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This land isn’t for you or me. It’s for the meat industry. | Almost half of the continental US is used for meat production. There’s something better we could do with it. (www.vox.com)

submitted 1 year ago by usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml to c/green@lemmy.ml

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[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It's hardly small. It's enough to make us miss Climate targets even if fossil fuels were eliminated today. We have to tackle both

To have any hope of meeting the central goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit global warming to 2°C or less, our carbon emissions must be reduced considerably, including those coming from agriculture. Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. Thus, major changes in how food is produced are needed if we want to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357

Further for the bit about feed addatives, those don't do as much as you'd think because the touted emissions reductions are only looking at feedlot emissions and not overall emissions

There, algae feed additives can be churned into the cows’ grain and soy feed. But on feedlots, cattle already belch less methane—only 11 percent of their lifetime output.

All told, if we accept the most promising claims of the algae boosters, we’re talking about an 80 percent reduction of methane among only 11 percent of all burps—roughly an 8.8 percent reduction total

https://www.wired.com/story/carbon-neutral-cows-algae/

[–] bioemerl@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It’s enough to make us miss Climate targets even if fossil fuels were eliminated today. We have to tackle both

Yeah, if every single trend occurring today continues linearly into the future and we don't account for the fact that all of the methane emissions have to be offset by carbon sinks from plant growth, we'll have a problem.

Fortunately none of that will happen. Your study is literally assuming that we will stop using all carbon within 20 years, but yet continue to use it for nitrogen fixation.

If you go look at their graphs, you notice a trend. The lines comparing fossil fuels and food emissions don't diverge until the absurd linear assumptions they make go nuts 50 years into the future.

At the end of the day, if you remove the fossil fuel usage, the cycle must self-balance, else eventually you run out of some resource.

Further for the bit about feed addatives, those don’t do as much as you’d think

That is one option, you can reduce methane emissions through things like medication.

You can gather the cows into one big airtight building, collect the methane emissions, and burn it before it gets into the atmosphere instead of just venting it raw into the atmosphere.

And you can do the same thing for manure.

Right now we aren't doing anything because these really aren't the problems we need to solve right now. The vast vast majority of emissions today are coming from:

Transportation.

Manufacturing.

Electricity use.

Agriculture is ten percent. Land carbon sinks in the United States? They offset 12 percent.

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That is completely misunderstanding the study. The study still finds that food emissions alone - with zero emissions from non-food sources after 2020 - would make us miss climate targets.. They do other analysis later than only makes the picture worse if other emissions aren't immediately stopped

As such, even if all non–food system GHG emissions were immediately stopped and were net zero from 2020 to 2100, emissions from the food system alone would likely exceed the 1.5°C emissions limit between 2051 and 2063

For biogas, it still has plenty of methane emissions and doesn't solve a number of other environmental issues like waterway pollution

What "medication" are you referring to with cattle? That's pretty vague but most likely you are referring to some kind of feed addatives which have the problems I mentioned earlier

[–] bioemerl@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

zero emissions from non-food sources after 2020 - would make us miss climate targets..

Did you actually read past the abstract?

Literally everything I said in my comment above still applies and you responded to literally none of it.

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

The line I quoted in the second response was not from the abstract