Giving Up Meat Won’t Have Much of an Effect on Climate Change

Re:Giving Up Meat Won’t Have Much of an Effect on Climate Ch... by JoeAltmaier on Wednesday September 11, 2019 @09:24AM (#20939850)

How about cooking them? Refrigerating them? Selling them?

I see the idea of marginal cost is getting through. But consider all the costs to get a real sense of how the origination marginal cost contributes.

And don't dismiss transportation. It has to get home from the grocery store, in that 10-burger one-person vehicular trip through city traffic. That's a marginal cost too.

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Re:Giving Up Meat Won’t Have Much of an Effect on Climate Ch... by vegannet on Wednesday September 11, 2019 @09:34AM (#20939964)

You can make the same point repeatedly if you like but, as I've explained, the costs you're referring to are a very small part of the total cost and certainly do not come close to offsetting the gains made by cutting out livestock from the equation.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Giving Up Meat Won’t Have Much of an Effect on Climate Ch... by JoeAltmaier on Wednesday September 11, 2019 @09:42AM (#20940077)

Citation? I suspect you made that up, to score imaginary internet points.

Here's some data I just Googled:

  Car trips:  0.34 metric tonnes of CO2 / 1000 miles

  Burgers:    0.5 metric tonnes / year of burgers (150)

Producing meat is very-much commensurate with other marginal activities associated with procuring meat, like trips to the grocery store.

I'm done here.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Giving Up Meat Won’t Have Much of an Effect on Climate Ch... by Jill_the_Pill on Wednesday September 11, 2019 @09:44AM (#20940104)

Ok, but considering that you very likely would continue to eat in the absence of meat, the replacement foods usually need cooking, refrigeration, and distribution. These things are not particular to meat and shouldn't factor into a comparison.

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Re:Giving Up Meat Won’t Have Much of an Effect on Climate Ch... by JoeAltmaier on Wednesday September 11, 2019 @09:52AM (#20940192)

That's the opposite of the correct conclusion. Because the meat ecological component is dwarfed by the other activities, it becomes (ecologically) insignificant to stop eating meat.

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