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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The biggest polluters are
- Transport 28%
- Electricity 25%
- Industry 23%
- Commercial & residential 13%
- Agriculture 10%
Agriculture (fertiliser, wild rodents, diesel, animals, rotting plants, not including plants wasted by consumers) is only 10%
We're making the best inroads into electricity. It is clearly possible and economical to convert all electrical grids to carbon neutral technology
We're starting to convert residential and commercial to entirely electric (except for the carbon and methane emissions from humans and pets, especially ones that eat beans) so that 13% is solvable
So at the moment 38% of greenhouse gases are easy, just needing political will
Another 23% is harder, industry needs some inventions, especially a green steel making process, and a green concrete making process. Both are years away and probably possible
Transport is hard. 6% is personal transport. That's easy to electrify. Trucking is harder, planes are harder still. I don't know how feasible wind power is for shipping, at least the trade winds blow the right way for Asia to America
The best bet for transport was a green liquid fuel, but the company trying to grow diesel from bacteria folded several years ago.
We are never going to decarbonise agriculture by abandoning any part of it. We can do a bit by practicing permaculture - that keeps more carbon in the ground; we can clean up animal agriculture by not feeding cattle human food, let them eat grass, and there is promising technology for reducing their (and other ruminants') methane emissions by feeding them seaweed
If we waved a wand and removed all farm animals from the world it wouldn't make a dent in carbon emissions or methane, cows would be replaced by deer which also make methane in exactly the same way cows do, but with no one feeding them seaweed
Uneaten grass would rot and be turned into methane (it's the same bacteria that work in cow and deer guts to break down grass). No one's treating rotting grass with seaweed.
Our best bet is to keep the marginal lands occupied by cattle and regulating people running cattle, requiring them to minimise their animals' emissions, or offset them
*Edited to fix typos
It looks like you're citing the EPA estimates for US GHG emissions by sector: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
Unfortunately this is only a small part of the overall picture. For instance, it notably doesn't include carbon sinks (areas that have a net reduction of GHG) like protected wild lands. One of the biggest climate issues is deforestation, since it not only produces emissions, but also damages the earth's ability to sequester CO2. https://thehumaneleague.org/article/meat-industry-deforestation-cop26
In fact, if you look at total land use, an alarming percentage of habitable land is being used to produce meat and dairy, accounting for a relatively small percentage of protein and calorie consumption.
You also have to be careful using GHG emissions as your only metric. Animal agriculture is a major contributor to many of the environmental issues we face:
Biodiversity loss and mass extinction attributed to deforestation and use of land for agriculture.
Antibiotic resistant bacteria resulting from overuse of antibiotics to promote livestock growth.
Eutrophication and dead zones from fertilizers used to produce animal feed and runoff from farms.
Zoonotic diseases which very often originate in livestock before jumping to humans: see swine flu, avian flu, etc.
Additionally, the claim that eliminating livestock would result in a 1:1 replacement in wild mammals is patently false. Livestock is farmed intensively, whereas wild animals live in areas that are, again, carbon sinks. Just looking at the numbers, wild mammals are only a tiny fraction of mammalian biomass, with the vast majority being humans and livestock.
Considering the greater picture, the best bet is for those who are able to eliminate their consumption of animal products to do so.
He was actually unfairly charitable be looking at global figures. Unfortunately, the "meat problem" is largely Africa, India, and China. Yes, about 20% of US meat comes from those regions because it is cheaper. But it is entirely sustainable for countries like the US, one of the largest meat consumers, to produce all the meat we consume and stay well within reasonable greenhouse gas footprints.
Your reply to him unfaortunately made the same mistakes his statements did. If you laser-focus at the countries where most vegans are pushing to make changes, it takes bad-faith analysis of figures to see the meat industry as anything but entirely sustainable.
People who want meat-eating to stop have an agenda. People who want to farm meat have an agenda. You have to look through TWO agendas, not just one, to find the real answers.
I'm baffled as to why you would say this after a comment that is literally just objective truths
I answered how I would say that by actually describing my criticisms in some detail.
The problem is only 9% of the beef production and 30% of global sheep and goat production are feed using grazing. The rest so most of them are feed using some form of human edible plants and they would not be replaced by wild animals. Furthermore it is something, which can be easily done today. We would still be able to produce enough food for every human on the planet and it would even be easier, as all the feedstock for animals would no longer be needed. So it really is a nice and easy few percent to get, which pretty much everybody can easily do themself.
https://www.fao.org/3/X5303E/x5303e05.htm#chapter 2: livestock grazing systems & the environment
The problem is only 9% of the beef production and 30% of global sheep and goat production are feed using grazing
The rest so most of them are feed using some form of human edible plants and they would not be replaced by wild animals
These two statements exclude the middle. There is grazing. There is feeding animal edible foods. And then there is feeding animals inedible waste. Your same source organization (FAO) points out that 86% of animal feed is inedible by humans. Realistically, a very high percent of that would be destroyed in a landfill or in burning if they were not being fed to animals.
Of the remaining 14% of feed that is edible to humans, they are the worst sorts of calories, empty and non-nutritious carbohydrates. And they are largely fed to the animal intentionally at certain parts of the feeding process (the end) to produce the highest quality of meat. Why? Because it's a waste of money to give animals feed that you could sell to humans if you have no good reason.
Grazing is terrible for the environment and crops are specifically grown as animal feed. It wouldn't be destroyed or burned because it wouldn't be grown at all. Additionally there are plenty of other uses for inedible plant waste other than feeding to animals.
Grazing is terrible for the environment
Why do you say this?
and crops are specifically grown as animal feed
Generally speaking, this is untrue. A small number of crops are grown as animal feed, but it's a waste of money to grow human edible crops for a majority of the animal feed cycle. As I said above, 86% of animal feed is inedible to humans, and a majority of the remaining 14% are dead calories.
It wouldn’t be destroyed or burned because it wouldn’t be grown at all
I guarantee nobody is backing off on growing corn, wheat, rice, or soy right now, even if we suddenly stopped letting anyone eat meat.
Additionally there are plenty of other uses for inedible plant waste other than feeding to animals
Are there? Care to cite which uses exist for feed that are better than the efficient process of using livestock to create some of the objectively highest-quality human-edible calories that exist in nature?
Devastates local ecosystems
It's not untrue food is literally grown to feed animals
Yes but I'm talking about the food grown to feed animals
Biofuel and compost
Devastates local ecosystems
Nope
It’s not untrue food is literally grown to feed animals
Actual nope.
Yes but I’m talking about the food grown to feed animals
So, you're talking about fiction
Biofuel and compost
Whatever that means.
Lol
- Transport 28%
- Electricity 25%
- Industry 23%
- Commercial & residential 13%
- Agriculture 10%
I can opt to significantly reduce my impact for no extra money in one of these sectors.
Self reply. I wonder what the climate impact of my compost pile is. Should I add seaweed? I live a long way from the sea, is the pile worse than a 400km round trip (presuming the right weed grows in the nearest bit of sea).
I hope fixing electricity, residential, commercial, transport, and industry is enough. The world could handle the carbon load of the same sort of biomass as we have now before we started burning all the oil
Usually compost is made from stuff that would otherwise be waste. The stuff in your compost would rot and off-gas anyways. I think intentionally composting actually results in less emissions than what would happen naturally or in a landfill. I wouldn't buy stuff just to compost it (I'd just buy compost, which, in my area, is usually made from yard waste collected by local municipalities). If you need a lot of compost you can usually intercept quite a bit of material from the normal waste streams for free. I.e. you can usually get arborists to dump tons of woodchips in your yard, talk to coffee shops to see if they'll give you their spent coffee grounds, etc.