I'm not arguing it's not a benefit, but I am arguing that it's hard.
Frankly, cutting meat consumption in half is usually easy and would already take us a very long way if done universally.
Great, I'm glad that works for you.
> Frankly, cutting meat consumption in half is usually easy and would already take us a very long way if done universally.
That sounds like a good idea, but it's harder to implement than you think, I think.
That said, I'm fully aware that it's easier to avoid meat in some places than in others. Living in the middle of a capital city, good meatless options were everywhere around, but after moving to suburbs of the same city there's not that much meatless stuff that I can order with delivery, for instance. It can also cost more, making it much less available for some social groups (although I hope it's just a matter of time and economy of scale, because in the end there's no reason why would it stay more expensive). Nevertheless, cutting meat intake by around half still doesn't seem that hard, it doesn't even take much effort once you already got to know the alternatives.
Do you think the above are equivalent to what you're asking regarding meat? Why or why not?
What's much more challenging is to make people care about danger enough to be willing to change their personal behavior even in slightest ways.
> Do you think the above are equivalent to what you're asking regarding meat? Why or why not?
Of course it's not equivalent, because this thread is explicitly not about giving up meat consumption.
Conversely, if everyone went vegetarian, that would pose a severe risk to humanity in the form of well documented negative health effects.
Even custom-tailored meat replacement products, like impossible burger (which aren't vegan, by the way), have more calories and are worse for your health than standard beef.
Promoting veganism is like promoting minimalism to the wall street elite. Much better idea to push for better living conditions for livestock, free range, etc. That would positively impact many many more animal lives than the small amount of people who will adopt full veganism.
To completely zero? Probably not. Dropping it by (say) >50%? Much easier.
Meat, especially in large quantities and from large animals, used to be a lot rarer before refrigeration was invented. There's no reason why it couldn't be dialled down culturally.
Reminder: the perfect is the enemy of the good. Getting people more over to pork and poultry would be a pretty good win:
* https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet
I am trying to make a point that "eat less meat, it's like super easy right?" is not about substituting tofu/beyond/impossible meat for beef. There are cultural traditions that cannot be replaced with tofu or vegetables. As a species we'll need to move on from this, but these sorts of things are deeply ingrained in the identity and traditions of many, many people.
For example, removing the consumption of beef brisket, skirt/flank steak, tongue and tripe from the Mexican/Southern US cultures will likely not happen while my generation, or the one after mine, are alive. It will probably happen when folks naturally adopt a more vegetable based diet and eschew those traditions. If somehow we could engineer beef substitutes for these that maintained the same characteristics of how they are cooked and what they tasted like, that would go a long way in getting us there; but we don't have the technology today.
And I don't mean to be over-dramatic, but if you went into any of the many multigenerational households or ranches here specifically in south Texas and told them they could not raise or eat beef anymore - you would be making an extreme and immediate affront to their way of life that many would fight and die to protect.
I play with my sliders all the time; I'm just not willing to slide so far in one direction that I give up my heritage.
I challenge you to evaluate your own life choices with an equally critical lens.
Thank you for the polite discourse.
There are millions (billions?) of people that don’t eat cows, it is not unrealistic for people to stop eating them, culture changes very quickly
When you start your response from a place that is unreasonable, nobody is going to give you the time of day. Telling people to just stop eating beef is both unreasonable and just flat out not going to happen in at least several generations with many steps in between - if it ever happens.
> it is not unrealistic for people to stop eating them
It's unrealistic to force them unless necessary.
Beef industry in some places is subsidized, demand can easily be curbed by removing subsidies or taxing. That isn't even on the table yet.
You can skip the seaweed and just give the active ingredient.
The only reason beef is so popular is because it's available. It's pretty inefficient in terms of energy input to calorie output and produces even more carbon as a byproduct of it's production. Carbon-cost wise, it should be seen as a luxury.
I also really don't think it would be an issue health-wise and diverting the market to other forms of food wouldn't really put too much strain on people's ability to provide enough food, calories- and protein-wise
Wait, what? Beef is popular because it tastes good. You don’t pay $50+ for a chicken breast, salmon filet, or pork chop. People consume beef because it tastes good. It’s “available” because people like it. If deer or bison sold for more than the price per lbs of beef, the cattle industry would collapse and be replaced overnight. But it doesn't, because people don't like the taste as much.
Also, bison absolutely cost more per pound than beef. Beef sells because it's cheap, not because it's expensive.
And yes, taste is subjective and the numbers make it pretty obvious that the majority of the population subjectively prefers beef.
Virtually every meaningful part of our lives is a luxury.
Your profile mentions you are a musician and artist: many many people in the world would consider your choices as unnecessary luxuries. In some parts of the world you would be deprived of your choices for the good of others. Surely we could even find people that would judge your art and music as a negative worth to the world.
A world where we only work for the minimum needs necessary to survive (food, shelter, etcetera) would not be worth aspiring for.
Note that I never argued for the abolition of cattle production, just that it's carbon-cost is not considered a much as it should be (as is the case with most things, I think)
I also never argued against luxury goods or only working for the most efficient means of survival. Luxury is fine, but I think everyone in modern society is going to have to give up at least some amount of the comforts of modern society.
Oh, I strongly agree.
However the majority of the greenhouse gas contribution from meat is methane, which decomposes over many decades. So in the long term, not eating meat is expected to only decrease your carbon footprint by 2% to 4%[1][2].
But meat is expensive, and I suspect that whatever you substitute instead of purchasing meat would generate CO2, so my guess is the impact would be much closer to 0%.
Personally I use money as my proxy for calculating carbon footprint. So your long term footprint is highly correlated and mostly dependent upon your income and the economy you belong to, almost regardless of your actions.
Unless you are doing direct action to capture carbon, not having children, killing people, or reducing your economy’s usage of CO2, then action at an individual level makes very little difference IMHO. Not to say we shouldn’t try!
Edit: also note the 60% headline figure is of 35% agricultural emissions, so actually about 20% of personal emissions. And presumably that is very strongly dependant on the country you in (buying meat from).
[1] https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/green-business/125675673/pa...
You don't think cultures eating meat and integrating meat into their traditions has anything to do with it?
It's difficult to separate the chicken and the egg here because farming meat was super cheap, accessible and beneficial (nutritionally, environmentally and financially) for a lot longer than the last 100 years.
It's "good" to transition to a meatless diet for the sake of the environment. The world is going to have to massively change in order to do that, and the cultures and traditions of a lot of people are going to be casualties along the way. Please don't be so dismissive of that.
> was super cheap, accessible and beneficial (nutritionally, environmentally and financially) for a lot longer than the last 100 years.
Interesting sidenote, I recently heard someone talk about how cattle was an extra good form of livestock because it "converted" an inaccessible form of energy (grass, which humans can't eat) that would otherwise be sitting there useless, into a useable form. With (most) modern farming, this is no longer the case.
Note that I never argued for a meatless diet, or even a beef-less one, and I don't think going to that extreme would be necessary or even the best outcome. And I recognize that doing so would mean many many generations of cultural shift and concerted effort. Just that beef farming in its current form should be considered more of a luxury in terms of cost to the environment than it currently is
A large portion of the population have been vegetarian for a long time. How is something alive and well and growing be unrealistic
Seaweed per day per cow := 0.085kg
Seaweed per year per cow := 31.025kg
Seaweed per year for cow population := 31,025,000,000kgs
Global seaweed production := 6,350,293,180kgs
So, we'd need to increase seaweed production by 5 times. We would then need to distribute this from the largest producers (China, Japan, Korea) the countries that consume the most (Europe, US). This isn't a problem that can be solved by mandated changes in a matter of years, and I have no idea what the CO2 output would be for this sort of production and shipping.
None of this needs to be binary this or that though. We can limit or eliminate our intake of meat products through personal choice AND engineer solutions to minimize environmental harm. We can do both and it does not have to be unanimous.
Also, there absolutely is a very real cultural shift happening right now that is embracing flexitarian/vegetarian/vegan diets.
I also don't have data on this, but I think there has been a much bigger rise in performative veganism than actual veganism. For example many popular twitch streamers say they are vegan, and then the next week viewers point out they are eating a cheeseburger on stream and they'll say "well I'm not today obviously".
Problem is the milk price is connected to the meat price. Which makes half the supermarket more expensive through milk products. Maybe there is a technological solution to abort the bulls like we do for chickens nowadays and give the cows hormons for milk production.
https://www.wur.nl/en/Research-Results/Research-Institutes/l...
I also remember a comment claiming that the cows don't like it because it makes them noticeably sick.
> I also remember a comment claiming that the cows don't like it because it makes them noticeably sick.
Had never read such a thing.
The land growing grass and corn to feed livestock isn't suddenly going to be abandoned, or even repurposed, and it's that biomass that's the ultimate source of those emissions.
If nothing else, there'll be that many more fields of corn destined for the ethanol refinery.
It's cow burps. That's it.
Land-use in the U.S. for cattle has actually been decreasing for decades. It's only increasing in Brazil because of new access to Asian and European markets.
That grass decomposes whether it's eaten by a cow or not.
And grazing land use has been decreasing, but not land use for producing feed.
That isn't contested. Decomposing grass won't yield those methane emissions, at the very least insofar as it won't decompose at the same rate.