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[–] 1 point 1 month ago (1 child)

It's also completely ignoring the vast distribution supply chain required to get vegetables out of season. Yes, if you only eat food which grows naturally in your area and then preserve it for the winter, it's very nearly zero impact. But if you eat kale delivered by diesel truck 2000 miles away, it's probably worse in terms of carbon footprint than eating some local chicken.

I have seen a handful of studies that suggest electric bikes charged with solar are lower impact than an analog bike due to how dirty the food supply chain in the US is. I kind of suspect being vegan would actually make it worse, simple due to the food being less calorie dense on average, likely resulting in a lower calorie per carbon-mile equivalent.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 month ago

    What you eat ends up mattering a lot more than transport. Transport is a small portion of emissions

    Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%. Not just transport, but all processes in the supply chain after the food left the farm – processing, transport, retail and packaging – mostly account for a small share of emissions. This data shows that this is the case when we look at individual food products. But studies also shows that this holds true for actual diets; here we show the results of a study which looked at the footprint of diets across the EU. Food transport was responsible for only 6% of emissions, whilst dairy, meat and eggs accounted for 83%.

    https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

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