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Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

• Nyandalized 7y ago
  I don't think people will stop consuming meat if you ask them nicely. You have to make decisions that will hurt the meat industry and make it infeasible. This would likely best be achieved through slowly dropping tax incentives, and transferring them over to alternatives so that people have something equally economical to today's meat.
  • mytailorisrich 7y ago
    There is no need to go from one extreme to the other. This is about eating "less" meat. People do not traditionally eat that much meat because meat used to be expensive and its supply limited. This is still the case in poor countries. In developed countries, people started to eat more and more meat as they got richer because we naturally like meat and because of clever marketing. We now eat too much meat, and also consume too much dairy (adults don't need to drink any milk and many don't digest it well, by the way). If people just stopped eating meat at every meal or every day, consumption would drastically drop without too much of a change in daily life. One solution would be measures to increase prices but that is a political minefield.
    • lol768 7y ago
      >adult don't need to drink any milk and many don't digest it well, by the way Never understood the obsession with drinking milk on its own (though I never liked the taste of it myself either). There's plenty of calcium to be found in other sources: kale, leafy greens, almonds, fortrified grains, beans/pulses etc.
      • close04 7y ago
        You're missing one solid reason to drink milk: some people like it. Most of the stuff we eat today is actually not about nutritional needs. And your argument can always be reshuffled. Swap milk with any one of the items you listed and one by one you can disqualify all of them from consumption. Variety is a good thing, meaning something should be eliminated because it's no good, not because there are alternatives. There's no requirement or recommendation to cover your daily needs with the least varied diet.
        • markstos 7y ago
          Of people I know who have reduced animal consumption, drinking cow milk and having it on cereal is one of the first things to go. In the early days soy milk was about the only alternative. Now there are so many dairy-free milk alternatives to try. The proliferation of grocery shelves is a testament to their growing popularity.
      • harimau777 7y ago
        This is a very niche reason, but one of the classic diets for beginner weight lifters who want to gain weight is to add a gallon of whole milk a day to their existing diet. For people that are trying to consume more calories and protein, I don't know of an alternative that combines comparable calorie & protein density, low cost, ease of consumption, and zero preparation time. More generally, I think that one of the big challenges with plant based diets is a lack of easily available calorie and protein dense foods. (I'm not saying its impossible to get enough calories and protein as a vegan, even as a bodybuilder. Just that it is not nearly as easy.)
        • growlist 7y ago
          I got a free sample of pea protein powder with some whey one time. It was truly disgusting!
          • ppseafield 7y ago
            Unflavored pea protein is pretty bad, but there are a ton of delicious vegan protein powder options out there.
        • gwm83 7y ago
          I haven't heard of this and I know a good number of weight trainers. Doesn't this give people massive squirts? Can anyone digest a whole gallon of milk in a day? Gross
        • wreath 7y ago
          I think you are referring to Mark Rippetoe’s suggested diet in his book Starting Strength. In which case, it is worth mentioning that this is suggested for skinny, 18 year old males and to be followed for the duration of the training program (months)
        • markstos 7y ago
          Even weight lifting is changing, with one of the top weight lifters being vegan: https://www.greatveganathletes.com/patrik-baboumian-vegan-strongman/ https://www.greatveganathletes.com/patrik-baboumian-vegan-st... Dairy in particular can be source of inflammation. One of the benefits of the vegan diets for athletes cited is a fast recovery time after workouts.
      • academic_nimrod 7y ago
        People aren't obsessed with it, it's just good. You ever had a cold glass of whole milk with a slice of chocolate cake? It's good for your soul.
        • lol768 7y ago
          I have, I wasn't much of a fan :P (Cow) milk just seems to have an unpleasant aftertaste to me. I get on well with oat milk, though.
      • growlist 7y ago
        One of the strangest things to me about lunch in the Netherlands: adult men drinking milk with their meal, this meal sometimes consisting of a chocolate hundreds and thousands sandwich O_o
        • radicalbyte 7y ago
          At least that's better than drinking buttermilk and a cheese sandwich :)
        • mrep 7y ago
          That is hilarious because I love to drink milk with sweet pastries and my girlfriend also thinks drinking straight milk is disgusting. It's hard to explain why, but I think the main reason is that I am not super into sweets and milk seems to counteract the sweetness. I also get heartburn frequently and milk tends to help my stomach not feel terrible like it would if I ate a sweet pastry by itself.
      • dmux 7y ago
        >Never understood the obsession with drinking milk on its own It's something that's been consumed for millennia. There are societies based on pastoralism where milk is a huge part of the diet. I'd hardly classify it as being an obsession.
        • lol768 7y ago
          >It's something that's been consumed for millennia. There are societies based on pastoralism where milk is a huge part of the diet. I'd hardly classify it as being an obsession. Obsession is probably the wrong word, but I'd still be curious as to the history behind it (and how long it continued into adulthood). Especially given its association with and place in a juvenile diet.
    • bigato 7y ago
      Given the extreme we are in yes, going to the other extreme would be a good thing. And even then, not enough. This is just one of the multiple changes that humanity need to bring about. I don't think people should be prohibited from eating animal products, but those who have the will to remove it completely from their diets would definitely be having a much higher positive impact on the environment.
      • mytailorisrich 7y ago
        It would be helpful, obviously, but it is not necessary and not realistic. Trying to go to an extreme is counter-productive because people won't follow. Convincing people not to eat meat at every meal or every day has a much higher chance of delivering significant results quickly.
    • aaron695 7y ago
      > One solution would be measures to increase prices but that is a political minefield. What's another solution? People will keep slaves if it's legal. Stopping the use of tax payer dollars to help people eat meat seems not that much of a minefield compared too?
    • kpU8efre7r 7y ago
      Exactly this. I will never go vegan or vegetarian but I mostly limit meat to only dinner and in smaller portions. My grocery bill is much smaller, it's healthier, and better for the environment overall. Pushing a full-blown switch to veganism as the only solution is not pragmatic.
    • fpoling 7y ago
      My grandmother told me that before the second world war for a typical peasant family in Belarus the meat meant a single chicken 2-4 times in a month for the whole family. Only on big celebrations few times in a year people could afford to slaughter a pig or a caw. Even eggs were considered expensive. Milk was more available as most families had a cow. The real staple food was potato and bread. In cities meat was more available as workers typically earned more. Option to eat meat each day was considered a luxury.
      • loceng 7y ago
        I think we should be pointing to science - which to date it hasn't been adequately done relating to diet, to see what diet is optimal, and how that varies per group whether that's by blood type, DNA/ancestral data, or other - while taking in the particular sensitivities of each individual as part of the research vs. making the reference points based on a structure of scarcity of what was available based on what people could afford; also having an idea of a person's current health state, how healthy their GI tract is and overall system needs to be taken into account as to how they may or may not respond to different diets - including not limited to how we're only just beginning to understand how gut bacteria and within the whole GI tract can strongly impact outcome.
      • diyseguy 7y ago
        Its interesting to hear anecdotal stories like these because they contradict the conventional wisdom nowadays that says you have to eat meat as protein every day - clearly that wasn't the case in prior centuries.
        • LegitShady 7y ago
          what was the life expectancy? what was the standard of living? trying to call back to 1930s belarus as an example to live from is crazy. It doesn't even logically follow that we should avoid meat because poor farmers in belarus didn't each much. Where's the logical argument?
          • berdon 7y ago
    • harimau777 7y ago
      A challenge that I could see with convincing people to adopt a more plant based diet is that there is a carbon cost associated with shipping food across the country, but in many parts of the US a plant based diet might be much less appetizing if it is restricted to local crops. For example, much of the country wouldn't have access to citrus fruits, bananas, pineapples, or avocados. Maybe a solution would be to tax food based on how long it was shipped but to exempt fruits and vegetables from the tax.
      • jbob2000 7y ago
        Na, that's a red herring. We can reduce our meat consumption and not replace it with anything. Americans are over consuming food, we can definitely reduce meat intake without needing to replace it with foods shipped in from out of county. Also, most of the US population is around the coasts. Shipping a bit of food inland to the people there isn't that big of an impact.
        • jnwatson 7y ago
          So you’re just asking humans to consume fewer calories? Good luck with that.
        • ben509 7y ago
          > Americans are over consuming food Overconsumption is generally less than 10% of their caloric needs, so they can't just drop a large source of nutrition.
          • mytailorisrich 7y ago
            Apparently, Americans throw away the equivalent of a third of the calories they consume, and interestingly a lot of fruits and veg. [1] Reducing waste would dramatically help the environment. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/18/americans-waste-food-fruit-vegetables-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/18/american...
        • corodra 7y ago
    • e12e 7y ago
      > There is no need to go from one extreme to the other. Global warming due to greenhouse gas is a reason to go to the "other" extreme?
    • hanniabu 7y ago
      > One solution would be measures to increase price, but that is a political minefield. It's only a political minefield because of corporate influence (dictation?) in politics.
    • magduf 7y ago
      >and also consume too much dairy (adults don't need to drink any milk and many don't digest it well, by the way) How much is "too much"? We don't need to drink tea or coffee either; do you propose getting rid of those too? For those of us who have no problems digesting it, what exactly is the problem with eating yogurt or drinking milk? Sure, consuming too much of those probably isn't good, but you can say that about literally any food. For people who don't digest it well, then of course I'd suggest not drinking it. The same goes for any other food: if you're allergic to peanuts, don't eat them. If you're allergic to shellfish, don't eat them. If you're allergic to bananas, don't eat them. If you're lactose-intolerant, don't drink milk unless you really like the taste and want to add lactase enzyme. I do agree that Americans in particular eat way too much red meat, but I think some people give dairy a hard time when I don't think it's that much of a problem compared to many other things. Most adults don't drink a lot of milk anyway; usually "dairy" for adults means eggs, cheese, yogurt, etc. I don't see the health problems with dairy the way I see with red meat either. For improving public health, we should instead be reducing how much red meat people eat, plus also reducing or eliminating stuff like HFCS, refined sugars, refined flour, alcohol, etc. >One solution would be measures to increase prices but that is a political minefield. What they should do is just eliminate the tax breaks that unhealthy industries enjoy.
  • truthwhisperer 7y ago
    no the question is do we support from the "west" that everyone gets the same share of the cake which means we have to change dramatically our way of living or do we want to keep it for ourselves. If every CN or IN guys lives on the same standard as we in EU/USA the world will be gone in 60 seconds. Let discuss on that level instead of picking out all kind of less relevant topics each time.
  • dkersten 7y ago
    Shift subsidies from meat to vegetables perhaps.
    • glastra 7y ago
      Which subsidies is meat getting? The ones that go to the agriculture industry responsible for feed? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_St...
      • leethargo 7y ago
        I heard that corn farming is subsidized in the US, which is also used to feed cows?
      • dkersten 7y ago
        Sure, why not? From the same wikipedia page, a bit above what you linked, there's also this chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Meat_Atlas_2014_subsidies_animal_products.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Meat_Atlas_2014_subsidies... showing how many billions are spent on animal product subsidies. Unfortunately I had no luck finding the actual OECD reports, though (aside from the " Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2019" report, but that seems to just compare each country to the global average, rather than talking about different types of subsidies)
        • glastra 7y ago
          "[...] animal products and feed", straight from the image. Sadly, no distinction. I would assume that it's mostly subsidies to feed. I am unable to find any sources on subsidies to meat directly. I'm all for removing subsidies to monoculture agriculture.
          • dkersten 7y ago
            > I am unable to find any sources on subsidies to meat directly. Yeah, I searched around a bit (even outside of the US) and I'm having difficulty finding any proper data to back up or refute it. That's a pity, would have been nice to know either way. The best I found was data on subsidies given to individual farmers in my country (I'm not in the US), but unless I scrape the site and aggregate and categorise the data, its not really useful (and doing that is too much work for me). > I'm all for removing subsidies to monoculture agriculture. Absolutely. I don't even mind animal products receiving subsidies, I'm not vegetarian and certainly not vegan, but I do hope that non-animal products get a large chunk of the subsidy pie, personally.
  • arethuza 7y ago
    Make much higher welfare standards for farm animals a requirement - making meat much more expensive, reducing consumption. Sounds like a win win to me.
    • sschueller 7y ago
      And if you don't want to wait for the government to require this you can already start today. Buy only locally farmed organic meat. Don't go to fast food places or restaurants that don't specifically declare that their meat is organic and local.
      • saagarjha 7y ago
        Or just reduce your meat consumption.
        • SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
          Speaking as someone who took the same stance as the commenter you're replying to, reduced meat consumption was indeed a side effect in my case without it being a conscious choice - mainly due to cost and inconvenience.
      • mklarmann 7y ago
        Trouble with organic is that those cows live longer, hence cause about 60% more Methan emissions, till they are slaughtered.
        • tom_mellior 7y ago
          > Trouble with organic is that those cows live longer Interesting. Do you have a source? I don't see a good reason for this off the top of my head.
          • dagw 7y ago
            At a guess cows that are grass fed and not given growth hormones grow much slower and thus take longer to reach 'slaughtering' weight.
  • est31 7y ago
    I agree. Few years back I bought some tofu sausages to try out how they taste. They tasted interesting but not like real sausages. Definitely not a good replacement. Even if I made myself eat them because of moral reasons, ignoring how they taste, many people would still avoid them. As long as meat tastes better than its alternatives, people will use it. We need to bring good meat alternatives to the masses. The theoretical advantage that artificial meat has is the lower amount of resources needed. Over time, because of this it can get much cheaper than real meat, at least if you don't factor in skewing of the market due to government subsidies. Then, if they truly have comparable tastes, people will naturally choose those alternatives. This seems like the best strategy: If you force people to become vegan by law without giving good alternatives, you just make them angry at people who want to stop climate change. If you nicely ask them, some will switch but most won't. So I believe the best way forward is to invest into meat alternative startups and help them make their product as widely used and as cheap as possible.
    • mklarmann 7y ago
      Our studies have shown, that about 10% are first movers (willing to give up benefits, to become climate friendly eaters) and 80% will go with the default when it is acceptable. The last 10% would still need to be coerced actively by some kind of restriction.
      • est31 7y ago
        10% is a lot. It's enough to swing an election. And no idea what the 80% would think. Also, I'm interested in global solutions, not ones that are effective in one country only. Globally, there are varying degrees of support for fighting climate change. Especially third world countries want growth and say it's the responsibility of developed economies to fight it because we have polluted so much historically. The goal is to make it impossible for Bolsonaro to sell his meat to any country in the world.
        • andrenth 7y ago
          How about we make it impossible for Trump or Merkel or Abe or Xi Jinping to sell their coal-powered production to any country in the world? The question is rhetorical and is meant to show that 1) this proposal is not a “global solution”, as punishing a single country would hardly make any difference; and 2) you’re personifying a country’s exports, associating them to an administration you disagree ideologically with, to make it sound evil, and that is not rational nor productive.
  • jdc 7y ago
    Methane tax IMO
    • glastra 7y ago
      Better dial down on the fiber intake, then!
      • C1sc0cat 7y ago
        And have regular blood tests and take your vitamins to keep your biochemistry at the right state.
    • elktea 7y ago
      "Combining isotopic evidence from ground surface measurements with the newly calculated fire emissions, the team showed that about 17 teragrams per year of the increase is due to fossil fuels, another 12 is from wetlands or rice farming, while fires are decreasing by about 4 teragrams per year. The three numbers combine to 25 teragrams a year -- the same as the observed increase"[1] The 'cows farting' story is not a major methane source. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-led-study-solves-a-methane-puzzle https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-led-study-solves-a-met...
      • dkersten 7y ago
        I don't have a source at hand, so grain of salt and all that... I read somewhere that grass-fed cows also produce a lot less methane than corn-fed cows.
      • hannob 7y ago
        What you're citing here is numbers for previously unexplained emissions, not total emissions. I.e. there was major uncertainty that scientists were measuring more methane than they expected, and these scientists tried to figure out where it comes from. The only thing your argument says is that for methane emissions from meat production apparently scientists had a pretty good idea about the numbers.
  • jazzabeanie 7y ago
    From the article: “But it would indeed be beneficial, for both climate and human health, if people in many rich countries consumed less meat, and if politics would create appropriate incentives to that effect.”
    • dqh 7y ago
      For the most part I now only eat meat, eggs, cheese, some nuts, and non-starchy vegetables. Mostly meat, and mostly very fatty meat like Pork belly. At 40 years old i've never been healthier as an adult - I don't buy the argument that meat is bad for you.
      • buckthundaz 7y ago
        Same here. People should experiment for themselves. Give a 30-Day meat-based diet a try. http://meatheals.com/ http://meatheals.com/ https://justmeat.co/ https://justmeat.co/
      • uxcolumbo 7y ago
        Check out pcrm.org for some medical arguments why it's bad for you. But even if you think it's not bad for you, it's bad for: - the environment - bad for people having to work in slaughterhouses killing and gutting animals all day - bad for the animal
  • CommieDetector 7y ago
    What gives you the right to control what people eat?
    • Nyandalized 7y ago
      I believe the government already has the right and power to control what people eat. People form the government, and people (ideally) choose the people to hold that power. In part I, too have the right to control what people eat through voting.
      • jfnixon 7y ago
        Great, that means we can vote to require meat at every meal. Don't like it? Too bad, so sad, we have the right to control what you eat.
        • saagarjha 7y ago
          You cannot force people to eat something.
          • CommieDetector 7y ago
            Then you can not force people _not_ to eat something.
            • gbear605 7y ago
              There’s an established precedent in (American) law that it’s generally okay to forbid an action but it’s not okay to mandate an action. For example, you can stop people from driving without a license, but you can’t make everyone get a license.
              • magduf 7y ago
                I hate to point it out, but ObamaCare is an example of the reverse: you're mandated to purchase health insurance, or else pay a hefty penalty fee.
  • nexensis 7y ago
    That's not entirely true - veganism has made massive strides in the last few years simply because more information is becoming available about the environmental, ethical and (arguably) health issues surrounding our heavy meat consumption. Millions of people are already voluntarily reducing their consumption and now virtually every restaurant in the UK has vegan options, making it easier for more people to switch. I live in the outskirts of a relatively small, low-income industrial city and there are signs outside small shops and restaurants everywhere promoting their new vegan menus. A traditional pub near me has no fewer than 14(!) plant-based main courses. I'd love to see tax incentives that reflect the damage that the meat and dairy industry are doing (ending the massive government subsidies would be a good start), however the changes I've seen in the UK give me hope that the grassroots level can sway public opinion without forcing people to change via legislation.
    • hannob 7y ago
      Local perception versus global reality: Meat consumption is still growing. This can easily get clouded if you live in a place where you feel a new vegan place opens all the time. But this is very unevenly distributed. The UK is a place where vegan eating is strong, likewise Germany, Sweden and certainly a few other places. But even in very similar countries also in middle Europe - e.g. Denmark, France - vegetarianism is still very unusual.
  • lm28469 7y ago
    Informing people might work for some [0]. That's how I reduced my consumption by 90%. If you truly want to do good and people are able to inform you that X is bad then you'll do your best to stop doing X. Also, good meat is expensive and cheap meat taste like shit so it's a good move for your wallet. [0] growing amount of people saying "I want to fight climate change but can't do anything myself"
  • throwaway3627 7y ago
    Never going to happen without leadership to force people to change. People are too stuck in their ways, even though meat agriculture is terrible for these reasons: - antibiotic resistance - air, water and soil pollution - climate change - inefficient calorie, phosphorus and land utilization - pandemic evolution - and of course cruelty to animals Eating meat is a choice to doom yourself, everyone else and the planet. No amount of gradual incrementalism, hand-wringing incentives or rationalizations/self-delusions can substitute for vital action.
    • academic_nimrod 7y ago
      What you mean by "vital action"? Sounds authoritarian. Shouldn't people vote on these sorts of things, with democracy and all?
      • AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        A matter of philosophy. Which is more important: the continuation of civilized human society, or democratic ideals? Personally, I'm not actually sure. The human race, like all things, is ultimately doomed so surely some consideration for values outside those of mere survival is necessary.
  • digitalsushi 7y ago
    Whenever I worry about someone bioengineering a plague for humans to save the planet, the pragmatist in me realizes they could just do the same against cows and only end up being remembered as half evil.
  • academic_nimrod 7y ago
    Got it - when democratic means don't work, switch to coercion and extortion. Wonder why people have such negative views of environmentalists.
  • nkozyra 7y ago
    > I don't think people will stop consuming meat if you ask them nicely. Illuminating the moral quandary of meat consumption helps. It worked for me. Nobody had to ask me nicely, they just needed to help me to think about it and be self-reflective. Even if you believe there to be ethical meat consumption (a notion I find dubious in modern life), people can reduce consumption and have a big impact. Modern commercial meat and dairy production is a horrible process and most people are so insulated from it that you get used to thinking meat is just this product that comes from a factory.
    • luckylion 7y ago
      > Nobody had to ask me nicely, they just needed to help me to think about it and be self-reflective. My theory is that you have to be ready / have to already, deep down, made that decision and then just needed a little push. Since this is a major topic in many societies with vegetarians and vegans proselytizing, I doubt that the majority of meat eaters aren't aware - they just don't come to the same conclusions or like it too much to quit.
    • corodra 7y ago
      But most people don't see a general ethical issue with eating meat. We are omnivores after all. Hell, our hunter gatherer ancestors ate more meat than we do. Though, higher quality. It's the same with seeing a wolf eat a deer. Think they care? Same with a chimp finally catching a monkey and eating it (now those are horrifying videos to see, especially since chimps love eating monkeys). Snake to a mouse. Fox to a hare. Cat to a bird. Shark to a seal. Cheetah to a gazelle. Osprey to a fish. At that, a lot of herbivores also kill and eat other animals (ground nesting birds being the popular victim). Mostly for the calcium in their bones. But still. But if broccoli could scream would you stop eating it? Circle of life. Just the way it is. However I do agree, there are a lot of commercial farming practices that need to be ended. Even if it means higher prices.
      • ppseafield 7y ago
        A lot of people have a problem with eating dog meat. Wolves that eat deer don't also breed them to the point where they contribute to climate change. Hunter gatherer folk don't breed them to a point where they are a significant factor in climate change. As carnivores wolves don't really have a choice to not eat meat. You do, though. With a couple of different choices at the supermarket or simply ordering different choices on the menu, you can help cut down our global emissions.
  • blunte 7y ago
    Sadly, I think the only thing that will make a big impact in changing people's consumption will be related to antibiotic resistant mass-contamination events. A few back to back meat recalls in the US got me to try vegetarianism 8 years ago. The animal welfare element only developed after I started learning about the new diet I was on. It also helps to promote stories of very healthy vegetarians (especially pro athletes). My favorites were Carl Lewis, Herschel Walker, and Venus Williams. There are many more out there. The key is to find decent, not too complex recipes. Dropping a slab of meat on the grill is so easy and results in such a tasty primary component of a meal; but making an interesting vegetarian meal requires more effort (at first). Once you know some good recipes, you get to the point where the only time you miss meat is when you're at a festival and you smell barbeque :).
  • the_gastropod 7y ago
    Absolutely! I think you hit the nail on the head. I went to an Israeli restaurant the other day, and (I'm guessing?) all the meat was kosher (read: expensive). Their menu prices seemed to be exactly how they should be. Vegetarian options were in the ~$7 range, and meat dishes were in the $35 range. This kind of pricing still makes meat dishes accessible to anyone that wants them, but gently nudges behavior in a more sustainable direction.
    • TheBeardKing 7y ago
      I hate when I go to Qdoba and the same bowl with Impossible meat is $9.99, while beef or chicken is $7.99. So now I have to pay more and eat less healthy?
      • uxcolumbo 7y ago
        Can you point me to some sources that say plant=based meat is less healthy than animal based meat?
        • TheBeardKing 7y ago
          Nutritionists vary on the following aspects, as the research isn't definitive, so I'm not going to give an opinion, just list the facts: the new meat alternatives have less protein, more sodium, more carbs, and more saturated fat. Take that as you will.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • saagarjha 7y ago
        I’m sure the vegetarian bowl without meat substitutes is cheaper.
  • mparramon 7y ago
    This is starting to happen in the EU already: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49281111 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49281111
  • srean 7y ago
    Apparently the Indian way is death by lynching on suspicion of cow slaughter with govt doing a 'wink wink' I was looking the other way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_vigilante_violence_in_India_since_2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_vigilante_violence_in_Indi... The govt's behavior is not motivated by climate.
• AndriyKunitsyn 7y ago
  How about we put a ban on UN officials’ private jets first?
  • sanxiyn 7y ago
    That's a good idea, but eating less meat is even better, because that can reduce 8Gt CO2/yr. Banning private jets would not reduce 8Gt CO2/yr. It is important to be quantitative here.
  • danieldk 7y ago
    Sorry, but this is really cheap criticism that detracts from the main point. Of course, their private jets (if they have them) should be banned, sure. But this is an invisible blip on the radar compared to the climate impact of the meat industry (or air travel in general). Such messages only cause people to postpone the need to take real action. And we need to take real action now if we even want a chance to dampen the effects of climate change (let alone reverse it).
    • throwaway3957 7y ago
      > But this is an invisible blip on the radar compared to the climate impact of the meat industry Me eating meat is an even smaller blip, why bother with taking my meat away? The truth is that you have to lead also by example or you’re not credible.
      • sanxiyn 7y ago
        No one is taking your meat away. The most plausible implementation is to make meat slightly more expensive. People do respond to incentives. People with strong meat preference (like you seem to be) can continue to eat meat, but people with marginal meat preference will switch.
  • fat-chunk 7y ago
    While the aviation industry, and as you point out low capacity flights in particular, is a major perpetrator for high CO2 emissions, the food industry is the number one area where your average consumer can make a big impact. I agree with you that governing bodies should be putting more pressure on the excesses of the wealthy and on industry, but changing industry practices and consumer behaviour are not mutually exclusive, especially when we should be doing everything we can on all fronts to overcome this crisis.
• pikma 7y ago
  I'm doubtful that much change can come from personal choices made by consumers. It seems to me that it would require tremendous energy and commitment from a very large number of people to significantly reduce the global demand. It seems to me that it's much more effective to raise the price or to reduce the supply (something like quotas or cap-and-trade). Can anyone point me to examples where my thinking is wrong, where changes came from the demand side?
  • kd5bjo 7y ago
    Changing the demand side is fundamentally what marketing does. It’s how Frito-Lay and Coca-Cola and any big worldwide brand came into existence, by convincing consumers to choose their product over the alternative.
  • darawk 7y ago
    Well, boycotts are a pretty good example. Those seem to change corporate behavior pretty frequently actually. That being said, i'm very skeptical of this type of demand-side strategy, in this particular area.
  • danmaz74 7y ago
    Why tremendous energy? Cutting individual consumption by eg 30% doesn't look so difficult to me.
    • pikma 7y ago
      You would need to get a large part of the global population to do it though, say 50%. And the prices for meat would go down, so you would need to convince the other half of the population not to increase their consumption.
      • danmaz74 7y ago
        Meat is disproportionately consumed in western countries, so, even a change only in those countries would have a big impact. Eg, China consumes half the meat per person of the US, and India just 5%.
• saagarjha 7y ago
  A lot of people seem to equate this to “they’re telling me to stop eating meat” and then fail to do anything: really, anything you do helps. Eat meat with every meal? Try skipping it for breakfast. Eat it every week? Try every other week. Nobody’s asking you to stop completely, at least not yet. (But if you want to, go right ahead!)
  • SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    > A lot of people seem to equate this to “they’re telling me to stop eating meat” Indeed, in fact the report's authors are keen to stress that this is not the case.
• Asmod4n 7y ago
  In the last couple articles I've read to reduce your own carbon footprint I've found one thing is sadly missing most of the time: butter. It's way worse than beef. One kg butter blasts 24kg CO2 into the air before it gets to you, with beef it's around 13kg.
  • saagarjha 7y ago
    Do people actually eat that much butter regularly?
  • K0nserv 7y ago
    The difference is that you don't consume butter in 250g quanities in a single sitting. Even if butter is worse the consumption patterns for butter are not those of beef.
    • mklarmann 7y ago
      Yes that is the point. If you account for calories, proteins and fats (as essential nutrients next to let’s say water and dry weight), butter doesn’t look that bad. It is still worse than average, so - check: app.eaternity.ch
  • danmaz74 7y ago
    How so? Butter is a side product from many dairy processes, eg producing parmesan and skimming milk.
    • mklarmann 7y ago
      Commonly and economic allocation is done. Each food is attributed those emissions to the share they have caused it by the money that was spend for it by the consumer. The question is: why was there a additional cow in the first place. Part of it was the butter.
  • _Microft 7y ago
    I've replaced butter with margarine in a lot of cases since I just didn't taste a difference when having it under something hearty and tasty. Easy win.
• baxtr 7y ago
  I have become an 80% vegetarian - meaning I try to avoid meat completely, but I am not "strong" enough and end up eating a (usually small) piece of meat, once every week/second week. It took me at least one year to achieve this, because meat is so prevalent in our society. A friend of mine was in India recently and he said he did not miss meat at all since the non-meat dishes were so great. I think a lot of it is just how good the quality of vegetarian dishes is.
  • n4r9 7y ago
    I'm similar. Only eat meat if I go out at weekends or if there's some left over that needs to get used up. My wife and I almost entirely cook for ourselves and it's pretty easy to make nice vegetarian meals. I do a fair amount of weightlifting and like to get the protein in - quorn, soy, tofu, lentils and eggs are key. I also supplement daily with whey protein shakes and creatine. It's a bit of a hassle and sometimes I find myself dying for a nice bit of lamb or steak, otoh it's good to pay this level of attention to one's diet.
  • ictebres 7y ago
    Yes, living in Berlin I feel spoiled. When I was in South Korea, most of the time there was nothing vegetarian on the menu, in Berlin you have multiple vegan options and even more vegetarian options. I believe restaurant options are very important since people learn from those and mimic them at home. We need restaurants to offer more vegetarian and vegan dishes for people to see that they can have a rich (IMHO richer) diet without meat. I don’t know how to nudge the restaurants though. Lower tax on organic/sustainable food can be one thing, or even better subventions for such restaurants and produce. But most importantly the meat and dairy industry needs to get under real supervision. Governments all around the world have been looking away for far too long.
    • Freak_NL 7y ago
      > I don’t know how to nudge the restaurants though Visit and ask for vegetarian or vegan dishes. Move on if there is nothing worthwhile; let the staff know if you've liked a particular dish or find the selection too limiting. Demand drives supply. In the Netherlands the vegetarian option used to be a boring salad with goat cheese. Nowadays not having decent meat-free options means you can't compete with the rest. This is something only the cheaper restaurants aimed at lower socio-economic classes can afford to do (but only for now). The reason for this discrepancy is that this class of people (mostly blue collar workers and their families) tends to lag behind the rest of society a bit as habits shift towards more healthy alternatives (smoking is another example).
• tsherr 7y ago
  The UN doesn't have the guts to target the task issue: too many humans. And recommend the only solution: one child per couple until we get down to about half the current population.
  • mklarmann 7y ago
    This would ignore the fact that almost all emissions are caused by the richest 10%. Reducing this population would be more effective.
    • deworde 7y ago
      And they apparently transition to an average of 0-2 children naturally as a function of wealth management and survival confidence.
    • ps101 7y ago
      1. Not really, the richest x% own and run the companies, and can spend more, but the mass of consumers of the products are spread across the wealth spectrum. 2. The idea to reduce the population based on some metric is a dangerous road to go down on. 3. By definition there will always be a richest 10% regardless of how many humans you get rid of.
    • tom_mellior 7y ago
      > almost all emissions are caused by the richest 10% I found this: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-by-income-region https://ourworldindata.org/co2-by-income-region but it does not talk about individuals, only countries and regions; it finds that "the richest half (high and upper-middle income countries) emit 86 percent of global CO2 emissions". According to the graph, 16% of world population in high-income countries are responsible for 38% of global CO2. The richer 51 of the world population cause 86%. I don't think this squares with your statement, even if both "almost all" and "10%" were hyperbole.
  • deworde 7y ago
    Didn't work in China. It actually causes a massive "aging population" crisis, some serious gender imbalances, and some weird economic effects throughout the stack. I mean, if you must be a film and TV dystopian bad guy, Thanos' idea doesn't work.
• pawanrawal 7y ago
  I am excited about the work Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are doing in this space. Creating alternatives with same nutrient content and similar taste but 1/10th the land usage and consuming less of other resources.
  • mklarmann 7y ago
    Specifically - and this is much more important right now: 1/10 of GHGs compared to their meat counterparts.
  • elktea 7y ago
    If they had the same nutrient content I would be excited as well. They merely look like a bit like meat. The similarities end there.
    • delecti 7y ago
      Considering the links between meat consumption and heart disease, one would think that you should be more excited that the nutrient content isn't the same.
  • LegitShady 7y ago
    beyond meat doesn't seem to be doing anything interesting aside from having a slightly better burger recipe than the last guy. As far as I can tell they've cashed in on the buzz generated by impossible foods, who genetically engineered yeast to produce a plant heme so their meatless meat products taste and cook more like meat. Beyond Meat just appears to have come to market first, and such gotten more attention. I've tried it a couple times, it was just ok, and not much better than most other decent veggie burger patties. Not groundbreaking and not worth more money than any others. I haven't tried impossible foods yet. Looking for them.
    • delecti 7y ago
      Impossible burgers aren't available to consumers. IMO Beyond isn't quite as good, but I can get it at the grocery store, and it's still much closer to the real thing than any veggie burgers I've tried other than Impossible. Note that that's not necessarily better than other veggie burgers, just closer to beef. IMO Impossible is even still closer to beef, and also the best burger I've ever had.
• K0nserv 7y ago
  I read somewhere that the one meat free day a week initative is laughable and we should really be aiming for one meat day a week. Personally I've switched to a mostly vegetarian diet in the past few years and when I do eat meat it's good high quality meat. Meat consumption seems like one of the easiest things governments could change to tackle climate change. Unlike cars and travel it's hard to make the argument that humans depend on access to meat so making it 700% more expensive via tax would effectively shift consumption patterns with few if any downsides. If anything it would probably have the excellect side effect of improving public health.
  • danieldk 7y ago
    Unlike cars and travel it's hard to make the argument that humans depend on access to meat so making it 700% more expensive via tax would effectively shift consumption patterns with few if any downsides. The problem is that no politician (perhaps outside green parties) wants to do this, because of the fear of becoming unpopular. We simultaneously need a shift in people's attitudes towards meat. I have been a vegetarian since I was 17 (I am 37 now). It has always fascinated me that becoming a vegetarian was only very little effort, but somehow people are extremely attached to meat. I never talk about being a vegetarian, but when people find out that I am a vegetarian, they often acts as being offended and having to defend themselves. We need to show people that there is a middle way where you can still eat meat (e.g. maybe once a week) but still drastically decrease their footprint.
    • K0nserv 7y ago
      This is the unfortunate truth and it's particularly bad beause the rich western countries that contribute the most to climate change will, in many instances, be the last to feel the effects. This in combination with decmoractic elections has the consequence that iniatives aimed at tackling climate change, all of which will have a negative impact on people's lives(percieved or not), will never be viable politics for any politcian who wants to stay in office.
      • C1sc0cat 7y ago
• throwaway3957 7y ago
  I personally used to be very concerned about ressource efficiency. With a new doomsday message every day, I decided to make most out of my resources now until some eco-shmock is going to make it unavailable for me. I fly all the time and eat as good as I can. Maybe tomorrow it will be only a memory but that’s more than making a big trip other year and then nothing. Edit: BTW, this is not trolling. I represent a real niche group with an unknown number of people behaving consciously or unconsciously the same. I think it’s an important information in the discussion. People downvote me because they don’t like that it is happening but it’s real. It’s like downvoting climate change because you don’t like it happening. Edit: Rebuilder, that’s a good question. What would change my behavior? I think positive role models could help. Leaders that say we restrict ourselves to meat once a week or even better: here is my CO2 footprint (and please no offsetting bullshit). That’s how it developed over the last 2 years. Etc.
  • saagarjha 7y ago
    > I decided to make most out of my resources They’re not “your” resources: they’re shared among everyone, including future generations.
    • throwaway3957 7y ago
      Well, so far I have no kids. My impact on the planet seems to be very temporarily and the damage I do will be forgotten in a hundred years. If I have 1.4 kids (my expected number of kids), it will take a bit longer but still damage is decreasing at fixed resource consumption per person.
      • saagarjha 7y ago
        But other people exist. Are you willing to leave the world in a worse place for them just because they’re not related to you? Also, > My impact on the planet seems to be very temporarily and the damage I do will be forgotten in a hundred years. As far as we know, this is not how climate change works.
  • jobigoud 7y ago
• ultim8k 7y ago
  I simply cannot believe that food is affecting environment more than factories, vehicles and rubbish.
  • mklarmann 7y ago
    Well, that is why it so important that we have the IPCC, and now this special report. Food causes 25-30% of human made GHG emissions. Large part for deforestation, Methan emissions of ruminants and animal feed. Without including the transportation, packaging, etc. in the calculation it is still 23%. As you can read in chapter 5 of the report.
  • bashy 7y ago
    It's amazing right? Animals don't need to be moved. Animals don't make rubbish. Animals don't need things built for them in factories. No need to worry! I'm vegan btw.
  • _carl_jung 7y ago
    The food supply chain involves all three of those.
  • anonymou2 7y ago
    It is not so hard to believe if you look at a graph like this one: https://www.resilience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Biomass-humans-livestock-wild-animals-e1527774939549.png https://www.resilience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Biomas...
  • sanxiyn 7y ago
    The article states food is responsible for a quarter. No one is claiming it is more than half. It is important to be quantitative.
• robin_reala 7y ago
  It’s also worth pointing out that even if you don’t want to reduce the amount of meat you eat, changing the type of meat can have big effects. For example (and ignoring transport to the consumer), lamb produces about 35 kg CO₂ per kg of meat, beef 25kg CO₂ / kg, pork and farmed salmon 8kg CO₂ / kg and chicken 4kg CO₂ / kg.
  • maxencecornet 7y ago
    This If you really want to have an impact while still eating meat, just stop eating beef/lamb altogether The amount of food and water needed to produce 1kg of beef meat is just insane Eat poultry or fish instead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio >Cattle is the worst at something like 15:1. Aquaculture, specifically tilapia and catfish, is good at under 2:1
    • mklarmann 7y ago
      Yeah chicken is the best farmed animal on CO₂. They burn less themselves because they can cuddle and have it warm. And don’t need to run around. ... in their small cages
    • mytailorisrich 7y ago
      As already mentioned in another discussion, the ratio they use for farmed fish is "where the first number is the mass of harvested fish used to feed farmed fish, and the second number is the mass of the resulting farmed fish". Which makes it much less positive than it first appears.
      • pvaldes 7y ago
        > makes it much less positive than it first appears. Take in mind that fish food for aquaculture has a small percentage of plant proteins and oils also. Is unclear if this was included or not in the claimed FIFO ratio, so some of this fish could be really soy (or maybe not). Reality is always more complex than a single numerical value.
    • 7y ago
• glastra 7y ago
  How about we don't change the diet but change where the food comes from? When talking about meat and damage to the environment, the only relevant figures are the ones associated with animal feed (e.g. water consumption per kg of meat). Pastured animals, by definition, don't eat feed coming from the monoculture industrial agriculture that is depleting the soil and consuming all those resources, and which is also used to feed humans, sadly.
  • saagarjha 7y ago
    > When talking about meat and damage to the environment, the only relevant figures are associated with animal feed (e.g. water consumption per kg of meat). Cows fart.
    • glastra 7y ago
      It's the burps, actually. And it's not nearly as dangerous as publicized. Methane's lifespan in the atmosphere is much, much lower (think two orders of magnitude) than carbon dioxide [0], for example. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane
      • the8472 7y ago
        The methane turns into CO2. Which means for the amount of carbon they release it's strictly worse than the same amount of carbon released as CO2.
        • glastra 7y ago
          Yes, you are right. I have conveyed my point only half-way and I apologize. What I meant is that methane is known to have a bigger heating effect than other greenhouse gases, like x28 that of CO2 if I recall correctly. This is used as part of the anti-ruminant argument, when comparing the effect of methane expelled by animals to the rest of greenhouse gas emissions. However, if you take into account the reduced lifespan, that 28-time increase is definitely less relevant.
• CommieDetector 7y ago
  Let's open an history book an review what happens when the government controlls the food production.
  • bluntfang 7y ago
    Sure! Corn is in everything! There's an obesity epidemic. Diabetes is effecting everyone's life. etc.
  • dragonwriter 7y ago
    Er, the results on that are rather mixed and ambiguous and depend more on other factors; but then again, controlling food production and distribution was the main role of most governments in most of history; it wasn't really until the agricultural revolutions that were a key factor in the feudal economic system starting to be replaced with capitalism that some governments could really afford (even in the short-term) not to make that their primary concern most of the time, and even now and even among advanced liberal Democratic “capitalist” (really, mixed economies) states, guiding food production and distribution remains a major role of government, even if the means used involve markets with government intervention through price controls, production subsidies, consumer (means-tested) subsidies, direct government purchase and distribution, aggressive negotiation of agricultural trade deals, etc., etc., etc., rather than transparent direct state direction.
    • nickik 7y ago
      > controlling food production and distribution was the main role of most governments in most of history; I would say this is simply wrong. Government often capture food production and use it to enrich themselves. Some historical places certainty had a function in distribution as well but this is not the common case. The waste majority of history, government were primary involved in food production and distribution beyond capturing as much as possible and distribution it to its own armies. Most of history food for the most part was produced and consumed fairly locally without much involvement of government.
• SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  It's good to see them putting the emphasis on eating less meat rather than cutting it out entirely. I do eat meat but I find myself eating less and less these days as non-meat alternatives become more appealing to me. I also don't eat "cheap" meat as I'm concerned about animal welfare. But I do take offense to vegans telling me that I'm evil because I don't fully embrace their choice of lifestyle and I'm sure most meat-eaters feel the same way.
  • supuun 7y ago
    Not all vegans think like this. I'm a vegetarian, but I really don't think, that I am a better person than meat eater. :) ETA: btw great job making effort to partly cut out meat from your diet. I myself want to become vegan, but I just can't switch immediately. IMO there is nothing wrong with gradual approach. P.S. sorry for my broken English.
• holstvoogd 7y ago
  Maybe we should also stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry close to 1,000,000,000,000$ yearly. Not saying we should not eat less meat or anything, just saying there might be more we could be doing if our governments weren't corporate/billionairs puppets mostly.
• open-source-ux 7y ago
  This report doesn't say you have to give up eating meat. It does say we need to reduce our consumption. This might mean eating meat once a week. We are eating more meat today (at least in the industralised nations of the "West") than in any other time in human history thanks to intensive farming practices. People seems to think that this is the natural state of affairs and that's how we've always consumed meat. But go back a few decades and meat was never available in such abundance and at such cheap prices. The ugly truth is we're simply too comfortable in our current lifestyles to make any changes that might challenge that comfort. Whether it's flying less (or even stopping altoghther) or eating less meat, the reaction is always resistance and sometimes even anger and outrage. I've said this before: we love to point accusatory fingers at others for taking too little action over climate issues but never lift a finger ourselves. Are we all a bunch of hypocrites and simply not willing to admit it?
• perlpimp 7y ago
  There are depictions of cows and mention of amazon forest. Could this be about fast food industry ? Also need scales of damage for poultry, swine etc, not sensational articles about going from one extreme to the other. I don't eat much beef but do love steak twice a month, is it alot? I don't think so, mostly have chicken bc it is easier to prepare and it seems to be easier to digest. at any rate i hope to see some scales for this sort of thing.
  • mklarmann 7y ago
    Springman, as cited in the report did a lot of calculations around this. He ended up with the minimal requirement for the average earth citizen with one portion of red meat per week. Check his definition of a flexitarien diet.
    • jobigoud 7y ago
      Minimal requirement? Millions of vegetarians don't eat that "one portion of red meat per week" and do just fine.
      • mklarmann 7y ago
        Minimal in terms of were we need at least reduce too. = max one portion per week
• ensiferum 7y ago
  The real culprit is the uncontrolled population growth but nobody wants to talk about that. Ok, let's assume that people do indeed eat too much meat and that we halve our current consumption. Population grows until it has doubled and the meat consumption is then back to the same level as to what it is now. Eventually we can all be eating grass and rocks and there'd still be too much demand on nature crated by the existence of humans. The only real long term solution is start limiting population growth drastically. Any crutch trying to limit energy and material consumption will not solve the root cause. (Ofc it still makes sense to cut off the excess and not be wasteful or a resource hog) Personally I'd like to have only enough people on this planet, so that everyone can be fed and educated and have access to health care, sanitation and all the basic needs.
  • sanxiyn 7y ago
    > Ok, let's assume that people do indeed eat too much meat and that we halve our current consumption. Population grows until it has doubled and the meat consumption is then back to the same level as to what it is now. This is a very strange assumption as UN Population Division predicts peak population at 12B, that is, the current world population will never double. That is business as usual without any intervention. Do you have specific reasons to disagree with UN Population Division?
    • barry-cotter 7y ago
      The UN Population Division have underestimated population growth for decades and base their projections on the assumption that fertility will converge on a steady state. This is evolotuniariliy illiterate. People who have more children will have children who have more children. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513817302799#bb0180 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109051381... The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely in the foreseeable future The forecasting of the future growth of world population is of critical importance to anticipate and address a wide range of global challenges. The United Nations produces forecasts of fertility and world population every two years. As part of these forecasts, they model fertility levels in post-demographic transition countries as tending toward a long-term mean, leading to forecasts of flat or declining population in these countries. We substitute this assumption of constant long-term fertility with a dynamic model, theoretically founded in evolutionary biology, with heritable fertility. Rather than stabilizing around a long-term level for post-demographic transition countries, fertility tends to increase as children from larger families represent a larger share of the population and partly share their parents' trait of having more offspring. Our results suggest that world population will grow larger in the future than currently anticipated.
• merricksb 7y ago
  Earlier discussion... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643257
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• elktea 7y ago
  There's a good case to be made for humans being primarily meat eaters for much of our history and only eating plants as an alternative to starving - we certainly haven't had time to evolve to eat a vegetarian diet. Agriculture has only been around for a small fraction of our history and the skeletal record clearly shows how disasterous it was for our health. The current 'plant based' fad diet recommendations are backed up by some very poor science and may be seriously unsuitable for humans and for children in particular, nutrition-wise. Animal agriculture is not even a major source of human emissions so to call for changes to our natural diet seems very premature.
  • Frondo 7y ago
    From an evolutionary perspective, we have evolved: we use tools and process nearly anything we eat anyway. Plants are the only thing we eat with minimal preparation, and only some of those. When was the last time you had raw beef? for me, it was beef tartare a few years ago... Raw grain? Nope, that's all processed, either by boiling, or grinding and turning into something else.
    • blisterpeanuts 7y ago
      Sushi! Homo Erectus was thought to have subsisted on raw meat. There's evidence of intestinal parasites that suggests such a diet. Apparently, at some point, we decided to cook our meat, which reduced the parasite load and removed the need for low pH comparative to other carnivores. But not too long ago, humans did eat some raw meats. Primitive hunters sometimes ate raw hearts, and drinking fresh blood was not unheard of. 1,000 years ago, the Mongols would sometimes nick their horses and drink blood to sustain them on long journeys.
      • Frondo 7y ago
        Sushi! I knew someone would bring it up. :) It's also usually prepared in some way, whether it's flash frozen or treated with vinegar. But, I guess my point is that the evolutionary argument doesn't really make sense in a world where we evolved tools and have been eating processed food for a long, long time. Also, evolution happens a lot faster than people give it credit for. Something I read somewhere is that the genes for lactose digestion only started remaining "switched on" in adults like 8,000 years ago, and yet a third of the world now has this gene. That's a really short time! That's not far from when we develop writing (around 6,000 years ago).
• mklarmann 7y ago
  Why is this thread a [dupe] ?
  • sanxiyn 7y ago
    It no more is.
• lhl 7y ago
  Almost all conventional/industrial agriculture (plant or animal based) is unsustainable due to the external inputs required (70% from fossil fuels for growing corn! [1]), soil depletion incurred [2], and just plain shipping things around. [3] The alternative is local regenerative agriculture [4], which the Rodale Institute [5] and a recent Quantis (non-peer reviewed) studies [6] point to being potentially carbon net negative due to carbon soil sequestration via regenerative grazing. It also appears to be more economically sustainable [7][8] and can provide competitive yields [8]. For those interested in reading more, I found a couple pretty lengthy (peer-reviewed) academic reviews on the topic to be pretty fascinating: Rhodes, Christopher J. “The Imperative for Regenerative Agriculture.” Science Progress 100, no. 1 (March 1, 2017): 80–129. https://doi.org/10.3184/003685017X14876775256165 https://doi.org/10.3184/003685017X14876775256165. Teague, W R. “FORAGES AND PASTURES SYMPOSIUM: COVER CROPS IN LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION: WHOLE-SYSTEM APPROACH: Managing Grazing to Restore Soil Health and Farm Livelihoods1.” Journal of Animal Science 96, no. 4 (April 2018): 1519–30. https://doi.org/10.1093/jas/skx060 https://doi.org/10.1093/jas/skx060. Pretty, Jules. “Agricultural Sustainability: Concepts, Principles and Evidence.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 363, no. 1491 (February 12, 2008): 447–65. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2163 https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2163. Pearson, Craig J. “Regenerative, Semiclosed Systems: A Priority for Twenty-First-Century Agriculture.” BioScience 57, no. 5 (May 1, 2007): 409–18. https://doi.org/10.1641/B570506 https://doi.org/10.1641/B570506. [1] https://www.wur.nl/en/show/Can-conventional-agriculture-feed-the-world.htm https://www.wur.nl/en/show/Can-conventional-agriculture-feed... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/business/worldbusiness/26food.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/business/worldbusiness/26... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_agriculture [5] https://rodaleinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/rodale-white-paper.pdf https://rodaleinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/rodale-white-... [6] https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/hubfs/WOP-LCA-Quantis-2019.pdf https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/hubfs/WOP-LCA-Quantis-2019... [7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5831153/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5831153/ [8] https://rodaleinstitute.org/science/farming-systems-trial/ https://rodaleinstitute.org/science/farming-systems-trial/
  • 7y ago
• thelittleone 7y ago
  We're creatures of habit. The pattern of breakfast, lunch and dinner means I'm usually "hungry" before breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was feeling hungry about dinner time a while back, but I couldn't decide what to eat so I skipped. I woke the next morning and didn't feel hungry at all. That seemed odd to me. So I skipped breakfast and ate lunch only (same portion size as normal) and continued to do so for six weeks. I felt great. Workouts strong, focus and concentration improved. I saved a bunch of time and money. After that did a 13 day fast (zero food). Day 3 sucked, but the 10 that followed where really eye opening in a wholly positive way. I do a lot of boxing, and I didn't stop during this fast. I thought it would suck but I had tons of energy and lots of speed. At the finishing lime, the first morsel of food (some roast pumpkin) was savored and tasted incredible. It gave me a new awareness and appreciation of what and how much food I need to maintain maximum performance. I know i could eat a LOT less than I do in a year and be as or more healthy and contribute to a healthier environment. We just have to break the habit. That's really hard given the social culture of eating.
  • Gatsky 7y ago
    Great comment. I too have experienced great benefits from fasting. Humans evolved under conditions of food scarcity. I think we are actually ‘designed’ to be fasting most of the time.
    • thelittleone 7y ago
      The scarcity concept is one I really connect with also. A bit extreme, but there's a 30 day water fast (supervised) that's meant to be life changing. From what I recall the believe is that eating as a coping mechanism stores that trauma in the lipids. 30 days burns through it all.
  • sphix0r 7y ago
    I'm a faster too and have more energy as well. No more energy drain after a big meal. Another advantage of fasting is that you spend less time on food. Our western society involves a lot of time on food(breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks).
• jillesvangurp 7y ago
  Regulate the industries and trade, not people's behavior. It's much easier and you actually get results and people adapt to pricing by themselves. The reality is that we have a few billion people that are doing pretty well economically and they are going to be feeding themselves with whatever they can afford. Unless you can convince more than half of them to become vegans, that means demand for meat is going to go up, rather than down. A few privileged rich hipsters choosing to only eat food others can't afford is not going to be doing anything for this planet. It's not statistically meaningful. Not even close. Industrial farming is the main problem here. We're literally eroding farmland by growing mono cultures (using pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, etc) whose primary function is to feed cattle that spends all its life indoors turning this farm produce into manure. That in turn gets mixed with urine to produce a chemically very active mix that produces all sorts of nasty stuff. It's stupid and massively wasteful. It's only cheap because doing that is being subsidized and stimulated by governments. Stop doing doing that and the price of meat goes up and people adapt their behavior. Unsustainably produced cheap meat is the problem. It's not the only way to produce meat but the it is the cheapest one and it's only cheap unless you also factor in the cost of destroying this planet. There are forms of farming that are effectively carbon negative (i.e. they capture more co2 than is released) that still produce meat and other produce. We can actually start undoing a lot of the damage already done simply by farming more smartly. This starts by stopping to reward harmful behavior with subsidies. Lots of farmers are already switching to more sustainable production methods because it makes business sense. Removing subsidies for their unsustainable competitors will help them.
  • holstvoogd 7y ago
    I feel the whole 'what can you do to save the planet' is a big distraction & shifting the blame strategy. As long as we have arguments on how much meat we are eating, how much energy we use etc, we are not focusing on the fact that governments hardly regulate anything corporate.
  • captainredbeard 7y ago
    As I understand it, almost no cattle live indoors, especially not for their entire life. The only exception I can think of is Kobe beef. Even industrial beef cattle follow these stages (most companies target a single stage though your smaller boutique producers tend to tackle all three or at least the last two): 1. Cow/calf operations. These are all pastured (grass fed). At weaning they are sold at auction. 2. Backgrounding. The calves are brought up to finishing weight. This is typically a grass fed stage. Once they reach market weight, they are sold at auction. 3. Finishing. Most are finished at feedlots, which are generally outdoors but extremely crowded. This is where the nasty industrial farming stuff is concentrated. Pasture finished beef is the way to go.
• Aser 7y ago
  I already do my part for the environment by not having kids. That's a much bigger impact than trying to reduce the amount of meat I eat. So I'll eat whatever I like, thank you.
  • saagarjha 7y ago
    Why not both?
  • zygimantasdev 7y ago
    Your kids could be the ones who innovate and fix the environment problems, therefore your argument is not valid
• loldot_ 7y ago
  I think most people willing to change their diet for the sake of the environment already are well aware of the consequences of meat eating. In my opinion it would be more beneficial to focus campaigns on the problem of food waste which I am sure more people would be willing to give up.
• wtdata 7y ago
  Very well, but why don't these reports ever call for reducing the birthrate in countries where this is exploding [1]? Now they are asking us to stop meat consumption, but the if number of people keeps increasing, what will they ask us to stop next instead of addressing the real problem? Clearly the real issue is having too many people. Birth control is the proper way to tackle the problem. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependencies_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
  • ailideex 7y ago
    Can't really argue with that, which is why people don't and just downvote.
    • mklarmann 7y ago
      Na, I think it is downvoted because it is pretty neo-liberal, to assume that population control is the solution, because it implicitly neglects that most emissions are caused by the richest people. Reducing those rich people would well be a fair point, though.
      • wtdata 7y ago
        Your point logically implies that you are against increasing life conditions of the people that are born poor in those countries with high birth rates.
• inert 7y ago
  Its such a shame. Such a blatant confession of incapacity. "Would you please stop drinking and driving? Its harmful and i said please!" Political institutions all around the world fail to do their due diligence and impose rules for stable civilizations and future generations. "So please, why dont you just do it?"
• harimau777 7y ago
  I think this is a situation where we need a Dr. George Washington Carver that not only recognizes that we need to eat less meat but also develops alternatives that the general public will accept. (Not sure how famous Dr. George Washington Carver is outside the US. He was one of the first famous African American scientists and is known for discovering that rotating crops with peanuts will add nutrients back to the soil and then inventing about 300 uses for peanuts in order to convince farmers to plant them. However, despite popular belief, peanut butter was not one of the uses that he invented.)
  • Frondo 7y ago
    I was in Canada recently and tried one of the Tim Hortons "beyond sausage" sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiches. From the "beyond meat" people. Had I not known what I was eating, I wouldn't have known it was plant-based at all. The taste and texture was, at least in fast food terms, just a really good sausage. I haven't been able to try the beyond burger Burger King is selling, but if it's on par with the beyond sausage, I can't see why I'd ever eat a meat-based fast food burger again. It was really that good, and an easy decision to make given the meat industry's impact on the environment. People who diss those meat substitutes out of hand should try them with an open mind (i.e. not from a place of "you can't control me" or "I'll never stop eating meat".)
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      Quick note: Burger King uses the Impossible Burger, not the Beyond Burger. In my opinion, the Impossible Burger isn't any better than a MorningStar Farms Grillers Prime (at significantly higher price). The Beyond Burger though is easily the best meat-free burger I've ever had. A&W and Carl's Junior are Beyond Burger joints.
      • 5A704C1N 7y ago
        You must have caught Impossible on a bad day. Prepared right, an Impossible Whopper is indistinguishable from the real thing
• amriksohata 7y ago
  Hindu texts, places where yoga came from, often warned about the Kali yuga and the effect abusing a cow would have, Beef is one of the most costliest foods to produce in terms of water consumption and carbon output https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46459714 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46459714
• adamsvystun 7y ago
  I think people in this thread suggest policies that are not centered around the problem that we are trying to solve. Do we want to reduce meat production or do we want to reduce the negative climate impact of meat production? It matters because the correlation is not straight forward. Different types of meats produce different environmental harm. Each meat type can be produced with different climate impact depending on production methods. So the best policies would be centered around reducing (proportionally to other industries) environmental impact of meat production. So things like emissions tax, climate-friendly land use rewards make sense, while putting taxes on all meat production makes less sense.
  • tomp 7y ago
    What's more, by targeting the effects, not the cause, you're helping create a better, free-er world, where governments aren't dictating how people live their lives. If the desired effect is "less global warming" (and you implement that via a fair CO2 / CH4 tax), then people can choose how they're going to reduce their CO2 impact. Maybe I prefer to eat 1 steak per week and cycle to work, whereas my neighbor eats soybeans whole year round and drives around in a car. Finally, by taxing (not banning) undesirable externalities governments spur technological development - people/companies can invest money into figuring out how to get the same result ("eat steak") with less of a climate impact (e.g. by feeding seaweed to cows), resulting in a win-win.
• swah 7y ago
  I'd raise my own pigs before replacing my meat with worms.
• codyb 7y ago
  This will probably get swallowed by the other 190 comments but are there good sources for how to make meat substitutes? I love to cook, and I frequently grind my own meat for burgers and sausages. I make my own jerkies too. I try to buy grass fed and pasture raised but I’m definitely not perfect since the nearest decent butcher is about twenty minutes by train. I guess the alternative would be an ask for great vegetarian cookbook recommendations.
  • hankstenberg 7y ago
    Check out https://deliciouslyella.com/ https://deliciouslyella.com/ for awesome vegan recipes. She also wrote at least one book.
  • maddy237 7y ago
    I love this website and their books: https://www.bosh.tv/ https://www.bosh.tv/
  • markstos 7y ago
    I like the New Fast Food cookbook by Jill Nussinow. It's not meat-substitutes, it's whole food, plant-based recipes for pressure cooking. https://www.amazon.com/New-Fast-Food-Pressure-MInutes/dp/0976708515 https://www.amazon.com/New-Fast-Food-Pressure-MInutes/dp/097... Jill McKeever has fun videos, including some plant-based meatloaf and others https://simpledailyrecipes.com/ https://simpledailyrecipes.com/
  • nabnob 7y ago
    Personally, I've found that the tastiest way to go vegetarian is by completely restructuring how I plan my meals. American food tends to revolve around meat, whereas food in other cultures treats meat as more of a side dish (if it is eaten at all). Indian/Bengali food, Middle Eastern food, (authentic) chinese food...pretty much anything besides American food is very easy to "veganize", since vegetables and legumes are centered more in the meal. I like this blog for ideas - https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/south-indian-breakfast-recipes/ https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/south-indian-breakfast-rec...
• Scoundreller 7y ago
  Have they taken meat off the menu at UN offices and HQ? Or is this for « everyone else »?
  • delecti 7y ago
    Even if your implied assumption is correct, and they haven't taken meat off the menu at UN HQ, being a hypocrite doesn't mean you're wrong. And in any case, it's likely the scientists putting out climate reports aren't the people running the cafeteria.
    • Scoundreller 7y ago
      > being a hypocrite doesn't mean you're wrong. But it makes one unpalatable; which is a problem when you want to change human behaviour.
• YeahSureWhyNot 7y ago
  climate change is caused by activities of large corporations but your solution is regular people changing diet? it's like suggesting people start driving 2 cylinder cars with AC off while fleet of largest ship companies create more co2 than all cars combined. you want to stop climate change? do the following: -stop cutting down forests. -stop drilling in arctic -stop oil spills -stop overfishing list goes on and all of these things are done by large corporations with approval of governments. leave regular people alone, the capitalist system has strangled them enough already.
• jnwatson 7y ago
  If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more. You’re not going to guilt people into changing their behavior. A carbon tax fixes this.
  • blunte 7y ago
    > If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more. I'm not willing to agree that it would reduce emissions more than ending meat consumption. It would help, however. Like most problems, there is not just one solution. Multiple modest to moderate changes in behavior can make a big difference. - redesign cities to include more and better public transport (less car/truck traffic) - reduce general product consumption (less global shipping) - we all know there's a lot of worthless stuff that gets manufactured and shipped, such as the low-end products you find in Walmart which break or fail after a short period of time - create permaculture food forests in and around cities (reducing global shipping of produce) - eat less meat (reducing production and transportation emissions) To put it into perspective, it's a bit like getting fit and losing weight. Yes you can radically change your diet, or you can do crossfit every day, but those narrow+deep efforts are usually very unpleasant and unsustainable (in terms of a human's ability to keep with the changes). Instead, some diet changes, some consistent exercise, some lifestyle changes (walking/biking in place of some car drives) tends to result in lasting health benefits. > A carbon tax fixes this. Not really. A carbon tax encourages projects like mass forest planting of monocultures. That will result in some problem down the road.
    • goatinaboat 7y ago
      redesign cities to include more and better public transport Concrete is a massive source of CO2 emissions. Rebuilding cities is really, really not going to help.
      • blunte 7y ago
        Concrete is big but much less in total than car emissions. However, I'm not advocating building new things; I'm suggesting changing the use of existing things: more public transport options, more park and ride locations, more city bike stands, etc.
• mark_l_watson 7y ago
  At least in the USA, this could in principle be fixed by ending the corporate welfare state. Old news, but All major industries like the beef industry get huge tax breaks, free water and other giveaways at the general taxpayer’s expense. Fixing the corruption (both democratic and republican parties) in our our political would end up helping the environment a lot. That said, we have zero chance of fixing our corrupt political system. It will never happen, the elites have won that war. One problem with reducing meat consumption is the general low skill level for cooking. Vegetarian food can taste better than meat dishes but you need skill and good ingredients. I have mixed feelings about Beyond Meat: my wife and I love the hot Italian sausage and burgers, but it is really not that healthy.
  • yifanl 7y ago
    > I have mixed feelings about Beyond Meat: my wife and I love the hot Italian sausage and burgers, but it is really not that healthy. Beyond Meat is competing with freezer aisle foodstuff and there it handily wins out in just about every category (price, taste, nutrition), even if objectively it's unhealthy for you. There's a world of vegetarian options outside of the preprocessed fauxmeats (including the entire produce section).
  • the_gastropod 7y ago
    > I have mixed feelings about Beyond Meat: my wife and I love the hot Italian sausage and burgers, but it is really not that healthy. I totally get this, and have similar feelings. But I try to remind my self what Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger are competing with: meat. They have similar saturated fat profiles to their "real" alternatives. I look at these meat alternatives as mostly beneficial for: 1. Meat eaters looking to eat more sustainably, but continue eating burgers and sausages and whatnot occasionally 2. "Cook out" situations where you can bring a good veggie burger and not be a total social weirdo eating grilled corn by yourself. And it's a good conversation starter, and others are usually intrigued enough to try, and impressed after having done so.
    • andy_ppp 7y ago
      Why do you guys think saturated fat is bad for you? Certainly when fried it's much much healthier as it doesn't decompose into cancerous aldehydes. The science on this is very tainted so I would be very careful about assumptions here. Are there other things apart from saturated fat you are worried about? [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3t902pqt3C7nGN99hVRFc1y/which-oils-are-best-to-cook-with https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3t902pqt3C7nGN99hV...
• TheAlchemist 7y ago
  There is an interesting film coming soon on meat consumption: The Game Changers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSpglxHTJVM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSpglxHTJVM Produced by James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan it follows several top level athletes and investigate the myth about the need for animal proteins
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• blisterpeanuts 7y ago
  In the early 1800s, there were an estimated 60 million bison in North America. They were hunted nearly to extinction, and today there are an estimated 31,000 (wikipedia). Meanwhile, there are about 120 million cattle in the U.S. and Canada (over a billion worldwide). It's possible that cattle therefore have a larger impact on the ecology than did the buffalo, but there were always large grazing herds in the world, and far more numerous prior to the Industrial Age. It's possible that there are in fact fewer ruminants today than in pre-industrial times, if the great herds of millions of reindeer and similar creatures that once roamed the plains of North America and Siberia are taken into account. Last year I began bow-hunting for deer in my part of New England, where there is an excessive population that damage forests, endanger drivers, and spread disease. I'm also hoping to raise meat chickens and egg laying chickens in the near future. Hunt for your own meat and stop buying factory meat that has been pumped with all sorts of hormones and antibiotics. I love a good beefsteak and I do hope such will continue to be available, but harvesting your own meat is probably the best thing for the planet and gives you a much stronger connection to (and respect for) the game animals that we eat!
  • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Neat for you, but probably not scalable. Hunting and gathering always had that problem. For the other 6 billion people on the planet, big Ag is all that's going to feed them.
    • blisterpeanuts 7y ago
      Not scalable to 7b people, but maybe applicable to a few more millions of people in North America, for example, where meat consumption per capita is very high. Imagine the impact on the meat industry if one million more households in North America decided to keep chickens in the back yard, for example.
      • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
        They'd buy 1 or 2 fewer chickens per year. I don't think it'd register. You vastly underestimate the Big Ag chicken infrastructure. E.g. when McD's started serving chicken McNuggets years ago, they contracted for Every Chicken In Canada to supply the demand. Currently Americans eat 8 billion chickens a year, not to even mention egg factories. A million chickens from back yards is literally 'chicken feed'.
• nullreference00 7y ago
  produce less meat Eating less meat just means more waste. We need to stop talking about climate change as a problem individuals can solve with ecological lifestyle choices. We need international economic planning and the seizure of carbon extracting industry.
  • paulluuk 7y ago
    I think the rationale here is that the market is rational, and if people were to consume less meat, less meat would be produced. And that makes sense to me. It's not as if we're killing 3 billion animals per day just because we can, we're doing it because there's such a huge demand for it.
  • Spooks 7y ago
    Supply and demand though. It wouldn't be instant, but if people start eating less meat, they will produce less. If grocery stores can't sell a certain amount in a couple days, and if this trend continues, they will reevaluate and buy less
  • vorpalhex 7y ago
    > the seizure of carbon extracting industry It sounds like what you mean is that you want some government or government like entity to take down big beef/pork/chicken. What the actual version of that would be is some government-esque entity taking over a bunch of farms and murdering their cows/pigs/chickens and forcibly unemploying large groups of people. Alternatively that might mean some government-esque entity invading a bunch of foreign farms owned by small Central and Southern American ranchers who aren't exactly rolling in cash with their occupation despite releasing a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. Let's maybe not call for large government/government-esque orgs to go around seizing anything. That sounds very drastic and bad for a lot of mostly innocent people who do a lot of hard work to raise cows for not very much pay.
    • hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
      The OP could be meaning seizure as in 'to stop' rather than 'to take'?
• ulises314 7y ago
  Is very sad to read through the comments and find only a bunch of excuses, you claim being rational people: there is a problem, the solution is clear as day, what are you going to do?
• jokoon 7y ago
  Unless you properly regulate capitalism, is it still capitalism? I don't want to accuse capitalism because it often falls into the whole "is socialism bad", "mao and stalin murdered people so socialism is dangerous", but it's difficult to not correlate environmental issues and growth policies related to capitalism. I guess communist states also had environmental issues? What about current socialist states? I mean how can we can really pinpoint the political issue here? It seems crony capitalism is at the root of inequality and global warming, yet rent seeks are still being left alone. It seems so difficult to have something in between. Today we're giving crumbs to the poor in exchange of co2 emissions. We can't do anything right.
  • eitland 7y ago
    I think you are right: I'm fairly certain socialist states polluted just as bad as capitalist states. As far as I'm aware they also did so in a more wasteful way, i.e. they produced less goods and services for the same pollution.
    • philwelch 7y ago
      They polluted even worse. The Soviet Union was directly responsible for some of the greatest ecological catastrophes in history, including the drying of the Aral Sea.
• sak5sk 7y ago
  For anyone who hasn't had a chance to see how animals are treated in slaughter houses (WARNING! Graphical and not easy to watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYQDWF2SkSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYQDWF2SkSU
• Hitton 7y ago
  Lab grown meat can't come soon enough.
• dustinmoris 7y ago
  A little personal anecdote: I grew up in Central Europe and in a very meat heavy society. When I grew up I would have had three proper meals every day with meat in them. Meat was THE main component of every meal. A sandwich without some ham or bacon? Unimaginable! Lunch without meat in sauce, or steak or some ribs or some chicken? I would have taken this as an insult. Are we beggars now or what? Dinner... same story. In my early twenties I was convinced that meat is part of a well balanced diet. People who don't eat meat are weak. They get ill and they certainly won't have much muscles. I was an ignorant prick, let's put it this way. When I was ~25 I met my wife whilst travelling. She's British Indian and grew up her entire life on a Vegetarian diet. We got together and so on, but the point is I was confronted to compromise with a Vegetarian person from one day to another without any warning. Initially I continued to eat the way I always did, just taking her preferences into account and try to be the loving supporting boyfriend/husband that we all want to be. I'd cook my meat in a separate pan and I'd use different knives and forks to handle meat and the veg in the house. My wife asked me for only one favour: If I could not buy beef and store it in the house then she'd be super grateful. I was okay with that, I thought cooking a good steak takes some skill anyway and I can happily just eat steak outside and cook other meats at home. 7 years later and I am 99% Vegetarian. The other 1% is sea food. I look back at myself and think how stupid was I. I feel healthier today, get less ill and feel physically in a pretty good shape. I don't take any protein shakes, supplements or other crap. I actually prefer to eat veg over meat. It all started with me trying some meat replacements like Quorn when making a stir fry, or Quorn mince pieces when making spaghetti. Then I'd start cooking more beans, lentils, chickpeas and other high protein ingredients. The taste is amazing and our meals are rich in nutrition, vitamins and carbs. I was the guy who would have sworn that I could never become Vegetarian and today I'm almost the opposite. I don't like the look, smell or consistency of meat anymore. I don't like that it's so easy to get seriously ill from meat when not cooked properly, or the utensils which were used for preparation were not cleaned sufficiently. Long story short, if I was able to make such a drastic turn around on make meat intake then I know that anyone can. It just takes a strong incentive to implement change. For me that incentive was being in love with a girl, but for others it might be something else. Tax, regulation, laws are an effective tool. Personally I believe that nobody will miss the meat in 20 years time if implemented by a government. It's just too difficult for people to imagine that is true and I consider myself lucky to actually have experienced this myself so I can say this today.
• _iyig 7y ago
  Side note: most industrial fertilizer is produced from non-renewable minerals and natural gas [0]. If you want a truly sustainable food system, some amount of "organic" a.k.a. plant and animal-based fertilizer is probably necessary. We know this works, because it's how all farmland was fertilized before the mining of niter and invention of the Haber-Bosch process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#Production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#Production
• nashashmi 7y ago
  We should encourage pasture aminal grazing instead of the current grazing methods. And wished this UN report mentioned that. Otherwise it is just a liberal green leftist report sponsored by the the meatless meat industries who are encouraging this. I see a parallel between a sudden rush of beyond meat served in restaurants and this report. Like a concerted effort at play.
• pvaldes 7y ago
  It seems that nobody is wondering about implications of stopping eating meat for our hormonal health... Cholesterol has also a mission in our bodies. Protecting us from cold, and being a necessary precursor of male hormones. Identify green with healthy and meat as unhealty is a myth. Try to eat 1 Kg of persil a day and stay alive. Many green things are pretty good making poisons that can do horrible things to our body. Mammals and birds instead are pretty safe in this aspect. The real problem is not eating meat, is being served an oiled whole cow each day in your restaurant. A partial solution could be as simple as standardize (and reduce) the humongous USA rations.
• Will_Parker 7y ago
  From https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-... "Animal agriculture is responsible for 13–18% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and less in developed countries (e.g. 3% in the USA). Fossil fuel combustion for energy and transportation is responsible for approximately 64% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and more in developed countries (e.g. 80% in the USA)." I think in the USA, it would be more productive to address the 80% as higher priority than reducing the 3%. I think this veganism initiative is also more driven by morality and political partisanship than by an effort to find a realistic and practical solution to GHG emissions. And this can backfire: I believe that a reason why nearly half the country will not even openly admit there is a problem, is because they fear the consequences of political over-reaction more than the problem itself.
  • DominikPeters 7y ago
    Is that 3% number associated with meat production in the USA or with meat consumption in the USA? If it's the former, then 3% would be an underestimate of the impact of reducing meat consumption, since the 3% doesn't include the emissions impact of feed and livestock that is imported.
    • vasco 7y ago
      That is true, but I think the point stands. As (mostly) programmers we're quick to understand and make use of practical rules like Ahmdal's law[1] for optimizing software, and know that you always start by looking at the parts that take the longest. Yet in real life we're sometimes tempted to optimize at the fringes first and ignore the obvious biggest contributing factors first. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law#Serial_programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law#Serial_programs
      • bluesign 7y ago
        I think it is also related to efficiency, most gain with minimum efforts
      • 7y ago
• ackfoo 7y ago
  Or we could address the problem directly by having fewer children. Reducing and then controlling our numbers at a sustainable level, like every other organism on the planet. But, nooo, let's eat less meat and have a carbon tax and all the other BS that idiot liberals come up with to dance around the issue that you cannot have unlimited growth on a finite planet. Our biggest problem is not climate change. It's an over-supply of extremely stupid people.
• methuselah 7y ago
  Lol those who needs classes for learning veg dishes, please visit some vegetarian Indian family.they just cook best veg dishes though spicy
• ivanhoe 7y ago
  Number of serious scientists claim quite the opposite, that cattle grazing is the only solution to stop the erosion and turning land into deserts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI
• JTbane 7y ago
  Would any vegans like to comment on how to address the lack of vitamin B12 and EPA/DHA in diets that have no animal products? Biggest issue for me, imo.
  • rqk9j 7y ago
    You supplement it and add it to other processed foods (like plant based milk). The B12 is only in meat because it is fed to the animal already. You just have to adjust the process. The days of natural B12 occurance in meat are long gone bacause of the almost "sterile" way cattle is kept today.
• Josh379 7y ago
  When you factor in the CO2 absorbing grass the rudiments eat, the contribution drops to about 0.5%.
• fmakunbound 7y ago
  People are not going curb their meat intake. This is how you can be certain global warming will continue, fresh water will become scarce and more forest will be loss to animal agriculture.
• Proven 7y ago
  No it doesn't. It calls for the termination of the UNO.
• greggeter 7y ago
  Increasing grains, sugars, fruits, and starchy vegetables will increase diabetes, cancer, depression, a host of other maladies. This will increase healthcare spending. Meat and, more accurately, the animal fats that come with them, appear to be the healthiest calories we can eat. Medical practices are seeing reversal of diabetes, drastic weight loss, more energy, less depression, and cognitive benefits from healthy high fat diets (NOT seed or veggie oils). The near-constant elevation of insulin from our standard diet is doing us great harm. Please spend five minutes reading through this Twitter account for this perspective: https://twitter.com/drjasonfung https://twitter.com/drjasonfung Hyperinsulinemia info: https://twitter.com/KenDBerryMD https://twitter.com/KenDBerryMD Other feeds that deal with depression, fasting, healthy fat diets: https://twitter.com/bigfatsurprise https://twitter.com/bigfatsurprise https://twitter.com/foundmyfitness https://twitter.com/foundmyfitness https://twitter.com/MikhailaAleksis https://twitter.com/MikhailaAleksis https://twitter.com/lowcarbGP https://twitter.com/lowcarbGP
• whiddershins 7y ago
  This is irresponsible advice because nutrition is not a solved problem. As long as we fail to solve it, as in, correctly predict the short, medium, and long term effects on heath and well being for people across all variations of genome and microbiome, not to mention activity level and medical conditions, people need to evaluate their food intake individually. Guilting people away from “taking care” of themselves based on a subset of the medical and nutritional literature to achieve some global carbon emissions target is not a reasonable strategy, in my opinion.
  • mklarmann 7y ago
    This sounds rather short sighted to me. Changing our diet towards lower meat consumption (like we had 50 years ago - max. 1 portion of meat per week), has been shown to come with substantial health benefits. It is a no brainer that we should go there. Because the alternative is so much more detrimental for the human race. Being struck by climate change means we would have around 500 million people who need to migrate, besides other catastrophic effects.
  • flr03 7y ago
    I don't buy this. Sounds like an excuse to not change our habits. Diets have rapidly and continuously been changing over the last decades and I don't think mc donald's waited for the nutrition to be a "solved problem" before taking over the world with the big mac. Asking people to reduce their red meat consumption couldn't be worse than that.
• efiecho 7y ago
  It's funny how HN is an echo chamber sometimes. Every time I'm reading a thread like this, it's flooded with post from people who have turned vegans or almost reduced meat to zero, and one could think that this is the norm. Like a few years back when HN was going on about how the whole world would now stop eating regular food, and consume some powder mixed with water, I think it was called Soylent or something. That didn't happen. If anything, I will only be eating more meat, better quality, but not less and this is probably also the case for millions of other people.
  • mklarmann 7y ago
    This topic has gained substantial scientific evidence. More people have come to turns that the facts only point to possible solutions for the climate were we substantially eat less meat. Having you eat even more meat makes you indirectly responsible for people’s death. It might not be right. But in the near future (2-3 years) you might feel ashamed of what you said right now.
    • marcus_holmes 7y ago
      I'm fascinated that the solutions to climate change appear to line up neatly with the things that hippies have been saying for years (capitalism needs to be replaced with a state-managed global economy, nuclear power is bad, vegetarianism is good, bicycling is good, plant more trees). Particularly the nuclear power option. That one makes no sense. Concrete is a major source of CO2 emissions. In some places, it contributes more than agriculture. Why isn't that being targeted for scientific studies on its impact, and recommendations from the UN on practices? Or has it, and those are just not newsworthy enough to make the BBC take notice? I'm probably being cynical, but it all smells of hidden agendas.
      • mklarmann 7y ago
        This report was generated by the IPCC on request of the international community at the COP in Paris, after they pointed out, that no information was available about 1.5 degree target (the first special report), and food and land was missing (second special report). There is a third one coming about the arctic as far as I remember.
• dsirola 7y ago
  The report states with high confidence that balanced diets featuring plant-based, and sustainably-produced animal-sourced, food “present major opportunities for adaptation and mitigation while generating significant co-benefits in terms of human health”. I think this says it all. The consumption is not as much of a problem as production. They don't mention how much forest is also cut to build farms and it's not like plant growing industry is any better in terms of emissions [1] and water / land poisoning with pesticides and GMO plants. Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against GMO that is done well, but the current direction that's only serving corporate greed instead of bettering farming industry is just disgusting. Without animals we are just as equally doomed as we are with them [2]. I also have a feeling that they're trying to optimize the 1% instead of tackling real problems caused by coal energy, cars, airplanes etc. [1] https://agreenerworld.org/a-greener-world/it-wasnt-the-cows-after-all/ https://agreenerworld.org/a-greener-world/it-wasnt-the-cows-... [2] https://youtu.be/vpTHi7O66pI https://youtu.be/vpTHi7O66pI
  • henryaj 7y ago
    > it's not like plant growing industry is any better in terms of emissions Animal agriculture is enormously more resource-intensive than plant agriculture: https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1159831081798864898/photo/1 https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1159831081798864898... How are we still having this debate?
    • hispanic 7y ago
      I didn't read much of the report from which this is sourced from, but it appears that they base their numbers on current farming practices. In the U.S., those practices (for beef, pork, etc.) are, for the most part, horrible and irresponsible. Responsible practices work in concert with and support of the environment, not against it. Cows graze on and replenish lush grasslands. Pigs forage through and replenish forested areas. The animals are allowed to work within the cycle of nature and act as integral parts of healthy land management instead of being removed from it and treated as industrial outputs. Cows aren't the problem. Pigs aren't the problem. Chickens aren't the problem. Mankind's industrialization of cows, pigs, and chickens is the problem. So, for me, that's why we're still having this debate.
• acd 7y ago
  For a New Years resolution to reduce the carbon footprint I came up with three things to reduce my co2 footprint. 1) reduce meat consumption especially from cows 2) use public transportation whenever available instead of a car. 3) consume less new stuff
• DiseasedBadger 7y ago
  The first and last meat in the economy is human. What we need to do, is limit emigration and stabilize crumbling economies that incentivize high-reproduction for subsistence labor.
• chansiky 7y ago
  I think one problem is that people don't realize they could not only survive, but live healthy, satiated, and even build muscle on a vegetarian diet(without protein shakes etc, just regular grocery foods). I feel like if more people realized this, they would consider eating meat more often. I personally love that I rarely have to worry about maggots in my garbage bin because there would be nothing that would be interested for them to be eating.