Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02409-7

by sanxiyn • 7 years ago

457 528 7 years ago

I don't think people will stop consuming meat if you ask them nicely. You have to make decisions that will hurt the meat industry and make it infeasible.

This would likely best be achieved through slowly dropping tax incentives, and transferring them over to alternatives so that people have something equally economical to today's meat.

mytailorisrich4• 7 years ago

There is no need to go from one extreme to the other. This is about eating "less" meat.

People do not traditionally eat that much meat because meat used to be expensive and its supply limited.

This is still the case in poor countries.

In developed countries, people started to eat more and more meat as they got richer because we naturally like meat and because of clever marketing.

We now eat too much meat, and also consume too much dairy (adults don't need to drink any milk and many don't digest it well, by the way). If people just stopped eating meat at every meal or every day, consumption would drastically drop without too much of a change in daily life.

One solution would be measures to increase prices but that is a political minefield.

lol7683• 7 years ago

adult don't need to drink any milk and many don't digest it well, by the way

Never understood the obsession with drinking milk on its own (though I never liked the taste of it myself either). There's plenty of calcium to be found in other sources: kale, leafy greens, almonds, fortrified grains, beans/pulses etc.

bigato• 7 years ago

Given the extreme we are in yes, going to the other extreme would be a good thing. And even then, not enough. This is just one of the multiple changes that humanity need to bring about. I don't think people should be prohibited from eating animal products, but those who have the will to remove it completely from their diets would definitely be having a much higher positive impact on the environment.

aaron695• 7 years ago

One solution would be measures to increase prices but that is a political minefield.

What's another solution?

People will keep slaves if it's legal.

Stopping the use of tax payer dollars to help people eat meat seems not that much of a minefield compared too?

kpU8efre7r• 7 years ago

Exactly this.

I will never go vegan or vegetarian but I mostly limit meat to only dinner and in smaller portions. My grocery bill is much smaller, it's healthier, and better for the environment overall.

Pushing a full-blown switch to veganism as the only solution is not pragmatic.

_0w8t3• 7 years ago

My grandmother told me that before the second world war for a typical peasant family in Belarus the meat meant a single chicken 2-4 times in a month for the whole family. Only on big celebrations few times in a year people could afford to slaughter a pig or a caw. Even eggs were considered expensive. Milk was more available as most families had a cow. The real staple food was potato and bread.

In cities meat was more available as workers typically earned more. Option to eat meat each day was considered a luxury.

harimau7773• 7 years ago

A challenge that I could see with convincing people to adopt a more plant based diet is that there is a carbon cost associated with shipping food across the country, but in many parts of the US a plant based diet might be much less appetizing if it is restricted to local crops. For example, much of the country wouldn't have access to citrus fruits, bananas, pineapples, or avocados.

Maybe a solution would be to tax food based on how long it was shipped but to exempt fruits and vegetables from the tax.

e12e• 7 years ago

There is no need to go from one extreme to the other.

Global warming due to greenhouse gas is a reason to go to the "other" extreme?

hanniabu2• 7 years ago

One solution would be measures to increase price, but that is a political minefield.

It's only a political minefield because of corporate influence (dictation?) in politics.

magduf7• 7 years ago

and also consume too much dairy (adults don't need to drink any milk and many don't digest it well, by the way)

How much is "too much"?

We don't need to drink tea or coffee either; do you propose getting rid of those too?

For those of us who have no problems digesting it, what exactly is the problem with eating yogurt or drinking milk? Sure, consuming too much of those probably isn't good, but you can say that about literally any food.

For people who don't digest it well, then of course I'd suggest not drinking it. The same goes for any other food: if you're allergic to peanuts, don't eat them. If you're allergic to shellfish, don't eat them. If you're allergic to bananas, don't eat them. If you're lactose-intolerant, don't drink milk unless you really like the taste and want to add lactase enzyme.

I do agree that Americans in particular eat way too much red meat, but I think some people give dairy a hard time when I don't think it's that much of a problem compared to many other things. Most adults don't drink a lot of milk anyway; usually "dairy" for adults means eggs, cheese, yogurt, etc. I don't see the health problems with dairy the way I see with red meat either. For improving public health, we should instead be reducing how much red meat people eat, plus also reducing or eliminating stuff like HFCS, refined sugars, refined flour, alcohol, etc.

One solution would be measures to increase prices but that is a political minefield.

What they should do is just eliminate the tax breaks that unhealthy industries enjoy.

dkersten8• 7 years ago

Shift subsidies from meat to vegetables perhaps.

glastra9• 7 years ago

Which subsidies is meat getting? The ones that go to the agriculture industry responsible for feed?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_St...

arethuza• 7 years ago

Make much higher welfare standards for farm animals a requirement - making meat much more expensive, reducing consumption.

Sounds like a win win to me.

sschueller2• 7 years ago

And if you don't want to wait for the government to require this you can already start today.

Buy only locally farmed organic meat. Don't go to fast food places or restaurants that don't specifically declare that their meat is organic and local.

Sharlin• 7 years ago

Yeah. Modern factory farming practices are the reason why meat has become so cheap that its consumption per capita has at least tripled since the 50s.

olakease• 7 years ago

I think that is a good point. Also taxing "especially unfriendly environment products" would be great

est314• 7 years ago

I agree. Few years back I bought some tofu sausages to try out how they taste. They tasted interesting but not like real sausages. Definitely not a good replacement. Even if I made myself eat them because of moral reasons, ignoring how they taste, many people would still avoid them. As long as meat tastes better than its alternatives, people will use it. We need to bring good meat alternatives to the masses. The theoretical advantage that artificial meat has is the lower amount of resources needed. Over time, because of this it can get much cheaper than real meat, at least if you don't factor in skewing of the market due to government subsidies. Then, if they truly have comparable tastes, people will naturally choose those alternatives.

This seems like the best strategy: If you force people to become vegan by law without giving good alternatives, you just make them angry at people who want to stop climate change. If you nicely ask them, some will switch but most won't. So I believe the best way forward is to invest into meat alternative startups and help them make their product as widely used and as cheap as possible.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

Our studies have shown, that about 10% are first movers (willing to give up benefits, to become climate friendly eaters) and 80% will go with the default when it is acceptable. The last 10% would still need to be coerced actively by some kind of restriction.

trymas2• 7 years ago

TL;DR: In my opinion meat analogues will not convert meat-eaters to vegetarians, problem is that switching to vegetarian diet requires rather big cultural change on our eating traditions.

I hear where are you coming from, though IMHO it's a problem with lack of knowledge/tradition/culture of producing vegetarian/vegan meals.

If you would say that you're vegetarian to my grandparents, they'd imagine that you eat vegetable salad all the time, with occasional baked potatoes for hot meal, they cannot imagine a meatless meal.

From my experience people tend to think that there must be a 1 to 1 replacement for meat foods: steaks, sausages, cutlets, burgers, meatballs, etc.

IMHO usually great vegetarian dishes (tasty, easy to make, not expensive, etc.) are mostly different set from meat dishes. It requires a cultural shift, which is insanely hard to change in general western population, where it's common and expected to have ham/bacon sandwich for breakfast, meatballs and spaghetti for lunch, steak for dinner, and beef burger or ribs on a bbq on a weekend.

You need a completely different set of dishes to change that meat eating tradition and IMO tofu sausages, cheap soy steaks and other meat analogues will not convert meat-eaters to vegetarians (fingers crossed for Impossible meat projects to change that).

Anecdotal example from the same thread on Indian vegetarian cuisine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20652404

P.S. I very much agree with you on this:

The theoretical advantage that artificial meat has is the lower amount of resources needed. Over time, because of this it can get much cheaper than real meat, at least if you don't factor in skewing of the market due to government subsidies.

Subsidies are really skewing prices of animal vs plant based products.

Where I am from pork is around 5-6€/kg, chicken 3.5-5€/kg, beef 10-30€/kg, milk 0.5-1€/l.

Whereas soy-almond milk 1.5-3€/l, soy meat analogues 5-15€/kg, mushrooms 3-15€/kg, etc.

There is no substantial price difference (mostly), which is spectacular to me. How it's possible to sell 1 kilo of chicken breast for 3.5€ is spectacular to me, when freaking beans cost around 3-4€/kg. How do they grow that chicken, when it's clear as a day that it requires probably an order of magnitude more resources compared to growing beans. I wouldn't even go how government is bending backwards for milk producers with tax incentives to keep prices "competitive", and I have no idea how pork is not 20-50€/kg, when every other year there's some disease, which requires to kill and destroy all pigs in farms in 500km radius.

_0w8t3• 7 years ago

Meat taste comes mostly from salt and souses. People who tried home-made sausages or grilled meat without any of those complained that it tasted like nothing. The problem with tofu sausages is that one just cannot add that much salt as to meat without making it feel too salty.

That acquired taste can be reset if for 2-4 weeks one avoids any product with added salt or sugar. Then tofu and many other products including plain meat without any additives will taste much better.

fulafel• 7 years ago

Tofu sausages are indeed terrible. Try seitan, quorn or some other kind that has a bit more effort put into it.

jdc• 7 years ago

Methane tax IMO

glastra9• 7 years ago

Better dial down on the fiber intake, then!

elktea7• 7 years ago

"Combining isotopic evidence from ground surface measurements with the newly calculated fire emissions, the team showed that about 17 teragrams per year of the increase is due to fossil fuels, another 12 is from wetlands or rice farming, while fires are decreasing by about 4 teragrams per year. The three numbers combine to 25 teragrams a year -- the same as the observed increase"[1]

The 'cows farting' story is not a major methane source.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-led-study-solves-a-met...

jazzabeanie2• 7 years ago

From the article: “But it would indeed be beneficial, for both climate and human health, if people in many rich countries consumed less meat, and if politics would create appropriate incentives to that effect.”

dqh• 7 years ago

For the most part I now only eat meat, eggs, cheese, some nuts, and non-starchy vegetables. Mostly meat, and mostly very fatty meat like Pork belly. At 40 years old i've never been healthier as an adult - I don't buy the argument that meat is bad for you.

CommieDetector3• 7 years ago

What gives you the right to control what people eat?

Nyandalized2• 7 years ago

I believe the government already has the right and power to control what people eat. People form the government, and people (ideally) choose the people to hold that power.

In part I, too have the right to control what people eat through voting.

mattacular• 7 years ago

Mother nature.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

The same people who currently hold the right to destroy this planet and make it uninhabitable for all future generations.

dkersten8• 7 years ago

If it damages the world or society, then why not? Would you say that I have the right to eat pets? Humans? Animals (or plants) that are on the brink of extinction?

There are plenty of valid reasons to restrict what people are allowed to eat.

hannob3• 7 years ago

We already do that.

You can't legally eat the meat of other humans in most (all? not sure) countries. You're not allowed to buy the meat of certain animals in certain countries, due to cultural norms (dogs) or due to protection of certain species.

It's an absolutely normal thing that laws regulate or forbid things that have negative effects on society.

perfunctory2• 7 years ago

Do you mean we should ban McDonald's ads and food marketing in general? Because that sounds like a great idea.

Which makes me think. I wonder how much meat would people eat naturally, if they were note exposed to an image of a BigMac on every corner.

matz16• 7 years ago

Like with everything else, power and influence. If the meat eater somehow let the vegan to win then well they get to control what people eat.

nexensis• 7 years ago

That's not entirely true - veganism has made massive strides in the last few years simply because more information is becoming available about the environmental, ethical and (arguably) health issues surrounding our heavy meat consumption.

Millions of people are already voluntarily reducing their consumption and now virtually every restaurant in the UK has vegan options, making it easier for more people to switch.

I live in the outskirts of a relatively small, low-income industrial city and there are signs outside small shops and restaurants everywhere promoting their new vegan menus. A traditional pub near me has no fewer than 14(!) plant-based main courses.

I'd love to see tax incentives that reflect the damage that the meat and dairy industry are doing (ending the massive government subsidies would be a good start), however the changes I've seen in the UK give me hope that the grassroots level can sway public opinion without forcing people to change via legislation.

hannob3• 7 years ago

Local perception versus global reality: Meat consumption is still growing.

This can easily get clouded if you live in a place where you feel a new vegan place opens all the time. But this is very unevenly distributed. The UK is a place where vegan eating is strong, likewise Germany, Sweden and certainly a few other places. But even in very similar countries also in middle Europe - e.g. Denmark, France - vegetarianism is still very unusual.

lm28469• 7 years ago

Informing people might work for some [0]. That's how I reduced my consumption by 90%. If you truly want to do good and people are able to inform you that X is bad then you'll do your best to stop doing X.

Also, good meat is expensive and cheap meat taste like shit so it's a good move for your wallet.

[0] growing amount of people saying "I want to fight climate change but can't do anything myself"

digitalsushi• 7 years ago

Whenever I worry about someone bioengineering a plague for humans to save the planet, the pragmatist in me realizes they could just do the same against cows and only end up being remembered as half evil.

academic_nimrod2• 7 years ago

Got it - when democratic means don't work, switch to coercion and extortion.

Wonder why people have such negative views of environmentalists.

nkozyra6• 7 years ago

I don't think people will stop consuming meat if you ask them nicely.

Illuminating the moral quandary of meat consumption helps. It worked for me. Nobody had to ask me nicely, they just needed to help me to think about it and be self-reflective.

Even if you believe there to be ethical meat consumption (a notion I find dubious in modern life), people can reduce consumption and have a big impact. Modern commercial meat and dairy production is a horrible process and most people are so insulated from it that you get used to thinking meat is just this product that comes from a factory.

luckylion• 7 years ago

Nobody had to ask me nicely, they just needed to help me to think about it and be self-reflective.

My theory is that you have to be ready / have to already, deep down, made that decision and then just needed a little push. Since this is a major topic in many societies with vegetarians and vegans proselytizing, I doubt that the majority of meat eaters aren't aware - they just don't come to the same conclusions or like it too much to quit.

corodra4• 7 years ago

But most people don't see a general ethical issue with eating meat. We are omnivores after all. Hell, our hunter gatherer ancestors ate more meat than we do. Though, higher quality. It's the same with seeing a wolf eat a deer. Think they care? Same with a chimp finally catching a monkey and eating it (now those are horrifying videos to see, especially since chimps love eating monkeys). Snake to a mouse. Fox to a hare. Cat to a bird. Shark to a seal. Cheetah to a gazelle. Osprey to a fish. At that, a lot of herbivores also kill and eat other animals (ground nesting birds being the popular victim). Mostly for the calcium in their bones. But still.

But if broccoli could scream would you stop eating it? Circle of life. Just the way it is.

However I do agree, there are a lot of commercial farming practices that need to be ended. Even if it means higher prices.

matz16• 7 years ago

Even if you believe there to be ethical meat consumption (a notion I find dubious in modern life

Why is that dubious ? Ethics is personal. For me, consuming meat is ethical. Unless I'm forced to not eat meat then I won't stop.

blunte4• 7 years ago

Sadly, I think the only thing that will make a big impact in changing people's consumption will be related to antibiotic resistant mass-contamination events.

A few back to back meat recalls in the US got me to try vegetarianism 8 years ago. The animal welfare element only developed after I started learning about the new diet I was on.

It also helps to promote stories of very healthy vegetarians (especially pro athletes). My favorites were Carl Lewis, Herschel Walker, and Venus Williams. There are many more out there.

The key is to find decent, not too complex recipes. Dropping a slab of meat on the grill is so easy and results in such a tasty primary component of a meal; but making an interesting vegetarian meal requires more effort (at first). Once you know some good recipes, you get to the point where the only time you miss meat is when you're at a festival and you smell barbeque :).

the_gastropod5• 7 years ago

Absolutely! I think you hit the nail on the head. I went to an Israeli restaurant the other day, and (I'm guessing?) all the meat was kosher (read: expensive). Their menu prices seemed to be exactly how they should be. Vegetarian options were in the ~$7 range, and meat dishes were in the $35 range. This kind of pricing still makes meat dishes accessible to anyone that wants them, but gently nudges behavior in a more sustainable direction.

TheBeardKing4• 7 years ago

I hate when I go to Qdoba and the same bowl with Impossible meat is $9.99, while beef or chicken is $7.99. So now I have to pay more and eat less healthy?

mparramon• 7 years ago

This is starting to happen in the EU already: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49281111

srean• 7 years ago

Apparently the Indian way is death by lynching on suspicion of cow slaughter with govt doing a 'wink wink' I was looking the other way.

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

The govt's behavior is not motivated by climate.

AndriyKunitsyn• 7 years ago

How about we put a ban on UN officials’ private jets first?

sanxiyn6• 7 years ago

That's a good idea, but eating less meat is even better, because that can reduce 8Gt CO2/yr. Banning private jets would not reduce 8Gt CO2/yr. It is important to be quantitative here.

microtonal2• 7 years ago

Sorry, but this is really cheap criticism that detracts from the main point. Of course, their private jets (if they have them) should be banned, sure. But this is an invisible blip on the radar compared to the climate impact of the meat industry (or air travel in general).

Such messages only cause people to postpone the need to take real action. And we need to take real action now if we even want a chance to dampen the effects of climate change (let alone reverse it).

throwaway39572• 7 years ago

But this is an invisible blip on the radar compared to the climate impact of the meat industry

Me eating meat is an even smaller blip, why bother with taking my meat away?

The truth is that you have to lead also by example or you’re not credible.

fat-chunk• 7 years ago

While the aviation industry, and as you point out low capacity flights in particular, is a major perpetrator for high CO2 emissions, the food industry is the number one area where your average consumer can make a big impact.

I agree with you that governing bodies should be putting more pressure on the excesses of the wealthy and on industry, but changing industry practices and consumer behaviour are not mutually exclusive, especially when we should be doing everything we can on all fronts to overcome this crisis.

SmellyGeekBoy4• 7 years ago

Makes sense as long as the following assumptions are true:

1. UN officials are traveling by private jet

2. Private jets are worse for the environment than the meat industry

I presume you have evidence of the above that lead to your suggestion?

_Microft4• 7 years ago

Why? The emissions of a few individuals can be far higher than sustainable and it can still give a net-positive effect when their influence on society is great enough.

vinay4273• 7 years ago

If their higher emissions aren't at least indirectly necessary for their high influence on society, then while it may be sustainable and net-positive, it isn't necessary justifiable because better options exist.

People with a "high influence on society," however that's measured, can't just do whatever they want because their existence is still net-positive.

benp44• 7 years ago

Because this isn't the problem.

In fact your defensive reaction is much more representative of the problem: that people find it so hard to accept that in order to avoid their children's lives being significantly worse than the lives we enjoy today, they may have give up a few fking burgers

pikma2• 7 years ago

I'm doubtful that much change can come from personal choices made by consumers. It seems to me that it would require tremendous energy and commitment from a very large number of people to significantly reduce the global demand. It seems to me that it's much more effective to raise the price or to reduce the supply (something like quotas or cap-and-trade).

Can anyone point me to examples where my thinking is wrong, where changes came from the demand side?

kd5bjo• 7 years ago

Changing the demand side is fundamentally what marketing does. It’s how Frito-Lay and Coca-Cola and any big worldwide brand came into existence, by convincing consumers to choose their product over the alternative.

darawk• 7 years ago

Well, boycotts are a pretty good example. Those seem to change corporate behavior pretty frequently actually. That being said, i'm very skeptical of this type of demand-side strategy, in this particular area.

danmaz744• 7 years ago

Why tremendous energy? Cutting individual consumption by eg 30% doesn't look so difficult to me.

pikma2• 7 years ago

You would need to get a large part of the global population to do it though, say 50%. And the prices for meat would go down, so you would need to convince the other half of the population not to increase their consumption.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

Isn’t the face of the earth mostly shaped by our consumer choices (including where you put you pension and savings). Everything else (like military, etc.) does only contribute minor. Who else if not us?

vinay4273• 7 years ago

I think I agree, though personally (not as a counterexample), this only targets the environmental aspect of avoiding meat and leaves behind the ethical decision around animal consumption to some degree. While reducing subsidies and other benefits would go a long way here as well, there are still some animal byproducts that have a relatively low ecological footprint and effecting changes to these through legislation still seems premature and heavy-handed in the current political climate in most any country.

It seems to me that for those considerations, bringing new perspectives to consumers to try and influence their choices at the store is one of the only practical options for now.

sanxiyn6• 7 years ago

This is exactly what is proposed. "It would be beneficial, for both climate and human health, if people in many rich countries consumed less meat, and if politics would create appropriate incentives to that effect". "Appropriate incentives" is a policy, "less meat consumption" is simply the result.

markstos6• 7 years ago

Dairy consumption has been on the decline for years in the US as plant-based alternatives on the rise.

The restaurant industry reports that profits are up for restaurants serving plant-based meat options, so more restaurants are trying it.

Every meal is a vote.

saagarjha8• 7 years ago

A lot of people seem to equate this to “they’re telling me to stop eating meat” and then fail to do anything: really, anything you do helps. Eat meat with every meal? Try skipping it for breakfast. Eat it every week? Try every other week. Nobody’s asking you to stop completely, at least not yet. (But if you want to, go right ahead!)

SmellyGeekBoy4• 7 years ago

A lot of people seem to equate this to “they’re telling me to stop eating meat”

Indeed, in fact the report's authors are keen to stress that this is not the case.

Asmod4n• 7 years ago

In the last couple articles I've read to reduce your own carbon footprint I've found one thing is sadly missing most of the time: butter.

It's way worse than beef.

One kg butter blasts 24kg CO2 into the air before it gets to you, with beef it's around 13kg.

saagarjha8• 7 years ago

Do people actually eat that much butter regularly?

K0nserv4• 7 years ago

The difference is that you don't consume butter in 250g quanities in a single sitting. Even if butter is worse the consumption patterns for butter are not those of beef.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

Yes that is the point. If you account for calories, proteins and fats (as essential nutrients next to let’s say water and dry weight), butter doesn’t look that bad. It is still worse than average, so - check: app.eaternity.ch

danmaz744• 7 years ago

How so? Butter is a side product from many dairy processes, eg producing parmesan and skimming milk.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

Commonly and economic allocation is done. Each food is attributed those emissions to the share they have caused it by the money that was spend for it by the consumer. The question is: why was there a additional cow in the first place. Part of it was the butter.

_Microft4• 7 years ago

I've replaced butter with margarine in a lot of cases since I just didn't taste a difference when having it under something hearty and tasty. Easy win.

trymas2• 7 years ago

I would speculate that when compared butter vs meat consumption, butter would be consumed probably an order of magnitude less than meat.

philwelch5• 7 years ago

A kilogram of beef lasts me two meals. A kilogram of butter lasts me months.

baxtr2• 7 years ago

I have become an 80% vegetarian - meaning I try to avoid meat completely, but I am not "strong" enough and end up eating a (usually small) piece of meat, once every week/second week.

It took me at least one year to achieve this, because meat is so prevalent in our society. A friend of mine was in India recently and he said he did not miss meat at all since the non-meat dishes were so great. I think a lot of it is just how good the quality of vegetarian dishes is.

n4r9• 7 years ago

I'm similar. Only eat meat if I go out at weekends or if there's some left over that needs to get used up. My wife and I almost entirely cook for ourselves and it's pretty easy to make nice vegetarian meals. I do a fair amount of weightlifting and like to get the protein in - quorn, soy, tofu, lentils and eggs are key. I also supplement daily with whey protein shakes and creatine. It's a bit of a hassle and sometimes I find myself dying for a nice bit of lamb or steak, otoh it's good to pay this level of attention to one's diet.

ictebres• 7 years ago

Yes, living in Berlin I feel spoiled. When I was in South Korea, most of the time there was nothing vegetarian on the menu, in Berlin you have multiple vegan options and even more vegetarian options.

I believe restaurant options are very important since people learn from those and mimic them at home. We need restaurants to offer more vegetarian and vegan dishes for people to see that they can have a rich (IMHO richer) diet without meat.

I don’t know how to nudge the restaurants though. Lower tax on organic/sustainable food can be one thing, or even better subventions for such restaurants and produce. But most importantly the meat and dairy industry needs to get under real supervision. Governments all around the world have been looking away for far too long.

Freak_NL2• 7 years ago

I don’t know how to nudge the restaurants though

Visit and ask for vegetarian or vegan dishes. Move on if there is nothing worthwhile; let the staff know if you've liked a particular dish or find the selection too limiting. Demand drives supply.

In the Netherlands the vegetarian option used to be a boring salad with goat cheese. Nowadays not having decent meat-free options means you can't compete with the rest. This is something only the cheaper restaurants aimed at lower socio-economic classes can afford to do (but only for now). The reason for this discrepancy is that this class of people (mostly blue collar workers and their families) tends to lag behind the rest of society a bit as habits shift towards more healthy alternatives (smoking is another example).

bjoli2• 7 years ago

In sweden this is called being a Stockholm vegetarian, and it's very much a thing. I know a bunch of people like you, and they all claim that the hardest thing is to not just go "fuck it" and eat meat like they did before.

baxtr2• 7 years ago

That’s funny, because I don’t enjoy meat as much as before any more. Before I couldn’t imagine a life without meat. Now, every time I eat it I feel less satisfied. I don’t I ever go back. But who knows.

bjackman• 7 years ago

I saw a quote I liked recently (on a different topic but applies here too): We don't need a few hundred thousand perfect vegetarians, we need billions of imperfect ones.

tsherr2• 7 years ago

The UN doesn't have the guts to target the task issue: too many humans. And recommend the only solution: one child per couple until we get down to about half the current population.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

This would ignore the fact that almost all emissions are caused by the richest 10%. Reducing this population would be more effective.

deworde2• 7 years ago

And they apparently transition to an average of 0-2 children naturally as a function of wealth management and survival confidence.

ps101• 7 years ago

1. Not really, the richest x% own and run the companies, and can spend more, but the mass of consumers of the products are spread across the wealth spectrum.

2. The idea to reduce the population based on some metric is a dangerous road to go down on.

3. By definition there will always be a richest 10% regardless of how many humans you get rid of.

tom_mellior6• 7 years ago

almost all emissions are caused by the richest 10%

I found this: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-by-income-region but it does not talk about individuals, only countries and regions; it finds that "the richest half (high and upper-middle income countries) emit 86 percent of global CO2 emissions". According to the graph, 16% of world population in high-income countries are responsible for 38% of global CO2. The richer 51 of the world population cause 86%. I don't think this squares with your statement, even if both "almost all" and "10%" were hyperbole.

deworde2• 7 years ago

Didn't work in China. It actually causes a massive "aging population" crisis, some serious gender imbalances, and some weird economic effects throughout the stack.

I mean, if you must be a film and TV dystopian bad guy, Thanos' idea doesn't work.

tsherr2• 7 years ago

It's not without it's problems, but ultimately the issue is too many humans. We can deal with that now or wait for nature to deal with us later.

alexgmcm• 7 years ago

Birth rate seems to converge to 1-2 children per couple in advanced economies anyway.

Really we should be ensuring access to birth control and education in developing countries along with improving medical services to cut infant mortality (so that parents can be sure their young will reach old age and don't need to play it safe and have many young).

We are getting there slowly, but we could do more.

barry-cotter3• 7 years ago

Birth rate seems to converge to 1-2 children per couple in advanced economies anyway.

This is incoherent. You can’t converge on extinction. Any population that doesn’t even replace itself will die out rapidly.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109051381...

The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely in the foreseeable future
The forecasting of the future growth of world population is of critical importance to anticipate and address a wide range of global challenges. The United Nations produces forecasts of fertility and world population every two years. As part of these forecasts, they model fertility levels in post-demographic transition countries as tending toward a long-term mean, leading to forecasts of flat or declining population in these countries. We substitute this assumption of constant long-term fertility with a dynamic model, theoretically founded in evolutionary biology, with heritable fertility. Rather than stabilizing around a long-term level for post-demographic transition countries, fertility tends to increase as children from larger families represent a larger share of the population and partly share their parents' trait of having more offspring. Our results suggest that world population will grow larger in the future than currently anticipated.

hleszek• 7 years ago

It is really sad that nothing is done to reduce overpopulation. Even if the whole world stopped eating meat, by 2050 when the world population will get close to 10 milliards we would produce as much CO2 as now. All the measures that we could take to reduce the personal impact will just delay the inevitable.

rebuilder• 7 years ago

It's too late for birth control to help with the immediate problem of excess CO2 emissions.

pawanrawal• 7 years ago

I am excited about the work Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are doing in this space. Creating alternatives with same nutrient content and similar taste but 1/10th the land usage and consuming less of other resources.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

Specifically - and this is much more important right now: 1/10 of GHGs compared to their meat counterparts.

elktea7• 7 years ago

If they had the same nutrient content I would be excited as well. They merely look like a bit like meat. The similarities end there.

delecti4• 7 years ago

Considering the links between meat consumption and heart disease, one would think that you should be more excited that the nutrient content isn't the same.

LegitShady7• 7 years ago

beyond meat doesn't seem to be doing anything interesting aside from having a slightly better burger recipe than the last guy.

As far as I can tell they've cashed in on the buzz generated by impossible foods, who genetically engineered yeast to produce a plant heme so their meatless meat products taste and cook more like meat.

Beyond Meat just appears to have come to market first, and such gotten more attention. I've tried it a couple times, it was just ok, and not much better than most other decent veggie burger patties. Not groundbreaking and not worth more money than any others.

I haven't tried impossible foods yet. Looking for them.

delecti4• 7 years ago

Impossible burgers aren't available to consumers. IMO Beyond isn't quite as good, but I can get it at the grocery store, and it's still much closer to the real thing than any veggie burgers I've tried other than Impossible. Note that that's not necessarily better than other veggie burgers, just closer to beef. IMO Impossible is even still closer to beef, and also the best burger I've ever had.

K0nserv4• 7 years ago

I read somewhere that the one meat free day a week initative is laughable and we should really be aiming for one meat day a week. Personally I've switched to a mostly vegetarian diet in the past few years and when I do eat meat it's good high quality meat.

Meat consumption seems like one of the easiest things governments could change to tackle climate change. Unlike cars and travel it's hard to make the argument that humans depend on access to meat so making it 700% more expensive via tax would effectively shift consumption patterns with few if any downsides. If anything it would probably have the excellect side effect of improving public health.

microtonal2• 7 years ago

Unlike cars and travel it's hard to make the argument that humans depend on access to meat so making it 700% more expensive via tax would effectively shift consumption patterns with few if any downsides.

The problem is that no politician (perhaps outside green parties) wants to do this, because of the fear of becoming unpopular. We simultaneously need a shift in people's attitudes towards meat.

I have been a vegetarian since I was 17 (I am 37 now). It has always fascinated me that becoming a vegetarian was only very little effort, but somehow people are extremely attached to meat. I never talk about being a vegetarian, but when people find out that I am a vegetarian, they often acts as being offended and having to defend themselves.

We need to show people that there is a middle way where you can still eat meat (e.g. maybe once a week) but still drastically decrease their footprint.

K0nserv4• 7 years ago

This is the unfortunate truth and it's particularly bad beause the rich western countries that contribute the most to climate change will, in many instances, be the last to feel the effects. This in combination with decmoractic elections has the consequence that iniatives aimed at tackling climate change, all of which will have a negative impact on people's lives(percieved or not), will never be viable politics for any politcian who wants to stay in office.

ensiferum2• 7 years ago

Because many vegetarians have elitist approach and meat eating people feel judged so they become defensive.

prawn• 7 years ago

Government won’t touch it directly - they’d get smashed by meat lobbyists. In Australia, the lamb industry is an aggressive advertiser. Zero chance beef lets it happen in the US. Has to come from other cost pressures. Let steak become even more of a special occasion thing because people can’t afford it all the time.

ultim8k• 7 years ago

I simply cannot believe that food is affecting environment more than factories, vehicles and rubbish.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

Well, that is why it so important that we have the IPCC, and now this special report. Food causes 25-30% of human made GHG emissions. Large part for deforestation, Methan emissions of ruminants and animal feed. Without including the transportation, packaging, etc. in the calculation it is still 23%. As you can read in chapter 5 of the report.

bashy• 7 years ago

It's amazing right? Animals don't need to be moved. Animals don't make rubbish. Animals don't need things built for them in factories.

No need to worry!

I'm vegan btw.

_carl_jung• 7 years ago

The food supply chain involves all three of those.

anonymou22• 7 years ago

It is not so hard to believe if you look at a graph like this one: https://www.resilience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Biomas...

sanxiyn6• 7 years ago

The article states food is responsible for a quarter. No one is claiming it is more than half. It is important to be quantitative.

robin_reala• 7 years ago

It’s also worth pointing out that even if you don’t want to reduce the amount of meat you eat, changing the type of meat can have big effects. For example (and ignoring transport to the consumer), lamb produces about 35 kg CO₂ per kg of meat, beef 25kg CO₂ / kg, pork and farmed salmon 8kg CO₂ / kg and chicken 4kg CO₂ / kg.

maxencecornet• 7 years ago

This

If you really want to have an impact while still eating meat, just stop eating beef/lamb altogether

The amount of food and water needed to produce 1kg of beef meat is just insane

Eat poultry or fish instead

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

Cattle is the worst at something like 15:1. Aquaculture, specifically tilapia and catfish, is good at under 2:1

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

Yeah chicken is the best farmed animal on CO₂. They burn less themselves because they can cuddle and have it warm. And don’t need to run around. ... in their small cages

mytailorisrich4• 7 years ago

As already mentioned in another discussion, the ratio they use for farmed fish is "where the first number is the mass of harvested fish used to feed farmed fish, and the second number is the mass of the resulting farmed fish".

Which makes it much less positive than it first appears.

marcus_holmes3• 7 years ago

not fish. Commercial fishing is killing the oceans (and something like 80% of the plastic in the ocean is fishing industry waste).

jazzabeanie2• 7 years ago

And meat from wild invasive species is even lower.

DoctorOetker• 7 years ago

this suggests taxing meat as a function of CO2 production, as opposed to price taxation. This would automatically reward local production (the same additional tax for an imported cheaper meat as for a local but more expensive meat, hits the cheaper one harder)

hoorayimhelping• 7 years ago

Thank you. Is there a reliable place I can find this information? I have anecdotally been much healthier after incorporating more protein, particularly whole meat (rather than isolated protein) into my diet - fewer illnesses, faster recovery time, better gut health, etc.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

You can access health and CO₂ informations on almost all foods here: https://app.eaternity.ch/login

glastra9• 7 years ago

How about we don't change the diet but change where the food comes from?

When talking about meat and damage to the environment, the only relevant figures are the ones associated with animal feed (e.g. water consumption per kg of meat).

Pastured animals, by definition, don't eat feed coming from the monoculture industrial agriculture that is depleting the soil and consuming all those resources, and which is also used to feed humans, sadly.

saagarjha8• 7 years ago

When talking about meat and damage to the environment, the only relevant figures are associated with animal feed (e.g. water consumption per kg of meat).

Cows fart.

glastra9• 7 years ago

It's the burps, actually.

And it's not nearly as dangerous as publicized.

Methane's lifespan in the atmosphere is much, much lower (think two orders of magnitude) than carbon dioxide [0], for example.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane

the84724• 7 years ago

No matter what you feed them, compared to other livestock animals cows are a fairly inefficient at turning feed into meat, meaning you need to dedicate more land to agriculture when it could be forest instead and thus a better carbon sink.

glastra9• 7 years ago

Out of curiosity, which animals are more efficient? Do you have a source on that?

There are, as far as I know, regions where the soil is only capable of growing pasture, hard to plant trees in.

wtdata4• 7 years ago

meaning you need to dedicate more land to agriculture

I don't understand why most people have this wrong idea. In a lot of places, the grazing pastures are naturally occurring, they aren't planted there.

It feels like people want to destroy the natural landscape of countries like Argentina, just because it's now fashionable to say they don't eat meat.

Even goats, everyone goes around claiming they have such an ineficient CO2/Kg meat index. Well, around here, goats are fed almost all the year by going into the forest and cleaning the shrubs and small vegetation there... besides feeding the goats for free, it also cleans the forest for free: something we would have to do otherwise in order to prevent fires in the summer.

tom_mellior6• 7 years ago

You can't produce as much meat from pastured animals as with industrial techniques. If humanity went all-pastured, meat prices would go up, many wouldn't be able to afford as much meat as now, and we would have changed the average person's diet.

This would also create incentives to cut down forests to create more "pasture", and that would be pretty terrible.

CommieDetector3• 7 years ago

Let's open an history book an review what happens when the government controlls the food production.

dragonwriter3• 7 years ago

Er, the results on that are rather mixed and ambiguous and depend more on other factors; but then again, controlling food production and distribution was the main role of most governments in most of history; it wasn't really until the agricultural revolutions that were a key factor in the feudal economic system starting to be replaced with capitalism that some governments could really afford (even in the short-term) not to make that their primary concern most of the time, and even now and even among advanced liberal Democratic “capitalist” (really, mixed economies) states, guiding food production and distribution remains a major role of government, even if the means used involve markets with government intervention through price controls, production subsidies, consumer (means-tested) subsidies, direct government purchase and distribution, aggressive negotiation of agricultural trade deals, etc., etc., etc., rather than transparent direct state direction.

nickik• 7 years ago

controlling food production and distribution was the main role of most governments in most of history;

I would say this is simply wrong. Government often capture food production and use it to enrich themselves. Some historical places certainty had a function in distribution as well but this is not the common case.

The waste majority of history, government were primary involved in food production and distribution beyond capturing as much as possible and distribution it to its own armies.

Most of history food for the most part was produced and consumed fairly locally without much involvement of government.

bluntfang2• 7 years ago

Sure! Corn is in everything! There's an obesity epidemic. Diabetes is effecting everyone's life. etc.

SmellyGeekBoy4• 7 years ago

It's good to see them putting the emphasis on eating less meat rather than cutting it out entirely. I do eat meat but I find myself eating less and less these days as non-meat alternatives become more appealing to me. I also don't eat "cheap" meat as I'm concerned about animal welfare. But I do take offense to vegans telling me that I'm evil because I don't fully embrace their choice of lifestyle and I'm sure most meat-eaters feel the same way.

supuun• 7 years ago

Not all vegans think like this. I'm a vegetarian, but I really don't think, that I am a better person than meat eater. :)

ETA: btw great job making effort to partly cut out meat from your diet. I myself want to become vegan, but I just can't switch immediately. IMO there is nothing wrong with gradual approach.

P.S. sorry for my broken English.

holstvoogd2• 7 years ago

Maybe we should also stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry close to 1,000,000,000,000$ yearly.

Not saying we should not eat less meat or anything, just saying there might be more we could be doing if our governments weren't corporate/billionairs puppets mostly.

open-source-ux• 7 years ago

This report doesn't say you have to give up eating meat. It does say we need to reduce our consumption. This might mean eating meat once a week.

We are eating more meat today (at least in the industralised nations of the "West") than in any other time in human history thanks to intensive farming practices. People seems to think that this is the natural state of affairs and that's how we've always consumed meat. But go back a few decades and meat was never available in such abundance and at such cheap prices.

The ugly truth is we're simply too comfortable in our current lifestyles to make any changes that might challenge that comfort. Whether it's flying less (or even stopping altoghther) or eating less meat, the reaction is always resistance and sometimes even anger and outrage.

I've said this before: we love to point accusatory fingers at others for taking too little action over climate issues but never lift a finger ourselves. Are we all a bunch of hypocrites and simply not willing to admit it?

perlpimp• 7 years ago

There are depictions of cows and mention of amazon forest. Could this be about fast food industry ? Also need scales of damage for poultry, swine etc, not sensational articles about going from one extreme to the other. I don't eat much beef but do love steak twice a month, is it alot? I don't think so, mostly have chicken bc it is easier to prepare and it seems to be easier to digest.

at any rate i hope to see some scales for this sort of thing.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

Springman, as cited in the report did a lot of calculations around this. He ended up with the minimal requirement for the average earth citizen with one portion of red meat per week. Check his definition of a flexitarien diet.

jobigoud• 7 years ago

Minimal requirement? Millions of vegetarians don't eat that "one portion of red meat per week" and do just fine.

ensiferum2• 7 years ago

The real culprit is the uncontrolled population growth but nobody wants to talk about that.

Ok, let's assume that people do indeed eat too much meat and that we halve our current consumption. Population grows until it has doubled and the meat consumption is then back to the same level as to what it is now.

Eventually we can all be eating grass and rocks and there'd still be too much demand on nature crated by the existence of humans.

The only real long term solution is start limiting population growth drastically. Any crutch trying to limit energy and material consumption will not solve the root cause. (Ofc it still makes sense to cut off the excess and not be wasteful or a resource hog)

Personally I'd like to have only enough people on this planet, so that everyone can be fed and educated and have access to health care, sanitation and all the basic needs.

sanxiyn6• 7 years ago

Ok, let's assume that people do indeed eat too much meat and that we halve our current consumption. Population grows until it has doubled and the meat consumption is then back to the same level as to what it is now.

This is a very strange assumption as UN Population Division predicts peak population at 12B, that is, the current world population will never double. That is business as usual without any intervention. Do you have specific reasons to disagree with UN Population Division?

barry-cotter3• 7 years ago

The UN Population Division have underestimated population growth for decades and base their projections on the assumption that fertility will converge on a steady state. This is evolotuniariliy illiterate. People who have more children will have children who have more children.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109051381...

The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely in the foreseeable future

The forecasting of the future growth of world population is of critical importance to anticipate and address a wide range of global challenges. The United Nations produces forecasts of fertility and world population every two years. As part of these forecasts, they model fertility levels in post-demographic transition countries as tending toward a long-term mean, leading to forecasts of flat or declining population in these countries. We substitute this assumption of constant long-term fertility with a dynamic model, theoretically founded in evolutionary biology, with heritable fertility. Rather than stabilizing around a long-term level for post-demographic transition countries, fertility tends to increase as children from larger families represent a larger share of the population and partly share their parents' trait of having more offspring. Our results suggest that world population will grow larger in the future than currently anticipated.

anonymou22• 7 years ago

It is approximately 200.000 new humans every day. Or an entire new Germany every year.

_Microft4• 7 years ago

Peak population growth rate was 50 years ago. -> https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth

What we are currently seeing in absolute numbers is a huge number of people with a lower growth rate out-reproducing a lower number with a higher growth rate in the past.

Education, available contraceptives, low child mortality (yes, low mortality as that makes having children less of a gamble and therefore you can get away with having fewer) automatically lead to lower fertility rates.

tom_mellior6• 7 years ago

Population growth... where?

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-by-income-region: "When aggregated in terms of income, we see in the visual below that the richest half (high and upper-middle income countries) emit 86 percent of global CO2 emissions. The bottom half (low and lower-middle income) only 14%. The very poorest countries (home to 9 percent of the global population) are responsible for just 0.5 percent. This provides a strong indication of the relative sensitivity of global emissions to income versus population. Even several billion additional people in low-income countries — where fertility rates and population growth is already highest — would leave global emissions almost unchanged. 3 or 4 billion low income individuals would only account for a few percent of global CO2. At the other end of the distribution however, adding only one billion high income individuals would increase global emissions by almost one-third."

merricksb• 7 years ago

Earlier discussion...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643257

elktea7• 7 years ago

There's a good case to be made for humans being primarily meat eaters for much of our history and only eating plants as an alternative to starving - we certainly haven't had time to evolve to eat a vegetarian diet. Agriculture has only been around for a small fraction of our history and the skeletal record clearly shows how disasterous it was for our health.

The current 'plant based' fad diet recommendations are backed up by some very poor science and may be seriously unsuitable for humans and for children in particular, nutrition-wise. Animal agriculture is not even a major source of human emissions so to call for changes to our natural diet seems very premature.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

I challenge your opinion:

I wouldn’t call the world consensus of the IPCC poor science. It is actually the opposite: the best science we have available.

The report goes into depth about the health benefits these diets have also.

chrisco2556• 7 years ago

The IPCC is now the authority on human nutrition?

throwaway39572• 7 years ago

There's a good case to be made for humans being primarily meat eaters for much of our history and only eating plants as an alternative to starving

To really contribute, it would be nice if you came up with some citations to your claim.

elktea7• 7 years ago

Our stomach pH is very low, comparable to carrion eaters and some carnivores.

"It is interesting to note that humans, uniquely among the primates so far considered, appear to have stomach pH values more akin to those of carrion feeders than to those of most carnivores and omnivores" https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Our requirements for DHA and B12 indicate a diet rich in both - both found almost exclusively in animal foods

Evolution of the Human Brain: the key roles of DHA(omega-3 fatty acid) andD6-desaturase gene https://www.ocl-journal.org/articles/ocl/pdf/2018/04/ocl1700...

We wean our young for a very short amount of time compared to other apes.

"Our model indicates that carnivory has a specific and quantifiable impact on human development and life history and, crucially, explains why Homo weans so much earlier than the great apes." Impact of Carnivory on Human Development and Evolution Revealed by a New Unifying Model of Weaning in Mammals https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

saagarjha8• 7 years ago

There are entire cultures whose diet is plant-based.

shlant11• 7 years ago

naw, just a fad unlike Paleo, Keto, Carnivore etc. ;)

Frondo3• 7 years ago

From an evolutionary perspective, we have evolved: we use tools and process nearly anything we eat anyway. Plants are the only thing we eat with minimal preparation, and only some of those.

When was the last time you had raw beef? for me, it was beef tartare a few years ago...

Raw grain? Nope, that's all processed, either by boiling, or grinding and turning into something else.

blisterpeanuts7• 7 years ago

Sushi!

Homo Erectus was thought to have subsisted on raw meat. There's evidence of intestinal parasites that suggests such a diet.

Apparently, at some point, we decided to cook our meat, which reduced the parasite load and removed the need for low pH comparative to other carnivores.

But not too long ago, humans did eat some raw meats. Primitive hunters sometimes ate raw hearts, and drinking fresh blood was not unheard of. 1,000 years ago, the Mongols would sometimes nick their horses and drink blood to sustain them on long journeys.

blisterpeanuts7• 7 years ago

Paleontologists believe that it was the shift from fruits and nuts to a high protein diet of meat that allowed our brains to grow dramatically compared to other primates. We are omnivorous, and our bodies require a certain amount of plant matter ideally, but clearly meat is an integral component of a healthy human diet.

ulises3144• 7 years ago

Quote a single paleontologist.

shlant11• 7 years ago

Sounds like a big ol' Paleo-esque Appeal to Nature argument.

The current 'plant based' fad diet recommendations are backed up by some very poor science and may be seriously unsuitable for humans and for children in particular, nutrition-wise

Care to provide evidence to back that up? Your broad, evolutionary talking points and observations on stomach pH in your other response hardly backs up your strongly worded supposition.

Plant based diets have been practiced by not insignificant portions of the population beginning in the 6th-century BCE with Buddhism and Hinduism[1]. An estimated 20-40% of India is currently vegetarian[2]. Not sure "fad" is an accurate descriptor.

I'm sure you'd have a hard time refuting the unending amount of "poor science" that shows plant based diets are effective for longevity, treating obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure[3]. The AICR recommends a plant based diet to prevent cancer[4], and ten other major Nutritional Organizations recognize the health benefits[5].

"It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.

These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes."[5]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_vegetarianism#Ancie...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#India

3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662288/

4. https://www.aicr.org/patients-survivors/healthy-or-harmful/v...

5. https://www.theplantway.com/is-vegan-healthy/

magduf7• 7 years ago

Plant based diets have been practiced by not insignificant portions of the population beginning in the 6th-century BCE with Buddhism and Hinduism. An estimated 20-40% of India is currently vegetarian. Not sure "fad" is an accurate descriptor.

In terms of human history, he's right. 6th-century BCE was not very long ago at all: that's less than a mere 3000 years. Humans have been around for over 2 million years.

Also, he's right about the skeletal record: archaeology shows that humans lost about 1 foot of height when they switched to agriculture. Yes, much of India is vegetarian, but Indians tend to be pretty short, but then when they emigrate to western nations and adopt more western diets, their kids end up dwarfing them.

nharada• 7 years ago

I'd consider 9% of all human emissions[1] to be a "major source". Just because it's not the majority doesn't mean it's not important.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

dennis_jeeves• 7 years ago

Our stomach pH is very low, comparable to carrion eaters and some carnivores.

Hmm... this is how you get into an argument where people talk past each other. You may be correct when it comes to that little nugget of information, but when it comes to the larger context, that piece of information will not make sense to someone who has other contradicting pieces of information. ( for example a vegan who thinks that humans ought to have huge canines to be a carnivore).

Anyway it's unfair of me to critique your style/content of your argument without offering an alternative. How about this?: Ask the person who is into the 'plant based' belief to conduct an experiment of eating only meat for 2 months and then report the results. i.e if both of you agree that most 'science' and 'research' is flawed. Of course it goes without saying that you too should have performed this experiment on yourself.

Side note - I have been carnivore for 6 years ( 99% of my diet is red meat, eggs and dairy ).

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

Why is this thread a [dupe] ?

sanxiyn6• 7 years ago

It no more is.

lhl2• 7 years ago

Almost all conventional/industrial agriculture (plant or animal based) is unsustainable due to the external inputs required (70% from fossil fuels for growing corn! [1]), soil depletion incurred [2], and just plain shipping things around. [3]

The alternative is local regenerative agriculture [4], which the Rodale Institute [5] and a recent Quantis (non-peer reviewed) studies [6] point to being potentially carbon net negative due to carbon soil sequestration via regenerative grazing. It also appears to be more economically sustainable [7][8] and can provide competitive yields [8].

For those interested in reading more, I found a couple pretty lengthy (peer-reviewed) academic reviews on the topic to be pretty fascinating:

Rhodes, Christopher J. “The Imperative for Regenerative Agriculture.” Science Progress 100, no. 1 (March 1, 2017): 80–129. https://doi.org/10.3184/003685017X14876775256165.

Teague, W R. “FORAGES AND PASTURES SYMPOSIUM: COVER CROPS IN LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION: WHOLE-SYSTEM APPROACH: Managing Grazing to Restore Soil Health and Farm Livelihoods1.” Journal of Animal Science 96, no. 4 (April 2018): 1519–30. https://doi.org/10.1093/jas/skx060.

Pretty, Jules. “Agricultural Sustainability: Concepts, Principles and Evidence.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 363, no. 1491 (February 12, 2008): 447–65. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2163.

Pearson, Craig J. “Regenerative, Semiclosed Systems: A Priority for Twenty-First-Century Agriculture.” BioScience 57, no. 5 (May 1, 2007): 409–18. https://doi.org/10.1641/B570506.

[1] https://www.wur.nl/en/show/Can-conventional-agriculture-feed...

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/business/worldbusiness/26...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_agriculture

[5] https://rodaleinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/rodale-white-...

[6] https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/hubfs/WOP-LCA-Quantis-2019...

[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5831153/

[8] https://rodaleinstitute.org/science/farming-systems-trial/

wtdata4• 7 years ago

Local agriculture won't feed 7 billion people and even worst went the method you are proposing is GMO, fertilizer and pesticide free.

lhl2• 7 years ago

The point is that conventional agriculture (eg, with industrial inputs) is literally unsustainable - there is a 56% food gap in the coming decades. [1]

Also, there's plenty of evidence that small, sustainable farms are both more efficient (in inputs, and land) and more productive in total caloric terms that mono-cropped industrial farming. In the Pretty review I referenced, Table 3 shows the "adoption of agricultural sustainability technologies and practices on 286 projects in 47 countries" increased average % increase in crop yields from 22% to 146%. [2]

Per the FAO [3], globally, small farms continue to dominate in food production and their food production (and economic sustainability) would be improved via an "ecological intensification" approach. [4]

[1] https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/12/how-sustainably-feed-10-bil...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610163/

[3] https://www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/industrial-a...

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5478712/

thelittleone4• 7 years ago

We're creatures of habit. The pattern of breakfast, lunch and dinner means I'm usually "hungry" before breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I was feeling hungry about dinner time a while back, but I couldn't decide what to eat so I skipped. I woke the next morning and didn't feel hungry at all. That seemed odd to me. So I skipped breakfast and ate lunch only (same portion size as normal) and continued to do so for six weeks. I felt great. Workouts strong, focus and concentration improved. I saved a bunch of time and money.

After that did a 13 day fast (zero food). Day 3 sucked, but the 10 that followed where really eye opening in a wholly positive way. I do a lot of boxing, and I didn't stop during this fast. I thought it would suck but I had tons of energy and lots of speed. At the finishing lime, the first morsel of food (some roast pumpkin) was savored and tasted incredible. It gave me a new awareness and appreciation of what and how much food I need to maintain maximum performance.

I know i could eat a LOT less than I do in a year and be as or more healthy and contribute to a healthier environment. We just have to break the habit. That's really hard given the social culture of eating.

Gatsky• 7 years ago

Great comment. I too have experienced great benefits from fasting. Humans evolved under conditions of food scarcity. I think we are actually ‘designed’ to be fasting most of the time.

thelittleone4• 7 years ago

The scarcity concept is one I really connect with also. A bit extreme, but there's a 30 day water fast (supervised) that's meant to be life changing. From what I recall the believe is that eating as a coping mechanism stores that trauma in the lipids. 30 days burns through it all.

sphix0r• 7 years ago

I'm a faster too and have more energy as well. No more energy drain after a big meal. Another advantage of fasting is that you spend less time on food. Our western society involves a lot of time on food(breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks).

thelittleone4• 7 years ago

Yeah the time saved surprised me also. No more "hmmm what to eat for... " only one meal a day. I was surprised to learn how much time I spend thinking of either what to eat, or eating or digesting it in a food coma :)

blisterpeanuts7• 7 years ago

I believe you're right. We didn't evolve to eat regular meals, but rather to gorge when there was abundance, then starve/fast during the in-between periods. Probably water was the one thing that we had regularly from day to day.

I've moved to a calorie-limited diet, myself, and the effects on my health have been dramatic. My acid reflux has subsided; it disappeared when I went low carb for a month and has not come back, even though I've added fruit carbs back in to my diet. I'm down over 20 pounds, and hoping to lose another 20 or so, while at the same time working out and replacing fat with muscle mass.

We can be healthier, if we try. Unfortunately, our modern societies, especially here in North America, encourage excessive eating with all of the sad results that are evident if you go out in public and observe the clinical obesity that is commonplace.

thelittleone4• 7 years ago

Congrats on shedding those pounds! Must be feeling great. I always found it a pain to consume enough vegetables. Then I had my wisdom teeth removed and couldn't eat for a week. I blended a ton of good veggies into a mash to get some nutrients. Even now (many years later) I still blend those veggies. Nutrition hacks! :)

jillesvangurp2• 7 years ago

Regulate the industries and trade, not people's behavior. It's much easier and you actually get results and people adapt to pricing by themselves. The reality is that we have a few billion people that are doing pretty well economically and they are going to be feeding themselves with whatever they can afford. Unless you can convince more than half of them to become vegans, that means demand for meat is going to go up, rather than down. A few privileged rich hipsters choosing to only eat food others can't afford is not going to be doing anything for this planet. It's not statistically meaningful. Not even close.

Industrial farming is the main problem here. We're literally eroding farmland by growing mono cultures (using pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, etc) whose primary function is to feed cattle that spends all its life indoors turning this farm produce into manure. That in turn gets mixed with urine to produce a chemically very active mix that produces all sorts of nasty stuff. It's stupid and massively wasteful. It's only cheap because doing that is being subsidized and stimulated by governments. Stop doing doing that and the price of meat goes up and people adapt their behavior. Unsustainably produced cheap meat is the problem.

It's not the only way to produce meat but the it is the cheapest one and it's only cheap unless you also factor in the cost of destroying this planet. There are forms of farming that are effectively carbon negative (i.e. they capture more co2 than is released) that still produce meat and other produce. We can actually start undoing a lot of the damage already done simply by farming more smartly. This starts by stopping to reward harmful behavior with subsidies. Lots of farmers are already switching to more sustainable production methods because it makes business sense. Removing subsidies for their unsustainable competitors will help them.

holstvoogd2• 7 years ago

I feel the whole 'what can you do to save the planet' is a big distraction & shifting the blame strategy. As long as we have arguments on how much meat we are eating, how much energy we use etc, we are not focusing on the fact that governments hardly regulate anything corporate.

captainredbeard• 7 years ago

As I understand it, almost no cattle live indoors, especially not for their entire life. The only exception I can think of is Kobe beef.

Even industrial beef cattle follow these stages (most companies target a single stage though your smaller boutique producers tend to tackle all three or at least the last two):

1. Cow/calf operations. These are all pastured (grass fed). At weaning they are sold at auction. 2. Backgrounding. The calves are brought up to finishing weight. This is typically a grass fed stage. Once they reach market weight, they are sold at auction. 3. Finishing. Most are finished at feedlots, which are generally outdoors but extremely crowded. This is where the nasty industrial farming stuff is concentrated.

Pasture finished beef is the way to go.

jillesvangurp2• 7 years ago

It depends. A lot of cows are kept indoors as well: https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2015/12/more-dutch-cows-are-ke...

The netherlands also has more pigs than people and these certainly don't go outside except to travel to slaught houses.

Aser• 7 years ago

I already do my part for the environment by not having kids. That's a much bigger impact than trying to reduce the amount of meat I eat. So I'll eat whatever I like, thank you.

saagarjha8• 7 years ago

Why not both?

zygimantasdev• 7 years ago

Your kids could be the ones who innovate and fix the environment problems, therefore your argument is not valid

loldot_• 7 years ago

I think most people willing to change their diet for the sake of the environment already are well aware of the consequences of meat eating. In my opinion it would be more beneficial to focus campaigns on the problem of food waste which I am sure more people would be willing to give up.

wtdata4• 7 years ago

Very well, but why don't these reports ever call for reducing the birthrate in countries where this is exploding [1]?

Now they are asking us to stop meat consumption, but the if number of people keeps increasing, what will they ask us to stop next instead of addressing the real problem?

Clearly the real issue is having too many people. Birth control is the proper way to tackle the problem.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...

ailideex• 7 years ago

Can't really argue with that, which is why people don't and just downvote.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

Na, I think it is downvoted because it is pretty neo-liberal, to assume that population control is the solution, because it implicitly neglects that most emissions are caused by the richest people. Reducing those rich people would well be a fair point, though.

harimau7773• 7 years ago

I think this is a situation where we need a Dr. George Washington Carver that not only recognizes that we need to eat less meat but also develops alternatives that the general public will accept.

(Not sure how famous Dr. George Washington Carver is outside the US. He was one of the first famous African American scientists and is known for discovering that rotating crops with peanuts will add nutrients back to the soil and then inventing about 300 uses for peanuts in order to convince farmers to plant them. However, despite popular belief, peanut butter was not one of the uses that he invented.)

Frondo3• 7 years ago

I was in Canada recently and tried one of the Tim Hortons "beyond sausage" sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiches. From the "beyond meat" people.

Had I not known what I was eating, I wouldn't have known it was plant-based at all. The taste and texture was, at least in fast food terms, just a really good sausage.

I haven't been able to try the beyond burger Burger King is selling, but if it's on par with the beyond sausage, I can't see why I'd ever eat a meat-based fast food burger again. It was really that good, and an easy decision to make given the meat industry's impact on the environment.

People who diss those meat substitutes out of hand should try them with an open mind (i.e. not from a place of "you can't control me" or "I'll never stop eating meat".)

AnIdiotOnTheNet5• 7 years ago

Quick note: Burger King uses the Impossible Burger, not the Beyond Burger. In my opinion, the Impossible Burger isn't any better than a MorningStar Farms Grillers Prime (at significantly higher price). The Beyond Burger though is easily the best meat-free burger I've ever had.

A&W and Carl's Junior are Beyond Burger joints.

AnIdiotOnTheNet5• 7 years ago

As suggested by the other reply, I feel like this is kinda what Beyond Meat is already doing.

amriksohata• 7 years ago

Hindu texts, places where yoga came from, often warned about the Kali yuga and the effect abusing a cow would have, Beef is one of the most costliest foods to produce in terms of water consumption and carbon output

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46459714

adamsvystun• 7 years ago

I think people in this thread suggest policies that are not centered around the problem that we are trying to solve.

Do we want to reduce meat production or do we want to reduce the negative climate impact of meat production?

It matters because the correlation is not straight forward. Different types of meats produce different environmental harm. Each meat type can be produced with different climate impact depending on production methods.

So the best policies would be centered around reducing (proportionally to other industries) environmental impact of meat production. So things like emissions tax, climate-friendly land use rewards make sense, while putting taxes on all meat production makes less sense.

tomp• 7 years ago

What's more, by targeting the effects, not the cause, you're helping create a better, free-er world, where governments aren't dictating how people live their lives. If the desired effect is "less global warming" (and you implement that via a fair CO2 / CH4 tax), then people can choose how they're going to reduce their CO2 impact. Maybe I prefer to eat 1 steak per week and cycle to work, whereas my neighbor eats soybeans whole year round and drives around in a car.

Finally, by taxing (not banning) undesirable externalities governments spur technological development - people/companies can invest money into figuring out how to get the same result ("eat steak") with less of a climate impact (e.g. by feeding seaweed to cows), resulting in a win-win.

swah• 7 years ago

I'd raise my own pigs before replacing my meat with worms.

codyb• 7 years ago

This will probably get swallowed by the other 190 comments but are there good sources for how to make meat substitutes? I love to cook, and I frequently grind my own meat for burgers and sausages. I make my own jerkies too.

I try to buy grass fed and pasture raised but I’m definitely not perfect since the nearest decent butcher is about twenty minutes by train.

I guess the alternative would be an ask for great vegetarian cookbook recommendations.

hankstenberg• 7 years ago

Check out https://deliciouslyella.com/ for awesome vegan recipes. She also wrote at least one book.

maddy237• 7 years ago

I love this website and their books: https://www.bosh.tv/

markstos6• 7 years ago

I like the New Fast Food cookbook by Jill Nussinow. It's not meat-substitutes, it's whole food, plant-based recipes for pressure cooking. https://www.amazon.com/New-Fast-Food-Pressure-MInutes/dp/097...

Jill McKeever has fun videos, including some plant-based meatloaf and others https://simpledailyrecipes.com/

nabnob• 7 years ago

Personally, I've found that the tastiest way to go vegetarian is by completely restructuring how I plan my meals.

American food tends to revolve around meat, whereas food in other cultures treats meat as more of a side dish (if it is eaten at all). Indian/Bengali food, Middle Eastern food, (authentic) chinese food...pretty much anything besides American food is very easy to "veganize", since vegetables and legumes are centered more in the meal.

I like this blog for ideas - https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/south-indian-breakfast-rec...

Scoundreller2• 7 years ago

Have they taken meat off the menu at UN offices and HQ?

Or is this for « everyone else »?

delecti4• 7 years ago

Even if your implied assumption is correct, and they haven't taken meat off the menu at UN HQ, being a hypocrite doesn't mean you're wrong.

And in any case, it's likely the scientists putting out climate reports aren't the people running the cafeteria.

Scoundreller2• 7 years ago

being a hypocrite doesn't mean you're wrong.

But it makes one unpalatable; which is a problem when you want to change human behaviour.

YeahSureWhyNot• 7 years ago

climate change is caused by activities of large corporations but your solution is regular people changing diet? it's like suggesting people start driving 2 cylinder cars with AC off while fleet of largest ship companies create more co2 than all cars combined. you want to stop climate change? do the following: -stop cutting down forests. -stop drilling in arctic -stop oil spills -stop overfishing list goes on and all of these things are done by large corporations with approval of governments. leave regular people alone, the capitalist system has strangled them enough already.

jnwatson3• 7 years ago

If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more.

You’re not going to guilt people into changing their behavior.

A carbon tax fixes this.

blunte4• 7 years ago

If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more.

I'm not willing to agree that it would reduce emissions more than ending meat consumption. It would help, however.

Like most problems, there is not just one solution. Multiple modest to moderate changes in behavior can make a big difference.

- redesign cities to include more and better public transport (less car/truck traffic)

- reduce general product consumption (less global shipping) - we all know there's a lot of worthless stuff that gets manufactured and shipped, such as the low-end products you find in Walmart which break or fail after a short period of time

- create permaculture food forests in and around cities (reducing global shipping of produce)

- eat less meat (reducing production and transportation emissions)

To put it into perspective, it's a bit like getting fit and losing weight. Yes you can radically change your diet, or you can do crossfit every day, but those narrow+deep efforts are usually very unpleasant and unsustainable (in terms of a human's ability to keep with the changes). Instead, some diet changes, some consistent exercise, some lifestyle changes (walking/biking in place of some car drives) tends to result in lasting health benefits.

A carbon tax fixes this.

Not really. A carbon tax encourages projects like mass forest planting of monocultures. That will result in some problem down the road.

onion2k• 7 years ago

A carbon tax fixes this.

Not really.

You're conflating the tax with spending the tax revenue. You don't need to spend any of the revenue on carbon sequestering projects. Just implementing a carbon tax that pushed the price of things like air travel up to the reflect the real cost would do a huge amount to reduce the amount people pollute.

If the price of a flight doubled then fewer people would fly.

goatinaboat• 7 years ago

redesign cities to include more and better public transport

Concrete is a massive source of CO2 emissions. Rebuilding cities is really, really not going to help.

codetrotter• 7 years ago

Carbon tax like you said, and also all product should be labeled with some sort of information about the carbon footprint that stems from the production and transportation of this product, so that consumers can compare products in terms of carbon footprint just like they can in terms of nutrients in food.

A challenge to get right for sure, but it could have significant positive impact.

pmlnr• 7 years ago

stopped traveling for fun

Uhm... how about stop travelling for business in the world of instant communication?

deepGem• 7 years ago

Based on my business travels mostly related to sales, I don't see any of them shifting online. When it comes to decision making, physical presence matters a lot. This is not some routine weekly status call we are talking about. Courting customers, making them feel good and closing that deal - none of these will ever happen online, unless some magical VR tech comes about.

jf22• 7 years ago

And conferences to watch somebody give the same talk that is on youtube or training that is on Pluralsight or scotch.io.

AnIdiotOnTheNet5• 7 years ago

Imagine if every office worker worked remotely how much less driving would be necessary.

mruts• 7 years ago

I agree, but I think securitizable carbon credits make a lot more sense than a straight up tax.

Also it’s not just that can’t guilt people into changing behavior, I don’t think we should. Humanity moves forward by solving our problems not through everyone magically changing how they act.

elorant• 7 years ago

If everyone stopped traveling for fun the worldwide tourism economy would collapse. There are whole countries that rely on tourism to make it through.

ccffph• 7 years ago

Why is the tourism economy more important than the livestock economy?

henryaj3• 7 years ago

If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more

Animal agriculture is responsible for 14~18% of greenhouse gas emissions [0]; aviation only ~5% [1].

[0] https://skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-contribute-to-gw.... [1] - https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/aviation-2-3-times...

nightski• 7 years ago

That is globally, in the U.S. it skews much differently.

jnwatson3• 7 years ago

Traveling isn’t just aviation. Most traveling for fun in the US is via automobile.

PunchTornado• 7 years ago

yeah, a carbon tax so that only rich people can enjoy things. how about before demanding common people change their behaviour ban private jets and yachts?

mark_l_watson• 7 years ago

At least in the USA, this could in principle be fixed by ending the corporate welfare state. Old news, but All major industries like the beef industry get huge tax breaks, free water and other giveaways at the general taxpayer’s expense.

Fixing the corruption (both democratic and republican parties) in our our political would end up helping the environment a lot. That said, we have zero chance of fixing our corrupt political system. It will never happen, the elites have won that war.

One problem with reducing meat consumption is the general low skill level for cooking. Vegetarian food can taste better than meat dishes but you need skill and good ingredients. I have mixed feelings about Beyond Meat: my wife and I love the hot Italian sausage and burgers, but it is really not that healthy.

the_gastropod5• 7 years ago

I have mixed feelings about Beyond Meat: my wife and I love the hot Italian sausage and burgers, but it is really not that healthy.

I totally get this, and have similar feelings. But I try to remind my self what Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger are competing with: meat. They have similar saturated fat profiles to their "real" alternatives.

I look at these meat alternatives as mostly beneficial for:

1. Meat eaters looking to eat more sustainably, but continue eating burgers and sausages and whatnot occasionally

2. "Cook out" situations where you can bring a good veggie burger and not be a total social weirdo eating grilled corn by yourself. And it's a good conversation starter, and others are usually intrigued enough to try, and impressed after having done so.

andy_ppp7• 7 years ago

Why do you guys think saturated fat is bad for you? Certainly when fried it's much much healthier as it doesn't decompose into cancerous aldehydes. The science on this is very tainted so I would be very careful about assumptions here. Are there other things apart from saturated fat you are worried about?

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3t902pqt3C7nGN99hV...

TheBeardKing4• 7 years ago

We've been trying to cut our meat consumption, but the cooking complexity is exactly my issue. We're lazy but healthy eaters, meaning our regular entrees are a meat and a couple veggie sides. We also do low carb, mainly because it's just easier to limit calorie intake that way. Most of the dinner work is usually cutting and preparing vegetables. When we cut meat, it cuts the main portion of the entree, which can sometimes be filled with baked potato, corn on the cob, some quinoa thing, but it's not as satisfying and gets boring. We don't like buying processed foods, and soups without meat are nearly a no-go for me. But hey, I'm limiting consumption so I guess I'm doing my part.

Pxtl• 7 years ago

Yeah, as a vegetarian I can do some awesome things with lentils, but I remember the days when I could rub some spice on a pork chop and throw it on the grill and then have something boxed and starchy on the side and have a pretty decent meal.

Meanwhile, a good lentil stew is a much more involved project. Much less home-made veggie burger patties which have dozens of ingredients and elaborate preparation processes.

Going full vegan is even harder, because cheese is a pretty good shortcut to making hearty food.

dnhz3• 7 years ago

Healthiest way to go about it is to go low-fat, high carb. The body uses glucose for energy most easily. Whole-foods plant based diets, as shown in documentaries like Forks Over Knives, have been shown to let people lose weight and reverse diseases like diabetes. A cooked carb like a potato or rice is like 1 calorie/gram, including the water. Oil is 9 calories/gram. Without oil, sheer food volume and fiber will make you feel full. A huge portion of the world thrives on grains and legumes as staples.

saiya-jin2• 7 years ago

soups without meat are nearly a no-go for me

This way you are missing maybe 90% of the soups of the world. Maybe try some exotic spices - I used to hate tomato soup from our school canteen with passion, but once I tried a properly spiced variant in Nepali Himalayas, things were never the same again (for the better) and I love it these days (I mean the Nepali version)

koolba• 7 years ago

We don't like buying processed foods, and soups without meat are nearly a no-go for me. But hey, I'm limiting consumption so I guess I'm doing my part.

I lean toward the carnivore spectrum but there are a couple meatless soups that I enjoy:

* New England clam chowder

* Corn chowder

* Barley mushroom (though it’s even better with meat)

* Gazpacho

And while I’d never order it if given the option for a “real one”, vegetarian pho was surprisingly good.

ashelmire• 7 years ago

I have mixed feelings about Beyond Meat: my wife and I love the hot Italian sausage and burgers, but it is really not that healthy.

Regular veggie burgers and other products (not trying to imitate meat) are usually really good. They should embrace the fact that they can include a vast array of vegetables and spices. Example: Morningstar farms has a chickpea burger I really like. Also it's much cheaper than Beyond products. I share your concern about the Beyond products (and other vegetarian products); if I want a ton of saturated fat, I'd just eat meat. Chicken and fish are healthier than Beyond.

A society that eats less meat (or none) is inevitable given time, for both moral and practical reasons of health, scarcity and environmental impact. We should teach people to cook healthy vegan food that they enjoy. Just providing food options people enjoy without meat will reduce meat consumption without pushing a moral agenda that often receives hysterical responses.

Disclaimer: I eat meat, though I've been eating less for the above reasons.

magduf7• 7 years ago

We should teach people to cook healthy vegan food that they enjoy.

That just isn't realistic; you'll wind up with a lot of really unhealthy people eating food they hate. Not everyone is good at cooking, and one big reason veganism is so unpopular is because it's so hard to make anything that tastes good with it. Meat is easy to cook, even for people who aren't very good at cooking. And veganism is generally unhealthy, because most people aren't dedicated or good enough at it to get the proper nutrition, so they leave out critical nutrients, whereas with meat it's really easy to get everything you need (like iron).

Expecting the whole populace to get good at cooking vegan food is like expecting the whole populace to become very skilled at C++ programming (including template metaprogramming). It isn't going to happen.

If someone makes vegan pre-made meals that can just be microwaved, that would be different.

cribbles• 7 years ago

Corporate welfare is one thing. I'd also like to direct readers to this thread from yesterday: https://twitter.com/unabanned/status/1159272783676891136

- which persuasively argues (with multiple sources) that the US meat industry depends upon massive labor exploitation of undocumented immigrants in order to 1) suppress wages and 2) maintain an otherwise intolerable working environment.

This shows that the problem is not simply corrupt legislation and lobbying, but a de facto symbiotic relationship between the meat industry, federal immigration authorities and border coyotes to maintain artificially low prices.

thatfrenchguy• 7 years ago

It's also true for the agricultural industry in the US in general though.

cronix• 7 years ago

What will happen to veggie prices when we go to a $15 min wage? Do other farms not benefit from illegal labor?

dragonwriter3• 7 years ago

which persuasively argues (with multiple sources) that the US meat industry depends upon massive labor exploitation of undocumented immigrants in order to 1) suppress wages and 2) maintain an otherwise intolerable working environment.

That's well-known about the meat industry. The problem with suggesting it as a reason to avoid meat in favor of vegetable-based food is the same is well-known to be true of agriculture generally.

weberc2• 7 years ago

Wouldn't the relationship between the meat industry and federal immigration authorities be the opposite of symbiotic? Federal immigration aims to curb the illegal immigration off of which (we reasonably alledge) the meat industry is profiting. Surely this is evident by the inclusion of "border coyotes" in the alleged symbiotic relationship?

ObscureMind• 7 years ago

That said, we have zero chance of fixing our corrupt political system

We do have a chance. It's not going to be long until a critical mass of individuals understand that democracy is a system that legitimizes coercion, and that taxation is theft and generates poverty. We just need one more generation until that happens.

When people reach that conclusion, they will move their money away from fiat currencies and they will move their information into distributed systems (eg. blockchains).

By consequence they will make states and coercion not viable. Without the ability to control currencies, states go bankrupt and can't even pay for people to steal your money.

Welcome to anarcho-capitalism, while I wait for the downvotes.

DiseasedBadger2• 7 years ago

If putting your money in crypto prevents you from paying taxes, it's you who'd go to jail. If any government saw a dip in taxes, they'd just pass a law requiring an "internet driver's license". Then require your wallet number. Such licenses are already common, outside the US.

So, less anarcho anything. More jail time, and then forced labor, and then one again paying taxes.

Sorry.

hanniabu2• 7 years ago

At least in the USA, this could in principle be fixed by ending the corporate welfare state. Old news, but All major industries like the beef industry get huge tax breaks, free water and other giveaways at the general taxpayer’s expense.

Unfortunately, in my experience when I bring this up the typical response us that I must be a socialist.

magduf7• 7 years ago

In America, saying anything unAmerican is "socialist". So advocating things like much stricter gun laws, more public transit, or ending tax breaks and other giveaways to large politically-connected corporations are unAmerican and therefore "socialist" in American parlance.

jackewiehose• 7 years ago

One problem with reducing meat consumption is the general low skill level for cooking. Vegetarian food can taste better than meat dishes but you need skill and good ingredients

No, why? Not at all... My cooking skill level is knowing how to use a stove. What good ingredients do you mean? In my experience cooking meat is always the hardest part.

ulises3144• 7 years ago

Yeah, survival is more important that you having comfort food.

yifanl• 7 years ago

I have mixed feelings about Beyond Meat: my wife and I love the hot Italian sausage and burgers, but it is really not that healthy.

Beyond Meat is competing with freezer aisle foodstuff and there it handily wins out in just about every category (price, taste, nutrition), even if objectively it's unhealthy for you.

There's a world of vegetarian options outside of the preprocessed fauxmeats (including the entire produce section).

asdfman1232• 7 years ago

You want to find a rare issue with bipartisan support? Try raising the price of food and seeing how people like it.

dragonwriter3• 7 years ago

You want to find a rare issue with bipartisan support? Try raising the price of food and seeing how people like it.

Food stamps are designed to raise the market clearing price of food as a subsidy to agriculture (they’ve since become a means-tested welfare program as well, while retaining the original purpose); they have fairly strong political support, which definitely shows a partisan divide.

The Dairy Price Support Program and other agricultural price support programs likely continue to exist despite having the sole purpose of raising the price of food; were raising the price of food the kind of third-rail you are trying to imply, there would be a bipartisan consensus against such programs that would make it impossible to retain them.

johnisgood2• 7 years ago

One problem with reducing meat consumption is the general low skill level for cooking. Vegetarian food can taste better than meat dishes but you need skill and good ingredients. I have mixed feelings about Beyond Meat: my wife and I love the hot Italian sausage and burgers, but it is really not that healthy.

What? I make stew of any legumes and it does not require more skills than cooking meat.

qkls• 7 years ago

Good vegetarian food can be easy but some ingredients like tofu require seasoning. Almost all meat dishes can be made with only salt and pepper.

gingabriska• 7 years ago

I read some study somewhere, which says eating meat makes you more sexually attractive and your features are developed better if you eat meat.

If there the case, I don't think you can convince people to not eat meat because it's like telling them to stop using makeup or stop making efforts to become mor handsome/beautiful

TheAlchemist• 7 years ago

There is an interesting film coming soon on meat consumption: The Game Changers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSpglxHTJVM

Produced by James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan it follows several top level athletes and investigate the myth about the need for animal proteins

blisterpeanuts7• 7 years ago

In the early 1800s, there were an estimated 60 million bison in North America. They were hunted nearly to extinction, and today there are an estimated 31,000 (wikipedia).

Meanwhile, there are about 120 million cattle in the U.S. and Canada (over a billion worldwide). It's possible that cattle therefore have a larger impact on the ecology than did the buffalo, but there were always large grazing herds in the world, and far more numerous prior to the Industrial Age. It's possible that there are in fact fewer ruminants today than in pre-industrial times, if the great herds of millions of reindeer and similar creatures that once roamed the plains of North America and Siberia are taken into account.

Last year I began bow-hunting for deer in my part of New England, where there is an excessive population that damage forests, endanger drivers, and spread disease. I'm also hoping to raise meat chickens and egg laying chickens in the near future.

Hunt for your own meat and stop buying factory meat that has been pumped with all sorts of hormones and antibiotics. I love a good beefsteak and I do hope such will continue to be available, but harvesting your own meat is probably the best thing for the planet and gives you a much stronger connection to (and respect for) the game animals that we eat!

JoeAltmaier3• 7 years ago

Neat for you, but probably not scalable. Hunting and gathering always had that problem. For the other 6 billion people on the planet, big Ag is all that's going to feed them.

blisterpeanuts7• 7 years ago

Not scalable to 7b people, but maybe applicable to a few more millions of people in North America, for example, where meat consumption per capita is very high. Imagine the impact on the meat industry if one million more households in North America decided to keep chickens in the back yard, for example.

nullreference00• 7 years ago

produce less meat

Eating less meat just means more waste. We need to stop talking about climate change as a problem individuals can solve with ecological lifestyle choices. We need international economic planning and the seizure of carbon extracting industry.

paulluuk• 7 years ago

I think the rationale here is that the market is rational, and if people were to consume less meat, less meat would be produced.

And that makes sense to me. It's not as if we're killing 3 billion animals per day just because we can, we're doing it because there's such a huge demand for it.

Spooks• 7 years ago

Supply and demand though. It wouldn't be instant, but if people start eating less meat, they will produce less.

If grocery stores can't sell a certain amount in a couple days, and if this trend continues, they will reevaluate and buy less

vorpalhex• 7 years ago

the seizure of carbon extracting industry

It sounds like what you mean is that you want some government or government like entity to take down big beef/pork/chicken.

What the actual version of that would be is some government-esque entity taking over a bunch of farms and murdering their cows/pigs/chickens and forcibly unemploying large groups of people.

Alternatively that might mean some government-esque entity invading a bunch of foreign farms owned by small Central and Southern American ranchers who aren't exactly rolling in cash with their occupation despite releasing a lot of carbon into the atmosphere.

Let's maybe not call for large government/government-esque orgs to go around seizing anything. That sounds very drastic and bad for a lot of mostly innocent people who do a lot of hard work to raise cows for not very much pay.

hdfbdtbcdg• 7 years ago

The OP could be meaning seizure as in 'to stop' rather than 'to take'?

reitanqild• 7 years ago

Let's maybe not call for large government/government-esque orgs to go around seizing anything.

Agree.

I'm adding a reminder here for anyone whos intrigued by this to read up on Soviet history, Kmer Rouge and Maos China. (Of course make sure to read up on UK, Belgian and Dutch colonies as well. And American imperialism. Lots of ugly stories there as well.)

saiya-jin2• 7 years ago

What about good old taxation? Tax biological meat by the amount it pollutes (so I guess beef would be the highest), subsidy (ideally with those taxed money) artificially grown one / invest into research of it if we're not there yet

sak5sk2• 7 years ago

Even if everyone decided that it's in everyone's best interest to eat less meat, some people would just assume since everyone else is doing it, they can cheat. Or worse, they would just ignore it.

The point at which we ask people to do the right thing is long gone. We need swift, definitive action that takes the hammer to the nail and closes those gaps for good. The only way I am aware of that happening is regulation. Yet, we have massive corruption and money dictating favorable outcomes so I don't know how anything will change. We need someone with brains and balls to say no to a political career and just do what's right no matter the personal consequences. This person would need to be extremely intelligent, eloquent and convincing enough to get other world leaders to get on board and implement a policy that EVERYONE has to abide by. This needs to happen practically over night. All seemingly impossible feats, but this is what we are up against now.

11235813213455• 7 years ago

Temporarily maybe, but consumption pulls production, production follows consumption, not the opposite

Producing less will make it more expensive at least

kjsbfkjbf• 7 years ago

Basic economics have moved far past supply and demand curves, imo.

Also demand is not the same as consumption. You can manufacture demand.

paulcole• 7 years ago

We need international economic planning and the seizure of carbon extracting industry.

Hate to be cynical but there is 0% chance of this happening.

Climate change will never be "solved" because nobody truly cares. For the vast majority of people the consequences are too abstract and they like their current lifestyle too much.

People would rather pretend that using a paper straw will make the world livable for the next generation than face reality.

ulises3144• 7 years ago

The only way consumers have to impact on production of a commodity is our purchasing habits, is not weak, vegans are causing havoc on the diary industry.

philwelch5• 7 years ago

We need international economic planning

That would reduce meat consumption a lot. All other food consumption, too.

jokoon• 7 years ago

Unless you properly regulate capitalism, is it still capitalism? I don't want to accuse capitalism because it often falls into the whole "is socialism bad", "mao and stalin murdered people so socialism is dangerous", but it's difficult to not correlate environmental issues and growth policies related to capitalism. I guess communist states also had environmental issues? What about current socialist states?

I mean how can we can really pinpoint the political issue here? It seems crony capitalism is at the root of inequality and global warming, yet rent seeks are still being left alone. It seems so difficult to have something in between.

Today we're giving crumbs to the poor in exchange of co2 emissions. We can't do anything right.

eitland• 7 years ago

I think you are right:

I'm fairly certain socialist states polluted just as bad as capitalist states. As far as I'm aware they also did so in a more wasteful way, i.e. they produced less goods and services for the same pollution.

philwelch5• 7 years ago

They polluted even worse. The Soviet Union was directly responsible for some of the greatest ecological catastrophes in history, including the drying of the Aral Sea.

sak5sk2• 7 years ago

For anyone who hasn't had a chance to see how animals are treated in slaughter houses (WARNING! Graphical and not easy to watch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYQDWF2SkSU

Hitton• 7 years ago

Lab grown meat can't come soon enough.

dustinmoris• 7 years ago

A little personal anecdote:

I grew up in Central Europe and in a very meat heavy society. When I grew up I would have had three proper meals every day with meat in them. Meat was THE main component of every meal. A sandwich without some ham or bacon? Unimaginable! Lunch without meat in sauce, or steak or some ribs or some chicken? I would have taken this as an insult. Are we beggars now or what? Dinner... same story.

In my early twenties I was convinced that meat is part of a well balanced diet. People who don't eat meat are weak. They get ill and they certainly won't have much muscles. I was an ignorant prick, let's put it this way.

When I was ~25 I met my wife whilst travelling. She's British Indian and grew up her entire life on a Vegetarian diet. We got together and so on, but the point is I was confronted to compromise with a Vegetarian person from one day to another without any warning.

Initially I continued to eat the way I always did, just taking her preferences into account and try to be the loving supporting boyfriend/husband that we all want to be. I'd cook my meat in a separate pan and I'd use different knives and forks to handle meat and the veg in the house. My wife asked me for only one favour: If I could not buy beef and store it in the house then she'd be super grateful. I was okay with that, I thought cooking a good steak takes some skill anyway and I can happily just eat steak outside and cook other meats at home.

7 years later and I am 99% Vegetarian. The other 1% is sea food. I look back at myself and think how stupid was I. I feel healthier today, get less ill and feel physically in a pretty good shape. I don't take any protein shakes, supplements or other crap. I actually prefer to eat veg over meat. It all started with me trying some meat replacements like Quorn when making a stir fry, or Quorn mince pieces when making spaghetti. Then I'd start cooking more beans, lentils, chickpeas and other high protein ingredients. The taste is amazing and our meals are rich in nutrition, vitamins and carbs.

I was the guy who would have sworn that I could never become Vegetarian and today I'm almost the opposite. I don't like the look, smell or consistency of meat anymore. I don't like that it's so easy to get seriously ill from meat when not cooked properly, or the utensils which were used for preparation were not cleaned sufficiently.

Long story short, if I was able to make such a drastic turn around on make meat intake then I know that anyone can. It just takes a strong incentive to implement change. For me that incentive was being in love with a girl, but for others it might be something else. Tax, regulation, laws are an effective tool. Personally I believe that nobody will miss the meat in 20 years time if implemented by a government. It's just too difficult for people to imagine that is true and I consider myself lucky to actually have experienced this myself so I can say this today.

_iyig• 7 years ago

Side note: most industrial fertilizer is produced from non-renewable minerals and natural gas [0]. If you want a truly sustainable food system, some amount of "organic" a.k.a. plant and animal-based fertilizer is probably necessary. We know this works, because it's how all farmland was fertilized before the mining of niter and invention of the Haber-Bosch process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#Production

nashashmi• 7 years ago

We should encourage pasture aminal grazing instead of the current grazing methods. And wished this UN report mentioned that.

Otherwise it is just a liberal green leftist report sponsored by the the meatless meat industries who are encouraging this.

I see a parallel between a sudden rush of beyond meat served in restaurants and this report. Like a concerted effort at play.

pvaldes2• 7 years ago

It seems that nobody is wondering about implications of stopping eating meat for our hormonal health...

Cholesterol has also a mission in our bodies. Protecting us from cold, and being a necessary precursor of male hormones. Identify green with healthy and meat as unhealty is a myth.

Try to eat 1 Kg of persil a day and stay alive. Many green things are pretty good making poisons that can do horrible things to our body. Mammals and birds instead are pretty safe in this aspect.

The real problem is not eating meat, is being served an oiled whole cow each day in your restaurant. A partial solution could be as simple as standardize (and reduce) the humongous USA rations.

Will_Parker• 7 years ago

From https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-...

"Animal agriculture is responsible for 13–18% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and less in developed countries (e.g. 3% in the USA). Fossil fuel combustion for energy and transportation is responsible for approximately 64% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and more in developed countries (e.g. 80% in the USA)."

I think in the USA, it would be more productive to address the 80% as higher priority than reducing the 3%. I think this veganism initiative is also more driven by morality and political partisanship than by an effort to find a realistic and practical solution to GHG emissions. And this can backfire: I believe that a reason why nearly half the country will not even openly admit there is a problem, is because they fear the consequences of political over-reaction more than the problem itself.

DominikPeters• 7 years ago

Is that 3% number associated with meat production in the USA or with meat consumption in the USA? If it's the former, then 3% would be an underestimate of the impact of reducing meat consumption, since the 3% doesn't include the emissions impact of feed and livestock that is imported.

vasco2• 7 years ago

That is true, but I think the point stands. As (mostly) programmers we're quick to understand and make use of practical rules like Ahmdal's law[1] for optimizing software, and know that you always start by looking at the parts that take the longest. Yet in real life we're sometimes tempted to optimize at the fringes first and ignore the obvious biggest contributing factors first.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law#Serial_programs

martius• 7 years ago

Eating less meat is not veganism. It's not even vegetarianism.

It's not the first time that I'm seeing reactions about this report to focus on veganism. I don't understand where it comes from: the word "vegan" is absent from the article and the IPCC report doesn't recommend a any diet.

I understand debate about this report and the impact of agriculture and breeding, but I don't understand why the debate is centered around veganism.

shlant11• 7 years ago

it's a knee jerk reaction when people hear "eat less meat" they think "vegans". It's easier to downplay facts and argue against ghosts when you can associate what you don't like hearing with people who are commonly hated.

MegaDeKay• 7 years ago

Indeed. It is not an all or nothing kind of thing. I've been eating less meat lately for a number of reasons, but I'm far from being vegan.

The Skeptical Science link doesn't seem to touch on water usage, only focusing on greenhouse gas emissions. Groundwater decline and depletion is another factor that should be kept in mind as people consider their food choices.

noetic_techy• 7 years ago

If you trace the origin of most of these low meat consumption pushes, its often vegan groups with an agenda trying to get the governments ear. Problem is, the recommendations and studies they site don't stand up to real scrutiny. For example they often say you should not exceed the RDA for meat consumption, without realizing that an RDA is the bare minimum to not be nutrient deficient. It is by no means the optimal level of protein consumption and likely a detrimental recommendations for the vast majority. When called out on it, they will pull the GHG card, but at 3% of US GHG emission even that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Then they pull the morality card, without realized that row crop harvest kill vastly more small animals per harvest. Its all rooted in bias, plane and simple. The most vocal are the vegans and they make a convincing surface argument.

maximente• 7 years ago

well, we know that animal agriculture results in deforestation. so it's not so simple.

one would need to calculate both the carbon output of animal agriculture and - crucially - the carbon that will /permanently/ not be captured via loss of land that serves as a carbon sink (Amazon rain forest is the big one) that results as demand for additional animal agriculture increases.

therealdrag02• 7 years ago

And cross that with our other values like morality or deforestation's contribution to animal species extinction.

therealdrag02• 7 years ago

Woah. I always thought it was more than that. EPA puts it at only 9% https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas...

henryaj3• 7 years ago

It's more than that because of land use changes caused by animal agriculture: https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1159831081798864898...

LinuxBender• 7 years ago

I would also be curious to find (I can't find any stats) on how much carbon is put back into circulation when people metabolize hydrated carbon a.k.a. carbohydrates. I've done my part to stop consuming carbohydrates and it was not easy.

bontaq• 7 years ago

With those statistics, it's funny. The solution is buses and green energy, but those cost money.

neves• 7 years ago

And the burden is in the developed countries, not in the developing ones.

taffer• 7 years ago

That 3% figure prbably doesn't take the global supply chain, deforestation and consumption shift towards western diets in developping and emerging economies into account.

At least in the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change's Global Calculator[1], the food lever seems to be much more powerful than your comment suggests.

[1] http://tool.globalcalculator.org

methuselah• 7 years ago

Lol those who needs classes for learning veg dishes, please visit some vegetarian Indian family.they just cook best veg dishes though spicy

ivanhoe2• 7 years ago

Number of serious scientists claim quite the opposite, that cattle grazing is the only solution to stop the erosion and turning land into deserts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI

JTbane• 7 years ago

Would any vegans like to comment on how to address the lack of vitamin B12 and EPA/DHA in diets that have no animal products?

Biggest issue for me, imo.

rqk9j• 7 years ago

You supplement it and add it to other processed foods (like plant based milk). The B12 is only in meat because it is fed to the animal already. You just have to adjust the process. The days of natural B12 occurance in meat are long gone bacause of the almost "sterile" way cattle is kept today.

Josh379• 7 years ago

When you factor in the CO2 absorbing grass the rudiments eat, the contribution drops to about 0.5%.

fmakunbound• 7 years ago

People are not going curb their meat intake. This is how you can be certain global warming will continue, fresh water will become scarce and more forest will be loss to animal agriculture.

ulises3144• 7 years ago

Is very sad to read through the comments and find only a bunch of excuses, you claim being rational people: there is a problem, the solution is clear as day, what are you going to do?

whiddershins• 7 years ago

This is irresponsible advice because nutrition is not a solved problem.

As long as we fail to solve it, as in, correctly predict the short, medium, and long term effects on heath and well being for people across all variations of genome and microbiome, not to mention activity level and medical conditions, people need to evaluate their food intake individually.

Guilting people away from “taking care” of themselves based on a subset of the medical and nutritional literature to achieve some global carbon emissions target is not a reasonable strategy, in my opinion.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

This sounds rather short sighted to me. Changing our diet towards lower meat consumption (like we had 50 years ago - max. 1 portion of meat per week), has been shown to come with substantial health benefits. It is a no brainer that we should go there. Because the alternative is so much more detrimental for the human race. Being struck by climate change means we would have around 500 million people who need to migrate, besides other catastrophic effects.

flr03• 7 years ago

I don't buy this. Sounds like an excuse to not change our habits. Diets have rapidly and continuously been changing over the last decades and I don't think mc donald's waited for the nutrition to be a "solved problem" before taking over the world with the big mac. Asking people to reduce their red meat consumption couldn't be worse than that.

efiecho• 7 years ago

It's funny how HN is an echo chamber sometimes. Every time I'm reading a thread like this, it's flooded with post from people who have turned vegans or almost reduced meat to zero, and one could think that this is the norm.

Like a few years back when HN was going on about how the whole world would now stop eating regular food, and consume some powder mixed with water, I think it was called Soylent or something. That didn't happen.

If anything, I will only be eating more meat, better quality, but not less and this is probably also the case for millions of other people.

mklarmann23• 7 years ago

This topic has gained substantial scientific evidence. More people have come to turns that the facts only point to possible solutions for the climate were we substantially eat less meat.

Having you eat even more meat makes you indirectly responsible for people’s death. It might not be right. But in the near future (2-3 years) you might feel ashamed of what you said right now.

marcus_holmes3• 7 years ago

I'm fascinated that the solutions to climate change appear to line up neatly with the things that hippies have been saying for years (capitalism needs to be replaced with a state-managed global economy, nuclear power is bad, vegetarianism is good, bicycling is good, plant more trees).

Particularly the nuclear power option. That one makes no sense.

Concrete is a major source of CO2 emissions. In some places, it contributes more than agriculture. Why isn't that being targeted for scientific studies on its impact, and recommendations from the UN on practices? Or has it, and those are just not newsworthy enough to make the BBC take notice?

I'm probably being cynical, but it all smells of hidden agendas.

isbjorn16• 7 years ago

You can extend that argument to almost anything. I'm not sure I'm saying you're wrong, either, but simply being alive seems to adversely impact the environment. I don't think you or anyone is saying people should start offing themselves to stop hurting the environment - we all seem to understand there's a continuum and where people put their own personal line ultimately ends up being a personal decision.

I believe I'm healthier eating meat than not eating meat. My blood tests, blood pressure, and weight corroborate that. For whatever reason I could never find a vegan diet that didn't balloon absolutely everything while also sating my unreasonable appetite. I'm not saying this is a good thing (eating meat or eating junk food that happens to be vegan and thinking it'll be appropriate), but I am saying that no amount of quinoa or lentils ever hit the spot or made me feel full, not even when I was legitimately so full I wanted to throw up from all the food in my stomach. I was mentally ravenous, and it was turning me into a vicious beast. I could _nominally_ stay vegan if I ate deep fried _anything_, but that's clearly madness (which, again, showed itself pretty convincingly by all measures available to me).

I'm not going to kill myself to save the environment. I wouldn't expect you to, either. But at the least I can not have children - surely avoiding 1..N generations of 1..M descendants per generation is of FAR greater positive impact than eating burgers and steaks.

All of that said, I'm really holding out hope for lab grown meats, and I only eat meat when my body begins to demand it. It doesn't have to be an always food, is what I'm saying.

briandear2• 7 years ago

Just being alive makes us indirectly responsible for people’s deaths. We could go down that philosophical rabbit hole a long way. People aren’t dying because I ate a steak. That sort of hyperbole isn’t helpful.

dsirola2• 7 years ago

The report states with high confidence that balanced diets featuring plant-based, and sustainably-produced animal-sourced, food “present major opportunities for adaptation and mitigation while generating significant co-benefits in terms of human health”.

I think this says it all. The consumption is not as much of a problem as production. They don't mention how much forest is also cut to build farms and it's not like plant growing industry is any better in terms of emissions [1] and water / land poisoning with pesticides and GMO plants. Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against GMO that is done well, but the current direction that's only serving corporate greed instead of bettering farming industry is just disgusting. Without animals we are just as equally doomed as we are with them [2]. I also have a feeling that they're trying to optimize the 1% instead of tackling real problems caused by coal energy, cars, airplanes etc.

[1] https://agreenerworld.org/a-greener-world/it-wasnt-the-cows-...

[2] https://youtu.be/vpTHi7O66pI

henryaj3• 7 years ago

it's not like plant growing industry is any better in terms of emissions

Animal agriculture is enormously more resource-intensive than plant agriculture:

https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1159831081798864898...

How are we still having this debate?

hispanic• 7 years ago

I didn't read much of the report from which this is sourced from, but it appears that they base their numbers on current farming practices. In the U.S., those practices (for beef, pork, etc.) are, for the most part, horrible and irresponsible. Responsible practices work in concert with and support of the environment, not against it. Cows graze on and replenish lush grasslands. Pigs forage through and replenish forested areas. The animals are allowed to work within the cycle of nature and act as integral parts of healthy land management instead of being removed from it and treated as industrial outputs.

Cows aren't the problem. Pigs aren't the problem. Chickens aren't the problem. Mankind's industrialization of cows, pigs, and chickens is the problem.

So, for me, that's why we're still having this debate.

acd• 7 years ago

For a New Years resolution to reduce the carbon footprint I came up with three things to reduce my co2 footprint.

1) reduce meat consumption especially from cows 2) use public transportation whenever available instead of a car. 3) consume less new stuff

DiseasedBadger2• 7 years ago

The first and last meat in the economy is human. What we need to do, is limit emigration and stabilize crumbling economies that incentivize high-reproduction for subsistence labor.

chansiky• 7 years ago

I think one problem is that people don't realize they could not only survive, but live healthy, satiated, and even build muscle on a vegetarian diet(without protein shakes etc, just regular grocery foods). I feel like if more people realized this, they would consider eating meat more often. I personally love that I rarely have to worry about maggots in my garbage bin because there would be nothing that would be interested for them to be eating.

Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

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