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Often I see comments asking what we can do to combat this, or expressing feeling hopeless. While it is not the complete solution, one direct way is by eliminati

by spraak 7y ago

Often I see comments asking what we can do to combat this, or expressing feeling hopeless. While it is not the complete solution, one direct way is by eliminating your personal consumption of animal products. Animal agriculture is a huge contributor to methane production, especially from cows. > Overall, we conclude that methane emissions associated with both the animal husbandry and fossil fuel industries have larger greenhouse gas impacts than indicated by existing inventories. [1] [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/20/1314392110.abstract https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/20/1314392110.abs...

oliveshell 7y ago
It’s a nice thought, but even if we accept that the global population doing this would stem the tide of climate change (which I am doubtful it would), one quickly realizes that there is no way that the entire global population is going to stop eating animals, and we are back to feeling hopeless. I’m increasingly convinced that carbon sequestration on industrial scales is the only serious way to solve this problem.
- ianai 7y ago
  Sequestration won’t do enough soon enough. This could be methane deposits evaporating from long frozen stores (permafrost and other sources). Methane is a much bigger problem for the atmosphere than carbon and sequestration won’t touch it. If quitting meat sounds tough, consider that I’ve heard the only effective thing to do would be immediately cease all ICE production/use. But oddly feeding cows seaweed would cut their methane production something like 90%.
  - cageface 7y ago
    That’s a best case scenario based on lab results, not feeding cows at scale in the field. The number looks a lot closer to 50% in other trials. In a addition there are tremendous challenges in producing and transporting enough seaweed to implement this even if the kinks get worked out without doing as much damage to the environment. It’s good to keep all options on the table but seaweed is far from the silver bullet some people want it to be.
  - WAHa_06x36 7y ago
    Methane also has a much shorter half-life in the atmosphere, though, so just decreasing production of it will have a big effect in the short to medium term.
- jefflombardjr 7y ago
  > I’m increasingly convinced that carbon sequestration on industrial scales is the only serious way to solve this problem. This is akin to trying to prevent the dust bowl[0] with giant vacuum cleaners. The environment is a system. We are a function of it, not the masters of it. We need to address the feedback loops causing this crisis that we are creating. Even if that would work - As others have pointed out, we don't have the luxury of time to deploy industrial scale carbon sequestration. And even if we did - this type of thinking still discounts nature's value. [1] Why do we think it is easier to develop and deploy industrial scale carbon sequestration equipment when we have plants that are pretty damned good at doing just that? [2] We need a total perspective change here. Nature doesn't need saving, the concrete deserts that are cities need green roofs and trees. We need to stop useless commutes and start working from home where applicable. We need to realize that lawns are an ecological disaster. [3] But above all else, We need to make environmental damage illegal and stop allowing companies to profit off of it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl [1]https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/this-is-why-putting-a-price-on-the-value-of-nature-could-help-the-environment/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/this-is-why-putting-a... [2]https://www.thoughtco.com/which-trees-offset-global-warming-1204209 https://www.thoughtco.com/which-trees-offset-global-warming-... [3]https://earther.gizmodo.com/lawns-are-an-ecological-disaster-1826070720 https://earther.gizmodo.com/lawns-are-an-ecological-disaster...
  - semi-extrinsic 7y ago
    > we don't have the luxury of time to deploy industrial scale carbon sequestration Yes, we do. It's just that it costs money, and nobody wants to pay up. Same goes for all other realistic climate solutions that we have, unfortunately.
  - jefflombardjr 7y ago
    * Above all else we need energy innovation: https://www.reddit.com/user/thisisbillgates/comments/auosel/ask_me_about_energy_innovation_and_climate_change/ei0j3vj?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x https://www.reddit.com/user/thisisbillgates/comments/auosel/...
- vinc 7y ago
  You know what's the simplest solution for carbon sequestration on industrial scales? Trees! And do you know how we could make space for more trees? By switching as much as we can to plant based diets because it takes a lot more plants to feed the animals that we eat instead of eating the plants directly. I did an estimation once for Western Europe using FAO stats[1] and by switching to a vegan diet we could roughly double the size of the forests, that's a massive scale! It'll help fighting the climate crisis and it'll also help solving the species extinction crisis in Western Europe. And the cool thing is that we don't need to wait for all the human population to switch overnight to a vegan diet, reducing meat and dairy consumption is a perfectly valid first step that everyone can do! The more people switch diets and the more space will become available for rewilding. We can already see plant based diets becoming more and more popular, and at the same time it seems that flexitarian diets are also getting quite mainstream. I think there's hope on that front at least. [1] https://vinc.cc/essays/changing-our-diet-for-a-wilder-world/ https://vinc.cc/essays/changing-our-diet-for-a-wilder-world/
- devit 7y ago
  Just outlaw animal husbandry and meat sales or apply high enough taxes to meat, and meat consumption will become small enough to be irrelevant. People can be vegan just fine, it's only a matter of habits.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    Not everyone can be vegan just fine. Nutritional balance isn’t as well understood as many people think. I’m all for reducing the scale of meat, but for someone like me—who’s been urged to eat more red meat as a result of my deficiencies on top of supplementation—ceasing to do so will put my health back at risk. I don’t need to eat it every day, but it’s a near essential part of my diet. Problems of nutrient uptake are the reason medical researchers and professionals aren’t just telling us to go ahead, subside on non-nutrient cellulose fibre cakes and just pop a pill containing all essential nutrients and calories every day. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/dietary-supplements-do-they-help-or-hurt https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/dietary-suppl...
- ab8 7y ago
  > there is no way that the entire global population is going to stop eating animals Hard problems always feel this way. <insert slavery reference> 1. No way to stop eating animals 2. No way to stop driving/flying 3. Don't ask me to change. YOU change. => no change in status quo
- village-idiot 7y ago
  Fun fact, properly managed cattle herds can sequester carbon on an industrial scale! Techniques like rotational intensive grazing can help build up the top soil and rich root system that used to cover the plains, sequestering carbon and making the soil far more fertile.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    To add to that— adjusting the diet of cattle to one of red algae has proven to reduce their methane emissions dramatically. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-shrink-livestocks-global-carbon-hoofprint/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-...
    - village-idiot 7y ago
      Methane release from cattle is largely a by-product of nitrogen fixing fertilizers putting natural methane eating bacteria in the soil into an inactive state. If we stopped using synthetic (and oil based!) fertilizers at least on where the cattle poop, a lot of that methane will get sequestered into the top soil too. Which also explains why the flatulence of 60-100m buffalo before the industrial era didn’t warm the planet.
      - 52-6F-62 7y ago
        Interesting. I haven’t looked that deeply into the problem, but I’ll have to read about that. I imagine some locales might be worse for that problem than others, yeah? Do you have any info you can share?
        village-idiot 7y ago
        https://aem.asm.org/content/72/2/1346 https://aem.asm.org/content/72/2/1346
        52-6F-62 7y ago
aaronbrethorst 7y ago
Cut down on your consumption of meat. That's good and important. But it is no substitute for voting.
mattigames 7y ago
The only way methane from live-stock is gonna disappear is by either: 1) Lab-created meat 2) Seaweed and other techniques of reducing methane released by cows [0] 3) Less humans due birth control or fortuitous events (e.g. a plague) [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-shrink-livestocks-global-carbon-hoofprint/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-...
- estebank 7y ago
  4) Reduce demand. I'm Argentinean, if I stopped eating meat my passport would probably be revoked. I grew up thinking that it was perfectly normal to eat meat 7 days a week. Even with this background, I started reducing the amount of meat some time back. I'm not vegetarian by any means, but I reduced my meat consumption about 80% without even trying. I'm sure there are lots of people that could too. > Less humans due birth control or fortuitous events (e.g. a plague) Like everything, consumption follows a Pareto distribution, where some "whales" drive most of the demand. You can focus on them instead of hoping for lots of people dying. Also, reduce poverty and the amount of newborns in this planet will naturally decrease precipitously, without any need for a mandate from anyone.
  - mattigames 7y ago
    Changing people mentality is the less likely way methane is going to be reduced; I'm sure you tried to convince your family but you had little or no success, some parts of the world are even having trouble making people believe that vaccines are good don't think they gonna pay much attention about methane.
  - steve_adams_86 7y ago
    I also grew up eating crazy amounts of meat here in Canada. I'm steadily moving towards a vegetarian (though with some fish and other sea life I harvest) diet despite still absolutely loving meat. I just can't justify it anymore. To me (and I know others don't need to feel the same way) it's practically immoral to eat in a way that wouldn't be sustainable if everyone else did. It's incredible to be born in a place and time where I can afford dry aged sirloin, fresh bacon, roast chicken, or smoked duck breast with my meals... But to partake in it is a serious disservice to everyone else in the world, however minute that disservice may seem at the global scale. Having kids robbed me of the selfishness I required to isolate myself from the externalities of my lifestyle. To be honest, some days I wish I still didn't worry about it.
hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
How will this help with the catastrophic release of methane from melting tundra and gas hydrates?
- vbuwivbiu 7y ago
  a + b - a = b b < (a + b)
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    While true technically, it doesn't matter if (a + b) ≈ b. The parent's question is essentially about that.
fungi 7y ago
Not all meats are equal https://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-theres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands-4659 https://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-the...
neiman 7y ago
Assume that humans stop consuming livestock products tomorrow. The real goal would still be to reduce livestock, right? How will it be done exactly? How long will it take? Will they be released to nature? Killed? Not allowed to reproduce and we'll wait for them to die of old age? Be supplied condoms?:-) I don't have the knowledge to know whats needed to be done, or which steps are needed to be taken to do that, even if we stop consuming livestock products.
- cheerlessbog 7y ago
  Also if we reduce meat consumption but not milk and eggs, what happens to the animals too old to produce efficiently? Killing and eating them might have a lower environmental impact than letting them live out their old age and then rot.
- pjc50 7y ago
  An overnight stop isn't going to happen. Even a decade would be an absurdly optimistic short time for that to happen. That's longer than the normal farm lifespan of almost all food animals. Most ones reared for meat have less than two years. Reproduction of farm animals is totally controlled today by segregation usually from birth.
jefflombardjr 7y ago
Live stock farming is ~27% of methane production, where fossil fuels are ~33% [1]. Eating an eco friendly diet is great on the individual level, but we should not underscore the drastic need for decisive action on an institutional level. [1] https://whatsyourimpact.org/greenhouse-gases/methane-emissions https://whatsyourimpact.org/greenhouse-gases/methane-emissio...
- h0l0cube 7y ago
  One way to achieve both action on an institutional level, and reduce the consumption of meat, would be to capture the 'environmental costs' in the price. This could be orchestrated by government intervention, or on a less-effective scale, it could be a market differentiation for certain beef brands to include climate-change mitigation as part of their strategy and charge a premium.
  - FailMore 7y ago
    Yes 100%. The world needs Environmental Economics. This would make it financially worth while for huge investment to flow into environmentally friendly products.
- rjf72 7y ago
  And to emphasize here, those figures are likely both inflated if this article's hypothesis is correct. That being that primarily natural factors are driving the surge. It's because of this, and practical reality, that I don't understand why scrubbing is not considered a bigger part of the discussion on these topics. For instance one new technological solution [1] proposes an atmospheric removal of CO2 that could cost as little as $94 per ton. Our current CO2 emissions due to fossil fuels are about 37 billion tons a year. That's $3.5 trillion, 4% of the global GDP, to remove 100% of annual emission output. And an even better aspect of these solutions is that they also scale indefinitely. For instance you could not only reduce our footprint to 0 but even reduced the concentration of various gases in the sky, such as CO2, if that was deemed desirable. The same technology (or an inverse) also has direct application to future geoengineering efforts on other planets. Ultimately this is technology that there does not seem to be any physical barrier against - in other words we can develop it. And now seems like a great time to develop it. The current mitigation ideas of cutting back on x seem to be all we consider, yet they have immense barriers to execution. By contrast technological solutions would be something that would require no sacrifice and simultaneously also greatly expand our technology and developmental capabilities. And most importantly they all seem tantalizingly close. Yet in spite of all of this there seems to be near 0 discussion of these options. This is something I find confusing. [1] - http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/new-method-reduces-the-cost-of-scrubbing-co2-from-the-atmosphere/article/524596 http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/ne...
vbuwivbiu 7y ago
I'm reading a lot of smoker's-logic in the replies to this: people who love eating meat clutching at straws trying to rationalize it. Nobody's forcing you to do anything! You can happily ignore this and continue living your life as you wish.
- louthy 7y ago
  Or, it’s logic. Instead of blanket dismissal of everyone that doesn’t agree with you, why don’t you engage individually and help them understand your point of view. You may even find that you need to update your thinking rather than just claiming an entire group of people are deluded.
  - rewq4321 7y ago
    I'm not seeing much logic in the responses to be honest. We've known for a long time that animal agriculture produces more 100-year carbon equivalent emissions than the whole transportation industry (cars, trains, trucks, boats, planes, ...) combines. It's also the leading cause of deforestation, ocean deadzones, and extinction. > The 2006 report Livestock's Long Shadow, released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, states that "the livestock sector is a major stressor on many ecosystems and on the planet as a whole. Globally it is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases (GHG) and one of the leading causal factors in the loss of biodiversity, while in developed and emerging countries it is perhaps the leading source of water pollution." > A 2017 study published in the journal Carbon Balance and Management found animal agriculture's global methane emissions are 11% higher than previous estimates based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. > In November 2017, 15,364 world scientists signed a Warning to Humanity calling for, among other things, drastically diminishing our per capita consumption of meat. A similar shift to meat-free diets appears also as the only safe option to feed a growing population without further deforestation, and for different yields scenarios. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...
bubblewrap 7y ago
A more effective way of treating the feeling of hopelessness might be to simply stop consuming the news. They feed on our fears...
breatheoften 7y ago
I had an impossible burger slider yesterday for the first time — as a fan of the taste of meat, I’m very ready for the non-animal based meat future!
- maelito 7y ago
  What's their carbon footprint ?
  - lui8906 7y ago
    "The carbon footprint of the latest Impossible Burger recipe is 89% smaller than a burger made from real beef, according to a science-based life cycle assessment released by the company this week." https://www.fooddive.com/news/impossible-burger-boasts-much-smaller-carbon-footprint-than-beef/551073/ https://www.fooddive.com/news/impossible-burger-boasts-much-...
baxtr 7y ago
Absolutely. Even worse: It’s not only the direct production of methane but also deforestation for soy production / farmlands that drives climate change.
sascha_sl 7y ago
This is terrible advice, because it makes people think they did "enough" themselves to combat climate change when dropping animal product methane to 0 would not even be close to enough. Remember, 100 companies are responsible for 71% of climate emissions. These need to be dealt with, swiftly. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...
- simonh 7y ago
  It’s great advice because it’s a tangible change individuals can make immediately. There is very little we can individually do about the 100 companies, or do at all in the short term. This problem will need to be tackled on multiple fronts simultaneously. Advising people not to do something that could make a real difference doesn’t seem particularly helpful. I’m fed up reading comments along the lines of ‘we shouldn’t try to solve this problem, because we should be solving this other problem instead’. In every case I’ve seen this argument, there’s absolutely no constraint at all preventing us from doing both.
  - keymone 7y ago
    The advice may not be as great. Amount of land and water needed to grow crops that sufficiently replace nutrition provided by meat may be worse for climate change than just eating meat. Obviously that only applies to grass-fed cattle. I don’t have a source right now, but the choice is not as obvious as many think.
    - jeremyjh 7y ago
      Isn’t most cattle fed grain?
      - keymone 7y ago
        Yes it is, which is the main issue because apart from impact on land, corn-fed cows do excrete(?) more methane than grass-fed.
imtringued 7y ago
It would help if you read the article which explicitly states that more than 40% of the emissions come from fuel production. Agricultural emissions can be managed by changing the diet of the animals.
- ab8 7y ago
  > changing the diet of animals Changing our own diet is on the table too... considering we don't need to eat cattle to survive. This problem is one of overconsumption, and isn't going away by keeping our lifestyle the same.
- village-idiot 7y ago
  And by better animal husbandry techniques like rotational intensive grazing. Well managed cattle herds can sequester carbon in the top soil. There is absolutely no need to go vegetarian to save the planet.
andy_ppp 7y ago
I’ve personally started just eating meat on the weekend as a gateway drug into full vegetarianism, it’s actually a really nice thing eating so much veg and clean food all week and then maybe roasting a really nicely grown chicken on the weekend. I definitely feel much better.
HaukeHi 7y ago
Meatless Mondays won't cut it. But even if we were to offset our worst carbon excesses—such as intercontinental air-travel and meat—ethical consumerism won't solve the climate crisis. Most other people simply won't offset their emissions. We need coordinated policy approaches to climate change. And policy needs to be global in scope. Because even if advanced economies were to reduce their emissions to zero, this would be insufficient to prevent warming with substantial risks. Note that emerging economies are producing an increasingly large share of total global emissions, while the share from advanced economies is dwindling, now accounting for only 35% of global emissions. This trend continued past 2015 and is forecast to continue in the coming years. By 2040, emerging economies will produce 75% of all emissions, while only 25% will come from advanced economies. But policy-makers are still stuck in a mid-2000s mindset. Back then, their emissions were still the highest in the world and they had to focus their policies on reducing their own emissions. This no longer makes sense. Advanced economies have a special obligation to do more to lower emissions in all countries. Why is it our responsibility? Because our per capita emissions are still the highest and we have emitted the most carbon since the industrial revolution. Only if the policies of advanced economies lead to reduced emissions in all countries, can we prevent dangerous climate change. The most effective policies to prevent climate change are those that stimulate clean energy innovation. In other words, those that stimulate progress or breakthroughs in clean energy technologies (or any low-carbon technology that lowers emissions as well as demonstration projects, i.e. RD&D). Providing the global public good of cheaper clean energy technology helps all countries reduce their emissions. If you want to do something check out my crowdfunding campaign for effective climate policy here: https://www.lets-fund.org/clean-energy https://www.lets-fund.org/clean-energy
- codingdave 7y ago
  Personally, I'd be more responsive to what you have to say if you were to post comments that were more participatory in the discussions, and not always using your comments to post the same link to the fundraising site you founded.
eb3c90 7y ago
I would also argue that supporting efforts to understand where the methane is coming from would be good. For example Methane Sat[1] looks like it can cover a wide area and is coming on-line in the time frame to do some good (2020). [1] https://www.edf.org/climate/how-methanesat-is-different https://www.edf.org/climate/how-methanesat-is-different
andrepd 7y ago
The impact of my choice as a consumer is a blip in the radar compared to the impact of large companies changing their course, or being forced to change their course. Even more, compared to the people making those decisions. We need to take personal responsibility to those concrete people quickly, instead of blaming abstract concepts like "corporations" or "the market".
pdr94 7y ago
To get a better sense what you can do to actually make a difference, I highly recommend https://www.amazon.com/dp/0954452933/tag=davidmackayca-20 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0954452933/tag=davidmackayca-20 (also available online for free). If you take one transatlantic flight, you'd produce more CO2 than by driving for a year.
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
The article makes it clear that methane emissions from farming can be reduced without reducing the production [1]. At the same time, the majority of methane is produced by fossil fuel production that drives industry, transportation and energy production, that are also the largest sources of C02 emissions. It seems to me that by addressing the emissions of industry, transporation and energy production, we'd be killing two birds with one stone- whereas by going vegan or vegetarian we would only achieve a small reduction in both kinds of emission. The best thing to do to reduce emissions seems to stop driving, stop flying, prefer public transport, stop buying a new phone every year and stop burning as much excess electricity as we now do. Going vegan or vegetarian seems like a personal option, and a distant third or fourth priority for the general population. There are many more, much more effective things to do than stop eating meat. _______________ [1] Thus, there is wide agreement among experts that, regardless of the drivers behind the surge, reducing emissions from fossil-fuel production and distribution, primarily through ending leaks and venting, is one of the few options available to control global methane levels and that this option is the most practical one. In addition, scientists report that there are narrow opportunities to address agricultural emissions, e.g. changes in the diet of livestock can reduce the production of methane without affecting production.
ar-jan 7y ago
Let's also look at greenhouse gases in general: "According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the largest sources of U.S. GHG emissions in 2016 were electricity production (28 percent of total emissions), transportation (28 percent) and industry (22 percent). All of agriculture accounted for a total of 9 percent. All of animal agriculture contributes less than half of this amount, representing 3.9 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. That’s very different from claiming livestock represents as much or more than transportation." [0] Global direct greenhouse gas emissions from transportation versus livestock represent 14 versus 5 percent respectively. [1] Also consider: "According to the FAO, as much as 70 percent of all agricultural land globally is range land that can only be utilized as grazing land for ruminant livestock." [1] [0] https://theconversation.com/yes-eating-meat-affects-the-environment-but-cows-are-not-killing-the-climate-94968 https://theconversation.com/yes-eating-meat-affects-the-envi... [1] http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0 http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0
- rewq4321 7y ago
  > Global direct greenhouse gas emissions from transportation versus livestock represent 14 versus 5 percent respectively. The FAO's latest number for livestock emissions is 14.5% when considering the full life-cycle. It doesn't matter that we don't have a full life-cycle analysis for transportation - that doesn't change the number for livestock. The author tries to dismiss the 14.5% because "[transportation might be a bigger culprit]" and talks about "unringing" the bell on the FAO report simply because of a correction from 18% to 14.5%, which seems a bit of an overstatement. On top of this, new (2017) data seems to suggest that our predictions of livestock emissions were too low: > Using the new emissions factors, we estimate global livestock emissions of 119.1 ± 18.2 Tg methane in 2011; this quantity is 11% greater than that obtained using the IPCC 2006 emissions factors, encompassing an 8.4% increase in enteric fermentation methane, a 36.7% increase in manure management methane, and notable variability among regions and sources. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5620025/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5620025/
  - ar-jan 7y ago
    It does matter, because it makes sense to focus on the biggest contributors to emissions, where the most gains could be made. The current thinking goes we should eat "less or no meat", when the effort could be put towards not using grain for livestock feed, and promoting other changes such as reducing methane specifically by adding seaweed to the livestock's diet. That's not to mention that grazing is essential to both prevent and reverse desertification.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
The most impactful, single action any of us need to take is breaking the stronghold that fossil fuel interest have in politics. We can all go vegan today, but if there's no broad, strong policy to decarbonize transport and industry, it won't matter how many bean burgers we eat. We need political power, not just avoidance of beef.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  The nice thing about not eating meat is that it's a non exclusive effort. It's just something you integrate in your routine and you can still try to curb carbon emissions at the political level if you think it's the best course of action.

by spraak 7y ago

oliveshell 7y ago

It’s a nice thought, but even if we accept that the global population doing this would stem the tide of climate change (which I am doubtful it would), one quickly realizes that there is no way that the entire global population is going to stop eating animals, and we are back to feeling hopeless. I’m increasingly convinced that carbon sequestration on industrial scales is the only serious way to solve this problem.

ianai 7y ago
Sequestration won’t do enough soon enough. This could be methane deposits evaporating from long frozen stores (permafrost and other sources). Methane is a much bigger problem for the atmosphere than carbon and sequestration won’t touch it. If quitting meat sounds tough, consider that I’ve heard the only effective thing to do would be immediately cease all ICE production/use. But oddly feeding cows seaweed would cut their methane production something like 90%.
- cageface 7y ago
  That’s a best case scenario based on lab results, not feeding cows at scale in the field. The number looks a lot closer to 50% in other trials. In a addition there are tremendous challenges in producing and transporting enough seaweed to implement this even if the kinks get worked out without doing as much damage to the environment. It’s good to keep all options on the table but seaweed is far from the silver bullet some people want it to be.
- WAHa_06x36 7y ago
  Methane also has a much shorter half-life in the atmosphere, though, so just decreasing production of it will have a big effect in the short to medium term.
jefflombardjr 7y ago
> I’m increasingly convinced that carbon sequestration on industrial scales is the only serious way to solve this problem. This is akin to trying to prevent the dust bowl[0] with giant vacuum cleaners. The environment is a system. We are a function of it, not the masters of it. We need to address the feedback loops causing this crisis that we are creating. Even if that would work - As others have pointed out, we don't have the luxury of time to deploy industrial scale carbon sequestration. And even if we did - this type of thinking still discounts nature's value. [1] Why do we think it is easier to develop and deploy industrial scale carbon sequestration equipment when we have plants that are pretty damned good at doing just that? [2] We need a total perspective change here. Nature doesn't need saving, the concrete deserts that are cities need green roofs and trees. We need to stop useless commutes and start working from home where applicable. We need to realize that lawns are an ecological disaster. [3] But above all else, We need to make environmental damage illegal and stop allowing companies to profit off of it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl [1]https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/this-is-why-putting-a-price-on-the-value-of-nature-could-help-the-environment/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/this-is-why-putting-a... [2]https://www.thoughtco.com/which-trees-offset-global-warming-1204209 https://www.thoughtco.com/which-trees-offset-global-warming-... [3]https://earther.gizmodo.com/lawns-are-an-ecological-disaster-1826070720 https://earther.gizmodo.com/lawns-are-an-ecological-disaster...
- semi-extrinsic 7y ago
  > we don't have the luxury of time to deploy industrial scale carbon sequestration Yes, we do. It's just that it costs money, and nobody wants to pay up. Same goes for all other realistic climate solutions that we have, unfortunately.
- jefflombardjr 7y ago
  * Above all else we need energy innovation: https://www.reddit.com/user/thisisbillgates/comments/auosel/ask_me_about_energy_innovation_and_climate_change/ei0j3vj?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x https://www.reddit.com/user/thisisbillgates/comments/auosel/...
vinc 7y ago
You know what's the simplest solution for carbon sequestration on industrial scales? Trees! And do you know how we could make space for more trees? By switching as much as we can to plant based diets because it takes a lot more plants to feed the animals that we eat instead of eating the plants directly. I did an estimation once for Western Europe using FAO stats[1] and by switching to a vegan diet we could roughly double the size of the forests, that's a massive scale! It'll help fighting the climate crisis and it'll also help solving the species extinction crisis in Western Europe. And the cool thing is that we don't need to wait for all the human population to switch overnight to a vegan diet, reducing meat and dairy consumption is a perfectly valid first step that everyone can do! The more people switch diets and the more space will become available for rewilding. We can already see plant based diets becoming more and more popular, and at the same time it seems that flexitarian diets are also getting quite mainstream. I think there's hope on that front at least. [1] https://vinc.cc/essays/changing-our-diet-for-a-wilder-world/ https://vinc.cc/essays/changing-our-diet-for-a-wilder-world/
devit 7y ago
Just outlaw animal husbandry and meat sales or apply high enough taxes to meat, and meat consumption will become small enough to be irrelevant. People can be vegan just fine, it's only a matter of habits.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  Not everyone can be vegan just fine. Nutritional balance isn’t as well understood as many people think. I’m all for reducing the scale of meat, but for someone like me—who’s been urged to eat more red meat as a result of my deficiencies on top of supplementation—ceasing to do so will put my health back at risk. I don’t need to eat it every day, but it’s a near essential part of my diet. Problems of nutrient uptake are the reason medical researchers and professionals aren’t just telling us to go ahead, subside on non-nutrient cellulose fibre cakes and just pop a pill containing all essential nutrients and calories every day. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/dietary-supplements-do-they-help-or-hurt https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/dietary-suppl...
ab8 7y ago
> there is no way that the entire global population is going to stop eating animals Hard problems always feel this way. <insert slavery reference> 1. No way to stop eating animals 2. No way to stop driving/flying 3. Don't ask me to change. YOU change. => no change in status quo
village-idiot 7y ago
Fun fact, properly managed cattle herds can sequester carbon on an industrial scale! Techniques like rotational intensive grazing can help build up the top soil and rich root system that used to cover the plains, sequestering carbon and making the soil far more fertile.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  To add to that— adjusting the diet of cattle to one of red algae has proven to reduce their methane emissions dramatically. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-shrink-livestocks-global-carbon-hoofprint/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-...
  - village-idiot 7y ago
    Methane release from cattle is largely a by-product of nitrogen fixing fertilizers putting natural methane eating bacteria in the soil into an inactive state. If we stopped using synthetic (and oil based!) fertilizers at least on where the cattle poop, a lot of that methane will get sequestered into the top soil too. Which also explains why the flatulence of 60-100m buffalo before the industrial era didn’t warm the planet.
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago
      Interesting. I haven’t looked that deeply into the problem, but I’ll have to read about that. I imagine some locales might be worse for that problem than others, yeah? Do you have any info you can share?
      - village-idiot 7y ago
        https://aem.asm.org/content/72/2/1346 https://aem.asm.org/content/72/2/1346
        52-6F-62 7y ago

aaronbrethorst 7y ago

Cut down on your consumption of meat. That's good and important. But it is no substitute for voting.

mattigames 7y ago

The only way methane from live-stock is gonna disappear is by either: 1) Lab-created meat 2) Seaweed and other techniques of reducing methane released by cows [0] 3) Less humans due birth control or fortuitous events (e.g. a plague) [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-shrink-livestocks-global-carbon-hoofprint/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612452/how-seaweed-could-...

estebank 7y ago
4) Reduce demand. I'm Argentinean, if I stopped eating meat my passport would probably be revoked. I grew up thinking that it was perfectly normal to eat meat 7 days a week. Even with this background, I started reducing the amount of meat some time back. I'm not vegetarian by any means, but I reduced my meat consumption about 80% without even trying. I'm sure there are lots of people that could too. > Less humans due birth control or fortuitous events (e.g. a plague) Like everything, consumption follows a Pareto distribution, where some "whales" drive most of the demand. You can focus on them instead of hoping for lots of people dying. Also, reduce poverty and the amount of newborns in this planet will naturally decrease precipitously, without any need for a mandate from anyone.
- mattigames 7y ago
  Changing people mentality is the less likely way methane is going to be reduced; I'm sure you tried to convince your family but you had little or no success, some parts of the world are even having trouble making people believe that vaccines are good don't think they gonna pay much attention about methane.
- steve_adams_86 7y ago
  I also grew up eating crazy amounts of meat here in Canada. I'm steadily moving towards a vegetarian (though with some fish and other sea life I harvest) diet despite still absolutely loving meat. I just can't justify it anymore. To me (and I know others don't need to feel the same way) it's practically immoral to eat in a way that wouldn't be sustainable if everyone else did. It's incredible to be born in a place and time where I can afford dry aged sirloin, fresh bacon, roast chicken, or smoked duck breast with my meals... But to partake in it is a serious disservice to everyone else in the world, however minute that disservice may seem at the global scale. Having kids robbed me of the selfishness I required to isolate myself from the externalities of my lifestyle. To be honest, some days I wish I still didn't worry about it.

hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago

How will this help with the catastrophic release of methane from melting tundra and gas hydrates?

vbuwivbiu 7y ago
a + b - a = b b < (a + b)
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  While true technically, it doesn't matter if (a + b) ≈ b. The parent's question is essentially about that.

fungi 7y ago

Not all meats are equal https://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-theres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands-4659 https://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-the...

neiman 7y ago

Assume that humans stop consuming livestock products tomorrow. The real goal would still be to reduce livestock, right? How will it be done exactly? How long will it take? Will they be released to nature? Killed? Not allowed to reproduce and we'll wait for them to die of old age? Be supplied condoms?:-) I don't have the knowledge to know whats needed to be done, or which steps are needed to be taken to do that, even if we stop consuming livestock products.

cheerlessbog 7y ago
Also if we reduce meat consumption but not milk and eggs, what happens to the animals too old to produce efficiently? Killing and eating them might have a lower environmental impact than letting them live out their old age and then rot.
pjc50 7y ago
An overnight stop isn't going to happen. Even a decade would be an absurdly optimistic short time for that to happen. That's longer than the normal farm lifespan of almost all food animals. Most ones reared for meat have less than two years. Reproduction of farm animals is totally controlled today by segregation usually from birth.

jefflombardjr 7y ago

Live stock farming is ~27% of methane production, where fossil fuels are ~33% [1]. Eating an eco friendly diet is great on the individual level, but we should not underscore the drastic need for decisive action on an institutional level. [1] https://whatsyourimpact.org/greenhouse-gases/methane-emissions https://whatsyourimpact.org/greenhouse-gases/methane-emissio...

h0l0cube 7y ago
One way to achieve both action on an institutional level, and reduce the consumption of meat, would be to capture the 'environmental costs' in the price. This could be orchestrated by government intervention, or on a less-effective scale, it could be a market differentiation for certain beef brands to include climate-change mitigation as part of their strategy and charge a premium.
- FailMore 7y ago
  Yes 100%. The world needs Environmental Economics. This would make it financially worth while for huge investment to flow into environmentally friendly products.
rjf72 7y ago
And to emphasize here, those figures are likely both inflated if this article's hypothesis is correct. That being that primarily natural factors are driving the surge. It's because of this, and practical reality, that I don't understand why scrubbing is not considered a bigger part of the discussion on these topics. For instance one new technological solution [1] proposes an atmospheric removal of CO2 that could cost as little as $94 per ton. Our current CO2 emissions due to fossil fuels are about 37 billion tons a year. That's $3.5 trillion, 4% of the global GDP, to remove 100% of annual emission output. And an even better aspect of these solutions is that they also scale indefinitely. For instance you could not only reduce our footprint to 0 but even reduced the concentration of various gases in the sky, such as CO2, if that was deemed desirable. The same technology (or an inverse) also has direct application to future geoengineering efforts on other planets. Ultimately this is technology that there does not seem to be any physical barrier against - in other words we can develop it. And now seems like a great time to develop it. The current mitigation ideas of cutting back on x seem to be all we consider, yet they have immense barriers to execution. By contrast technological solutions would be something that would require no sacrifice and simultaneously also greatly expand our technology and developmental capabilities. And most importantly they all seem tantalizingly close. Yet in spite of all of this there seems to be near 0 discussion of these options. This is something I find confusing. [1] - http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/new-method-reduces-the-cost-of-scrubbing-co2-from-the-atmosphere/article/524596 http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/ne...

vbuwivbiu 7y ago

I'm reading a lot of smoker's-logic in the replies to this: people who love eating meat clutching at straws trying to rationalize it. Nobody's forcing you to do anything! You can happily ignore this and continue living your life as you wish.

louthy 7y ago
Or, it’s logic. Instead of blanket dismissal of everyone that doesn’t agree with you, why don’t you engage individually and help them understand your point of view. You may even find that you need to update your thinking rather than just claiming an entire group of people are deluded.
- rewq4321 7y ago
  I'm not seeing much logic in the responses to be honest. We've known for a long time that animal agriculture produces more 100-year carbon equivalent emissions than the whole transportation industry (cars, trains, trucks, boats, planes, ...) combines. It's also the leading cause of deforestation, ocean deadzones, and extinction. > The 2006 report Livestock's Long Shadow, released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, states that "the livestock sector is a major stressor on many ecosystems and on the planet as a whole. Globally it is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases (GHG) and one of the leading causal factors in the loss of biodiversity, while in developed and emerging countries it is perhaps the leading source of water pollution." > A 2017 study published in the journal Carbon Balance and Management found animal agriculture's global methane emissions are 11% higher than previous estimates based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. > In November 2017, 15,364 world scientists signed a Warning to Humanity calling for, among other things, drastically diminishing our per capita consumption of meat. A similar shift to meat-free diets appears also as the only safe option to feed a growing population without further deforestation, and for different yields scenarios. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...

bubblewrap 7y ago

A more effective way of treating the feeling of hopelessness might be to simply stop consuming the news. They feed on our fears...

breatheoften 7y ago

I had an impossible burger slider yesterday for the first time — as a fan of the taste of meat, I’m very ready for the non-animal based meat future!

maelito 7y ago
What's their carbon footprint ?
- lui8906 7y ago
  "The carbon footprint of the latest Impossible Burger recipe is 89% smaller than a burger made from real beef, according to a science-based life cycle assessment released by the company this week." https://www.fooddive.com/news/impossible-burger-boasts-much-smaller-carbon-footprint-than-beef/551073/ https://www.fooddive.com/news/impossible-burger-boasts-much-...

baxtr 7y ago

Absolutely. Even worse: It’s not only the direct production of methane but also deforestation for soy production / farmlands that drives climate change.

sascha_sl 7y ago

This is terrible advice, because it makes people think they did "enough" themselves to combat climate change when dropping animal product methane to 0 would not even be close to enough. Remember, 100 companies are responsible for 71% of climate emissions. These need to be dealt with, swiftly. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...

simonh 7y ago
It’s great advice because it’s a tangible change individuals can make immediately. There is very little we can individually do about the 100 companies, or do at all in the short term. This problem will need to be tackled on multiple fronts simultaneously. Advising people not to do something that could make a real difference doesn’t seem particularly helpful. I’m fed up reading comments along the lines of ‘we shouldn’t try to solve this problem, because we should be solving this other problem instead’. In every case I’ve seen this argument, there’s absolutely no constraint at all preventing us from doing both.
- keymone 7y ago
  The advice may not be as great. Amount of land and water needed to grow crops that sufficiently replace nutrition provided by meat may be worse for climate change than just eating meat. Obviously that only applies to grass-fed cattle. I don’t have a source right now, but the choice is not as obvious as many think.
  - jeremyjh 7y ago
    Isn’t most cattle fed grain?
    - keymone 7y ago
      Yes it is, which is the main issue because apart from impact on land, corn-fed cows do excrete(?) more methane than grass-fed.

imtringued 7y ago

It would help if you read the article which explicitly states that more than 40% of the emissions come from fuel production. Agricultural emissions can be managed by changing the diet of the animals.

ab8 7y ago
> changing the diet of animals Changing our own diet is on the table too... considering we don't need to eat cattle to survive. This problem is one of overconsumption, and isn't going away by keeping our lifestyle the same.
village-idiot 7y ago
And by better animal husbandry techniques like rotational intensive grazing. Well managed cattle herds can sequester carbon in the top soil. There is absolutely no need to go vegetarian to save the planet.

andy_ppp 7y ago

I’ve personally started just eating meat on the weekend as a gateway drug into full vegetarianism, it’s actually a really nice thing eating so much veg and clean food all week and then maybe roasting a really nicely grown chicken on the weekend. I definitely feel much better.

HaukeHi 7y ago

Meatless Mondays won't cut it. But even if we were to offset our worst carbon excesses—such as intercontinental air-travel and meat—ethical consumerism won't solve the climate crisis. Most other people simply won't offset their emissions. We need coordinated policy approaches to climate change. And policy needs to be global in scope. Because even if advanced economies were to reduce their emissions to zero, this would be insufficient to prevent warming with substantial risks. Note that emerging economies are producing an increasingly large share of total global emissions, while the share from advanced economies is dwindling, now accounting for only 35% of global emissions. This trend continued past 2015 and is forecast to continue in the coming years. By 2040, emerging economies will produce 75% of all emissions, while only 25% will come from advanced economies. But policy-makers are still stuck in a mid-2000s mindset. Back then, their emissions were still the highest in the world and they had to focus their policies on reducing their own emissions. This no longer makes sense. Advanced economies have a special obligation to do more to lower emissions in all countries. Why is it our responsibility? Because our per capita emissions are still the highest and we have emitted the most carbon since the industrial revolution. Only if the policies of advanced economies lead to reduced emissions in all countries, can we prevent dangerous climate change. The most effective policies to prevent climate change are those that stimulate clean energy innovation. In other words, those that stimulate progress or breakthroughs in clean energy technologies (or any low-carbon technology that lowers emissions as well as demonstration projects, i.e. RD&D). Providing the global public good of cheaper clean energy technology helps all countries reduce their emissions. If you want to do something check out my crowdfunding campaign for effective climate policy here: https://www.lets-fund.org/clean-energy https://www.lets-fund.org/clean-energy

codingdave 7y ago
Personally, I'd be more responsive to what you have to say if you were to post comments that were more participatory in the discussions, and not always using your comments to post the same link to the fundraising site you founded.

eb3c90 7y ago

I would also argue that supporting efforts to understand where the methane is coming from would be good. For example Methane Sat[1] looks like it can cover a wide area and is coming on-line in the time frame to do some good (2020). [1] https://www.edf.org/climate/how-methanesat-is-different https://www.edf.org/climate/how-methanesat-is-different

andrepd 7y ago

The impact of my choice as a consumer is a blip in the radar compared to the impact of large companies changing their course, or being forced to change their course. Even more, compared to the people making those decisions. We need to take personal responsibility to those concrete people quickly, instead of blaming abstract concepts like "corporations" or "the market".

pdr94 7y ago

To get a better sense what you can do to actually make a difference, I highly recommend https://www.amazon.com/dp/0954452933/tag=davidmackayca-20 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0954452933/tag=davidmackayca-20 (also available online for free). If you take one transatlantic flight, you'd produce more CO2 than by driving for a year.

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

The article makes it clear that methane emissions from farming can be reduced without reducing the production [1]. At the same time, the majority of methane is produced by fossil fuel production that drives industry, transportation and energy production, that are also the largest sources of C02 emissions. It seems to me that by addressing the emissions of industry, transporation and energy production, we'd be killing two birds with one stone- whereas by going vegan or vegetarian we would only achieve a small reduction in both kinds of emission. The best thing to do to reduce emissions seems to stop driving, stop flying, prefer public transport, stop buying a new phone every year and stop burning as much excess electricity as we now do. Going vegan or vegetarian seems like a personal option, and a distant third or fourth priority for the general population. There are many more, much more effective things to do than stop eating meat. _______________ [1] Thus, there is wide agreement among experts that, regardless of the drivers behind the surge, reducing emissions from fossil-fuel production and distribution, primarily through ending leaks and venting, is one of the few options available to control global methane levels and that this option is the most practical one. In addition, scientists report that there are narrow opportunities to address agricultural emissions, e.g. changes in the diet of livestock can reduce the production of methane without affecting production.

ar-jan 7y ago

Let's also look at greenhouse gases in general: "According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the largest sources of U.S. GHG emissions in 2016 were electricity production (28 percent of total emissions), transportation (28 percent) and industry (22 percent). All of agriculture accounted for a total of 9 percent. All of animal agriculture contributes less than half of this amount, representing 3.9 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. That’s very different from claiming livestock represents as much or more than transportation." [0] Global direct greenhouse gas emissions from transportation versus livestock represent 14 versus 5 percent respectively. [1] Also consider: "According to the FAO, as much as 70 percent of all agricultural land globally is range land that can only be utilized as grazing land for ruminant livestock." [1] [0] https://theconversation.com/yes-eating-meat-affects-the-environment-but-cows-are-not-killing-the-climate-94968 https://theconversation.com/yes-eating-meat-affects-the-envi... [1] http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0 http://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0

rewq4321 7y ago
> Global direct greenhouse gas emissions from transportation versus livestock represent 14 versus 5 percent respectively. The FAO's latest number for livestock emissions is 14.5% when considering the full life-cycle. It doesn't matter that we don't have a full life-cycle analysis for transportation - that doesn't change the number for livestock. The author tries to dismiss the 14.5% because "[transportation might be a bigger culprit]" and talks about "unringing" the bell on the FAO report simply because of a correction from 18% to 14.5%, which seems a bit of an overstatement. On top of this, new (2017) data seems to suggest that our predictions of livestock emissions were too low: > Using the new emissions factors, we estimate global livestock emissions of 119.1 ± 18.2 Tg methane in 2011; this quantity is 11% greater than that obtained using the IPCC 2006 emissions factors, encompassing an 8.4% increase in enteric fermentation methane, a 36.7% increase in manure management methane, and notable variability among regions and sources. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5620025/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5620025/
- ar-jan 7y ago
  It does matter, because it makes sense to focus on the biggest contributors to emissions, where the most gains could be made. The current thinking goes we should eat "less or no meat", when the effort could be put towards not using grain for livestock feed, and promoting other changes such as reducing methane specifically by adding seaweed to the livestock's diet. That's not to mention that grazing is essential to both prevent and reverse desertification.

WhompingWindows 7y ago

The most impactful, single action any of us need to take is breaking the stronghold that fossil fuel interest have in politics. We can all go vegan today, but if there's no broad, strong policy to decarbonize transport and industry, it won't matter how many bean burgers we eat. We need political power, not just avoidance of beef.

jobigoud 7y ago
The nice thing about not eating meat is that it's a non exclusive effort. It's just something you integrate in your routine and you can still try to curb carbon emissions at the political level if you think it's the best course of action.