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.
Beef is the biggest mass consumed culprit. I think mutten might be worse, but it isn't eaten nearly as much.
My point is, if you struggle to reduce meat consumption, just reducing beef consumption would make a big difference. Next time you are out, get a chicken sandwich instead of a burger. It's that simple.
This is the actual reason I default to chicken and sometimes opt for fish. And oat milk. It's not everything, but it's a hell of a lot better than eating beef five nights a week and barely required any effort on my part.
Next time you are out, get a chicken sandwich instead of a burger. It's that simple.
I wish it was that simple, but it isn't. If consumers replace chicken with beef, chicken will get more expensive and beef will get less expensive. Maybe some factory farmers and slaughterhouses will change species and ranchers will hire a PR firm to start a "eat more beef" add campaign. A new equilibrium will be reached with no significant impact on animal welfare or the climate, because the meat industry is well aware that consumer preferences shift over time and is happy to accommodate those shifts as long as consumers keep eating meat.
What sends a message is vegetarianism or veganism. And, to a lesser extent, buying your meat from a local cooperative or raising your own. Taking money out of the pockets of the factory farm industry as a whole saves animals and sends a message. Just eating less beef doesn't.
Ideally, more people would eat way less meat.
I stand by it being that simple. Beef production has more than 3 times the emissions per pound than other meats.
It isn't about sending a message, it is about reducing GHG emissions.
As far as prices, maybe. I don't know the ins and outs of raising animals for food. I don't think meat prices are entirely supply and demand due to different costs in raising different animals.
your link is new to me, so i dug through it a bit, checked some references, and i've decided the methodology is bad, and the authors either know this or they should have known this. the primary source for the LCA comparisons says, in plain english, in the introduction that LCA's should not be used for comparisons due to a lack of control for the data gathering procedures. the actual paper's purpose was to, i shit you not, ignore this guidance, average every datapoint they could find for any food type, and then stock them together in one paper.... to let you compare LCAs. this is shoddy work.
i didn't bother to go digging into the tertiary sources on which your link relies, but i will say i did some of the reading into the sources for other papers on the impacts of animal agriculture, and i have yet to find any investigation that doesn't attribute to livestock all of the impacts of everything in their diet. that seems reasonable: if a cow eats it, then it should be counted. but that falls apart under scrutiny. my primary example is that, in the united states, many cattle are fed cottonseed. cottonis not a food crop, though. it's a textile. the cottonseed is a byproduct, and whether we feed it to cattle or press it for oil, any such use is actually reclaiming resources. how should that be counted? it's not as though cottonseed is an essential part of cattle diets, it's only through the happenstance of its availability and relative price point that it's in there at all.
and this just points at a larger problem: everything in our agricultural sector is so intertwined and interdependent that the impact of anything is a mercurial notion, that changes on a seasonal basis dependent on the weather, technology, and people's feelings.
i don't believe beef can't be raised sustainably (which is to say, indefinitely on a given plot of land, given sufficient sun and rainfall). i'm open to data about this, but cattle were among the first domesticated animals, and we've seen all kinds of climate change since then, so cattle can't be the problem in-and-of themselves.
Also, falafels sandwich are amazing !
Plant based for the environment, vegan for the animals🖖
So many good reasons to eat less meat.
Eat...Rich...Eat the rich! Ok!
The good news is that the methane emissions are so damn bad that it also means that relatively modest reductions (in global percentage) will go a long way toward the problem.
Meat got expensive AF for me and my family. I'm actually surprised how easy it was to switch.
A lot of vegetarian alternatives are now catering towards former meat eaters, so the taste lines up better. And I also found a secret weapon. Asian mock meats is really really good.
Once in a while, I treat the family to those beyond meats, which taste pretty real. But they're also expensive so...
My recommendation is learn to love lentils. Replace the beef in your spag bol with them. So good and so much cheaper. Also beans, there are so many good things you can do with them.
Lentils r amazing, although they severely lack protein. Plus, they alone do not have all 9 required amino acids. To get them, u need to consume lentils AND beans.
The daily RDA for me is around 56 grams of protein. If I had to meet this demand via lentils and beans alone, then I would need to consume around 460 grams of lentils and beans DAILY. Yeah... Imagine the AMOUNT of gases after that lol.
HOWEVER, there still is a solution that I found. Say hello to "TVP", ie., "Texturised Vegetable Protein". This basically concentrates all this protein, while having all 9 required amino acids. To meet my RDA, I would need to consume just 120 grams.
I still do have lentils and beans sometimes. However, TVP is still always present in some form.
@UraniumBlazer @Nonameuser678 56 grams of protein from all sources. There is protein in almost everything you eat, and it combines to reach that goal. You don't have to get all 56 grams from just lentils and beans
Also, it's rice or some other grain you want to pair with lentils to achieve a complete protein, not beans -- beans are legumes, and most legumes have a similar amino acid profile
Well wheat and rice have like under 4 gm of protein per 100gm. Vegetables are even less than this. I would have to eat kilos and kilos of stuff to meet my RDA this way.
Also, it's rice or some other grain you want to pair with lentils to achieve a complete protein, not beans -- beans are legumes, and most legumes have a similar amino acid profile
Oh yeah, I looked this up. I don't see the beans lentil thing that I mentioned anywhere. So ig u'r right. I think I saw this in some YouTube video.
Well wheat and rice have like under 4 gm of protein per 100gm. Vegetables are even less than this. I would have to eat kilos and kilos of stuff to meet my RDA this way.
That is why I promote replacing beef, the biggest problem with anything else. It isn't realistic to expect massive amounts of people to make such drastic changes to their diet in any reasonable time frame. We CAN drastically reduce GHG, especially methane from beef production by replacing it with a less harmful alternatives, and from there gradually scale back meat production as a whole.
Another issue is production. There needs to be time for food producers to change what they are producing. It takes time for plants to grow and animals to mature. If we all just ate rice and beans starting tomorrow, does the world even have enough to feed everyone? We can't just eat a bunch of corn like cows do. We would have to get corn farmers to grow something else.
Considering the nutrition and production hurdles, I promote just reducing beef consumption right now. If that ever succeeds, I'll move on to reducing meat consumption in general, giving time for viable alternatives to mature.
Suuuure... However, it's not that difficult to replace all meat entirely, rapidly (around a decade). This is where TVP tech comes in, which I stated in my original comment.
TVP is tremendously cheap, contains as much protein as meat and is even easier to prepare than meat. It's like vegan vibranium. Check it out.
does the world even have enough to feed everyone?
Yes. If every human stopped eating beef and meat from sheep, we would need 50% of the agricultural area compared to now. And if everyone became vegan, we would only need about 25-30% of the area. There will never be a food shortage because of plants replacing meat in food.
we would need 50% of the agricultural area compared to now. And if everyone became vegan, we would only need about 25-30%
Yes, that is true. That isn't what I am talking about.
I am talking about what is currently being produced right now. My gut tells me if everyone literally went vegan tomorrow, there wouldn't be enough food to go around.
Reducing meat consumption does need to happen, but it will realistically take at least a few years, if not a decade to transition food supply chains. At minimum, it will take at least a few growing seasons to transition from animal feed crops to food crops.
Yes, it will definitely take years for such a transition. But since most people will not change their eating behaviour quickly and radically anyway, that will not be a problem I think.
And imagine how many carbs you're getting with your lentils. If you're on a diet, getting your protein from lentils is pretty much impossible. Also, plant proteins are not as digestible as animal protein, so you need to add another 10-15% to your lentils to make up for that.
TVP is awesome. I pad out my meat with it. It's a great way to cut down on your meat and really doesn't distract from the meatiness at all. Beans and lentils have a texture, flavour, and mouth feel that is quite overwhelming and is really inescapable if you're having any reasonable quantity of them.
This, I basically never buy any 'vegan' products. I just sub mince with red and yellow lentils and barley, it's great and cheap. Add lots of veggies and you've got a delicious meal.
Vegan food companies selling healthy vegetables and staple foods: ✋
Vegan food companies selling fake meat: 👀🫴💸
No, stop being billionaires, and give your money away
Yep. I can stop eating food entirely without it making a dent. But if fucking musk could stop flying to the corner store it might help out a bit
I am interested to see what the summit actually says. the thumbnail graphic is just poore-nemecek, and the methodology on that was very lax.
carbon tax wouldn't fix this, meat tax?
If it covered methane emissions on the basis of CO2e, it could.
A carbon tax has been politically really tough to pass in the US though.