The entire agriculture sector of the US economy produced 8.6% of US carbon emissions in 2016. About half of that is from fertilizer (soil management). Even if you impute the entire carbon footprint of us ag to beef production, combustion for transport beats it by 3.5x. Combustion for electricity also exceeds it by 3.5x.
Meat is a tiny slice of your CO2 footprint.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-01/documents/20...
Now lets start to argue over what plants to replace the rainforest with and we've lost to point.
The rain forest is being destroyed for greed. Fix greed and you can fix the planet.
So less rainforest needs to be felled for the same amount of nutrition.
Arguing what the land should be used for is the point. Some uses are more destructive than others.
"If we didn't put gasoline in our vehicles, we'd just put something else in them, so arguing over what to put in our vehicles for fuel is besides the point."
If the richer nations cared about the Amazon rainforest, we'd pay rent on it.
That research was done by Oxford University over a 5 year period.
It's not a meme - it's scientific research.
But I get it, it's easier to label it a meme, so we can continue our destructive lifestyle.
And it's not just about GHG, it's also about biodiversity and habitat loss caused by the large scale animal agriculture industry.
But hey, burgers first, right?
And screw future humans having to live on a more hostile planet.
I think humans needed to be this remarkably selfish to get to this point. But now selfishness risks a quick demise. Quick as in faster than evolution can be an aid.
If there isn't a technical solution that's economically and politically equitable, we will end.
And buying solar panels and upgrading to a hybrid or electric car which costs thousands is easier than replacing your meat burger with a plant-based meat burger. Makes total sense and lets ignore biodiversity and habitat loss while we're at it.
Why not do both?
Why not eliminate / reduce consumption of large scale dairy and meat products AND use renewable energy sources?
Surely you would agree doing both is actually even more impactful, no?
For example, there are detailed models and measurements for both soil management (significant) and fertilizer (negligible).
What you’re seeing under Agriculture fertilization is the application of fertilizer, not the production of it. They’re talking about the c02 released by using it, or the c02 expended generating the fertilizer in the first place.
Land use change is an entirely different category in the report. So even though the reason we’re changing land use is to farm feed crops for animals primarily, it’s listed as it’s own thing.
It goes on and on.
For an actually accurate picture of how land and agriculture actually affect the climate, see the incredibly well-researched, encyclopedic book “The Carbon Farming Solution”.
But for you or anyone else who wants to see an alternative take, a quick search pulled up this McKinsey analysis which, while I’ve only skimmed it, seems much more in line with my understanding which is that agriculture — when fairly measured — represents more like a quarter of our emissions. And there’s no getting around the fact that the vast majority of that is currently tailored towards meat production, directly or indirectly.
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/agricul...