
Vegetarian diets are not going to save the planet - biz84
https://shift.newco.co/vegetarian-diets-are-not-going-to-save-the-planet-4f50d0c1f8cf
======
cies
TL;DR: Terrible article, I suggest not waste your time on it.

Why?

* Author writes """it’s more accurate to say that vegetarian diets are “less awful,” not “better,” than omnivorous diets""". He gives no hard numbers to back it up. Less awful IS OBVIOUSLY the same as better. According to many sources, that are well presented in the Cowspiracy documentary (among others) it is shown that a vegetarian diet, and specially a vegan diet, is A LOT less awful then an omni diet both environmentally, ethically and considering health impact.

* He argues vegetarians eat more staples. And that they are usually grown as mono crops, thus bad for the environment. He forgets that animals slaughtered for meat have been eating staples all their lives. A large part of the staples are grown for life stock; this makes meat so inefficient in the first place. The author is seems to know that it is also grown for life stock, but then continues that vegetarians are responsible for the monocrop disaster. Clearly misguided he is.

* Showing pictures of hippies to re-enforce the idea that vegetarians/vegans are some treehugging margin group. Whoever lives in a cosmopolitan city knows this is not true, or not anymore.

What I do agree on: eat with the seasons. But simple economics of "eat what is
cheap" should help with that. It is that supermarkets choose to put the "high
price" on produce all year long, except for a discount crop maybe. This is
because produce does not pull customers.

What pulls customers? Cheap meat, and cheap beer. That's why there's always
some meat on offer that costs less per kilo then bell peppers in the
supermarkets near where I live.

If we want to save the planet from the rather imminent "mass extinction" (lets
not call it "global warming" that sound waaay to nice), we should not optimize
for consumerism but for sustainability. And meat eating is simply not
sustainable.

~~~
hannob
> According to many sources, that are well presented in the Cowspiracy
> documentary (among others) it is shown that a vegetarian diet, and specially
> a vegan diet, is A LOT less awful then an omni diet both environmentally,
> ethically and considering health impact.

Just a quick note: The "Cowspiracy" movie unfortunately presents its case by
cherry picking scientific evidence and presenting much higher numbers than
what is reasonable. Wikipedia has something about it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowspiracy#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowspiracy#Criticism)

I recently saw that movie. Basically what the movie maker did was taking the
highest number he could find and repeating it over and over again.

This is unfortunate, because the overall message is still very much true: Meat
production causes a lot of greenhouse gas emissions and cutting them is a
great opportunity. And NGOs are very reluctant to talk about it.

~~~
botexpert
51% of CO2 emissions is just a number that was repeated.

there's also dead oceans by 2048 which is the most pessimistic estimate.

but some numbers are fine.

the amount of land that is used for livestock is incomparable. water
pollution, dead ocean zones, all caused by animal agriculture.

the amount of environmental destruction and pollution is incomparable. more
than 90% of destroyed Amazon rainforest was for the sole reason of raising
more livestock.

yeah, CO2 equivalent footprint might not be 51% but the oil industry does less
environmental damage than animal agriculture. highest CO2 footprint isn't even
cars and transport but heating and cooling.

~~~
alex_duf
I believe it's 51% of the greenhouse effect, that include 20ish percent of co2
emission resulting from cattle + the effect of methane which is a much more
powerfull green house gas than co2.

(now whether this number is 51% or something else is another debate)

~~~
mklarmann
51% includes also respiration of cows, which should be net zero, because it is
exactly the CO₂ that was captured by the plants before. (which is not okay to
do)

Also 51% because equivalent calculations are not done over the span of 100
years, but shorter (methane becomes more dominant) and deforestation is also
accounted for - (which is both fine).

So it is somewhere in between the results of renovated studies that say it is
around 31% (e.g. Tukker et al) and the 51% worldwatch report.

------
lukasben
I don't eat meat not to solve any sustainability problems. I don't eat meat
because of how the meat industry is treating the animals and the nature (By
the way, most soy and grain is produced to feat our animals). I can give you a
lot of examples for the planned economized genocide on other races than
humans. But people, like the author of this text, don't want to hear arguments
or examples like that. They don't buy at the local market, they buy the
cheapest meat at the supermarkets and care about their wallets more than they
care about others. We totally lost the connection to the lives of the animals
we eat. Additionally I don't eat meat because 80% of our antibiotics is
produced to feat it to animals. Just Google MRSA and find out how much your
government is doing about that issue. Some scientist, here in germany, call
the resistance against antibiotics an equal threat to the mankind like nuclear
weapons. This issue brings meat consumption and therefore the meat industry in
a total different perspective.

~~~
roel_v
That's not what this post is about (why people shouldn't eat meat). It's about
the claim that vegetarian diets are better for the environment, which they
are, but not to the extent that they'll solve our sustainable agriculture
challenges. Please take your soapboxing to a place where it's on topic.

~~~
rusk
Please there is no call for being mean like this. I personally found this
comment to be interesting and relevant. I also think it is relevant to the
larger discussion of which this article is a part.

~~~
roel_v
How is calling out people for highjacking discussions that are remotely about
their personal convictions to preach about those convictions 'mean'? If
anything, this site should police such behavior more - what we have now is
half of the posts arguing a straw man because they see a keyword in the title
and feel they need to defend their ideological positions. The OP is about how
vegetarianism won't lead to sustainable food supply - and the GP answers 'you
should become vegetarian because poor animals'. Fine, but in the context of
this threat pure noise. Look, I'm not saying I can always restrain myself to
stay on topic in every post I type; I'd be happy to have those posts summarily
deleted too if that meant the signal to noise ratio in the comments would
increase.

------
hannob
I'm not sure what to make out of such a text.

Basically what the text says is that plant-based food usually is less resource
intense and thus better for the environment, but there are also other factors
and plant-based food production isn't perfect. (Independent of the question
whether all the other things he says are true.)

So the headline is obviously strictly true, but highly misleading. A more
accurate one would be "Vegetarian diets are good for the planet, but they're
not the whole solution".

~~~
stupidcar
Uh, no. That is not what the article says _at all_.

The text explicitly says that vegetarian diets are _not_ part of the solution.
Either now, or under the system he proposes.

He's very clear that eating a fully vegetarian diet now is worse, footprint-
wise, that eating a mildly omnivorous one.

He's also very clear that while eating a vegetarian diet under his proposed
system would be just about possible, it is built around the assumption that
most people will be eating meat, and that it would form a primary food source
for the months of year when plant-based sources were scarce.

~~~
mcv
He's certainly trying to _suggest_ that vegetarianism is worse, but he doesn't
back it up. In fact, his off-hand remark that "Most of these staple crops —
especially corn and soy — wind up in animal feed" undermines this point.

------
DerpyBaby123
The article should be titled something more like 'Local, Seasonal Diets Are
Going To Save The Planet'. It's not much about vegetarianism, except to attack
it for clickbait reasons.

~~~
onion2k
And a local, seasonal vegetarian diet is a lot easier to implement in a city
environment than a local, seasonal omnivorous diet. So vegetarian is still
likely to be a better option in the future, especially if you consider vat-
grown meat to be a vegetable.

~~~
wazoox
No, because with your vegetables you get lots of peels and seeds and remains
that will be just great to feed a couple of hens for instance. Sustainable
agriculture, even at a very small scale, always combines plants and animals.

That's the fundamental blind spot of vegans. Anyone actually growing some
vegetables and fruits in his backyard will understand this. I know many
starry-eyed hippies growing organic stuff in the countryside, and if many of
them are vegetarians (eating dairy, eggs, etc but no meat) absolutely 0% of
them are vegans because _it doesn 't make sense from a producer perspective_.

~~~
onion2k
_Sustainable agriculture, even at a very small scale, always combines plants
and animals._

Absolutely, and that's why I said vegetarian rather than vegan. Working
animals for eggs, milk, wool, etc are a good idea. That's still not supporting
an omnivorous diet though.

------
mcv
While I think the solutions presented in this article sound fantastic (in both
senses of the word, unfortunately; it sounds way too ambitious to be realistic
in the current political climate), the attack on vegetarianism is
disingenuous.

As the article itself points out: "Most of these staple crops — especially
corn and soy — wind up in animal feed". So that means that eating meat has the
same devastating effect (but on a larger scale, because animals eat a lot) as
its strawman vegetarian diet of wheat, corn, soy and rice.

Of course vegetarianism isn't magically going to solve all the world's
problems, but _all other things being equal_ , eating less meat will reduce
your ecological footprint. There's a lot more you can do, but eating less meat
is an easy first step.

------
schlowmo
Besides some flimsy claims about who consumes the most staples the article
just basically says:

\- buy local

\- eat with the seasons

\- many small local farms are better than few big (remote)

\- there's need for a better market for those small farms

Is it just me not getting what this has to do with the cons of "vegetarian
diets"? At least where I live eating meat isn't a sign for any of those
points.

Although I'm a sarcastic person myself, this anti-hippie rhetoric is
completely self-defeating. While I get the environmental and economic benefits
of the "eat local" ideology, the consequences for our menu appear (at least to
me) more hippie-like than not eating meat. But maybe this is just my opinion
living in the North German Plain not wanting to eat rutabaga the whole winter.

~~~
Kliment
As another person living in that region, rutabaga is not the only locally
available crop - cauliflower, a whole variety of cabbages, corn lettuce
(feldsalat), parsnips, and a bunch of other related plants are in season now,
as are cultivated mushrooms. We mostly eat fresh stuff from the local farmer's
market and it certainly doesn't feel hippie-like at all - it's just normal
winter food.

As an aside, rutabaga has an awful reputation, which I feel is very much
unjustified. It's by no means my favorite vegetable, but it certainly has its
uses, and is lovely combined with say sweet potato in a mash. I understand it
was the food of last resort for many in times of famine, but it's been two
generations since the last time that was the case, and I think it's high time
it was restored to the table as something more than a poor substitute.

~~~
schlowmo
I told you I'm a sarcastic person ;). I confess using the rutabaga example
knowing its bad reputation for the sake of aggravation. Although I grew up in
that region with food-conservative parents,[0] I'm still fan of occasional
rutabaga mash or rutabaga gratinée - withstanding the lack of understanding
from my flatmates.

[0] Means: regional/seasonal food not as ideology, but because it's the food
one has eaten since childhood; or in other words: "What the farmer doesn't
know he doesn't eat."

------
bananicorn
>Most of these staple crops — especially corn and soy — wind up in animal feed
and fuel;

Exactly. So why should eating less of the same food than is necessary to
produce a substantially smaller amount of meat be discouraged? Using less
resources overall is still better, right?

edit: formatting

~~~
codebolt
Yeah this article is completely half-baked. If we had only grown enough of
these staples to feed humans, it would require a whole lot less than growing
enough to feed animals who feed humans. The author here is making it sound
like there wouldn't be much difference.

------
JDDunn9
Most of the arguments are just an appeal to nature. Doesn't address cow burps
as a major source of pollution. Seems to be making a food miles argument, when
what matters is carbon per pound of food. Transporting by boat is highly
efficient and a high percentage of the cargo is food. Driving to pick up your
food from 3 farmer's markets can create more pollution than would be used to
transport them from across the world, because the food is such a small
percentage of the weight of your car.

------
otalp
The title should really be "Vegetarian diets alone are not going to save the
planet".

------
TulliusCicero
> Unfortunately, most food plants in this country are grown in resource-
> intensive systems that groan under the weight of a relentlessly demanding
> global consumer,

Question: aren't 'local', small-scale farms _more_ resource-intensive per unit
of food grown than factory farms, not less?

------
luckystartup
I think it entirely depends on the timescale. I like to imagine a distant
future where all food production is automated. Staples, vegetables, and fruits
(and fresh water) would be available to everyone for free. People wouldn't eat
meat because of the environment. People wouldn't grow up eating meat, so
eating a cow would be just as repulsive as eating a cat or a dog. It wouldn't
even be a temptation.

> They’re so large, astronauts can see entire sections of the planet turn
> brown and die every Spring as farmers nuke the soil’s native biology to make
> way for the artificially imposed order of the grain field.

I don't know what to make of "artificially imposed order of the grain field."
People have been artificially imposing order on the earth for thousands of
years. Granted, it's on a much bigger scale today. Still, how do you propose
feeding the earth without any artificial order?

In this future world, all of the machinery will run on solar and wind power.
We will grow genetically modified crops so that we only need to use a small
amount of pesticides and fertilizers. And just like all plants, these crops
will absorb a lot of carbon dioxide and release a lot of oxygen.

I mean, even if this is still bad for the environment, would there even be any
room for improvement? The only thing I can think of is somehow reducing the
human population. That's a prickly subject.

And we're going to really have to think about all of this before we defeat
aging.

------
mklarmann
Founder of Eaternity here. Putting facts to the issue, we have collected the
largest database to calculate the CO₂ emissions for food - and it is freely
available: www.eaternity.org

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Cool project! Forwarded to people at oekom-research.com I know.

~~~
mklarmann
thank you

------
tom_devref
The author should cite the article(s) that claim vegetarian diets alone will
save the planet - this is clickbait/trolling. I'm a vegetarian and make no
claim that being so is going to save the planet - it would help if we all were
but it's definitely not a silver bullet.

------
hehheh
This article is long on assertions and devoid of facts. It is junk. To the
author: post again when you can back up your statements.

------
eeZah7Ux
The author's agenda is showing.

------
manojlds
> Note: everything written from here on is from the “local” perspective of a
> Virginian

Then why talk about the planet.

------
dandare
I am still not convinced that _local_ anything is more eco/carbon friendly.
Think the Law of Comparative Advantages - in certain areas my lunch will be
way more eco/carbon friendly if I only spend the whole day producing guns
instead of butter. Also I suspect that huge farms employing high end software,
hardware and even weather prediction technology are more eco/carbon friendly
than any local farmer can ever be.

------
soggypopsicle
Quality of the article aside, local agriculture is usually worse
environmentally due to its smaller size:
[http://freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-
local...](http://freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-local-food/)

------
MBlume
The author's very excited about urban gardens, but have we gotten anywhere
close to cleaning up our cities well enough that we can grow food there
without swallowing a bunch of lead in the process?

------
kirerukaze
This article reminds me of a previous one from a few months ago that talked
about where the produce in Chinatown comes from (local, small growers rather
than large industrial operations).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981063)

------
tkyjonathan
TL;DR: Try Vegan/Vegetarian diets and buy local to have the best sustainable
diet. Also, bring your own hand-knitted bags to buy food at the farmers
market.

------
dm03514
i was in NYC for work during the holidays, etsy had a pop up exchange in
Chelsea market and it was absolutely nuts. After seeing it, the need to create
a food market to connect, and incentivize, local producers and consumers was
obviously apparent.

I think garden tech is a wide open space with room for even small application
of tech mentality to have a huge impact on yield

------
cnative100
I'm the author. Ho boy. Just a few clarifications based on things I'm seeing
here:

"a vegetarian diet, and specially a vegan diet, is A LOT less awful then an
omni diet both environmentally, ethically and considering health impact."

I agree. Nowhere did I contradict this.

"He argues vegetarians eat more staples."

No, I argue that the most vegetarian diets are composed primarily of staples.
Subtle but extremely important distinction.

"Showing pictures of hippies to re-enforce the idea that vegetarians/vegans
are some treehugging margin group."

I dug my own grave here. Had no idea this article would go viral. Oops.

"meat eating is simply not sustainable"

Correct; CAFO industrial meat that's eaten without an ear toward seasonality
or ecological propriety is pure hell. However, sustainable food production
systems will rely on modeling natural patterns (which is the opposite of what
nearly all farms today do), and that will rely heavily on animals - though
far, far, FAR fewer of them - for mineral cycling and fertility, as do nearly
all native ecosystems. I don't have the space here to talk about fertility via
animals vs nitrogenous covers; may address that in a later article.

"Cowspiracy"

This movie is directed at the industrial meat supply chain: the land-expansive
background farms that feed CAFOs and the CAFOs themselves. I advocate for
neither.

"The author is also playing the false dichotomy vegetarian <-> omnivorous"

There is an entire paragraph in my article where I explain that not all
vegetarian diets, and not all omnivorous diets, are created equal.

"Had the author consulted the literature, he'd know that the environmental
credentials of grass-fed beef are extremely suspect; some studies suggest that
the carbon footprint is actually greater than intensive feedlot beef and the
land use is absolutely vast. He'd know that only a handful of animal sources
of protein have equivalent CO2 emissions to plant sources - intensively reared
poultry, eggs and some inshore seafoods."

The increased carbon footprint of grass-finished beef is based on grass
finished beef living longer than grain finished beef because they take longer
to finish. The studies I've seen regarding grass/grain cattle emissions are
limited to examination of lifetime carbon output directly from the cow through
expiration. They do not examine 1.) the sequestration of carbon into soil
built by ecologically managed, rotationally-grazed herds, 2.) the carbon
output of CAFO manure lagoons, 3.) the carbon footprint of the grains fed to
CAFO animals. In short, the studies do not address the net carbon effect of
the entire system, and they only address the two "traditional" methods of
raising cattle, neither of which I endorse.

"He's very clear that eating a fully vegetarian diet now is worse, footprint-
wise, that eating a mildly omnivorous one."

Not quite. I said it's POSSIBLE for a fully vegetarian diet to be worse,
footprint wise, than a plant-centric omnivorous one. I.e. there is no
deterministic link between vegetarian diets and sustainability.

"Besides some flimsy claims about who consumes the most staples"

Again, I make no claims about who eats the most staples. I make a claim that
the most vegetarian diets are principally composed of staples.

"It's not much about vegetarianism, except to attack it for clickbait
reasons."

Absolutely correct. I had to choose between an accurate title that almost no
one would read, or a caustic one that would stimulate debate and get me yelled
at. And so here we are :-)

"The author should cite the article(s) that claim vegetarian diets alone will
save the planet"

As stated in the first sentence, this article was prompted by a slew of
responses from vegetarians to my previous article about organic agriculture,
nearly all of whom argued that the "simple" solution to food sustainability
was to switch to a vegetarian diet.

"Question: aren't 'local', small-scale farms more resource-intensive per unit
of food grown than factory farms, not less?"

Yes. However, I'm advocating a form of agriculture that doesn't exist yet.

------
sax0n
> On the east coast, the solution is large numbers of smaller (50–500 acres)
> cultivated food forests surrounding our urban centers, forming the backbone
> of a production system augmented by urban gardens growing on nearly every
> rooftop, balcony, vacant lot, road median, yard, public park, and empty
> warehouse floor. The solution involves brick & mortar markets and food hubs
> being supplanted by producer/consumer exchanges* that allow computers to
> handle the aggregating without obscuring the relationship between grower and
> eater.

I am suspicious of this - especially the part about rooftop gardens. I
remember someone telling me that small gardens are quite carbon intensive
because they don't get the economies of scale that large farm operations do.
Can anyone confirm that? Do permaculture farms get economies of scale?

The true solution is very, very simple. A crippling carbon tax. It needs to be
large enough that it becomes unprofitable to have tomatoes in winter, and for
food to travel long distances.* We don't necessarily need to buy directly from
directly from producers if middlemen supermarkets can transport food
efficiently.

Perhaps such a heavy carbon tax would force supermarket chains to downsize and
source more food locally and in season, but the real optimisations would come
from the things we haven't thought of yet. Every business would be looking to
for ways to cut their carbon costs, necessity is the mother of invention of
course. This would require a huge restructuring of the world economy. That's
possible, just a hard sell - think how much the world economy changed during
WW2.

I've been in a pretty apocalyptic kind of mood lately (feeling my vibe? F#A#∞
is a great album to day dream this stuff to.). Melting permafrost in Siberia
and Alaska will cause a a vicious circle of carbon being released, further
warming temperatures. Political action is the only thing that can stop climate
change and with the way Trumps first week has gone, my hopes for that are the
bleakest they've ever been. Are we past the tipping point? I'm kind of
wondering if we should just give up and use the rest of our oil to move people
away from coastal areas. Perhaps militarisation of national borders is the
logical thing to do to prepare for waves of climate refugees that can't be
supported (that's a very, very sad thought). Will starving nations resort to
nuclear war? What do people here think?

* Worried about how the poor would handle such a rise in food costs? You should be. I imagine the bulk of the tax would need to be transferred to the poor, as they spend the largest proportion of the income on basic necessities caused by a heavy carbon tax. On a global scale, a heavy carbon tax would need to result in large transfers from the developed nations to the underdeveloped. A political pipe dream...

------
lngnmn
The vegan nonsensealists perhaps should consider the role of hunting and
animal husbandry in the ability of humans to inhabit northern and semidesert
regions of the planet and to sustain a population. It is also good idea to
read about the causes of malnutrition in poor communities.

~~~
kagamine
With 54% [1] of the world's population in urban areas already (rising to over
70% in the developed world) [1] that "role of hunting and animal husbandry in
... regions of the planet" is becoming an ever increasing rarity. By 2050 the
54% is expected to rise to 66% [2] so I doubt there will be many hunter
gatherers left anywhere.

Here in 'the North' at longitude ‎10.757933 people only hunt for sport.
Although they make the claim of culling for environmental reasons I have yet
to see any elk or red deer without venturing deep into the forest on foot (so
I'm calling BS).

>the causes of malnutrition in poor communities.

Obvious response would be to eradicate yet more rain-forest and open a
McDonalds in all those poor countries. /s Malnutrition in poor communities
(and I'm not sure to where you refer with that vague choice of phrase) is
likely caused by factors that control diet, and not by diet in and of itself.
In other words, it's the poverty itself causing malnutrition, not a lack of
meat or forced vegetarianism.

1\. [http://www.prb.org/Publications/Lesson-
Plans/HumanPopulation...](http://www.prb.org/Publications/Lesson-
Plans/HumanPopulation/Urbanization.aspx)

2\.
[http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-...](http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-
urbanization-prospects-2014.html)

~~~
lngnmn
That was a hint on the cause - why this evolutionary adaptation would emerge
in the first place.

For everything else - think what would happen in any urban area if a few
poultry farms would close for a month. India is one single example of mostly
vegetarian traditionalist population, but even in India in the tribes
populated north and north-west regions vegetarian diet cannot sustain a
population.

Bonus question: how do you imagine a vegetarian Pakistan or any other middle
east country?

Do not bother to answer here.

