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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

#71

Post by quotemstr »

adrianN wrote: post #64
voldacar wrote: post #48

It feels like we are headed into a new medieval era of sumptuary laws and moral decrees promulgated by a decentralized international clerical-academic class. I don't think I like it very much

Better than being headed into a new medieval era because climate change caused civilization to collapse.

There is no universe where climate change causes the literal collapse of civilization. Exaggerating the risks of something just destroys the credibility of the people doing the exaggerating: consider DARE and drugs.

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

#72

Post by wumpus »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #59
wumpus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source that shows that it's not negligible? The carbon and water cost of 10 calories of grain is pretty large.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... The EPA site shows transportation and electricity as the main contributions to carbon. The grains are not the issue, the subsidies in the US are so strong that they are not a real factor. There is so much excess food produced they export it to other countries for instance. https://modernfarmer.com/2019/01/congress-finally-passed-a-n... https://abcnews.go…

Again, you apparently are willing to confuse the transportation cost of beef with the transport cost of everything.

Nice reference to Marxism.

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

#73

Post by voldacar »

adrianN wrote: post #64
voldacar wrote: post #48

It feels like we are headed into a new medieval era of sumptuary laws and moral decrees promulgated by a decentralized international clerical-academic class. I don't think I like it very much

Better than being headed into a new medieval era because climate change caused civilization to collapse.

I will not eat the bugs.

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

#74

Post by wumpus »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #66
wumpus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not quite the same. Many people seek to eat local. To those people a steak from 10mi away is not fungible with a steak 1000mi away

And that's totally fine! But that's not what I was attempting to discuss.

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

#75

Post by tasty_freeze »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #21
tfehring wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lower it compared to when? CO2 levels are much higher now than they were even 100 years ago. If we somehow managed to move CO2 levels back to 1950 levels is that really a problem?

Another problem. Say a given crop might do better with increased CO2 given all other factors remain unchanged. But that boost of CO2 from 300 ppm to 420 ppm also came with changes to the environment, so all other factors are not unchanged. OK, CO2 levels have gone up 35%, but if the likelihood of experiencing a rain-free period of more than 30 days in that region has doubled, having more CO2 isn't worth the cost.

*I made up the claim as an illustrative example. I'm sure there are myriad co-factors that come with the increase in CO2.

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

#76

Post by adamnemecek »

voldacar wrote: post #73
adrianN wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than being headed into a new medieval era because climate change caused civilization to collapse.

I will not eat the bugs.

There are plenty of alternatives.

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

#77

Post by wumpus »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #69
wumpus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that insulting people for virtue signaling isn't an objective thing.

Objectively, we should look at the largest percentages that are causing carbon emissions if the goal was to lower it.

I'm pretty sure that you could talk about carbon emissions without accusing people of virtue signaling. Try it, maybe it will work better than your current approach?

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

#78

Post by adrianN »

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…

Well, some meat production is obviously a sustainable part of agriculture. There will always be some areas where the soil is too poor for anything but grazing and you'll always have some waste that you can feed to chicken, pigs, and ruminants. But these sustainable levels of animal husbandry are so far removed from the industrialized meat production that we're currently doing that they might as well be zero. Recall that just a generation or two ago meat was something you ate once a week if you lived in a fairly developed country. Today Americans eat more than a 100kg of meat per year.

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

#79

Post by tobtoh »

As someone in the Gen X demographic who has never smoked, I've watched the anti-smoking campaigns and shift in attitudes towards smoking with interest - particularly how resistant smokers were to initially giving up smoking.

I feel like eating meat is going to be my generations equivalent of smoking. Intellectually, I agree that eating meat is bad for the environment, cruel to animals (esp industrial farming) etc ... but I can't see myself giving up eating meat.

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

#80

Post by [deleted] »

wumpus wrote: post #35
GhettoComputers wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have a source that shows that it's not negligible? The carbon and water cost of 10 calories of grain is pretty large.

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