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Comment by chunkyslink | Hacker News Reader

I'm fairly sure that meat production and farming for human consumption is the best way to have a quick global impact on climate change, slowing deforestation and slowing species extinction.

Fossil fuels are the wrong target for a quick win (which we need).

Caveat: I eat meat once a week now.

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I've just look at some stats (a few first google results, no idea if they are correct) and it seems that in developed countries meat production has about 3% impact on CO2 the whole emission. It is also not clear how this number was calculated, as "deforestation" is mentioned as a factor that increases CO2 emission, I don't know how much it contributes to those 3% - maybe it would be enough to stop deforestation. The most harmful is beef production, pork or chickens seems to be much less important. So yes, maybe beef consumption will help, but only very little.

In a nutshell, in developed countries, the deforestation happened a long time ago, so it doesn't have a big impact on the continuing CO2 contribution from meat production. In other words, no new land is being cleared for livestock in most developed countries. In developing countries, unfortunately, deforestation for livestock production can be a big contribution to CO2.

> meat production has about 3% impact on CO2 the whole emission.

CO2 is not the only GHG.

EDIT: See https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...

Become a hunter and harvest deer meat instead of purchasing cow meat. You will be participating in sustainability of forests and wild game populations and helping to fund your local wildlife and fisheries agency. Deer populations have reached record levels of around 33 million in the U.S. alone, and they are very destructive to the forests (and suffer horrible deaths in the winter as they overgraze and strip the land of all edibles). The meat is very lean and nutritious.

Entomophagy is also an option -- eat grasshoppers. Insect protein is high quality, low fat, and very abundant. It's lower on the food chain than mammalian protein, easily grown, and can be prepared into tasty dishes (more common in Africa and Asia than in the U.S. and Europe).

I feel this is a misnomer. The carbon to grow the corn the cows eat comes from the atmosphere. Corn doesn't create new carbon. Cows don't create new carbon. Some of the carbon does get released back into the atmosphere as the corn is harvested and the cows eat it.

The reason fossil fuels are so bad is that we are releasing carbon that has been sequestered for thousands and millions of years. We need to stop increasing the max supply in the atmosphere and slow recapture what is there so we can reduce the ppm and start lowering the greenhouse effects we have created.

The problem with cows is supposedly their farts and blurbs that contain a lot of methane- a powerful greenhouse gas.

It does and right now we are doing both. There is also a lot of promise around methane capture which we can then burn as fuel and only end up with CO2 (but no new CO2). Methane will also eventually turn back into CO2 and water but it takes several years. Our biggest challenge is that humans (me included) are selfish. We really just need less people to give the earth time to heal itself without doubling down on the destruction at the same time.

How is convincing everyone to change their diet a “quick win?” Seems to me converting fossil fuels to renewables is the “quicker win” as it doesn’t require all of humanity to change their behavior.

Nuclear power (often avoided for ideological, unscientific reasons) could have a much bigger impact.

You’re talking about changing most of the world’s diet. Good luck with that.

I really don't get this type of defeatist thinking, and I see this in basically every climate discussion.

It's pretty simple - it either happens (along with renewables etc.) or we face the consequences. It either happens willingly or forcefully. And as a matter of fact, veganism/flexitarianism are on the rise, so it is happening. Some people just get it and act.

There are no 'diets' on a dead planet. Good luck with choosing your diet then.

Few care to have a discussion with hyperbolics.

Beyond Meat seems to be doing well.

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