16 ms·

The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet

168 points by kitkat_new 4y ago

bigtex 4y ago
These are the same people who fly on commercial planes to beautiful destinations to then lecture me about the food I eat and the cars I drive. I guarantee none of the people authoring the IPCC report are eating bugs or lab grown meat steaks at these fancy conferences.
postdb 4y ago
Wow pork emits less than chess and farmed fish! Very interesting!
throwaway22032 4y ago
I want to eat meat. I think it's better for me. Not only my health, but specific goals I have. I will do what is necessary in order to do so. This is generally how I operate. I also want to drive a car, own a house (not an apartment), have children, etcetera. It strictly benefits me to recommend that you (as a stranger) don't do any of this. I'd rather have less competition. That's all this stuff comes down to, to me. Convince everyone else to reduce their standard of living. I'm just not going to eat the bugs, sorry. Try as hard as you like.
exfatloss 4y ago
[flagged]
- hdhrufjdi 4y ago
  Why do you think this is good?
  - exfatloss 4y ago
    I think animal foods are very healthy and the CO2 emissions/environmental effects of cattle are usually overblown. One "study" I saw claimed cattle used 1000000x more water than grains. But they counted the rainfall on the entire grazing area as consumed by the cattle, which is obviously nonsense. It goes back into the cycle. (As does the water the cattle consume, of course.)
    - jwagenet 4y ago
      That study (if true) is obviously exaggerated, but the main issue is water diverted from rivers like the Colorado. Cows milk requires something like double the water of almond milk and an order of magnitude more water than oat milk.
    - Renaud 4y ago
      > CO2 emissions/environmental effects of cattle are usually overblown. Methane production from cattle is not a blip. Whatever statistic you pick, it's one of the major contributing factors to agricultural emissions. We tend to consume too much meat. The US in particular is the top consumer of meat per inhabitant, like 300% more than the recommended meat consumption for a healthy diet (about 100g/day of red meat, before cooking). So you can argue that an omnivorous diet is healthy, but we clearly over-produce meat and over-eat it by a very large margin.
      - exfatloss 4y ago
        I think quite the opposite - a beef-only diet, very high in fat, is probably the evolutionary diet we're most adapted too. After all we only started cultivating grains about 10,000 years ago. It was large, fatty megafauna for hundreds of thousands of years before that.
    - shortcake27 4y ago
      > I think animal foods are very healthy There are countless studies showing a link between red meat and negative health effects, and there is probably no safe amount. Are you saying all the studies are wrong? What evidence do you have to support your claim?
      - exfatloss 4y ago
        Those studies have been debunked. Current state of science is that there is no indication that reduction of red meat consumption would bring any health benefits.
- boesboes 4y ago
  Bad
alphabetatheta 4y ago
I'm actually surprised how much dairy products contribute to global warming. It's only veganism that really cuts down on carbon emissions.
- karmakurtisaani 4y ago
  I suppose theoretically optimal diet would have to be some flavour of vegan, plus maybe some fish if available. In practice, a major reduction of meat and dairy would probably be enough to make a difference.
- Tade0 4y ago
  Not really. I looked at the different scenarios and we would probably do fine on chicken and cheese in terms of water consumption, CO2 and land use. Pork is where it starts being risky. Beef, lamb etc. are the most problematic parts.
  - choeger 4y ago
    This. There needs to be a pyramid in top of the food pyramid. Beef is not bad per se, it just shouldn't be your weekly meat.
    - shortcake27 4y ago
      I’m not sure if you responded to the wrong comment or what because the parent is referencing environment impact but you’re referencing health impacts. From an environmental point of view, there’s a linear relationship between your consumption of beef and environmental impact. There is no amount of beef that is good for the environment. From a health point of view, it’s debated, however there are more studies that show red/processed meats having negative health effects than neutral or positive effects. Of course, you can cherry pick the studies that align with your beliefs, but the prevailing data, evidence, and research show beef actually _is_ bad per se. Note: there is no nutrient (that we know of) that you can only get from beef and no other food source. So it isn’t necessary to include it in your diet. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-beef-with-red-meat https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-bee...
lnsru 4y ago
[flagged]
- bobs_salsa 4y ago
  What a baseless, fearmongering comment that isn't even relevant to the post. There are plenty of arguments for why our future may be leading to what you describe, but less meat in your diet is not one of them...
  - slowmotiony 4y ago
    My diet, my choice.
- calgarymicro 4y ago
  The IPCC being blocked from making scientific recommendations by moneyed interests (the meat industry) is . . . communism?
waihtis 4y ago
The discussion around plants, meat and dairy need to become much more nuanced. Let's take dairy as an example - has a great effect in boosting mTORC1 activity which causes better growth in children. Now, a non-insignificant set of people who have bought into zealous veganry are raising children who will be physically more fragile just because they've been marketed with the idea that dairy == bad. On the other hand, overactivation of mTORC1 is a driver of "growth-related diseases" like cancer, which suggests you should limit it post-adolescence. In conclusion, I think it is right for us not to listen to political panels who are sticking their finger up in the air to measure what is the politically correct thing to say today and prescribe policies based on that. People should have the freedom to research and choose. I am a layman on this topic; feel free to correct any errors in my claims.
- cinntaile 4y ago
  > I am a layman on this topic; feel free to correct any errors in my claims. This isn't how this works. You should back up your own claims with sources.
  - realworldperson 4y ago
    [dead]
- at_compile_time 4y ago
  mTOR makes children grow faster, but everything I've heard suggests that it doesn't make them any taller as adults. Meanwhile, obesity rates in children keep growing, and atherogenesis doesn't wait until adulthood. Heart disease and cancer are still the leading causes of death in America. COVID's taken the #3 spot, which affected those with obesity and diabetes much more than those without, but I don't expect it to stick around on this list. Somehow, frailty due to not eating meat didn't make the top 10. If we want kids to be strong and healthy, get them outside and get them moving. No diet will see them healthy if they're sedentary.
  - waihtis 4y ago
lexa1979 4y ago
If they really read both pieces of papers, they'd read the footnote 53 in the final draft, detailing what the IPCC is calling a "sustainable healthy diet". "53 ‘Sustainable healthy diets’ promote all dimensions of individuals’ health and well-being; have low environmental pressure and impact; are accessible, affordable, safe and equitable; and are culturally acceptable, as described in FAO and WHO. The related concept of ‘balanced diets’ refers to diets that feature plant-based foods, such as those based on coarse grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and animal-sourced food produced in resilient, sustainable and low-GHG emission systems, as described in SRCCL" Is Scientist Rebellion a lobby ? Who's pushing an agenda here ?
anonyfox 4y ago
No matter where you stand (some meat eaters tend to become extremely emotional on this): The fact that the scientific results and recommendations get utterly censored like this before publication makes me really angry. It’s somewhat fine for me if people/governments choose to ignore or argue against these results after publication, but this is just absurd… and is then used from people all over the world to point to „see, even scientists say it’s fine!“! We must find a way to eliminate this lobbying/corruption, rather soon! Meanwhile, of course a vegan diet is better for the environment and renewables/green energy should be a top priority, and yes every bit counts, and if everyone would agree and do this instead of arguing we would have solved the issue already.
- nradov 4y ago
  This was an ideological recommendation, not a scientific one. It's fine for scientists to also engage in political advocacy but we should be clear about which role they're playing at the time.
- jrootabega 4y ago
  > Meanwhile, of course a vegan diet is better for the environment This is not a matter of course. Humans are part of the environment, and it is not a matter of course that a vegan diet is healthy for humans. The idea (I don't want to say fact, but I believe it) that meat and dairy consumption/industry are currently happening at a scale that is harmful does not mean that meat and dairy are bad for the environment.
  - dTal 4y ago
    I don't understand the structure of your argument. What do you mean by "not a matter of course"? There is plenty of evidence that 1) vegan diets are associated with improved health outcomes, broadly speaking and 2) animal consumption has a disproportionate environmental impact for the nutrients obtained (which is unsurprising from a physics perspective, since the animals eat plants that humans could eat directly). Perhaps these things are not "inherently" true in that one can easily come up with edge-case counterexamples, but they are true on the whole.
vegetablepotpie 4y ago
It really does feel like we’re living in bizzaro world. If you want to make recommendations based on evidence, make sure it doesn’t impact the profits of powerful groups. Many negative things we see in public policy stem from this fact. Lack of right to repair, lack of broadband in America, lack of cyber security in corporations, US tax law. Maybe you like your meat. That’s fine. You can make decisions for your self, but we should at least be able to acknowledge the impacts of those decisions. I think the solution is to blanket ban corporate speech. It really is different than individuals speaking and we need to acknowledge that.
- karmakurtisaani 4y ago
  You know, I'm also fine with people eating meat. I just would like them to pay for the damage they cause, and would not like to subsidise their consumption with my tax money.
- revelio 4y ago
  "I think the solution is to blanket ban corporate speech. It really is different than individuals speaking" Does that apply to universities, government employees and claims about the "consensus" too? Or are they all individuals?
- incone123 4y ago
  "I think the solution is to blanket ban corporate speech." How will you ban corporate shills?
  - vintermann 4y ago
    It shouldn't be all that hard, really. We ban prostitution (whether we should or not is another question). It's the same principle: you can do the thing as much as you like, but you can't pay people for it. It doesn't have to be strict. It doesn't have to be two sided. For simplicity, maybe you want to only ban the paying side. Say there can't be a post in your budget that says "influence politicians for favourable legislation" if you're an LLC. How limited liability corporations spend money is already pretty monitored, for obvious reasons, so it wouldn't be that hard.
tdeck 4y ago
Why bother? Hardly anything the IPCC says seems to translate into policy.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > Hardly anything the IPCC says seems to translate into policy. Following their reports multiple countries have adopted measures directly citing those reports, with targets based on those reports. E.g. to maintain warming below X C, we'll have to reduce by Y our annual CO2 emissions, so we'll ban new internal combustion engine cars sales starting 20ZZ, while also doing this and that. Seen across the EU and the US btw.
  - tdeck 4y ago
    Sure, where Y is either woefully inadequate or never hit and ZZ is typically far enough in the future that it's too late to have a meaningful effect, and can be reversed anyway before it comes to fruition. The likelihood that "eat less meat" is going to make it into meaningful policy changes seems pretty low.
Proven 4y ago
[dead]
fwungy 4y ago
Were these the same people who told us the glaciers would be melted and the Maldives under water by 2000? How narcissistic do you have to be to believe the world is going to end in your little eye blink of a lifetime? Look, the West can go carbon negative, but it makes no difference at all if China and India just use the West's carbon virtue to increase their own carbon consumption (that the West isn't using). We really should be thinking about next generation nuclear and mitigation as first tier strategies and not attempting to remake human nature in a few generations time.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  > We really should be thinking about next generation nuclear and mitigation as first tier strategies and not attempting to remake human nature in a few generations time. It's funny, because a lot of "greens" are asking for less carbon-* or carbon neutral stuff, but are immediately against anything nuclear, even though it's the only option we have, to generate enough power, even on windless nights. There are even comics made about this: https://i.redd.it/x1saxijbtj7a1.png https://i.redd.it/x1saxijbtj7a1.png
  - sunbum 4y ago
    Because the "greens" of the cold war are the same people today. Totally yes that must entirely be it!
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    I think greens are not alone in this - our whole culture has been part of demonizing nuclear power. Non-activist people accepted avoiding nuclear as a good compromise since it was a touchy subject. The luxury of considering no externalities (i.e allowing fossil fuel emissions) enabled this.
- frereubu 4y ago
  I take your point, but this isn't a zero-sum game, as has been shown by the plummeting cost of solar energy. If enough countries move towards renewable enegy (and in the mid-term nuclear, agreed) it will become cheap enough that other will adopt it for purely economic reasons.
mejutoco 4y ago
I find it bad that scientific results get censored, and I am also wondering if there is proof that a plant-based diet is more healthy. My suspicion is it might be for the average American, but it is based on gut feeling (pun intended). I remember margarine (plant-based) was all the rage too and IIRC it was much less healthy than butter (animal-based). My guess is it depends on the specific meals.
- colordrops 4y ago
  Margarine is a synthetic product, with the oil created in complex refineries then hydrogenated. You can't compare this to something like lentil stew or a salad. If the recommendation is that eating anything you want as long as the origin can be traced back to plants, then I agree, plant based diets aren't necessarily healthier. A WFPB (whole foods plant based) diet is undeniably healthy though. The problem with margarine is orthogonal - it's due to processing. Processing has been shown to be very unhealthy whether with plant based products like margarine, or animal based products like hot dogs. In any case the IPCC's recommendation is about the environment, and there is no doubt that animal foods are far worse for the environment.
  - mejutoco 4y ago
    Those are very good points. I agree on animal foods being worse for the environment too. Cheers.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    The idea that "processed food" is bad annoys me, because it's so impossibly broad. Milling, roasting, fermenting, freezing, drying, smoking, chopping, soaking, skimming, distilling, salting, curing, pickling, sieving, threshing, squeezing, and yes, hydrogenation - Anything we do to food is processing, and a lot of food is not safe to eat without processing. Veganism is one thing, but the "raw food" diet is damn near impossible to make work, so much that the alternative people who embrace every other fad like that warn against it. It is specific forms of processing which are bad, in specific circumstances. Smoking is, sadly, bad because the substances which preserve the food are carcinogenic. Partial hydrogenation of oils is bad because half of the partially hydrogenated products will be trans fats which the body really isn't good at handling.
guerby 4y ago
You always have to be careful for averages kgCO2/unit of some product where there are multiple ways to produce the stuff. To take beef for example (since it usually tops the kgCO2/unit food charts) if we just replaced the millions of bisons exterminated in the USA: https://theconversation.com/historical-photo-of-mountain-of-bison-skulls-documents-animals-on-the-brink-of-extinction-148780 https://theconversation.com/historical-photo-of-mountain-of-... (30-60 millions bisons to ... about 500). By cattle, on the same grass lands (no land use change - important), the impact on climate change would be exactly zero vs pre industrial levels. We could probable have some quantity of near CO2 neutral meat if we wanted to. When I want beef I buy from a local farmer (grass fed 10km from my home), I don't think removing it would really help the climate vs things I've done like insulating my house, switching to heat pump, remote work, and switching to EV.
m0llusk 4y ago
Do official recommendations like this really influence people's food choices? There have been calls for plant based diets for a long time and yet meat eating has been increasing.
- sprucevoid 4y ago
  Well no report by itself has a big impact. It is a matter of incremental change over time. Like with anything some people are early and they've already switched to plant based eating. Others move later. Like with any commercial sector with interest misaligned with the needed climate policy there is a lot of lobbying and greenwashing going on. This piece covers that well https://newrepublic.com/article/168766/meat-industry-lobbying-climate https://newrepublic.com/article/168766/meat-industry-lobbyin...
jononomo 4y ago
Interestingly, if you eat a diet of ONLY beef, as I do, then you will find that your health and fitness improve dramatically and that you spend dramatically less time preparing, cooking, and eating food. Also, if you eat only beef then you completely stop farting (and the volume of your poop falls by 80%). I've often wondered why "cow farts" are considered such a terrible climate change concern but "human farts" aren't.
leethargo 4y ago
According to the bar chart in the article, chocolate and coffee are also big factors. Why are these not talked about more? I'm guessing their impact is mostly from deforestation. Does somebody know more?

168 points by kitkat_new 4y ago

These are the same people who fly on commercial planes to beautiful destinations to then lecture me about the food I eat and the cars I drive. I guarantee none of the people authoring the IPCC report are eating bugs or lab grown meat steaks at these fancy conferences.

postdb 4y ago

Wow pork emits less than chess and farmed fish! Very interesting!

throwaway22032 4y ago

I want to eat meat. I think it's better for me. Not only my health, but specific goals I have. I will do what is necessary in order to do so. This is generally how I operate. I also want to drive a car, own a house (not an apartment), have children, etcetera. It strictly benefits me to recommend that you (as a stranger) don't do any of this. I'd rather have less competition. That's all this stuff comes down to, to me. Convince everyone else to reduce their standard of living. I'm just not going to eat the bugs, sorry. Try as hard as you like.

exfatloss 4y ago

[flagged]

hdhrufjdi 4y ago
Why do you think this is good?
- exfatloss 4y ago
  I think animal foods are very healthy and the CO2 emissions/environmental effects of cattle are usually overblown. One "study" I saw claimed cattle used 1000000x more water than grains. But they counted the rainfall on the entire grazing area as consumed by the cattle, which is obviously nonsense. It goes back into the cycle. (As does the water the cattle consume, of course.)
  - jwagenet 4y ago
    That study (if true) is obviously exaggerated, but the main issue is water diverted from rivers like the Colorado. Cows milk requires something like double the water of almond milk and an order of magnitude more water than oat milk.
  - Renaud 4y ago
    > CO2 emissions/environmental effects of cattle are usually overblown. Methane production from cattle is not a blip. Whatever statistic you pick, it's one of the major contributing factors to agricultural emissions. We tend to consume too much meat. The US in particular is the top consumer of meat per inhabitant, like 300% more than the recommended meat consumption for a healthy diet (about 100g/day of red meat, before cooking). So you can argue that an omnivorous diet is healthy, but we clearly over-produce meat and over-eat it by a very large margin.
    - exfatloss 4y ago
      I think quite the opposite - a beef-only diet, very high in fat, is probably the evolutionary diet we're most adapted too. After all we only started cultivating grains about 10,000 years ago. It was large, fatty megafauna for hundreds of thousands of years before that.
  - shortcake27 4y ago
    > I think animal foods are very healthy There are countless studies showing a link between red meat and negative health effects, and there is probably no safe amount. Are you saying all the studies are wrong? What evidence do you have to support your claim?
    - exfatloss 4y ago
      Those studies have been debunked. Current state of science is that there is no indication that reduction of red meat consumption would bring any health benefits.
boesboes 4y ago
Bad

alphabetatheta 4y ago

I'm actually surprised how much dairy products contribute to global warming. It's only veganism that really cuts down on carbon emissions.

karmakurtisaani 4y ago
I suppose theoretically optimal diet would have to be some flavour of vegan, plus maybe some fish if available. In practice, a major reduction of meat and dairy would probably be enough to make a difference.
Tade0 4y ago
Not really. I looked at the different scenarios and we would probably do fine on chicken and cheese in terms of water consumption, CO2 and land use. Pork is where it starts being risky. Beef, lamb etc. are the most problematic parts.
- choeger 4y ago
  This. There needs to be a pyramid in top of the food pyramid. Beef is not bad per se, it just shouldn't be your weekly meat.
  - shortcake27 4y ago
    I’m not sure if you responded to the wrong comment or what because the parent is referencing environment impact but you’re referencing health impacts. From an environmental point of view, there’s a linear relationship between your consumption of beef and environmental impact. There is no amount of beef that is good for the environment. From a health point of view, it’s debated, however there are more studies that show red/processed meats having negative health effects than neutral or positive effects. Of course, you can cherry pick the studies that align with your beliefs, but the prevailing data, evidence, and research show beef actually _is_ bad per se. Note: there is no nutrient (that we know of) that you can only get from beef and no other food source. So it isn’t necessary to include it in your diet. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-beef-with-red-meat https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-bee...

lnsru 4y ago

[flagged]

bobs_salsa 4y ago
What a baseless, fearmongering comment that isn't even relevant to the post. There are plenty of arguments for why our future may be leading to what you describe, but less meat in your diet is not one of them...
- slowmotiony 4y ago
  My diet, my choice.
calgarymicro 4y ago
The IPCC being blocked from making scientific recommendations by moneyed interests (the meat industry) is . . . communism?

waihtis 4y ago

The discussion around plants, meat and dairy need to become much more nuanced. Let's take dairy as an example - has a great effect in boosting mTORC1 activity which causes better growth in children. Now, a non-insignificant set of people who have bought into zealous veganry are raising children who will be physically more fragile just because they've been marketed with the idea that dairy == bad. On the other hand, overactivation of mTORC1 is a driver of "growth-related diseases" like cancer, which suggests you should limit it post-adolescence. In conclusion, I think it is right for us not to listen to political panels who are sticking their finger up in the air to measure what is the politically correct thing to say today and prescribe policies based on that. People should have the freedom to research and choose. I am a layman on this topic; feel free to correct any errors in my claims.

cinntaile 4y ago
> I am a layman on this topic; feel free to correct any errors in my claims. This isn't how this works. You should back up your own claims with sources.
- realworldperson 4y ago
  [dead]
at_compile_time 4y ago
mTOR makes children grow faster, but everything I've heard suggests that it doesn't make them any taller as adults. Meanwhile, obesity rates in children keep growing, and atherogenesis doesn't wait until adulthood. Heart disease and cancer are still the leading causes of death in America. COVID's taken the #3 spot, which affected those with obesity and diabetes much more than those without, but I don't expect it to stick around on this list. Somehow, frailty due to not eating meat didn't make the top 10. If we want kids to be strong and healthy, get them outside and get them moving. No diet will see them healthy if they're sedentary.
- waihtis 4y ago

lexa1979 4y ago

If they really read both pieces of papers, they'd read the footnote 53 in the final draft, detailing what the IPCC is calling a "sustainable healthy diet". "53 ‘Sustainable healthy diets’ promote all dimensions of individuals’ health and well-being; have low environmental pressure and impact; are accessible, affordable, safe and equitable; and are culturally acceptable, as described in FAO and WHO. The related concept of ‘balanced diets’ refers to diets that feature plant-based foods, such as those based on coarse grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and animal-sourced food produced in resilient, sustainable and low-GHG emission systems, as described in SRCCL" Is Scientist Rebellion a lobby ? Who's pushing an agenda here ?

anonyfox 4y ago

No matter where you stand (some meat eaters tend to become extremely emotional on this): The fact that the scientific results and recommendations get utterly censored like this before publication makes me really angry. It’s somewhat fine for me if people/governments choose to ignore or argue against these results after publication, but this is just absurd… and is then used from people all over the world to point to „see, even scientists say it’s fine!“! We must find a way to eliminate this lobbying/corruption, rather soon! Meanwhile, of course a vegan diet is better for the environment and renewables/green energy should be a top priority, and yes every bit counts, and if everyone would agree and do this instead of arguing we would have solved the issue already.

nradov 4y ago
This was an ideological recommendation, not a scientific one. It's fine for scientists to also engage in political advocacy but we should be clear about which role they're playing at the time.
jrootabega 4y ago
> Meanwhile, of course a vegan diet is better for the environment This is not a matter of course. Humans are part of the environment, and it is not a matter of course that a vegan diet is healthy for humans. The idea (I don't want to say fact, but I believe it) that meat and dairy consumption/industry are currently happening at a scale that is harmful does not mean that meat and dairy are bad for the environment.
- dTal 4y ago
  I don't understand the structure of your argument. What do you mean by "not a matter of course"? There is plenty of evidence that 1) vegan diets are associated with improved health outcomes, broadly speaking and 2) animal consumption has a disproportionate environmental impact for the nutrients obtained (which is unsurprising from a physics perspective, since the animals eat plants that humans could eat directly). Perhaps these things are not "inherently" true in that one can easily come up with edge-case counterexamples, but they are true on the whole.

vegetablepotpie 4y ago

It really does feel like we’re living in bizzaro world. If you want to make recommendations based on evidence, make sure it doesn’t impact the profits of powerful groups. Many negative things we see in public policy stem from this fact. Lack of right to repair, lack of broadband in America, lack of cyber security in corporations, US tax law. Maybe you like your meat. That’s fine. You can make decisions for your self, but we should at least be able to acknowledge the impacts of those decisions. I think the solution is to blanket ban corporate speech. It really is different than individuals speaking and we need to acknowledge that.

karmakurtisaani 4y ago
You know, I'm also fine with people eating meat. I just would like them to pay for the damage they cause, and would not like to subsidise their consumption with my tax money.
revelio 4y ago
"I think the solution is to blanket ban corporate speech. It really is different than individuals speaking" Does that apply to universities, government employees and claims about the "consensus" too? Or are they all individuals?
incone123 4y ago
"I think the solution is to blanket ban corporate speech." How will you ban corporate shills?
- vintermann 4y ago
  It shouldn't be all that hard, really. We ban prostitution (whether we should or not is another question). It's the same principle: you can do the thing as much as you like, but you can't pay people for it. It doesn't have to be strict. It doesn't have to be two sided. For simplicity, maybe you want to only ban the paying side. Say there can't be a post in your budget that says "influence politicians for favourable legislation" if you're an LLC. How limited liability corporations spend money is already pretty monitored, for obvious reasons, so it wouldn't be that hard.

tdeck 4y ago

Why bother? Hardly anything the IPCC says seems to translate into policy.

sofixa 4y ago
> Hardly anything the IPCC says seems to translate into policy. Following their reports multiple countries have adopted measures directly citing those reports, with targets based on those reports. E.g. to maintain warming below X C, we'll have to reduce by Y our annual CO2 emissions, so we'll ban new internal combustion engine cars sales starting 20ZZ, while also doing this and that. Seen across the EU and the US btw.
- tdeck 4y ago
  Sure, where Y is either woefully inadequate or never hit and ZZ is typically far enough in the future that it's too late to have a meaningful effect, and can be reversed anyway before it comes to fruition. The likelihood that "eat less meat" is going to make it into meaningful policy changes seems pretty low.

Proven 4y ago

[dead]

fwungy 4y ago

Were these the same people who told us the glaciers would be melted and the Maldives under water by 2000? How narcissistic do you have to be to believe the world is going to end in your little eye blink of a lifetime? Look, the West can go carbon negative, but it makes no difference at all if China and India just use the West's carbon virtue to increase their own carbon consumption (that the West isn't using). We really should be thinking about next generation nuclear and mitigation as first tier strategies and not attempting to remake human nature in a few generations time.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
> We really should be thinking about next generation nuclear and mitigation as first tier strategies and not attempting to remake human nature in a few generations time. It's funny, because a lot of "greens" are asking for less carbon-* or carbon neutral stuff, but are immediately against anything nuclear, even though it's the only option we have, to generate enough power, even on windless nights. There are even comics made about this: https://i.redd.it/x1saxijbtj7a1.png https://i.redd.it/x1saxijbtj7a1.png
- sunbum 4y ago
  Because the "greens" of the cold war are the same people today. Totally yes that must entirely be it!
- kzrdude 4y ago
  I think greens are not alone in this - our whole culture has been part of demonizing nuclear power. Non-activist people accepted avoiding nuclear as a good compromise since it was a touchy subject. The luxury of considering no externalities (i.e allowing fossil fuel emissions) enabled this.
frereubu 4y ago
I take your point, but this isn't a zero-sum game, as has been shown by the plummeting cost of solar energy. If enough countries move towards renewable enegy (and in the mid-term nuclear, agreed) it will become cheap enough that other will adopt it for purely economic reasons.

mejutoco 4y ago

I find it bad that scientific results get censored, and I am also wondering if there is proof that a plant-based diet is more healthy. My suspicion is it might be for the average American, but it is based on gut feeling (pun intended). I remember margarine (plant-based) was all the rage too and IIRC it was much less healthy than butter (animal-based). My guess is it depends on the specific meals.

colordrops 4y ago
Margarine is a synthetic product, with the oil created in complex refineries then hydrogenated. You can't compare this to something like lentil stew or a salad. If the recommendation is that eating anything you want as long as the origin can be traced back to plants, then I agree, plant based diets aren't necessarily healthier. A WFPB (whole foods plant based) diet is undeniably healthy though. The problem with margarine is orthogonal - it's due to processing. Processing has been shown to be very unhealthy whether with plant based products like margarine, or animal based products like hot dogs. In any case the IPCC's recommendation is about the environment, and there is no doubt that animal foods are far worse for the environment.
- mejutoco 4y ago
  Those are very good points. I agree on animal foods being worse for the environment too. Cheers.
- vintermann 4y ago
  The idea that "processed food" is bad annoys me, because it's so impossibly broad. Milling, roasting, fermenting, freezing, drying, smoking, chopping, soaking, skimming, distilling, salting, curing, pickling, sieving, threshing, squeezing, and yes, hydrogenation - Anything we do to food is processing, and a lot of food is not safe to eat without processing. Veganism is one thing, but the "raw food" diet is damn near impossible to make work, so much that the alternative people who embrace every other fad like that warn against it. It is specific forms of processing which are bad, in specific circumstances. Smoking is, sadly, bad because the substances which preserve the food are carcinogenic. Partial hydrogenation of oils is bad because half of the partially hydrogenated products will be trans fats which the body really isn't good at handling.

guerby 4y ago

You always have to be careful for averages kgCO2/unit of some product where there are multiple ways to produce the stuff. To take beef for example (since it usually tops the kgCO2/unit food charts) if we just replaced the millions of bisons exterminated in the USA: https://theconversation.com/historical-photo-of-mountain-of-bison-skulls-documents-animals-on-the-brink-of-extinction-148780 https://theconversation.com/historical-photo-of-mountain-of-... (30-60 millions bisons to ... about 500). By cattle, on the same grass lands (no land use change - important), the impact on climate change would be exactly zero vs pre industrial levels. We could probable have some quantity of near CO2 neutral meat if we wanted to. When I want beef I buy from a local farmer (grass fed 10km from my home), I don't think removing it would really help the climate vs things I've done like insulating my house, switching to heat pump, remote work, and switching to EV.

m0llusk 4y ago

Do official recommendations like this really influence people's food choices? There have been calls for plant based diets for a long time and yet meat eating has been increasing.

sprucevoid 4y ago
Well no report by itself has a big impact. It is a matter of incremental change over time. Like with anything some people are early and they've already switched to plant based eating. Others move later. Like with any commercial sector with interest misaligned with the needed climate policy there is a lot of lobbying and greenwashing going on. This piece covers that well https://newrepublic.com/article/168766/meat-industry-lobbying-climate https://newrepublic.com/article/168766/meat-industry-lobbyin...

jononomo 4y ago

Interestingly, if you eat a diet of ONLY beef, as I do, then you will find that your health and fitness improve dramatically and that you spend dramatically less time preparing, cooking, and eating food. Also, if you eat only beef then you completely stop farting (and the volume of your poop falls by 80%). I've often wondered why "cow farts" are considered such a terrible climate change concern but "human farts" aren't.

leethargo 4y ago

According to the bar chart in the article, chocolate and coffee are also big factors. Why are these not talked about more? I'm guessing their impact is mostly from deforestation. Does somebody know more?