Well that's a bit over the top...
Seems like they could have stuck with the "vegetables are good for you" line and had just as relevant of an article.
If we eat the stuff we give to cows (which is what vegetarians do) then we would need only 10% of the land to farm it.
My point being the problem is not meat which is a natural part of our diet (and is traditionally raised on land not well suited to crops) but the crazy frankenmeat many are reduced to eating due to overpopulation.
Either way, we can’t just “eat what the cows eat” directly and there are a lot more variables to consider.
What has been natural about our diets since the invention of cooking?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer...
The alternative would be to let tons of cultured pastures go to waste, and instead develop extremely expensive and wasteful greenhouse altnernatives that would suck our energy reserves dry. That is why meat production is in fact preferrable in the North. It's just not feasible to produce enough food without spending a lot of resources on imports, due to growing conditions that favour greens that aren't edible for humans, so our best option is then meat for local and "short-travelled" sustenance. [2]
Second, there's obviously a place for meat eaters in this biodiversity. Of course, we're "too many" humans (who are of course meat eaters), but on the other hand we're sustaining our current population nicely with progresses made within both environmentally friendly transportation and not to mention advances within industrialized and automated farming. [3] Add to this that the population growth is in fact slowing down. [4]
Long story short, the world has a giant surplus of food. [5] The amount of food here isn't the problem. It's the adverse effects local politics, production and transportation that are the problems the grand level, and to that end you can't as a general rule suggest that veggies are the "best" option. Well, it clearly isn't in the northeren hemisphere.
In the end the moral question is, should we really force people to eat this, that or the other? I mean, there's obviously no harm in making suggestions, but when those suggestions aren't met with enthusiasm, then change isn't liable to happen without the use of force. And I think can all agree that we are nowhere near a Soylent Green situation, so we still have the option to give people a choice.
Personally, my bet are on those developing succulent and protein-rich meat alternatives. The second they can make a product that similar enough, but without the environmental overhead, then people will flock to it.
[1]: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3437e.pdf
[2]: Norwegian language source: https://www.agrianalyse.no/getfile.php/134664-1553523670/Dok...
[3]: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow....
[5]: https://www.dw.com/en/the-global-food-surplus/a-15452289
Transport has a low impact on the total emissions (and also producing beef is sooo bad) that you could e.g. ship a kilogram of peas several times around the globe and the peas would still win emission-wise against a kilogram of locally produced beef. If you pick another metric, like energy content ('calories') or compare emissions per mass of contained protein, beef is still worse.
[0] https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1294928556036956162
So if we all stopped eating meat we could cut emissions but a couple of % but if we all stopped driving and turned our heating down/up we could actually make a real difference?
Edited with real numbers from https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/
This article suggests livestock greenhouse gas emissions are equivalent to the entire transportation sector. Basically because methane and carbon dioxide have different effects on warming: https://www.ecowatch.com/which-is-worse-for-the-planet-beef-...
If you have a good source I would be delighted to read it.
It’s not just about emissions. It’s also about the massive amount of land required to produce meat vs. crops for human consumption.
Re: cutting out meat vs. driving, only one of those activities is necessary to survive for the very high percentage of the population who don’t have access to public transit.
You can probably give corn to people instead of cows in the US (yay more HFCS!) but you can't ask the sheep and goat herders to graze themselves.
Among the most effective things you can do yourself with minimal impact of your way of life is choosing to eat less meat.
Edit: the numbers I remembered was for Europe. Globally food production is 25%
https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/
>Globally, the primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions are electricity and heat (31%), agriculture (11%), transportation (15%), forestry (6%) and manufacturing (12%). Energy production of all types accounts for 72 percent of all emissions.
It’s about a college cafeteria experimenting to reduce carbon emissions and the amount of land required to serve meals:
> Last year, University cafeterias (separate from the colleges) announced a 33% reduction in carbon emissions per kilogram of food purchased, and a 28% reduction in land use per kilogram of food purchased.
They aren't ranching in Manhatten. Leasing land for grazing brings in about $70 an acre while doing it for crops will bring in around $280 an acre. Development of course would bring in amounts that are several orders of magnitude higher. Where cattle are raised, raising cattle is the only purpose available. This is why ranches are out west in the US or in the outback in Australia.
If the world stopped raising cattle, a lot of steppes around the world would go back to being completely useless. We wouldnt free up valuable land.
"Grazing systems supply about 9 percent of the world's production of beef"
The overwhelming majority of cows live on maize, soy, barley etc.
Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding#Grazing
That meat is bad for our health is a myth perpetuated by the health industry, as well as by bad research that isn't accounting for processed meat vs. high quality unprocessed meat, nor do the studies account for confounding factors like other unhealthy food that many meat eaters eat.
Dr. Georgia Ede is someone to look up on YouTube who's been spending her time debunking bad research on meat.
> but that of the planet, as livestock farming on a massive scale destroys habitats and generates greenhouse gases.
Monocultures are really terrible, and based on the latest thought leaders and their knowledge, the trend needs to move towards allowing animals to roam the land again - which helps aerate and maintain the quality of soil.
My guess for future is free-roaming animals in their natural habitat, and vertical farming for vegetables, etc.
This source says methane is 84x the impact of carbon dioxide: https://www.edf.org/climate/methane-other-important-greenhou...