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Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

> It's important to note that almost all of the land that cattle are raised on is unsuitable for any other purpose

The land used to grow the food used to feed most cattle most definitely could be used for other purposes or just left alone.

The vast majority of cattle aren't grass-fed on the high plains just before slaughter. Sustainably produced beef like this simply can't scale and is too expensive for mass consumption.

Most cattle are fed in feedlots using grains produced en masse for that purpose.

That is why beef production has such a huge carbon footprint - because of the massive crop fertilizer inputs needed to feed massive quantities of cattle.

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I recently watched a documentary that really called to question this common wisdom. https://youtu.be/SdrhpThqlCo For context, I was vegan from 2006-11, and the environmental reasons were my primary motivation. Now it seems obvious that the numbers couldn't have been what I thought. Put into context that "carbon footprint" was a slogan invented by the fossil fuel industry, and its clear who is served by shifting the blame to cows.

> Put into context that "carbon footprint" was a slogan invented by the fossil fuel industry, and its clear who is served by shifting the blame to cows.

We should absolutely be scrutinizing the fossil fuel industry. There's also no reason to _shift_ blame; both can be blamed at the same time. Ulterior motives behind the origin of carbon footprints does not negate the impact of our diets - particularly animal agriculture.

Willpower is finite, political will is finite, social capital is finite. We really can't afford to squander those things on low-impact high-pain measures. Farm bills and government subsidies to fossil fuel make your diet not even noise. Its not detectable at any scale. The only way to change diets at scale is price and availability.

Electric cars are sold to wealthy people so they can maintain their lifestyle with a fresh narrative of being the solution. Meanwhile, a few meters of road being built releases massive amounts of crap to the air.

Lab-grown meat is the same. Bioreactors taking resources from states away to pump out goo for people to eat states away is not sustainable and will never be sustainable.

We need to return to the land, but governments work hard to ensure every last human is a citizen, and produces wealth for someone else. People who resisted were met with violence and their land seized. The system is going to collapse, I really don't have hope. But the least you could do is spare people the party line of blame and shame. /doomer-rant

Today's latest from Kurzgesagt is also relevant: https://youtu.be/yiw6_JakZFc

Analysis claiming that beef production at large is not the major source of CO2 emissions among livestock is ignoring the supply chain CO2 of beef production - ignoring the CO2 emissions of the food produced to feed the cows.

This is pretty well documented:

http://www.fao.org/gleam/results/en/

Also, whether one is a vegan or not is irrelevant to the question. These are systemic issues based on, as you yourself say, the lack of price put on CO2 emissions to account for their externalities.

However, the lack of political will to do so up to this point doesn't mean we can or should end industrial society and return to the land. There are less dramatic solution paths, but they will need time to acculturate.

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