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Comment by mkempe | Hacker News Reader

"The company estimates that the policy will save 445.1m pounds of CO2 emissions ... by 2023." That's 202,000 kt over a 5-year plan.

Global fuel-based emissions in 2015: 36,061,710 kt CO2.

In other words, they think they are so important as to "save" about 0.1% of global CO2 annually just by refusing to include meat in the menu of their own events and employee-expensed meals. I doubt the magnitude of their estimates.

[added] For a sense of scale, WeWork has about 2,000 employees.

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Why does it make sense to compare global CO2 emissions to WeWork's CO2 emissions?

One company with one decision making an 0.1% reduction on global CO2 annually sounds pretty darn good to me.

It should sound good—unbelievably good. This is why the global comparison makes sense: it implies wework is already using at least 0.1% of the world’s C02 production. Which seems absurd for 1/4000000th of the world population.

Maybe they were just letting cows rot in their pantry, I dunno.

> One company with one decision making an 0.1% reduction on global CO2 annually sounds pretty darn good to me.

The point is that WeWork is being either credulous, fraudulent, or incompetent, because it isn't possible for this 2,000 person company to account for 0.1% of global CO2.

I read mkempe's comment as agreeing that it sounds pretty darned good... in fact too good to be credible.

Also, if a group of urban westerners WERE to stop eating such a large quantity of meat en masse, it would have the effect of lowering the price of meat and not the effect of simply reducing the meat eaten in the world. Most of that meat will just get bought by others for a slightly cheaper price. Making protein cheaper for poorer people in the world would arguably be the best outcome of this experiment if the magnitude were anything close to their estimates.

You're right to consider the marginal effect that this might have on the purchasing habits of meat eaters, but you're wrong to ignore the marginal effect that the fall in prices will have on meat producers.

A fall in price will always reduce the quantity supplied, ceteris paribus.

> Also, if a group of urban westerners WERE to stop eating such a large quantity of meat en masse, it would have the effect of lowering the price of meat and not the effect of simply reducing the meat eaten in the world.

This is equivalent to claiming that demand for meat is purely elastic and that the market for meat is frictionless with respect to shipping worldwide.

What evidence do you have for these claims?

Let alone that lower demand might lower price and increase consumption from others, keeping net meat production the same.

Even more obviously absurd: 15 million animals saved is how many per employee?

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