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Transport makes up only 6% of the greenhouse gas emissions from food
- LatteLazy 6y agoWe've decided as a species to do nothing about our emissions and let what happens happen. So who cares what does or doesn't make a difference?
- mikedilger 6y agoThe world has been reducing greenhouse gas emissions since at least 1990 when it was 6 trillion tonnes of CO2e per year. We're currently at about 4.4 trillion tonnes of CO2e per year. We have an ambitious goal of getting down to 1 trillion (or even 250 million) tonnes of CO2e per year by 2050 because of how bad things will get if we don't. As game theory (and the tragedy of the commons) would suggest, there will be cheaters. But those cheaters are not overwhelming the overall downward trend.
- MintelIE 6y agoPoorly written blog post. Author even skips analysis of their own opening graph.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago> Arguments like these try to shift away the spotlight from big companies who collectively make up a large chunk of the greenhouse gas emissions to individuals. This is the key problem, with “eat local” and all similar initiatives. Yes, reducing emissions by tiny percentages is still a good thing. But too often, by focusing the conversation on these small individual actions, we miss the forest for the trees.
- tdeck 6y agoAgreed. I don't know what year that tweet is from, but I can't believe we're still being told by the UN that we can beat climate change by "unplugging unused appliances" when what we really need is a major shift from industry/ It's the same kind of blame-shifting propaganda that we've seen for decades about single-use packaging: https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-indian-crying-environment-ads-pollution-1123-20171113-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec...
- ebg13 6y ago> I don't know what year that tweet is from Oct 27, 2019. So not long ago.
- rvense 6y agoThe electronics shop across the street has its display windows lit all night, with two or three giant TV screens telling the (very few) passers-by to buy a Google Home so they can talk to their smart light bulbs, or whatever. Maybe, just maybe, we could stop that before telling me to unplug my phone charger or switch off my router at night.
- Brian_K_White 6y agoYou know tv's aren't lit by incandescent bulbs right? Find some other punching bag to help you excuse yourself from whatever little things might otherwise be your part, if not "phone chargers", that one was a flop.
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- MperorM 6y agoI originally interpreted the title as 'eating locally has a tiny environmental footprint" which is opposite of the point the article is trying to make. I'm not sure what the rules about changing a title is, but the article makes an excellent point and it would be a shame if people who don't read the article get it wrong like I did.
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- tdeck 6y agoDisappointingly it seems that organic farming isn't better for the environment either. It relies heavily on the byproducts of animal agriculture (i.e. manure), which is the most inefficient and polluting segment of our food supply. Even though people who eat organic may tend to eat less meat, that's not sustainable if their food supply is dependent on the meat-producing infrastructure remaining in place. Organic farming also requires more land than non-organic farming, which means more forest and wetlands cleared for agriculture to produce the same amount of food. Here's an interesting study on the topic: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652617309666 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09596...
- 488643689 6y agoWorth noting, we're actually drowning in cow shit. In Germany the meat lobby is actually pushing for disposing even more into the grounds, conventional or ecological farming. We could reduce meat production a lot, before running out of shit... On top, most crops are grown for animal consumption anyway.
- rvense 6y agoAs I understand it the problem is again distribution. If German cows are anything like Danish pigs, they eat a lot of Brazilian soy. But nobody's shipping shit back to South America. So they get fertilizer from mines. Maybe it's the pigs and cows who should be told to eat local?
- Shivetya 6y agoReally all they eventually say is eat less dairy and meat. As in industrial meat and dairy farming impact the environment more that vegetable crops. Nothing else to take away from it. Pretty much a pointless "well duh" article with an end comment that we need to do less travel by road and air. Well that will never happen and another pandemic will force more on the roads separately instead of sharing bus, train, or plane. However BEV will pretty much solve the majority of the pollution side but it will increase miles traveled.
- acangiano 6y agoA large percentage of the population going vegan and working from home becoming the norm for suitable jobs, would be game changers in terms of pollution.
- jiofih 6y agoThis ignores so many aspects before jumping to a conclusion. You have to take into account the “packaging” and “processing” environmental cost as well, plus the fact that local, organic farmers will also have a significantly lower impact than what’s shown, which is 90% comprised of large scale industrial farming.
- netrus 6y agoWhy would that be? I would imagine "large scale industrial farming" to be quite efficient - animals don't get a lot of space there and are optimized to turn the food they are given into as many meat calories as possible. It's horrible for the animals, but efficient. Caring about the environment is about more than climate change, but if the target is to tackle climate change, the answer is NO meat, not local organic meat (and dairy).
- mamon 6y agoClimate change is a natural result of CO2 emissions, which are natural side effect of life. By fighting the climate change you're fighting the life itself :)
- jiofih 6y agoIt’s efficient in terms of output, but not necessarily environmentally friendly. The methods used, monoculture, the volume of waste generated, and the chemicals necessary to cope with it all can be damaging to a level much higher than adding up individual small farmers.
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- kdamica 6y agoI remember reading a study once that concluded that buying from a farmers market is only emissions negative if the farmer lives within a few miles of the market. Ship transport is mind bogglingly efficient.
- Animats 6y agoYes, driving the SUV to the farmer's market emits far more per kilo of food than shipping a container from South America to North America.
- bb2018 6y agoOne rule of thumb I think about is that the cost of oil needed to manufacture/ship an item cannot exceed the cost of that item. So, if a plastic straw costs two cents, then at most about 1/200th a gallon of oil/gas was used to both make the plastic and ship it to wherever you are. It is very easy to look at the visual volume of straws or bags and feel like it is a lot of plastic - but in reality it is the equivalent amount of oil usage as driving a few more blocks.
- mrfusion 6y agoI wonder if the tesla semi will make a difference?
- harimau777 6y agoIt seems to me that something that might make a difference on greenhouse gas emissions from food and that I don't see activists working on is making vegetarian and vegan diets more accessible. For example: - Developing recipes that a palatable, convenient, relatively cheap, and which meet people's nutritional goals. - Teach people to cook those recipes.
- dorena 6y agoI completely agree! I think we should go further and teach cooking at school. Finally kids would learn something they could use every day :)
- contingencies 6y agoThe proportion of people who will change habits based upon objective statistical and extrapolated moral imperative arguments is small. The proportion of people who will change habits based upon convenience is high. In addition, food production and distribution systems are immensely heterogeneous. They tend to be predictable in structure based upon land use patterns (urban planning). Apartment dwellers spend less on transport and more on packaging, but don't grow much food or raise animals. With small family units, cook-for-one kitchens and duplicate appliances, waste is highest. Suburbia dwellers spend more on transport but might grow food and raise animals or at least keep chickens. Waste is also high, often due to spoilage. Villages and rural dwelling people may very well produce all their own food and may walk everywhere, with no transport. Waste is lower, since crops may be picked or animals slaughtered only when required. Since changing people's lifestyles to a sustainable reality requires drastic lifestyle changes and is therefore untenable, I believe the key to significantly reducing resource wastage in the food distribution globally is more efficient distribution and the deduplication of resources (kitchens, appliances, grocery stores, etc.). Obviously this can be sold based on convenience, but cuts across tightly held beliefs around individualism, identity and tradition (amongst others). For various reasons such as population density, social norms, mobile payment penetration and legal and regulatory environments, I believe the future technologies in this space will be set in the world's highest density cities in Asia, and then re-exported to a lagging west.
- Ghjklov 6y ago>The proportion of people who will change habits based upon convenience is high. Good point. Another key thing is economics. Nice vegan eco-friendly locally sourced sausage there buddy. 10 bucks? No thanks. If the people with power to do so cared about animals and the climate, they'd do everything they can to make sure their vegan products are affordable to poor people. They need to be at least cheaper than the meat products. But that does not seem to be the case.
- hwillis 6y agoThis is true for meat and many grains, but not really for other foods. There are two MAJORLY misleading caveats to the data as presented: 1. These emissions include semi-permanent sinks (where carbon is converted into dirt or trees that don't need to be cut down annually), but not the fact that carbon is absorbed to grow the plants. Unlike transport, this carbon doesn't simply appear. If you take this into account it reduces the overall carbon from Ag by ~20%. 2. Fruits and vegetables have MUCH more energy spent on transport, over 50% in some cases once you account for CO2 absorption. Potatoes as well. See page 61 (fig S13) of the supplement on the original paper: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2018/05/30/360.6392.987.DC1/aaq0216-Poore-SM-revision1.pdf https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2018/05/30/... Meats and milk (and to a lesser extent rice- methane from the water paddies) are overwhelmingly the largest cause of Ag GHG emissions and why transport seems to play such a small role. It's the only case that buying locally doesn't make a difference.
- shafyy 6y agoNaturally, this figure will vary from food type to food type. As you've pointed out, this doesn't change the fact that many people don't realize how much bigger the effect of avoiding meat and dairy is vs. buying locally produced foods. I also mentioned some more caveats in the article, e.g. transport does matter for goods such as berries and green beans, which are highly perishable and therefore transported by air planes.
- jsingleton 6y agoOur World in Data have an excellent analysis on this topic as usual. > Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
- vram22 6y agoJust saw this related book today: The Carbon Farming Solution: http://www.perennialsolutions.org/shop/the-carbon-farming-solution-signed http://www.perennialsolutions.org/shop/the-carbon-farming-so... Author is Eric Toensmeier. From his about page: http://carbonfarmingsolution.com/bio http://carbonfarmingsolution.com/bio Eric Toensmeier is the award-winning author of Paradise Lot and Perennial Vegetables, and the co-author of Edible Forest Gardens. He is an appointed lecturer at Yale University, a Senior Biosequestration Fellow with Project Drawdown, and an international trainer. He has studied useful perennial plants and their roles in agroforestry systems for over two decades.He is the author of The Carbon Farming Solution: A Global Toolkit of Perennial Crops and Regenerative Agricultural Practices for Climate Change Mitigation and Food Security.
- mikedilger 6y agoMeat production produces methane, not CO2. People yearn for simpler data and try to create equivalence (CO2e), but you cannot simply combine them without a loss of understanding/meaning. Methane is much more potent, but also more transient in the atmosphere than CO2 is. It stays in the atmosphere about 12 years. Fossil-fuel production actually emits more methane than meat production does (but meat production is number two and a very big slice). So by cutting down on fossil fuels you will have a bigger impact on solving the methane problem than going vegetarian, and you'll also be solving the longer term CO2 problem. But every bit counts. Vegetarianism (or near-vegetarianism) is quite healthy too. If we stopped meat production entirely right now, in a few decades we'd be back at ancient levels and the temperature would drop accordingly. But if you are worried about a climate apocalypse that our children and grandchildren are going to have to deal with, going vegetarian now is going to have little impact on that problem. CO2 is still the bigger and more long-term problem.
- andrekandre 6y agomethod though breaks down into co2 and water eventually, so its still a problem in the long term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane
- mikedilger 6y agoYou are correct that it breaks down into co2, but it is not part of the long term problem. The CO2 from methane breakdown was sourced from the atmosphere in the first place. And it goes back into the atmosphere. It's part of the permanent surface-atmosphere CO2 cycle. Atmospheric CO2 -> Grass -> Ruminant animal -> Methane -> Atmospheric CO2 Fossil fuels, OTOH, bring up CO2 from deep in the earth where it has been sequestered for eons. If we ate less meat and turned the pasture into woodland, we could sequester quite a lot of CO2 on the order of 50 years or so. Longer if we buried the wood. And I'm not against that. But it seems silly to me to focus on these minor hacks to surface cycles for temporary gains when the clear long-term problem is fossil fuel. We need to keep focusing on fossil fuel.
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