Eating meat creates four times more greenhouse gases than being vegan, landmark study finds
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/meat-greenhouse-gases-vegan-diet-study-b2378754.htmlOpen linkView original on slrpnk.net697
Comments902https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/meat-greenhouse-gases-vegan-diet-study-b2378754.htmlOpen linkView original on slrpnk.net
Eating the rich is by far the most eco-friendly approach as it can dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Jeff bezos probably tastes like drywall and hooker spit.
Compost them first then you can eat the rich while also being vegan = Billions and billions of carbons.
Hooker spit. Lol. Imagine Jeff Bezos paying you hundreds of thousands to spit on him while trying to hide the fact that, you would gladly do it for free.
plus it's the only place in their house
And other people's cum.
I vehemently disagree with this statement.
We need to compost the rich and use that as a soil amendment to grow heirloom vegetables.
One Elon musk can feed a family for a year.
One farm fertilized with musk mulch can feed a city block!
Ok, are actively working on this? Is your work on it so horrendously demanding of all your attention of every single day, that you couldn't ALSO go vegan, or vegetarian, or just eat less meat? Eat the rich is just a fun day dream and a lazy excuse to not do what you can (like going vegan).
Eating the rich would also vastly reduce racism, sexism, classism, and worker exploitation. Can I therefore ignore my negligible personal impact, and keep being racist, sexist, classist, and buy only the cheapest clothes crafted by the most exploited third world toddlers?
You sound like you are fun at parties. This was obviously a joke. Also, Why can't we do both?
Spoken like a true conservative, I agree with you, we also need to reduce tax for the rich and raise the retirement age to at least 97 years otherwise the economy will crumble.
Yeah, twisting everything into class conflit babble is the balanced way to think.
Yes, it is!
Found the ecofascist.
This crucially important caveat they snuck in there:
"Prof Scarborough said: “Cherry-picking data on high-impact, plant-based food or low-impact meat can obscure the clear relationship between animal-based foods and the environment."
...which is an interesting way of saying that lines get blurry depending on the type of meat diet people had and/or the quantity vs the type of plant-based diet people had.
Takeaway from the article shouldn't be meat=bad and vegan=good - the takeaway should be that meat can be an environmentally responsible part of a reasonable diet if done right and that it's also possible for vegan diets to be more environmentally irresponsible.
That’s both absolutely true and a massive distraction from the point. An environmentally friendly diet that includes meat is going to involve sustainable hunting not factory farming. In comparison an environmentally friendly vegan diet is staples of meat replacements and not trying to get fancy with it. It’s shit like beans instead of meat, tofu and tempeh when you feel fancy. It means rejecting substitutes that are too environmentally costly such as agave nectar as a sweetener (you should probably use beet or cane based sweetener instead).
So in short eat vegan like a poor vegan not like a rich person who thinks veganism is trendy
"So in short eat vegan like a poor vegan not like a rich person who thinks veganism is trendy"
But in the context of this conversation, wouldn't eating like a poor vegan rely heavily on buying products that also have a heavy impact on the environment?
You would have to buy cheaper products which come from mass produced farms that use TONS and TONS of water! And generate TONS and TONS of carbon emissions during production of those products.
To be vegan AND
advocate for conservation(you can advocate for something no matter your own behavior. That's the wrong word to use) to claim that your lifestyle is better for the environment than your non-vegan counterparts, you have to have money.I ain’t never heard of a gram of black beans with more co2 emissions than a gram of beef
Yes, I think it’s vital to avoid thinking in absolutes over carbon footprints if we are to make real progress. We can argue endlessly over the “necessity” of consuming meat, but that becomes a distraction. Many things are not “necessary”, but most people are not realistically going to live in caves wearing carbon neutral hair shirts.
We need to continue increasing transparency on the impact of different animal products, so consumers can make informed choices. While also accepting they may not always be perfect.
The only way to stop people from eating meat is to make a vegan food that tastes better than a bacon cheeseburger.
https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/htm
yes. when you look at charts and such. Someone who exclusively ate meat for some reason who moved to chicken would have a greater impact than someone who exclusively ate chicken and went vegan. Sheep did not show up so well either so im guessing ruminants in general are not going to be so hot. Anyway I would encourage folk to keep it in mind and do what they can. I realize go vegan results in many. Well eff it all then but man just avoiding beef is big impact.
But that first person could have an even bigger environmental impact by becoming Vegan instead of only eating chicken.
yes but if you actually convince someone who eats just chicken to go vegan it will have less of an effect if you actually convince a big red meat eater to limit to chicken.
Watch as I solve this trolley problem with the Ole dual track drifting solution. They should all go vegan. You should, too.
you convinced me. don't try something because its just not good enough. stay the course. good convincing.
Thank you for helping me to convince everyone else just how pathetic you sound.
Name calling derails conversations faster than drifting trains. Put yourself in their shoes and maybe just agree to disagree.
I ate a double cheeseburger for dinner and it was better than any vegetable I've ever eaten.
You'd have a bigger impact by convincing 30% of the population to only have chicken, vs convincing 15% to go vegan.
Sure, and if we could only do one, we should choose accordingly. We can do both, simultanously. Exactly like how we don't have to choose between eating less meat and driving less cars.
Or an even bigger impact by having fewer children.
This is true, however, not realistic in some parts of the world. For instance, in the United States, Republicans have waged a war on bodily autonomy, which includes the Roe v. Wade ruling and states creating departments to hunt down citizens who go out of state to have abortions. There are also countries where sex education is not prohibited. So, take these things into consideration while thinking about potential solutions. That being said, you are right, and you can do something about it by voting, if you are able to, wherever you live.
Do you remember a source for that info? Or at least suggestions? I'm interested to read into it, but I'm not really sure what to even google for that
Our World in Data has a decent article about it: https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
Pic: https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/02/Environmental-impact-of-food-by-life-cycle-stage-768x690.png
This and the article seem like a great breakdown, thank you very much. I would have guessed chocolate would be somewhere in the middle, and I've never really thought about cheese in this context at all. I was surprised to see both of them so high up there.
This would suggest my sweet tooth is my biggest problem, at least, since beef is too expensive to be a common occurrence anyway
The real takeaway should be that the Independent is complete garbage
So nice to read a sensible comment in a sea of crazy talk.
Yeah I barely eat beef anymore, mostly chicken. I don't want to give up on eating animals, especially since I'm trying to get into shape right now and it would be hard to eat healthy and get enough protein to build up muscle mass.
Do whatever you want but just so you know Arnold Schwarzenegger is a vegetarian now. It’s much less difficult than people think to get enough protein to bulk up without meat unless you’re doing hardcore body building. Beans and rice is a high protein dinner. Peanut butter is amazing for bulking.
80% vegan. He still eats fish, eggs and chicken. https://www.insider.com/how-arnold-schwarzenegger-gets-protein-on-mostly-vegan-diet-2023-6
80% plant-based diet. Veganism is an ethical stance, not a trendy diet.
Agreed. Almost Vegan isn't Vegan but it's something.
I know and if everything goes as planned soon my dietary needs will change that this is a thing I will greatly reconsider. As of now I still have some fat reserves so I try to avoid too many carbs or fat. My theory is that I'm still capable to gain muscles while maintaining a small deficit as I have enough reserves to feed my muscles before my body decides it'd rather burn protein for energy. At the end of summer I'll go back to focus on weight loss until I'm forced to bulk because I won't be as much outside for weather and daylight reasons. I'll rethink my relationship with animal products at those points.
german vegan strongman
I keep half a dozen of my own chickens in my backyard...which means about half my daily protein intake comes from eggs (which is a great source, btw). And my chickens free-range in my backyard and largely take care of and feed themselves (supplemented with chicken feed but they get most of their daily intake from the bugs/plants in the yard). I still do eat meat almost daily, but the quantities are a lot less than what I was doing a decade ago, and beef is less than a once-a-week thing for me. Like you, I'm trying to get back in shape and watching macronutrients (like protein) very carefully and trying to hit certain daily minimum numbers.
The best-treated slaves are still slaves at the end of the day.
I'd recommend reading into some more scientific sources of physical therapy and nutrition. I think it could help you overcome your bias.
Eating a varied plant based diet can seriously improve performance compared to a one sided diet. I, like millions of others perform very well in strength based sports.
Remember that protein is simply a combination of amino acids. It doesn't necessarily matter where you get them from, but how many of each you ingest compared to your needs.
Good luck 👍
A couple of people have spoken to me before about wanting to cut back on, or completely cut meat from their diets, but didn't know where to start. If anyone reading this feels the same way, here's some fairly basic recipies that I usually recommend (Bosh's tofu curry is straight up one of the best currys i've ever had - even my non-vegan family members love it)
Written:
Videos:
Tofu is also super versatile and is pretty climate-friendly. there's a bazillion different ways to do tofu, but simply seasoning and pan frying some extra/super firm tofu (like you do with chicken) with some peppers and onions, for fajitas, is an easy way to introduce yourself. Here's a little guide for tofu newbies: A Guide to Cooking Tofu for Beginners - The Kitchn. If you wanna level up your tofu game with some marinades here's six.
Lentils and beans are also super planet friendly, super cheap, and super versatile! You'll be able to find recipies all over that are based around lentils and beans so feel free to do a quick internet search.
Sorry for the huge, intimidating wall of text! I do hope someone interested in cutting back on meat found this useful though :)
In this thread: Shit loads of people who will say they care about the climate crisis on one day, then say they don't care about the 18.5% of global carbon emissions that the meat industry causes the next day because they can't get over the decade worth of anti-veganism jokes and memes that they've constantly repeated uncritically.
Individual habits MUST be changed to solve this part of the problem, there is literally no way around that. Getting triggered and writing screeds because you've spent decades getting caught up in hate over food choices won't stop the planet burning.
Tax meat, subsidize healthy meat alternatives.
OK, but what if instead of going vegan, I just don't have kids. Because adding more people to the world also creates more greenhouse gasses.
The problem is not the amount of people but how much each individual consumes. Getting meat out of your diet is a simple and a small sacrifice. Besides the health benefits there is also the fact that you don't contribute to the culling of 70 billion animals per year (of which 40% is probably not eaten and thrown in the trash). Not only that but you don't contribute to the greatest cause of deforestation, antibiotics resistance, decline of biodiversity, water waste, ...
Besides the global population is steadily stagnating (Africa is still booming) as a lot of countries see population decline (less than 2 children per woman).
You don't even need to cut it out entirely. Just not eat such a ridiculous amount of meat.
Stuff like this isn't helping. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH9VLihKm2g
Couldn't we just stop food waste? Most food is discarded before even making it to the store. Seems to me being more efficient with how we distribute food is more realistic that trying to convince everyone to go vegan.
Because I'm not going to stop eating meat and the amount of ppl like me is larger than you think
Many people will also not reduce food waste, for exactly same reasons you won't stop eating meat. Convenience, habit, cost, time investment.
Except those two things are not the same. We already have regulatory organizations that determine how food is handled and distributed. We can't regulate veganism, we can regulate food waste
We could absolutely regulate veganism. Hell, it's the other way around at the moment. For pretty much every animal rights law, there's an exception specifically for farm animals. Just removing those exceptions would make factory farming (and therefore like 90% of meat production) illegal.
And in a more general sense, we absolutely can regulate carnism (aka the opposite of veganism), exactly how we regulate a million other moral questions.
If only we had other examples of bans on certain goods and substances based on minority groups crys about morality. Im sure none of them resulted in billions of wasted dollars, mass incarceration, and the creation of a new black market
Both are true: reducing waste and adopting a plant based diet are great ways of reducing your footprint.
The number of vegetarians/vegans is growing quickly. I'm not convincing you of going vegan. You are convincing yourself to keep on eating meat despite the scientific facts and moral consequences.
Right there with ya
How bout both? :)
What if you don't have kids and just make an effort to reduce intake of animal products knowing it contributes to global collapse and also represents a modern holocaust.
Animal products don't have to be as all or nothing as having kids.
That moment when your veganism goes so hard you commit a hate crime on the internet implicitly comparing Jews to cattle
Edit: I'm from Poland, the country where most of the Holocaust happened - this is where the Jewish population was the highest and where Germans build their death camps. We read about it extensively at school, including eyewitness accounts describing the atrocities involved in this horrific campaign of human extermination, from the home of the Jew, to the ghetto, to the transport train, to the camp, to the gas chamber and to the furnace. Many of us heard those stories from our grandparents, of their neighbors being humiliated and taken away, ghettos liquidated, and public executions. I don't know what kind of deplorable scumbag one has to be to equate factory farming with the Holocaust.
Yes, it's a tasteless comparison. I'm a German. Hello neighbor, nice to live in peace.
The comparison also falls flat because while the Holocaust was a genocide, meant to eradicate, factory farming is the polar opposite.
The population size of factory farmed animals is usually way above natural levels, because we farm them. A philosopher even called it an evolutionary win for the farmed species (which does not justify any harm done to individuals).
There are more ways to express 'very bad' than comparing to the Holocaust, and many reasons not to, if you understand it.
Here are some quotes for you. From holocaust survivors and their relatives.
-Susan Kalev, who lost her father and her sister in the Holocaust
-“Hacker,” Animal Liberation Front member & Holocaust survivor
-Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish author, Nobel Laureate, & Holocaust survivor
-Alex Hershaft, Farm Animal Rights Movement founder & Holocaust Survivor
-Georges Metanomski, a Holocaust survivor who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
-Marc Berkowitz, Animal activist & survivor of Josef Mengele’s “twin experiments”
-Alex Hershaft, Farm Animal Rights Movement founder & Holocaust Survivor
-Gary Yourosky
You're right, it's so much fucking worse than the Holocaust by orders of magnitude. At least the Nazis weren't raping women to keep the Holocaust perpetually going.
If you said that in Germany, you'd probably get arrested.
holocaust
hŏl′ə-kôst″, hō′lə-
noun
This is just dishonest. The comparison is made specifically because of #2. It's the attempt to connect emotions and judgements people have about Nazi atrocities with animal slaughter. That's also why you quoted a Shoa survivor in defense of this wreck of a comparison.
May I invite you to watch this video of Alex Hershaft. He is probably one of the first, if not the first, persons who made the connection between the Jewish holocaust and what he himself calls the animal holocaust. In this talk he talks about his experience in the Warschau ghetto, his family in Treblinka and his later experience with slaughterhouses. Drawing quite a few parallels between the two.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=f7dZv43A0g0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
*implicitly comparing the treatment of Jews during the holocaust to the treatment of cattle today
also, you can compare two things without equating them
I think if you actually cared about the words you wrote, you wouldn't have used them as the basis of a lazy strawman to win an argument on the internet against veganism
The problem is agribusiness. They treat animals with no respect in a terrible a terrible manner, unlike most small-scale farms where the farmers often have a personal relationship with their livestock.
Factory farms whether it be chicken, hog or cattle often end up putting the animals on a feedlot or in a high density chicken farm with literally millions of birds under one roof. This leads to a slaughterhouse that is a horror show. It was a book written a hundred years ago called The jungle, look it up. It's been an issue for a long time and it is inhumane.
It's not to say that killing animals is pretty, but it can be done in a more humane fashion starting by respecting the lives of the animals while they are alive.
The flip side is that if we were to actually close down all of the farms and raise no livestock for me, there's a good chance that these species will functionally go extinct.
Small-scale farms still needlessly kill animals for profit.
We can just eat plants.
I don't care about arguing about veganism. Just stop bringing up stuff like this. Also, do you think calling something a "modern holocaust" is not a comparison in terms of scale of harm? As opposed to every other time those words are used?
Edit: If you want to argue for veganism, stop bringing up Shoah. It's disgusting, downplaying the severity of the genocide, and earns you no favors with the general population. It has negative convincing power.
It's 90 billion every year. If their suffering is 15000 less significant, that's one holocaust a year, every year, since many years. Why are you using Shoah, if holocaust is so obviously only one thing? And why are the voices of holocaust victims/survivors/relatives totally fine to silence? Many have made that comparison, shouldn't they know best whether it's comparable???
You are correct however that this argument is utterly stupid and useless to make, esp. online, where there is zero context.
I'm still missing the part where it's equating Jews to farm animals.
That their suffering matters as much as that of farm animals? That's a disgusting preposition. If you compare those two things in the scale of harm, that's an obvious conclusion.
You're the one putting scale in there
Here are some quotes for you. From holocaust survivors and their relatives.
-Susan Kalev, who lost her father and her sister in the Holocaust
-“Hacker,” Animal Liberation Front member & Holocaust survivor
-Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish author, Nobel Laureate, & Holocaust survivor
-Alex Hershaft, Farm Animal Rights Movement founder & Holocaust Survivor
-Georges Metanomski, a Holocaust survivor who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
-Marc Berkowitz, Animal activist & survivor of Josef Mengele’s “twin experiments”
-Alex Hershaft, Farm Animal Rights Movement founder & Holocaust Survivor
-Gary Yourosky
Holocaust survivor likens treatment of farm animals to modern-day Shoah
You can find any representative of any group with any belief. It proves nothing - it's just one guy, and plenty of Jews eat meat everyday and would consider his words insulting, the majority of Holocaust survivors included.
I feel like a holocaust survivor should have a way better idea of whether these things are comparable, rather than a non-vegan, non-holocaust survivor on the internet, no? Anyway, here's more voices: Here are some quotes for you. From holocaust survivors and their relatives.
-Susan Kalev, who lost her father and her sister in the Holocaust
-“Hacker,” Animal Liberation Front member & Holocaust survivor
-Isaac Bashevis Singer, Yiddish author, Nobel Laureate, & Holocaust survivor
-Alex Hershaft, Farm Animal Rights Movement founder & Holocaust Survivor
-Georges Metanomski, a Holocaust survivor who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
-Marc Berkowitz, Animal activist & survivor of Josef Mengele’s “twin experiments”
-Alex Hershaft, Farm Animal Rights Movement founder & Holocaust Survivor
-Gary Yourosky
Try reading the article.
“What I’m asking them to do is change their lifestyle three times a day,” he explained. “It’s not like supporting gay, women’s or civil rights, where all they have to do is stop discriminating.”
“There aren’t that many people willing to listen to this kind of presentation because it doesn’t leave them indifferent,” he said. “It’s not something you just do casually, like your typical TED talk.”
Even in his own view of himself he isn't well received and his views are controversial and difficult to accept.
So? Does that proof him wrong?
Here you have a holocaust survivor who compares what the Nazis did to the jews to what we do to animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses. His words. Never does he equate a cow to a Jew, but he recognizes that both are living breathing beings who don't want to suffer and who want to live. He gets that it is hard for you to accept that, because if you would fully accept it you would probably have to give up consuming animal products in order to not feel like a massive hypocrite. Is he wrong though?
100 corporations contribute 71% of all emissions, and I'm supposed to stop eating the pork I bought from a local farmer? Fuck that noise!
Those 100 corporations make materials that everyone else uses (mostly O&G) and the consumption and use of those materials (by we the consumers) is responsible for 71% of GHG emissions.It's not just 100 companies burning coal for funsies
I've argued both angles before, and I think reality is somewhere in the middle. Companies produce things because people want those things. But that doesn't mean companies are producing them in the most sustainable way possible. Electricity from coal has a significant difference in emissions if you scrub the flue gas vs if you don't change it at all. We can force companies to be more sustainable while providing their product.
Tyson foods is not what we would consider a " local farmer ". There are many hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of local farmers around the world who do grow and raise animals for market.
Since the guy you responded to mentioned a local farmer, one would assume that he is buying from a smaller probably family farm who are raising animals on a much smaller scale than the feed lots that the big agribusinesses run.
https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food?insight=food-emissions-climate-targets#key-insights-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food
Vegans try not to compare agriculture to genocide challenge +don't compare poc to animals bonus round (IMPOSSIBLE)
I'm not even vegan... I just dislike evil a bit more than you.
Holocaust survivor likens treatment of farm animals to modern-day Shoah
Cherrypicking examples doesn't prove your point. I can find trans terfs people who think protecting trans kids makes you a groomer, that doesn't make it any less awful of a take. Stop being an obnoxious racist vegan on the internet pls
Ok but try actually reading the arguments before you dismiss them? It's not bad takes.
Comparing two bad things doesn't take anything away from either, it's just a comparison.
So it's fine to say your comparison is like Trump spewing nonsense on social media? Since I didn't take anything away from either, it’s just a comparison.
While technically you are correct, I think it is important to notice and respect meaningful differences. Good comparisons have similarities in prominent attributes. Comparisons with dissimilarities in key aspects show something in between thoughtlessness and dishonesty, depending on the degree of awareness.
Sure you can make that comparison, it seems a bit nonsensical to me tho.
There are similarities, that's the point, try reading the article.
Kindly fuck off with your spammy “relevant” links and your sanctimonious “oh you’re almost there, sweetie” attitude.
We get it, you’re vegan and you think everyone should be. Unfortunately, that’s never going to happen, but what can happen is that people reduce the amount of animal products they consume, which would have a MASSIVE impact relative to how things are now.
That said, your attitude is actively harming the cause that you espouse. Nobody’s gonna want to go vegan if this is how you act about it, jfc.
Why are you so angry at someone simply providing sources and advocating that we stop harming animals?
You make it sound like I've been rude and condescending but I haven't.
You’ve absolutely been self-righteous about it. I think this comment is a good example, as is spam posting the same links without really saying anything other than “or…you could go vegan :) tee hee!”
It’s not productive, and actively turns people off in a time when many of those same people are, for the first time, reconsidering their dietary balance.
It’s like criticizing an out-of-shape person at the gym. Maybe they’re not doing it the way you think it should be ideally done, but they’re at least trying and doing something rather than giving up entirely.
I don't see what's self-righteous about that comment.
The links provide context to the discussion, giving people the data so they can verify is a good thing.
It seems like you feel attacked, I haven't attacked you.
Were you totally going to have children before you found out how bad they are for the climate? If not, you're resting on literally fictional laurels. For example, maybe you planned a genocide of all black people, but then chose not to do it when you heard racism is bad. Therefore, by your logic, you prevented millions of deaths. You're basically an anti-racist hero!
But finally, as a childfree, carfree vegan myself, I don't understand why you can't just do your best
Here's a list of things I didn't do, just to save the planet:
The environmental impact was not the ONLY reason I'm child free but it was definitely a factor in that decision. Same with being carfree. In fact I do a lot of things for not than one reason.
The point is that even without that reason you wouldn't have any kids. It's not the cornerstone of your childfree-ness. Neither is it for me, which is why I recognize that it's morally lazy to rest on the imaginary laurels of not birthing children.
By that logic, every parent could ALSO claim they are doing their part for the earth. Simply by not having EVEN MORE children. Hell, maybe they are better than you because you only didn't have 2 kids, but they didn't have 4 additional kids. Thats twice the savings, twice the reason to not make the world a better place and blame everyone else!
The average family has 1.6 to 2.4 children depending on the region. The "even more" argument doesn't really hold up because that's not the societal norm.
I also don't own a car and cycle/bus everywhere. My girlfriend and I made the choice not to have kids, and we try not to be wasteful. It's not about sacrifice, it's about being aware of what you do.
While that reduces greenhouse gasses, it's not sustainable.
God forbit we actually end up in something.
Instead of going vegan or not having kids, I died when I was 5. Because living also creates more greenhouse gasses.
In fact, having a small footprint is just a matter of choosing how miserable you're willing to make your life.
Unfortunately the Earth cannot sustainably support so many people living COMFORTABLY, and eating WHATEVER WE LIKE. The more people, the more miserable is the globally sustainable way of life.
Curbing population growth - not Thanos-like, but through education and availability of contraceptive methods - is the only way we can all have the cake (and the meat) and eat it.
Many wealthy countries have their population declining. Maybe if we get to the same level of wealthiness everywhere, less people would engage in procreation.
In any case, if we just do nothing and the doomsday evangelists are even nearly right, extreme weather, plage and famine caused by climate change will indeed curb the population. Eventually it reaches equilibrium.
In this case, the faster we get to the edge of the abyss, the quicker the situation will solve itself.
Be careful, you're wandering awfully close to eco-facist talking points
In many areas yes, but not when it comes to food. A plant based diet is in no way miserable. There are still too many places with bad kitchens making it seem that way, but that's just a lack of skill on their part.
I'd say my food experience rather became less miserable when I stopped eating meat, and my footprint decreased by a lot.
If you open the window to ventilate for 20 minutes that's different from replacing the air in your room in 2 nanoseconds. The violent shockwave of the latter will probably damage your stuff and harm your health.
Similarly, the speed of climate change matters a lot. It is required for plants and animals to migrate and adapt, for people to migrate and adapt, for infrastructure to be built. It makes all the difference between a devastating blow and adaptation, while the reached equilibrium is the same in both cases.
Because if we don't have children then who are we saving the planet for? There are very clear and achievable ways to massively reduce our individual and collective emissions which we can pass onto our descendents for a sustainable future.
Because someone else will have children. Not every human needs to procreate to keep our species alive. We're at 8 Billion and going strong.
So if you're not going to have children anyway then it's irrelevant and why not go vegan?
So someone should only care about their progeny, everyone else is 'irrelevant'. That's certainly a take.
The previous poster was suggesting that they could make a choice between going vegan and remaining childless, implying that they're both difficult to live with. Since one option was irrelevant, there should still be the capacity to take the other.
I don't believe my lacking of kids means anything with regards to my eating habits. If I want to go Vegan or Vegetarian, then I will, whether I have kids or not.
Then why did you present children as an alternative?
I didn't but you feel I did, feel free to quote the text you have a problem with.
I do apologise, it was someone else whose comment I attributed to you.
Exactly. Not having kids covers my any excess from meat and driving easily.
We’ve been eating meat for millennia, while climate change has only been an issue for a century, yet somehow meat eating is the problem, not the billions of people we have added.
Meat production has also skyrocketed in the last 100 years: https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production#global-meat-production
And you don’t think the population also skyrocketing contributes to that?
For sure it contributes, but meat was considered a luxury item before humans industrialized farms and slaughter houses. The main reason we are eating so much meat today, is because it was made dirt cheap and omni-available. And in fact, it is still kept artificially cheap with subsidies in most places today. Don't forget that half the world is living in what we would consider poverty. The world bank reported in 2019 that "half of the global population lives on less than US$6.85 per person per day".
I am not saying over-population is not a problem, but it is also not the problem. Yes, 8 billion people is too much, but only because of the way we're using our resources. It is like having a cake for 8 people and then 4 taking 7/8th of the cake and then throwing up their hands and saying: "Sorry guys, we're with too many people! Better not have children anymore!"
It's not like we don't have the know-how or technology to live with 8 billion humans on this planet. It is that we're unwilling to use it, because it would require some sacrifices.
Perhaps that's why you find yourself arguing on the internet against veganism. You don't want to change. Perhaps you'd like there to be a single root cause to a complex situation that is unlikely to have a single solution. Over-population is a problem, but so is meat consumption and so are coal power plants, etc. Sorry, life isn't that simple.
Lots of food is subsidized. And I am certainly not arguing in favor of subsidizing meat.
Earth produces fine resources. We cannot just keep increasing the denominator and then wine that people just trying to live are consuming too much.
Tell me, how many resources can each person use (or pay a corporation to use for them) and not overshoot our resources?
I am not saying overconsumption is not a problem. It is among the super rich. But I’m tired of the wealthy flying private jets to board their yachts, while people are saying people eating meat or driving cars is the problem. You need a reasonable degree of comfort. If we have to live the life of an acetic, what is the point of living at all?
I am not saying that each person should stay within the boundaries of what the planet can currently afford while keeping everything the same. The pie is clearly not big enough. That would surely put a lot of us back in the stone age and therefore is simply not a realistic option. I am saying that we should make more efficient use of our resources using the best of our knowledge (grow the pie). And yes, we should make some sacrifices too (be less greedy). The ones we can reasonably make without losing anything of moral significance. The Paris agreement is proof that there are plenty of people who have looked at these issues in depth and belief that this is doable.
For example, only a small percentage of our energy consumption is powered by solar, wind and nuclear, while the vast majority still comes from coal, gas and oil. It is not like we simply don't know how to change that. We just don't want to. It is uncomfortable to change, but we could theoretically make that change a lot faster than we're doing it now without cutting back much on consumption or sacrificing anything of moral significance.
Likewise, and admittedly on a much smaller scale, you don't want to change to veganism, which could reduce your carbon footprint from food by up to 73 per cent. And just like switching to clean power sources would not put us back in the stone ages, you'd not end up living like an ascetic if you'd switch to a vegan diet.
But you're not off the hook just because you're not the major cause of the problem. We're all in this together and we've all got to act responsibly within our means. How can you expect others to change if you won't? Should all small countries only change when the big countries change? Should all small cities only change when the big cities change? Should the rich only change when the super rich change? Etc.
And are you even aware where you sit in terms of your income/wealth compared to the rest of the world though? I'm betting that the majority of the world thinks you're rich. The majority of the world points at people like you and me, you're pointing to the super rich, the super rich point to the politicians, the politicians point at industry, industry points at the share holders, the share holders point at the consumers, etc.
The largest thing you can do is have fewer kids: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children
At least you get it, though. There is no path forward to be resource neutral. Few want to acknowledge that. Even the most resource-conscious person in a wealthy country uses too much one way or another.
And to me, a vegan diet is asceticism. That’s just my tastes. You are free to like vegan food, I don’t. I’m sorry I’m not you.
I never asked to be born. Not a day goes by I don’t wish I wasn’t. My parents wanted a play toy, so here I am, forced to pay bills on a collapsing planet. But now that existence has been thrust upon my, I want to enjoy what I can. Sorry that apparently makes me an awful person.
Fossil fuels are the problem, but not eating meat is a juicy, very low hanging fruit.
There is no other way to prevent that much emissions for basically not changing anything. You will still eat 3 meals a day for a similar price.
It’s not nothing to me. Eating isn’t a mere chore, I eat because it is enjoyable. Vegan entrees just are not consistently palatable to me. Take away meat and I’m sorry, but my list of reasons to live will dwindle.
And besides, I’d argue not having kids is an even lower hanging fruit by your reasoning. That even saves money. A lot of money.
Seems you haven't had a good veggie dish yet. I totally get how enjoyable food is central for a happy life, but you don't enjoy it because it was killed instead of harvested. I'm pretty sure you have a few veggie foods you enjoy, maybe without realizing they don't contain meat.
As said in a nearby comment: Only if you didn’t want to have kids anyways. In which case it should not be counted as a saving.
If you want to have kids but don’t because of climate, that’s probably tougher to stomach than a slight composition change on your plate.
Or maybe I have different tastes than you.
I really hate that attitude that because it isn’t much of a sacrifice for you, it isn’t for anyone else. People are different.
Heck, even if I found your one magical dish, I’m not going to eat it for the rest of my life. Even with meat, I choose variety.
Oh, so personal preference suddenly matters? Seems you haven’t found the right hobby yet. I totally get how kids are central for a happy life, but you don't enjoy them because they are your kids instead of pets. I'm pretty sure you have a few activities you enjoy, maybe without realizing they don't contain kids.
See how you sound?
How about this, you don’t eat meat, I’ll not have kids? We’ll see in 100 years who had a more meaningful impact on climate change.
Not having kids prevents far more emissions than not eating meat, and changes my life even less then a diet change.
Only if you didn't want to have kids anyways. In which case it should not be counted as a saving.
If you want to have kids but don't because of climate, that's probably tougher to stomach than a slight composition change on your plate.
I'm thinking of changing my life as a change to what's happening now, not what may happen in the future.
Oh look, another article pointing the finger at the meager consumption habits of citizens and completely ignoring the massive ocean of CO2 production by large companies.
Don't people get tired of seeing this same argument being made? The amount of carbon produced by barges carrying cargo over the Atlantic so far greatly exceeds the consumption of many millions of people every single day but I'm supposed to feel guilty for eating a piece of steak today instead of some semi-edible "impossible meat" bug protein?
ETA: Nice, my first blowup since leaving reddit. Very refreshing to see some people arguing passionately. I appreciate the vigor and the quality of argumentation, everybody. The quality of discourse here is so much better than on reddit.
I'm willing to admit the "semi edible impossible meat bug protein" gamut was a bit tongue in cheek, but I recognize how it can sound genuine. I do think Impossible Meat is disgusting, but that's neither here nor there.
I eat plenty of plant matter and I regularly forage in the local forests to learn about edible plants. But I'm not going to stop enjoying steak just because it might put a bit more CO2 (why do people keep writing it as C02 online?) into the atmosphere. If removing subsidies and putting more pressure on the meat industry to be less wasteful, less environmentally impactful and more ethical towards animals causes steak to rise to $40/lb as some here have stated I'll gladly pay.
FWIW, I get my steak from local farms that are free range and grass fed. Grass feeding is healthier for the cow than the typical grain, it produces less CO2 and the steak is better quality. Plus the cows are better taken care of. Again, thanks for the great messages (generally).
This has been known for eons, hasn't it?
Well that's no surprise. Raising animals for meat is horribly inefficient compared to plants.
I upvoted because this message still didn't reach everyone, but I guess it's just that people are in denial.. like, isn't this obvious? And weren't there already dozens of studies proving it?
I’ll go completely meat free when the super rich go private jet free.
Well, if everyone thinks like that nobody does anything ever.. even the richest of the rich can say "it's not because of me", because it really isn't. This is a man made disaster, but not by any single man. Some contribute more, others less, but the idea that only the rich polute is complete bonkers.
I think that's the point. People don't want to change, so they say: "I'll change when they'll change." Knowing full well that it is a deadlocked situation.
That's you. That's how dumb you sound.
Interesting comparison there. But hey, I'm not kink shaming.
Other people doing bad things doesn't justify you doing bad things.
Agreed, but it’s too easy to come after plebs like me and my eating habits when comparably private air flight is responsible for orders of magnitude more co2.
Me turning down my heating or eating less bacon is not going to have the kind of impact that big corporations, government, and super wealthy could have if they curbed their destructive habits.
Aviation worldwide creates 2% of man made GHG, food production 25% and could be reduced by 75% with a plant based diet.
How do we hold evil corporations accountable if not refusing to give them our money?
We can do better in our own lives while advocating for bigger change.
humans also evolved to die from cholera before the age of 3 what's your point
so add b12 to foods, or take b12 supplements
not having children because you never wanted children isn't an argument unless you avoided having them specifically for the climate
you're allowed to eat meat, but can we please stop with all the limp-wristed excuses for why it's actually morally justifiable and just own it?
You can do more than one thing to help the climate.
Sure, humans evolved to eat meat. Let's just assume that's correct, and you have the right interpretation of it.
But that doesn't mean we have to.
Humans didn't evolve to type things on a cell phone, yet here we are.
I eat meat myself. But I reduced a lot my consumption, most people in Western countries consume far too much, even for their own health. We should consume less and better, chosing meat from sustainable farming instead of cheap meat from pastures where there should be the Amazon..
We're omnivores which means we can thrive with or without meat, B12 is simple to supplement.
people ate meat for MILLIONS OF YEARS with negligible global warming effect from the animals
vegans going start blaming the Assyrianz for inventing husbandry before blaming Exxon Mobile BP
like dude pick your battles
People did not consume the amount of meat they do today. Meat used to be a serious luxury most people couldn't afford at all.
You should educate yourself instead of knee jerk reacting to bash on vegans.
So if we just stop subsidizing it so ridiculously it should go way down to sustainable levels then right?
Certainly if we also stop indirect subsidies like the failure to internalize externalities. Include the climate damage caused in the price tag, and people will love a veggy curry instead.
I am a vegan bro I hate meet Because I don't like the taste. I hate vegans trying to turn a food PREFERENCE into a snobbery high horse thing. dude eating Factory Farm Veggies is just as bad if not worse (see Monsanto)
Maybe Boop A Pipeline if you are truly morally superior
That's nice. I'm not vegan, actually, and I encourage veganism/vegetarianism but don't consider eating meat a moral failure.
You are making prejudice assumptions and being a bit of a dick about it which is ironic since your whole supposed complaint is some fantasy vegan that fits the stereotype in your head (probably placed there by meat industry propaganda).
Also, factory farmed veggies are obviously not as bad as the meat, that's just you being a silly twat.
your right I'm sorry
It's alright, I do the same thing sometime. It just means you're passionate.
I think you forgot to take your B12 supplements like a good vegan.
it's actually extremely sad that you are correct I was so moody and angry all day. 500 calories ain't cutting it
Veganism is not a food preference, you are not vegan.
Veganism is a stance to avoid harming non-human animals.
dude people will never change because you tell them too if yall actually cared you would talk about the end of factory farms (which also incudes Veggies) the corruption Comes from the system itself. you are absolutely naive if you thing a a capitalist run Vegan Diet Enforced by Law would Help the environment
mate the cut down the rainforest to grow all kinds of food. growing Veggies with Monsanto juice literally gave millions of people cancer 🙄
You have no idea of the scale we are dealing with.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
Vegans still care about the ban of oil and many other topics like zero waste, it is not exclusive.
Due to the current infrastructure not everyone can just stop using fossile fuel based transport, but we all can go vegan. So yes, we pick battles, those we can win now and we still fight against what we cant change as individuals.
thats what you sound like. a fascist. People have the RIGHT to choose what they eat
https://www.elwooddogmeat.com/meet-the-dogs
Haven't we known this for a long time? With good peer reviewed studies?
And the type of meat changes the math significantly. Beef is notoriously inefficient and produces an insane amount of GHG emissions compared to more efficient meats like chicken, pork, and farmed fish.
It's not really suprising, is it? Just take two people and give them the same basics, but swap everything non vegan with the stuff those animals got to eat for one of them. Not only did he save the middle man to save on emissions, he also ended up with way more food. So you could save a lot more emissions by cutting down the vegan pile to the same amount of calories.
Replacement products bring down the comparison, but making stuff out of soy will always be more efficient than feeding soy to animals and then eating those. So with otherwise equal lifestyles a vegan will always produce less emissions.
It amazes me how people can wail about the record breaking heat on one hand and the effects of climate change, and sit in these comments and rationalize that eating meat isn't contributing. Of course it is.
Going vegan was the best decision I ever made for myself.
IMO people should've dialed down their meat consume for years, everybody knows what it's doing. I'm not a vegetarian by any means (I love many veggy recipes though & I adore good (!) tofu), we (my family) are getting meat from organic farms or from hunters for years, that's more expensive but 2 times a week is absolutely sufficient. Same price as before, roughly. Even my meat devouring daughter thinks like that, but she gets real cranky after 5 days of lentils, bulgur wheat and paprika ;)
Better title "Eating meat creates four times more greenhouse gases than not eating meat".
Every time I read about meat and greenhouse gases I feel the need to explain the natural carbon circle. A cow does not produce carbon. It takes carbon from plants and releases it to the atmosphere. Then plants retake that carbon.
Humans are adding carbon to the atmosphere by digging out stored carbon from the ground and bring it to the atmosphere.
So we have to fix the part where we bring additional carbon to the atmosphere. But yes, there are other environmental issues with cattle if you read the op's article.
The Biogenic Carbon Cycle and Cattle: https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/biogenic-carbon-cycle-and-cattle
Eating meat is bad, but this won’t be solved by individual action. Putting a cost on every ton of beef, plastic, and carbon created would create market conditions that would reduce the production of these things and hence the consumption
It's not the eating it really. It's the farming and processing. I think it's important to be clear so consumers aren't stuck with all the blame.we buy what's cheap and available and their pursuit of that has lead us here.
Can anyone explain to me why being vegan is the new cool, while being vegetarian is equal to eating meat without eating meat? Like, when I'm looking for vegetarian recipes, I only see vegan recipes, no vegetarian ones anywhere.
There sure is a lot of effort being made to obscure the fact that most greenhouse gasses come from industrial sources.
Like factory slaughterhouses.
I'm sure shipping vast quantities of almonds and almond milk from places like California to the rest of the world produces almost no greenhouse gases /s
Not to talk about the ecological damage it does to California due to the immense water consumption.
Roughly half the amount of cow's milk.
https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/22659.jpeg
Per person or current polution rates? If this is a 1 to 10 comparison, having twice as much gasses produced doesn't mean much.
The chart says those values are what it takes to produce one liter of each milk.
So we are talking about producing roughly 580 calories of almond milk vs producing 2400 calories of cow milk.
So in terms of calories/pollution rate, we are talking about a scale of 1:2 in favor of cow milk efficiency.
Meaning in terms of keeping people fed as a rate of efficiency in pollution, cow milk is twice as efficient.
Does that math add up? feel free to check me.
Edit: doubled the calories in an unsweetened silk almond milk for almond milk calorie count
Used a local brand of whole milk that based on a short Google search seems pretty standard.
Sounds about right, though I'm not sure if I agree with the direct comparison of calories. Milk probably isn't going to be a major source of a person's calories (at least it wasn't a major source of calories for me before I went vegan), and it seems unlikely that someone will drink 4 cups of almond milk to replace each cup of dairy milk they would have drank in order to maintain the same calorie intake from milk. Comparing by volume produced makes more sense to me, since someone switching milks seems more likely to use them as a 1 to 1 replacement volume wise, e.g. someone adding 1 cup of almond milk to cereal vs. adding 1 cup of dairy to cereal.
Nutrition isn't just about filling up some hunger bar counted in calories, otherwise we should just grow sugar everywhere and diet coke would be idiotic. Cow milk has more calcium naturally (it gets added to the alternatives), more protein (soy milk comes close, almond milk does not), but more saturated fat (the others have healthier fats)
Yes that neglects the transport though. Cow milk can PE produced locally almost everywhere. Cow milk I buy here was produced maybe 10km away from me. Almond milk was transported 5000+ km.
Just wrote a comment with bad math.
Almond milk and cow milk are effectively the same in terms of cal/pollution rate.
Cow milk produces 4x as much pollution, but also produces 4x as many calories.
Which doesn't really matter because people don't put milk in their coffee to add x amounts of calories. So in almost all cases, they will use the same amount in volume/weight.
And a lot of other plant based milk alternatives have an even lower environmental impact, the difference between your average milk and milk alternative will be even bigger.
Why count calories? Are we calorie-starved? Last time I checked the problem in most of the developed world was the opposite, excess calories.
Because you measure energy of food in calories, and we are comparing produced value of good over pollution. Why would you not?
Look at that, compared by calories, animals products still lose: https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#explore-data-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food
Why would you pick almond milk over hemp, cashew, oat, or soy milk? Perhaps because your argument is disingenuous garbage, hmmm?
Quote the name of the person who brought up almond milk for me?
Nah Corporations and industries creates 1000x more greenhouse gases than meat and agriculture.
Only four? I thought it'd be much higher
You don't need to cut meat out of your diet to make an impact!
Cut your meat intake down to just ONE meal a day. That's it! If everyone did that, it would make an absolutely tremendous impact.
Start noticing how often you eat meat. Many people eat meat for literally every single meal and don't even realize it, it's so ubiquitous in most societies.
One meal a week is better. Eating meat daily is pretty bad.
Yes, but people love their meat and cutting consumption down to 30% or 35% of what it is now would be HUGE.
Pretty much where I'm at now. Meat is really just a dinner thing and not every night. Got there mostly out of laziness and being broke
Very true, but vegans are still gonna shit on you for cutting out less that 100% of animal products from your life. Idk how they can be so desperate to be superior to others that they would actively discourage improving your lifestyle just because it could be even better
Vegans don't eat animals for the sake of the animals, because they believe killing them unnecessarily is morally wrong.
Saying you're only going to eat animals once a day is like saying you're going to halve the amount of violent crimes you commit and expecting praise for it.
It depends on wether you're actually concerned about the animals, or about yourself.
If you're concerned about the animals, 100 people reducing by 10% is exactly as good as 10 people reducing by 100%. The difference is, 10 people don't have to feel guilty. But no animal benefits from that.
Those 100 people would still be eating 90% as many animals as they were before. People don't need to eat animals to live, so expecting praise for eating 10% less is pretty funny.
It'd be like a criminal deciding to decrease the amount of crimes he commits by 10% and expecting people to encourage and praise him.
Everything on the planet eats everything else on the planet.
I'm all for sustainable and ethical meat, but killing a cow for beef is not fucking murder, and doing so has the opposite effect you're intending - it just dilutes definition of murder.
Animals are gonna die. We have so many fucking cows, chickens and pigs on this planet only because we're gonna eat them. Most wouldn't be alive anyway if they weren't grown for food.
Maybe try adjusting your expectations to be in line with fucking reality -- my 4 year old still wishes for a unicorn when she blows out my candles but my 7 year old now wishes for things that might or could actually happen. In other words! Grow up.
Your 7 year old probably also wishes for world peace, better stop working for a better world!
Everything on this world dies, therefore it's morally totally fine to artificially create, imprison, and then kill billions for no other reason than taste. Every dog dies, therefore shooting them for fun is morally totally fine!
Appeal to nature, seriously, for your 7 year olds sake, look it up.
I believe that's called the appeal to nature fallacy. Something happening in nature doesn't mean it's morally right. Lions often commit infanticide, but that obviously doesn't make it okay for humans to do.
That would be much better than breeding billions of animals and putting them under the conditions we do, just because people like how they taste.
See, I don't care about the praise or the feeling of purity or whatever. I care about the actual effect in what is arguably the actual concern, in this case greenhouse gas emissions. And for that, it does not matter if many reduce or few abstain.
Sure, and if you could somehow demonstrate that advocating for 100% means those 100 people are definitely, totally not going to change their consumption at all, you'd have an actual point.
Sorry, it does not work that way. Each way of doing agriculture kills creatures. There are insects, rodents, snails and birds harmed in any landscaping operation, wether the end product is meat or plant.
All you can do by changing your diet from meat to plant is a gradual change. You kill less and do less harm, which is great. But you still kill and do harm, that's just how these things are.
Maybe a kill-free diet is possible with food synthesized in sterile labs, but the resources for that also have to come from somewhere.
With a vegan diet, less plants need to be harvested, so less insects, rodents, snails, birds would die.
In 2013, University of Minnesota researchers calculated that 67% of crop calories in the U.S. fed animals while 27% fed people.
I know, and that's a great reason for a plant based diet.
But read again to what I replied:
There seems to exist the delusion of kill-free agriculture, when the best we can achieve is to kill less.
We know that we have a Impact on others but shouldn't the goal be to keep it a minimum?
Animal industry is the intentional killing and abusing of animals. Animal feed is the biggest part of crops grown, for those crops all kind of animals are killed on a big scale. Veganism is about reducing the impact, stopping the intentional killing and reducing the unavoidable impact as much as possible. There is no delusion of a "zero impact vegan" it is just a construct for people who want to justify not changing them self.
Yes, completely agreed.
Maybe I misunderstood the person I was initially responding to, but I understood them as exactly that, when they said what I already quoted two times.
It's also not the first time I encountered this attitude. Maybe they don't actually believe what they say, but then my critique is directed at the wording. There is no zero kill diet (although plant based diets are clearly much less harmful than other diets).
Occasionally, some vegans bring up this idea and react very sensitive when confronted with how it's false. Maybe that defensiveness is fueled by cognitive dissonance which we mostly know from the other side.
With 50% less meat consumed, less plants need to be harvested, so less insects, rodents, snails, birds would die.
Also which is easier to sell to someone currently eating meat with every meal?
True. The difference is between calling it good enough halfway or going as far as possible though. So they do have a point, although I agree that (like in every other group of people) there are some that are a little over enthusiastic and in danger or turning people away instead of encouraging them.
Done, I already intermittent fast and only eat a snack supper snack, and only the supper has meat (95% of the time 5% I might eat leftovers from night before as a snack).
I also buy my beef, pork and eggs from my buddy, who grows them locally. No need to boat my meat from Argentina or new Zealand, or drive it up from the US.
Now quit asking me to do fucking more. I'm done cutting back, spending more etc. This is as far as I need to go.
Perfect!
But also, give cutting it out totally a try, it's probably not as hard as you imagine
I started by cutting back, then after awhile realized I don't really crave meat, tbh, so just stopped!
How much greenhouse gas does does a private jet make? I'm tired of them putting it on the overburdened collective to do huge industry sweeping change, when we could swat down a few more private jets, regulate some industries better, and impose sanctions and other measures on countries that aren't cooperating and have major drastic impact with much less overall effort.
“And yet, eating a vegan diet still produces greenhouse gasses! Curious!”
On the flip side, meat tastes 20x better than vegetables.
Having fewer children is the number one thing you can do. And it's not even close.
I mean, do the other things anyway if you like. They can't hurt. They may even save you money. But they won't save an overpopulated planet.
Since it isn't mentioned in the article, here is the reference: paper (2014)
In the study it even shows how driving a 10 years car for 6000 miles is rougly two years of saved emission with a meat->vegan switch.
I don't know, changing dietary is obviously good for the health, but these results seems to make pretty useless changes, use the bike and save twice as much.
EDIT: There is a new paper (2023), it is in a reply.
lower than I would expect
As usual, the title is clickbait. It's not "eating meat" that produces 4 times more greenhouse gases, it's a high-meat diet. Big difference that is conveniently left out of the title to get more clicks.
Yeah 4 times 0.0000000000000000000000001% of what the largest companies produce.
I was just talking about this idea with a friend. We decided it would be political suicide in the US for anyone to suggest eating less meat.
People would literally rather see the world burn than give up their chicken nuggets.
I'm not even hardcore vegetarian. I looked at the situation and agreed it's hard to ethically justify eating meat. So I started eating less. I'm down to pretty much just "sometimes I get a pizza slice with a meat topping if there's nothing good without meat". Maybe I'll cut that out too one day.
Articles like this are dumb... This just puts the burdon on everyday people who are doomed to fail if they try. If the entire world turned vegan would it make a difference? Rather, how about some tough legislation against the top polluting companies responsible for climate change... That would mean some politicians would have to refuse a few bribes, tough I know, but any level of effort here will create more results than a world giving up meat
https://peri.umass.edu/greenhouse-100-polluters-index-current
I do b fartin when I eat meat /s
I was addicted on meat and cheese too. I do jot miss it at al now.
We have godlike power on this planet. If we abuse power without necessity over less capable animals, we do deserve a chaotic reality, dont,
I thought the number was higher.
no sh*t
I'm enough of a cu*t as it is. If I went vegan, people wouldn't stand me, I just think I'd lose the friends I have left.
What's the most nutritious food?
Ok, now do corporations.
That is a lie.
Yes. Power abuse over suposed inferior species. It is "yummie" for doers
We should keep their brain, dick and balls so we can clone the billionaires (adult sized from the clone-0-matic) then before they wake up, we upload their mind, and we fuck them with their own dick! Hey if you collect enough you could open up an only fans Page!
No food is "problem free" and, much like normal agriculture where different crops cause different problems, different meats (poultry, pig, cow) cause different problems and have different costs.
Are insects a valid protein source? Apparently yes! Am I willing to eat them? Maybe! I've never had the chance to try any, none of the markets I go to stock anything like that.
Ditching all meats for soy and other vegetal proteins? Doable, but more expensive than eating chicken or pig, in my case. Fully getting rid of eggs and milk is also problematic for me because they are even cheaper than the meat itself.
You know what would be really funny? If cattle ranchers were forced to come up with big diapers for all the cows, harvesting the methane and turning that into somewhat cheap extra gas for cooking.
ok
Who cares how much meat I eat when there's a billion cars, 2 billion factories and 1000 greedy billionaires burning the world to the ground?
Hate the game, not the players. If we eat them, others will substitute them. We need legal changes just like we had for abolishing formal human slavery
Thank God for trees. Amirite?
And articles like this require electricity for the duration of it's existence... and people aren't going to stop eating meat any time soon
People can't think critically over why they prefer meat over vegetables. They just think they do it because hurr durr meat tastes better or you need protines.
If they actually think about the fact that they have been eating meat for every meal since they were a child they might understand that it is just a habit they have formed.
I strongly suggest to those people to try to have 1 dinner a week without meat or fish. It has nothing todo about taste and all about habits and what you are used to.
Try to challenge yourself a little bit and you might get a better perspective over these things.
Can't we all just agree 8 billion people is silly? Think about how much of it is just completely redundant. The main focus really should be massive population reduction.
Edit: Also, no, I don't mean killing off anyone, just reducing birth rates will do fine. We know even just a simple high school education reduces birth rates.
Too many generalisations made about vegan v meat eating alternative land use i feel. Dont doubt any of the studies but the assumption that you can flip land use from animal farming to other agriculture isn't always that straight forward as the land and environment isn't always suitable.
Maybe coordinated land use optimization based on local enviroment and food provision would be a more sensible approach.
I always thought about meat, poultry, fish and eggs. And, again, always thought "what do strength champions eat?" Simple Google search show small amount of vegan champions, most of them stamina/speed champions, and some of those turned vegans after 20/30 years of omnivorous diet. And not taking into account their "supplements." Just thinking out loud.
Ok idc tho
It's also much tastier.
There are plenty of things that create more greenhouse gases that should be more thoroughly regulated than eating meat.
The vegan brigade is back out. I dont care. I'm still eating meat. I always finish my meals and I hate wasted food. I'm not going to feel guilty that your skinny ass survives on fucking leaves, nuts and beans that turns you into an ultrapreachy unbearable cunt. And stop diverting attention from your fucking palm oil and avacado farms
I haven't clicked through, but I bet they meant "producing meat."
I only eat animals that I shot myself.
It largely depends on the way the meat is produced.
You may have beef that is corn fed so you use all the energy of multiple times more corn production and transport to feed them vs. just eating the corn.
Or you may have ranched grass fed beef that eats grass in a field that required nothing other than a fence. No plowing, destroying soil with pesticides and running heavy machinery. A few hundred years ago there were 3 times more roaming bison than there are cows in the US today, so gas isn’t really an issue.
Best reason to go cut down on meat is for health reasons. And be careful of where your meat is sourced.
Correction: it is a factor of 2 not 3. See reply for source.
Do you want to REALLY cut down on pollution? Stop giving free money to the giant corporations that are causing the most of it.
I'm not going to be vegan and I'm not going to eat bugs. If the corporations want to stop climate change, the corporations are causing the most of it.
Who gives a fuck about greenhouse gasses. All the creatures we create are our children, and all are owed the unconditional love and protection of their creators. The experiences of animals are real and matter. Their suffering is identical in nature to your own. It harms us when we take pleasure in cruelty and violence.
You work so hard to block out that simple reality. The destruction of climate, personal health, and ecosystems, those are all just incidental to the atrocity that we are committing on intelligent creatures. You cannot enjoy a cheeseburger or bacontho while you are watching Dominion. Your enjoyment is predicated on fucking DENIAL.
It's not because of meat it's because of unsustainable farming practices being used on a massive scale. Implement some fucking laws about it and maybe we wouldn't have this problem
Do you want a warmer earth or everything that eats plants eradicated by farmers protecting their crops. Both seem like lose lose.
What about soy derivates being used as estrogens by the body suppressing testosterone. Plus to keep soy fields you have to spray more pesticides than everything else.
https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/food_practice/sustainable_production/soy/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890623820302926 :(
So fake.
the vast majority of the soybean product that is fed to animals is the byproduct of producing soybean oil. feeding animals industrial waste is a good use of it.
im a vegan with a soy allergy. not seeing the correlation
Sorry for replying only now. Do you know what soy does to pollutants present in the terrain used to cultivate it? "Grok says"
"Soil Contamination: The intensive use of agrochemicals can lead to the accumulation of toxic residues in the soil. While soybeans require fewer fertilizers due to their nitrogen-fixing ability, herbicides are applied to 98% of U.S. soybean fields, and fungicides and insecticides are used on 22% and 20% of fields, respectively. These chemicals can degrade soil health over time and contribute to pollutant buildup. https://www.newrootsinstitute.org/articles/soy-farms https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258110341_Land_and_water_requirements_for_soybean_cultivation_in_Brazil_environmental_consequences_of_food_production_and_trade
Heavy Metal Accumulation: Soybeans are bioaccumulators, meaning they can uptake heavy metals like cadmium, lead, or arsenic from contaminated soil, water, or fertilizers. These metals can accumulate in the soybean grain, potentially entering the food chain. This property is sometimes exploited for bioremediation (cleaning contaminated soils), but it also means soy grown on polluted terrain may concentrate these contaminants.
Heavy Metals in Soy and Their Relevance to Allergies Heavy Metal Uptake by Soybeans: Soybeans are bioaccumulators, capable of absorbing heavy metals like cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), arsenic (As), and mercury (Hg) from contaminated soils, water, or fertilizers. For example, studies have shown soybeans can accumulate cadmium from phosphate fertilizers or polluted irrigation water, with concentrations varying based on soil conditions.
These metals can end up in soy-based foods (e.g., tofu, soy milk, or animal feed), potentially entering the human food chain.
Allergic Reactions and Heavy Metals: Direct Allergic Potential: Heavy metals themselves are not common allergens, but they can act as haptens—small molecules that bind to proteins in the body, potentially triggering immune responses. For instance, nickel and cobalt are known to cause contact dermatitis in sensitive individuals, though this is less relevant for ingested metals in soy.
Soy Allergens and Metal Interactions: Soy is one of the top eight food allergens, with proteins like Gly m 5 and Gly m 6 triggering reactions in sensitive individuals. There’s no direct evidence that heavy metals in soy exacerbate these allergic reactions, but metals can cause oxidative stress or inflammation, potentially amplifying immune responses in predisposed individuals. For example, cadmium exposure has been linked to increased inflammation, which could theoretically worsen allergic symptoms, though specific studies on soy are lacking.
Environmental Exposure: Heavy metals in soil or water from soy cultivation runoff (e.g., in Brazil’s Cerrado or U.S. Midwest) can contaminate local ecosystems, leading to inhalation or skin exposure in nearby communities. Chronic low-level exposure to metals like lead or arsenic may sensitize immune systems, potentially increasing susceptibility to allergies, though this is speculative and not well-studied in the context of soy specifically.
"Grok" say so.
so the scientific articles that someone else linked are fake but groks word is gospel ?
I don't see this as "stop eating meat to save the environment." I see this as "fix the meat industry to save the environment"
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector gives a good breakdown of the worlds C02 production. Electricity and basic household use combined with transport are 73% of the problem. Livestock is 5.8%.
If every person on the planet installed Solar panels and completely removed their grid electricity and gas usage and replaced their car with an electric vehicle and didn’t use planes we could address 10.9% + 11.9% + 1.9% = 24.7% of all CO2 production. If we all gave up all meat then we could raise that to 30.5%. Its less than that however because only 60% of personal transit is actually passenger vehicles, not all aviation is people, some tiny amount of emissions for cement is going to be personal etc etc. That is the grand total that we have control over with personal replacement and some consumer choice and some of that livestock would go into other protein sources. The rest is all businesses and building and waste management that if we stopped using would no longer be developed nations and that we have no control over how its powered. Its fair to say business is responsible for reducing emissions of at least 70% of the problem.
I would also argue that there is no particular reason for consumers to be responsible for electricity CO2 production either when CO2 free alternatives exist, we might have the option to buy solar, wind and batteries but the grid is a better place to fix that in the same model so I think we could argue reasonable its even less we are directly responsible for. All of this is consumption for us and the economy, no people means no CO2 production but any CO2 we don’t directly emit (a car is direct as is a gas cooker or a wood burner) isn’t our fault its the business that burnt it to deliver that service/energy and we don’t get to control it so we can’t be held responsible for it.
The entire goal is to transition our lifestyles into something sustainable not to go back to there being 10,000 of us living like cavemen.
Oh well.
So who's having burgers tonight? Maybe with bacon too.
We lose 24 billion tons of fertile soil every year to desirtification, so expect the titles to evolve with time so we don't eat veggies either.
This study misses two major things that need to be considered to properly evaluate a majority vegan diet for the population vs a diet that has meat. Whatever your personal thoughts, we should be able to agree that we don't have a full picture without this information.
What are emissions, land use, and water use going to look like if vegan food production is scaled up to provide the same calories that a diet with meat has? This is a nontrivial consideration especially since meat is more calorie dense. You will need a larger quantity of vegan options to match a caloric equivalent of meat.
Humans need amino acids that are only found in meat for our full health. This is easy enough to counteract by taking vitamin supplements, but if the entire world needed to take these supplements regularly, what sort of emissions and water use would the scaled up production have? Is manufacturing a high quantity of necessary vitamins going to be better environmentally? I honestly don't know.
Assuming we want the global population to have at least the same food access and nutrition as today, these are questions we need to know the answer to. Maybe the points I've raised are easily addressed without significant emissions. That would be fantastic -- we just need to have a full picture.
Edgy, bro.
Based
Another vegan study that if you look into the numbers they are wrong. Another study to ignore. I shall carry on eating what I want.
The vegan agenda shows when they crumple everything animal under "meat" and everything vegetable under "vegan", when there are some vegan foods that have higher cost to the environment to be produced than some animal products, when comparing nutrition to nutrition values.
The TLDR: Here, you need to eat these grass clippings to save the planet. Never mind every store you go to has items made-of and encased in plastic. Never mind that your fuel efficient car is made of plastic. Never mind the climate spokespeople that live in houses and fly in private jets have an environmental impact of small cities. Listen to them tell you what to eat and how to live, just don't question what they eat and how they live. If there is going to be real change, we won't have yearly cellphone upgrades. Items will packaged in biodegradable materials. We won't have same-day delivery for anything. Hospitals and medical offices will go back to glass, metal and reusables. They will sterilize instead of throwing away. Items will be repairable instead of refuse when they break. The burden has always been placed on the individual, but a company is given a pass because they say good things, not do good things.
Vegans: "all you have to do to save the planet is to turn your back on millions of years of evolution, and one of the few sources of pleasure remaining to you in your day to day life... And convince everyone else in the world to do the same! ... And then, we will have maybe made a partial dent in climate change ... But not enough to actually really change our prospects in any meaningful way ... And also, we used bad science to come up with this plan to begin with."