Eating meat creates four times more greenhouse gases than being vegan, landmark study finds
Meat-free eating found to have much lower environmental impact on land use, water pollution risk, water use and biodiversity loss
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Oh look, another article pointing the finger at the meager consumption habits of citizens and completely ignoring the massive ocean of CO2 production by large companies.
Don't people get tired of seeing this same argument being made? The amount of carbon produced by barges carrying cargo over the Atlantic so far greatly exceeds the consumption of many millions of people every single day but I'm supposed to feel guilty for eating a piece of steak today instead of some semi-edible "impossible meat" bug protein?
ETA: Nice, my first blowup since leaving reddit. Very refreshing to see some people arguing passionately. I appreciate the vigor and the quality of argumentation, everybody. The quality of discourse here is so much better than on reddit.
I'm willing to admit the "semi edible impossible meat bug protein" gamut was a bit tongue in cheek, but I recognize how it can sound genuine. I do think Impossible Meat is disgusting, but that's neither here nor there.
I eat plenty of plant matter and I regularly forage in the local forests to learn about edible plants. But I'm not going to stop enjoying steak just because it might put a bit more CO2 (why do people keep writing it as C02 online?) into the atmosphere. If removing subsidies and putting more pressure on the meat industry to be less wasteful, less environmentally impactful and more ethical towards animals causes steak to rise to $40/lb as some here have stated I'll gladly pay.
FWIW, I get my steak from local farms that are free range and grass fed. Grass feeding is healthier for the cow than the typical grain, it produces less CO2 and the steak is better quality. Plus the cows are better taken care of. Again, thanks for the great messages (generally).
Meat production causes 25% of all GHGs in our atmosphere. Personal consumption, on this matter, is 100% the cause. No one is forcing anyone to eat meat on the staggering level North Americans do. If we as North Americans didn't demand so much cheap plastic shit to buy as part of our lifestyle, there would be less of it made, less of it shipped, fewer cargo ships, less GHG. Your beef isn't with people telling you that we consume too much, your beef is with the insurmountable prospect of convincing billions of people to cool it.
Aaaaand we're getting into the US defaultism again
This increases food insecurity. There is absolutely no way you remove a major source of food production without more people going hungry. I don't think I need to belabor this aspect further.
Not to mention, the logic of your argument also shifts the blame of fossil fuel emissions from corporation to consumer. No one is forcing us to use gasoline or plastic on the staggering level that North Americans do. If we simply cut back, then there'd be fewer emissions. For that matter in fact, this very discussion we're having is possible because of electrical power, which more than likely produced GHG as well. Should we hold the blame for this as our consumption, and let dirty coal plants get a pass?
Finally, these researchers have a major hole in their research. They haven't even looked at what emissions and resource usage we'd have if we scaled up vegan food production to replace current meat consumption. And I suspect we'd find one major health problem -- there are some amino acids we only get from meat. To prevent health deterioration, we'd need massive production of vitamin supplements that are mandatory for everyone to consume for their health. Even if we somehow manage this in a vegan friendly process, it will use an extortionate amount of energy, resources, and freshwater. Enough that I can't say definitively it would be less than meat consumption.
The difference between the calories an animal consumes vs the amount that animal provides to us is huge. If we converted the animal feed to direct food production we would not have 'food insecurity'.
https://awellfedworld.org/feed-ratios/ has sources, if you actually care to learn rather than talking from your armchair.
And yes consumers absolutely should have some blame in climate change. Corporations don't pollute for fun, they do it for profit. It's way easier for us to point fingers and continue to do fuck all while the planet burns.
There is plenty looking at how it scales up and they account for nutrition
we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115
The research suggests that it’s possible to feed everyone in the world a nutritious diet on existing croplands, but only if we saw a widespread shift towards plant-based diets.
[...]
If everyone shifted to a plant-based diet we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75%. This large reduction of agricultural land use would be possible thanks to a reduction in land used for grazing and a smaller need for land to grow crops.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
This is because it takes a lot of human-edible feed to produce animal products
1 kg of meat requires 2.8 kg of human-edible feed for ruminants and 3.2 for monogastrics
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912416300013
Before anyone mentions something like grass-fed production let's note that grass-fed production very much doesn't scale and has enormous land use giving high pressure for deforestation as well
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
Damn an extortionate amount of energy, resources, and freshwater? Good thing all those cows and chickens don't need any of those to put them through an entire life cycle before we eat them.
We're long past the point where focusing on just one or two sources of carbon is enough. Everything needs to be examined. We can choose a more sustainable diet AND curb mindless consumerism.
Also, I find the impossible/beyond burgers to be pretty good. I dunno what you're on about with "bug protein". At worst, they're made from yeast but plant material otherwise?
Bugs, crickets specifically iirc, have been touted as the miracle solution to getting protein in everyone's diet without the ethical or environmental ramifications of the current meat industry.
This has nothing at all to do with the impossible burger, or any burger that I'm aware of... maybe the previous guy just thinks it tastes like bugs? ...and fuck if they can make a bug patty taste as good as the impossible burger, then sign me up - the impossible is NOT bad. It's not great either, I'd rank it as slightly better than the average fast food burger patty, but that's good enough for me.
I'm vegan with pretty big muscles, the protein thing is a myth. Its really fucking easy to get enough or even extra
I'm non-vegan and scrawny. I make poor life choices.
When the vegetable meat costs more than the animal meat, I can feel the "I'm being ripped off". Make fake meat cheaper than real meat and I'll eat it all day long.
Animal meat is subsidized heavily, plant meat is not. All we'd have to do is stop subsidizing animal agriculture and start subsidizing more plant alternatives.
I wouldn't say I'd feel ripped off, but for my broke ass, cost is probably the most heavily weighed feature of my food. Ethical and ecological concerns come in 2nd. To really push consumers toward meat alternatives, those alternatives need to, at the very least, cost the same as meats.
I don't know why this is downvoted. It seems perfectly reasonable to me as someone who has managed to cut most of the meat out of my diet. We definitely need affordable alternatives. Real meat is cheaper right now and that is the deciding factor for a lot of people.
Hopefully we will see this change soon.
I don't think we can call the 18.5% of CO2 emissions that the meat industry creates "meager".
You're correct that the most effective way to tackle this is for governments to restrict the source, but you need to change people's habits too. Simply making meats more expensive isn't the entire problem.
This is an absolutely massive chunk of our emissions and it can not be left out of response to the crisis.
No, but you should feel guilty for the atrocity that you inflict in intelligent creatures. I don't understand why that does not even enter the equation for people. Even if you must insist that an animal's life is not worth the same as a human beings, that doesn't mean it is worthless. That does not mean you are morally entitled to make decisions that require vast cruelty. Your preference for the same three fucking animals over the tens of thousands of culinary plants available to you isn't more important than not raping animals, not mutilating animals, not traumatizing animals, not forcing the dependence of animals, not torturing and murdering intelligent creatures.
You realize this is included in a large chunk of the CO2 that companies produce, right? Do you think they simply spew CO2 into the air for funsies? They produce shit that people are buying. That production spits out CO2. A good chunk of the CO2 produced is from the meat industry. Most of our meat is produced in large scale farms. To get that meat, you need feed. That takes land and harvesting. Those combines don't run on hopes and dreams. Those run on fossil fuels. Then the feed has to get to where the meat is. That happens on trucks and barges which run on fossil fuels. Then once the meat is actually slaughtered, it is shipped out on trucks and barges which, again, run on fossil fuels.
But don't feel too guilty when eating a steak. But also don't removed when steak becomes $40/lb when subsidies for the cattle industry are removed and the government also properly taxes CO2 emissions. In fact, given your comment, you should be actively advocating that to your representatives.
And lastly, Impossible meat is fucking pea protein. Where the fuck are you getting that it is made from insects? You sound like one of those conspiracy freaks who is constantly worried about being forced to eat bugs. Are bugs to icky for you? Are you not man enough to eat them because they are scary?
I replied via an edit to the parent comment. Thank you
What do you think big companies produce to make CO2? What do you think the big barges are transporting? At the end of the day, companies make what consumers want. And the meat industry is a horrible contributor to climate change, not to talk about land and water usage. So say all you want to make you feel better, which is fine, but the facts are that we as a society need to eat less meat to be more sustainable. Eating meat twice a day is not necessary, and nor is it even common, both on a global and historical scale. It is a luxury that we have to think hard about whether we should reduce the use of.
Isn't meat one of the things being shipped across the Atlantic?
Ah the classic "i get my meat from local farms, free range and grass fed!" doesn't change the fact that they die for nothing more than your tastebuds, buddy. A horrible existence through and through because you specifically paid for it, on top of being responsible for 18.5% CO2 emissions. It's easy to point the finger at "big corporations" and simply hope that they spontaneously stop polluting without consumers demanding alternatives at the very least.
Wait until you see the giant super-yacht couriers that ship super-yachts for the supper rich.