Yeah, because for the majority of the public it’s a lost cause.
I haven’t eaten meat in so long and I sincerely don’t miss it but anytime I mention it to my friends it’s unconscionable. I wasn’t even pitching for them to be a vegetarian, I was pitching for them to eat smaller portions.
I brought up that we should stop subsidizing red meat so heavily so we can subsidize healthier foods, I might as well have been Judas himself.
The meat industry propaganda runs deep.
Animal farming is a waste of farmland, just grow human food directly without the mass murder and extreme inefficiency
It’s strange how that same site, in a different article with the same author, lists a very different number of 18.4% for all Agriculture, of which livestock and manure makes up just 6%:
https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
I suppose the difference depends on how things are defined and categorized.
That is misunderstanding the graph. That’s only counting direct emissions. Feed production is a major source of emissions for animal agriculture
From the article:
“Livestock” emissions here include direct emissions from livestock only — they do not consider impacts of land use change for pasture or animal feed.
Beef industry groups take an active approach to messaging, including staffing a 24/7 “command center” in Denver that scans social media for negative stories and deploys counter-messaging.
Damn, as if watching out for Russia bots and Israel bots wasn’t enough now we gotta watch out for beef bots.
The meat and dairy industry has been fighting this fight for a long ass time now.
If you look at the source of the data for emissions it’s unclear that it’s all from meat production: https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions-food
Even if we take at face value that meat accounts for 60% of industrial agriculture emissions, as a proportion of total emissions that is still only 0.6 * 26% = ~16%. It’s sizable, but perhaps we should be addressing the elephants in the room, in the “non-food” section, first.
We need both
The other emissions are providing necessary value and not strictly producing what amounts to a luxury product. Cars move people, clothes need to be made, resources need to be shipped across the globe, etc… Yeah you can have deeper discussions about how to trim them down but that’s a clean, easy 16% that could be won basically tomorrow.
Do you think say perhaps AI emissions are less of a luxury product than food?
As wasteful as our AI usage is it still has a function that couldn’t be substituted. There’s no other tool that could be used for, say, a certain subset of public health analysis or massive archival projects or image analysis.
Granted if we were using it in only those cases we’d need a fraction of the capacity. But the emissions we’d cut are much, much smaller than the savings from the meat industry. Last I checked all US datacenters (not just AI) were less than 3% of emissions. Building and running a computer isn’t as disruptive as constantly moving millions of tons of meat + feed + equipment and minutae.
Commercial meat is a luxury because it can be entirely replaced by other calories + nutrients + supplements. And this is just a discussion on emissions but the other benefits of going meatless are just as notable (eg: agriculture is the #1 cause of ecosystem collapse; large public health benefits)
Commercial meat is a luxury
This is a take I’ve never heard before, it’s not how I think luxury goods are defined, and I’m now genuinely curious as to what you consider a luxury product. Do you think that eating some chicken is the same as wearing a Hermes handbag, or driving a Lamborghini?
because it can be entirely replaced by other calories + nutrients + supplements.
This reads to me like it cannot be replaced without supplementation, which seems to be a critical flaw for people who are unable to supplement. I’m also of the opinion that calories are not a useful measure for nutrition, since our bodies are not bomb calorimeters.
A luxury is something pleasant or enjoyable but not strictly necessary. It’s not a matter of how much more enjoyable it is but just that it can be functionally replaced (Lambo -> Toyota Corolla; Designer bag -> any other bag; Meat -> Plant proteins). Unless there’s some rare medical condition that prevents eating anything but animal proteins, we have the means to replace it (as a massive commercial industry at the very least).
WRT alternative diets it really depends on what you replace it with. I believe there are technically some entirely vegan diets without supplements but if you’re buying your meat from the store you could just as easily buy supplements from the same place and not worry about it.
I went meatless recently and even as an unabashed meat lover it really wasn’t that bad. Vegan/vegetarian meat substitutes have advanced a ton in the past few years when I do get the craving, but I don’t notice a day-to-day difference. The main annoyances have been limited restaurant menus and rebuilding my recipe catalog.
I see, so your definition of luxury good is “something that can be functionally replaced.” I was thinking of the economic definition.
I don’t think meat to be functionally replaceable with plant proteins. Heme-iron alone makes it very difficult to do, since iron from plants is far less bioavailable. What does a vegan diet do for Vitamin B12? Conspicuous consumption is not necessary for survival, but B12 very much is.
I don’t notice a day-to-day difference.
Changes from nutrition can take a long time to become manifest. I wish you longevity and good health.
IIRC there is exactly one variety of lentil that can supply B12, but otherwise it’s mass produced via bacteria fermentation. At a certain age, most doctors recommend a daily vitamin supplement anyway so it’s really a matter checking a few labels before you pick one to make sure your multivitamin matches your meatless diet.
I appreciate the well wishes, my doctor is already much happier with my visits 😂
Vegans often supplement harder to obtain nutrients, B12 and bioavailable Iron is very cheap and easily obtained, so it’s usually not an issue.
The problematic nutrients are B12, D and Omega-3.
Food specifically for vegans such as plant milk is usually fortified with B12 and D. Vitamin D can also be gotten by touching grass. Linseed is a good Omega-3 source.
To quote my own comment on this post:
Animal farming is a waste of farmland, just grow human food directly without the mass murder and extreme inefficiency
People are emotionally invested in meat and that often shuts down any conversation
Meat has been associated with masculinity in Western culture for several centuries now. For some men it’s a solid 30 to 40% of their personality and some patriarchy embracing woman buy into it too. It would be a really tough sell in these nations that also have the historically highest cumulative contribution to carbon emmisions.
The most obnoxiously sanctimonious vegan I’ve ever met, wasn’t half as big a dickhead as the average “I’m a carnivore, I must have meat in every meal” manchild.
Meatless Mondays is a good start if you were raised on meat and don’t have a clue what veg’s eat. My partner and I are almost 90% vegetarian and we are both drastically healthier than what we were before.
I’ve gotten to 42% vegan, 42% lacto-vegetarian, and 14% omnivore, but I can and should do better.
But, I don’t think individual action is the “right” solve for this. I think we have to cap emissions by regulation. We could do cap and trade if will had really good measures for removal and capture, but we can’t depend on self-reporting for that.
The problem is that it’s incredibly difficult, if not effectively impossible, to actually get those regulations proposed and passed due to how much profit there is for the food corporations, who have bottomless pockets to lobby against those things passing. Collective action by reducing our own consumption is a way to overcome that issue, if done on a wide enough scale.
Yea and whenever I bring it up people get offended, specifically beef.
It’s weird how it’s linked to being manly and how it’s “tradition”
So manly how you picked the factory meat from the freezer in the super market. Only a real man could. Tradition, sure, but ask your grandpa how often they would and could afford meat.
I’m glad it’s getting more expensive, we’ve ignored the external costs for way too long.
About this article, one thing that I don’t like is that once more the focus is on personal decisions. This shifts the focus from a systemic problem to personal problem. It’s the industry that dictates regulations and policies through lobbying. Let’s keep our eyes on the goal.
Edit: Of course boycotting the industry would be a great solution, and this doesn’t even mean that someone needs to be vegan, or that they are loaded wth money. Or even avoiding bying these products would be great. Still, the most important thing imo is that industries stop doing what they do.
Agree but nothing will change until personal choices also change. You can’t magically fix the emissions and deforestation of beef, and beef consumption continues to rise. You have to stop consuming beef.
I mean that’s sort of the point of the article. Stopping climate change is going to require both systemic and personal change. Media likes to focus on the systemic parts:
mining, manufacturing, and energy production (55.9%); fossil fuels (47.9%); and transportation (34%)
And ignore the personal parts because people don’t like to be told “this thing that brings you joy is killing the planet” and are more open to the idea that it’s all just the big corporations faults and if we could just control/regulate them we can have a sustainable future without having to change our lifestyle.
We are going to have to change our lifestyle though and meat consumption is going to be a big part of that change. It’s also a personal choice, it’s not like cars where the system is basically forcing you to drive. You can become vegan or vegetarian tomorrow and the only cost would be to your taste. Sure there are some subsidies nudging you towards consuming meat, but rice and beans is still the cheapest diet there is and no amount of beef subsidies will make a burger the cheaper option.
Tradies leaving trucks running all day because they aren’t paying for the fuel is an emissions source.
Buses idling at stops for tens of minutes at a time is an emissions source.
Target the people that are wilfully wasting resources.
Both. If you eat meat, you’re willfully wasting resources
It’s looking like if we’re going to survive on the planet, we can’t keep waiting to do something that might personally effect us in the hopes that the corporations will someday have a muzzle put on them. It could be decades until that happens, so we’d best chip in with what we can do personally until that day happens.
Like people choosing to eat meat and animal products instead of plant based alternatives?
I’m fairly certain that human population has gone beyond what the earth can sustain.
That’s only true when people eat meat. The capacity increases about 90% higher if everyone were vegan.
Good luck trying to get Americans to give up their meat.
So you’re telling me I could live in a world without meat but almost 10 times more people? Why would anyone want that?
I have to buy more steaks.
It’d be able to pretty easily sustain the current population with more sustainable lifestyles and renewable infrastructure in the most polluting countries.
Industrial meat, consumerism, and fossil fuel use are all driven by capitalism. If we get rid of that and work on addressing those problems, we’d be chill.
This factually incorrect. Earth can sustain the current population easily - just not with our current death-spiral of capitalism.
It’s also one of the core eco-fascist talking points.
The thing is that people are really good at reproducing exponentially
Population projections show that we will peak at about 10 billion. What’s your point?
Where are the actual numbers on this?
Interesting. I’m pessimistic about anything that conservative being implemented in the US. Too many of the conservatives in this country have the “rugged individual” myth engrained. I’m sure there are a few who actually have the skills to survive like that, but they overwhelmingly vote like they can.
It’s conservative only in that it “conserves our ability to live on this planet”. The measures described in the paper can only reasonably be implemented under a socialist government that has taken full control over economic development. Capital C Conservatism as a political ideology, however, seeks to conserve existing societal hierarchies, hierarchies such as capitalism which, ironically, is expressly running us towards civilisational collapse due to climate change.
On what, exactly?
On the carrying capacity of the planet.
Okay but what exactly do you want to know? There isn’t one single gotcha study that would answer this. There’s plenty of studies that show things like food wastage, or land wastage to feed the meat industry. There’s articles on crops that waste excess water, like almonds, or technology that does the same, like AI. You then have to use critical thinking skills to put all that together and determine that maybe capitalism is the main issue and not overpopulation.
Give me everything you’ve got!
I drank from a water hose as a kid, and I love to drink straight from the hose of knowledge.
Malthus was a fascist and you’re a fascist for repeating his bullshit.
Now back on topic: I’m pretty sure the couple companies that are mostly based on fossil fuels being responsible for around 90% of greenhouse gases are the main contributors to climate change, not meat production, even if it contributes too.
It’s a bit extreme to call them a fascist when they likely are just ill-informed on the actual carrying capacity of the earth. If our standards are so high that we don’t have room for people to be wrong and to learn before calling them a fascist, then we’ll actively push people away from wanting to learn.
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Fascism is a far right ideology. I’m very far left.
You seem to use “fascist” as an ad hominem fallacy.
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You’re using it to attempt to discredit my statement.
That’s the ad hominem logical fallacy.
If I’m wrong, show me data, and I’ll retract my statement.
