Red meat has a huge carbon footprint because cattle requires a large amount of land and water.
https://sph.tulane.edu/climate-and-food-environmental-impact-beef-consumption
Demand for steaks and burgers is the primary driver of Deforestation:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/marcel-gomes-interview
If you don’t have a car and rarely eat red meat, you are doing GREAT 🙌🙌 🙌
Sure, you can drink tap water instead of plastic water. You can switch to Tea. You can travel by train. You can use Linux instead of Windows AI’s crap. Those are great ideas. But, don’t drive yourself crazy. If you are only an ordinary citizen, remember that perfect is the enemy of good.
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The idea that we have to grow food for food is ridiculous. Cows turn grass into meat just fine, why do we need to grow corn and soybeans for them
I bet it’s because, like with hogs, we’ve bred them to be so growth optimized they can’t get enough calories from grass anymore.
Unfortunately grass-fed production is no solution. It both does not scale or help reduce emissions
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
Not scaling could be a feature and not a bug. It would raise the price of beef and thus lower demand.
To an extent, yes it would likely do that. Though on the other hand running into the maximum capacity limitations would not look pretty. Even countries that have a just bit higher grass-fed production than others have a fair number of issues (and still use plenty of supplemental grain)
For instance, in New Zealand, they use a massive amount of synthetic fertilizer on grasslands to try to make it keep up for dairy production
The large footprint for milk in Canterbury indicates just how far the capacity of the environment has been overshot. To maintain that level of production and have healthy water would require either 12 times more rainfall in the region or a 12-fold reduction in cows.
[…]
The “grass-fed” marketing line overlooks the huge amounts of fossil-fuel-derived fertiliser used to make the extra grass that supports New Zealand’s very high animal stock rates.
Or in the UK and Ireland where grass-fed production leads to deforestation and they still need additional grain on top of it
Most of the UK and Ireland’s grass-fed cows and sheep are on land that might otherwise be temperate rainforest – arable crops tend to prefer drier conditions. However, even if there were no livestock grazing in the rainforest zone – and these areas were threatened by other crops instead – livestock would still pose an indirect threat due to their huge land footprint
[…]
Furthermore, most British grass-fed cows are still fed crops on top of their staple grass
the first time in probably a year i’ve seen someone explain supply and demand correctly. thank you.
What?!?
It doesn’t mean that you must supply me with everything I demand?!?!
why do we need to grow corn and soybeans for them
we don’t. but we do grain finish most cattle, because it’s faster.
Well, it’s not “growing” per se, but we produce fertilizers which are “plant food”, so you could say we grow food for our food even for plants.
My big problem is not with individuals ethically trying to do the right thing, or about people trying to convince individuals to be ethical and to do the right thing.
My big problem is the amount of effort in this when it will have only small gains. In today’s society, meaningful gains come from changes in government regulations and policies.
If you want people to stop eating as much red meat, get the government to stop providing subsidies to cattle owners. I have a money-focused relative who owns cattle only because of the subsidies. At least let the price of beef go up to its actual market value. You’d think that would be an easy sell for Republicans who believe in the free market, but they’re the ones who want the subsidy the most.
Of course, then, you can add additional regulations and encourage environmental responsibility.
We should push for large institutional change, but don’t ignore individual change either. Problem is how will you get said governments to act if people aren’t also stepping up and they expect backlash to acting? The more people expect it to be cheap and highly consumed, the harder it will be for them to act. Moving people away from meat individually makes it easier. Movements that succeed usually have both individual and institutional change
Institutional change that is achievable at the current moment is smaller. There’s been some success with things like changing the defaults to be plant-based (which is good and we should continuing to push for that), but cutting subsides is going to be an uphill battle until a larger number of people change their consumption patterns
I agree that individual change is important, but you have to go about it a certain way. Actually the way OP is phrasing it is pretty good. Let people understand that just eating less red meat is always better.
Because if the messaging is at all confusing, you’ll get the kind of result you got during the start of Covid with the masks. It was always true that any amount of masking helped, but when you started to make it complicated, you got a lot of backlash and people completely stopped masking. And of course, with both Covid and red meat, there are people out there incentivized to make things complicated so that people give up. I think it really needs to be dead simple to work.
I enjoy red meat, but I avoid it most of the time because of trying to be healthier. Also guilt from seeing videos of happy cows looking like gigantic dogs.
Fucking shit though I had no idea coffee was so high up the list. I probably should drink less of it anyway, but ouch, that one hurt me way more than the beef.
I was surprised it was that high. I don’t ever drink coffee, so hopefully it offsets some of the meat. We have already reduced our consumption.
because companies pollute much more
This argument drives me crazy. Companies, in this context, are the people. The companies pollute exclusively on behalf of their customers. WE ARE THE COMPANIES.
See, OP is not saying we should “just drop red meat”, and this is probably why you get that kind of reactions.
if you think about the energetic demand of growing food only to feed an animal that then will become food, rather than skipping this step and eating the original food instead.
most people don’t want to eat grass or soy cake. letting cows graze, and feeding soycake (the byproduct of soybean oil production) to pigs and poultry is a conservation of resources.
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not all land is suitable for crops. letting cattle graze it is fine.
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this is a strawman
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You can’t counter “raising enough cows to supply our current meat demand takes a lot of resources we could be eating instead” with “its okay for them to eat grass :D”
this conversation didn’t happen.
Good news is that overall arable farmland usage goes down the less meat you eat. Don’t need to use all the same land, you have flexibility to move around production
we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
overall arable farmland usage goes down the less meat you eat.
I don’t think that has ever happened.
It’s worth noting that soybean meal is not a byproduct. When we look at the most common extraction method for soybean oil (using hexane solvents), soybean meal is still the driver of demand
However, soybean meal is the main driving force for soybean oil production due to its significant amount of productivity and revenues
[…]
soybean meal and hulls contribute to over 60% of total revenues, with meal taking the largest portion of over 59% of total revenue
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0926669017305010
This is even more true of other methods like expelling which is still somewhat commonly used
Moreover, soybean meal is the driving force for the whole process [expelling oil from soy] because it provides over 70% of the total revenue for soy processing by expelling
hexane solvents are not the most common method of oil extraction. you have been misinformed.
some studies show soybean oils being as much as half the value of the crop, despite being just 20% of the weight.
If we assume that’s the case, half of revenue is still not a byproduct, it’s a coproduct. The other half is still pretty relevant to its value and usage. If 50% of your revenue disappears from something, you’re going to be making a lot less of it
i think at this point we’ve devolved into arguing semantics. you’re not going to convince me soybean is a viable crop unless you can press it for oil, and i don’t think i can convince you it’s a viable product unless the meal is fed to livestock. but i hope you have a good night!
Operative word you. Individual action was a deliberate red herring constructed by the FF industry propaganda machines half a fucking century ago, because they knew who the actual significant contributors to the problem were.
It’s a manner of perspective, Coca Cola is considered one of the largest polluters on the planet but that’s not because corporate Coca Cola is out there polluting for funsies it’s because they make a product that individuals purchase and then individuals improperly dispose of. Sure no one person can stop Coca Cola from polluting but isn’t the pollution caused by your individual purchase your own responsibility?
No. Coke could make biodegradable packaging and choose not to because number go up. Next question.
And people could not purchase non biodegradable products
Operative word you. Individual action was a deliberate red herring constructed by the FF industry propaganda machines half a fucking century ago, because they knew who the actual significant contributors to the problem were.
I do agree that real change takes political power. You need things like tax breaks for people who use public transit, congestion pricing, taxing airports more, banning ads for SUVs, requiring electronic devices to be repairable, etc… These actions would be far more efficient than any individual action. Sure.
But political power isn’t enough. Look at what just happened in Canada.
Justin Trudeau banned oil tankers off the coast of British Columbia and he tried to ban single use plastics. He faced outraged reactions.
Some angry politicians were publically taunting him on social media and sued his government :
A guy literally campaigned on defending plastics and slashing the (tiny) tax on carbon.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-scrap-plastics-ban-1.7514037
See what happened? The guy was the Prime Minister. He tried some small changes. He faced brutal political backlash. Why? His people weren’t ready.
Change starts with individuals. Only when you reach a critical mass of individuals can you start trying to push for policy changes.
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Let me tell you something, the consumer is to blame.
Nobody needs to orient their life around anything that they don’t choose. For example I willingly gave up my car and picked a job near me so I didn’t have to drive.
There wouldn’t be a market for bottled water if people wouldn’t drink the fucking shit.
This whole cognitive dissonance crap where you get to live a completely hedonistic trash-filled lifestyle, while justifying that you have the right because you’re sad about your earning… I am sick to death of this attitude in people.
Oh and the shitty product that exists? I must consume it, it’s not me for purchasing it and creating a market, it’s them for serving my need & this market.
There wouldn’t be a market for bottled water if water was clean and readily available for free.
The bottled water industry is way worse in Norway than in Spain for example.
Even if you justification added up, you could just go get barrels of water, you don’t need to get individual bottles.
You people actually make me sick with your BS
Most scandinavians don’t buy individual bottles because of the drinking water quality. water is usually available most places. And it’s always free in regular cafes and restaurants in Norway if you ask for it.
It’s solvable if the state does what’s it’s supposed to.
It’s pretty lame to use the (imperically correct concept) of, no ethical consumption under capitalism to blanket absolve you of willful, informed choices. Humans all eat approx the same amount of calories, but the production of said calories are far from equal. Like you can be mad at the statistics but that doesn’t really change the reality of an unnecessary cultural pratice which massively contributes to climate.
I mean just for your own sake, stop this line of thinking at “I don’t care” instead of looking for a scapegoat to justify you indifference as praxis.
Get out of here with your logic and reason!
LOL
Tell me what is your job?
Don’t they sell crap?
Do you live in a hut?
Clean your ass with grass?
Piss off with your selfrightious BS.How about you go fuck yourself?
:)
🙄
This is such a colossal cop out. Without question corporations and individual billionaires produce more pollution by several magintuedes of individual people. But even that is a drop in the bucket between the deforestation, the years of transporting food for livestock and the final transportation of end product meat to the world population that can be fed on plant based protein.
Save this line for plastic straws and other frivolous demonization from those in private jets. But don’t use it as a thought terminating cliche aginst the single biggest source of historical human made climate change.
Oh please.
Every food needs to be transported.
Well not if it’s produced and consumed locally but you forget you’re in capitalism where it’s cheaper to get your quinoa from 4000km away, etc.
Also I don’t want to be fed on plant based protein.
The world population can be fed anyway but capitalism says we need to destroy a lot of food to keep the prices down.
And some regions don’t have food bcs it can’t get there or their crops are destroyed by war, again caused by capitalism.
There’s a reason you don’t hear about little Greta anymore, she got wise.
Everyone can parrot the BP carbon footprint garbage all they want, IDC. I have zero guiltAlso I don’t want to be fed on plant based protein.
At the core of literally every anti-vegan argument is, "but I don’t wanna!"
yep imagine not doing what you want
Do beliefs and principles even matter if, whenever they’re inconvenient, you ignore them and do whatever you were going to do anyway?
you have zero knowledge of my beliefs, let alone if I find them inconvenient or ignore them.
No need for your pedantic ramblings.
Going to have a cocktail in the sun with a little umbrella. ByeThis conversation is about whether eating meat is unethical, if you’re saying “I don’t wanna” then what you’re saying is that it doesn’t matter whether it’s ethical or not, because even if it were shown to be unethical and against your principles, you wouldn’t care, because “I don’t wanna.” Because your treats are more important to you than beliefs or principles.
People will look at an image like this, read that 80% of deforestation in the Amazon happens for cattle, and go “I’m powerless, Exxon is bad” and continue to not only eat meat 5x a day but also actively try to convince other people that reducing their meat consumption is silly and they might as well keep eating it as much as they want because grocery stores will stock it anyway and Elon Musk rides a jet.
All you fuckers act like your individual choice to not eat meat or have kids won’t just have another eat up the same resources or have kids in your stead. We need smart people to have ethical kids and we need extreme systematic political change for any real affect whatsoever. Even if the ENTIRE WORLD dropped red meat, while still a good chunk, it’s only 6% of our global annual emissions that we’d save. The top 3 sectors for emissions are energy transportation and general industry which makes up about 75% of global emissions, at about 25% each. The individual choices not mattering as much as political systematic change is huge, and that won’t happen if the Trumpers are having most of the kids and we’re having stupid divisive arguments about what our individual food choices should be.
It’s enough to make it difficult to keep to 2C climate targets on its own. Its not something we should ignore - especially since much of it comes in methane emissions which means reduction in it can be felt quicker and reduce chance of hitting feedback loops. We must tackle all sources
To have any hope of meeting the central goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit global warming to 2°C or less, our carbon emissions must be reduced considerably, including those coming from agriculture. Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. Thus, major changes in how food is produced are needed if we want to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
That’s also on top of other environmental issues that it contributes to besides just climate change. Land usage, water usage, waste runoff
Transitioning to plant-based diets (PBDs) has the potential to reduce diet-related land use by 76%, diet-related greenhouse gas emissions by 49%, eutrophication by 49%, and green and blue water use by 21% and 14%, respectively, whilst garnering substantial health co-benefits
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html
And pesticide and fertilizer usage is lower
Thus, shifting from animal to plant sources of protein can substantially reduce fertilizer requirements, even with maximal use of animal manure
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344922006528
The diet containing more animal products required an additional 10 252 litres of water, 9910 kJ of energy, 186 g of fertilizer and 6 g of pesticides per week in comparison to the diet containing less animal products
Emissions are just a piece of it. There’s land use, consequences of this land use, etc, which involve changes in rain patterns, soil acidification, and so forth.
You have anger problems as well as responsibility problems.
Not having a kid eclipses all of these by orders of magnitude.
I haven’t had hundreds of kids. I’m a climate savior.
you got rookie numbers. i could have had tens of thousands.
As a middle aged dude who is unlikely to have kids at this point, I’m curious about the numbers if you have some some suggested sources to peruse
i regard all antinatalism as ecofascism. i’m not asking you to change my mind, i’m letting you know you might be participating in a eugenics campaign.
How is it eugenics if it has nothing to do with a parent’s genetic make up? Like if they said “meat eaters shouldn’t have kids” you could try and make an argument for eugenics but for nobody to have a kid or for everyone equally to have less children how is that eugenics?
you are saying this in english, to a (self-)selected demographic subset of english speakers. you are encouraging a particular set of people not to have children. that’s eugenics. unless you can find a way to convey this message to everyone, at once, in an identical message given cultural and other contexts, you will be biasing the message to be more effective among some segment of the populous.
We’ve done it. We’ve finally found the Olympic Gold Medalist for Mental Gymnastics.
Congratulations.
this is a thought-terminating cliche. what i said is true.
So are you interpreting the comment as only people who speak English should not have kids?
only people who speak english can read that comment. they are only talking to english-literate people.
edit: … english-literate people who are on lemmy.
That was not my question. Do you think the OP meant that only people who speak English should not have kids?
no. i don’t think that. but i think the propaganda they’ve produced can only have that effect.
Sorry buddy, that isn’t how this works. Great try tho. Go back to the whiteboard and come back when you have valuable input to share.
- Only a small subset of people who don’t have kids are antinatalists.
- Antinatalism is not eugenics.
- Environmentalism is the opposite of fascism, actually. When you stick up for the environment, you’re with the good guys.
Environmentalism is the opposite of fascism
ecofascism is a real phenomenon. there is a cure for political illiteracy.
2 truths and a lie…the deep ecology movement and the Unabomber would seem to undermine your third claim
- Antinatalism is mental illness
Antinatalism is not eugenics.
maybe not in and of itself, but any advocacy for it or policies enforcing endorsing or causing it surely are.
Only a small subset of people who don’t have kids are antinatalists.
i’m not talking about people who don’t have kids. i’m talking about people who advocate for people not to have kids.
That’s one pair of philosophies that creep me out both ways. Both the anti natalists and pro natalists.
Deciding for yourself is one thing, imposing your choice on others is maddening.
I don’t know if the comment quite raises to the level of anti natalist though. Maybe it’s grading on a curve of reading some more hard core anti natalists, but that comment felt tame and felt like they wouldn’t necessarily object to a couple having one child or even two, being somewhat below the replacement level…
i’m not pro-natalist, but i am anti-anti-natalist, if there is any room for that.
Ontop of that, factory farming is a lovecraftian horror that floods the universe with terrible agony. And there’s very good reason to believe that the suffering of animals is as real and awful as yours or mine.
the graphic you posted comes from this article, which shows it is based on poore-nemecek 2018. i’ve detailed teh problems with this study in another top-level comment here, but, basically, it’s not good science. i feel you’re spreading misinformation.
I wouldn’t call this “detailing the problems.” You wrote a few paragraphs and possibly listed a few.
How much of cattle feed is cottonseed? In the US only or worldwide? What are alternatives? Would they be better or worse?
poore-nemecek is conducting scientific malpractice by combining LCA studies as they have. the problem with behrens, admittedly, is more of a feeling of misgiving, and I don’t know if there is any study that properly accounts for reclaimed agricultural water, or of that’s even a reasonable thing to do when your end product is a simple statistic like land use, water use, or ghge.
I think the best thing to do is probably look at inefficiencies in any specific operation and help them improve, but that doesn’t give simplistic answers like telling 8 billion people to eat more or less of something.
For someone who seems so righteous and careful about saying the right thing, I think it’s funny you end with “telling 8 billion people to eat more or less of something” when that’s an obvious exaggeration on your part. Global meat consumption is highly skewed. For example, apparently, the US consumes 21% of the world’s meat (world population review, which cites FAO, 2010) yet accounts for about 4% of the world population.
I’m advocating for a method to actually improve outcomes, and, yes, lampooning the simplistic answers offered here. but if the answers are more complex, there is not any nuance or further explanation offered here. the data gathering and analysis methods offered are flawed, and it doesn’t take a degree in statistics or environmental science to understand this.
you’ve latched onto one glib comment I’ve made while glossing over the real methodological missteps.
It’s a “glib comment” you’re making to further discredit the study. I could be wrong but I don’t think you’ve posted any actual studies that talk about what’s wrong with the Poore Nemecek article. It was published in 2018 so there should be plenty.
Instead, you say you “detailed” what’s wrong with the study when you, at best, gave a short overview. Then you made exaggerations to further discredit the study. You also say the study is so bad “it doesn’t take a degree in statistics or environmental science” to understand why it’s so bad.
You could very well be right but I just see someone puffing up their chest and not actually using intellectual methods to convey their point of view while expertly pretending to be doing that.
simply reading the LCA studies cited by poore and nemecek will show they are misusing the data.
Surely within the 6000+ articles that cite it there must be a great study going to town on Poore and Nemecek, then.
Oooo a “teh” in the wild—a rare site in the mobile internet age! (I’m not being mean, I’m just remarking the rarity!)
Red meat is a staple of right wing peoples identity since a lot of them are cattle farmers and merica. So a study like this, posted to Lemmy is just great.
I think it’s more related to hypermasculinity and meat. Eg grilling steaks. The whole bacon craze with men. Those Burger King commercials with all the meat and the girls licking ranch. Hungry Man frozen dinners with the meat as the biggest and most important thing.The fact that they call their dicks their meat or sausage (does look like sausage so I get). The weightlifting bros and high protein diets that are usually meat. Keto and men and Joe Rogan. The Atkins diet being marketed to men. I was just doing a back and forth with a guy on Lemmy who insisted the only food you need to eat is meat because it has all the vitamins you need (it does not, or at least, muscle meat does not and he didn’t seem into eating organ meat like heart and liver).
But yeah it’s also probably related to “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner” stuff too.
I just think it’s the masculinity thing because a lot of rightwing men have to hide any bit of femininity they can, and most people are a mix of masculine and feminine traits normally so it causes rightwing men to overcompensate to hide it.
a study like this, posted to Lemmy is just
circle jerking
Veganism is good, necessary even, but more than voting we need to actually overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism. Profit will destroy the planet unless we take control of the reigns from capital.
Yeah plants, the only thing that creates Oxygen
or eat the wealthy is a better start
How much less red meat to offset all the private jet that flew to Venice for bezos’ wedding?
“Your strategy, eating less red meat, pales in effectiveness to my strategy, blowing up Jeff Bezos’ private jet” alright, go blow up Jeff Bezos’ private jet then.
No, its fine, he paid for a carbon offset. That makes everything ok.
Not loving that the exact source of the data in this graph is not clearly linked in the description.
Yeah let us do the microscopic differences while some industry totally ignores it…
Sure. Imma keep using my jet though.
Not disagreeing that meat is bad for the environment, but I think not having kids is probably way above cutting out meat.
