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> telling people to eat less meat [...] does basically nothing to combat climate change Are you sure? The main source of deforestation is to use the land for

by lucb1e 5y ago

> telling people to eat less meat [...] does basically nothing to combat climate change Are you sure? The main source of deforestation is to use the land for livestock[1], as far as I know the reason is that previously-poor countries are getting rich enough to buy meat (semi-)regularly. Yet you say that eating less meat will do nothing but make you feel good? Seems to me it would help against deforestation if nothing else. But is deforestation bad in the context of climate change? [2] > Averaged over 2015—2017, global loss of tropical forests contributed about 4.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year (or about 8-10% of annual human emissions of carbon dioxide). 10% of our current emissions is deforestation?! The change in forest cover, so the extra consumption of meat (not the current consumption)? Frankly this number seems too high. The source of this source checks out at least[3] and it also seems to match with this .gov site [4] at first glance. But I've spent 20 minutes on finding numbers now, it's someone else's turn. I'd be happy to know if it's wrong. Until such time, please check your facts before talking to other people about just leaning back and letting someone else solve the problem because your contribution "does nothing in reality". Some things like plugging out chargers when not in use are indeed feel-good. Other things that we all do are not. Each individual contribution is obviously meaningless, but we're not talking about Jesus cutting out his individual meat consumption and thereby saving us all, nor do we all have to play Jesus either. Skip meat one day of the week where you would normally have meat, and you already decrease your consumption by >10%. Or replace half your beef-based meals with poultry, that also saves a shitton of CO2e. Obviously this is not the only thing we need to do. But let's not put on blindfolds and just continue what we've been doing until now while the rest of the world also wants to start doing that. [1] "agriculture accounts for around 85% of deforestation worldwide. And while this can mostly be attributed to meat production (beef in particular)" https://onetreeplanted.org/blogs/stories/deforestation-causes https://onetreeplanted.org/blogs/stories/deforestation-cause... [2] https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/deforestation/ https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/deforestation/ [3] https://www.wri.org/insights/numbers-value-tropical-forests-climate-change-equation https://www.wri.org/insights/numbers-value-tropical-forests-... [4] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
epistasis 5y ago
Who is the audience for these suggestions? Every country has their own unique profile and path for the next few decades, and the high emitters have far different paths to decarbonization than the low-emitting countries, which will simultaneously industrialize as they adopt the lifestyles of the global north, but with modern low-carbon technology. If we are talking about the really big emitter, namely the US, then cutting meat is one of the far later actions we need to take. Meat is a tiny fraction of the US's emissions, dwarfed by far harder tech and economic transitions. And dropping meat is a quick action, takes almost no tech/economic, and could be effected in a year or so. Same goes for nearly all high per-capita energy countries, which is the vast majority of the HN audience. But the real hard change for the US is transportation. It's the biggest source, and it's tied intimately to the (bad) design of our built environment, which necessitates tons of driving and treats non-drivers as oddities and excludes them from access to most of society. The easiest way to lower transportation emissions, switching current vehicles to batteries or to fuels derived from renewable energy, requires an industrial buildout of absolutely massive scale and that needs to happen with such speed that we are not on track by any means. Massive EV deployment is necessary, but insufficient to meet the speed with which we must transition, due to the speed limits of scaling production capacity. And batteries are going to be in demand from the electrical grid, and hydrogen will be hugely in demand for fertilizer (ammonia) and other industrial applications (actually I have little hope of hydrogen being a transport solution at all.) If we are going to be talking about highly off-putting lifestyle changes to an audience like HN, we should be focusing on massively reducing the need for gasoline based transit. Meaning dense urban infill, tooooooons of infill building in Silicon Vallet, and complete bans of new builds far from jobs and groceries, where most building is happening right now. And there must also be massive building of trains and deployment of EV buses. Talking about meat has almost no impact for the HN audience except to turn them off from taking any action, because even if people cut down on meat (and I have), it's not nearly as big a deal as switching to a heat pump water heater from natural gas or living closer to work, children's schools, grocery stores, and other daily necessities. If we are talking about rain forests being cut for farming, sure, that's something that should be addressed, but as a US citizen I have to do so much more locally before I get to tell other countries how to cut their emissions.

by lucb1e 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

epistasis 5y ago

Who is the audience for these suggestions? Every country has their own unique profile and path for the next few decades, and the high emitters have far different paths to decarbonization than the low-emitting countries, which will simultaneously industrialize as they adopt the lifestyles of the global north, but with modern low-carbon technology. If we are talking about the really big emitter, namely the US, then cutting meat is one of the far later actions we need to take. Meat is a tiny fraction of the US's emissions, dwarfed by far harder tech and economic transitions. And dropping meat is a quick action, takes almost no tech/economic, and could be effected in a year or so. Same goes for nearly all high per-capita energy countries, which is the vast majority of the HN audience. But the real hard change for the US is transportation. It's the biggest source, and it's tied intimately to the (bad) design of our built environment, which necessitates tons of driving and treats non-drivers as oddities and excludes them from access to most of society. The easiest way to lower transportation emissions, switching current vehicles to batteries or to fuels derived from renewable energy, requires an industrial buildout of absolutely massive scale and that needs to happen with such speed that we are not on track by any means. Massive EV deployment is necessary, but insufficient to meet the speed with which we must transition, due to the speed limits of scaling production capacity. And batteries are going to be in demand from the electrical grid, and hydrogen will be hugely in demand for fertilizer (ammonia) and other industrial applications (actually I have little hope of hydrogen being a transport solution at all.) If we are going to be talking about highly off-putting lifestyle changes to an audience like HN, we should be focusing on massively reducing the need for gasoline based transit. Meaning dense urban infill, tooooooons of infill building in Silicon Vallet, and complete bans of new builds far from jobs and groceries, where most building is happening right now. And there must also be massive building of trains and deployment of EV buses. Talking about meat has almost no impact for the HN audience except to turn them off from taking any action, because even if people cut down on meat (and I have), it's not nearly as big a deal as switching to a heat pump water heater from natural gas or living closer to work, children's schools, grocery stores, and other daily necessities. If we are talking about rain forests being cut for farming, sure, that's something that should be addressed, but as a US citizen I have to do so much more locally before I get to tell other countries how to cut their emissions.