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For anyone interested in the numbers behind how bad beef and deforestation are for the environment, see Hannah Ritchie’s great new book Not the End of the World

For anyone interested in the numbers behind how bad beef and deforestation are for the environment, see Hannah Ritchie’s great new book Not the End of the World.

mytailorisrich 2y ago
Beef in itself is not bad for the environment. It's the scale of demand that is bad. And that demand is fueled by the combined effects of global population growth and global increase in standards of living. We tend to stop at the symptoms instead of going after the root cause.
- defiamazing 2y ago
  Agreed. Check out /r/keto and /r/zerocarb for some great research about the natural human diet. Humans have eaten beef (exclusively even) for billions of years.
  - crawfishphase 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - chickenchase-rd 2y ago
    Brazilians of years, not billions
  - jdietrich 2y ago
    Humans have only existed for about 300,000 years. Cows are about 10,000 years old.
- Qem 2y ago
  > Beef in itself is not bad for the environment. It's the scale of demand that is bad. Wasting crops feeding cattle is inherently worse than the alternative, feeding directly on the crops and avoiding the wasting of calories when going up one trophic level.
  - mytailorisrich 2y ago
    That's an uneeded "optimisation". There is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. Again, the issue is that the environment has a limited, finite capacity, which we exceed when we are 10 billion with good standards of living. To reduce quality of life (because it's not limited to meat, it's comprehensive restrictions) simply to accomodate ever more humans on the planet is madness and unsustainable, anyway. PS: Let's also remember, for example, that 50-60 million bisons roamed North America before European settlement, whereas there are about 28 million beef cows in the US today (according to Google).
    - repelsteeltje 2y ago
      Another way to cast the meat vs crops debate is "true pricing": the growing demand for meat is not simply a result of growing population or growing standards of living, but caused by ignoring "externalities". I.e.: if the true impact of turning crops into meat were reflected in the price of a hamburger, demand elasticity would eventually result in much less production. Or: growing meat consumption is mostly a result of implicit subsidies to maintain status quo, ignore climate change,etc.
    - emptysongglass 2y ago
      > There is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. You're not doing a whole lot to explain why there is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. I can think of a whole host of reasons why it is wrong in matters of ethics and mercy. Who is there to advocate for the cow? We know cows feel a gamut of emotions just as we do. They are not insensate. Most humans, when given a knife or a captive bolt gun and told to go kill that cow on yonder would not. So we externalize the death-making to slaughterhouse workers who coincidentally also suffer: > ...SHWs had significantly higher levels of depression compared with office workers, but not butchers. The difference in depression rates differed from study to study, ranging from 10% to 50% [1] There's really no good, ethical argument to be made for the killing of animals for food or pleasure. Did we need to do it once to survive as a species? Yes. Are we largely living in a post-scarcity world where those practices should now be challenged? Yes. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10009492/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10009492/
- DasIch 2y ago
  Beef is extremely inefficient compared to plant-based food. We could sustain a far larger population with no loss in standards of living without it.
  - wk_end 2y ago
    Most people would argue that not eating beef would lower their standard of living.
    - _3u10 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - rangestransform 2y ago
    [flagged]
- pickleberto 2y ago
  [dead]
- colordrops 2y ago
  That's like saying "oil is not bad for the environment, it's the scale of the demand that is bad".
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
willcipriano 2y ago
> deforestation https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/co2-is-making-earth-greenerfor-now/ https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/co2-is-making-... https://terra.nasa.gov/news/modis-shows-earth-is-greener https://terra.nasa.gov/news/modis-shows-earth-is-greener
- Qem 2y ago
  Greening != Recovery > China’s outsized contribution to the global greening trend comes in large part (42%) from programs to conserve and expand forests. These were developed in an effort to reduce the effects of soil erosion, air pollution and climate change. Another 32% there – and 82% of the greening seen in India – comes from intensive cultivation of food crops. If the green of pristine forests is replaced by the green desert of a monocultural eucalyptus planted forest, or the green of grass pastures, it's still a big ecological net loss.
  - willcipriano 2y ago
    Read the first one. The second has a lot of spin that is obvious once you have the context from the first article. The entire planet is greener. Everywhere. The planting did little. > Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect One of those Inconvenient Truths.
    - _3u10 2y ago
      Exactly, the US and Europe are free to reforest but choose not to for some unexplained reason. Brazilian beef is frankly way less deforested than anything from the U.S. or Europe. The three most forested countries in the world are Russia, Canada and Brazil in that order. In all honesty I’m perfectly fine with the bans / boycotts it keeps farmers here poor and beef cheap.
      - willcipriano 2y ago
        North America (and the US) is greener than 20 years ago. Europe is greener than 20 years ago. Asia is greener than 20 years ago. Africa is greener than 20 years ago. The entire planet is greener than 20 years ago. It has nothing to do with people planting trees and everything to do with Co2 being what plants eat.
debacle 2y ago
As a counter point, livestock are a critical part of the regenerative ag movement. Our property was farmland for 150 years before it basically ran out of nutrients in the 1970s. After one year of a pretty good harvest (not great) in 2019, we couldn't grow anything. One home testing kit later, and we found that there were virtually no minerals in the soil. Fast forward five years and between heavy composting and generating a very healthy amount of bird waste, we're just starting to restore the nutrient balance in the soil. The next step (in progress) is planting some native grasses and low lying shrubs to try and break up the practically impenetrable clay pan that exists below the soil. Many people dislike meat eating, and I understand that, but developing a healthy relationship with the land practically requires some form of livestock. We are turning "dead" land into highly productive pasture literally in one growing cycle.
- guhidalg 2y ago
  Where did the feed for the animals come from?
  - debacle 2y ago
    Kitchen scraps and forage mostly. We did add some feed during the winter because we miscalculated our needs. We aren't doing anything intensive, and we don't have chickens or pigs. I did the math, and it doesn't really seem like you can have chickens or pigs just range, you have to supplement their diet in some way. Geese on the other hand are like...the best animals for regenerative ag, maybe next to sheep. We will probably get chickens at some point (unless we miraculously can range enough ducks for eggs), but we will have to buy in their feed.
  - shmageggy 2y ago
    This is currently downvoted, but it's a valid question. The concept at play is "ghost acres". The idea being that you might have a wonderful regenerated plot of productive land, but if it requires a massive amount of land elsewhere to maintain, you might not have gained as much as you think.
- LinXitoW 2y ago

For anyone interested in the numbers behind how bad beef and deforestation are for the environment, see Hannah Ritchie’s great new book Not the End of the World.

mytailorisrich 2y ago

Beef in itself is not bad for the environment. It's the scale of demand that is bad. And that demand is fueled by the combined effects of global population growth and global increase in standards of living. We tend to stop at the symptoms instead of going after the root cause.

defiamazing 2y ago
Agreed. Check out /r/keto and /r/zerocarb for some great research about the natural human diet. Humans have eaten beef (exclusively even) for billions of years.
- crawfishphase 2y ago
  [flagged]
- chickenchase-rd 2y ago
  Brazilians of years, not billions
- jdietrich 2y ago
  Humans have only existed for about 300,000 years. Cows are about 10,000 years old.
Qem 2y ago
> Beef in itself is not bad for the environment. It's the scale of demand that is bad. Wasting crops feeding cattle is inherently worse than the alternative, feeding directly on the crops and avoiding the wasting of calories when going up one trophic level.
- mytailorisrich 2y ago
  That's an uneeded "optimisation". There is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. Again, the issue is that the environment has a limited, finite capacity, which we exceed when we are 10 billion with good standards of living. To reduce quality of life (because it's not limited to meat, it's comprehensive restrictions) simply to accomodate ever more humans on the planet is madness and unsustainable, anyway. PS: Let's also remember, for example, that 50-60 million bisons roamed North America before European settlement, whereas there are about 28 million beef cows in the US today (according to Google).
  - repelsteeltje 2y ago
    Another way to cast the meat vs crops debate is "true pricing": the growing demand for meat is not simply a result of growing population or growing standards of living, but caused by ignoring "externalities". I.e.: if the true impact of turning crops into meat were reflected in the price of a hamburger, demand elasticity would eventually result in much less production. Or: growing meat consumption is mostly a result of implicit subsidies to maintain status quo, ignore climate change,etc.
  - emptysongglass 2y ago
    > There is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. You're not doing a whole lot to explain why there is nothing wrong with eating meat and breeding cattle. I can think of a whole host of reasons why it is wrong in matters of ethics and mercy. Who is there to advocate for the cow? We know cows feel a gamut of emotions just as we do. They are not insensate. Most humans, when given a knife or a captive bolt gun and told to go kill that cow on yonder would not. So we externalize the death-making to slaughterhouse workers who coincidentally also suffer: > ...SHWs had significantly higher levels of depression compared with office workers, but not butchers. The difference in depression rates differed from study to study, ranging from 10% to 50% [1] There's really no good, ethical argument to be made for the killing of animals for food or pleasure. Did we need to do it once to survive as a species? Yes. Are we largely living in a post-scarcity world where those practices should now be challenged? Yes. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10009492/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10009492/
DasIch 2y ago
Beef is extremely inefficient compared to plant-based food. We could sustain a far larger population with no loss in standards of living without it.
- wk_end 2y ago
  Most people would argue that not eating beef would lower their standard of living.
  - _3u10 2y ago
    [flagged]
- rangestransform 2y ago
  [flagged]
pickleberto 2y ago
[dead]
colordrops 2y ago
That's like saying "oil is not bad for the environment, it's the scale of the demand that is bad".

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

willcipriano 2y ago

> deforestation https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/co2-is-making-earth-greenerfor-now/ https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/co2-is-making-... https://terra.nasa.gov/news/modis-shows-earth-is-greener https://terra.nasa.gov/news/modis-shows-earth-is-greener

Qem 2y ago
Greening != Recovery > China’s outsized contribution to the global greening trend comes in large part (42%) from programs to conserve and expand forests. These were developed in an effort to reduce the effects of soil erosion, air pollution and climate change. Another 32% there – and 82% of the greening seen in India – comes from intensive cultivation of food crops. If the green of pristine forests is replaced by the green desert of a monocultural eucalyptus planted forest, or the green of grass pastures, it's still a big ecological net loss.
- willcipriano 2y ago
  Read the first one. The second has a lot of spin that is obvious once you have the context from the first article. The entire planet is greener. Everywhere. The planting did little. > Results showed that carbon dioxide fertilization explains 70 percent of the greening effect One of those Inconvenient Truths.
  - _3u10 2y ago
    Exactly, the US and Europe are free to reforest but choose not to for some unexplained reason. Brazilian beef is frankly way less deforested than anything from the U.S. or Europe. The three most forested countries in the world are Russia, Canada and Brazil in that order. In all honesty I’m perfectly fine with the bans / boycotts it keeps farmers here poor and beef cheap.
    - willcipriano 2y ago
      North America (and the US) is greener than 20 years ago. Europe is greener than 20 years ago. Asia is greener than 20 years ago. Africa is greener than 20 years ago. The entire planet is greener than 20 years ago. It has nothing to do with people planting trees and everything to do with Co2 being what plants eat.

debacle 2y ago

As a counter point, livestock are a critical part of the regenerative ag movement. Our property was farmland for 150 years before it basically ran out of nutrients in the 1970s. After one year of a pretty good harvest (not great) in 2019, we couldn't grow anything. One home testing kit later, and we found that there were virtually no minerals in the soil. Fast forward five years and between heavy composting and generating a very healthy amount of bird waste, we're just starting to restore the nutrient balance in the soil. The next step (in progress) is planting some native grasses and low lying shrubs to try and break up the practically impenetrable clay pan that exists below the soil. Many people dislike meat eating, and I understand that, but developing a healthy relationship with the land practically requires some form of livestock. We are turning "dead" land into highly productive pasture literally in one growing cycle.

guhidalg 2y ago
Where did the feed for the animals come from?
- debacle 2y ago
  Kitchen scraps and forage mostly. We did add some feed during the winter because we miscalculated our needs. We aren't doing anything intensive, and we don't have chickens or pigs. I did the math, and it doesn't really seem like you can have chickens or pigs just range, you have to supplement their diet in some way. Geese on the other hand are like...the best animals for regenerative ag, maybe next to sheep. We will probably get chickens at some point (unless we miraculously can range enough ducks for eggs), but we will have to buy in their feed.
- shmageggy 2y ago
  This is currently downvoted, but it's a valid question. The concept at play is "ghost acres". The idea being that you might have a wonderful regenerated plot of productive land, but if it requires a massive amount of land elsewhere to maintain, you might not have gained as much as you think.
LinXitoW 2y ago