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Comment by ysleepy | Hacker News Reader

Wow, thats weak reasoning. They add the emissions of the stuff you statistically buy with the money instead of meat. Even then it still comes out as a reduction.

I'm not a vegetarian, but seeing the other ecological effects of requiring 5x agricultural land and fertiliser to get the same calories as not good is reasonable.

This is clearly propaganda.

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That's only the third and weakest of Lomborg's points. The others are:

1. Food makes up only 20% of an average person's greenhouse emissions, and probably less if you're living a jetsetting Silicon Valley lifestyle of air-conditioned spaces and lengthy commutes.

2. The original calculation assumes you'll go 100% vegan, not just vegetarian, which for most people is a step too far.

Even excluding the third argument, Lomborg notes that you're looking at a 4.3% reduction at best.

That’s a very unfair statement I think.

I for one drive an EV that’s charged by solar panels at my place of work, and my energy is sourced from a mix of hydro / solar / and wind.

This is probably true for a significant portion of people in the Valley. Certainly more so than say people in Midwest US and Canada.

What? Here in Iowa we get a significant fraction of the state energy budget from wind. More GW than California. Can't drive across the state without encountering 'wind farms', hundreds of giant generators extending in arrays to the horizon.

https://www.iowafarmbureau.com/Article/Iowa-is-a-Leader-in-t...

I’ve lived in Alberta and I’ve visited many parts of the US where the Mighty Truck is the preferred method of transportation, and their mileage is less than desirable. Then there is heating that must be done in the winter which will most likely be still done by burning nat gas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

Shows Iowa as 14th on emissions per capita and California is 6th from the bottom. So what are you trying to prove?

Aside: Iowa Farm Bureau is an insurance company that pretends to be the voice of farmers and “grass roots org”, it is also big a lobbying spender. Which makes me doubt both your intent and sources.

Really? Attack me personally? Is that your preferred 'argument'?

The fact is, Iowa produces more energy by wind that many other states, including California. Is that in dispute? Citation please.

No that is not in dispute, but I also don’t see how what I said in the original comment is false or what your point is. All you have said is “What?” What what? You haven’t put any of my claims in dispute either, and I have given evidence that most states have a significantly higher emissions per capita as a whole than California, I couldn’t get more granular and current measurements for Bay Area as a whole so this will do for now as last I checked SV is part of California. The original person I was replying to has made no legitimate claims (backed with data) to defend their position, which is precisely what I called out. You made a comment about how Iowa has more wind power in response. Fine. So what? Iowa is ranked fifth when it comes to energy consumption per capita as well [1] while California is 48th. The majority of Iowa’s energy still comes from coal and natural gas. In 2017, California ranked second in the nation in conventional hydroelectric generation and first as a producer of electricity from solar, geothermal, and biomass resources. Wind is practical the only source of renewable energy in Iowa and it’s total amount is dwarfed by what California is producing. So once again back to your original reply, what I have said that is wrong or incorrect that deserves only “what?” You can browse on EIA and see for yourself very clearly that per capita almost every other state is worse than California, that includes the Midwest.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/state/rankings/

"This is probably true for a significant portion of people in the Valley. Certainly more so than say people in Midwest US "

That was in dispute. California gets a tiny fraction of its power from wind, the total state less than Iowa produces (where did you get the 'dwarfed' notion?) while the Midwest gets up to 50%. In Iowa another large fraction is from the Palo nuclear plant. So, very little coal etc.

Coal's share of net electricity generation in Iowa declined from 76% in 2008 to 45% in 2018, but coal is still the state's largest source of net electricity generation. 45% is very little indeed.

Please fact check your claims next time.

California produces 28000 MW of renewables total which is way more than Iowa. California Coal power mix was about 3%, and lower in my community

I claim that Iowa wind energy exceeds California. That's all. And that's true.

It's unseemly to keep changing the subject to one that you can 'win'.

As far as I can tell from the article, he's looking at only the direct emissions from agriculture, and ignoring land use changes, like being able to plant trees where we used to grow grain for beef.

A quick read of the career of Bjørn Lomborg shows he is an useful messenger of companies and people that have an interest in climate crisis denial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg

yip! i stopped reading the article as soon as i came across his name

'A reduction' isn't the same as 'a big effect'. Meat is marginally more expensive, ecologically. But the other alternatives are not free either. So the total benefit of 'not eating meat' isn't realized to the bottom line. Its marginal.

this fact:

> requiring 5x agricultural land and fertiliser

can certainly not be paraphrased as:

> marginally more expensive, ecologically

That origination cost is added to the cost of harvest, transportation, refrigeration, distribution etc. Is it then so significant? That's the interesting question.

Because its one cost in a whole column of costs, reducing that entry is what makes it 'marginal'. Meaning, one part of a large total.

It is a dishonest way of representing it IMO.

The headline suggests meat production is not a significant emission source, but it actually argues that it has around the same emissions of the average bought goods of a particular society. Then saying it therefore does not matter is quite the stretch.

Marginally? Beef, for example, takes many times the amount of energy and water to produce equivalent calories to vegan foods. Based on any measure, beef is significantly more expensive than vegan food sources, “marginally” is far from an accurate comparison.

Then there's transportation, refrigeration, distribution, point of sales... all with their cost. Are we still so sure the 'savings' is significant?

The cost of transporting a hundred thousand burgers is dwarfed by the cost of creating a hundred thousand burgers. The primary costs associated with meat are in the production, not the transport: compared to, say, Beyond Meat, a single beef burger is 15x more ecologically expensive _before_ transport -- which is the same, and inconsequential in comparison.

How about cooking them? Refrigerating them? Selling them?

I see the idea of marginal cost is getting through. But consider all the costs to get a real sense of how the origination marginal cost contributes.

And don't dismiss transportation. It has to get home from the grocery store, in that 10-burger one-person vehicular trip through city traffic. That's a marginal cost too.

You can make the same point repeatedly if you like but, as I've explained, the costs you're referring to are a very small part of the total cost and certainly do not come close to offsetting the gains made by cutting out livestock from the equation.

Citation? I suspect you made that up, to score imaginary internet points.

Here's some data I just Googled:

  Car trips:  0.34 metric tonnes of CO2 / 1000 miles

  Burgers:    0.5 metric tonnes / year of burgers (150)

Producing meat is very-much commensurate with other marginal activities associated with procuring meat, like trips to the grocery store.

I'm done here.

Ok, but considering that you very likely would continue to eat in the absence of meat, the replacement foods usually need cooking, refrigeration, and distribution. These things are not particular to meat and shouldn't factor into a comparison.

That's the opposite of the correct conclusion. Because the meat ecological component is dwarfed by the other activities, it becomes (ecologically) insignificant to stop eating meat.

I think the point is that while giving up meat might have a significant effect on your carbon footprint from food consumption, it will have a small effect on your overall carbon footprint. A carnivore who never take an airplane and bikes everywhere is going to have a smaller carbon footprint than a vegan who drives an SUV to work every day and jet sets around the world.

That being said, none of this is a good argument for not giving up meat.

You need to be more specific. Beef is more expensive to produce than grains. But leafy greens are way more expensive to produce than beef. Non-meat food has a 50x range in cost to produce a calorie. You have to be specific about which non-meat foods you’re replacing meat consumption with. If you’re eating a bunch of kale and avocado instead of meat, then your change probably has no net environmental benefit. If you switch to mostly grains and legumes, then that’s a different story.

Bingo. Not much gain to be had here when you look at the actual sources of emissions by category. Tackling electricity production and transportation should be #1 and #2, since they are (more) easily influenced by the state and could be brought down to near-zero emissions within, say, 25 years. Railing at people to stop eating meat because “it’s causing global warming” is at best ineffective and at worst disingenuous.

>Railing at people to stop eating meat because “it’s causing global warming” is at best ineffective and at worst disingenuous

Right, but one of the biggest annoyances I have with right-wing blogs like Reason is that 95% of their content is just reactionary "Actually, liberals aren't quite right about X" crap while offering no alternatives/solutions. At least "stop eating meat" is something with a net positive.

That's the argument that helps people give up doing something important instead? "At least I'm doing something". When that something is insignificant when there are better ways to contribute.

Look at either side of the political spectrum and you'll see clickbait garbage. They shouldn't be a barometer for correctness.

There are basically only two things that are going to slow/stop the rise in CO2 emissions: shift to low/no-carbon sources of energy, including natural gas and nuclear, and retool transportation networks to favour electric wherever possible. Obviously planes will be running on kerosene for the foreseeable future, but cars, trucks, and ships could all be electric within a quarter century.

Eating less/no meat is a perfectly acceptable ethical choice, but it should be divorced form serious discussion of the root causes of carbon emissions.

What is a net positive about "stop eating meat" unless you're livestock? From a nutrition perspective it's not a positive thing to "stop eating meat".

Besides changing your diet there are hundreds of other net positive (yet virtually inconsequenial) steps you can take to reduce your carbon footprint.

- Wash laundry with cold water - Hang your laundry on a clothes line to dry - Not manage and maintain a grass lawn - Get healthy enough to get off/reduce perscription meds - Drive a hybrid or an EV - Have no/fewer offspring - Don't have pets - Don't work out or exercise (you'll expend more energy, eat more and breathe more co2) - Don't drink alcohol (wine, beer, spirits) - Don't eat chocolate (if meat is somehow uneccessary, certainly chocolate, wine, palm oil and tons of other nutritionally high GHG foods) - Don't play or support activities which waste land, e.g., golf, football, soccer, graveyards, etc.

If you subscribe to the theory that people have some amount of maximum hardship they're willing to undergo for the environment, then we should focus on maximum impact, minimum hardship actions. Things like "no meat", then, which have significant hardship and insignificant benefits, displace other, more beneficial changes. A similar argument could be made for plastic straw bans.

Basically - if the choice isn't "nothing OR stop eating meat" + "nothing OR switch to more fuel efficient cars" but instead "nothing OR stop eating meat OR switch to more fuel efficient cars", then encouraging "stop eating meat" and not an actually significant change is suboptimal.

And that reasoning is working. The longer we do mock debate over climate change real / not real, the slower we go.

Reminds me of the GMO / non-GMO debate. The longer we keep that simple frame the slower we go. GMO isn’t any one thing, GMO is the future of most living things and things we haven’t imagined.

This is our first climate, our first planet. We will be a part of many others, as living intelligence and more.

Where does 50% of all fertilizer come from? Animal waste/manure.

Where does the rest of fertilizer come from? It is synthesized from fossil fuels...

> requiring 5x agricultural land and fertiliser to get the same calories

What is the methodology used to reach this result?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency#Ten_perc...

Here's the abstract from the paper:

Sustainable diets, in particular vegetarianism, are often promoted as effective measures to reduce our environmental footprint. Yet, fewconclusions take full-scale behavioral changes into consideration. This can be achieved by calculating the indirect environmental rebound effect related to the re-spending of expenditure saved during the initial behavioral shift. This study aims to quantify the potential energy use and greenhouse gas emission savings, and most likely rebound effects, related to an average Swedish consumer's shift to vegetarianism. Using household budget survey data, it estimates Engel curves of 117 consumption goods, derives marginal expenditure shares, and links these values to environmental intensity indicators. Results indicate that switching to vegetarianism could save consumers 16% of the energy use and 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions related to their dietary consumption. However, if they re-spend the saved income according to their current preferences, they would forego 96% of potential energy savings and 49% of greenhouse gas emission savings. These rebound effects are even higher for lower-income consumers who tend to re-spend on more environmentally intensive goods. Yet, the adverse effect could be tempered by purchasing organic goods or re-spending the money on services. In order to reduce the environmental impact of consumption, it could thus be recommended to not only focus on dietary shifts, but rather on the full range of consumer expenditure.

I'd argue that eating vegetarian isn't really that much cheaper in the first place.

In the paper, there's also section 4.6.2.1 about organic food consumption:

If a vegetarian diet is chosen for its environmental value, it is possible that consumers will simultaneously choose organic instead of conventional products for their perceived improved impact on the environment. Organic products however are often associated with a price premium, which can fundamentally change the conclusions on re-spending and environmental impacts occurred.

and a few paragraphs later:

"Therefore, not only would we avoid any rebound behavior, we find virtuous cycle effects in that consumers will save 111% of both the potential energy and the potential greenhouse gas emission savings thatwere predicted from only foregoing meat alone."

So, if you go vegetarian, go organic while you're at it!

PS: The paper isn't so bad, you should probably read it in full (you know where). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.04.030

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