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> electricity generation is the single biggest contributor to climate change—responsible for 25 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and growing every day T

by cies 7y ago

> electricity generation is the single biggest contributor to climate change—responsible for 25 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and growing every day To put it in perspective: livestock clocks in at 18% and transportation at 13%. [1] But greenhouse gas emissions is not all that counts, there's also acidification, eutrophicatoin (phosphor pollution) and land use. Livestock clock in very high on all these points. [2] We need land for forest: reduce footprint while re-creating habitats. Good to know Bill also invests on that side of the picture. [3] [1] http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts [2] https://phys.org/news/2018-05-reveals-foods-markedly-environmental-impacts.html https://phys.org/news/2018-05-reveals-foods-markedly-environ... [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/21/how-bill-gates-backed-vegan-beyond-meat-is-winning-over-meat-eaters.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/21/how-bill-gates-backed-vegan-...

paganel 7y ago
We need a change in culinary habits, eating meat each day for seven days a week isn’t pheasible on the long run. And I don’t think people will flock to eating artificial meat, I don’t think real milk has been replaced by soy milk. Also, a fact left unsaid by most of the people commenting on this, we need to reverse the engines of economic growth, this planet doesn’t have the resources of providing a middle-class lifestyle for 7 or 8 billion people. In essence, I’m saying that Malthus was right, and the longer we fight against his ideas the longer it will take for us to complain about stuff that I’m afraid is already outside of our control. I’m not really sure what sort of event will bring the next environmental state of equilibrium, we used to rely on wars and lack of antibiotics for that in centuries past, but I’m sure it won’t be pretty.
- fiblye 7y ago
  I think the effort to get people to stop eating meat and XYZ favorite food isn't going to work. A lot of people eat what they eat because they don't really have much food choice. And with some people pushing weird options like bugs as a protein source while the rich will surely keep eating normal old burgers, life is starting to feel like a bad scifi movie. I think the absolute biggest and most immediate solution is eating less. Not less beef. Not less pork. Just less of everything. Obese people can easily consume 2x or more of the food a non-obese person takes in. In America alone, about 1/3 of the country is obese. Doing incredibly rough math here, cutting the calorie consumption of that top 1/3 in half would be the equivalent of 1/6 of food consumption vanishing. As someone from a rural family full of almost-carnivore 400+ pounders, getting them to cut their calories to ~2500 calories a day would be like half the neighborhood and their consumption simply vanishing. And that's not even factoring in the gas we need to burn to accommodate the greater mass on airplanes, in cars, etc. Dropping the average weight of obese countries by 1/3 would put a big dent in emissions.
- antepodius 7y ago
  People have been prophesizing collapse and mass death for decades. They were wrong every time (obviously). Do you have the numbers to back up your claim about middle-class lifestyles?
  - paganel 7y ago
    We do currently witness mass death for insects, which had managed to survive through quite a few geological revolutions but which apparently cannot survive the humans’ need for industrialized agriculture (and you cannot feed 8 billion people without industrialized agriculture). And the extinctions among the mammal genre are already pretty well known.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    For millennia, actually. They have been right a few times.
- viraptor 7y ago
  > I don’t think real milk has been replaced by soy milk. It doesn't taste like cow's milk though. And it's not trying to. Artificial meat on the other hand has a goal of being as close to beef as possible.
- pif 7y ago
  > this planet doesn’t have the resources of providing a middle-class lifestyle for 7 or 8 billion people. So what? What do you propose, concretely? > Malthus was right, Again, so what?
  - nabnob 7y ago
    I'm not the person you're responding to, but I think the only way to fight climate change is by changing to an economy that doesn't rely on increasing production, and accepting a lower standard of living. I see people blaming climate change on overpopulation, but this isn't really the truth - a majority of the world's energy usage comes from first world countries.
    - pif 7y ago
      > and accepting a lower standard of living. I think nearly everybody is ready to accept a lower standard of living... for their neighbourghs!
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      How much of a reduction are we talking about? Because if it's far enough, then it won't really be any different than the destruction of our civilization. At that point we might as well go full steam ahead into climate change, because the results of it aren't actually set in stone. The IPCC says that we still don't know how to properly model clouds in our climate change models - they could have a significant cooling or warming effect.
  - paganel 7y ago
    > So what? What do you propose, concretely? I did say: > I’m afraid is already outside of our control. so you could say I'm a defeatist, as in I know of no workable and ethical solution. I am just laying out of the facts as I think they are happening.
    - pif 7y ago
      Maybe we agree in the following conclusion: Global warming is here to stay (because only a global effort can constrast it and human nature is against global efforts). Let's stop pretending we can make anything about it and let's instead focus on adapting to it (because humanity thrives when everybody can try and improve his own condition without sliding into theft).
rayiner 7y ago
Livestock only accounts for so much globally because much of Asia and Africa contributes little to CO2 output other than growing livestock. But that’s rapidly changing as those countries develop. The amount of CO2 China added to its footprint in the last year alone is more than what would be saved if the entire US switched to being vegan. As India and Africa follow the development trajectory of China, livestock will become a very small portion of CO2 footprint, just as it is in developed countries. (In the US, the difference between the average diet and a vegan diet is just a few percent of your footprint.)
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
  >> (In the US, the difference between the average diet and a vegan diet is just a few percent of your footprint.) I can believe that but could you please source it?
  - neltnerb 7y ago
    I think this was a commonly misinterpreted study from 2016. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33797273/BOLAND-DOCUMENT-2016.pdf?sequence=1 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33797273/BOLAND-... With this being the key figure: https://postimg.cc/pmQCfdZq https://postimg.cc/pmQCfdZq And the key conclusions from that table: "The impacts from food production for a vegan diet reflect the least GHG emissions when compared with that of a meat-based or vegetarian diet. As per Table 10, vegan diets produce carbon dioxide emissions of 1,798 g/person/day, showing the lowest amount of emissions, versus 7,891 g/person/day from a meat-based diet, demonstrating the highest emissions (Table 10). Vegetarian diets produce slightly higher emissions than a vegan diet, totaling 2,622 g/person/day. The largest individual food group contributor is red meats within the meat-based diet in the amount of 5,153 g/person/day. At the opposite end in a vegan diet, the lowest contributor to GHG emissions is potatoes." Every study I am aware of is clear that a vegan diet is less carbon intense than a carnivore diet. Beef especially, which is reported as 49% of the total for meat eaters. I think the people suggesting that "in the US it would raise CO2 emissions" is like a third-order effect people imagined up by drawing a box around the US and saying emissions from cattle grown in other countries for our consumption somehow emit carbon that doesn't get to the US while simultaneously assuming land use conversion in the US to increase agricultural output of plants which would increase emissions locally. Maybe. A lot of our crops go to feed those cattle. I would be extremely skeptical of any claim like this that flies in the face of 3rd grade science class where we learned that at each step up in the food chain 90% of the energy is lost to support systems like... being alive... while only 10% remains as biomass to eat. This is basically thermodynamics in action with edge effects that contrarians want to focus on.
jeraehej 7y ago
Cowspiracy has been debunked over and over again also it's good to know that bill invest on GMO, at least now we know what this side of the picture is.
- cies 7y ago
  Yes. And other shady investments. I wasnt trying to paint him a saint. ;)
- valtism 7y ago
  Has it been debunked? As far as my reading has shown me in the past and now, it seems to be fairly accurate, with some criticisms levelled at its conclusion that veganism is the right solution. https://www.quora.com/How-accurate-is-the-movie-Cowspiracy/answer/James-Ballantyne-3 https://www.quora.com/How-accurate-is-the-movie-Cowspiracy/a...
marcosdumay 7y ago
You can't really compare CH4 and CO2 emissions. They have completely different lifecycles and short term properties. Those livestock emissions nearly do not contribute to ocean acidification, and half of it will be gone in 20 years.

by cies 7y ago

paganel 7y ago

We need a change in culinary habits, eating meat each day for seven days a week isn’t pheasible on the long run. And I don’t think people will flock to eating artificial meat, I don’t think real milk has been replaced by soy milk. Also, a fact left unsaid by most of the people commenting on this, we need to reverse the engines of economic growth, this planet doesn’t have the resources of providing a middle-class lifestyle for 7 or 8 billion people. In essence, I’m saying that Malthus was right, and the longer we fight against his ideas the longer it will take for us to complain about stuff that I’m afraid is already outside of our control. I’m not really sure what sort of event will bring the next environmental state of equilibrium, we used to rely on wars and lack of antibiotics for that in centuries past, but I’m sure it won’t be pretty.

fiblye 7y ago
I think the effort to get people to stop eating meat and XYZ favorite food isn't going to work. A lot of people eat what they eat because they don't really have much food choice. And with some people pushing weird options like bugs as a protein source while the rich will surely keep eating normal old burgers, life is starting to feel like a bad scifi movie. I think the absolute biggest and most immediate solution is eating less. Not less beef. Not less pork. Just less of everything. Obese people can easily consume 2x or more of the food a non-obese person takes in. In America alone, about 1/3 of the country is obese. Doing incredibly rough math here, cutting the calorie consumption of that top 1/3 in half would be the equivalent of 1/6 of food consumption vanishing. As someone from a rural family full of almost-carnivore 400+ pounders, getting them to cut their calories to ~2500 calories a day would be like half the neighborhood and their consumption simply vanishing. And that's not even factoring in the gas we need to burn to accommodate the greater mass on airplanes, in cars, etc. Dropping the average weight of obese countries by 1/3 would put a big dent in emissions.
antepodius 7y ago
People have been prophesizing collapse and mass death for decades. They were wrong every time (obviously). Do you have the numbers to back up your claim about middle-class lifestyles?
- paganel 7y ago
  We do currently witness mass death for insects, which had managed to survive through quite a few geological revolutions but which apparently cannot survive the humans’ need for industrialized agriculture (and you cannot feed 8 billion people without industrialized agriculture). And the extinctions among the mammal genre are already pretty well known.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  For millennia, actually. They have been right a few times.
viraptor 7y ago
> I don’t think real milk has been replaced by soy milk. It doesn't taste like cow's milk though. And it's not trying to. Artificial meat on the other hand has a goal of being as close to beef as possible.
pif 7y ago
> this planet doesn’t have the resources of providing a middle-class lifestyle for 7 or 8 billion people. So what? What do you propose, concretely? > Malthus was right, Again, so what?
- nabnob 7y ago
  I'm not the person you're responding to, but I think the only way to fight climate change is by changing to an economy that doesn't rely on increasing production, and accepting a lower standard of living. I see people blaming climate change on overpopulation, but this isn't really the truth - a majority of the world's energy usage comes from first world countries.
  - pif 7y ago
    > and accepting a lower standard of living. I think nearly everybody is ready to accept a lower standard of living... for their neighbourghs!
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    How much of a reduction are we talking about? Because if it's far enough, then it won't really be any different than the destruction of our civilization. At that point we might as well go full steam ahead into climate change, because the results of it aren't actually set in stone. The IPCC says that we still don't know how to properly model clouds in our climate change models - they could have a significant cooling or warming effect.
- paganel 7y ago
  > So what? What do you propose, concretely? I did say: > I’m afraid is already outside of our control. so you could say I'm a defeatist, as in I know of no workable and ethical solution. I am just laying out of the facts as I think they are happening.
  - pif 7y ago
    Maybe we agree in the following conclusion: Global warming is here to stay (because only a global effort can constrast it and human nature is against global efforts). Let's stop pretending we can make anything about it and let's instead focus on adapting to it (because humanity thrives when everybody can try and improve his own condition without sliding into theft).

rayiner 7y ago

Livestock only accounts for so much globally because much of Asia and Africa contributes little to CO2 output other than growing livestock. But that’s rapidly changing as those countries develop. The amount of CO2 China added to its footprint in the last year alone is more than what would be saved if the entire US switched to being vegan. As India and Africa follow the development trajectory of China, livestock will become a very small portion of CO2 footprint, just as it is in developed countries. (In the US, the difference between the average diet and a vegan diet is just a few percent of your footprint.)

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
>> (In the US, the difference between the average diet and a vegan diet is just a few percent of your footprint.) I can believe that but could you please source it?
- neltnerb 7y ago
  I think this was a commonly misinterpreted study from 2016. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33797273/BOLAND-DOCUMENT-2016.pdf?sequence=1 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33797273/BOLAND-... With this being the key figure: https://postimg.cc/pmQCfdZq https://postimg.cc/pmQCfdZq And the key conclusions from that table: "The impacts from food production for a vegan diet reflect the least GHG emissions when compared with that of a meat-based or vegetarian diet. As per Table 10, vegan diets produce carbon dioxide emissions of 1,798 g/person/day, showing the lowest amount of emissions, versus 7,891 g/person/day from a meat-based diet, demonstrating the highest emissions (Table 10). Vegetarian diets produce slightly higher emissions than a vegan diet, totaling 2,622 g/person/day. The largest individual food group contributor is red meats within the meat-based diet in the amount of 5,153 g/person/day. At the opposite end in a vegan diet, the lowest contributor to GHG emissions is potatoes." Every study I am aware of is clear that a vegan diet is less carbon intense than a carnivore diet. Beef especially, which is reported as 49% of the total for meat eaters. I think the people suggesting that "in the US it would raise CO2 emissions" is like a third-order effect people imagined up by drawing a box around the US and saying emissions from cattle grown in other countries for our consumption somehow emit carbon that doesn't get to the US while simultaneously assuming land use conversion in the US to increase agricultural output of plants which would increase emissions locally. Maybe. A lot of our crops go to feed those cattle. I would be extremely skeptical of any claim like this that flies in the face of 3rd grade science class where we learned that at each step up in the food chain 90% of the energy is lost to support systems like... being alive... while only 10% remains as biomass to eat. This is basically thermodynamics in action with edge effects that contrarians want to focus on.

jeraehej 7y ago

Cowspiracy has been debunked over and over again also it's good to know that bill invest on GMO, at least now we know what this side of the picture is.

cies 7y ago
Yes. And other shady investments. I wasnt trying to paint him a saint. ;)
valtism 7y ago
Has it been debunked? As far as my reading has shown me in the past and now, it seems to be fairly accurate, with some criticisms levelled at its conclusion that veganism is the right solution. https://www.quora.com/How-accurate-is-the-movie-Cowspiracy/answer/James-Ballantyne-3 https://www.quora.com/How-accurate-is-the-movie-Cowspiracy/a...

marcosdumay 7y ago

You can't really compare CH4 and CO2 emissions. They have completely different lifecycles and short term properties. Those livestock emissions nearly do not contribute to ocean acidification, and half of it will be gone in 20 years.