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Have a look at this chart: https://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/world-flowchart.jpg https://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/world-flowchart.jpg Livestock

Have a look at this chart: https://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/world-flowchart.jpg https://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/world-flowchart.jpg Livestock and manure account for 5.1% of global CO2 production. Agriculture on the whole account for 13%. Although the 5.1% is a large chunk, it's just nowhere near enough. Air transportation is also sitting at a cool 1.6%. In order for us to make large changes, we're going to have to make fairly substantial alterations to the way we do things. I'm totally happy if some people don't eat meat. Heck, I was vegan for 10 years! But, I don't think it's a terribly effective approach to addressing global climate change. The 5% isn't enough and it doesn't force us to make the other cultural changes that are necessary to succeed.

Gravityloss 7y ago
From a person's personal emissions point of view, the math could be a bit different. It's something that you as a person can have more an immediate effect on than, say, what kind of district heating fuel your city uses or if your apartment building is doing an energy saving renovation or not. Flying is another case like that - a relatively personal choice. EDIT: looking at your picture, which is great, it seems almost none of the parts are over 10% alone. Deforestation is huge, 18.3%. I don't know how big is dairy and beef farming's impact on that.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  I think the way to look at it is that the vast majority of the graph is taken up by industry -- either manufacturing, or shipping/transportation. I think the actual key to making a difference is reducing consumption. Buy something once in your life rather than every few years. Go for higher quality items rather than disposable. These days, energy is the controlling factor in cost -- automation having reduced labour costs. Every time you buy something a good proportion of that cost is just energy. If you change from spending, say, $30K per year to spending $10K per year, you will reduce overall energy expenditure massively. There are 2 problems with this: 1) our economy isn't designed to deal with a reduction in demand. 2) our culture is geared to fill up our houses with new things every year. So that's my suggestion if you want to make a personal contribution. Edit: There is a small line for "Agricultural Energy Use" and another for "Other Agriculture". All agricultural energy use is 1.4% and the total for all agriculture other than rice production is 0.9%. So I suppose the milk industry is some proportion of the 5% of livestock and the 2.3% of everything else. However, in some parts of the world it does contribute to deforestation. In fact, my understanding is that the vast majority of deforestation is actually for agricultural use -- but a lot of that is for chemical products as well (palm oil for use as an emulsifier in detergent as an example). Probably easiest way to deal with that is to buy local, traditional goods and to avoid luxury imported items.

Gravityloss 7y ago

From a person's personal emissions point of view, the math could be a bit different. It's something that you as a person can have more an immediate effect on than, say, what kind of district heating fuel your city uses or if your apartment building is doing an energy saving renovation or not. Flying is another case like that - a relatively personal choice. EDIT: looking at your picture, which is great, it seems almost none of the parts are over 10% alone. Deforestation is huge, 18.3%. I don't know how big is dairy and beef farming's impact on that.

mikekchar 7y ago
I think the way to look at it is that the vast majority of the graph is taken up by industry -- either manufacturing, or shipping/transportation. I think the actual key to making a difference is reducing consumption. Buy something once in your life rather than every few years. Go for higher quality items rather than disposable. These days, energy is the controlling factor in cost -- automation having reduced labour costs. Every time you buy something a good proportion of that cost is just energy. If you change from spending, say, $30K per year to spending $10K per year, you will reduce overall energy expenditure massively. There are 2 problems with this: 1) our economy isn't designed to deal with a reduction in demand. 2) our culture is geared to fill up our houses with new things every year. So that's my suggestion if you want to make a personal contribution. Edit: There is a small line for "Agricultural Energy Use" and another for "Other Agriculture". All agricultural energy use is 1.4% and the total for all agriculture other than rice production is 0.9%. So I suppose the milk industry is some proportion of the 5% of livestock and the 2.3% of everything else. However, in some parts of the world it does contribute to deforestation. In fact, my understanding is that the vast majority of deforestation is actually for agricultural use -- but a lot of that is for chemical products as well (palm oil for use as an emulsifier in detergent as an example). Probably easiest way to deal with that is to buy local, traditional goods and to avoid luxury imported items.