Livestock contributes to 15% of all greenhouse gasses. But the solution is easy, cheap, and only midly inconvenient. Going vegan.
This has the added benefit of protecting threatened ecosystems in the rainforrest and seas.
We could then spend that energy on the difficult stuff. Fast tracked rollout of renevables and interrim energy storage.
We've known and broadly accepted that smoking is bad since 1964[1]. Yet new people start smoking every year. Even in countries where packaging displays disgusting pictures showing the long term results of smoking.
To me it seems unlikely that relevant parts of the world will become vegan in the short term, or that cattle farmers will pivot to something else. But I do often see that "green" initiatives that also save companies money are adopted quickly. Not all farmers may care about emissions, but needing less feed (and thus saving money) seems like an easy win. Hopefully all these small gains will add up.
[1] - https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/history/inde...
Just that going vegan is an incredibly simple solution, and itself super easy.
I probably wouldn't be vegan if it weren't for all those tasty vegan meat alternatives.
Just now I had a german "currywurst" made from wheat protein that tastes indistinguishable from the meat original. It actually tastes "better" becauese you don't get the "joyous experience" of biting onto a piece of bone or onto some chewy piece of atery or god knows what... shudder
Eating more shrimp/seafood, chicken, pork, etc instead of beef would be just as effective without all of the extra work necessary to ensure people are getting necessary amounts of protein.
Asking everyone to go vegan is selling a lifestyle and a belief system, not solving a problem.
And it'll work just as well.
If you want to stop people eating meat, the solution is to tax it so that the price of the good reflects its true cost. But that ain't gonna happen. So the least we can do is clean up the production and supply chains to reduce those externalized costs.
It's already happening to such a degree that diary and meat farmer interest groups are HEAVILY lobbying the EU, to make it as difficult as possible for replacement products.
We might as well put our efforts into cleaning up these roadblocks/corruption to a brighter future.
And why can't we do both?
Expect individuals to go vegan, expect governments to support the development of vegan substitutes. Have people take the bike instead of cars more often, but have a carbon tax on flights.
You still have the climate, land, and water impact of the majority of the feed.
You're also stil stuck with the huge water requirements, antibiotic resistence, disease, and animal cruelty.
You're advocating for a reduction of at most 50% of the harmfull effects. But going 100% is trivial, so why not do it?
We can't even convince the public to wear face masks in public and that vaccines are safe, and you're telling me that it would be trivial to make everyone go vegan? Even discussing this is pointlessly filling the atmosphere with more CO2.
I actually happen to think that our civilization will inevitably become vegetarian, but it won't happen within my lifetime, and in the meantime, some scientists have found a cheap way to reduce methane emissions. That's awesome! Stop pissing on their work.
Also, rebuilding topsoil with grazing animals has a side benefit of being a carbon sink.
I'm fine with having smaller amounts of animals in open spaces that goes around and take care of the fields, but today's animal agriculture doesn't take care of that.
We grow so much that we've stated to deforest the amazonas for it.
You will never be able to feed mainl seaweed, nor by grazing alone.
The advantage of soil protection from grazing is thus negated by the additional feed production.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22119...
I can't eat a lot of fats due to a bad pancreas, but I'm also B12-deficient and anemic. Doc asked me to eat more red meat on occasion, so I try to about once a week.
As an attempt at an alternative, I tried one of the popular substitutes. I tried it before my ... "pancreatic situation" was known to me. It made me sick for days. Vomiting, other digestive issues I won't list, and incredible abdominal pain and sourness of my stomach resulted.
I've even seen similar reports in various Vegan forums.
Those substitutes are filled with canola (and other) oils to add body, flavour, and characteristic "juiciness".
I'm intrigued by lab-grown meat, but those pea and soy meat substitutes are not viable. They're not even close to a viable substitute. Eating a steak or some bone marrow once a week or so keeps me feeling like I'm an alive human being, which I have to say is nice having been close to the alternative.
I take 1 1000% daily reccomended dose per day, as per consultation with my doctor. Together with D3, Folic Acid, and Iron.
Most people are vitamin deficient, meat eating/milk drinking or not, unless you actively substitute.
It's all the same stuff anyways. B12 is produced by bacteria living on the ground. Which would normally bio accumulate in livestock. Howeve since most livestock is fed with silo feed, theyd too get B12 deficiency, if it wasn't substituted.
So you have the choice of eating B12 directly with a lot of control over dosage, or have the livestock swallow the pill for you. Seems like an inefficient intermediary step.
It's not enough. And uptake is a complex process, it's not as simple as supplement with a given isolate. Unfortunately, not every human body will adhere to a textbook case where a single supplemental pill or shot does the trick. If it did, I'd be in a better way.
As it is, I'm working on staying ahead of any problems B12 and anemia can cause me down the line. I'd rather not reach the point of others I've known who have to have regular blood transfusions to stay alive and prevent their minds and bodies from eroding.
I'll stick to my physician's word and millennia of evolution on that one, if it's all the same to you.
And please, show me some respect: you must know that consuming a complex of nutrients through a food source is not the same as ingesting a copious amount of an isolate. It's certainly not akin to an animal "swallowing a pill" for me.
I wish you lasting health, but fear you are suggesting we all gamble on the oversight and benevolence of the food industry by eating even more processed, engineered foods than even Doritos or Taco Bell as your main protein source(s).
Yes, industrial food does bad things to produce large amounts of chicken, but there are quality farmers still in business, and I'll take a real, dead bird, fish or cow (and occasional pig, though harder to defend) any day over engineered replacement proteins.
I guess you meant "some humans eat meat", or else I cannot be human by your definition, and I sure look like one.
But then, some* humans also kill each other, rape their children (etc). But no one was trying to describe what some humans do/did but what they should better do if we're trying to live in a peaceful and sustainable world. Why should we care that some people eat meat? I don't care that some people burn their own houses unless it threatens mine or my neighbors'.
In the future, we may well learn that people were eating meat and some continue to do so. Just like some people still commute by horse.
*I realized that the easiest way to curb climate change is simply to stop eating meat. I'm healthier and can cook more dishes than ever. Why would the world not go vegan? I can't find a good reason except "because I believe so". Then, again, more and more people become vegetarian so we can only bet.
Currently, meat substitutes are effectively a premium product - however, if (when?) they would be available at half the price of animal protein, then I believe meat consumption worldwide would decrease a lot even if people's preferences would not change. Cultural norms would shift eventually, but that's slow, and price changes can happen and affect change much faster.
Please stop making everything _my_ problem when other countries do not give a rats ass.
The richest countries are the reason for climate change. We've lived way past what is sustainable for a hundred years, and now you want to blame it on somebody else?
Sure, everything but taking personal responsibility...
This isn't correct.
Different types of coal can result in dramatic difference in CO2 production per kWh hour generated.
Why is the burden on me? That's never been explained by all the climate religionists out there. When the west does something it's bad. When everyone else does it, they get a pass?
We already did the industrial revolution. We already went through the long process. They have free wins - they don't need to design new processes or methods - they have plenty of money.
They have the wrong priorities.
Instead we can sit here and pat ourselves on the back for not using plastic straws, because save the turtles or some absolute crock, while 4 or 5 countries in asia produce almost ALL of the plastic trash in the oceans.
There are many things we could which even save money, make people some happier, and help the climate... but we don't.
Do I need to comment?
Although China still consumes 28% of the world’s meat, including half of all pork, and boasts a meat market valued at $86bn (£62bn)
That's the second sentence in the second paragraph of the article you linked.
"But the solution is easy, cheap, and only mildly inconvenient. Ride a bicycle."
"But the solution is easy, cheap, and only mildly inconvenient. Live in a solar powered minihome."
""But the solution is easy, cheap, and only mildly inconvenient. Don't reproduce/have kids."
"But the solution is easy, cheap, and only mildly inconvenient. No plastics."
I am a huge environmentalist, and I've adopted large swathes of these policies personally. As MIB said, a person is smart, rational, and reasonable, but PEOPLE are scared, stupid, and crazy. They are lazy, apathetic, ingrained in habit, and tired.
Global warming in particular should be pursued in a multifront effort. No one can prognosticate and see "this is where we put ALL our efforts". To succeed it needs to be a combined, iterative, democratic process of research, technology, education, and cultural advancement.
I think we both know where this is going.
Me? I pick up litter. It's time to put lipstick on this pig.
Making ~99% of people vegans is anything but easy, cheap, and mildly inconvenient. In fact, it is impossible (until we manage to replicate meat in the lab).
Your view is ridiculously myopic; I will not and most people will not stop eating meat anytime soon. It is a simple fact and you must accept it before trying to solve this. Real solutions are something like the article describes.
i think making a point more extreme than necessary motivates people to disagree with you
It's a bit like saying: "Reducing the amount of fossil fuel is a good idea, but why go to zero?"
Nutrition is an entirely different thing. First of all, it is a very fundamental cultural and personal thing. Meat and dairy products have an important nutritional value, which isn't easily replaced, especially not by local foods in many regions. And except for the fossil fuels used in farming (both for meat and plant production), it is carbon-neutral. The problem with it are rather matters of scale and over consumption, so yes, the idea to just reduce meat consumption sounds like a very good idea overall.
I've read somewhere recently that you need 16kcal of feed to produce 1kcal worth of chicken. That's a 16 times loss in efficiency that requires a lot of plants to feed to the chicken that could have been consumed by humans.
So not a solution.
Also, in terms of non processed stuff, the highest protein-to-calories ratio is Chicken Breast, lentils don't even come close (if you need 180g of protein, chicken breast will cost you 800calories while lentils will 2400cal).
Now I'm not aware whether eating chicken contributes as much CO2 as beef, but if it doesn't, why not tell people to switch to chicken instead of plant based stuff.
This is a dangerous attitude. While technically true it gives everyone an easy cop out to avoid making real substantive change.
Some things help and some things help.