Eating Meat Is Bad for Climate Change, and Here Are All the Studies That Prove It
Eating Meat Is Bad for Climate Change, and Here Are All the Studies That Prove It
As negotiations get underway at COP28, we compiled a list of the leading research documenting the connection between meat and greenhouse gas emissions.
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Agricultural run off is the main polluter of US waterways. It does include the meat industry, but switching to an all vegetarian diet would ramp up the pollutants caused by fruit and vegi farming.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-09/documents/ag_runoff_fact_sheet.pdf
This is technically true, but rather misleading.
Meat animals eat plants. By not eating meat, you don't need to grow the plants to feed to the animals. Animals aren't perfectly efficient. To grow 100 calories of chicken breast takes way, way more than 100 calories of corn.
In fact, more land is used to grow feed crops than to grow crops directly eaten by people, even though most calories in our diet are from plants. And that's not not counting pasture and rangeland, which makes up an absolutely absurd amount of the US.
So yes: you'll increase the amount of runoff from chickpea and lentil fields, but you'll more than make up for that from much larger decreased runoff from soy and corn fields.
>more land is used to grow feed crops than to grow crops directly eaten by people,
citation needed
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/ is where I first saw that number, though it's paywalled now unfortunately.
https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel-animal-feed says
The proportions are even more striking in the United States, where just 27 percent of crop calories are consumed directly — wheat, say, or fruits and vegetables grown in California. By contrast, more than 67 percent of crops — particularly all the soy grown in the Midwest — goes to animal feed. And a portion of the rest goes to ethanol and other biofuels.
>Most cropland is used for livestock feed, exports or is left idle to let the land recover.
this is pretty ambiguous syntax.
it does not plainly say what you claimed
Look at the numbers on the map behind the text.
77.3 m acres of crops eaten directly by people.
127.4 m acres of feed crops. 52 m acres fallow.
The feed crops alone dwarf what's eaten by people. Both feed and fallow is over double the number of acres of crops eaten by Americans.
this assumes that none of the exports are eaten directly.
if this is the best you have, you are basing a pretty heavy claim on a pretty thin interpretation. maybe you can find a better source, but I doubt it. I think you will find that people eat 2/3 of global crop calories. the method of excluding exports from food-uses and including them with animal feed seems sloppy at best, but possibly dishonest.
Sure - if you assume that fewer than 17.1 m acres of the 62.8 m acre category of "other grain and feed exports" (i.e. less than 27% of it) are animal feed, and none of the wheat exports end up in feed, then the total acreage of food eaten by someone and food eaten by animals are equal.
That seems pretty unlikely, though.
Global numbers aren't great, because diets are really different in different countries. The meat eaten by the average American dwarfs the amount of meat eaten by the average Latvian or Peruvian person.
you will forgive me if I don't take your word for it
You are correct, but we also aren’t anywhere near full vegan in the US. We already have a hard time hiring enough people to harvest our produce as it is. Also, if we’re being honest we might as well be using slave labor to do it.
But here’s the thing. I’m not arguing that meat is better. I’m arguing that there are too many people on the earth, and until some of them are culled feeding everyone is going to be problematic.
Feeding people on an industrial scale. No matter how you slice it is problematic. We have to feed too many people. In order to do that we have to do things that aren’t great.
That’s the reality of the situation.
Oh wow, I thought your original comment was a joke lol. Regardless of what Charlie Kirk told you, a lot of land used for animal feed could be repurposed to grow food for humans.
I’m not super serious. I mean we are talking hypotheticals either way. The world/USA is never going to be full vegan. At least not in our lifetimes, and we have to feed too many people. So, things will continue just as they are.
If I was being serious I would have also mentioned the water crisis in our agricultural areas in the US on top of the contamination. That way I could really drive home just how unsustainable our situation is. I know that livestock uses more water by the way, but it’s super unsustainable as it is. I doubt that just cutting out meat would be enough to save the lack of water situation.
It’s a multifaceted, and complicated issue. One that if we’re being serious I’m smart enough to know that I don’t know all the ins and outs of. I’m also smart enough to know that you don’t either. Seeing as this issue isn’t our job and both of us are woefully inadequate to look at the situation from every angle. I was simply trying to look at some angles that perhaps you hadn’t.
I think that explains how serious I was with my comments. Which is to say I am not, and neither are you.
Also, did you know that 20% of US crops are alfalfa for export? I’ll let you figure out why that’s important. After all you made me look up Charlie Kirk.
Again…. Current land use does not dictate future land use.
And I’m not seeing anything about 1/5th of US crop exports being alfalfa
There are more articles, but this is the specific article I was citing.
I typed out like 6 paragraphs explaining why us even arguing about this topic is dumb. But really it comes down to this. In order to make the world go vegan or even just the US you would have to FORCE a lot of people. In the process destroying major symbols of their culture. Among so many other problems. A bunch of people would suffer from malnutrition until they got the hang of the new diet.
That’s the problem. Every time I see this topic come up. I never see anyone mention the problems with forcing the world to go vegan. It would essentially be cultural genocide since a lot of cultures really revolve around food.
The list just keeps going with why forcing the world or US to go vegan is a horrible idea. But no one wants to admit it.
That article says 20% of alfalfa is exported
Yes. That’s not even 20% of US corn growth alone. They are saying 20% of alfalfa is exported.
You know what you’re right. I’ll be damned I guess I misread that.
However, I am curious about your take on the cultural genocide angle with the food.
Yes yes I told you you were right. Jeez man
But, about forcing everyone to switch to vegan cultural genocide right?
I typed my reply before I saw yours.
No idea what you’re talking about with forcing veganism. I’ve suggested most people reduce their meat consumption significantly and that some give up meat. That’s not veganism and I never said anything about forcing people.
Dude, I started this whole thing by playing devils advocate about the problems of the world getting rid of livestock and going vegan. You joined in the conversation by saying you read my comments and accusing me of listening to some dude I had to look up.
Therefore it was a fair assumption, since you never said otherwise, to look at our entire conversation as we were talking about the entire world going vegan.
Look it’s ok. It was like 3am or something here when we were having this conversation, and honestly we both sucked at it.
I hope you have a great rest of the week.
That's why we should start talking about going vegan, get the change happening as early as possible
Are you serious? So, we gotta start early on the cultural genocide? That’s what you’re going with?
Just to be sure. You’re talking cultural genocide of almost every culture in the world. Basically every cultures food is wiped out.
But I get significantly more nutrients from chicken than corn.
Yes, nutritionally speaking chicken feed isn't the best substitute for chicken.
A good vegan equivalent to chicken vindaloo on rice isn't corn vindaloo on rice. It's chickpea vindaloo on rice.
A good vegan substitution for chicken tacos isn't a corn taco. It's black bean tacos.
Yes, beans are a little lower in protein than chicken. No, that doesn't really matter ,reasonable vegan diets will have adequate protein. And there's a reason legumes and a grain are a staple in many cultures - black beans and corn, lentil soup with bread, tofu and rice - it's tasty, nutritionally sound and an efficient use of cropland.
Well, now I want black bean tacos...
I will take your notes. Can we simply reduce the meat intake coverall instead of eliminating it? I think a balance or moderation is good. We are naturally omnivores after all.
Yes.
There's assorted waste byproducts that aren't good eats but can be fed to animals - for example, spent brewery grain or sugar beet pulp. Some number of chickens and pigs can be raised sustainably. Not very many,
but some.Some number of deer can be hunted sustainably. Likewise with wild boar.
100 people doing meatless Monday is the same as 14 people going vegan. And 100 flexitarians who eat meat on average one day a week are worth 85 people going vegan. Any amount of reducing meat intake is better than nothing.
Holy hell, people consume that much meat? I feel like I don't really eat meat often. I do love bird, but I'm pretty sure I have meatless Monday most Mondays haha.