“And yet, eating a vegan diet still produces greenhouse gasses! Curious!”
I always thought about meat, poultry, fish and eggs. And, again, always thought “what do strength champions eat?” Simple Google search show small amount of vegan champions, most of them stamina/speed champions, and some of those turned vegans after 20/30 years of omnivorous diet. And not taking into account their “supplements.” Just thinking out loud.
Who gives a fuck about greenhouse gasses. All the creatures we create are our children, and all are owed the unconditional love and protection of their creators. The experiences of animals are real and matter. Their suffering is identical in nature to your own. It harms us when we take pleasure in cruelty and violence.
You work so hard to block out that simple reality. The destruction of climate, personal health, and ecosystems, those are all just incidental to the atrocity that we are committing on intelligent creatures. You cannot enjoy a cheeseburger or bacontho while you are watching Dominion. Your enjoyment is predicated on fucking DENIAL.
This has been known for eons, hasn’t it?
I do b fartin when I eat meat /s
This crucially important caveat they snuck in there:
“Prof Scarborough said: “Cherry-picking data on high-impact, plant-based food or low-impact meat can obscure the clear relationship between animal-based foods and the environment.”
…which is an interesting way of saying that lines get blurry depending on the type of meat diet people had and/or the quantity vs the type of plant-based diet people had.
Takeaway from the article shouldn’t be meat=bad and vegan=good - the takeaway should be that meat can be an environmentally responsible part of a reasonable diet if done right and that it’s also possible for vegan diets to be more environmentally irresponsible.
yes. when you look at charts and such. Someone who exclusively ate meat for some reason who moved to chicken would have a greater impact than someone who exclusively ate chicken and went vegan. Sheep did not show up so well either so im guessing ruminants in general are not going to be so hot. Anyway I would encourage folk to keep it in mind and do what they can. I realize go vegan results in many. Well eff it all then but man just avoiding beef is big impact.
Do you remember a source for that info? Or at least suggestions? I’m interested to read into it, but I’m not really sure what to even google for that
Our World in Data has a decent article about it: https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
This and the article seem like a great breakdown, thank you very much. I would have guessed chocolate would be somewhere in the middle, and I’ve never really thought about cheese in this context at all. I was surprised to see both of them so high up there.
This would suggest my sweet tooth is my biggest problem, at least, since beef is too expensive to be a common occurrence anyway
Someone who exclusively ate meat for some reason who moved to chicken would have a greater impact than someone who exclusively ate chicken and went vegan.
But that first person could have an even bigger environmental impact by becoming Vegan instead of only eating chicken.
You’d have a bigger impact by convincing 30% of the population to only have chicken, vs convincing 15% to go vegan.
Sure, and if we could only do one, we should choose accordingly. We can do both, simultanously. Exactly like how we don’t have to choose between eating less meat and driving less cars.
Or an even bigger impact by having fewer children.
This is true, however, not realistic in some parts of the world. For instance, in the United States, Republicans have waged a war on bodily autonomy, which includes the Roe v. Wade ruling and states creating departments to hunt down citizens who go out of state to have abortions. There are also countries where sex education is not prohibited. So, take these things into consideration while thinking about potential solutions. That being said, you are right, and you can do something about it by voting, if you are able to, wherever you live.
yes but if you actually convince someone who eats just chicken to go vegan it will have less of an effect if you actually convince a big red meat eater to limit to chicken.
So nice to read a sensible comment in a sea of crazy talk.
If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives? The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.
[…]
Plant-based protein sources – tofu, beans, peas and nuts – have the lowest carbon footprint. This is certainly true when you compare average emissions. But it’s still true when you compare the extremes: there’s not much overlap in emissions between the worst producers of plant proteins, and the best producers of meat and dairy.
https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
The real takeaway should be that the Independent is complete garbage
Yes, I think it’s vital to avoid thinking in absolutes over carbon footprints if we are to make real progress. We can argue endlessly over the “necessity” of consuming meat, but that becomes a distraction. Many things are not “necessary”, but most people are not realistically going to live in caves wearing carbon neutral hair shirts.
We need to continue increasing transparency on the impact of different animal products, so consumers can make informed choices. While also accepting they may not always be perfect.
That’s both absolutely true and a massive distraction from the point. An environmentally friendly diet that includes meat is going to involve sustainable hunting not factory farming. In comparison an environmentally friendly vegan diet is staples of meat replacements and not trying to get fancy with it. It’s shit like beans instead of meat, tofu and tempeh when you feel fancy. It means rejecting substitutes that are too environmentally costly such as agave nectar as a sweetener (you should probably use beet or cane based sweetener instead).
So in short eat vegan like a poor vegan not like a rich person who thinks veganism is trendy
Yeah I barely eat beef anymore, mostly chicken. I don’t want to give up on eating animals, especially since I’m trying to get into shape right now and it would be hard to eat healthy and get enough protein to build up muscle mass.
Articles like this are dumb… This just puts the burdon on everyday people who are doomed to fail if they try. If the entire world turned vegan would it make a difference? Rather, how about some tough legislation against the top polluting companies responsible for climate change… That would mean some politicians would have to refuse a few bribes, tough I know, but any level of effort here will create more results than a world giving up meat
https://peri.umass.edu/greenhouse-100-polluters-index-current
It’s not really suprising, is it? Just take two people and give them the same basics, but swap everything non vegan with the stuff those animals got to eat for one of them. Not only did he save the middle man to save on emissions, he also ended up with way more food. So you could save a lot more emissions by cutting down the vegan pile to the same amount of calories.
Replacement products bring down the comparison, but making stuff out of soy will always be more efficient than feeding soy to animals and then eating those. So with otherwise equal lifestyles a vegan will always produce less emissions.
Yes. Power abuse over suposed inferior species. It is “yummie” for doers
It’s also much tastier.
There are plenty of things that create more greenhouse gases that should be more thoroughly regulated than eating meat.
ok
And the type of meat changes the math significantly. Beef is notoriously inefficient and produces an insane amount of GHG emissions compared to more efficient meats like chicken, pork, and farmed fish.
Hate the game, not the players. If we eat them, others will substitute them. We need legal changes just like we had for abolishing formal human slavery
I’m enough of a cu*t as it is. If I went vegan, people wouldn’t stand me, I just think I’d lose the friends I have left.
Ok, now do corporations.
