22 ms·

Meat accounts for nearly 60% of all greenhouse gases from food production

79 points by makerofspoons 5y ago

r00fus 5y ago
I'm not by any means meat-free, but it's really quite easy (and tasty) to cut 80% or more of your weekly meat diet. We do this at home by making lots of hearty soups, having salad with each meal and having good cheeses, nuts and lots of fruits on hand.
- RspecMAuthortah 5y ago
  For me at least, since switching to a complete meat based diet I have had a lot of my digestive issues along with host of other problems (better sleep for example but that could be because I don't have to wake up middle of the night from the esophageal pain) completely gone. I also feel a lot better mental health wise(again could be because I have better sleep). I understand I might be an anecdote.
  - r00fus 5y ago
    Often, getting a specialized diet prevents you from eating over-processed foods, which would cut down on potential problems your body may have with them. It's the same with a low-meat diet since so many restaurants don't offer food without meat - you end up not eating out as much or selecting healthier items.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    What were you eating before?
  - albertgoeswoof 5y ago
    A complete meat diet?
    - dwohnitmok 5y ago
      It happens. E.g. the Inuit traditional diet is effectively entirely meat/animal products. Non-animal products make up a tiny sliver of the traditional diet.
      - spicymaki 5y ago
        Yeah no thanks, the Inuit lifestyle does not seem healthy. The Inuit currently have lifespans that are about 13 years less than the average Canadian lifespan. Even that is an improvement of 29 years from the 1940s. [0] [0] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-003-x/2008001/article/10463/4149059-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-003-x/2008001/article...
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        dwohnitmok 5y ago
        I have no particular take on the health of the Inuit diet; I bring it up mainly to indicate that there are people who do go essentially their whole lives on just a meat diet. However your statistics there have way too many confounding factors to attribute anything substantial to the native diet. Infant mortality rates historically and remain (comparatively) very high. Alcoholism is rampant among Canadian indigenous people. Even among peoples who have similar diets such as e.g. Metis, Inuit and First Nations peoples, life expectancy is significantly different (this is before even getting into a comparison with other meat-eating cultures in the world). There is virtually no signal here to determine the healthiness of an Inuit-style diet either way.
  - jimnotgym 5y ago
    Can you tell us more? You went 100% meat and your digestive system for better? What is an average meal for you?
  - pigeonhole123 5y ago
    Same here. I never tolerated legumes well, and cutting all plants and especially ones containing fiber cured my IBS and got rid of my chronic inflammation. For anyone curious Paul Mason has a few talks about fiber.
- amelius 5y ago
  +1 It's also healthier to cut down on meat.
  - dawnerd 5y ago
    But is it really? We're omnivores. Our bodies are designed to eat meat. I went hardcore keto and only eat meat + cheese and I've lost a ton of weight and lowered my BP etc. That is way healthier than what I was before so I'm not sure the argument cutting down on meat is healthy.
    - exdsq 5y ago
      Yes, support for this is practically unanimous by health research on the topic. Obviously there's orders of 'bad', with processed meats being worse than red meats, and red meats worse than say lean white meats, and the quantity matters too. The whole omnivore argument tends to assume we used to eat tons of meat all the time but it was a rarity until fairly recently in our history.
      - dawnerd 5y ago
        Yes, I've seen plenty of these studies but all of them have too many variables at play. Actual proof that meat is bad is very foggy at best. Edit: I'm not arguing either way - I just don't buy into this whole meat is bad for you argument.
        invalidname 5y ago
        The argument about processed foods (meat and otherwise) is pretty solid. Red meat... Open to debate. You need to keep in mind that most of our baselines come from the mid 20th century. Where everyone ate meat, so our definition of "healthy" is based on 70 year old averages. The median for "healthy" is a meat eater. My spouse is vegan and super healthy. Yet some of her blood-works are borderline. As far as we can tell it's because she's vegan. It's the stats themselves that are biased against veganism. I think that if the studies were corrected meat eating would look MUCH worse than it does now.
josh_today 5y ago
Ok now do emissions from global travel by reporters versus food production
xyzzy21 5y ago
And I don't have a problem with that because this actually means that non-meat is 40% and all food is 100% Non-meat isn't zero either - massive fossil fuel inputs go into all plant cultivation from farm equipment to fertilizers to pesticides.
- hexo 5y ago
  Yeah! If we completely stopped eating meat then plant based food would account for 100% of all greenhouse gases from food production!
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    And if we stopped all greenhouse emissions from food eventually all of the emissions from any industry would reach 0!
- WhompingWindows 5y ago
  You don't have a problem with an increased level of emissions relative to other possible scenarios of our food system? Imagine if 50% of meat eaters ate 50% less meat, particularly beef. That'd lead to ~25% less meat emissions, aka ~15% less food-based emissions. It's a substantial step towards neutrality without anyone giving up a food permanently. Long term, we're going to need lab or plant-based meats, since I doubt we'll ever convince people to give up their cherished food items unless economics makes it incredibly expensive.
  - spicymaki 5y ago
    I agree with your assessment. I am pretty cynical that most people will give up meat consumption. Lab grown meats at scale or substitutes are really going to drive the reduction in emissions we need.
    - WhompingWindows 5y ago
      I fully agree, I think we could get bigger wins scaling up artificial meats than many other solutions we're spending money on, like hydrogen fuel cell vehicles or nuclear fusion. While those great technologies will be amazing in the future, we're overlooking what we can do now in the hopes of a big win later.
pier25 5y ago
Yes, but let's not forget the biggest source of emissions is, by far, the generation of energy. Aprox 45% of global emissions come from: - Generation of electricity and heat. - Burning of fossil fuels at factories, mines, etc, to produce energy on site. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#Sector https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
- pl-94 5y ago
  Meat production is using some parts of this energy (e.g. transportation of feedstock + food). You either want to look at how the energy is produced or how it is consumed. Moreover, we aim at reaching net carbon by 2050. This means that we need to cut on everything. So the question is about how easy it is to reduce such budget and how efficient this cut provides. In this perspective, zero waste is a bad trade off for climate change (a lot of efforts and only a 100 kg saved per year). Vegetarianism (or better veganism) sounds like the best thing to start with.
  - pier25 5y ago
    > Meat production is using some parts of this energy (e.g. transportation of feedstock + food). Everything is using energy. Transportation is not included in the 45% (check the link in my previous comment). And AFAIK we also need to transport vegetables, using machines for agriculture, etc. > Vegetarianism (or better veganism) sounds like the best thing to start with. Objectively, chicken and pork have much lower emissions than beef. Also, removing beef consumption would increase consumption of other foods so the emissions reduction wouldn't be as drastic.
    - pl-94 5y ago
      > Also, removing beef consumption would increase consumption of other foods so the emissions reduction wouldn't be as drastic. Well, since you have a factor between 10x (cereals) and 100x (legumes) in the CO2 emissions between beef and vegetables, yeah it does drastically decrease emissions. > Objectively, chicken and pork have much lower emissions than beef. Right. However, pork is mostly fed with cereals, inducing a high level of CO2eq/kg + land use + loss of diversity.
simmanian 5y ago
For those who are interested in modifying their diet for the environment but are hesitant to cut out meat altogether: the two-thirds vegan diet has much less carbon footprint than going fully vegetarian [1]. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/11/15/how-much-would-giving-up-meat-help-the-environment https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/11/15/how-much...
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  Though, you can see right there on the graph, that comparison relies on lacto-ovo vegetarians eating a heck of a lot of dairy. Also: > However, a newly converted vegetarian who replaces every 50g of beef she usually eats with 100g of kale would soon be famished. C'mon. The only world in which the idea of someone doing that is anything but absurd and/or tragic is one of motivated hypotheticals. Replacing your primary source of protein and fat with a pile of leaves is not vegetarian eating; it's disordered eating. They do it again right at the end, with the well-poisoning phrase, "die-hard leaf-eaters." Allow me to suggest that, if that's what you think eating vegan is about, you won't last long on the 2/3 vegan diet, either. For goodness sake, at least throw some beans or a potato or something in so you're not spending four days a week being hangry all the time. Maybe even treat yourself to a burrito; at Chipotle the meat and dairy free ones are still something like 1000 calories apiece. And they'll put some leaves in it, if you like, free of charge. Multiple kinds of leaves.
  - mtalantikite 5y ago
    Yeah, as a vegetarian I always get the feeling that meat eaters are just really not that imaginative with how they think about food. The knee-jerk reaction is often “so you just eat salads?” as if, you know, food didn’t exist.
    - XorNot 5y ago
      Heck I'm not vegetarian, but deliberately started seeking out vegetarian recipes because they have a much more diverse flavor profile and more interesting uses of spices.
tomp 5y ago
It's to a large degree the fault of unsustainable farming techniques. Chicken eating worms that eat grass being eaten by humans exhaling CO2 that grass uses to grow is a closed carbon cycle. Beef belching methane changes the equation a bit, but there's research into ways to decrease that.
post_break 5y ago
Thanks to inflation I'm already cutting my meat eating way down. Ground beef prices are nuts, steaks? Forget it. Chicken hasn't gone up as much but it still hurts. I wish I could cut it down more but I'm a picky eater. And the other thing that just kills me is how much plastic there is every trip to the grocery store.
sam0x17 5y ago
That's not really a surprising statistic given the "from food production" qualifier. That said, there is proven technology (feeding cows seaweed) that dramatically cuts this back, and we frankly should be mandating its use at this point. Would create jobs too.
- albertgoeswoof 5y ago
  Or just don’t eat the cows it’s really not that hard
  - mattmiller 5y ago
    Parent just suggested a realistic and actionable solution and you replied a snarky totally unrealistic counter offer.
    - awesomeusername 5y ago
      Bullshit. A large portion of the population have been vegetarian for a long time. How is something alive and well and growing be unrealistic
      - skeaker 5y ago
        Because it relies on the majority of the population to unanimously change their mind and diets. Between economic reasons (alternative diets can be more expensive to a family that has no time to cook every meal), health reasons, traditional reasons, societal conceptions, and downright stubborn people, it's essentially not possible without multiple generations worth of effort. That's much less realistic than changing mandated farming practices which could be done in a matter of years.
        exdsq 5y ago
        Cows in world := 1,000,000,000 Seaweed per day per cow := 0.085kg Seaweed per year per cow := 31.025kg Seaweed per year for cow population := 31,025,000,000kgs Global seaweed production := 6,350,293,180kgs So, we'd need to increase seaweed production by 5 times. We would then need to distribute this from the largest producers (China, Japan, Korea) the countries that consume the most (Europe, US). This isn't a problem that can be solved by mandated changes in a matter of years, and I have no idea what the CO2 output would be for this sort of production and shipping.
Gustomaximus 5y ago
Also what matters is what people do with the money saved not buying meat. This study found people in wealthier nations had cost savings from not buying meat. This lead to increased purchases in other goods which in turn balanced out most of the green house gas savings from the meat reduction. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800915002153 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218...
shapefrog 5y ago
It is pretty clear we need to hunt into extinction all the large animals on this planet, to save the planet. Advocating anything else is basically destroying the planet.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Do humans count as large animals in this?
  - shapefrog 5y ago
    We generate a few orders of magnitude less methane per person/animal than mules and asses, but there are a lot more of us. All options have to be on the table and once we have gotten rid of all the low hanging fruit, the choices get trickier and trickier.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  I think we can leave the wild ones alone. The article's really talking more about artificially maintaining the populations of certain domesticated species at levels vastly higher than a natural ecosystem could support without human intervention on an industrial scale.
  - shapefrog 5y ago
    Prior to the colonization of the US there were some 60million buffalo, with little interference from human intervention it is probably fair to say that is the population numbers for the 'natural ecosystem'? They number now in the 10,000's. But they have been replaced with ultra high density industrial scale factory farming and this has resulted in 90million cows ... Sure that is 50% extra, but on the scale of this sort of issue - is that really a lot? Buffalo is probably nearly 50% bigger in mass and methane production anyway.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - 5y ago
masteranza 5y ago
Frankly, I've expected the data to be worse, but it's also incomplete. They haven't taken into account the amount of greenhouse gases produced when the consumption of those foods is included, e.g., eating just beans is not going to decrease the total amount of greenhouse gases, because of gas producer shifts from the product to the consumer. On the other hand, it is little known that flatulence almost never happens on carnivore diet.
albertgoeswoof 5y ago
I felt like this figure was a bit low, and it is, because it doesn’t take into account the yield from each food source. E.g. as the article states “to produce 1kg of wheat, 2.5kg of greenhouse gases are emitted. A single kilo of beef, meanwhile, creates 70kg of emissions” Which is a much more meaningful way to look at it.
- antisthenes 5y ago
  Food also needs to be accounted for protein content and quality. Beef, for example, contains 2x as much protein and mostly fat otherwise, whereas wheat has carbs, which are much faster to digest. In order to consume as much protein as you would from beef, you have to consume twice as much of it. And since you can't really separate wheat protein from the carbs in household conditions, you're forced to overload on carbohydrates in order to get the same amount of high quality nutrients. And I'm not even touching on essential amino-acids, some of which are missing entirely in wheat. Which is why pretty much every single vegetarian has to supplement their meals with dairy or regularly boost with powdered protein. It doesn't matter much for sedentary lifestyles, but trying to be active on a vegetarian/vegan diet is pure hell.
  - at_compile_time 5y ago
    >And since you can't really separate wheat protein from the carbs in household conditions, That's literally how you make seitan. https://backyardhomesteadhq.com/how-to-make-seitan-from-any-flour-a-complete-guide/ https://backyardhomesteadhq.com/how-to-make-seitan-from-any-...
meristohm 5y ago
“Eat food, not too much (instead of “not a lot”), mostly plants” is rephrasing Michael Pollan. My family isn’t vegan or vegetarian, we just rarely eat meat, and we enjoy it as a treat. I’d rather err on the side of under-eating and then experiment with what I need more of than consume too much “just in case” or because it feels good.
RattleyCooper 5y ago
And animals, in general, account for nearly 100% of all greenhouse gas emissions, so if we kill absolutely everything on the planet we can save the planet!
- pl-94 5y ago
  The planet is not a risk. The problem is first about human societies in the middle term perspective (before 2100). And then about human life in the long term (after 2100). But no the planet will always survive. It cares really little about its parasites.

79 points by makerofspoons 5y ago

I'm not by any means meat-free, but it's really quite easy (and tasty) to cut 80% or more of your weekly meat diet. We do this at home by making lots of hearty soups, having salad with each meal and having good cheeses, nuts and lots of fruits on hand.

RspecMAuthortah 5y ago
For me at least, since switching to a complete meat based diet I have had a lot of my digestive issues along with host of other problems (better sleep for example but that could be because I don't have to wake up middle of the night from the esophageal pain) completely gone. I also feel a lot better mental health wise(again could be because I have better sleep). I understand I might be an anecdote.
- r00fus 5y ago
  Often, getting a specialized diet prevents you from eating over-processed foods, which would cut down on potential problems your body may have with them. It's the same with a low-meat diet since so many restaurants don't offer food without meat - you end up not eating out as much or selecting healthier items.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  What were you eating before?
- albertgoeswoof 5y ago
  A complete meat diet?
  - dwohnitmok 5y ago
    It happens. E.g. the Inuit traditional diet is effectively entirely meat/animal products. Non-animal products make up a tiny sliver of the traditional diet.
    - spicymaki 5y ago
      Yeah no thanks, the Inuit lifestyle does not seem healthy. The Inuit currently have lifespans that are about 13 years less than the average Canadian lifespan. Even that is an improvement of 29 years from the 1940s. [0] [0] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-003-x/2008001/article/10463/4149059-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-003-x/2008001/article...
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - dwohnitmok 5y ago
        I have no particular take on the health of the Inuit diet; I bring it up mainly to indicate that there are people who do go essentially their whole lives on just a meat diet. However your statistics there have way too many confounding factors to attribute anything substantial to the native diet. Infant mortality rates historically and remain (comparatively) very high. Alcoholism is rampant among Canadian indigenous people. Even among peoples who have similar diets such as e.g. Metis, Inuit and First Nations peoples, life expectancy is significantly different (this is before even getting into a comparison with other meat-eating cultures in the world). There is virtually no signal here to determine the healthiness of an Inuit-style diet either way.
- jimnotgym 5y ago
  Can you tell us more? You went 100% meat and your digestive system for better? What is an average meal for you?
- pigeonhole123 5y ago
  Same here. I never tolerated legumes well, and cutting all plants and especially ones containing fiber cured my IBS and got rid of my chronic inflammation. For anyone curious Paul Mason has a few talks about fiber.
amelius 5y ago
+1 It's also healthier to cut down on meat.
- dawnerd 5y ago
  But is it really? We're omnivores. Our bodies are designed to eat meat. I went hardcore keto and only eat meat + cheese and I've lost a ton of weight and lowered my BP etc. That is way healthier than what I was before so I'm not sure the argument cutting down on meat is healthy.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    Yes, support for this is practically unanimous by health research on the topic. Obviously there's orders of 'bad', with processed meats being worse than red meats, and red meats worse than say lean white meats, and the quantity matters too. The whole omnivore argument tends to assume we used to eat tons of meat all the time but it was a rarity until fairly recently in our history.
    - dawnerd 5y ago
      Yes, I've seen plenty of these studies but all of them have too many variables at play. Actual proof that meat is bad is very foggy at best. Edit: I'm not arguing either way - I just don't buy into this whole meat is bad for you argument.
      - invalidname 5y ago
        The argument about processed foods (meat and otherwise) is pretty solid. Red meat... Open to debate. You need to keep in mind that most of our baselines come from the mid 20th century. Where everyone ate meat, so our definition of "healthy" is based on 70 year old averages. The median for "healthy" is a meat eater. My spouse is vegan and super healthy. Yet some of her blood-works are borderline. As far as we can tell it's because she's vegan. It's the stats themselves that are biased against veganism. I think that if the studies were corrected meat eating would look MUCH worse than it does now.

josh_today 5y ago

Ok now do emissions from global travel by reporters versus food production

xyzzy21 5y ago

And I don't have a problem with that because this actually means that non-meat is 40% and all food is 100% Non-meat isn't zero either - massive fossil fuel inputs go into all plant cultivation from farm equipment to fertilizers to pesticides.

hexo 5y ago
Yeah! If we completely stopped eating meat then plant based food would account for 100% of all greenhouse gases from food production!
- Ekaros 5y ago
  And if we stopped all greenhouse emissions from food eventually all of the emissions from any industry would reach 0!
WhompingWindows 5y ago
You don't have a problem with an increased level of emissions relative to other possible scenarios of our food system? Imagine if 50% of meat eaters ate 50% less meat, particularly beef. That'd lead to ~25% less meat emissions, aka ~15% less food-based emissions. It's a substantial step towards neutrality without anyone giving up a food permanently. Long term, we're going to need lab or plant-based meats, since I doubt we'll ever convince people to give up their cherished food items unless economics makes it incredibly expensive.
- spicymaki 5y ago
  I agree with your assessment. I am pretty cynical that most people will give up meat consumption. Lab grown meats at scale or substitutes are really going to drive the reduction in emissions we need.
  - WhompingWindows 5y ago
    I fully agree, I think we could get bigger wins scaling up artificial meats than many other solutions we're spending money on, like hydrogen fuel cell vehicles or nuclear fusion. While those great technologies will be amazing in the future, we're overlooking what we can do now in the hopes of a big win later.

pier25 5y ago

Yes, but let's not forget the biggest source of emissions is, by far, the generation of energy. Aprox 45% of global emissions come from: - Generation of electricity and heat. - Burning of fossil fuels at factories, mines, etc, to produce energy on site. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#Sector https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

pl-94 5y ago
Meat production is using some parts of this energy (e.g. transportation of feedstock + food). You either want to look at how the energy is produced or how it is consumed. Moreover, we aim at reaching net carbon by 2050. This means that we need to cut on everything. So the question is about how easy it is to reduce such budget and how efficient this cut provides. In this perspective, zero waste is a bad trade off for climate change (a lot of efforts and only a 100 kg saved per year). Vegetarianism (or better veganism) sounds like the best thing to start with.
- pier25 5y ago
  > Meat production is using some parts of this energy (e.g. transportation of feedstock + food). Everything is using energy. Transportation is not included in the 45% (check the link in my previous comment). And AFAIK we also need to transport vegetables, using machines for agriculture, etc. > Vegetarianism (or better veganism) sounds like the best thing to start with. Objectively, chicken and pork have much lower emissions than beef. Also, removing beef consumption would increase consumption of other foods so the emissions reduction wouldn't be as drastic.
  - pl-94 5y ago
    > Also, removing beef consumption would increase consumption of other foods so the emissions reduction wouldn't be as drastic. Well, since you have a factor between 10x (cereals) and 100x (legumes) in the CO2 emissions between beef and vegetables, yeah it does drastically decrease emissions. > Objectively, chicken and pork have much lower emissions than beef. Right. However, pork is mostly fed with cereals, inducing a high level of CO2eq/kg + land use + loss of diversity.

simmanian 5y ago

For those who are interested in modifying their diet for the environment but are hesitant to cut out meat altogether: the two-thirds vegan diet has much less carbon footprint than going fully vegetarian [1]. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/11/15/how-much-would-giving-up-meat-help-the-environment https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/11/15/how-much...

mumblemumble 5y ago
Though, you can see right there on the graph, that comparison relies on lacto-ovo vegetarians eating a heck of a lot of dairy. Also: > However, a newly converted vegetarian who replaces every 50g of beef she usually eats with 100g of kale would soon be famished. C'mon. The only world in which the idea of someone doing that is anything but absurd and/or tragic is one of motivated hypotheticals. Replacing your primary source of protein and fat with a pile of leaves is not vegetarian eating; it's disordered eating. They do it again right at the end, with the well-poisoning phrase, "die-hard leaf-eaters." Allow me to suggest that, if that's what you think eating vegan is about, you won't last long on the 2/3 vegan diet, either. For goodness sake, at least throw some beans or a potato or something in so you're not spending four days a week being hangry all the time. Maybe even treat yourself to a burrito; at Chipotle the meat and dairy free ones are still something like 1000 calories apiece. And they'll put some leaves in it, if you like, free of charge. Multiple kinds of leaves.
- mtalantikite 5y ago
  Yeah, as a vegetarian I always get the feeling that meat eaters are just really not that imaginative with how they think about food. The knee-jerk reaction is often “so you just eat salads?” as if, you know, food didn’t exist.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    Heck I'm not vegetarian, but deliberately started seeking out vegetarian recipes because they have a much more diverse flavor profile and more interesting uses of spices.

tomp 5y ago

It's to a large degree the fault of unsustainable farming techniques. Chicken eating worms that eat grass being eaten by humans exhaling CO2 that grass uses to grow is a closed carbon cycle. Beef belching methane changes the equation a bit, but there's research into ways to decrease that.

post_break 5y ago

Thanks to inflation I'm already cutting my meat eating way down. Ground beef prices are nuts, steaks? Forget it. Chicken hasn't gone up as much but it still hurts. I wish I could cut it down more but I'm a picky eater. And the other thing that just kills me is how much plastic there is every trip to the grocery store.

sam0x17 5y ago

That's not really a surprising statistic given the "from food production" qualifier. That said, there is proven technology (feeding cows seaweed) that dramatically cuts this back, and we frankly should be mandating its use at this point. Would create jobs too.

albertgoeswoof 5y ago
Or just don’t eat the cows it’s really not that hard
- mattmiller 5y ago
  Parent just suggested a realistic and actionable solution and you replied a snarky totally unrealistic counter offer.
  - awesomeusername 5y ago
    Bullshit. A large portion of the population have been vegetarian for a long time. How is something alive and well and growing be unrealistic
    - skeaker 5y ago
      Because it relies on the majority of the population to unanimously change their mind and diets. Between economic reasons (alternative diets can be more expensive to a family that has no time to cook every meal), health reasons, traditional reasons, societal conceptions, and downright stubborn people, it's essentially not possible without multiple generations worth of effort. That's much less realistic than changing mandated farming practices which could be done in a matter of years.
      - exdsq 5y ago
        Cows in world := 1,000,000,000 Seaweed per day per cow := 0.085kg Seaweed per year per cow := 31.025kg Seaweed per year for cow population := 31,025,000,000kgs Global seaweed production := 6,350,293,180kgs So, we'd need to increase seaweed production by 5 times. We would then need to distribute this from the largest producers (China, Japan, Korea) the countries that consume the most (Europe, US). This isn't a problem that can be solved by mandated changes in a matter of years, and I have no idea what the CO2 output would be for this sort of production and shipping.

Gustomaximus 5y ago

Also what matters is what people do with the money saved not buying meat. This study found people in wealthier nations had cost savings from not buying meat. This lead to increased purchases in other goods which in turn balanced out most of the green house gas savings from the meat reduction. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800915002153 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218...

shapefrog 5y ago

It is pretty clear we need to hunt into extinction all the large animals on this planet, to save the planet. Advocating anything else is basically destroying the planet.

Ekaros 5y ago
Do humans count as large animals in this?
- shapefrog 5y ago
  We generate a few orders of magnitude less methane per person/animal than mules and asses, but there are a lot more of us. All options have to be on the table and once we have gotten rid of all the low hanging fruit, the choices get trickier and trickier.
mumblemumble 5y ago
I think we can leave the wild ones alone. The article's really talking more about artificially maintaining the populations of certain domesticated species at levels vastly higher than a natural ecosystem could support without human intervention on an industrial scale.
- shapefrog 5y ago
  Prior to the colonization of the US there were some 60million buffalo, with little interference from human intervention it is probably fair to say that is the population numbers for the 'natural ecosystem'? They number now in the 10,000's. But they have been replaced with ultra high density industrial scale factory farming and this has resulted in 90million cows ... Sure that is 50% extra, but on the scale of this sort of issue - is that really a lot? Buffalo is probably nearly 50% bigger in mass and methane production anyway.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 5y ago

masteranza 5y ago

Frankly, I've expected the data to be worse, but it's also incomplete. They haven't taken into account the amount of greenhouse gases produced when the consumption of those foods is included, e.g., eating just beans is not going to decrease the total amount of greenhouse gases, because of gas producer shifts from the product to the consumer. On the other hand, it is little known that flatulence almost never happens on carnivore diet.

albertgoeswoof 5y ago

I felt like this figure was a bit low, and it is, because it doesn’t take into account the yield from each food source. E.g. as the article states “to produce 1kg of wheat, 2.5kg of greenhouse gases are emitted. A single kilo of beef, meanwhile, creates 70kg of emissions” Which is a much more meaningful way to look at it.

antisthenes 5y ago
Food also needs to be accounted for protein content and quality. Beef, for example, contains 2x as much protein and mostly fat otherwise, whereas wheat has carbs, which are much faster to digest. In order to consume as much protein as you would from beef, you have to consume twice as much of it. And since you can't really separate wheat protein from the carbs in household conditions, you're forced to overload on carbohydrates in order to get the same amount of high quality nutrients. And I'm not even touching on essential amino-acids, some of which are missing entirely in wheat. Which is why pretty much every single vegetarian has to supplement their meals with dairy or regularly boost with powdered protein. It doesn't matter much for sedentary lifestyles, but trying to be active on a vegetarian/vegan diet is pure hell.
- at_compile_time 5y ago
  >And since you can't really separate wheat protein from the carbs in household conditions, That's literally how you make seitan. https://backyardhomesteadhq.com/how-to-make-seitan-from-any-flour-a-complete-guide/ https://backyardhomesteadhq.com/how-to-make-seitan-from-any-...

meristohm 5y ago

“Eat food, not too much (instead of “not a lot”), mostly plants” is rephrasing Michael Pollan. My family isn’t vegan or vegetarian, we just rarely eat meat, and we enjoy it as a treat. I’d rather err on the side of under-eating and then experiment with what I need more of than consume too much “just in case” or because it feels good.

RattleyCooper 5y ago

And animals, in general, account for nearly 100% of all greenhouse gas emissions, so if we kill absolutely everything on the planet we can save the planet!

pl-94 5y ago
The planet is not a risk. The problem is first about human societies in the middle term perspective (before 2100). And then about human life in the long term (after 2100). But no the planet will always survive. It cares really little about its parasites.