Hacker News Reader

Comment by xyzzy21 | Hacker News Reader

And I don't have a problem with that because this actually means that non-meat is 40% and all food is 100%

Non-meat isn't zero either - massive fossil fuel inputs go into all plant cultivation from farm equipment to fertilizers to pesticides.

View on HN

You don't have a problem with an increased level of emissions relative to other possible scenarios of our food system? Imagine if 50% of meat eaters ate 50% less meat, particularly beef. That'd lead to ~25% less meat emissions, aka ~15% less food-based emissions. It's a substantial step towards neutrality without anyone giving up a food permanently.

Long term, we're going to need lab or plant-based meats, since I doubt we'll ever convince people to give up their cherished food items unless economics makes it incredibly expensive.

I agree with your assessment. I am pretty cynical that most people will give up meat consumption. Lab grown meats at scale or substitutes are really going to drive the reduction in emissions we need.

I fully agree, I think we could get bigger wins scaling up artificial meats than many other solutions we're spending money on, like hydrogen fuel cell vehicles or nuclear fusion. While those great technologies will be amazing in the future, we're overlooking what we can do now in the hopes of a big win later.

Yeah! If we completely stopped eating meat then plant based food would account for 100% of all greenhouse gases from food production!

And if we stopped all greenhouse emissions from food eventually all of the emissions from any industry would reach 0!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com