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Animal agriculture is also a huge contributor to the global climate change problem. Again, basically swept under the rug. My suspicion is that many powerful pe

by peller 10y ago

Animal agriculture is also a huge contributor to the global climate change problem. Again, basically swept under the rug. My suspicion is that many powerful people feel (rightly or wrongly) that the subject of enforcing diet is simply too untenable for them to take up without all hell breaking loose. (What do you mean I can't eat my meat!?) ...And that's not to mention all the "standard issues" clouding their judgment and priorities.

marricks 10y ago
It's funny because there are some easy changes governments could make which aren't even in telling people what to do. We literally give billions to animal ag industries in subsidies, we could just stop that. Take it a step further and use that money to actually fund alternatives so they're substantially cheaper for the public. The fact that almond/coconut milk is more expensive than cow milk speaks volumes about how the system is set up. Another step, which the FDA almost did this year, is advise people to eat less animals because it's awful for the environment. In general just making the message more visible would help. The last one is kind of telling people what to do, but the FDA already does that anyway so it's not too much of a change.
- ant6n 10y ago
  Is almond milk really better than cow milk in terms of impact?
  - Lewton 10y ago
    Why was this (ant6n's) post downvoted? It's a legitimate question https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/oct/21/almond-milk-quite-good-for-you-very-bad-for-the-planet https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/oct/...
    - r00fus 10y ago
      I was about to rebut you, but the facts remain: The largest supplier (by far) of almonds in the world is California. So yeah, if you drink almond milk it's likely sourced from CA using up precious water that is causing the CA central valley to literally sink [1], as much as several inches a month (ie, several feet so far). However, almonds pale in comparison to cows or other livestock in terms of water usage (esp when used as meat) - while consuming large quantities of almonds may not be sustainable, it's a lot better than eating meat... just may be as water-unsustainable as drinking local milk (if you live in CA). [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/28/california-central-valley-sinking-farmers-deepwater-wells https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/28/california-c...
      - ant6n 10y ago
        But meat cows and milk cows are not the same thing. You need to grow a whole cow to have the meat of one cow, but if you grow one milk-cow you have the life-time supply of one cow. The water to meat (weight) ratio may be in the thousands or ten thousands, but the water to milk ratio may be in the oughts or tens.
        botexpert 10y ago
        Milk cows carry a baby every year which puts more pressure on metabolism needs. Milk is more energy and water inefficient than meat ( same scale comparison).
  - greeneggs 10y ago
    In terms of global warming, almond milk seems to be about 4.6 times better than cow milk. On page 8 of [1], they claim that CO2-equivalent emissions are 0.36 kg/L almond milk, and 1.67 kg/L cow milk. (Note: This is somebody's class report, not a peer-reviewed publication.) There is some uncertainty in these numbers, of course. If you care more about water usage, then 1L of almond milk uses on the order of 1600 gallons of water, compared to under 100 gallons of water per liter of cow milk. Again, there is some uncertainty. And I think CO2-equivalent emissions is far more important. [1] http://www.environment.ucla.edu/perch/resources/images/cow-vs-almond-milk-1.pdf http://www.environment.ucla.edu/perch/resources/images/cow-v...
    - marricks 10y ago
      Does the cow milk water usage compare the water used in the crops to feed the cows? It seems staggering to me that water used would be so much less.
      - akiselev 10y ago
        Although trees generally conserve water much better than animals, you need to support the entire almond tree for a few almonds whereas the cow's entire body will be used for a variety of products. The water usage of the agricultural infrastructure supporting the cow may be higher in absolute numbers but a single cow is literally hundreds or thousands of pounds of useful meat and bone after it is no longer useful as a milking cow.
- _coldfire 10y ago
  >We literally give billions to animal ag industries in subsidies, we could just stop that. I'm in agreeance with your suggestions, but note that Indonesia has large protests over small increases in meat costs. There's a political reality to dramatically raising food prices in a democracy.
tluyben2 10y ago
I notice that especially men get very defensive about their perceived meat entitlement. Seems to point to education and environment. Here on HN threads you can also see men getting aggressive when there is a suggestion (even with supporting articles) that it is unhealthy etc. Seems not unlike when it was first suggested that smoking was bad as that was also perceived 'real manly'. Same with guns. With alcohol a bit less but also and with sugar almost not. Seems to correspond with what is shown in culture (books, tv etc) and education as more and less butch.
- ashark 10y ago
  It's hardly just men. There are plenty of women with the "meal (and certainly dinner) = meat" notion in their heads.
  - tluyben2 10y ago
    Didn't say just men; I just see, especially for red meat, men are vocal and aggressive about it. Maybe it is just places I go to ;) But I have seen it all over the world. Some places more than others.
- gozur88 10y ago
  "Perceived meat entitlement"? Can't imagine why you find people getting defensive.
  - tluyben2 10y ago
    Not to me... Waiters to people and people to waiters, people at people at parties etc. What would you call it though? This thread is about killing life because rich folks want meat? If that is assumed true, then is that not a feeling of entitlement people have for some reason?
    - gozur88 10y ago
      I suspect the problem is people are unhappy with your assumption of the entitlement to tell them what they ought to be eating.
arzt 10y ago
Swept under the rug because there hasn't been a proven viable alternative that creates enough food to support modern human organization. Growth is the be all, end all of capitalism and agriculture is the 10,000 year old basis for it's existence. Until society rewrites the social contract, we're stuck with it and there are going to be articles like this one written that continually cast it into doubt.
- mark_edward 10y ago
  Agriculture and meat aren't the same thing.
  - arzt 10y ago
    This article references deforestation whose root cause is a desire to to create land for grazing, so in this case it seems to be.
jimmaswell 10y ago
It's a tradeoff. Maybe most people just don't think slowing climate change is worth reducing meat consumption.
nathancahill 10y ago
It's not even meat. All we have to do is cut beef. Pork, lamb, chicken, rabbit and fish (in that order) have exponentially less environmental impact. Downvoters tell me why you disagree?
- peller 10y ago
  You make a valid point that there are varying degrees of offense. There's this thing called the "feed conversion ratio"[0] that measures how much input it takes to get the desired output. But for all meats, even fish, the ratio is above 1 (it takes more food than is produced). I would be curious to see where insects fall on the spectrum; I've heard they're very efficient protein producers for the physical space they take up, but I'm having trouble locating any specific data to back that up. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio
  - nathancahill 10y ago
    That's true, however, the bigger issue with beef is the methods used to raise cattle in tropical countries. Farming cattle involves clear-cutting large swaths of forest to create fields that have 2-3 years of use for cattle before the soil is completely degraded. Then new land must be cleared. Cattle methane is another huge problem. Neither of those issues are factored in to the "feed conversion ratio".
  - ssalazar 10y ago
    > for all meats, even fish, the ratio is above 1 (it takes more food than is produced) That seems like basic physics(?) How could it possibly be below 1 for anything that doesn't photosynthesize?
    - peller 10y ago
      Yea. The reason I called out fish is that they have the advantage of more-or-less not needing to support their own body weight to move around, unlike land-based animals, and therefore they have the closest ratio to 1.
belorn 10y ago
In an other article, I just did some hasty estimates of diet vs commuting. If you drive for more than 5 minutes, you will cause a higher climate effect than any diet choice. Eat just the nicest climate friendly food, and drive for more than 5 minutes in one direction and you end up doing more harm than an meat eating cyclist. Which also mean that working from home would be the biggest cultural change to fix the environment, and much more effective than any cultural change in diet.
- peller 10y ago
  Interesting. I think what would be so hard about doing such an estimation is that most of the damage is just so far removed from us end consumers. It seems to me, very hard to extrapolate what one gallon of gas burned or one hamburger of meat eaten actually equates to on the production end of the spectrum. Care to share any more details?
  - belorn 10y ago
    For estimates, I used https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/21/giving-up-beef-reduce-carbon-footprint-more-than-cars https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/21/giving-u... for meat vs vegetarian, and carbon-footprint for 5m commute was provided by a comment here on HN, but I remade them this time. Using https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=307&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=307&t=11 we get us co2 per gallon, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles#Fuel_economy_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles#Fu... gives average miles per gallon, which with units (gnu tool) translated it to about 8.6 miles for 3kg co2. 8.6 miles is, depending on driving speed, a reasonable estimated of 10m driving. So if a person commute time to work is 5m, and 5m back, the co2 should be similar to a person who eat meat-rich diet but who work from home.
    - peller 10y ago
      Giving the meat vs vegetarian study authors the benefit of the doubt with respect to their calculations of greenhouse gas emissions from "production, transport, storage, cooking and wastage of food", and considering that on the commuting side of the equation you're only considering the emissions from burning gasoline (ignoring drilling/extraction, refining, and all the transportation that happens in the middle), the disparity must be even worse than you suggest. Perhaps a little ironically, the headline of the Guardian article says exactly the opposite.

by peller 10y ago

marricks 10y ago

It's funny because there are some easy changes governments could make which aren't even in telling people what to do. We literally give billions to animal ag industries in subsidies, we could just stop that. Take it a step further and use that money to actually fund alternatives so they're substantially cheaper for the public. The fact that almond/coconut milk is more expensive than cow milk speaks volumes about how the system is set up. Another step, which the FDA almost did this year, is advise people to eat less animals because it's awful for the environment. In general just making the message more visible would help. The last one is kind of telling people what to do, but the FDA already does that anyway so it's not too much of a change.

ant6n 10y ago
Is almond milk really better than cow milk in terms of impact?
- Lewton 10y ago
  Why was this (ant6n's) post downvoted? It's a legitimate question https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/oct/21/almond-milk-quite-good-for-you-very-bad-for-the-planet https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/oct/...
  - r00fus 10y ago
    I was about to rebut you, but the facts remain: The largest supplier (by far) of almonds in the world is California. So yeah, if you drink almond milk it's likely sourced from CA using up precious water that is causing the CA central valley to literally sink [1], as much as several inches a month (ie, several feet so far). However, almonds pale in comparison to cows or other livestock in terms of water usage (esp when used as meat) - while consuming large quantities of almonds may not be sustainable, it's a lot better than eating meat... just may be as water-unsustainable as drinking local milk (if you live in CA). [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/28/california-central-valley-sinking-farmers-deepwater-wells https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/28/california-c...
    - ant6n 10y ago
      But meat cows and milk cows are not the same thing. You need to grow a whole cow to have the meat of one cow, but if you grow one milk-cow you have the life-time supply of one cow. The water to meat (weight) ratio may be in the thousands or ten thousands, but the water to milk ratio may be in the oughts or tens.
      - botexpert 10y ago
        Milk cows carry a baby every year which puts more pressure on metabolism needs. Milk is more energy and water inefficient than meat ( same scale comparison).
- greeneggs 10y ago
  In terms of global warming, almond milk seems to be about 4.6 times better than cow milk. On page 8 of [1], they claim that CO2-equivalent emissions are 0.36 kg/L almond milk, and 1.67 kg/L cow milk. (Note: This is somebody's class report, not a peer-reviewed publication.) There is some uncertainty in these numbers, of course. If you care more about water usage, then 1L of almond milk uses on the order of 1600 gallons of water, compared to under 100 gallons of water per liter of cow milk. Again, there is some uncertainty. And I think CO2-equivalent emissions is far more important. [1] http://www.environment.ucla.edu/perch/resources/images/cow-vs-almond-milk-1.pdf http://www.environment.ucla.edu/perch/resources/images/cow-v...
  - marricks 10y ago
    Does the cow milk water usage compare the water used in the crops to feed the cows? It seems staggering to me that water used would be so much less.
    - akiselev 10y ago
      Although trees generally conserve water much better than animals, you need to support the entire almond tree for a few almonds whereas the cow's entire body will be used for a variety of products. The water usage of the agricultural infrastructure supporting the cow may be higher in absolute numbers but a single cow is literally hundreds or thousands of pounds of useful meat and bone after it is no longer useful as a milking cow.
_coldfire 10y ago
>We literally give billions to animal ag industries in subsidies, we could just stop that. I'm in agreeance with your suggestions, but note that Indonesia has large protests over small increases in meat costs. There's a political reality to dramatically raising food prices in a democracy.

tluyben2 10y ago

I notice that especially men get very defensive about their perceived meat entitlement. Seems to point to education and environment. Here on HN threads you can also see men getting aggressive when there is a suggestion (even with supporting articles) that it is unhealthy etc. Seems not unlike when it was first suggested that smoking was bad as that was also perceived 'real manly'. Same with guns. With alcohol a bit less but also and with sugar almost not. Seems to correspond with what is shown in culture (books, tv etc) and education as more and less butch.

ashark 10y ago
It's hardly just men. There are plenty of women with the "meal (and certainly dinner) = meat" notion in their heads.
- tluyben2 10y ago
  Didn't say just men; I just see, especially for red meat, men are vocal and aggressive about it. Maybe it is just places I go to ;) But I have seen it all over the world. Some places more than others.
gozur88 10y ago
"Perceived meat entitlement"? Can't imagine why you find people getting defensive.
- tluyben2 10y ago
  Not to me... Waiters to people and people to waiters, people at people at parties etc. What would you call it though? This thread is about killing life because rich folks want meat? If that is assumed true, then is that not a feeling of entitlement people have for some reason?
  - gozur88 10y ago
    I suspect the problem is people are unhappy with your assumption of the entitlement to tell them what they ought to be eating.

arzt 10y ago

Swept under the rug because there hasn't been a proven viable alternative that creates enough food to support modern human organization. Growth is the be all, end all of capitalism and agriculture is the 10,000 year old basis for it's existence. Until society rewrites the social contract, we're stuck with it and there are going to be articles like this one written that continually cast it into doubt.

mark_edward 10y ago
Agriculture and meat aren't the same thing.
- arzt 10y ago
  This article references deforestation whose root cause is a desire to to create land for grazing, so in this case it seems to be.

jimmaswell 10y ago

It's a tradeoff. Maybe most people just don't think slowing climate change is worth reducing meat consumption.

nathancahill 10y ago

It's not even meat. All we have to do is cut beef. Pork, lamb, chicken, rabbit and fish (in that order) have exponentially less environmental impact. Downvoters tell me why you disagree?

peller 10y ago
You make a valid point that there are varying degrees of offense. There's this thing called the "feed conversion ratio"[0] that measures how much input it takes to get the desired output. But for all meats, even fish, the ratio is above 1 (it takes more food than is produced). I would be curious to see where insects fall on the spectrum; I've heard they're very efficient protein producers for the physical space they take up, but I'm having trouble locating any specific data to back that up. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio
- nathancahill 10y ago
  That's true, however, the bigger issue with beef is the methods used to raise cattle in tropical countries. Farming cattle involves clear-cutting large swaths of forest to create fields that have 2-3 years of use for cattle before the soil is completely degraded. Then new land must be cleared. Cattle methane is another huge problem. Neither of those issues are factored in to the "feed conversion ratio".
- ssalazar 10y ago
  > for all meats, even fish, the ratio is above 1 (it takes more food than is produced) That seems like basic physics(?) How could it possibly be below 1 for anything that doesn't photosynthesize?
  - peller 10y ago
    Yea. The reason I called out fish is that they have the advantage of more-or-less not needing to support their own body weight to move around, unlike land-based animals, and therefore they have the closest ratio to 1.

belorn 10y ago

In an other article, I just did some hasty estimates of diet vs commuting. If you drive for more than 5 minutes, you will cause a higher climate effect than any diet choice. Eat just the nicest climate friendly food, and drive for more than 5 minutes in one direction and you end up doing more harm than an meat eating cyclist. Which also mean that working from home would be the biggest cultural change to fix the environment, and much more effective than any cultural change in diet.

peller 10y ago
Interesting. I think what would be so hard about doing such an estimation is that most of the damage is just so far removed from us end consumers. It seems to me, very hard to extrapolate what one gallon of gas burned or one hamburger of meat eaten actually equates to on the production end of the spectrum. Care to share any more details?
- belorn 10y ago
  For estimates, I used https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/21/giving-up-beef-reduce-carbon-footprint-more-than-cars https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/21/giving-u... for meat vs vegetarian, and carbon-footprint for 5m commute was provided by a comment here on HN, but I remade them this time. Using https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=307&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=307&t=11 we get us co2 per gallon, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles#Fuel_economy_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles#Fu... gives average miles per gallon, which with units (gnu tool) translated it to about 8.6 miles for 3kg co2. 8.6 miles is, depending on driving speed, a reasonable estimated of 10m driving. So if a person commute time to work is 5m, and 5m back, the co2 should be similar to a person who eat meat-rich diet but who work from home.
  - peller 10y ago
    Giving the meat vs vegetarian study authors the benefit of the doubt with respect to their calculations of greenhouse gas emissions from "production, transport, storage, cooking and wastage of food", and considering that on the commuting side of the equation you're only considering the emissions from burning gasoline (ignoring drilling/extraction, refining, and all the transportation that happens in the middle), the disparity must be even worse than you suggest. Perhaps a little ironically, the headline of the Guardian article says exactly the opposite.