this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Eating less meat 'like taking 8m cars off road' (www.bbc.co.uk)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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A new Oxford University study pinpoints for the first time how high- and low-meat diets impact the planet.

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[–] Jessica 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The title of this article seems rather sensational and misleading because it doesn’t cite or explain the 8 million cars anywhere and neither does the study it’s sourcing as far as I can tell. A quick web search says 8 million cars is 1/4 of all the cars on the road in the United Kingdom. That seems like too large of a number.

[–] Holyginz 3 points 1 year ago

Not to mention, the super wealthy and corporations being reigned in will still do far more than a random joe eating less steak. Just my two cents.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Here are some figures on CO2 output for domestic vehicle travel in the UK https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-and-environment-statistics-2022/transport-and-environment-statistics-2022

( unfortunately for 2020, during lockdown - so add 20%ish to get 2019 )

domestic transport was responsible for emitting 99 MtCO2e (million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent), a 19% reduction from 2019 and the largest fall in emissions on record.

So, if you’re right and 8million is about a quarter of the cars, that’s about 25m tonnes of CO2)

OK very tough calcalculation stupid assumptions, but just sanity checking.

  • Assuming 60million people in the UK

  • Assume all are heavy meat eaters (no)

  • Assume they cut down saving 5kg of CO2 a day, I make that

108Mt a year saved.

So actually, it would take a quarter of the population being heavy meat eaters cuttting down to get to the 80m cars.

So - not entirely mad?

Note - my maths is really really bad, so I could well have made egregious errors here