There probably isn't an incentive to reduce methane emissions for farmers right now though, right? We'd have to pass regulations mandating a reduction, or an emissions tax or something.
I think we will be able to detect methane emissions on a large scale from space sometime soon, e.g. [1]. At that point, farmers can't escape the law in any way, and they will have an incentive to reduce emissions.
[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0615/NASA-detects-meth...
You don't want to make the law something they must "escape" from, but rather something they can profit from by not polluting. Like tax credits.
"Yes, there is a lot of work on finding methane emissions by satellite. This is good as a broad guide to spotting big emissions like the huge US leak: the real problem we have is in quantifying emissions at ground level from a wide range of much smaller sources, and in placing good accurate numbers on the fluxes.
Unfortunately, the emission is from the ground into the boundary layer, at the bottom of the atmosphere, while satellite observation sees through the total column. We use wind back-trajectory analysis to identify the source of the methane (running the weather backwards), but there have been bad examples in the past where the media latched onto claims of major methane anomalies seen from space (e.g. in the Arctic or in S America) and didn’t realise that the methane was in the mid-troposphere in air that had last been in contact with the ground many thousands of miles away.
What is needed is an integrated approach at all levels, using satellite observation, wind-tracking using chemical transport models, and careful ground measurement to identify sources."
The relevant part is from 13:58 (Andrieu, Eric) to (including) !4:00 (Eck, Stefan). I'm not sure if there ever existed software that worked on that site, so you probably have to skip to 1:48 in the stream mms://vod.europarl.europa.eu/wmv/nas/nasvod02/vod0910/2015/wm/VODChapter_20151028_12104300_14320200_509dc321150aee25e47-337f.wmv?wmcache=0
It's not like that voting is directly relevant in the legislative process but that's another discussion.
You can live on a vegan diet, but it is easier to live on an omnivore diet. And since for most people easier is preferable, and when talking about the population of the world as a whole, you'll still find that a large percentage of the world's population will eat meat if it is easily available.
So seguing into climate change issues, this took politics too. It started with grassroots taking hold in the 60's counter culture, then the start of political pressure in the 70's. The first big political move was Reagan coming on board during the 80's; and also some lucky technology hook ups like solar powered calculators (never underestimate the power of logistical growth from a low end but widely used product).
The 90's brought us government sponsored research and industry backed development and product roll outs; this led to massive improvements in cost mainly though scale. The last 15 years have led to product refinements, financing options, and a greater society wide understanding of just how bad climate change could be.
And now we are at a situation of solar becoming cheaper than coal for producing electricity. 50 years!
So if you want to achieve the same with meat vs vegetables there is an enormous amount to achieve, above all you'll need to convince people at least as well as climate change issues, get government backing, make it as enjoyable as eating meat, and drive down the cost of Lysine and Methionine extraction.
In fact Canola (low erucic acid rapeseed) meal (what's left over after oil extraction) is currently used as livestock feed, this could be used for human consumption but would require further post-processing and possibly protein profile adjustment.
To accept it you must either be against democracy as a concept of equal rights to vote, or for an almost equal distribution of income. Neither of which is particular mainstream ideologies today.
We could demand that farms had zero carbon footprint, zero water usage/drainage, a new tree for every cut one, and no pesticides. It is expensive, and food labeled under a mission which try to cover some of those aspects do demand a much higher price. At best it can be said is that its has a lower environmental impact that cows, even through my government (Sweden) explicitly says that if we don't get more farmers, most of the open field and bio diversity that comes from open fields will be lost.
Personally, I would go with a omnivore diet that pay a little extra (ie about double vs the cheapest) for products under environmental focused labels, and then just eat less of it. Even better, skip that car and you will end up having a much lower carbon footprint than any car owner has, regardless of diet.
Until someone can fix this and disassociate ecological efficiency from the limousine liberal, these programs are unfortunately going to only be marginal. Minimizing environmental externalities can't be seen as optional.
Lots of reasonable things increase cost - such as refrigerated storage and inspection. We don't tier the product market like this though, "oh you want your meat to be free of disease? Well then mr fancy pants... Here's the luxury product."
I agree in principle with your sentiment; however, I have yet to come up with an alternative which does not involve strong environmental legislation. Which, in the US at least, is only likely to happen after it's too late, if ever.
Conservatives are unlikely to be OK with someone knowingly and intentionally exposing people to fatal levels of radiation in the way they are OK with adverse ecological systems.
It needs to leave the intellectual space of optional or preferential discourse and enter the one of rights and crimes.
I don't think that's true. They defended the cigarette industry, for example. They oppose laws and regulations protecting people in the workplace. They support and encourage law enforcement's abuse of the poor and minorities.
> It needs to leave the intellectual space of optional or preferential discourse and enter the one of rights and crimes.
That would help, but for many it's about ideology and greed and not about rational debate.
For instance, if a beer commercial was jingoistic and patriotic, we'd probably agree that it was a marketing tactic and not necessarily the drinking choice of nationalists.
I agree, but many self-identified conservatives believe these things, according to polls.
I'm pretty sure this move was made by the 'anti-environmentalists', including big industry and those fighting the ideological war against 'liberalism'. They would have found a way to discredit it among their followers - if not this way, than another.
Even these terms are from their propaganda, but lots of people repeat them as if they have meaning and represent something real.
> rich liberal urban elite.
> limousine liberal
I didn't say the terms were unintentionally used, I said they were empty stereotypes from conservative propaganda.
Regarding their emptiness: Can you define the terms? Do you have some data to back up the existence of the demographic and their purported behavior?
http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/ukhome/food-quality/eggs.html#clo...
Couldn't you look at it as a vanguard thing? Like, once the public is more used to the idea because it's been on the market in some form, it's easier to mandate it?
Only in the short term.
Methane has a GWP (Global Warming Potential or equivalent impact compared to same amount of carbon dioxide) of 86 over 20 years; 34 over 100 years; and 7.6 over 500 years.
34 / 5 is 6.8 so most of that 500 year potential is front loaded to the first 100 years. The difference from 7.6 vs 6.8 is because it breaks down into some CO2. And in fact is less potent than C02 from year 100-400.
This is how Norway encourages bottle recycling: There's no law mandating recycling of bottles, but there's a substantial tax on beverage containers that you get a reduction of in proportion to your return rate. This has resulted in a return rate of 99%+ of recyclable bottles by making it economically beneficial for retailers and distributors to participate in fairly elaborate and expensive collection and recycling schemes.
It takes some work to get mechanisms like this in place in a way that isn't easy to exploit, but get the incentives right and you can let economic interests do most of the work.
After some while, giving more marketing about "going green" and calculating that money was being throw at the garbage, some stores like restaurants and supermarkets began to collect those aluminum cans. Profit for then, recycling still being profitable to companies, poor people lost this income they have fomented.
Getting the incentives right across the whole chain is important.
E.g. I can't rememember ever seeing an automated bottle return machine like these [1] [2] in a US grocery store. It's been a few years, so it may have gotten more widespread, and I know some states have had return laws that have been more effective, so I'm sure it depends on location. In Norway the norm is for most grocery stores and shopping centres with any stores that sell bottles to have those.
Part of the reason is that in Norway, if people don't return bottles, the cost for retailers and distributors go up (or more precisely, their tax does not go down) by more than the cost of the recycling, so it's not just consumers that are incentivised, but retailers and distributors too, with the result that there's a massive infrastructure targeted at making it easy to return (and as a result one of the largest manufacturers wordwide of automated return solutions is Norwegian as well).
I currently live in the UK, which is much worse than the US when it comes to bottle rturns, and really wish the above solution would become more widespread.