understand your point about forests. "As long as that forest continues to grow and mature", surely that's still a one time event? There is no growing over what was previously a farm being reforested, and the "maturation" is effectively limited to soil generation (normally fractions of mms a year), which captures a tiny amount of carbon, the rest being cycled by scavenging (micro)organisms? It is, for all intents and purposes, a one time carbon capture event. The overall body mass of mice, foxes, and deer is absolutely ineffectual for carbon capture, and again more or less constant after the first few years.
"We should become vegan for a couple decades" then? I don't think it's a reasonable idea to sell to the public.
Not true ... warming potency, bio sources (like fossil fuels), deforestation, energy use, animals' inefficiencies in converting plants into calories/protein
> surely that's still a one time event
Not true ... deforestation for pasture or farmland (carbon into atmosphere), cleared land doesn't store carbon as much as forest do, reforestation mean not only carbon capture while forest is growing, mature forests still serve as carbon sink, sequestration potential is not only about animals, but also vegetation and soil, which is capable of storing 3x more carbon than the atmosphere, harvested wood for architecture keeps carbon stored for decades, centuries even. It's not one time event.
> The overall body mass of mice, foxes, and deer is absolutely ineffectual for carbon capture,
Not true.
The climate crisis and biodiversity crisis can't be approached separately, says study
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-climate-crisis-biodiversity-ap...
‘A wake-up call’: total weight of wild mammals less than 10% of humanity’s
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/18/a-wake-u...
How restoring key wildlife species can be a game-changing climate solution
https://www.oneearth.org/how-restoring-key-wildlife-species-...
(no llm was used in production of this message)
It doesn't matter. If you run a fixed number of coal fired power plants for a hundred years, your hundred first year will make the climate change worse, because you added extra carbon to the atmosphere. If you run fixed amount of meat production for a hundred years, hundred first year does nothing to the climate, because the system as a whole is in a steady state (methane and NO2 are settled at their levels set by decay/production ratio and there's no new carbon added to the cycle).
It is still categorically different, you're talking of one-off events vs constant in/out flows.
> mature forests still serve as carbon sink
The only way it can happen is if carbon gets stored somewhere. Where do you think it gets stored? In other words, for it to be true, purely from conservation of matter perspective, you should see a material difference after fully logging a hundred year forest vs a fifty year forest. It's not the volume of wood itself, it's fairly constant after a while between wildfires and rotting. It's not the soil, it only accumulates a fraction of mm per year [0] and not all of it is carbon. Where do you think the carbon goes?
> Not true.
What do you mean "not true"? Here's a random article [1] estimating all wild animal biomass at 20Mt, of which more than half is water, and even if all of the rest is carbon we're talking at most 10Mt of carbon stored in all animal bodies. For comparison, total yearly CO2 emissions are over 34 billion tonnes per year. Any CO2 stored in animal biomass of a new forest is not even a drop in the bucket.
I'm not sure why do you feel the need to be sarcastic about substituting LLM musings for your own thoughts, especially after saying that you don't have time to engage.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00167...
[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2204892120
You're still focusing on carbon and carbon only, and ignoring other aspects of the problem (like increase in warming due to much potent greenhouse gases, pollution etc. etc.).
> Where do you think the carbon goes?
I'm talking about difference between pastures and forests. Old-growth forests may seem stagnant, but they still store massive amount of carbon in the wood, soil, dead wood and litter that slowly decomposes, and below-ground biomass (massive trees with extensive roots = massive microbiome).
When a mature forest is logged for animal ag, not only it releases the carbon stored in the trees' biomass, but it also disrupts the soil and can result in substantial carbon emissions.
The rate at which mature forests continue to absorb CO2 is a topic of research, some studies argue that older forest continue serving as significant carbon sinks, other that they don't. But both camps see their value due to large amounts of carbon they store and the biodiversity they enable.
> It's not the soil, it only accumulates a fraction of mm per year
I thought we're talking about carbon storage, not soil formation.
> CO2 stored in animal biomass of a new forest is not even a drop in the bucket
Sure, because wildlife has no value except as being a storage medium for CO2. /s
> after saying that you don't have time to engage
Yeah, I really shouldn't.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
Half of all habitable land is used for agriculture. 80% of that is animal agriculture.
This leaves only 37% for forests; 11% as shrubs and grasslands; 1% as freshwater coverage; and the remaining 1% – a much smaller share than many suspect – is built-up urban area which includes cities, towns, villages, roads and other human infrastructure.
> doesn't necessarily destroy all habitat that'd otherwise be there
Animal ag is enabled by deforestation. 50+% of all pastures are deforested lands. The difference in biodiversity in a forest vs pasture is huge (pasture is a biodesert compared to a functional multi-level old growth forest).
Animal ag is e.g. a leading driver of amazon deforestation, either for pastures or production of feed. 80% of all soy produced world wide is animal feed, same as 35-40% of corn (and biofuels, less than 13% is for humans).
https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation
Notice: this doesn't account for historical deforestation (existing pastures deforested between last 10000 years)
If those pastures were afforested, we could store our entire 1.5C carbon budget in those forests and soils (thus stopping climate change and extinctions / biodiversity loss).
There are questions to be raised and numbers to be thrown around, but world-level numbers aren't really that interesting.
If world numbers are not good enough for you, do you want numbers specifically for argentina or the us? Or some other from those 200+ countries that exist? From a random stranger on the internet, instead of doing your own research? In the age or google etc? Just so you'd reject those for some arbitrary bullshit reason again?
Come on.
Oh yes it would.
> if you didn't eat meat, this wouldn't be happening ... probably not even relevant to Argentina.
https://green-ecolog.com/15337803-deforestation-in-argentina...
https://www.globalissues.org/news/2010/05/19/5658
In the 1830s, the sheer abundance and diversity of plants and animals in Argentina -- whether on land or in the water -- astounded British naturalist Charles Darwin during his famed tours of South America ...
If we could put a satellite image from 200 years ago next to one from today, we would see that the forested area has diminished in size and quality. The wooded areas left are much smaller and with less variety of species,' he said ...
For the last 200 years, this South American country ... has seemed to be bent on destroying its forests ...
In 1915, Argentina had 100 million hectares of forest - nearly a third of the national territory. Although there are doubts about the veracity of this official figure, there is no question about the magnitude of the destruction ...
By 1937, the agricultural census determined that the total area was 37.5 million hectares, and by 1987 it was 35 million. Ten years later, the area covered by forests had been reduced to 33 million hectares.
Deforestation accelerated to make room for intensive farming. Currently, more than half of the cultivated area in Argentina is planted in transgenic soy, which China buys in massive quantities to feed its livestock.
Meat has much higher quality protein delivery than veggies and vegans have well documented health problems because it's absurdly difficult to be healthy on a vegan diet.
Animal ag uses land that was stolen from wildlife and deforested.
> vegans have well documented health problem
Sorry, that's not true at all.
Sustainable eating is cheaper and healthier - Oxford study
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-chea...
Plant-based diets were protective against cancers of the digestive system, with no significant differences between different types of cancer, a meta-analysis based on 3,059,009 subjects
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35719615/
Meat tax would boost health and cut healthcare spending: research
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2023/04/meat-tax-would-boost-health...
Over 17,000 doctors call on White House to shape nutrition policy on plant-based diets
https://www.foodingredientsfirst.com/news/over-17000-doctors...
American Dietetic Association
It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.
NHS UK
A vegetarian or vegan diet can be suitable for everyone, regardless of their age.
British Dietetic Association.
[I]t is possible to follow a well-planned, plant-based, vegan friendly diet that supports healthy living in people of all ages, and during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
World Health Organisation
For adults, protein from two or more plant groups daily is like to be adequate.
The wild fish we eat in various dishes has changed rapidly as the ecology has changed due to fishing. Many people change their diets according to seasonal availability.
Yea, because people like those things (fast food and espresso).
Getting people to do less of something they really like? (Eat meat) Not likely, no matter how great your vegan slop tastes.
It’s also important to consider that you can simply eat less meat and not quit it altogether. You might not get people to give up meat, but you can get them to eat 30% less without feeling like it’s a sacrifice.
Btw, when you become vegan, you realize you've been taking something that wasn't yours to take in the first place. And vegan food can be extremely tasty and filling. You can't just take meat out of a recipe and think you have vegan food.
Idea: try searching "<any_recipe> vegan"
It's a lot of habits that you must break, a lot of flavours that you must forget. There is a lot of amazing vegan food, but the vegan version of what people know is often a pale substitute. You might convince people with curry, but likely not with vegan sausage.
I think that it's more realistic to get people to massively cut their meat and dairy consumption than to really go vegan. Do what you can, but cheat sometimes.
In other words, I think it's better to accept that most people will get halfway there, and to make that easy.
Just in the last year I've had some plant-based bacon and sausages that my SO refuses to eat for being "too meat-like".
> I think it's better to accept that most people will get halfway there
Agree ... stepping stones.
> a lot of flavours that you must forget
A lot of those flavours are spices, and methods of preparation. Have you tried eating raw meat or unsalted cheese?
I think that's the idea. We need to get more people exposed to good vegan food. Someone get Jamie Oliver!
There are vegan tv cooking shows (check youtube).
There are thousands of sites with good vegan recipes.
Even Jamie Oliver has 160+ vegan recipes on his site :)
https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/category/special-diets/v...
Put another way, have you ever gotten your water tested? Did it come up with lead in it? If it did have lead in it, what would you do?
Whether that is true or not, I think it's more important to keep in mind that it's not our place to judge that, unless you hold some biblical belief that animals were put on earth by god to feed us. The cost of freedom must be taken into account too, it's a value not only relevant to humans.
A lot of the suffering in the world comes about because humans have an inflated sense of moral agency over things outside their scope. We have the tools to affect many beings and many lands, but not the wisdom to see the immediate and long term effects. We just see our current behavior, and then employ all kinds of mental gymnastics in order to perpetuate it. We'll go to great trouble to change the world, just so we don't have to admit we need to change our selves.
In my mind sentience is a spectrum and cows aren't very far along it. I spent my childhood working with cows and I can tell you they're dumb as rocks. They have little memory of the past and zero concept of the future. They were always happy to see us and had no concept of their freedom being restricted or that we would eventually auction them and their offspring to the slaughterhouse. People that are worried about cow rights have usually never spent time with them. Goats are further down the spectrum, but still dumb. Certain other cattle like pigs are said to be quite intelligent so there's more of an argument to be made.
Well, dub? People who spend a lot of time with cows are presumably working in the meat or dairy industries. It's rare for a person to believe their own actions are wrong.
Is the alternative breeding millions of cows and pitting them against their natural predators, or leaving them to starve? If not, then I'm not sure what relevance the comparison has.
Factory farms are where most people get their meat in America.
Imagine how healthy you’d be if all you ate was oatmeal, a hormone cocktail (to make you grow faster), and some vitamins. Then imagine living in a cage with dozens of other people, having scarcely three feet between you and the next person. Would you be healthy?
That’s what people are eating.
Cooking nice vegetarian food is more time consuming and you do need to learn new techniques but they are just as delicious and fulfilling.
I will say there is a certain visceral feeling with eating meat off a bone which I do occasionally miss (I have been vegetarian, except when I travel, for 8 years).
My partner used to have the same complaints about vego food! The right recipes can be just as filling (a lot you come across incidentally may be designed to be “healthy” and therefore lower calorie). If you’re interested, “Flavour” by Yotam Ottolenghi is full of really excellent vegetarian food which is filling and isn’t very demanding on your cooking skills. But unavoidably, it does take more time to make a passable meal than a meat dish.
IDK a single telegraph cucumber here is $4-6, tomatoes anywhere from $8-16.
1kg of chicken is $12 and you get order of magnitude more calories.
Admittedly NZ had bad flooding recently hence the insane vegetable prices and you can find some cheap stuff, but it's hard. I've gone days without eating a single vegetable and feel my health going down the drain, but what can you do?
Our (2 person) grocery bill is around au$60-$70 per week which is less than half of what I hear from regular meat eaters.
https://fortune.com/2023/07/21/why-healthy-food-so-expensive...
The 2023 Farm Bill is projected to spend $700 billion over the next five years, with powerful industry lobbyists directing funds to enrich themselves at the expense of agricultural communities, human health, animal welfare, and environmental sustainability.
Most Americans have never heard of this massive omnibus bill, which Congress reauthorizes every five or so years, yet it impacts us every day. It shapes our food system–from subsidizing factory farms to funding food and nutrition programs, and it is why burgers are artificially cheap and salads cost more than they should.
This is honestly what turns me off about not eating meat the most. Dude literally said he would freeze in winter and sweat in the summer and give up his firstborn and you're like "it's cheaper yay !".
It feels like a telemarketer on my phone trying to sell me something after I told them a resounding no.
if you had to make choice every day I'm sure you'd prefer vegetarian + aircon/heating
Edit: after reading the article I know exactly as much as before. there are some superficial talking point without any hint of how this study was conducted or which nuances have been considered. There is nothing of substance and smells like a pure opinion piece.
Sell me a good paper and I will study it. I’m not gonna read anything just so I can say my first impression was right all alone.
And for god’s sake don’t bury the link to the paper. Did they even post it? It should be way easier to get to the source too. Not a good sign either
The link is in the second paragraph of the article, not burried at all.
---
I'd prefer when seeing these articles that the author talks about which land mass or eco system they are talking about.
Australia has hundreds of thousands of acres of land where the animals roam in self sustainable set ups.
Ripping up these ecosystems to grow nuts and beans would be "worse" for the environment.
there is about 1B cows, there is about 8B humans. Fart composition matters as well, if we're counting methane as worse, more plant ingestion means higher fraction of methane.
humans produce around 0.5g methane per day average beef cow of 500kg produces around 0.265g methane per day, average beef cow weighs ~1000kg, so lets say we're around on par for methane.
So, if we get rid of cows and instead ingest plant matter directly, we would need to see a increase of methane production of no more than 11.11% to break even.
however, if top google hits continue to be (if they ever were) reliable, we will see an increase of about 7 farts per day, from a 13-21 average for a male. This is an increase of about 33-54% so if in all the error that will exist arising from my franken-data and all the assumptions made along the way don't significant impact general accuracy, then we're not even close to breaking even.
Australia is an outliner. Factory farming in The West is an entirely different - and much uglier - story.
And they even spread the pig manure all over fields here. The smell tells everything.
There's a reason they want to make "meat" in a lab. Hint: It's not because of traditional pastures.
No, you could reforest/rewild those lands and stop droughts and and biodiversity loss and repair microclima and soil health etc. etc.
And by growing nuts it would be worse for the environment? Growing nut trees is co2 positive. How could forests with nut trees be worse than pastures with dried out grass?
If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares (and free up an area as big as Africa for rewilding / reforesting)
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
The higher-order requirements of 'Four Pest' policies are incompatible with human rights. There's ways to attain equilibrium with the planet without using thumb screws.
Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-glob...
Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...
Safe and just Earth system boundaries
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06083-8
Because the nut trees would need massive amounts of irrigation.
If you have a place with pastures of dried-out grass, what makes you think there's enough rainfall there to sustain a forest of nut trees?
E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic_pump
(2015) https://theecologist.org/2015/mar/02/without-its-rainforest-...
Mainstream climatologists predict a 15% fall in rainfall over the Amazon if it is stripped of its rainforest. But the 'biotic pump' theory, rooted in conventional physics and recently confirmed by experiment, shows that the interior of a forest-free Amazon will be as dry as the Negev desert
(2019) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/23/amazon-r...
Soaring deforestation coupled with the destructive policies of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, could push the Amazon rainforest dangerously to an irreversible “tipping point” ... After this point the rainforest would stop producing enough rain to sustain itself and start slowly degrading into a drier savannah, releasing billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, which would exacerbate global heating and disrupt weather across South America.
(2023) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/magazine/amazon-tipping-p...
The consensus used to be that ecosystems are merely a product of prevailing weather patterns. But in the 1970s, the Brazilian researcher Eneas Salati proved that the Amazon, with its roughly 400 billion trees, also creates its own weather. On an average day, a single large tree releases more than 100 gallons of water as vapor. This not only lowers the air temperature through evaporative cooling; as Salati discovered by tracking oxygen isotopes in rainwater samples, it also gives rise to “flying rivers” — rain clouds that recycle the forest’s own moisture five or six times, ultimately generating as much as 45 percent of its total precipitation. By creating the conditions for a continental swath of evergreens, this process is crucial to the Amazon’s role as a global “sink” for carbon.
Many scientists now fear, however, that this virtuous cycle is breaking down.
While I certainly agree that chopping down the Amazon is terrible, I think you're vastly oversimplifying things with this theory. Some things just don't grow well in some places, and soil is important too. You can't just plant a bunch of trees in the desert: there's no soil there, just sand. Sure, you could start small at the coast and move inland as the ecosystem changes and soil quality is improved, but this is something that would probably take many centuries or longer.
Grasslands, savannas, etc. have been around for far, far longer than human civilization; they're not something we created with deforestation, and ruminants like cows(' ancestors) have been around far longer than us, grazing in these places. Chopping down forests to make more places for cows obviously is a bad idea, but I'm not convinced that it's feasible to take places that have been grazed by animals for millennia and somehow turn them all into nut tree forests.
I'm aware. There are methods like enhancing the sand with soil sludge (nutrients & microbiome), for example.
> something that would probably take many centuries or longer.
Destruction is fast, regeneration slow. Those deserts might as well be a product of previous civilizations overgrazing.
Environmental Implications of Livestock: Goats
https://epar.evans.uw.edu/research/environmental-implication...
Blame it on the goats? Desertification in the Near East during the Holocene
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09596836166704...
> Grasslands, savannas ... they're not something we created with deforestation
Mongolia for example was much more forested in the past. Apx. 50% of current age grasslands and savannas were previously forests. Also, natural grazers prefer different plants than cows, so the compositions and storage capacity of pastures and grasslands differ extremely.
> I'm not convinced that it's feasible to take places that have been grazed by animals for millennia and somehow turn them all into nut tree forests
We don't have to. Just afforest those pastures and rewild the rest. It would protect the biodiversity for future generations.
https://xkcd.com/1338/
It also shows only two types of meat (lamb and beer herds) with the largest land use but ignores chicken and others.
It's not the same and easily comparable.
https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts
Today only 3% of pacific bluefin tuna remain.
For the first time sharks are going extinct because of us.
Sharks kill 10 people per year, comparatively, people kill 11,000-30,000 sharks per hour.
Approx. 50 mil. sharks are killed every year as bycatch.
Seabird populations have declined by 70% since 1950's.
Studies estimate that up to 40% of all marine life caught is thrown overboard is bycatch.
There are 4,600,000 commercial fishing vessels in the world.
Over 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises are killed as bycatch every year.
46% of the pacific garbage patch is fishing nets.
There is enough long line set every day to wrap around the planet 500x.
Six out of seven species of sea turtles are either threatened or endangered due to fishing.
The fishing industry kills more animals in a day than the deep water horizon oil spill did in months.
Fishing has become a major threat to coral reefs from the Middle East to the Caribbean, where 90% of large fish have disappeared.
In the 1830's a typical fishing boat caught 1-2 tons of halibut per day, but today the entire fishing fleet catches 1-2 tons across the entire year.
Fish populations are in decline to near extinction. Virtually empty oceans by 2048.
Fish carbon stabilizes our climate.
> It also shows only two types of meat (lamb and beer herds) with the largest land use but ignores chicken and others.
If does not, read the original study https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325532198_Reducing_... or see here https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...
The problem is overpopulation
Not at all.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares
> The problem is overpopulation
A little math might help.
environmental_impact = number_of_individuals * mean_individual_consumption
We can either lower individual_consumption, or wait for the nature to reduce number_of_individuals
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/14/reforest...
Offsetting agricultural emissions through reforestation would cost 15pc of farm profits
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2021-11-28/carbon-reforest...
https://ecologi.com/projects/wildlife-corridors-koalas-austr...
https://landlifecompany.com/news/the-critical-state-of-austr...
How to combat desertification with reforestation
https://www.groasis.com/en/planting/can-you-plant-trees-and-...
https://www.reforestnow.org.au/
I am really curious what exactly "high meat" means. I am very curious since the difference between "low meat" and vegetarian is minimal at best and even between low and vegan is still not that drastic.
I would also really like to see how the dietary enviromental impact relates to a persons entire environmental impact (as in, ok we see a 30% impact change based on dietary impact but how much of a change is that on a personal level really?)
There are just a lot of information missing here that would paint much better (or not better depending on what you are trying to argue) picture.
I am also curious how this changes based on where you live and how far your food has to travel to get to you within the same country. Like rural vs urban in the US.
From the study: high meat-eaters (≥100 g total meat consumed per day)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w
> I am also curious how this changes based on where you live and how far your food has to travel to get to you within the same country. Like rural vs urban in the US.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local
... the results of a study which looked at the footprint of diets across the EU. Food transport was responsible for only 6% of emissions, whilst dairy, meat and eggs accounted for 83%.
Many of the foods ... are ... transported by boat – avocados and almonds are prime examples. Shipping one kilogram of avocados from Mexico to the United Kingdom would generate 0.21kg CO2eq in transport emissions. This is only around 8% of avocados’ total footprint. Even when shipped at great distances, its emissions are much less than locally-produced animal products.
Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%.
Transatlantic fresh produce is generally air freight.
Many believe that air-freight is more common than it actually is. Very little food is air-freighted; it accounts for only 0.16% of food miles.9 But for the few products which are transported by air, the emissions can be very high: it emits 50 times more CO2eq than boat per tonne kilometer.10
> I would also really like to see how the dietary enviromental impact relates to a persons entire environmental impact (as in, ok we see a 30% impact change based on dietary impact but how much of a change is that on a personal level really?)
That is information I am struggling to actually find. 30% of one of impacts is a decent amount but I also don't own a car. How much of my entire environmental impact is my diet?
They also seem to be grouping all meat together. Like Beef and Chicken. According to https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food there is a massive difference between the impact of Chicken vs Beef. I searched that report for chicken (never came up) and Poultry (came up twice). So I am very curious how they are actually coming to these numbers when all of the types of meet vary wildly in their impact.
I don't know whether there is an official answer, but if you look at your link there, it says, e.g. 1 kilo of poultry creates 10 kilos of CO2. The average american produces 14k Kilos of CO2/yr, so if you ate a kilo of chicken a day, you're looking at about 3k Kilos of CO2, or something like 20% of your carbon.
If you eat a kilo of beef it's like 250% of the average carbon footprint a year. That is a LOT of meat, but overall, you can guesstimate this is like 10-20% of your carbon footprint if you eat a lot of chicken, and maybe the bulk of it if you eat a lot of red meat. It seems like chicken is better than fish is wayyy better than red meat.
You're right, but only if you count carbon footprint. You also have to count in destroyed/damaged/polluted ecosystems, elimination of wildlife, deforestation, energy, etc. etc. if you WANT to have a complete picture.
For CO2 numbers, you can see the original study
Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325532198_Reducing_...
or the graph listing more kinds of meats here:
Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...
> From the study: high meat-eaters (≥100 g total meat consumed per day)
For reference, that's about one quarter pounder from McDonald's.
This doesn’t even really need reporting when every rando-vegan out there is running up to people they don’t know to announce shit like this.
Downvote me, but you know it’s true.
Fish ... 1,32 kg CO2e
Tomato ... 0,32 kg CO2e
Environmental impact of food production of tomatoes would depend on the method of production and the season. Growing tomatoes in the winter in non-insulated greenhouses heated by coal energy would be very bad, obviously. Importing tomatoes by ship could be better in that case (CO2 tranport budget is usually under 10%), obviously seasonal produce is best.
Meat is not CO2 only, though. Other impacts of animal agriculture:
- Greenhouse gas emissions
- Deforestation (50% of pastures used to be forests)
- Land degradation
- Water pollution
- Water overconsumption
- Loss of biodiversity
- Antibiotic resistance
- Ocean dead zones
- Inefficient land and resource use
- Ethical concerns
- Contribution to zoonotic diseases
- Air pollution
- Eutrophication
- Soil erosion
- High energy consumption
- Chemical runoff from pesticides and fertilizers
- Destruction of habitats and ecosystems
- Inequality in global food distribution
- Public health risks from foodborne illnesses
- Nutrient pollution
- Strain on waste management systems
- Overfishing (40-70% of plankton gone, sharks 90% gone, fish almost gone in 2040's)
Also, there is little point in adopting a Vegan diet while ignoring the much bigger opportunity of Nuclear Energy.
Like obviously people would choose war.
It's the same with "climate refugees": if we get to that stage there won't be razor wire and a fully deployed military who will shoot on sight. Same with "let's all get rid of our cars": the public would complain but we'd easily engage in all our warfare to maintain a standard of living. Its cool if individuals want to opt out, but most won't.
I think we're not looking in the right direction if we want to reduce environmental impact of humanity.