People Don't Get the Link Between Meat Consumption and Climate Change (2016)

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/people-still-don-t-get-the-link-between-meat-consumption-and-climate-change/

by antouank • 9 years ago

46 111 9 years ago

blogs.scientificamerican.com

emodendroket16• 9 years ago

Trying to fix climate change as an individual consumer is hopeless.

alex_duf2• 9 years ago

It's like saying recycling is useless because no one recycles. You have to start somewhere

donatj• 9 years ago

Recycling is useless because the process takes more energy than mining new except for a few select materials. It’s a feel good exercise in wastefulness.

twostoned• 9 years ago

I don't disagree in principle, "Be the change you want to see in the world" and all that, but climate change from an individual level to me seems silly, or perhaps overwhelming. I have stopped really worrying about it in the Dr. Strangelove sense because it's out of control. We're supposed to sort our plastics and papers and yet all of our options available for purchase have been shipped, at least in part, from across the Pacific Ocean? There's airplanes littering the skies yet I'm supposed to worry about putting my banana peels into a compost bin? I actually don't understand. I feel like a lot of business decisions are made that we, as peons, have no say in that affect the overall biosphere a lot and then we're made to feel bad about it. "Ride your bike!" "Recycle!" "Don't forget to turn your lights off when you're not in the room!" Meanwhile: Fracking. ookay...

On topic: I have little doubt there's a strong link between climate change in general and the production and consumption of livestock.

peg_leg4• 9 years ago

If policy dictated through incentives or exise taxes on not recycling then people will recycle.

mrarjen4• 9 years ago

Correct, I think it would be more effective having this change on a production level where farmers and scientists possibly work together to make meat production more sustainable by for example beter utilizing and extending grass lands in barren regions. Trick is to not make the meat more expensive...

pzone3• 9 years ago

What's needed is a carbon tax. Yes this will make meat (among other things) more expensive, but it is generally offset by the tax savings.

hycaria10• 9 years ago

Why not ?! It seems the most effective way to change peoples habits is still prices.

dsjoerg• 9 years ago

Yeah it's as hopeless as voting. Do you vote?

lucozade• 9 years ago

More specifically, it's as hopeless as voting in a planet-wide election.

So until we have the latter, or a forum with enough authority to have the effect of the latter, voting isn't a valid comparison.

Which is a shame as voting is actually quite effective sometimes.

eastendguy2• 9 years ago

People Still Don't Get the Link Between the Number of People on this Planet and Climate Change

(I hardly eat meat these days, but nothing will help if the population continues to grow at the same rate)

14573892• 9 years ago

In Which Eastendguy Obfuscates the Much Stronger Nature of the Link Between Profligate Western Meat Consumption Patterns and Climate Change

kbart• 9 years ago

"Much Stronger Nature of the Link"

Citation needed. I would bet my money that growth of population and urbanization has bigger impact than meat industry.

Yusho2• 9 years ago

That's exactly why the rule of 72 should be thought more often. Just seeing how quickly the population can double at the current growth rate is an eye opener.

72 / 1.1 = 65 Years

Meat isn't the problem, endless growth is.

nine_k2• 9 years ago

Do regions with most growth also eat most meat, per capita?

newscracker4• 9 years ago

Population growth doesn’t remain static. It’s not going to double in the time frame you’ve projected. In fact, it’s not going to reach that figure for much longer, if at all.

Hans Rosling’s talks (on TED and YouTube) throw a lot of light on the peak population we’d likely reach, the reasons for those and also what we can do to control it (the key is educating girls). He died some months ago, but his talks and work are engaging and illuminating.

melling2• 9 years ago

I don’t get the connection either. The United States with 4% of the world’s population produces a lot of CO2. India with 4 times the number of people produced half as much.

China with 4 times the number of people now produces twice as much as the US. China’s CO2 surged in the past two decades.

Finally, does this have anything to do with meat?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...

lozenge3• 9 years ago

A lot of China's CO2 production is to create goods that are purchased by the US and other developed countries. http://m.pnas.org/content/107/12/5687

And yes, some 15% of humans' GHG production can be attributed to meat.

vixen99• 9 years ago

Depends which area. Europe is dying out with a fertility rate in most parts of much less than 2.1 as required for sustained population. https://jakubmarian.com/fertility-rate-by-region-in-europe/

Sir_Cmpwn• 9 years ago

Population will not continue to grow at the same rate. The global population is expected to level off within 100 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...

gcatalfamo• 9 years ago

What the other people don't get is that going vegan/vegetarian is NOT the correct answer.

hycaria10• 9 years ago

Absolutely, the only stronger decision one can take is having one child less. But as this is not considered by most, limiting meat to one or two meals a week would already be a good step forward

dwaltrip2• 9 years ago

I think taxing carbon output and passing policies to more quickly facilitate the switch to renewable energy would be more effective.

This wouldn't rely on individuals making large changes to their life all on their own.

kelchm• 9 years ago

Actually, I think you'll find that people just really like the way meat tastes.

nerdponx4• 9 years ago

It's more than that. People are very attached to their food choices, they put a lot of personal stock in what they eat. Food is an essential, ancient part of culture and society.

You not only have to convince people to get over the taste, but you also have to convince people to get over the cultural importance of meat-based foods. Not so hard and some families, but probably serious challenge and many others. "Thanksgiving turkey", "Christmas ham", "high holidays brisket", what have you.

Cthulhu_• 9 years ago

The ones you mentioned are sporadic, celebtratory meals though; the main meat consumption is still the day-to-day stuff. Chicken sandwiches and such.

Luc• 9 years ago

Culture can change. Meat consumption in Belgium is down more than 16% over 4 years: http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20171103_03168897 (in Dutch). This coincides with several vegetarian and 'flexitarian' campaigns.

See also: the Netherlands becoming a bicycle country thanks to a sustained effort over several generations.

amelius• 9 years ago

I think we should consider a rule that everybody who wants to eat an animal, has to kill it themselves. At least that will solve the mental disconnect between reality and food consumerism.

swah• 9 years ago

If there is an app for that, ok. Otherwise I will only eat chicken, since space is limited around here.

jp555• 9 years ago

All that would happen is people would quickly aclimate to killing their dinner. We did it for humdreds of thousands of years, it’s part of our genetic make up.

pif• 9 years ago

Absolutely! And everybody who wants to type a message on HN, has to build his keyboard himself. And his computer. And the internet.

emodendroket16• 9 years ago

Yeah and if you want light you should have to slaughter a whale and extract the oil yourself.

ajeet_dhaliwal• 9 years ago

This is it. I'm in agreement with Anthony Bourdain here about vegetarian food in most places. If I lived in India, in particular Punjab it would be far easier to be a vegetarian because stuff actually tastes great (better than meat!) but elsewhere it's hard. Being half decent isn't good enough, the vegetarian food has to taste as good as or better than meat. The worst is places where the idea of a vegetarian meal is taking the meat out of a burger and feeding people the bun and lettuce.

emodendroket16• 9 years ago

Or worse, replacing it with a substitute meat that "tastes just like meat!" (N.B.: it tastes and has a mouthfeel nothing like meat)

newscracker4• 9 years ago

In this context, dairy consumption is also linked to climate change (just like meat is), because it’s the same animals (cattle) who are bred and raised to produce dairy (excreting methane and CO2) and then slaughtered in a fraction of their lifespan when their milk production drops.

If you want to lower your carbon footprint below that of a vegetarian, going vegan is one way to do it.

P.S.: Watch the documentary “Cowspiracy”.

mythrwy2• 9 years ago

People don't believe the link between meat consumption and climate change.

It seems like one leftist agenda being used to push another leftist agenda and pretty much anyone who isn't down with leftist agendas tunes right out as this is just too far fetched to even consider.

(Not a heavy meat eater myself but not for planet saving reasons. I just don't like a lot of meat sitting in my stomach. Beans and whole grains and fruits and veggies and occasionally a small piece of meat is much better for me.)

rhinoceraptor2• 9 years ago

People love to neglect grass fed meat. Much of the planet is grasslands that require grazing animals. You put grazing animals on the land, move them around, and that’s it. The only real energy input is the sun.

Compare that to monocropping which requires vast oil and pesticide/herbicide input, displaces local habitats, reduces the biodiversity of the planet.

hycaria10• 9 years ago

Where do you move them to during the winter ? Do you fly them to green pastures in the other hemisphere then ? Or maybe you just forgot that 600kg animals won't keep the same meaty and fatty bodyshape if you don't provide them silage or else during the cold seasons ?

craigds• 9 years ago

Grass fed beef isn't a solution. Cows still produce a lot of methane. http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-03-grass-fed-beef-good-or-b...

peg_leg4• 9 years ago

Science is not a leftist agenda.

DiabloD32• 9 years ago

I agree. However, what the article claims to be is not science.

mythrwy2• 9 years ago

Oh I'm not suggesting it is. Just stating what I think people believe.

panic• 9 years ago

If you're interested in a research-backed analysis of how much impact various solutions to global warming would have, http://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank is a good reference. "Plant-Rich Diet" is #4 on the list.

peg_leg4• 9 years ago

Meat is cheap. AND it's not up to individuals to make the broad policy changes needed to affect climate change. That's done by governments. People will follow suit. If there's a tax on meat, less meat will be eaten. To put the onus on individuals to make policy decisions is preposterous.

acjohnson55• 9 years ago

Exactly. Price in the externalities, and people will make better choices.

lozenge3• 9 years ago

Yeah, choices like voting the "meat tax party" out of office.

hycaria10• 9 years ago

While I agree these are not popular enough to get elected on or to introduce and no one wants to commit political suicide. Hell even wildlife protection or ecological associations barely mention these subjects as it drives people away from donations.

emodendroket16• 9 years ago

If it's not popular enough to get over the finish line in elections how's it supposed to sudden gain so much traction that everyone changes their lifestyles?

14573892• 9 years ago

You can try and tax your way to culture shifts but since we aren't all Homo economicus it is often not as effective as directly appealing to morality and individual responsibility.

dwaltrip2• 9 years ago

Grassroots movements and citizen created advocacy orgs (non-profits, etc) can be a big part of what often causes government to make policy changes.

But you are right that the primary focus should be on facilitating effective policy change for such issues.

I do think there is some value in individual change as an agent of broader cultural change, but this is much harder to assess. Part of my reasoning is that policy change will likely fail without some corresponding cultural change as well. I'd like to learn more about this complex dynamic though...

In the end, policy change is definitely necessary to successfully defense against large, negative externalities.

announcerman• 9 years ago

Only the elite should have access to meat in order to stop climate change, the rest will have to do with soybased fake meat substitutes. It's healthier too!

peg_leg4• 9 years ago

This is rather true.

emodendroket16• 9 years ago

That's far from the only possible solution, although it is essentially the one you create if your solution is to just jack up the price of meat.

cagenut• 9 years ago

Meat is a big one, but its the #3 - #5ish big one depending on how you look at things (at an individual westerner vs. other lenses).

Roughly in order it goes

  - having more kids than adults (population growth)
  - living in a single-family detached home (land use sprawl + hvac inefficiency)
  - owning a car
  - flying
  - eating red meat (particularly beef & lamb)

So yes by all means, eat less red meat, but after you've moved to a multi-unit building and sold your car and stopped going to conferences.

For context, a six ounce ribeye steak is the co2 eqiv (really its methane) of 330g of emitted carbon. That is almost the exact same number of grams it costs to drive an electric vehicle on an average u.s. grid mix 2 miles. Gas burners more like 1 mile.

So ditch the car and enjoy the steak.

emodendroket16• 9 years ago

Oh, good news, you can just ditch the car and walk several miles to everywhere you need to go. Again, telling people to just start living like they're Benedictine monks is not a serious solution to the problem.

TheCoelacanth3• 9 years ago

With better land use patterns you wouldn't need to walk that far. I can walk to dozens of restaurants without going more than half a mile.

Even single family house neighborhoods can have a decent selection of restaurants and grocery stores within a short walking distance if we get rid of the stupid zoning rules that strictly segregate residential and commercial uses.

TheCoelacanth3• 9 years ago

having more kids than adults (population growth)

Good news on that point is that the number of children in the world already peaked several years ago. The continuing population growth is now being driven solely by life expectancy increases. Growth in lifespans in developed countries seems to be running out of steam, so once developing countries have caught up we would expect population growth to stop fairly soon afterwards.

resonanttoe• 9 years ago

Grrr, paywalled research articles.

I have some questions that maybe someone who has read the paper (or has access to it may be able to find out).

The abstract talks about Outstanding effectiveness and fairly positive effectiveness, what was the scaling they used? (Great, good, neutral, bad, awful? or something else)

Similarly, it talks about correlations with motivational and cultural factors, were these identified at all?

And what was the methodology/measure for the effectiveness rating?

tfolbrecht2• 9 years ago

People still don't get that haphazard false equivalences weaken trust in media.

I live in the rural south. The cows in my lumpy unfarmable backyard eat grass. How is it a harmful practice? I can't convert grass to a complete protein source. Any link between wild game and climate change? Fishing?

Articles like this are alienating to the average person. Why not use this opportunity push more ethical options? Grass fed Beef, Wild game, carbon neutral feedstocks, locally produced, sustainable practices. Then your readers have a clear path to less harmful alternatives before converting to the 3 square soylents of the future.

falcolas• 9 years ago

Rural north-west here, same issue. I get it, there are some cattle ranches which would turn my stomach, but the average ranch around here is hundreds of acres of unfarmable (or unprofitable to farm) land dedicated to a few hundred head of cattle (i.e. you don't see the cattle most of the time).

They're oddly beautiful spaces to look upon, compared to the mechanical oddity (circular fields in a square plots) that is the modern farm.

reustle• 9 years ago

I'm not educated on the statistics, but how much of the total meat consumed (let's say beef in the US) comes from the big bad farms? Is it possible to convert over to only healthier grass pastures?

I'm a meat eater who is happy to pay more and cut down, just wondering how feasible it is.

ourmandave• 9 years ago

Currently, most communications around meat and climate change are in the category of ‘the pointing finger’, thereby creating guilt, shame, and stigmatization among committed carnivores, and activating psychological mechanisms of denial and downplay.

Stating that eating meat is ‘bad’ therefore doesn’t seem to work that well.

Consumption and lifestyles therefore tend to be shaped more by people collectively than individually. The most effective strategies thus engage people in groups...

One of my master students, Lena Johanning, translated this idea by developing postcards that humorously depict "flexitarian" superheroes on the front, with an invitation for a veggie dinner on the back, coupled with some amazing fact about meat and climate change.

So their answer is to convert "carnivores" with a Vegan Timeshare Sale Luncheon? =D

DiabloD32• 9 years ago

This is a useless article with a serious vegan bent.

Humans cannot survive as vegans, and suggesting so is a pretty backwards thing given that these are basic scientific facts; so called "healthy vegans" often are taking supplements that they believe are vegan when they are in fact animal-sourced, or they are using algae-based products that are often highly contaminated as a nature of their production.

Literally, the headline might as well be "People Still Don't Get the Link Between Humanity's Existence and Climate Change, And All Humans Should Die".

In addition, they are unable to illustrate a link between humanity's actions and climate change and just take the meme for granted. More and more evidence continues to mount that indicates the large scale climate trends are entirely driven by the sun (something that outputs 384.6 YW, strikes us with 174.0 PW of that, and the current human energy need is 18.0 PW), and the pollution of humans (which is undeniably bad, and maybe the second largest driver behind modern diseases; but does not sufficiently change the Earth's albiedo to explain the trends over the past 100+ years) has very little to do with it.

On top of this, the continued use of crops that are a mismatch with our animal herds would actually have helped their climate change argument, but they purposely ignored it to instead focus on pushing a vegan agenda. As in: stop using corn and other toxic feed crops, and instead grow nutrient dense foods to feed animals instead.

The discontinuation of corn and cereal grains as cash crops (through methods such as ending costly government subsidizes and letting corn and grain-focused farms collapse under the free market, as they should) would do far more to reduce the pollution and (already small) effect on climate change than trying to get non-vegans to accept a lifestyle incompatible with the biology of humans.

The vegan religion continues to ignore basic facts about humans, the evolution of humans, and what humans require to survive and thrive, so I have no clue why Scientific American would allow themselves to become a mouthpiece for something that has no basis in science.

I'm honestly waiting for vegan "researchers" to start trying to use meat eating as an explanation for the magnetic poles rapidly moving away from their traditional positions, the Solar Grand Minimum that we're heading possibly into this solar cycle, the eerily quiet solar surface, the unusually cold weather in the Middle East, AND the thickening of the ice shelf in Antarctica against the widely popularized (and not scientifically based) predictions by Al Gore.

Claiming humanity has this much control over the weather is a bit egotistical. The only time we've successfully done it on a large enough scale to matter, we caused a mini ice age in Europe, and choked London out with thick black (and certainly lethal) smog. In comparison, natural causes such as once-in-ten-thousand-year volcanic eruptions have done more damage.

erispoe• 9 years ago

Evolution doesn't have a purpose. Just because you can eat meat doesn't mean you have to, or that you should. You can have a meat-free, protein-heavy diet.

Most of meat products are so processed that they are indistinguishable from plant-based substitutes anyway. If you try an Impossible Burger without knowing it's plant-based, you wouldn't notice it's not meat.

Beside, are you seriously denying anthropic climate change?

fileeditview• 9 years ago

Even if evolution doesn't have a purpose it's pretty clear that meat consumption has been a boost to human evolution.

Also I wonder what kind of meat products you are eating?! If I buy and prepare a steak or some other raw meat it's pretty clearly meat. I also tried vegan sausages and stuff multiple times because of some friends. I NEVER could confuse it for meat.. so forgive me but this argument is totally invalid for me.

Nadya• 9 years ago

If you try an Impossible Burger without knowing it's plant-based, you wouldn't notice it's not meat.

Bullshit. My mother has tried to pass that product as a hamburger and in a single bite I spat it out and asked her what the hell was wrong with the burger - it has a very un-burger-like aftertaste.

I'm 99% sure people who think the "tastes like meat!" replacements taste like meat have damaged or weak taste buds and literally don't know what meat actually tastes like to many people. Like how a red/green color-blind person wouldn't know what red/green actually look like for most people.

ac29• 9 years ago

Humans cannot survive as vegans

Cite your claims. There are plenty of vegans who are very much alive, and most (but not all) research sugests that well planned vegan diets can be healthy for all life stages.

The most important deficiency in a vegan diet is vitamin B12, but that cannot be produced by any animals (or plants) [0]. Commerically the majority of it is made via bacterial fermentation.

[0] http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/vitamins/vitamin-B12

newscracker4• 9 years ago

Your comment is filled with hyperbole, ad hominems and misinformation, making it seem like you’re angry with vegans for some reason. That has resulted in putting forth claims and beliefs without good enough backing - statements like “vegans can’t be healthy” and like vegan researchers will use meat eating to explain some other totally unrelated phenomena. It would help look at better sources of information. On that front, though not the best, I’d recommend watching this documentary called “Cowspiracy”.

People Don't Get the Link Between Meat Consumption and Climate Change (2016)

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