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Comment by themerone | Hacker News Reader

The cattle industry is the lowest hanging fruit in reducing greenhouse emissions.

Ranchers and meet packers won't be happy about efforts to reduce beef consumption, but there losses could be offset by higher prices.

Beef consumers would be very unhappy about higher prices, but beef becoming a luxury item would cause minimal harm, as there are plenty of substitute protein sources.

Politicians on all sides are afraid of policies that could be seen as anti agricultural, so they focus all there efforts on much more costly measures.

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> The cattle industry is the lowest hanging fruit in reducing greenhouse emissions.

Citation needed.

This is a recurring meme in online discussion and I am honestly a bit aggravated by this. I am all for curbing the slaughter industry for the ethical aspect of animal suffering but the argument for ecological reasons seems like something introduced in public discourse to create distraction.

For example fugitive methane emissions from oil wells, pipelines, and coal pits, account for 5.8 % of GHG (This is also I suspect largely underreported). In contrast Livestock emissions and Manure/Fertilizer related emissions are also 5.8%. [0]

Please explain how it will be easier to stop Farmers in remote parts of Brazil and Argentina from raising cattle versus forcing billion dollar companies to sequester methane at extraction sites in US/Canada/Gulf countries?

In fact let's take it further if we look at the GHG emissions of:

- Iron/Steel Industry (7.2%)

- Cement Industry (3%)

- Fugitive methane emissions from Oil/Gas/Coal (5.8%)

- Petrochemical industry/refinement (3.6%)

These 4x GHG sources alone produce more GHG emissions than our _entire_ Agricultural activity (Plants + Livestock) including deforestation and crop burning. [0]

Our governments/regulators are failing us. We expect a 180 change from developing countries when entire billion dollar industries are idle in jurisdictions where we actually have a saying. As much as I agree with it for Animal welfare, in my view, Beef as an ecological battle _is_ a distraction.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

Its the recycling as distraction approach allover, but this time with vegetarians as usefull idiots.

Make public transport and meat alternatives cheaper. Rest follows.

> These 4x GHG sources alone produce more GHG emissions than our _entire_ Agricultural activity (Plants + Livestock) including deforestation and crop burning

If someone wants to decrease their green house emissions, its very hard to personally do anything about the Steel/Cement/Oil industry without a fair amount of effort - particularly if you're part of the "younger generation". Changes to those industries takes concerted political/industrial effort and vested interests want to maintain the status-quo.

However, anyone can give up or reduce the amount of beef they're eating without much effort, no government regulation needed.

Most people that care about environment, animal cruelty, and ethics are already small consumers of meat anyway. I would hazard guess also that any market reduction in Beef consumption in the West would be absorbed by Asian Markets, producers would not be producing less.

Actions like:

- Reducing/eliminating car usage

- Reducing residential heating/cooling

Are something individuals control and both would objectively have a much much greater GHG emissions impact. However they are not as popular in public discourse.

Looking at some documentaries about living conditions in very dense places proves that humans could survive in much smaller housing. You could massively increase density of housing and people would still stay alive.

But for some reason this is never suggested as solution before stopping eating meat...

> Most people that care about environment, animal cruelty, and ethics are already small consumers of meat anyway.

Based on what I see for sale in grocery stores and on restaurant menus a huge amount of meat is consumed in the US. I have a hard time believing it's all being consumed by people that don't care about the environment, animal cruelty and ethics. I think/hope that most people care about those things but just feel they are powerless to do anything about them or maybe aren't aware how bad some situations are, e.g. animal welfare in the meat industry.

> in contrast Livestock emissions and Manure/Fertilizer related emissions are also 5.8%.

Are those net emissions (= from fossil fuels) or they include net-zero emissions, such as CO2 from the atmosphere (crops) converted to some other (short lived) ghg?

OT, but these 2 sentences after each other got me confused, then amused at the poor writing...

> Citation needed.

> This is a recurring meme in online discussion and I am honestly a bit aggravated by this

It's low hanging because it costs consumers nothing to eat less beef.

The costs of cleaning up all those industries will get passed on to consumers.

> This is a recurring meme in online discussion and I am honestly a bit aggravated by this.

It is because the FAO report "Livestock's long shadow" has stood the test of time, despite what is usually said in internet comment sections.

On an individual level, it is probably the most simple thing you can do. Not driving/flying or will make it impossible for you to participate in society. Not eating meat is simple in most western countries.

Perhaps this is where we are missing the data.

I struggle to see how a X percentage reduction in meat consumption in North America or Europe would lead to a matched reduction in livestock numbers or deforestation. That surplus would just be absorbed as cheaper beef in other markets with deficit (in Asia for example).

I would be interested in seeing an analytical breakdown of consuming 50% less meat versus bringing your thermostat 3 or 4 Celsius away from your ideal temperature? Or forcing Commercial real estate to bring their thermostats 3 or 4 Celsius away from ideal?

I never said I think it is an individual problem. If we don't switch the energy sector away from oil there is not a chance in hell we are getting anywhere. What I said is, on an individual level, not eating animal products is a lot easier than avoiding oil use.

Regardless of how we chose to tackle the problem, we can't look away from the fact that meat - and especially beef - is an incredibly inefficient way to produce food. Not just with regards to CO2e. It uses a pretty staggering amount of land and often a staggering amount of fresh water.

I am looking out the window right now at a seemingly endless field of crops that will be fed to pigs and chicken. Sure, they are a lot better at converting plant calories to meat calories than cows, but it seems pretty wasteful. I remember calculating grams of protein per acre and was blown away at how inefficient everything except farmed fish and maybe chicken (which preformed worse than most pulses when comparing the most intensive husbandry).

I haven't looked it up, but I wouldn't be surprised if more than half of the used arable land in Norway (where I am right now) is used for feed. Everywhere I look there are crops grown for cows, pigs and chicken (not counting the rest products they get from other types of crops).

> On an individual level

I’ve been doing a deep dive into grid resilience and decarbonization lately, basically exploring all of the sources of energy that are either available for purchase at grid-scale today or look very promising for commercial readiness on a <5 year time horizon. The two main thoughts that are unfortunately dominating are:

- Any time people are being told that their own individual actions that potentially cost them money or reduce their quality of life (buy rooftop solar! “Shave The Peak!” Stop eating meat! Take the bus or train, don’t drive or fly), they’ve essentially been tricked into getting warm and fuzzy feelings by a corporation who will profit from their decision while making the most minuscule insignificant dent in the problem

- Collective action is the only way this problem gets solved, and to be palatable to the general population it’s going to need to be done in a way that doesn’t reduce quality of life. The main one: rapid rollout of a combination of nuclear, combined-cycle natural gas with carbon capture, solar, wind, and pumped-storage hydro if the local geography actually supports that in an economic way. This needs to be sufficient capacity buildout that we not only can power our homes and industry with primarily carbon-free energy but also heat them and power our vehicles.

I 100% understand the desire to feel like “I’m doing my part” and that personal sacrifice can feel a whole lot better when you feel like you’re contributing to solving an existential threat to humanity (which I do believe the carbon problem is, which led me to doing this research in the first place). But unless you’re actively attacking the Pareto portion of the problem, your individual effort isn’t going to do a whole lot.

Oh, I do agree with you. We should not individualize a collective problem. Telling people to eat less meat will be a lot less effective than, say, ending oil subsidies. I think a lot of people think ending the climate crisis is about NOT doing something, but that is not really a feasible choice. We would need something like 7 or 8 Corona recessions to actually reach the 1.5C "goal".

I do agree with you, except for the natural gas part. The leaks in the process of storing and transporting natural gas are too large for it to be feasible even if chimney carbon capture starts being 100% effective.

Regarding meat production we could at least start with not subsidising the shit out of it.

> I do agree with you, except for the natural gas part.

I’m coming at this from the perspective of a very flat Canadian province (very little hydro potential, the math on even pumped hydro storage is miserably bad). I have not yet found an alternative dispatchable energy source for load following that would work here other than natural gas. If you’ve got something that is economically viable and commercially available in the <5 year time horizon I would love to update my mental model with it. It sucks for sure, I just haven’t found anything better yet that can deployed today.

Edit: > Regarding meat production we could at least start with not subsidising the shit out of it.

Definitely agree with you there! My wife and I are fortunate enough to live near a very small-scale ranch whose only real subsidy is that the wife works as a well-paid nurse. I’m generally a big fan of “let industries work out their own economics and if it doesn’t work out it can go away” :D

Not anything that would be available in the short term, but geothermal should work well in some parts of Canada, and where it is not enough for power generation it should still work for heating homes in an effective manner using small scale(ish) installations that cover maybe 10-15 houses at the same time. I had it installed in my house recently, and the most expensive part was the drilling. A government program to lower that threshold would probably be a good way to reduce peak energy.

Regarding meat, I am also all for feeding cows grass only, but that means land use balloons like crazy.

Yeah geothermal is amazing here for heating and cooling but not quite hot enough for “standard” geothermal power generation. There is an experimental pilot project happening in the south of the province where they think they may have found a technique that might work for power but it is so far unproven and the first plant is targeting only 5MW.

100% it is the way to go for carbon-free heating and cooling here. For new rural builds it’s even cost competitive. A friend of mine recently built a house and getting a gas line installed was going to cost $40k. Installing geothermal came in below that and with a COP of 4 it ends up coming out marginally cheaper on a monthly basis (1kWh of electricity costs approximately the same as 3kWh of natural gas heating here). He has resistive heating backup but I think it has only kicked in once or twice over 5 years.

And yeah, definitely not scalable for everyone to just split a hobby-grown cow with their whole family. It sure is nice for us though!

What part of flying is mandatory for society? Driving surely has become this way, but there is a large number of people that could reduce their driving by a significant amount without a large impact to their lives. They still choose not to. They don't care.

It is not mandatory, but for many people not flying is a choice in the same way not having a smartphone is. Like where I am right now: Getting around in Norway means flying.

wouldn't be sure about this: "but beef becoming a luxury item would cause minimal harm", there's anecdotal evidence of the carnivore community, where ppl can't eat anything else. I'm lucky, I can eat other things. But I too suffer from depression when I stray too far into eating plants.

Beef returning to being a luxury item, as it was all over modern Europe until post-WW2 recovery. Non-wealthy Britons didn't eat beef very often, and it was also a special treat in Germany. Widespread regular beef consumption before the world wars was pretty much a big New World country (USA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Australia) thing.

Even today, Germans eat about 1/4 the amount of beef that Americans do, and somewhat less meat overall. It's certainly available, but it's a lot more expensive than pork or chicken. Domestic stall-raised beef is about the same price as free-range chicken, and free-range beef is even more expensive; I refuse to consider Brazilian beef, which is usually the cheapest, given its motivating role in the destruction of the rainforests.

The problem in arguing with food of previous eras is that they involved a lot of malnutrition related issues.

Politicians need to get elected and a culture war against hamburgers won't be very helpful with that.

The ranchers are the to be sacrificed scape goat for the car-industry. Yes to meat reduction, but in sync with SUV reduction.

I'm just going to be annoyed by the opening up of a new front in The War on Pleasure.

Except that 1/2 of beef is consumed by a minority of boomer men according to this article. And they are eating this largely via burritos and burgers rather than steaks.

They don't sound like they are taking care of themselves already. Would increasing the prices reduce consumption or just mean they treat themselves more like crap?

Would increasing the price really impact them, or the other 88% of the population that consumes significantly less on average?

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