Giving Up Meat Won’t Have Much of an Effect on Climate Change

https://reason.com/2019/07/29/why-giving-up-meat-wont-have-much-of-an-effect-on-climate-change/

by elorant • 7 years ago

59 94 7 years ago

ysleepy2• 7 years ago

Wow, thats weak reasoning. They add the emissions of the stuff you statistically buy with the money instead of meat. Even then it still comes out as a reduction.

I'm not a vegetarian, but seeing the other ecological effects of requiring 5x agricultural land and fertiliser to get the same calories as not good is reasonable.

This is clearly propaganda.

JoeAltmaier15• 7 years ago

'A reduction' isn't the same as 'a big effect'. Meat is marginally more expensive, ecologically. But the other alternatives are not free either. So the total benefit of 'not eating meat' isn't realized to the bottom line. Its marginal.

dasd99• 7 years ago

this fact:

requiring 5x agricultural land and fertiliser

can certainly not be paraphrased as:

marginally more expensive, ecologically

ysleepy2• 7 years ago

It is a dishonest way of representing it IMO.

The headline suggests meat production is not a significant emission source, but it actually argues that it has around the same emissions of the average bought goods of a particular society. Then saying it therefore does not matter is quite the stretch.

vegannet3• 7 years ago

Marginally? Beef, for example, takes many times the amount of energy and water to produce equivalent calories to vegan foods. Based on any measure, beef is significantly more expensive than vegan food sources, “marginally” is far from an accurate comparison.

cal5k2• 7 years ago

Bingo. Not much gain to be had here when you look at the actual sources of emissions by category. Tackling electricity production and transportation should be #1 and #2, since they are (more) easily influenced by the state and could be brought down to near-zero emissions within, say, 25 years. Railing at people to stop eating meat because “it’s causing global warming” is at best ineffective and at worst disingenuous.

Tepix• 7 years ago

Here's the abstract from the paper:

Sustainable diets, in particular vegetarianism, are often promoted as effective measures to reduce our environmental footprint. Yet, fewconclusions take full-scale behavioral changes into consideration. This can be achieved by calculating the indirect environmental rebound effect related to the re-spending of expenditure saved during the initial behavioral shift. This study aims to quantify the potential energy use and greenhouse gas emission savings, and most likely rebound effects, related to an average Swedish consumer's shift to vegetarianism. Using household budget survey data, it estimates Engel curves of 117 consumption goods, derives marginal expenditure shares, and links these values to environmental intensity indicators. Results indicate that switching to vegetarianism could save consumers 16% of the energy use and 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions related to their dietary consumption. However, if they re-spend the saved income according to their current preferences, they would forego 96% of potential energy savings and 49% of greenhouse gas emission savings. These rebound effects are even higher for lower-income consumers who tend to re-spend on more environmentally intensive goods. Yet, the adverse effect could be tempered by purchasing organic goods or re-spending the money on services. In order to reduce the environmental impact of consumption, it could thus be recommended to not only focus on dietary shifts, but rather on the full range of consumer expenditure.

I'd argue that eating vegetarian isn't really that much cheaper in the first place.

In the paper, there's also section 4.6.2.1 about organic food consumption:

If a vegetarian diet is chosen for its environmental value, it is possible that consumers will simultaneously choose organic instead of conventional products for their perceived improved impact on the environment. Organic products however are often associated with a price premium, which can fundamentally change the conclusions on re-spending and environmental impacts occurred.

and a few paragraphs later:

"Therefore, not only would we avoid any rebound behavior, we find virtuous cycle effects in that consumers will save 111% of both the potential energy and the potential greenhouse gas emission savings thatwere predicted from only foregoing meat alone."

So, if you go vegetarian, go organic while you're at it!

PS: The paper isn't so bad, you should probably read it in full (you know where). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.04.030

9nGQluzmnq3M2• 7 years ago

That's only the third and weakest of Lomborg's points. The others are:

1. Food makes up only 20% of an average person's greenhouse emissions, and probably less if you're living a jetsetting Silicon Valley lifestyle of air-conditioned spaces and lengthy commutes.

2. The original calculation assumes you'll go 100% vegan, not just vegetarian, which for most people is a step too far.

Even excluding the third argument, Lomborg notes that you're looking at a 4.3% reduction at best.

pmalynin4• 7 years ago

That’s a very unfair statement I think.

I for one drive an EV that’s charged by solar panels at my place of work, and my energy is sourced from a mix of hydro / solar / and wind.

This is probably true for a significant portion of people in the Valley. Certainly more so than say people in Midwest US and Canada.

DennisP• 7 years ago

As far as I can tell from the article, he's looking at only the direct emissions from agriculture, and ignoring land use changes, like being able to plant trees where we used to grow grain for beef.

clydethefrog• 7 years ago

A quick read of the career of Bjørn Lomborg shows he is an useful messenger of companies and people that have an interest in climate crisis denial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg

ptah2• 7 years ago

yip! i stopped reading the article as soon as i came across his name

tito4• 7 years ago

And that reasoning is working. The longer we do mock debate over climate change real / not real, the slower we go.

Reminds me of the GMO / non-GMO debate. The longer we keep that simple frame the slower we go. GMO isn’t any one thing, GMO is the future of most living things and things we haven’t imagined.

This is our first climate, our first planet. We will be a part of many others, as living intelligence and more.

vonmoltke2• 7 years ago

requiring 5x agricultural land and fertiliser to get the same calories

What is the methodology used to reach this result?

esailija2• 7 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency#Ten_perc...

QuantumAphid5• 7 years ago

Where does 50% of all fertilizer come from? Animal waste/manure.

Where does the rest of fertilizer come from? It is synthesized from fossil fuels...

stanski• 7 years ago

Climate change is a story of excess. It's not just eating meat three times a day. It's not just having two cars per household or buying a new phone/laptop/TV/everything every two years.

This article is trying really hard to avoid one of the problems, which the author seems to have a personal interest in.

cannonedhamster• 7 years ago

This article essentially just makes the claim that if you do nothing magic will make climate change go away. He didn't disprove the claim that vegetarianism will help lower carbon emissions, doesn't provide any real information for people looking to lower their carbon emissions. He also doesn't disclose he's the author of books that specifically claim that global warming isn't happening.

9nGQluzmnq3M2• 7 years ago

Incorrect: Lomborg's position is that climate change is happening, he just thinks that a) the effects will not as catastrophic as claimed and b) most of our efforts to fight it are meaningless wastes of money.

"Global warming is real – it is man-made and it is an important problem. But it is not the end of the world." -Lomborg

tito4• 7 years ago

Gas should be $20 per gallon. (see economic model below). So b) is super interesting to me.

Obama’s former Chief Economist, Michael Greenstone at U. Chicago studies the social cost of carbon. He modeled the cost of carbon at around $2,000 per ton. That means a gallon of gas “costs” society $20.

Which is a multiple of the current price of a gallon (~$4) today. This isn’t a 10% or 20% tax on gas, this is a nuts and bolts rebuilding of society.

I’m excited to be a part of it. I can understand how some would find that unwinnable or overwhelming. But to me the climate is the largest business opportunity civilization has ever seen.

dagw2• 7 years ago

But it is not the end of the world.

True, it might only be global catastrophe that will take generations to recover from.

kerkeslager• 7 years ago

This article essentially just makes the claim that if you do nothing magic will make climate change go away.

No it doesn't.

He didn't disprove the claim that vegetarianism will help lower carbon emissions,

I don't know if I'd say he disproves it, but he does present evidence that vegetarianism isn't a significant intervention.

doesn't provide any real information for people looking to lower their carbon emissions.

Yes, he does.

He also doesn't disclose he's the author of books that specifically claim that global warming isn't happening.

Nor is he obligated to. You didn't disclose in your post what your opinion is on vegetarianism, did you? This is just an ad-hominem attack, and a hypocritical one at that.

So basically, you made 4 statements. Two were flat wrong, one was an ad-hominem attack, and one was ambiguous. I downvoted.

frobozz• 7 years ago

No single thing that a single individual does will have much of an effect on climate change.

The point is that a lot of people have to do a combination of things.

The article states that:

First, he points out that calculations, for the most part, ignore 80 percent of greenhouse emissions that we each contribute to the atmosphere from transportation, heating, lighting, and manufacturing.

So cut those as well. I may have missed something, but I didn't see anywhere above that said what those "ignorant" calculations concluded.

becoming a vegetarian would cut the average person's greenhouse emissions by about 2 percent.

It then goes on to compare this to spending $3 per year on cap-and-trade allowances.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Offset are not XOR.

The conclusion is that you can cut your footprint by 4% by going vegetarian AND spending $3 per year on cap-and-trade allowances.

Ididntdothis2• 7 years ago

“No single thing that a single individual does will have much of an effect on climate change”

Dismissing something that may improve things to some degree but not completely is an old trick to stop inconvenient discussions and do nothing. Happens all the time. Drugs in the US costing too much compared to the rest of the world? Sure but look at how much the insurers make therefore stop asking why pharmaceutical companies charge that much. Reduce carbon emissions at home? would help but the real problem is China therefore let’s not do anything.

Eating less meat is not the solution to everything but it would be a benefit in multiple ways. Less animal suffering, less emissions and better health.

JoeAltmaier15• 7 years ago

No, the idea that giving up a burger now and then and saying "I did my part" is the single most significant trick to stop folks from doing something more effective.

Recognize truth, like the statement quoted, and move on to helping promote real solutions. That would be a significant act.

clamprecht• 7 years ago

I wonder if the beef industry has their PR machine in force. Remember when the Texas beef farmers sued Oprah Winfrey?

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/01/10/time-oprah-winfrey-b...

makerofspoons• 7 years ago

One area of change in one's lifestyle was never going to move the needle significantly. Reducing consumption is the real message- buy things that last, walk or bike, avoid air travel, turn off the AC, etc. Lomborg is right though that the savings on buying meat would likely be spent on other things, which is exactly why we need a carbon tax proportional to the emissions created to manufacture them.

vfc12• 7 years ago

People love to hear good news about their bad habits. I guess all those studies that took years of work and got published in peer review scientific journals like Nature, all the latest reports from the UN.

All of that goes out of the window because some guy decided to "do some number crunching". Well, what qualifies him to speak on these matters, where are his results?

Where they published in a peer-reviewed journal, does he have any idea what he is talking about? Did he take into account the consequences of the deforestation needed to produce meat, animal methane emissions?

What this guy is saying is in complete contradiction to mainstream scientific magazines and the UN.

Why should we listen to this guy just because he is telling us us what we want to hear?

eej2ya1K• 7 years ago

Looking at the comments here, I'm pretty sure he's telling you the exact opposite of what you want to hear.

vfc12• 7 years ago

Based on what, that's the question. It's the internet, you got scientists who spent years studying this issue, performed hundreds of studies to reach conclusions, published their conclusions in peer-reviewed journals.

And then some guy from Twitter comes along and says "No it's not" and people run with it just because that's what they want to hear.

fnord123• 7 years ago

To say Bjorn Lomborg is a controversial character is to put it mildly. His 2001 book, the Skeptical Environmentalist was the centre of a huge controversy.

efficax• 7 years ago

Results indicate that switching to vegetarianism could save consumers 16% of the energy use and 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions related to their dietary consumption. However, if they re-spend the saved income according to their current preferences, they would forego 96% of potential energy savings and 49% of greenhouse gas emission savings.

This is based on swedish pricing. But meat is extremely cheap in America, where we also consume more meat than most other nations, and replacing it with vegetarian protein would probably cost me more money.

In any case, if I'm committed to changing my diet for the climate, I'll probably try to be conscientious in my other consumption habits, right?

All this paper really concludes is that reducing meat is very effective but that there are lots of other things that need to also be done.

Also what about if we replanted the animal farms with oxygen producing trees, etc?

spodek• 7 years ago

Vegetarian is more efficient than meat, but if we use every efficiency to increase the population, we end up hitting other limits to growth.

What Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Prize for the Green Revolution, said applies here: "The green revolution has won a temporary success in man's war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only."

Efficiency is tactical. Reduction is strategic.

I spoke about this at more length in my podcast episode 183: Reusing and recycling are tactical. Reducing is strategic: https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-environment/episod....

truebrazilian2• 7 years ago

a lot of times pasture allows you to use marginal land that wouldn't be suitable for other cultures. Outside the developed world this happens a lot. In plenty of places there's not an option between corn and goats, but between inedible brush and goats. This doesn't apply too much to countries like the US, where cattle is feed with grains, that indeed could be consumed directly by humans without the energy losses created by the metabolic processes of raising said animals. But for free-range cattle in the less developed world, meat means having a biological factory to transform inedible cellulose into calories and proteins. And even for agricultural land of higher quality, suitable for crops, it is a good sustainable practice to alternate cultures with an occasional year of growing pasture, and letting cattle graze upon it and fertilize it with manure. So, the matter is more nuanced here. A big part of the problem are the subsides and non-tariff barriers that incentive farmers to raise cattle with feed on developed countries.

JoeAltmaier15• 7 years ago

Even in the US, many cattle are grazed on marginal lands, unsuitable for any other purpose.

QuantumAphid5• 7 years ago

This is true. Many people think that you can just get rid of livestock and grow kale. It doesn't work like that. Still others think you can get rid of livestock, which eliminates the need for feed crops, which then allows you to grow kale. That isn't reality either. Land with low-quality soils used to grow crappy field corn (which is not suitable for humans) cannot simply be converted to grow kale for humans.

Livestock are part of an integrated agriculture system. Livestock and agriculture depend on one another. Cattle and ruminants, for example, convert low quality wild scrub, fescue and leftover agricultural byprods into high quality human-edible meat and nutrients.

About 50% of the corn in the US is grown not for humans or animal feed, but to produce ethanol fuel. The residual of that ethanol process is then processed into feed for livestock.

Quite a bit of the Amazon region is used to grow soybeans. The soybeans are shipped to Asian countries where they make soybean oil out of it for cooking. The residual soy byproducts from that process is then turned into feed which goes to pigs and chickens in that region.

Also mentioned in an earlier reply that about 50% of all fertilizer needed for crop cultivation comes from animal manure and byproducts. The remainder (and alternative approach) is to synthesize the fertilizer from fossil fuels.

It's important to realize that livestock aren't simply a standalone component in the food system. They are a key part of the total agriculture picture.

Food also isn't simply calories, it's about nutrition-- getting absorbable animal-format vitamins, minerals, amino acids and other key nutrients. There are quite a few nutrients which are essential to the human body and yet are very difficult (some virtually impossible) to obtain from plant-only sources. So reducing meat does come with costs/risks in terms of nutrition, I think that shouldn't be overlooked.

ptah2• 7 years ago

I stopped reading at "Bjorn Lomborg". he is a known climate change denial propagandist

rblion• 7 years ago

People believe whatever they want and justify it with articles like these or the articles referenced. Civilization is a self-fulfilling prophecy writ large.

I have cut down a lot on my meat consumption for a number of reasons and feel better overall from a health standpoint, the environmental benefits are a bonus. That's enough for me.

I am here to serve, to create, to explore. If I can do that with minimal harm to other beings, great. If you choose to make fun of me for that, good for you. I don't take anything personally anymore.

mnm1• 7 years ago

I gave up meat for a decade and a half. It didn't do shit. Why? Because no one else did. And no one else will to any significant degree of the population. There likely are more vegetarians and vegans now than in the past based on the number of restaurants that cater to this diet but on the whole, people will not give up eating meat as long as meat exists. People are made to eat meat. What's next? Let's give up sex so that the population stops increasing? That's just as absurd. If meat exists and people can get it, they will eat it. It's that simple. And pretending like this is a solution in the face of that, even if it does reduce greenhouse gas emissions (which it almost certainly does), is a waste of time.

If people really think this is a solution, they can try to legislate it away. That won't work either because people will turn to the black market as they currently do for drugs and as they have in the past for meat and other foods when they weren't easily available (in some eastern bloc countries in the 80's for example).

This path is a dead end. Environmentalists would better serve their goals by looking towards things that are actually achievable rather than going down paths of impossibility. That is, if they actually want to enact change. A lot of environmentalists just want to be seen as trying to do something when their actions have no actual benefit.

0wis• 7 years ago

The point of the article is that not eating meat have a lower effect on global warming than what mass media is shouting.

IMO limiting meat consumption is a good idea, and not only on a global warming standpoint.

However, I would say that a critique of the mass media communication on veganism is interesting. Is the effort proportional to the effect ? Are there not more efficient ways to fight climate change ? A writing that brings arguments - and data - against the hype is always interesting and refreshing to me. In 2000’s it was «go vegan» publication, today its «anti-vegan».

To conclude, I’d say that every effort is counting to fight global warming, and the article is not against that idea.

perlgeek• 7 years ago

I like eating meat, so I am motivated to believe this, but the numbers seem in stark contrast with numbers I've read elsewhere, with no solid explanation where the difference comes from.

So I'm inclined to call BS.

pxue• 7 years ago

I think everything can be summed up like this...

you're planning to take a 7 day cruise to the Bahamas with your family of 4 this Christmas.

but you recently watched Patriot act episode on cruises and were shocked that a typical cruise generates equivalent of 1 million cars worth of greenhouse gas per day.

so you reached out to the cruise company and asks them what they can do to mitigate this appalling disregard of the environment.

the cruise company informs you that there's now a vegetarian or vegan premium meal plan that would cut down your green house consumption by about 10%.

you loved the idea and happily pays extra for the vegetarian meal plan, knowing that you're now doing good for the environment and thus saving the planet.

jacknews• 7 years ago

Bjorn Lomborg being reported in "Reason" magazine

I think together there might just be some degree of bias, when it comes to this issue.

But in any case, the real issue is not just about greenhouse emissions, and in particular not just about economics (typically, economic projections are linear, whereas reality is full of collapses and blossomings).

It's also about land-use, biodiversity, the health of the entire ecosystem, etc. We should not be clearing ancient tropical rainforest to raise beef.

sxp• 7 years ago

Other than carbon footprint, there are good reasons to give up meat. 90% of Amazon deforestation is due to cattle ranching[1]. Raising cattle also uses a large amount of water [2]. So if you're concerned about these two aspects of the environment, giving up beef is a good option.

The techno-optimist in me isn't worried about the environmental impact of cattle in the long run. I think plant-based & lab grown meat is going to take off in a decade once it can be engineered to taste better than natural meat. Once this happens, the lower price will cause people to shift away from real cows unless they want to pay a premium for organic, non-GMO meat.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Brazil#Causes [2] https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/l...

QuantumAphid5• 7 years ago

Q: If I give up meat, will Brazil reduce its cattle ranching? A: No.

Brazil isn't raising livestock for the US or North America. Not even 1% of their livestock products are imported to the US.

Giving Up Meat Won’t Have Much of an Effect on Climate Change

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