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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

#171

Post by tomp »

ayngg wrote: post #82
analog31 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are its main points?

Arguments that meat take an excessive amount of resources are disingenuous because those resources cannot simply be translated to other uses, examples being that the water use example many tout uses rainwater would fall anyways, that livestock will eventually urinate meaning it isn't actually lost, and land used for livestock is mostly non arable land and therefore cant be used for producing crops anyways. Also there…

How would reducing food waste reduce emissions? After all food is just condensed CO2, eating it releases that CO2 back into the atmosphere the same as rotting. It’s a closed cycle.

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

#172

Post by throwawaysea »

adrianN wrote: post #94
GhettoComputers wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ideally it would be an accurate reflection of all externalities in the final price, but how about we do not try to prevent tackling one of the externalities with whataboutism on other externalities.

I think it is unfair to call this “whataboutism”. If there isn’t a fair accounting applied to all activities and externalities, then what you’ll see is that those with political power will regulate only activities that aren’t important to them, while what they value personally is allowed unabated. Put another way, unequal application will lead to oppression.

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

#173

Post by egeozcan »

Doji wrote: post #159
cjblomqvist wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought along the same lines. But whatabout methane being 10 times the pollutant?

It's a concern, but fortunately if cattle population stays constant, their portion of the atmospheric resident methane will also remain constant, because methane degradation will keep pace with emissions. Compare this to cars. Even if the number of cars remains constant, their contribution to the C02 pool grows every day. So we should avoid increasing cattle population 100x, but we wouldn't want to do that anyway bec…

I think there lies the problem:

> fortunately if cattle population stays constant, their portion of the atmospheric resident methane will also remain constant

I have the impression (as a person uneducated in this topic) that current levels are already too high, and the world population is only going up.

Is there a way to produce more food with lower emissions or should the main target be a steady population? Or both?

I know some people who started eating insects and stopped planning for kids because of this. Me? I'm just confused.

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

#174

Post by throwawaysea »

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…

Interesting. Would people be able to “buy” more budget? And how would that work for complex activities that have a chain of carbon producing activities. For example let’s take something like a bar. People visiting the bar to share drinks with friends are buying alcohol, which has its own impacts. The building the bar is in might be made of concrete, which has a carbon impact. The high frequency with which dishwashers are run there have an impact. Do all of these get included into the price of a drink? Whose budget does it come out of?

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

#175

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

axiolite wrote: post #161
swader999 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ironic thing is that speed limits reduce revenues collected from gas tax via better fuel efficiency from driving slower.

A mid-sized conventional gasoline car is more fuel efficient at 55MPH than at 45MPH. Pumping losses work that way. With improved aerodynamics, you could get that even higher. https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10312

Incredible. Thanks for sharing. I had no idea. What is “pumping loss “?

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

#176

Post by ovalite »

elil17 wrote: post #85

> The simplest way to cut beef output is for people to eat other animals instead, or become vegetarians. That’s like, in 1900, saying “the simplest way to prevent road deaths is for everyone to drive slower.” That’s not simple at all - that’s an intractable group behavior problem. What you really need is for the government to come along and put up speed limits. Most people will push those rules, a few will flout them…

As mentioned earlier, methane breaks down after 10 years into CO2 which makes livestock more part of the cycle rather than a producer. Applying the tax to any process that directly removes carbon sinks (eg. drilling/forest clearing) should take care of any downstream processes that rely on it.

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

#177

Post by axiolite »

Coal is a fossil fuel. Returning ancient carbon to the atmosphere.

Cattle is a bio-fuel. The methane/carbon they release was captured by the grains and grasses shortly before the cattle consumed it, and will continue growing after they've consumed it.

Cattle should be the trendy and expensive thing among the outspoken, virtue-signaling greens. It's plant-based. Contains all-natural ingredients. Isn't made in a lab/on an assembly line with a a bunch of chemicals with scary names. Old hippies should each buy a cow to keep their lawns mowed and fertilized without burning gasoline.

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

#178

Post by swader999 »

axiolite wrote: post #161
swader999 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ironic thing is that speed limits reduce revenues collected from gas tax via better fuel efficiency from driving slower.

A mid-sized conventional gasoline car is more fuel efficient at 55MPH than at 45MPH. Pumping losses work that way. With improved aerodynamics, you could get that even higher. https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10312

But much less efficient at 65 and 75. Pushing the wind eventually gets you.

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

#179

Post by wumpus »

adrianN wrote: post #124
hncurious wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revealed preferences don't match that rhetoric. - People are not migrating North in droves. They are not preparing in any way. - Nuclear energy, the only realistic solution to climate change, is not being supported. It's actually being retired early in many cases and replaced with coal of all things. - Property prices on the coastline are going up. President Obama, who has access to the best information and experts,…

People don't act rationally, that should come as a surprise to no one. Look at the number of people who are overweight, sedentary and/or smoke even though they don't want to die of cancer or heart disease.

Alternately, you could consider all of the people who don't think nuclear is the solution to climate change. Are they irrational?

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

#180

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #138
tobtoh wrote: post #79

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 ...…

Did you notice what drove the change in attitudes towards smoking?

Partly, it was generational. Gen X grew up hearing the evils of smoking in the 70s (TV and radio ads were banned as early as 1971), then with great admonition in the 1980s.

1982 was the year that the US Surgeon General announced that second-hand smoke was dangerous. That was the beginning of the end. Then shortly after the lawsuits started.

Boomers and the generation before did not have much of that influence in their formative years, even though warning labels were put on cigarette packages in 1965, they were mostly ignored because… marketing.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/settlement/ti...

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