Except for the fact that meat consumption is a major resoirce drain on the planet as a whole. Just think about the amount of land, energy, water, medicine and time it takes to produce one kilogram of meat and contrast this with alternative protein sources such as vegatables and you will find that just by reducing ones meat consumption you can cut a big part of your impact on the planet.
Yeah. If we just reduced our meat consumption by somewhere between 50 and 75% we could feed the remainder off those sources and probably decrease the environmental impact of food production on net, except for cow's methane production.
Do be careful with that, whilst I agree that we need to drastically reduce our meat consumption, getting rid of all meat consumption with out some kind of super advancement in other fields will be far worse for the environment. In some place plant based food is more sustainable, in other animal based is.
You mean reducing meat consumption? Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories. It would even have a big positive environmental impact.
No one will die from not having meat for every single meal. Especially the climate could actually benefit from reducing meat intake, given that especially cattle are a large impact on co2 - not to mention all the rainforest in South America being razed for beef lots and beef feed material.
We should eat a lot less meat, particularly red meat, which is extremely wasteful and destructive to the environment compared to other sources of food.
I wish we could collectively accept that meat consumption is a huge ecological and environmental problem our planet is facing and simply transition to a more sustainable, vegetarian diet.
Reducing the effect that industrial meat production has on the environment is great and it's something we as humans do, improve the negative effects of our behavior when instead it would have far greater effect to change our behavior instead.
After seeing that Rolling Stone article on Smithfield Farms, I've cut back on my meat consumption.
The 'typical USA' diet of lots of meat for all three meals of the day doesn't seem sustainable to me. If we all cut back at least some, that will greatly reduce the environmental impact.
You don't need to be a vegetarian or vegan. Just eating less meat helps significantly with the things you mentioned. For example if everyone ate say 50% less meat we'd make a noticeable impact on climate change.
I am a vegan myself, but of course everyone can find the right tradeoff for themselves. I do think it's clear though that reducing meat consumption by some amount is just better overall for the planet, to avoid animal suffering, and for our health.
Even if it is a global phenomenon, and even if the US is not the worst in terms of meat calories consumer per-capita, that doesn't negate the fact that we could still improve our environmental impact by eating less meat.
It's not a competition, we can still make an impact locally and globally by eating less meat.
Glad to see this happen. When people talk about vegetarianism, it's almost always about the moral aspect of killing animals, and rarely about the huge impact the meat industry has on our environment.
People often dismiss vegetarianism because they like meat too much, stating that they can't go without that delicious steak once a week. The fun part about reducing your meat consumption in consideration of the environment is that you don't have to cut it entirely, it's just a matter of adjusting your everyday habits.
Meat production is using some parts of this energy (e.g. transportation of feedstock + food). You either want to look at how the energy is produced or how it is consumed.
Moreover, we aim at reaching net carbon by 2050. This means that we need to cut on everything. So the question is about how easy it is to reduce such budget and how efficient this cut provides.
In this perspective, zero waste is a bad trade off for climate change (a lot of efforts and only a 100 kg saved per year). Vegetarianism (or better veganism) sounds like the best thing to start with.
There is definitely some opportunity in reducing meat consumption, I want to say that up front.
Specifically, grain-fed beef is the one to reduce. In many other cases, meat production may be the best use of the available resources. Three specific cases to consider:
First, not all land can support crops. There is a lot of marginal land in the world that can support pasture land, but not corn or cabbages. This is more common in the third world than in the US, although the US has some historical grasslands we've been irrigating the heck out of.
Second, some animals can capture calories humans can't, or are unwilling to. Pigs can eat food scraps or no-longer-fresh produce.
Third, not all animals are equally inefficient. Cows are the ones that are 10-to-1 on their calorie efficiency (although if those are 10 calories of grass, it's still a bargain). Pigs are closer to 3-to-1. You still save a fair bit by reducing the amount of grain-fed pork in the world, but it isn't as dramatic as the savings from beef. Chickens are like 1.8-to-1. That makes them basically competitive with soybeans as a protein source; you can plant 2/3 an acre of corn and 1/3 an acre of soybeans and feed it to chickens to get as much protein as 1 acre of soybeans, plus you get an organic fertilizer from them. From a pure environmental standpoint, there is no reason to ever stop producing chickens.
I agree with you but I wonder why you discourage changing diet to include less meat. While it has less of an impact it's one of the easier things on that list to directly influence as a single human being. It also has knock on effects and health benefits. We can focus our efforts in multiple places, going vegan won't distract us from the other areas. I won't try to debate you or change your mind however and I agree that the numbers are overwelming, especially when you take into condisderation that carbon emissions are only one part of the planetary boundary system.
Indeed. Even if eating meat caused zero deforestation (directly or indirectly), it's super inefficient. If everyone stopped eating meat, 75% of the land used for farming could be re-wilded. That land area is something like China, the US, the EU, and Australia... combined.
I'm not vegetarian, but after seeing the results of deforestation first hand I've reduced my meat intake substantially. Side benefits included improved cooking abilities and lost weight without trying.
Eating meat is better for the environment in the long run.
If human population drops to zero due to climate change (which meat consumption contributes to), then the environment will be left alone and do great on its own! It wont even take more than 1-2 millennia for recovery, which is nothing in geological terms!
Compared to that eating vegan is just a feel-good half-measure.
Even if you don't want to go vegan, it's easy to eat less meat (and probably good for your health if you have a Western diet). My partner is vegetarian, I eat meat occasionally (and when I do I eat good meat, ethically and sustainably farmed).
Reducing meat consumption is by far the easiest way to reduce your carbon footprint.
Getting people not to eat heavy-carbon-usage-meat at scale might be impactful... like found a lab meat company or something.
I just don't think being a vegetarian has impact... it's something you do to keep consistent with your worldview or morality, not to mitigate climate change.
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