Emissions from 13 dairy firms match those of entire UK | Hacker News Reader

Emissions from 13 dairy firms match those of entire UK

theguardian.com

43 pointsperfunctory28 comments

This is factually incorrect, and the linked study [1] does not make this claim. In the study, the quoted 2017 level of CO2-equivalent emissions by the top 13 dairy firms is 337 MT. During the same year 2017, the UK emitted 464 MT CO2-e [2], which is about 38% more.

Now, if you want to compare these top 13 firms and see which country they exceed, you can sort all the countries and go down the list until you find one that emits less than the 337 MT. [3] is just such a list. You find that these firms emit just slightly less than Spain (340 MT) but much more than the Netherlands (193 MT).

[1]https://www.iatp.org/milking-planet

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_the_United_Kingdom

[3]https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=AIR_GHG

"match", in fact, can mean "similar", not necessarily "exactly equal".

Maybe this would help: "Feeding cows seaweed cuts 99% of greenhouse gas emissions from their burps, research finds"

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/cows-seaweed-metha...

Wonder if it affects the taste of the meat or milk... or has some other undesirable side effects?

Or just stop consuming dairy, since it's entirely unnecessary.

There's a large amount of literature on the effects of diet on meat flavor. I'm much more familiar with that side of things than milk flavor, but anecdotally I would expect similar effects.

Re: not consuming dairy, you be you. Cheese is rad. Good beef/pork/lamb/rabbit/etc. is rad. I think it's entirely possible to produce them in a sustainable and humane fashion, since I've personally been involved in producing beef that way (registered black angus FTW). My moo-cows had happy lives until their end. I think that's an attainable goal and compatible with also enjoying a wonderful tri-tip cooked with oak wood.

Drawdown is one of the most comprehensive and well-sourced books about solving anthropocentric climate change. If this article alarms you, in their technical report they lay out how switching to a plant-based diet is one of the most effective ways you can decrease your ecologial footprint: https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/plant-rich-diets

>The analysis shows the impact of the 13 firms on the climate crisis is growing, with an 11% increase in emissions in the two years after the 2015 Paris climate change agreement,

Okay.

>largely due to consolidation in the sector.

Record scratch

Does anyone know if any of the artificial food research tackling a cows milk substitute?

Oh, wait, I have a Google. https://www.sciencealert.com/news/20142910-26413.html is a six year old press release, so I guess it didn't get to market 'in five years'. It would be good if they could get something that could be made into cheese, or skip the wasteful bits and go straight to cheese. All I hear about is burgers, but I would have naively assumed milk a much simpler goal.

No idea about cheese, somebody is probably working on it. I would make a guess that the market for artificial milk is not worth the investment for most businesses, vegans, vegetarians and plant-based people moved on to plant milks and I think they're here to stay. There is a Swedish producer making high fat oat milk which apparently works really for coffee foam. My perspective is the question of whether or not plant milk vs cow milk is nutritionally equal doesn't matter since cow milk is not really required in modern society. It's an incredibly calorie and fat rich product that's intended for a developing calf, it was useful for humans living in harsh, winter conditions prior to industrialized farming but we can make up those calories elsewhere now.

Nutritionally, cheese is interesting due to the calcium content and vitamin K needed to absorb it rather than calorie content. And requires large amounts of cow (& sheep & goat) milk to create it. If artificial milk was possible, it could be made by traditional processes into the traditional cheeses we use for our varied cuisines. Direct artificial cheese I imagine would only get to market in one or two varieties (likely American cheese slices for artificial cheese burgers, or Parmesan for seasoning pasta).

It's a good point but I don't personally believe there are many modern humans outside of some small communitues that actually need to eat cheese for it's nutritional value. That said I understand it's often one of the harder things for people to give up when transitioning to plant-based diets.

Why does "need" have anything to do with one's diet? Cheese can be sustainably produced, and as an aside it tastes fabulous (I encourage you to try it).

I have zero intention to transition to a plant-only diet (we almost all already have "plant-based" diets, that term is offensively transparent marketing hand-waving for "vegetarian"). However, I certainly don't look down upon anyone for their individual dietary choices.

I don't really care for that term either but I used it because "vegan" has become such a loaded term in these kind of online debates, probably due to it often coming from the animal welfare angle and all sorts of silly hypothetical questions being offered from both sides. As for the cheese, I'll pass, you can keep it.

> The biggest dairy companies in the world have the same combined greenhouse gas emissions as the UK, the sixth biggest economy in the world

The biggest dairy companies in the world presumably feed a lot of people. The UK is less than 1% of the world's population. Economy rank doesn't matter on its own. This is an obviously disingenuous comparison.

> More than 90% of the corporate dairy industries’ emissions are produced by the cows themselves, mostly in the form of methane.

So we're worried that too many cows are breathing?

> Research shows all plant-based milks, such as soya and oat, result in far fewer emissions than dairy milk.

And there it is. It's a hit piece.

Most dairy isn't consumed as milk. You can't make cheese or cream from a plant. Dairy is a big part of my diet, and I'm not replacing it with something that isn't even nutritionally equivalent.

> So we're worried that too many cows are breathing?

No, farting.

> And there it is. It's a hit piece.

You’re not objecting to any of the facts of the article. Nor, presumably, to the general idea of climate change. So I’m having trouble seeing your viscous reaction to the article as anything but anger at being shown facts that paint your lifestyle in a bad light.

FWIW I also consume dairy and meat, and don’t plan on stopping, either. And yet I can’t fathom the anger this seems to invoke in you. Pointing out the relative costs to society of certain activities isn’t necessarily intended to get people to stop doing them. Here, for example, I believe putting pressure on the industry to mitigate that pesky methane problem is the far more promising route.

So you appreciate the cost of your diet to the environment and yet you delegate the responsibility to somebody else (the industry). I am not sure which attitude is worse.

The methane comes mostly from burping. [1]

I objected to how the article draws misleading comparisons amd I gave two examples - how the scale of emissions is distorted, and how offering up milk substitutes as an alternative ignores how most dairy is actually used. I think that's enough to convey my point without a line-by-line breakdown of the entire article.

I do like that they pointed out that consolidation has driven up demand, and at the cost of rural businesses and communities. But it's overshadowed by the rest of the article. For example, the grain alternative would just make consolidation worse.

This isn't about me wanting to drink milk, eat meat, and ignore climate change. It's about how we're replacing our traditional distributed and varied food supply with corporate monoculture.

The article is written with such a heavy bias (intentional or not) that it seems more like an opinion piece. I'm not angry. I'm just disappointed in the journalism.

[1] http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1734

Planet wide dairy companies. Not just UK based. Are cows not carbon neutral? Grass grows sucking in carbon, cows eat grass?

Apparently not, according to the article:

„More than 90% of the corporate dairy industries’ emissions are produced by the cows themselves, mostly in the form of methane.“

> Grass grows sucking in carbon, cows eat grass?

Very few cows are grown eating actual grass. Most are fed special cattle feed.

Cows are herbivores, I don't think grass vs barley or whatever they eat affects the carbon offset that much - they don't literally eat fossil fuels.

I would imagine it's not carbon neutral anyway because of transport and other overhead etc.

Methane being worse than CO2 seems to be also a concern,

The feed is grown with fertilizers, which are fossil fuel:

https://www.darrinqualman.com/historic-nitrogen-fertilizer-c...

> In 2015, farmers applied more than 110 million tonnes. We managed to increase grain output fourfold largely by increasing nitrogen inputs 23-fold. Nitrogen fertilizer is a fossil fuel product, made primarily from natural gas.

It depends on the country of course. UK cows tend to be fed mostly grass.

This is not the reality of the majority of dairy or beef production, at least not globally. The production of dairy itself is also a pretty cruel process.

In theory it's possible to farm cows without using fossil fuel so yes, it could be carbon neutral (ignoring the fact that current production levels aren't sustainable). But that's the problem with introducing a singular metric for a complex problem. The grass takes up CO_2, the cows produce CH_4 (Methane).

Cows produce (literally: fart) a lot of methane, which is an incredibly potent driver of global warming. A lot of energy also goes into the whole chain of production, from fertilizer used on feedstocks to transportation and so on.

Even compared just to other meats, beef is terrible for the climate. IIRC, pork does less than 1/3 the damage, and chicken gets close to vegetables on this measure

> Cows produce (literally: fart) a lot of methane

Excuse me my nitpicking, but cows mostly belch.

https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/33/which-is-a-bigger-methane-so...

Methane isn't as bad or terrible as it's made out to be https://www.alltech.com/features-podcast-blog/frank-mitloehn...

And the measurements for beef in regard to climate change was a global average, using Brazil burning down Amazon forests. Unless you're eating that beef you can find beef that is carbon neutral or even a carbon sink. It uses up land we can't grow crops on and without meats we wouldn't have enough.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com