Eating Less Meat Helps Protect the Planet From Climate Change

Smellyman

meat dumps and veg dumps are quite different.

HughFreakingDillon

Smellyman said:

meat dumps and veg dumps are quite different.

hence the name, smellyman, i'm guessing. 

pearljammr78

Smellyman said:

meat dumps and veg dumps are quite different.

So are the farts 💨 to be honest. 

Spiritual_Chaos

The Amazon is burning because the world eats so much meat

While the wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest may constitute an "international crisis," they are hardly an accident.

The vast majority of the fires have been set by loggers and ranchers to clear land for cattle. The practice is on the rise, encouraged by Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's populist pro-business president, who is backed by the country's so-called "beef caucus."

While this may be business as usual for Brazil's beef farmers, the rest of the world is looking on in horror.

So, for those wondering how they could help save the rainforest, known as "the planet's lungs" for producing about 20% of the world's oxygen, the answer may be simple. Eat less meat.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/23/americas/brazil-beef-amazon-rainforest-fire-intl/index.html

Spiritual_Chaos

Spiritual_Chaos

Ofc the US is ranking as "shitty as hell" when it comes to this metric too. When will they ever surprise in a positive way? For being "the greatest experiment on earth" they sure are shit in many, many ways. 
 

mickeyrat

got something from this decade?

Meltdown99

https://community.pearljam.com/discussion/281411/eating-less-meat-helps-protect-the-planet-from-climate-change/p1
https://community.pearljam.com/discussion/281519/the-amazon-rain-forest-is-on-fire-and-no-one-is-talking-about-it/p1

Can never have enough threads on the same topic...of course maybe this is a grab for attention.

I eat Canadian meat...not SA.

Spiritual_Chaos

Meltdown99 said:

I eat Canadian meat...not SA.

https://api.worldanimalprotection.org/

Spiritual_Chaos

benjs

Spiritual_Chaos said:

Given your graph posted above in this page, that shows that the USA is one of very few nations that eats as much meat per capita as it is, I find the title of this graph misleading. If it's "Animal-based vs. Plant-based", compare "Animal-based vs. Plant-based", not the most extreme version of animal-based (the standard American diet). 

Also, after visiting the site (https://plantricianproject.org/food-math-101), I have more comments.
-The only source for anything to do with land-use yields are two books - one called "Diet for a Small Planet" written in 1971 by Moore, one called "Diet for a New America" written in 1987 by Robbins.
-"Diet for a Small Planet" is falsely claimed to be written in 1982 - it was in fact written in 1971, which is important because...
-The sourcing explains, "[Moore's] numbers were 3.25 acres which equals 2.5 football fields; so we used a more conservative two football fields assuming that some agricultural efficiencies have been gained since 1982." While I don't know about the agricultural efficiency changes between those two dates, Our World in Data tells a story of massive efficiency boosts - https://ourworldindata.org/yields-and-land-use-in-agriculture

Finally, how many people does this mean we need to convince to move to a plant-based diet? And how are the efficiencies if we can't get everyone on board? What about the cost to repurpose the land for new crops, who bears those? And why should chicken coops decide to close down and pivot to kale? In terms of the abundance of livestock we have today, should we slaughter them all and have a big barbecue, to at least prevent the ongoing expulsion of methane (would vegans participate in that? It's ethically motivated), or will the new vegans adopt pet cows? How will we mitigate protein deficiencies and dietary training when we can't get that right even when we can chemically alter food so it tastes good - how are you going to sell a fat kid on arugula and tofu when he's used to KFC that his parents fed him regularly? And how much time have we got again? 

Obviously I've got a mix of real and rhetorical questions on here, but I think my sentiments of 'not keeping my fingers crossed for a future based on current evidence' are quite clear.

Meltdown99

Eat your plant diet and I’ll eat meat...

mickeyrat

Meltdown99 said:

Eat your plant diet and I’ll eat meat....

how do you like em? Prefer mine med rare.....

mace1229

Are we talking American football field, Canadian, indoor, or soccer? All are very different. 

CM189191

mace1229 said:

Are we talking American football field, Canadian, indoor, or soccer? All are very different. 

Indoor field seems inefficient to grow crops so problem not that one

Go Beavers

rgambs said:

Meltdown99 said:

1 thing...the price of meat here in Canada has to be forcing people to eat less meat.

Have you compared the price of vegetables on a protein basis?
I am very fitness-oriented and very conscious of my protein intake, and it would cost me a fortune, almost double, to get the same level of protein without meat.  

We do meatless meals 2-3 times a week and we are trying to take it another step forward, but it's tough.

Really? How many grams of protein a day are you shooting for? I only eat seafood once every week or two, otherwise I find it easy and pretty cheap to get my protein with dairy and plant based food. Meat seems pretty spendy. 

mickeyrat

  https://www.caloriesecrets.net/the-difference-between-animal-and-plant-protein-and-why-you-should-care/

josevolution

Smellyman said:

brianlux said:

It's always interesting to me when someone makes a true statement like "Eating less meat helps protect the planet from climate change", and then other people get on the post and start talking about how much they like meat.  Well yeah, OK fine, but what does that have to do with the fact presented in the statement? 

PJPOWER said:

My family and most in my neck of the woods use regenerative ranching practices, so I’m going to eat a steak that my family raised tonight and not feel guilty about it in the least:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilyeoh/2018/04/14/going-vegan-eating-sustainable-beef-can-be-good-for-the-environment/

I eat meat rarely but when I do, that is what I look for as well.  But the fact remains, eating less meat/ eating lower on the food chain is better for the planet.  If 7.7 billion people ate beef every day, no way would that be sustainable.

Because people are dicks.

I am vegan, but never mention I am to people anymore because invariably they start saying 'I am going to eat a burger, love dead cow.  Or bacon give me some pig. hahaha yum yum yum.'

That is awful that people say crap like that to people who don’t eat meat , to me I find that not eating meat is a lot harder than people realize ..

HughFreakingDillon

mace1229 said:

Are we talking American football field, Canadian, indoor, or soccer? All are very different. 

if only the NFL knew the difference, there wouldn't have been that debacle in my city last week. 

rgambs

Go Beavers said:

rgambs said:

Meltdown99 said:

1 thing...the price of meat here in Canada has to be forcing people to eat less meat.

Have you compared the price of vegetables on a protein basis?
I am very fitness-oriented and very conscious of my protein intake, and it would cost me a fortune, almost double, to get the same level of protein without meat.  

We do meatless meals 2-3 times a week and we are trying to take it another step forward, but it's tough.

Really? How many grams of protein a day are you shooting for? I only eat seafood once every week or two, otherwise I find it easy and pretty cheap to get my protein with dairy and plant based food. Meat seems pretty spendy. 

Dairy helps keep the price down, but I'm a bit intolerant so I have to limit dairy somewhat.
Yogurt isn't a problem so that's nice because it's inexpensive and has a very good protein/calorie ratio.
I shoot for 160g/day but usually fall short.

Good quality meat is expensive, for sure, but tuna packets and CAFO chicken breasts are cheap as shit.  
Good quality produce is absolutely more expensive than cheap meat and provides less nutritional benefit.  
To boot, good quality fruits and vegetables are next to impossible to buy in many places, the Midwest being one of them.