Note that the areas of the three largest deviations are, in order: Biosphere Integrity, Novel Entities (synthetic chemical & processes), and Biogeochemical Flows.
The entire ecosystem on which we depend for sustenance is an extremely complex web of interlocking dependencies, from plankton to pollinators, to soil microbiota, to temperature & hydration, and so on, endlessly.
This is the food web. If it collapses, we as a species are beyond fooked. Because it is so complex (and even something relatively simple such as CO2-driven greenhouse effect climate change is too complex for the lower half of the population to understand), it is barely even discussed.
But make no mistake, the food web is under massive assault from all kinds of human activities (and even the artificial agriculture web is coming up against the hard limit of a phosphorus crisis). This is likely to be a sooner and more catastrophic failure than the climate crisis. The Fine Article nicely clarifies some of the threat.
One major contributor to the overshoot is our current agricultural practices, with animal agriculture being a primary offender.
It's responsible for a significant amount of greenhouse gases, it's a leading driver of biodiversity loss and deforestation, and it contributes to soil degradation and water pollution.
We can significantly reduce our footprint by adopting plant-based diets, reforesting the pastures (more than 50% of which were originally forests), and allowing biodiversity to recover.
The carbon opportunity cost of animal-sourced food production on land - shifts in global food production to plant-based diets by 2050 could lead to sequestration of 332–547 GtCO2, equivalent to 99–163% of the CO2 emissions budget consistent with a 66% chance of limiting warming to 1.5 °C
Humanity would rather go to war to thin our numbers than give up eating meat.
The only viable method is lab grown meat that tastes exactly the same, same texture, and is cheaper. That's it. People have real stuff in their lives - they're not worried about planetary survival in 100 years, they're worried about next months rent, etc.
I suspect it's true that the only way to substantially cut animal-based protein consumption at scale is some technological alternative that offers a comparable culinary experience but with a lower cost (and lower impact). Although as another poster notes, it's also true that — like many resource consumption issues — the distribution isn't flat, but shows the majority of consumption coming from a relatively small fraction of the population.
However, what I wanted to point out is that "lab grown meat" is not the only possibility in this general area. Precision fermentation of proteins (e.g. https://gfi.org/science/the-science-of-fermentation/) is another approach that seems to have potential. Although I note that I don't have a specific horse in this race, and would be delighted to see anything that can reduce the overall environmental impact of food production at a global scale take off.
If you are actually worried about next month's rent, then going mostly vegetarian is FAR cheaper than eating beef
Plus, only 12% of the people eat 50% of the beef in the US. That is a group of 50-65 year-old men. Change their habits to match the normal population (or let them age out) and 50% of the problem disappears.
> Humanity would rather go to war to thin our numbers than give up eating meat
We're using up resources at a pace that outstrips Earth's ability to replenish them. For instance, we're already consuming 1.7 times the Earth's available resources.
Veggie sausages and burgers up to ten times better for environment than meat, study finds
> they're worried about next months rent
Vegan diets are typically the most economical choice, even in first-world countries. The affordability of animal products is primarily a result of significant subsidies, without factoring in the negative externalities.
I don’t think our grandchildren are going to care what we say. They’ll be too busy scavenging the scorched ruins of our cities for the last cans of refrigerant so they can survive another month on our doomed planet.
>They’ll be too busy scavenging the scorched ruins of our cities for the last cans of refrigerant so they can survive another month on our doomed planet.
Don't be silly. Our grandchildren won't need refrigerant to survive a hot Earth; they can just live underground. Caves stay cool year-round. Or they could dig a bunch of silos, 144 levels deep, and live in those, sending outcasts to the "outside" to die in the poisoned air.
I definitely would not eat lab grown meat. My own meat consumption is less than 200g per day. I eat one hamburger a month at most, as a treat. I want it to be the best hamburger from the happiest free range cow ever. I'm not going to eat some synthetic imitation, I'll just have bean stew with the occasional piece of chicken.
The way the vegan movement has weaseled its way into the discussion on climate change has been frankly horrifying to watch. As you said, people will not stop eating meat. Tell them that going vegan is the only way and they'll just say "fuck the planet" and not bother with it. Like, the worst that could happen is humanity going extinct. The Earth itself will be fine. Put that way, well, if we can't figure out how to run our farms more optimally, we should go extinct. Chickens don't contribute to atmospheric changes by themselves.
> My own meat consumption is less than 200g per day
You think that is little? 200 g per day would be 80000 tons of meat for a 400m population (EU) - let's generously account for the less hungry babies and we'd maybe have 60000 tons.
How many cows and pigs are we talking about here daily?
> The Earth itself will be fine.
Sure. Earth will be fine even if we are hit by a megathingy that rips apart the entire lithosphere. Nature will be fine even if our sun blows up tomorrow. But what has that to do with anything?
PS My own meat consumption is down to 2-3 meat dishes per month. Don't know if that helps...
Who is people? I've been a vegetarian for half a decade now on account of a family history of cardiovascular disease. People lack discipline and imagination, but it's not exactly rocket science to have a plant based diet. The largest obstacle is the large swathes of food deserts and the subsidizing of junk food.
If people had to pay the real price of meat with environmental externalities factored in most people would consume at a level you've described or even less. My issue with that is it doesn't address how most lifestyle emissions are attributable to the wealthiest economic class. It's still a better alternative to the system we have now, which is clearly unsustainable.
A 1/3rd pound burger takes 660 gallons of water to produce, or about 2500 liters. That's not even getting into any of the typical inputs like antibiotics which have their own collection of problems. Say what you will about vegans, it's impossible to talk about the environment without bringing up the impacts of industrial agribusiness and factory farming.
While we're talking about efficiency, you gain an order of magnitude improvement by farming crops for humans to eat rather than farming crops for animals to eat for humans to eat. Only about 55% of the crops we go are directly consumed by humans, the rest is used for feed and biofuels. It would take a tenth of the land area to feed the same amount of people plant-based vs an omnivorous diet. We should absolutely be pushing for less centralized food production, and chickens are a useful part of that. They turn food waste into new food and deal with several pests. That's very different from slaughtering them wholesale for cheap dinosaur nuggets.
Doesn't work. A long time ago I thought when all the old farts are gone, everything is going to be better. Had to have faith in my own generation right?
You know what happened... Humanity just grew a new set of old farts.
This, and so much this. "The hope of the world is in our generation". No, it really isn't. Any given generation is, statistically, a lot like every other generation (certainly over spans of 4-6 generations).
hope based on (a) there are always some number of people at a given point in time working toward the goals you want to be hopeful about (b) there's always some non-zero chance that they may be successful.
but hope somehow contigent or predicated on the age of those people? nah.
In NL the agro lobby has just successfully launched the largest political party here, on the back of a very well financed and organized series of protests. These people will stop at absolutely nothing to be allowed to fuck us all over for a few more years just so they can rake in some more dough. It is very disturbing to see how gullible the voters are.
>>Our agriculture and food production are major contributors to the damage
Yes - deadly serious.
I had to travel to the US midwest recently, after not having been there for a long time. As I drove out of the city the first impression of the farmlands was pleasant. But after an hour of highway-speed driving past nothing but bare fields (out of growing season) with scant rows of trees, we became a bit horrified — there was absolutely zero habitat for anything but the artificial plantings, when they were in season. And they would be coated with pesticides to ensure that there were no insects, or anything that ate them, or that ate the things that ate the insects, etc.. And indeed, returning to the airport in daytime, there was remarkably little wildlife.
It was a seriously disturbing experience, which I did not expect.
>>Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable
Yikes. The damage being done by 7 billion right now, adding 20-30% more is kind of unthinkable, even setting aside the agricultural damage. And you're absolutely right that we need to adopt a plant-based diet.
The conversion away from meat does seem much more doable, since only 12% of Americans eat 50% of the beef. Moreover, that's men between 50-66 years old, so if younger generations don't acquire that habit, we'll get a 50% reduction just by that sub-population aging out.
>And they would be coated with pesticides to ensure that there were no insects, or anything that ate them, or that ate the things that ate the insects, etc.. And indeed, returning to the airport in daytime, there was remarkably little wildlife.
Did you also notice a lack of dead insects on your windshield?
Maybe you're not old enough to remember, but several decades ago, any significant drive in most of the US would result in your windshield being coated in dead bugs. Not enough to cover it of course, but enough you'd have to run your washers and wipers sometimes, and use the scrubber at the gas station to clean your windshield (back in the full-service days, the attendant did this automatically for everyone, because they needed it).
These days, you can take a long drive and get virtually no dead bugs at all.
The entire ecosystem on which we depend for sustenance is an extremely complex web of interlocking dependencies, from plankton to pollinators, to soil microbiota, to temperature & hydration, and so on, endlessly.
This is the food web. If it collapses, we as a species are beyond fooked. Because it is so complex (and even something relatively simple such as CO2-driven greenhouse effect climate change is too complex for the lower half of the population to understand), it is barely even discussed.
But make no mistake, the food web is under massive assault from all kinds of human activities (and even the artificial agriculture web is coming up against the hard limit of a phosphorus crisis). This is likely to be a sooner and more catastrophic failure than the climate crisis. The Fine Article nicely clarifies some of the threat.