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Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

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Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#101

Post by throwaway3957 »

elktea wrote: post #92

There's a good case to be made for humans being primarily meat eaters for much of our history and only eating plants as an alternative to starving - we certainly haven't had time to evolve to eat a vegetarian diet. Agriculture has only been around for a small fraction of our history and the skeletal record clearly shows how disasterous it was for our health. The current 'plant based' fad diet recommendations are back…

> There's a good case to be made for humans being primarily meat eaters for much of our history and only eating plants as an alternative to starving

To really contribute, it would be nice if you came up with some citations to your claim.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#103

Post by the8472 »

glastra wrote: post #75
the8472 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No matter what you feed them, compared to other livestock animals cows are a fairly inefficient at turning feed into meat, meaning you need to dedicate more land to agriculture when it could be forest instead and thus a better carbon sink.

Out of curiosity, which animals are more efficient? Do you have a source on that? There are, as far as I know, regions where the soil is only capable of growing pasture, hard to plant trees in.

for the first two questions refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio

> There are, as far as I know, regions where the soil is only capable of growing pasture, hard to plant trees in.

I assume that those areas would not be sufficient to cover current meat and dairy demands. If they were there wouldn't be any deforestation or soy fields for animal feed. And non-grazed grasslands is still going to release less methane than grazed lands.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#104

Post by elktea »

pawanrawal wrote: post #15

I am excited about the work Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are doing in this space. Creating alternatives with same nutrient content and similar taste but 1/10th the land usage and consuming less of other resources.

If they had the same nutrient content I would be excited as well. They merely look like a bit like meat. The similarities end there.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#105

Post by lm28469 »

Nyandalized wrote: post #2

I don't think people will stop consuming meat if you ask them nicely. You have to make decisions that will hurt the meat industry and make it infeasible. This would likely best be achieved through slowly dropping tax incentives, and transferring them over to alternatives so that people have something equally economical to today's meat.

Informing people might work for some [0]. That's how I reduced my consumption by 90%. If you truly want to do good and people are able to inform you that X is bad then you'll do your best to stop doing X.

Also, good meat is expensive and cheap meat taste like shit so it's a good move for your wallet.

[0] growing amount of people saying "I want to fight climate change but can't do anything myself"

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#106

Post by benp44 »

AndriyKunitsyn wrote: post #3

How about we put a ban on UN officials’ private jets first?

Because this isn't the problem.

In fact your defensive reaction is much more representative of the problem: that people find it so hard to accept that in order to avoid their children's lives being significantly worse than the lives we enjoy today, they may have give up a few fking burgers

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#107

Post by mklarmann »

maxencecornet wrote: post #67
robin_reala wrote: post #32

It’s also worth pointing out that even if you don’t want to reduce the amount of meat you eat, changing the type of meat can have big effects. For example (and ignoring transport to the consumer), lamb produces about 35 kg CO₂ per kg of meat, beef 25kg CO₂ / kg, pork and farmed salmon 8kg CO₂ / kg and chicken 4kg CO₂ / kg.

This If you really want to have an impact while still eating meat, just stop eating beef/lamb altogether The amount of food and water needed to produce 1kg of beef meat is just insane Eat poultry or fish instead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio >Cattle is the worst at something like 15:1. Aquaculture, specifically tilapia and catfish, is good at under 2:1

Yeah chicken is the best farmed animal on CO₂. They burn less themselves because they can cuddle and have it warm. And don’t need to run around. ... in their small cages

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#108

Post by sanxiyn »

ensiferum wrote: post #80

The real culprit is the uncontrolled population growth but nobody wants to talk about that. Ok, let's assume that people do indeed eat too much meat and that we halve our current consumption. Population grows until it has doubled and the meat consumption is then back to the same level as to what it is now. Eventually we can all be eating grass and rocks and there'd still be too much demand on nature crated by the exi…

> Ok, let's assume that people do indeed eat too much meat and that we halve our current consumption. Population grows until it has doubled and the meat consumption is then back to the same level as to what it is now.

This is a very strange assumption as UN Population Division predicts peak population at 12B, that is, the current world population will never double. That is business as usual without any intervention. Do you have specific reasons to disagree with UN Population Division?

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#109

Post by lhl »

Almost all conventional/industrial agriculture (plant or animal based) is unsustainable due to the external inputs required (70% from fossil fuels for growing corn! [1]), soil depletion incurred [2], and just plain shipping things around. [3]

The alternative is local regenerative agriculture [4], which the Rodale Institute [5] and a recent Quantis (non-peer reviewed) studies [6] point to being potentially carbon net negative due to carbon soil sequestration via regenerative grazing. It also appears to be more economically sustainable [7][8] and can provide competitive yields [8].

For those interested in reading more, I found a couple pretty lengthy (peer-reviewed) academic reviews on the topic to be pretty fascinating:

Rhodes, Christopher J. “The Imperative for Regenerative Agriculture.” Science Progress 100, no. 1 (March 1, 2017): 80–129. https://doi.org/10.3184/003685017X14876775256165.

Teague, W R. “FORAGES AND PASTURES SYMPOSIUM: COVER CROPS IN LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION: WHOLE-SYSTEM APPROACH: Managing Grazing to Restore Soil Health and Farm Livelihoods1.” Journal of Animal Science 96, no. 4 (April 2018): 1519–30. https://doi.org/10.1093/jas/skx060.

Pretty, Jules. “Agricultural Sustainability: Concepts, Principles and Evidence.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 363, no. 1491 (February 12, 2008): 447–65. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2163.

Pearson, Craig J. “Regenerative, Semiclosed Systems: A Priority for Twenty-First-Century Agriculture.” BioScience 57, no. 5 (May 1, 2007): 409–18. https://doi.org/10.1641/B570506.

[1] https://www.wur.nl/en/show/Can-conventional-agriculture-feed...

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/business/worldbusiness/26...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_agriculture

[5] https://rodaleinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/rodale-white-...

[6] https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/hubfs/WOP-LCA-Quantis-2019...

[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5831153/

[8] https://rodaleinstitute.org/science/farming-systems-trial/

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#110

Post by rebuilder »

tsherr wrote: post #9

The UN doesn't have the guts to target the task issue: too many humans. And recommend the only solution: one child per couple until we get down to about half the current population.

It's too late for birth control to help with the immediate problem of excess CO2 emissions.
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