We don’t need ruminants to go away, we just need carbon to be fairly priced so that if factors in the negative externalities that are currently ignored. This wi

We don’t need ruminants to go away, we just need carbon to be fairly priced so that if factors in the negative externalities that are currently ignored. This will make beef a luxury purchase, which will drive down the level of consumption. Some of that cost could be offset by incentivizing carbon capturing farming practices like silvopasture and agroforestry. But while healthy pastures can sequester a lot of carbon, it’s nowhere near the numbers of a healthy forest. Ultimately we need to reforest a lot of land, which will reduce the grazing carrying load of the planet, and again make beef more expensive. I get it: beef is easy, and people love it. So are fossil fuels. You can make a strong argument that both have done a lot of good in bringing the world out of poverty. But, where things stand today, it’s unsustainable. People tend to focus just on the methane emissions of cows, but that’s probably somewhat solvable with changes to their diets — adding seaweed, etc. The real carbon cost is in land use change, chemical fertilizer production, transport, etc. The majority of our food system is set up to produce feed for animals. And the EPA numbers for agricultural emissions only focus on direct emissions from things like tilling, or gas burned by tractors. The true carbon cost of farming is likely to be much, much bigger than conventional estimates suggest. There seems to be a fear that a mostly vegetarian / vegan diet is somehow less healthy. I’d argue that there’s plenty of contemporary science on the subject to suggest that it’s just as healthy a way to live, and perhaps even more so. But even if it’s a tossup, there’s an undeniable fact: global warming is happening, and the health effects of that greatly outweigh the health effects that can probably be solved with a couple of supplements. (Anecdotal evidence, but my kids are vegan due to allergies, and they’re thriving. It’s never been easier to be vegan. My parents were for a time when I was a kid, and let me tell you, things have come a long way.)