I'm actually surprised how much dairy products contribute to global warming. It's only veganism that really cuts down on carbon emissions.
Pork is where it starts being risky.
Beef, lamb etc. are the most problematic parts.
From an environmental point of view, there’s a linear relationship between your consumption of beef and environmental impact. There is no amount of beef that is good for the environment.
From a health point of view, it’s debated, however there are more studies that show red/processed meats having negative health effects than neutral or positive effects. Of course, you can cherry pick the studies that align with your beliefs, but the prevailing data, evidence, and research show beef actually _is_ bad per se.
Note: there is no nutrient (that we know of) that you can only get from beef and no other food source. So it isn’t necessary to include it in your diet.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-bee...
That's a tautology. In that strict sense, there's no amount of you that's good for the environment, either. Unless we all commit suicide, we have to accept the fact that our behavior changes the environment. So, yes, quantities matter a lot.
Industrial cattle fed corn is an entirely different story and should almost certainly be counted as a different category as far as climate impact is concerned.
CH4 is another issue, but again, unless I'm missing something, total CH4 from cattle in the atmosphere should be proportional to the average number of heads alive. If we don't increase herd size, it won't go up — unlike CO2 from fossil fuel use.
With a low enough amount of cows bred in more traditional ways, there would be a cycle where an equivalent amount of carbon would be captured by plants vs what is excreted by the cow. That's why animal farming has not been a source of net CO2 for the thousands of years that we have been doing it before industrial times.
However, going back to historic sustainable levels means a drastic reduction in consumption of meat and dairy - probably a few times per year or something like that. Putting all livestock together, it would mean people could eat meat maybe once a month. Eggs and dairy may be a little more common, as those are collected throughout the life of the animal.
Moreover the weight of a cow carcass is no higher than 60% that of the animal, while for pigs the lower bound is ~78%. Poultry is also very efficient in this regard, especially turkey yielding 80%+.
Where I'm from domestically consumed beef comes mostly from dairy cows so it's not particularly good, but it appears to be the more environmentally sound choice than growing them just for the meat(not that this was the aim - it's just cheaper).
We already did, in the sense that we'd need more earths to let everyone on earth eat the kind of diets prevalent in rich countries today. https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets
Current enourmous land use by meat industries has many negative effects. We should individually switch to plant based (if you haven't already) and in public policy rapidly remove all subsidies from meat and animal industries and fully price in all negative externalities (GHG, antibiotics risks, pandemic risks, air and water pollution). At the same time subsidize plant based alternatives. As a result plant based alternatives would be several times lower in cost than the meat versions, which in turn would drive consumption changes.
No need to get all radical - you won't gain much support for such ideas. Beef consumption already peaked in rich countries anyway.
The idea that negative externalities should be priced in is the standard view in economics. I think most people, if provided the reasoning for it, would accept such pricing in when it comes to such serious global problems as climate change, antibiotics resistance, pandemic risk and air and water pollution.
Now is exactly the time for half measures - radical options proposed in the past largely failed due to their simplistic view of human nature.
We're actually getting there with electricity. Renewables - the very definition of a half-measure - are being deployed at a much higher rate than nuclear, which on the face of it is the ideal solution - but only in a world where megaprojects are delivered on time and within budget. Ironically China and Russia are doing great here - I suppose the secret ingredient is totalitarianism.
> I think most people, if provided the reasoning for it, would accept such pricing in when it comes to such serious global problems as climate change
That's a very charitable assumption.
There are many people who can't even begin to imagine, much less understand the issue at hand.
Going vegan because climate change and animal suffering is going to be a hard sell.
Not sure I understand. What are some examples of "radical options" in policy you think have been attempted and failed? What are examples of "non-radical" options you think there's evidence would yield better outcomes?
With "not the time for half measures" I meant that if only half measures are deployed now then it seems likely millions of humans, many from regions least responsible for climate change, will be harmed, killed or displaced.
The idea of pricing in costs is already very familiar to people in their everyday lives. There are social norms like "you break it, you pay" and various regulations that price in costs.
> Going vegan because climate change and animal suffering is going to be a hard sell.
Keep in mind the distinction between policy level and individual level. The policy suggestion was remove meat industry subsidies, price in externalities, subsidize plant based foods. On the individual level the best outreach approach varies case by case depending on where the recipient is at. Are you already vegan or in the process of switching to vegan? If not then feel free to lift any individual level objections or obstacles you personally have and we can discuss them.
Half measures is what's feasible. The measures you're proposing are not.
> Keep in mind the distinction between policy level and individual level. The policy suggestion was remove meat industry subsidies, price in externalities, subsidize plant based foods.
You're mistaken in the assumption that the majority will be willing to vote for this. Every point of yours is politically unpalatable.
There was this eye opening old XKCD that showed that by aggregate weight cattle dwarf every other land mammal: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1338:_Land_Mammal...
(Not a subject expert, do your own research, check the sources, etc.)
So even if we stopped producing CO2 from fossil fuels today, we would still be increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere though breeding cows and other livestock, moving through a CH4 phase that does even more harm. Livestock are releasing the C trapped in plant bodies.
There is only one place that actual surplus carbon comes from, and that is fossil fuels. Everything else is part of the closed-loop carbon cycle.
Atmospheric CH4 does not "do harm" as such, it's indeed a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming in proportion to its prevalence. Said prevalence, as I'm trying to point out, is proportional to the number of heads of cattle. As such, if we don't increase the number of heads significantly, the impact will be constant.
Contrast with fossil fuels for, say, transportation: their impact on greenhouse effect is constantly increasing at a rate proportional to the number of cars/planes/trips.
Or put another way: we have to stop using ICE cars and planes altogether to stop increasing greenhouse effect; we only have to keep eating the same amount of beef and cheese to stop their impact.
https://www.wired.com/story/carbon-neutral-cows-algae/ "What’s more, feeding cattle algae is really only practical where it’s least needed: on feedlots. This is where most cattle are crowded in the final months of their 1.5- to 2-year lives to rapidly put on weight before slaughter. There, algae feed additives can be churned into the cows’ grain and soy feed. But on feedlots, cattle already belch less methane—only 11 percent of their lifetime output. ... This means that even if algae diets on feedlots worked perfectly, it wouldn’t help with the 89 percent of cows’ belches that occur earlier in their lives."
Also speaking of pasture, afaik the equation for cattle is completely different whether they're fed corn vs grazing on marginal land as they're supposed to.
and where does the corn grow ?
The problem is that cattle consumes orders of magnitude more water compared to plants, on top of the fact that they also eat plants, of which they convert a small portion of into (edible) mass.
Their urine, en masse, is highly toxic to the local environment as it kills plants (high salt content, fertilizer burn) and pollutes rivers (pH, over-fertilization, algae blooming).
Other than that, what you describe only applies to industrial farming, not grazing cattle. Cows graze pasture, they shit and piss in pasture, it's almost a closed cycle except for the added salt the herder usualy gives them.
What water claim? That cows consume water and excrete concentrated urine? I don't know what you're debunking without a source, but appears to be a straw man.
> industrial farming, not grazing cattle
Grazing requires orders of magnitude more land compared to cramming cows into small cages, which decreases the amount of food you can derive from this already (very) expensive food source.
I love beef, but that doesn't change the fact that it's an incredibly wasteful source of food and it ultimately unsustainable compared to plants, fish, eggs etc.
It is true that lot feeds and industrialized cattle production create massive amounts of pollution but so does industrialized agriculture. The problem is on the how and not on the what (see Joel Salatin for a good example).
> The problem is on the how and not on the what
If we could realistically supply the entire demand for beef with cows grazing on fields on the same amount of land, without raising the price directly or by subsidizing the cost, I'd be all in. This is literally impossible as industrialized cattle production is that much more efficient, no matter how revoltingly disgusting it is.
I meet quite a bit of animal-activist types (by association) that 'expose' parts of the meat industry by taking jobs and secretly filming (as it's often illegal to do).
Most of the extreme horrors they've recorded are in slaughterhouses, but I have vivid memories of seeing cattle confined in small cages which fecal infected infections. Perhaps that's dairy production, as it doesn't affect the outcome (as much)?
Sure, there's rain and you can grow corn without irrigation, but the yields will never be as high as with it.
This is a why I say the meat industry is more honest than the Dairy industry. The Dairy folks are all about cows in green fields in the sun - ignoring the 4-5 years of psychological and physical torture only to end the exact same way.
At least the meat industry just says - it's for meat!