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People Don't Get the Link Between Meat Consumption and Climate Change (2016)
- revmoo 9y agoFlagged for multiple pop-ups
- emodendroket 9y agoTrying to fix climate change as an individual consumer is hopeless.
- alex_duf 9y agoIt's like saying recycling is useless because no one recycles. You have to start somewhere
- donatj 9y agoRecycling is useless because the process takes more energy than mining new except for a few select materials. It’s a feel good exercise in wastefulness.
- eastendguy 9y agoStrong statement - any data to back it up?
- kogepathic 9y ago> Recycling is useless because the process takes more energy than mining new except for a few select materials. It’s a feel good exercise in wastefulness. I would disagree. There is a benefit to keeping these materials out of a landfill. Saying we should just throw everything into a landfill because that uses the least energy is not considering the other benefits of diverting waste from the landfill.
- pzone 9y agoThe damaging effects of modern landfills are so low as to be effectively negligible.
- thinkMOAR 9y agoBut nonetheless, depletion of that resource or resources will slow down? Energy could be harvested from renewable energy for recycling? Bottom line for me sounds better for our world then mining new till we run out of something?
- pmoleri 9y agoYeah, it's not like waste is going to end up in landfills or oceans anyway.
- pzone 9y agoAlways recycle aluminum though!
- nerdponx 9y agoAs mined materials start to get more scarce, their prices will rise, and mining companies will have increased power over markets. You can see recycling as a kind of "intertemporal power smoothing", depriving mining companies of future economic power by reducing the rate at which materials are mined. Economic concentration of power imposes tremendous externalities, most of which are felt by ordinary people in the form of price increases and political disenfranchisement due to lobbying and outright corruption. I am willing to pay an energy premium today in order to avoid that human rights premium in the future. You may not be so willing, but I would urge you to consider that position.
- felipeko 9y agoAs price rises, recycling will be more advantageous and will compete with mined materials reducing their future economic power by the same amount as it would if you recycle now. The maximum effect of your policy will be to delay the moment when recycling becomes economic advantageous, and waste money/energy until then.
- nerdponx 9y agoGood point. I guess we have solar as an example of that, but solar was also heavily subsidized by the US gov't.
- nine_k 9y agoAs traditional mining becomes more expensive, recycling certain metals becomes the new mining. Also, certain plastics are very easy to recycle, so it's already profitable, I suppose. Otherwise, you can see landfills as future mining sites, when technology improves.
- twostoned 9y agoI don't disagree in principle, "Be the change you want to see in the world" and all that, but climate change from an individual level to me seems silly, or perhaps overwhelming. I have stopped really worrying about it in the Dr. Strangelove sense because it's out of control. We're supposed to sort our plastics and papers and yet all of our options available for purchase have been shipped, at least in part, from across the Pacific Ocean? There's airplanes littering the skies yet I'm supposed to worry about putting my banana peels into a compost bin? I actually don't understand. I feel like a lot of business decisions are made that we, as peons, have no say in that affect the overall biosphere a lot and then we're made to feel bad about it. "Ride your bike!" "Recycle!" "Don't forget to turn your lights off when you're not in the room!" Meanwhile: Fracking. ookay... On topic: I have little doubt there's a strong link between climate change in general and the production and consumption of livestock.
- hycaria 9y agoIt makes you think about it and sensibilize to it. Which probably failed by you considering : >On topic: I have little doubt there's a strong link between climate change in general and the production and consumption of livestock. The most common cow diet at the moment is 50kg of corn + 3 kg of soy + maybe 10kg (dry) of hay. Everyday. Do you think this grows out of the blue or uses arable land ? Also Europe imports soy (from southamerica mostly) to feed cattle. Add the transport costs & pollution and what have you and you might get a glimpse of how eating 100g of beef is producing way more GHG than 100g of beans.
- emodendroket 9y agoI don't get what you mean. It doesn't seem like you actually disagree with the snippet you're quoting, yet it seems like you're trying to refute it.
- hycaria 9y agoI can't read, sorry :p
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- peg_leg 9y agoIf policy dictated through incentives or exise taxes on not recycling then people will recycle.
- alex_duf 9y agoIf people were recycling and asking for change then the policies would be implemented. I guess it's a matter of taking our own responsibilities or not
- mrarjen 9y agoCorrect, I think it would be more effective having this change on a production level where farmers and scientists possibly work together to make meat production more sustainable by for example beter utilizing and extending grass lands in barren regions. Trick is to not make the meat more expensive...
- pzone 9y agoWhat's needed is a carbon tax. Yes this will make meat (among other things) more expensive, but it is generally offset by the tax savings.
- mrarjen 9y agoYea because taxing carbon will magically get rid of it! \o/
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoStrawman. No one is arguing that it would magically get rid of carbon. However, incentives and prices work. If we had a global tax on carbon that accurately reflected the externalities, carbon emissions would plummet.
- hycaria 9y agoWhy not ?! It seems the most effective way to change peoples habits is still prices.
- mrarjen 9y agoIf it's more expensive the less eco friendly ways of making meat will be consumed instead.
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoSuch as? You think if meat in the US doubled or tripled in price there’d be a black market that would overwhelm those gains? I really doubt that you have any evidence for that.
- dsjoerg 9y agoYeah it's as hopeless as voting. Do you vote?
- lucozade 9y agoMore specifically, it's as hopeless as voting in a planet-wide election. So until we have the latter, or a forum with enough authority to have the effect of the latter, voting isn't a valid comparison. Which is a shame as voting is actually quite effective sometimes.
- ryanwaggoner 9y agoIt’s worse than that: it’s voting in a centuries-long election with no specific endpoint where everyone votes multiple times a day, and each vote costs them a little bit.
- eastendguy 9y agoPeople Still Don't Get the Link Between the Number of People on this Planet and Climate Change (I hardly eat meat these days, but nothing will help if the population continues to grow at the same rate)
- 1457389 9y agoIn Which Eastendguy Obfuscates the Much Stronger Nature of the Link Between Profligate Western Meat Consumption Patterns and Climate Change
- kbart 9y ago"Much Stronger Nature of the Link" Citation needed. I would bet my money that growth of population and urbanization has bigger impact than meat industry.
- Yusho 9y agoThat's exactly why the rule of 72 should be thought more often. Just seeing how quickly the population can double at the current growth rate is an eye opener. 72 / 1.1 = 65 Years Meat isn't the problem, endless growth is.
- nine_k 9y agoDo regions with most growth also eat most meat, per capita?
- Yusho 9y agoWhen we look at the 3 countries with the most growth in combination with meat consumption (data from wikipedia) 1. China 58.2 kg/person and year 2. India 4.4 kg/person and year 3. USA 120.2 kg/person and year There are very big differences that have more to do with culture and income rather than growth. sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_cons...
- gcatalfamo 9y agoWhat the other people don't get is that going vegan/vegetarian is NOT the correct answer.
- hycaria 9y agoAbsolutely, the only stronger decision one can take is having one child less. But as this is not considered by most, limiting meat to one or two meals a week would already be a good step forward
- dwaltrip 9y agoI think taxing carbon output and passing policies to more quickly facilitate the switch to renewable energy would be more effective. This wouldn't rely on individuals making large changes to their life all on their own.
- kelchm 9y agoActually, I think you'll find that people just really like the way meat tastes.
- nerdponx 9y agoIt's more than that. People are very attached to their food choices, they put a lot of personal stock in what they eat. Food is an essential, ancient part of culture and society. You not only have to convince people to get over the taste, but you also have to convince people to get over the cultural importance of meat-based foods. Not so hard and some families, but probably serious challenge and many others. "Thanksgiving turkey", "Christmas ham", "high holidays brisket", what have you.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoThe ones you mentioned are sporadic, celebtratory meals though; the main meat consumption is still the day-to-day stuff. Chicken sandwiches and such.
- nerdponx 9y agoTrue, but people are attached to their chicken sandwiches, too. For most people in the US, at least, sandwiches (with a few specific exceptions) are supposed to contain meat. What else would you have, rabbit food on a bun?
- hycaria 9y agoToday I just ate one with tofu cooked in sauce and green beans (yeah soy has its own problems, at least in europe where we don't produce it). But you can also have beans / chick pea or even greens baked into fritters. I always liked the eggs mayo combo (adding tomato cucumber or whatever), but this is not vegan.
- emodendroket 9y agoI mean, to be completely honest with you, at this point I do not want to eat a sandwich at all.
- mythrwy 9y agoPeople don't believe the link between meat consumption and climate change. It seems like one leftist agenda being used to push another leftist agenda and pretty much anyone who isn't down with leftist agendas tunes right out as this is just too far fetched to even consider. (Not a heavy meat eater myself but not for planet saving reasons. I just don't like a lot of meat sitting in my stomach. Beans and whole grains and fruits and veggies and occasionally a small piece of meat is much better for me.)
- rhinoceraptor 9y agoPeople love to neglect grass fed meat. Much of the planet is grasslands that require grazing animals. You put grazing animals on the land, move them around, and that’s it. The only real energy input is the sun. Compare that to monocropping which requires vast oil and pesticide/herbicide input, displaces local habitats, reduces the biodiversity of the planet.
- hycaria 9y agoWhere do you move them to during the winter ? Do you fly them to green pastures in the other hemisphere then ? Or maybe you just forgot that 600kg animals won't keep the same meaty and fatty bodyshape if you don't provide them silage or else during the cold seasons ?
- craigds 9y agoGrass fed beef isn't a solution. Cows still produce a lot of methane. http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-03-grass-fed-beef-good-or-bad-climate http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-03-grass-fed-beef-good-or-b...
- Turing_Machine 9y agoIn North America, much of the land now used for grazing cows was formerly occupied by bison (which are so close to cows that they can actually interbred). I seriously doubt that this caused any significant net change in methane production.
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- panic 9y agoIf you're interested in a research-backed analysis of how much impact various solutions to global warming would have, http://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank http://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank is a good reference. "Plant-Rich Diet" is #4 on the list.
- peg_leg 9y agoMeat is cheap. AND it's not up to individuals to make the broad policy changes needed to affect climate change. That's done by governments. People will follow suit. If there's a tax on meat, less meat will be eaten. To put the onus on individuals to make policy decisions is preposterous.
- acjohnson55 9y agoExactly. Price in the externalities, and people will make better choices.
- lozenge 9y agoYeah, choices like voting the "meat tax party" out of office.
- hycaria 9y agoWhile I agree these are not popular enough to get elected on or to introduce and no one wants to commit political suicide. Hell even wildlife protection or ecological associations barely mention these subjects as it drives people away from donations.
- emodendroket 9y agoIf it's not popular enough to get over the finish line in elections how's it supposed to sudden gain so much traction that everyone changes their lifestyles?
- 1457389 9y agoYou can try and tax your way to culture shifts but since we aren't all Homo economicus it is often not as effective as directly appealing to morality and individual responsibility.
- dwaltrip 9y agoGrassroots movements and citizen created advocacy orgs (non-profits, etc) can be a big part of what often causes government to make policy changes. But you are right that the primary focus should be on facilitating effective policy change for such issues. I do think there is some value in individual change as an agent of broader cultural change, but this is much harder to assess. Part of my reasoning is that policy change will likely fail without some corresponding cultural change as well. I'd like to learn more about this complex dynamic though... In the end, policy change is definitely necessary to successfully defense against large, negative externalities.
- announcerman 9y agoOnly the elite should have access to meat in order to stop climate change, the rest will have to do with soybased fake meat substitutes. It's healthier too!
- peg_leg 9y agoThis is rather true.
- emodendroket 9y agoThat's far from the only possible solution, although it is essentially the one you create if your solution is to just jack up the price of meat.
- cagenut 9y agoMeat is a big one, but its the #3 - #5ish big one depending on how you look at things (at an individual westerner vs. other lenses). Roughly in order it goes - having more kids than adults (population growth) - living in a single-family detached home (land use sprawl + hvac inefficiency) - owning a car - flying - eating red meat (particularly beef & lamb) So yes by all means, eat less red meat, but after you've moved to a multi-unit building and sold your car and stopped going to conferences. For context, a six ounce ribeye steak is the co2 eqiv (really its methane) of 330g of emitted carbon. That is almost the exact same number of grams it costs to drive an electric vehicle on an average u.s. grid mix 2 miles. Gas burners more like 1 mile. So ditch the car and enjoy the steak.
- emodendroket 9y agoOh, good news, you can just ditch the car and walk several miles to everywhere you need to go. Again, telling people to just start living like they're Benedictine monks is not a serious solution to the problem.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- TheCoelacanth 9y agoWith better land use patterns you wouldn't need to walk that far. I can walk to dozens of restaurants without going more than half a mile. Even single family house neighborhoods can have a decent selection of restaurants and grocery stores within a short walking distance if we get rid of the stupid zoning rules that strictly segregate residential and commercial uses.
- emodendroket 9y agoEven if that's what the doctor ordered, so to speak, it's hardly a matter of individual initiative.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
- resonanttoe 9y agoGrrr, paywalled research articles. I have some questions that maybe someone who has read the paper (or has access to it may be able to find out). The abstract talks about Outstanding effectiveness and fairly positive effectiveness, what was the scaling they used? (Great, good, neutral, bad, awful? or something else) Similarly, it talks about correlations with motivational and cultural factors, were these identified at all? And what was the methodology/measure for the effectiveness rating?
- tfolbrecht 9y agoPeople still don't get that haphazard false equivalences weaken trust in media. I live in the rural south. The cows in my lumpy unfarmable backyard eat grass. How is it a harmful practice? I can't convert grass to a complete protein source. Any link between wild game and climate change? Fishing? Articles like this are alienating to the average person. Why not use this opportunity push more ethical options? Grass fed Beef, Wild game, carbon neutral feedstocks, locally produced, sustainable practices. Then your readers have a clear path to less harmful alternatives before converting to the 3 square soylents of the future.
- falcolas 9y agoRural north-west here, same issue. I get it, there are some cattle ranches which would turn my stomach, but the average ranch around here is hundreds of acres of unfarmable (or unprofitable to farm) land dedicated to a few hundred head of cattle (i.e. you don't see the cattle most of the time). They're oddly beautiful spaces to look upon, compared to the mechanical oddity (circular fields in a square plots) that is the modern farm.
- reustle 9y agoI'm not educated on the statistics, but how much of the total meat consumed (let's say beef in the US) comes from the big bad farms? Is it possible to convert over to only healthier grass pastures? I'm a meat eater who is happy to pay more and cut down, just wondering how feasible it is.
- tfolbrecht 9y agoFeasibility for the individual is a matter of being able to afford meat that is currently 50 - 100% more expensive per comparable cuts. Feasibility for society is complex. Where I live, grass fed cattle is mostly grown on short term leased land. Sellers and long term speculators of farmable land make cash on its interim usage for cattle. Non-feasible. In Australia and NZ, there are huge chunks of the country suitable for raising livestock, not suitable for land development or plant farming. There's more livestock than people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50MbPACZF-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50MbPACZF-4 Australian outback cattle farmers mustering with helicopters
- ourmandave 9y agoCurrently, most communications around meat and climate change are in the category of ‘the pointing finger’, thereby creating guilt, shame, and stigmatization among committed carnivores, and activating psychological mechanisms of denial and downplay. Stating that eating meat is ‘bad’ therefore doesn’t seem to work that well. Consumption and lifestyles therefore tend to be shaped more by people collectively than individually. The most effective strategies thus engage people in groups... One of my master students, Lena Johanning, translated this idea by developing postcards that humorously depict "flexitarian" superheroes on the front, with an invitation for a veggie dinner on the back, coupled with some amazing fact about meat and climate change. So their answer is to convert "carnivores" with a Vegan Timeshare Sale Luncheon? =D
- DiabloD3 9y agoThis is a useless article with a serious vegan bent. Humans cannot survive as vegans, and suggesting so is a pretty backwards thing given that these are basic scientific facts; so called "healthy vegans" often are taking supplements that they believe are vegan when they are in fact animal-sourced, or they are using algae-based products that are often highly contaminated as a nature of their production. Literally, the headline might as well be "People Still Don't Get the Link Between Humanity's Existence and Climate Change, And All Humans Should Die". In addition, they are unable to illustrate a link between humanity's actions and climate change and just take the meme for granted. More and more evidence continues to mount that indicates the large scale climate trends are entirely driven by the sun (something that outputs 384.6 YW, strikes us with 174.0 PW of that, and the current human energy need is 18.0 PW), and the pollution of humans (which is undeniably bad, and maybe the second largest driver behind modern diseases; but does not sufficiently change the Earth's albiedo to explain the trends over the past 100+ years) has very little to do with it. On top of this, the continued use of crops that are a mismatch with our animal herds would actually have helped their climate change argument, but they purposely ignored it to instead focus on pushing a vegan agenda. As in: stop using corn and other toxic feed crops, and instead grow nutrient dense foods to feed animals instead. The discontinuation of corn and cereal grains as cash crops (through methods such as ending costly government subsidizes and letting corn and grain-focused farms collapse under the free market, as they should) would do far more to reduce the pollution and (already small) effect on climate change than trying to get non-vegans to accept a lifestyle incompatible with the biology of humans. The vegan religion continues to ignore basic facts about humans, the evolution of humans, and what humans require to survive and thrive, so I have no clue why Scientific American would allow themselves to become a mouthpiece for something that has no basis in science. I'm honestly waiting for vegan "researchers" to start trying to use meat eating as an explanation for the magnetic poles rapidly moving away from their traditional positions, the Solar Grand Minimum that we're heading possibly into this solar cycle, the eerily quiet solar surface, the unusually cold weather in the Middle East, AND the thickening of the ice shelf in Antarctica against the widely popularized (and not scientifically based) predictions by Al Gore. Claiming humanity has this much control over the weather is a bit egotistical. The only time we've successfully done it on a large enough scale to matter, we caused a mini ice age in Europe, and choked London out with thick black (and certainly lethal) smog. In comparison, natural causes such as once-in-ten-thousand-year volcanic eruptions have done more damage.