165
The meat and dairy industry is not 'climate neutral', despite some eye-catching claims
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
165 points (97.1% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5808 readers
1068 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Let's keep burning our fossil fuels. Keep going on air travel. Concrete everything. Deforest it all. Keep not investing in green energy. Not cut down on waste. Not reduce consumption, but let's stop eating meat. It's all down to us. It's all on us. Not industry.
Environmental issues used to be multifaceted and commonly accepted that environmental impact was baked in at design phase, but nowadays it feels like a vegan religion. A purity test. It doesn't bring people on the journey, it just pushes people away. It's better everyone cuts 30% emissions, rather than 1% of people cutting 60%, and the rest not caring after being constantly shamed and told what to do.
Social media seems to have really dumbed down this issue.
Where did they say to not do any other action? We have to address both fossil fuels and emissions from the meat industry if we want to meat climate targets. We cannot afford to ignore either
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
To reduce emissions from the meat industry, most of that is going to have to come from reductions in meat consumption. The process itself is just quite inefficient
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
I wasn't talking about the article, I was talking about online discourse. Whenever climate has come up, it's almost always focussed on meat only in recent times.
We know plant based emit fewer emissions. We know red meat produces more than other meat such as chicken. We do need to make progress on emissions, and that can be cutting down meat consumption and also switching from red meat to chicken. If you eat red meat 7 days a week, and have 2 days without, and 2 days chicken instead, you're making inroads on emissions. Why is there a fixation of veganism? That was the comment I was responding to. I think it has less about the environment and more about vegans who are using the climate to further push their own personal agenda.
I would agree.
I largely agree with you. Blaming individuals is often a deflection from larger industrial responsibilities. Yes, consumer choices matter, but the real heavyweight is industrial emissions. And oh, the irony of the 'eco-friendly' vegan industry churning out carbon-intensive faux meats. It's less about what's on the plate and more about who's cooking the books.
Plant-based foods of any kind are dramatically lower in nearly every environmental metric. They are not carbon-intensive at all
https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
EDIT: I should also mention the emissions also mostly come from what's produced rather than in differences in things like transportation, processing, etc.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local