
People Don't Get the Link Between Meat Consumption and Climate Change (2016) - antouank
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/people-still-don-t-get-the-link-between-meat-consumption-and-climate-change/
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kelchm
Actually, I think you'll find that people just really like the way meat
tastes.

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

~~~
jp555
All that would happen is people would quickly aclimate to killing their
dinner. We did it for _humdreds of thousands of years_ , it’s part of our
genetic make up.

~~~
hycaria
That was never our primary source of food though.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Yes, because it was too expensive, but it has always been a significant
dietary compenent. Most people historically have eaten meat when they could
get it, and for most of them the slaughtering of the animals was very few
degrees of separation from them. Either they did it themselves, someone in
their family did it, someone they directly employed did it or they bought or
traded for it directly from someone who did it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
tfolbrecht
Feasibility for the individual is a matter of being able to afford meat that
is currently 50 - 100% more expensive per comparable cuts.

Feasibility for society is complex. Where I live, grass fed cattle is mostly
grown on short term leased land. Sellers and long term speculators of farmable
land make cash on its interim usage for cattle. Non-feasible.

In Australia and NZ, there are huge chunks of the country suitable for raising
livestock, not suitable for land development or plant farming. There's more
livestock than people.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50MbPACZF-4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50MbPACZF-4)
Australian outback cattle farmers mustering with helicopters

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

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

~~~
peg_leg
This is rather true.

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

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

Roughly in order it goes

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

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

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

So ditch the car and enjoy the steak.

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

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

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

~~~
emodendroket
Even if that's what the doctor ordered, so to speak, it's hardly a matter of
individual initiative.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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DiabloD3
This is a useless article with a serious vegan bent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beside, are you seriously denying anthropic climate change?

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

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

~~~
newscracker
Just because something happened in the past and resulted in some benefits
doesn’t necessarily mean we have to continue it. For example, the two world
wars and their impacts also helped accelerate technological progress to a
great degree, but I’m sure nobody would argue that we need more of them. In
our current times, and in this century, we’ll have better alternatives that
help humankind (if people accept them). Meat will not be a necessity for those
living in a globalized world.

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
craigds
Grass fed beef isn't a solution. Cows still produce a _lot_ of methane.
[http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-03-grass-fed-beef-good-
or-b...](http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-03-grass-fed-beef-good-or-bad-
climate)

~~~
rhinoceraptor
That’s only one metric to compare. That doesn’t take into account the carbon
sequestration from manure, topsoil formation, etc. from grass fed animals.

It also doesn’t take into account the massive energy use (and therefore,
carbon release) of fertilizing, seeding, irrigating, harvesting and processing
feed for conventional cattle.

So in total, I would expect grass fed meat to be much better than conventional
meat, and possibly better than if we were to just eat crops directly.

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resonanttoe
Grrr, paywalled research articles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

72 / 1.1 = 65 Years

Meat isn't the problem, endless growth is.

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

~~~
Yusho
When we look at the 3 countries with the most growth in combination with meat
consumption (data from wikipedia)

1\. China 58.2 kg/person and year

2\. India 4.4 kg/person and year

3\. USA 120.2 kg/person and year

There are very big differences that have more to do with culture and income
rather than growth.

sources:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_cons...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption)

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

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

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

~~~
nerdponx
As mined materials start to get more scarce, their prices will rise, and
mining companies will have increased power over markets. You can see recycling
as a kind of "intertemporal power smoothing", depriving mining companies of
future economic power by reducing the rate at which materials are mined.
Economic concentration of power imposes tremendous externalities, most of
which are felt by ordinary people in the form of price increases and political
disenfranchisement due to lobbying and outright corruption.

I am willing to pay an energy premium today in order to avoid that human
rights premium in the future. You may not be so willing, but I would urge you
to consider that position.

~~~
felipeko
As price rises, recycling will be more advantageous and will compete with
mined materials reducing their future economic power by the same amount as it
would if you recycle now.

The maximum effect of your policy will be to delay the moment when recycling
becomes economic advantageous, and waste money/energy until then.

~~~
nerdponx
Good point. I guess we have solar as an example of that, but solar was also
heavily subsidized by the US gov't.

