- Plenty of people (including me) are vegan, healthy, and happy. As omnivores above the poverty line, we can all make conscious and conscientious choices about what we eat. Going vegan is one of the most effective ways to combat global warming (if you're not in a position to donate large sums of money toward climate change research or mitigation).
- This is bullshit. The vast majority of CO2 is created by energy production.
The problem is systemic and blaming other people for their lifestyle choices is neither effective nor helpful and just leads to further division. It's exactly this sort of division that helps fossil companies to destroy the planet and keep making money.
- Sorry, this is just not correct, even when you ignore the other greenhouse gases and focus on CO2.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-warming-by-gas-and...
- flip the vertical order on that graph, its super misleading.
- Take a look to a soybean plantation for example, biodiversity totally destroyed. Also, are you doing a physical main work?
- The point is that you need multiple plantations like this to make enough feed for the cows to make equivalent calories/proteins.
- Disclaimer: Not a vegan myself.
You do realize those soybean plantations are not for human consumption, right? And that that's what is factored into the quoted loss of biodiversity?
- Give it a couple decades. Most 'vegans' stop being vegan well before that. I'll let you Google why they do.
- I gather this is a vague snarky comment loosely implying that vegans don't get enough B12. If so, it's a profoundly ignorant point that shows you don't have any knowledge of a typical vegan diet nowadays.
- I am not vegan, will never be, but I have known vegans for more than two decades and they are doing fine. We need to make it easy to make the right choice about food, and one way to do that is to stop making meat meat meat the ONLY cool thing. I am fine with vegans serving me tasty food, they make alternatives easier. If you do not want to be a full time vegan just switch to 3 out 7 days of the week or something like that.
- Vegans have never and will never appreciably reduced global emissions.
Global meat production is only increasing.
You're delusional with main character syndrome?
- Not to mention that beef/dairy production is a primary source of methane which is 80x more potent than Co2, but constantly under reported due to its shorter half life. Yes in the long run that matters, but its all the more reason that we should reduce animal agriculture right away as the payback is much faster than limiting Co2.
- I never understood this argument. With Oil & Gas you release green house gases that have been sealed away back into the air.
For methane produced by farming all components remain in a cycle. Everything released by animals eventually finds its way back to plants, which get eaten, which become exhaust of animals, etc.
This sounds to me more like a spin by big oil to finger point at another industry.
- The methane will eventually break down and be part of new plants, but in the meantime it will heat the planet much more than if it hadn't been there. Think of it this way: industrial scale cattle farming essentially makes and feeds biochemical reactors that turn hydrocarbons into a gaseous form that maximizes their global heating effect. Consider the counterfactual where we don't stuff billions of fart machines full of corn.
- It's not exactly a closed loop, though. A lot of crops are grown using fossil fuel-derived fertilizer.
- This is literally backwards - plants absorb CO2, not methane!
The obsession with CO2, specifically emitted by fossil fuel use, for me indicates geopolitical motivations (for both standpoints).
- What percentage of anthropogenic methane emissions can be attributed to cow farts?
I would hazard a guess that the incidental methane emissions from one gas extraction field would astronomically dwarf the emissions from cow farts.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_emissions
fossil fuels contribute 33% farm animals contribute 30%
Not astronomically; marginally. Anyone who's been around herbivore farm animals will tell you they fart. A lot.
Then again, farm plants are a further 18%.
- Those fossil fuels emit what otherwise wouldn't be available in the carbon cycle.
A cow that's fed on gras and farts emits nothing that that gras didn't pick up and contributes virtually nothing to climate change in the long term.
- I imagine the fertilizers used for the grass to support the quantity and quality of the cows’ output require quite a bit of fossil fuels.
Otherwise, I wonder if non fertilizer supported grass could support sufficient cows to satiate demand (which has not even peaked yet).
- I didn’t say animal agriculture, I said “cow farts”. The animal agriculture figure listed on that Wikipedia page includes all ruminant livestock (mainly cattle, sheep, and goats).
Also, from that Wikipedia article:
There is accumulating research and data showing that oil and gas industry methane emissions – or from fossil fuel extraction, distribution and use – are much larger than thought.[35][36][37][38][39]
Still, my “astronomically dwarfs” looks to be overstating it by a wide margin.
- > Then again, farm plants are a further 18%.
Yeah, but they also provide 80% of the world's calories to animals' 20%
- > farm plants are a further 18%
Apparently mainly rice growing. I knew paddy fields were bad, but I didn't know they were that bad. Per calorie I am sure it is more like a tenth that of ruminants, perhaps less, but still worth replacing with other carbohydrates.
- All the more so since rice is relatively poor in nutrients.
- Isn’t it the case that much of the land used to grow rice is good for little else?
- With corn based feeding.
- It isn't the "cow farts" that produce most methane, but rather the anaerobic processing of cow dung emanating from feed lots, dairy operations, etc.
Grass-fed beef cattle whose dung is "recycled" in a more natural way in the fields produce the same emissions as would wild ruminants such as antelope, bison, etc.
The biodiversity problem in the above refers mostly to new land clearances intended for farming, including for feedstock. This is minor in N. America and Europe, mostly as the clearances were done decades or over a century ago.
- This Wikipedia article linked to elsewhere in this discussion gives the impression that the agricultural methane emissions are primarily a result of enteric fermentation by ruminant livestock.
- I would argue animal emissions do not matter at all, methane survives about a decade in the atmosphere. Eventually breaking down to co2, co2 that was already in the atmosphere to begin with. Fossil fuel emissions are the ones that matter.
- Not following your logic. A decade is a long time for such a powerful greenhouse gas.
- There were cows a decade ago as well. The herd size dictates a level in the atmosphere it does not constantly increase the amount of methane in the atmosphere, there is an equilibrium.
Increasing herd sizes increases that equilibrium level and that is partially responsible for the overall increase.
But there are mitigations that can be applied there are feed additives that reduce the cow related methane emissions to 1%.
Overall point is cow farts can be a drop in the bucket in the overall scheme of things, all we have to do is modify their diet slightly. Should we do it yes. Is it a huge issue no.
Industrial methane leaks are a bigger problem, that methane when it breaks down will turn into co2 that was not there to begin with contributing to global warming permanently.
- Look up the methane cycle. Methane is a flow gas. CO2 is a millennial gas that can stick around for millennia.
- You would be wrong, they are about equal in size, both accounting for about a third of the anthropogenic emissions.
- It's mainly burps. They chew their cud.
Cows produce around 50 kg CH4 per head per year. There's around 1.5 billion cattle. That's around 75 teragrams (million metric tons).
Humans release about 410 teragrams altogether. About 40 percent is agricultural. And another 40 percent is from fossils, namely natural gas.
The top 100 natural gas leaks release over 20 teragrams of methane a year. That's just the leaks. That's 400,000,000 cattle worth of methane just pissed into the wind.
- [flagged]
- >Yes in the long run that matters, but its all the more reason that we should reduce animal agriculture right away as the payback is much faster than limiting Co2.
The long run is the thing that really matters. A faster payback only serves to cover the impact of those that want to keep pumping up oil and gas in the meantime(also to make synthetic fertiliser) for a few decades. It shifts focus from that on cow farts. As if the rotting plant matter and wild animal life that could replace it didn't emit any methane.
- methane has less ir absorption than co2 and (as you said) a shorter half life.
- We have around 27 million cattle (in the US) today. There were something like 30-50 million bison in the US before we almost eradicated them. Were the bison equally bad? Or is the problem that we’re feeding these ruminants unnatural diets?
Incidentally, I’d love to see the Great Plains return to huge roaming ruminant populations, and find a way to build our meat industry around that.
- I think the problem is how we keep the cattle.
In natural environment, they cohabitant with other animals. They migrates.
When we farm them, we remove anything not our primary product.
- Beef & dairy the industrial way drive this. Several studies and decade long experiments show the positive impact of the non-industrial alternatives.
- And which do the vast majority consume because that is the only one satisfying industrial scale consumption needs?
- There's more nuance here than reducing consumption of beef and dairy. Moving over to regenerative farming practices instead of factory farming will also improve the situation.
- How about regenerative economics? I hate it.
- Even on a site like HN, where rational and logical thinking is held in high esteem, and where few could be suspected of climate change denialism, a factual statement such as this one from the article:
"On average, animal-sourced foods are associated with eight times more carbon loss and 14 times more biodiversity loss per calorie than plant-sourced foods."
is very likely to be countered by listing personal preferences, anecdata, concern for vegans' health or mockery of that lifestyle choice, and generally nitpicking.
Honest admissions like 'I am part of the problem and will maybe try doing something about it' are very rare.
- > Even on a site like HN, where rational and logical thinking is held in high esteem
That is until people are faced with stuff like this :D. Then emotions take over.
- The rational and logical is mostly an aesthetic preference, not lived value.
HN leans strongly reactionary and just likes to dress it up a bit so as to appear more respectable.
- If I can’t eat meat and milk, what is the point of living? What is the point of doing anything if we humans cannot live the way humans have always lived (our “nature”)? What’s more important, the climate or human nature?
You know what’s the best way to combat climate change? Kill yourself.
I understand wanting to restrict private jets and personal cars since these are wasteful polluters not essential to life or human nature, but criticizing meat and milk is just misanthropy.
- The key is "maybe try doing something", does not mean to destroy our culture. My child choose to be vegetarian but I just can not be bothered. I am too lazy. That does not mean I do not try to adapt. You can find the things that are wonderful with other ways of life.
- You think there's no point in living if you can't eat meat and milk?
Is there really nothing else going on in your life?
I'm sorry.
- Indeed, that's the same answer when topics like public surveillance or dependency-inducing media are debated. It's difficult to criticize a problem, when you're a part of the problem, respectively paid to be the problem.
- Ok but like, where do you get your protein? I'm sorry but bacon is tasty and I want to eat it.
/s
- Unfortunately, the priority is increasing efficiency and ROI, rather than sustainability. This leads to centralization and operations at a scale which are not sustainable, without external input or causing damage to existing nature. De-centralization and sustainable practices are the only way forward, as it has been for centuries before us on this earth. Maybe space is the place for these kinds of centralised and intensive practices, like being planned for data centers.
- "Efficiency and ROI" can be applied to financial but also to environmental impact. Producing more with less [land use/fertilizer/water use] is also a form of efficiency, and it's good, but it requires vast capital that mom & pop farms don't have + strong government incentives. De-scaling is only an agrarian nostalgia fantasy, it's incompatible with reaching climate goals.
- Does this mean we should be advocating for more intensive cattle rearing? Stockyards and special breeds may not be the worst way to meet demand and reduce environmental impact (measured by CO2/methane emissions as well as biodiversity loss, for instance).
- Managed grazing along with other regenerative techniques can sequester carbon in the soil. Factory farms have the problem of concentrated dung disposal which usually leads to letting it sit in methane producing conditions and also feed for intensive operations usually comes from non-regenerative crop farming which uses more fossil-fuel fertilizer and depletes the soil.
- It's far easier do avoid producing so much meat. A vegetarian diet is perfectly healthy.
- Stockyards are the worst offenders. This is due to how the dung is processed, which releases a lot of methane. Grass-fed cattle have much lower net emissions of greenhouse gasses.
- I despair. Is it that hard for us to imagine eating less meat?
- We need a new caveat cliche for these headlines like how people love to reply “in mice” to health research. For environmental research it’s almost always “in the 3rd world”
- But it's also not like we can just stop eating steak and milk.
- you can, but you can also just reduce it, you can eat say half the meat/milk. Eat more vegetables and grains. Not only massively reduces the impact but pretty good for your body too
- Yes we can ... but most of us (including me) don't want to. (At least not completely)
- With the ever growing popularity and success of the ketogenic diet, it becomes progressively more evident that a plant based diet is massively suboptimal for a not insignificant fraction of people.
- Our ecosystem dying is also pretty suboptimal.
- This has nothing to do with plant and everything to do with rampant prevalence of gut dysbiosis and harmful gut bacteria feeding on otherwise healthy fibers and carbs, as well as processed carbohydrate and sugar overconsumption plus insulin resistance driven by sedentary lifestyles, inflammation, etc.
Ketogenic diet is a band aid to both, not a solution, and plants are not the cause of either problem, either.
- You can do a keto diet without meat.
- we literally cant, human body its not designed to not eat meat
- Not quite true, but cooking becomes quite a bigger challenge.
But mainly, beef and meat is not the same, cattle needs way more ressources than chicken for example, or well, insects.
- But the human hand was designed to hold a banana.
- There are other sources of meat.
Also dairy is not a meat.
- Ridiculous comment. The human body is not designed at all, and is very much capable of surviving without milk and meat. It's not even very hard!
- Surviving and prospering aren't the same things, though. And you do need to mind a lot of substitutes you now need, if you just let go of meat.
- It's not *that* hard to prosper with even a vegan diet in the modern world, I know several who do fine.
Hardest part is knowing implicit animal ingredients you might not otherwise guess, which almost tripped me up when I visited the US and (as a vegetarian*) almost bought some yogurt before reading the ingredients list and finding to my surprise that it contained gelatine.
* it's mainly the cheese; I've substituted out other uses of milk. Also, vegan yogurt is a thing now, not sure when that happened, before or after that visit.
- There is no health reason to eat meat. You can get your B12 elsewhere.
- You can get it from supplements. That's about it though.
- Supplements if you're vegan, there are vegetarian sources.
Just looked up the Wikipedia page to check on vegan, and… looks like all the animal and plant "sources" actually ingest the stuff from elsewhere?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12Since only bacteria and some archea possess the genes and enzymes necessary to synthesize vitamin B12, plant and algae sources all obtain the vitamin secondarily from symbiosis with various species of bacteria,[5] or in the case of fermented plant foods, from bacterial fermentation.[86] - TBH fortified yeast flakes are a pretty good spice.
- It literally is designed to survive without meat, meat used to be a luxury that was only eaten on special occasions for most people in history, we only eat so much nowadays because it became so cheap
- And yet the most populous country in the world has an enormous contingent of people who do not eat meat (on the order of hundreds of millions).
- Sure and like half of them have anemia.
- who ?? if you talking about indian, they still eat meat (around 6 - 12 pound every year)
- Mean != distribution.
The mean human has approximately one ovary, one testicle. A few hundred million Indians refusing all meat is compatible with the others not doing that.
- “Indian” does not seem to be a sufficiently cohesive group to qualify referring to them as “they” (in this matter).
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/06/29/religion-and...
- Genuine question, can you explain why we can't?
- Theres a billion or so Indians that might suggest otherwise
- Milk products are very prominent in many Indians’ diets. I wouldn’t be surprised if India’s milk consumption per capita is the highest in the world, given a large proportion of Indians avoid meat, so they might source more protein/fat from milk products.
If it’s not, it’s probably just poverty holding back consumption.
Edit: upon second reading, I realize techterrier was probably refuting only the steak part of sudo_cowsay’s comment
- India is about 100th in milk consumption per capita, consuming less than a third the average of the top 10.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_milk_cons...
- It's also poverty holding back millionaire consumption.
There was a research, which I can't be arsed to google with mobile, that compared western vegan diet and Indian omnivore and, yup you guessed it, the western version was less costly in terms of future proof.
But as with the zillionaires the human predicament depends on weather we muster the courage to limit ourselves or die to the extinction that's already manifesting itself in forms like forest fires, droughts and crop losses.
- I am not vegan, but I found dropping beef and lamb to be literally the easiest modification to my life possible. Dropping dairy is much harder, but as I am now discovering still incredibly easy to reduce.
- Dropping lamb? Something tells me that won't be a problem for most of the people in this thread lol.
- You can eat bugs
- [flagged]
- Thing is, will be anything left after we destroy the planet with war, data centers, rare earth minerals mines, nuclear and battery waste?
- Sadly, this being Hacker News, it won't catch much attention and will be quickly flagged by people who have too much karma.
But I think we are making progress, slowly, sadly too slowly, with the current summer we are having in Europe, of the impact of our past actions in the weather. And make no mistake, eating so much meat and drinking so much milk, is a huge impact we are inflicting on our planet.
Please do not comment with "I do X" or "In our house, we avoid doing Y" - it is not about you and me, it is about society. I am convinced, you are convinced, we need everyone to be convinced.
- Everyone apart from a few stragglers agree the climate is changing. Most people agree the world won’t change its behaviour on its own to stop that.
So we can thus incentivise change (things like renewables being far cheaper than fossil fuel) globally, and adapt to reality.
There are a vocal minority whining about how we need to stop eating beef or milk annd stop using energy and there are those who make beef and milk more sustainable and make generating energy sustainable. I have time for the latter. The former can go hand out with the coal rollers.
- How do you make beef and milk more sustainable? I'm honestly wondering. To me it seems similar to saying: we can make coal power plants more efficient. Equivalent to more "efficient" (however you want to define that) forms of animal husbandry.
It doesn't change the fact that you're still burning coal, while you could be putting up solar.
- Okay lets get this straight, animals do not contribute to global warming. The co2 they emit has been taken from the atmosphere from plants.
Methane breaks down to Co2 in the atmosphere on average in 9.6 years.
Animal rearing does not permanently affect the climate.
Increasing stock sizes does increase the methane level equilibrium but there are mitigations to this, there are additives to feed that can reduce methane emissions to 1%. Last I checked a few years ago, there were pilot programs to determine effects on animal welfare and product quality.
The problem we should be focusing on is fossil fuels.
- > Methane breaks down to Co2 in the atmosphere on average in 9.6 years.
Despite which, over a 100 year period it has 25 times the warming impact as the CO2 it turns into.
> The problem we should be focusing on is fossil fuels.
Everyone should focus on whatever they know how to make a dent with, the "sustainable" emissions rate is 0.1% of the current rate which is essentially "we need to fix everything everywhere except for pick one of grassland or North Korea".
- Animal-emitted CO2 isn't the problem, but methane.
The CO2 captured by plants and eaten by livestock gets converted in part to methane, a more more potent greenhouse gas. This does eventually degrade back to the original CO2, but on a scale of decades, it's currently too slow to prevent accumulation of methane.
- FWIW, no matter the issue, this kind of tone makes me close up for any rational arguments. I wish I could look past it, but I just can't.
- It's probably not the tone. You only choose to hear that tone and close up. (From my experience)
I hold some fringe ideas, e.g. helmets are bad. So I have lots of experience with handling discussion where people close up for any rational argument. Because I am just wrong by definition. That really lets you explore how people react to ideas they do not support.
- Yeah, straight out denial of somebody's experience is another debate killer.
- Beef specifically. If everybody switched to pork, chicken and fish that would mitigate most of this and it's a much more realistic ask.
- I would much rather have Europe install ACs instead. Stopping meat, not installing ACs, degrowth all look like masochistic ways to show that we are repenting.
- It will be flagged because of the manipulative headline.
- cow farts lol
- Another way of saying the same would be: Agriculture causes almost 60% of the biodiversity damage linked to global farmland.
Yep, is the miracle of literature. An hectare of cattle allows more biodiversity than the same hectare of lettuce.
- The miracle would be to read the article which states the biodiversity damage is 14 times higher per calorie than plant-sourced foods. Which means you could reduce the 40% to 2-3% if you would replace it totally.
- You think cows are the only animals that require food production from farms?
- Seems causally false.
- What does that mean?
92 points by robtherobber 1 hour ago | 118 comments