
Giving Up Meat Won’t Have Much of an Effect on Climate Change - elorant
https://reason.com/2019/07/29/why-giving-up-meat-wont-have-much-of-an-effect-on-climate-change/
======
cannonedhamster
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.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
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

~~~
tito
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.

~~~
bluedevil2k
Not sure how well that would go over with the average American, suddenly
seeing their usual $200-$300'ish monthly bill on gas suddenly change to $2000
- $3000/month.

And who would get all that extra tax revenue? I assume the US Government, but
does anyone have any belief that the US Government would actually put that
money towards carbon offsets?

~~~
aphextim
If it cost me 10x to fill my 500 gallon propane tank, well it's back to
burning wood/cutting down trees for me.

~~~
bryanlarsen
If you're not being stupid about it, you're cutting down mature trees and not
trampling the volunteer seedlings. Mature trees (especially coniferous trees)
are fairly carbon neutral because they suppress undergrowth. Seedlings capture
tons of carbon. So the tax would incentivize emitting much less net carbon.
That's the point.

~~~
aphextim
>If you're not being stupid about it, you're cutting down mature trees and not
trampling the volunteer seedlings.

Most of the time I can drive around my family's property and find many trees
that have already fallen and are down without having to even cut mature trees.
It's just the extra work that goes into it rather than calling up the gas
company for a refill. I am lucky and my great grandpa/family has been passing
the farm/land down through the generations and now it's a 'family' farm with
about 1500 acres, and about 2/3 of that is forest with trails.

Worst case scenario I contract out some kids/young adults in the area to
cut/haul/stack my wood if I am short on time and unable to get enough for the
winter myself.

Lots of Maple trees in Upper Michigan :D

~~~
bryanlarsen
Even better. Deadfall will rot, releasing its carbon anyways.

------
ysleepy
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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
'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.

~~~
vegannet
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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Then there's transportation, refrigeration, distribution, point of sales...
all with their cost. Are we still so sure the 'savings' is significant?

~~~
vegannet
The cost of transporting a hundred thousand burgers is dwarfed by the cost of
creating a hundred thousand burgers. The primary costs associated with meat
are in the production, not the transport: compared to, say, Beyond Meat, a
single beef burger is 15x more ecologically expensive _before_ transport --
which is the same, and inconsequential in comparison.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
How about cooking them? Refrigerating them? Selling them?

I see the idea of marginal cost is getting through. But consider _all_ the
costs to get a real sense of how the origination marginal cost contributes.

And don't dismiss transportation. It has to get home from the grocery store,
in that 10-burger one-person vehicular trip through city traffic. That's a
marginal cost too.

~~~
vegannet
You can make the same point repeatedly if you like but, as I've explained, the
costs you're referring to are a very small part of the total cost and
certainly do not come close to offsetting the gains made by cutting out
livestock from the equation.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Citation? I suspect you made that up, to score imaginary internet points.

Here's some data I just Googled:

    
    
      Car trips:  0.34 metric tonnes of CO2 / 1000 miles
    
      Burgers:    0.5 metric tonnes / year of burgers (150)
    

Producing meat is very-much commensurate with other marginal activities
associated with procuring meat, like trips to the grocery store.

I'm done here.

------
frobozz
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.

~~~
Ididntdothis
“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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
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.

~~~
couchand
But nobody who would give up meat for climate change is going to be satisfied
there. Your argument is a straw man.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Citation? How many vegetarians you know, do a single other thing (not counting
'giving up the straw in my soda')? Did they write their congressman? Do they
even know that's a thing?

~~~
couchand
Your lack of charity is alarming.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I'm just old and jaded I guess.

------
rblion
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.

------
vfc1
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
Looking at the comments here, I'm pretty sure he's telling you the exact
opposite of what you want to hear.

~~~
vfc1
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.

------
stanski
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.

------
efficax
> 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?

------
mnm1
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.

------
spodek
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...](https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-
environment/episodes/183-reusing-and-recycling-are-tactical-reducing-is-
strategic).

------
clamprecht
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...](https://www.texastribune.org/2018/01/10/time-oprah-winfrey-
beefed-texas-cattle-industry/)

------
sxp
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Brazil#Causes)
[2] [https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-
resources/science/l...](https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-
resources/science/livestock-water-use?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-
science_center_objects)

~~~
QuantumAphid
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.

------
truebrazilian
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.

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

~~~
QuantumAphid
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.

~~~
truebrazilian
"Quite a bit of the Amazon region is used to grow soybeans."

Not that much. Most soy in Brasil come from the Cerrado region, a Savanah-like
biome roughly the size of german and france, more or less south of the amazon
rain forest. Second to that, the region of the states of mato-grosso, sao
paulo and parana.

Soy is not much of a driver for amazon deforestation. The main problems there
are illegal loggers, illegal cattle ranching and gold mining.

~~~
QuantumAphid
Brazil is the dominant food producer in the Western Hemisphere. I didn't mean
to bring up soybeans with regard to deforestation (although it is a factor), I
used the soybeans example to illustrate that livestock, agriculture and global
demand are highly interconnected. There is very little that anyone outside of
Brazil can do to tell Brazil how it should manage its land and resources.

Brazil to pass U.S. as world's largest soy producer in 2018
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-soy-usa/brazil-
to-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-soy-usa/brazil-to-pass-u-s-
as-worlds-largest-soy-producer-in-2018-idUSKBN1IC2IW)

02-Jul-2019 USDA sees record soybean harvest for Brazil
[https://www.feednavigator.com/Article/2019/07/02/USDA-
sees-r...](https://www.feednavigator.com/Article/2019/07/02/USDA-sees-record-
soybean-harvest-for-Brazil)

Brazilian Soybean Production By State
[https://twitter.com/kevinvantrump/status/956187342150266880?...](https://twitter.com/kevinvantrump/status/956187342150266880?lang=en)
[https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/rssiws/al/crop_production_maps/Bra...](https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/rssiws/al/crop_production_maps/Brazil/Municipality/Brazil_Soybean_Production_Municipality.jpg)

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

------
fnord123
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.

------
pxue
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.

------
perlgeek
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.

------
jacknews
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.

------
0wis
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.

------
makerofspoons
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.

