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The planet’s vital signs are getting worse. One of the easiest fixes is your diet. (grist.org)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/fediverse_vs_disinfo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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One way of doing that, clearly, is producing and eating less meat. “I think this is an important opportunity for climate action that sometimes gets overlooked,” said Ripple. “Shifting toward more plant-based diets, especially in countries with high meat consumption, could make a meaningful difference.”

Raising cattle for human consumption is also one of the main drivers of deforestation, which contributes to warming by eliminating carbon sinks. Timothy Searchinger, a senior research scholar at Princeton University who studies the relationship between agriculture and the climate, noted that “we can’t solve climate change unless we stop” such clearing of carbon-rich habitats, “and we probably cannot stop that unless the world’s wealthy eat less meat, and particularly less beef.” (Searchinger was not involved in the report.)

He added, “Just eating 1.5 hamburgers a week on average instead of 3 is one of the basic ways Americans can help address climate change.”

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[–] 5 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

Hang on, if the difference is coming from cow farts, that CO₂ would have been released back to the atmosphere eventually anyways when whatever the cow would have eaten decayed.

As I understand it, the main process that reduces atmospheric CO₂ (other than the ocean, which is more of a reserve than a sink) is when it reacts with silicon/silica in the rocks, which is more or less a constant process, though increased frequency of things like landslides can increase it. Most of the CO₂ that gets used by plant life is just temporary until animal or microbial life converts it back to CO₂ for energy.

At least that's how I understand it. Though if you mean greenhouse gases in general, maybe it's extra methane being produced by the cow's digestive process rather than going straight to CO₂?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 child)

    While methane is a potent greenhouse gas; the main issue is CO²-equivalent per produced calorie. Growing edible plant is orders of magnitude more efficient than growing them + converting it to meat, before consumption.

    There is just a lot of lost energy in the meat production chain. Therefore we have to produce so much more plants to feed the meat. And any production has a greenhouse cost to it.

    Countries should ban import of meat and stop any subsidies for their own meat production. Then prices would influence customer choices appropriately; with dramatic drops in CO²-equivalent emissions.

    this requires political will and less corruption.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago

    Yeah, I did some more reading about it and if I'm understanding correctly, the main issues are from the machines involved in the process (eg, fertilizer production chain, farm machines used to plant, grow, harvest, and process the feed crops, transport of the feed and the animals) and the carbon being converted to and released as methane from the cows themselves.

    Chickens and pigs aren't as bad because they convert their calories to meat more efficiently and chickens don't release as much methane from their digestive process (not sure about pigs, didn't dig that far).

    Land use is another issue, though that's more for biodiversity than climate change. Though all the land that used to be forests did contain some of the carbon, even if it was just temporary, new trees would replace the old in forests but that doesn't happen in pastures.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

    The difference lies in the amount of feed required for one(1) kilogram of meat and that ruminant livestock emits quite a bit more methane than others.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    i went looking for the paper that this is based on. i can't find it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (3 children)

    It is from videnskab.dk if you scroll to the bottom there’s a list of their sources.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    The article I read about the difference between pork/chicken (which I recall was roughly similar) and beef was in a Danish article a good while back, and as I recall it it was including transport of the animals but also the transport of the food of which a lot of soy is imported from Brazil IIRC. And it is possible they just talked about greenhouse gasses in general.

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