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Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

economist.com

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Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#21

Post by GhettoComputers »

tfehring wrote: post #12
throwawaysea wrote: post #4

I can’t view the whole article due to the paywall, but I have to ask - where does this line of thinking lead? Does every pleasurable activity we might voluntarily undertake get scrutinized, regulated, or banned? I certainly hope not, since such losses of freedom can make the tyranny of the majority very real. It’s important that any potential policies are applied in a fair manner. For example, priced externalities sh…

There's nothing moralistic about a carbon tax - it's a Pigouvian tax, not a sin tax. The point of a Pigouvian tax isn't to say "I don't like that thing so let's tax it so other people do less of it," it's to say "Do what you want but don't make me or my children pay for the externalities it creates."

A decrease of carbon would many lower crop yields, could I sue for my lowered crop yields? The issue of a carbon tax is basically that politicians are only too happy to give more taxes, and would support carbon taxes regardless of it being good or bad.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#22

Post by seiferteric »

wumpus wrote: post #19
seiferteric wrote: post #6

power is fungible. Nobody cares where their electricity comes from. Coal is failing because it is not price competitive. Food is not fungible, so I am not sure what point this is making.

Lots of foods are commodities, so I'm not exactly sure why you think they aren't fungible. Soybeans, corn, pork bellies, ...

That's not what fungible means... A Watt is a Watt, a soybean is not a steak...

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#24

Post by wumpus »

fidgetspinner wrote: post #18

Hm, this seems to be missing the point that plant monocrops destroy the soil and are not nearly as efficient a source of food for the human body as fresh animal meat. Regenerative agriculture, which ideally requires both animal and plant cultivation, would be a better path forward if it could scale. If I remember correctly the papers that originally thought cattle were a big contributor to global warming turned out t…

I thought the main problem with cows was feed lots feeding 10 calories of grain to make 1 calorie of meat, not methane.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#25

Post by GhettoComputers »

wumpus wrote: post #17
GhettoComputers wrote: post #7

I disagree, its a percentage of roughly 10% according to the EPA in 2019. Here are the EPA statistics. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... I am all for replacing them with native buffalo, but this is overemphasis on minute percentages, this information presented is much too technology based and not practical, it relies on assumptions about plant based foods and lab meat (farming crops is t…

> interested in virute signaling rather than practical applications. Love the insult, I'm sure it helps the conversation along to a good conclusion.

Ill omit that then, I am getting used to using HN. Objectively, we should look at the largest percentages that are causing carbon emissions if the goal was to lower it.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#26

Post by timemachine »

throwawaysea wrote: post #4

I can’t view the whole article due to the paywall, but I have to ask - where does this line of thinking lead? Does every pleasurable activity we might voluntarily undertake get scrutinized, regulated, or banned? I certainly hope not, since such losses of freedom can make the tyranny of the majority very real. It’s important that any potential policies are applied in a fair manner. For example, priced externalities sh…

I don’t think that a magazine has the power to ban or set global policy on anything. They do have the ability (or perhaps the responsibility, as a free press) to to research, describe, and suggest alternatives to “every pleasurable activity we might voluntarily undertake.” That results in an informed majority, not a tyrannical one.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#27

Post by ginja »

I can’t read the full article because of the paywall but the main argument seems to be that cows emit a lot of CO2.

Ruminants eat plants, which contain carbon captured from the atmosphere. They then release most of that carbon back to the atmosphere, from where it will be eventually absorbed by plants again. So it’s a cycle where no new carbon is really being introduced (unlike burning fossil fuels that would otherwise stay in the ground).

Am I missing something or is the seriousness of this issue blown way out of proportion?

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#28

Post by GhettoComputers »

wumpus wrote: post #24
fidgetspinner wrote: post #18

Hm, this seems to be missing the point that plant monocrops destroy the soil and are not nearly as efficient a source of food for the human body as fresh animal meat. Regenerative agriculture, which ideally requires both animal and plant cultivation, would be a better path forward if it could scale. If I remember correctly the papers that originally thought cattle were a big contributor to global warming turned out t…

I thought the main problem with cows was feed lots feeding 10 calories of grain to make 1 calorie of meat, not methane.

Lets not forget the transportation of fresh meat is not negligible, the cooling and the fuel costs will add greatly to carbon emissions. Preserved foods and not relying on luxuries such as refrigeration would go a long way to sustainability and heath.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#29

Post by wumpus »

seiferteric wrote: post #22
wumpus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of foods are commodities, so I'm not exactly sure why you think they aren't fungible. Soybeans, corn, pork bellies, ...

That's not what fungible means... A Watt is a Watt, a soybean is not a steak...

I'm not sure why you think I said a soybean is a steak, but I meant that a soybean is a soybean, corn is corn, and pork bellies are pork bellies, when we're talking about things traded on the commodities markets.

Re: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

#30

Post by GhettoComputers »

jeffbee wrote: post #16
throwawaysea wrote: post #4

I can’t view the whole article due to the paywall, but I have to ask - where does this line of thinking lead? Does every pleasurable activity we might voluntarily undertake get scrutinized, regulated, or banned? I certainly hope not, since such losses of freedom can make the tyranny of the majority very real. It’s important that any potential policies are applied in a fair manner. For example, priced externalities sh…

The most straightforwardly fair way to do it is a carbon budget. If each person has some carbon budget and you want to spend yours on beef and I want to spend mine on motorcycle racing fuel, who is to argue we made the wrong choice? It goes back to one of my pet peeves that it is increasingly hard to find the kind of light bulbs I prefer, despite the fact that the electric supply to my home is powered by 100% renewab…

Do you just see it as carbon? What of the refinement of lithium ion batteries, the production of solar arrays and the toxic waste that accumulates from the production of these devices?

Ideally it would be a thermal budget rather than carbon.

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