So again, we can work on more than one issue, but why there is strong passion behind diet is that it's a very direct action and comes with other positives.
> Many are also passionate about it because there are other benefits that come with it - no longer needing to kill sentient beings (you probably wouldn't eat your dog, so why eat a pig who is of equal awareness and intelligence?)
Plenty of "sentient beings" are killed for crop farming. I am not even sure meat eaters cause more deaths than most vegans, specially if they are not pbd.
Do you realize that /more/ animals die from crop harvesting for feeding animals? Because if you aren't raising animals for food, you don't need to harvest crops for them. The net amount of crop deaths goes down.
Further, it's the fallacy of perfection - we can't stop all deaths, but we can do our best to get as many as possible unnecessary deaths to end.
Veganism is about what is practicable - i.e. what can be done in practice, not perfection.
One death for hundreds if not thousands of meals. That or seafood if you don’t consider shrimp sentient.
What's further, you're wildly under estimating how much food the death of one cow would give you.
These are all super common arguments against veganism and easily disproven
Wait, so just because you consider that it is not a requirement, it is ok? The reality is another and veganism could be ending the world and you would be defending a best case scenario that doesn't exist?
> Statistically it is not significant
Have you ever worked in fields? I haven't spent significant amount of time there, but I have spend weeks in a farm owned by relatives. I don't know what you call significant, but the meat processing that happens there is not "not significant". Rodents, snakes, even foxes. And all that without counting insects.
> These are all super common arguments against veganism and easily disproven
I don't think so. You are just using some higher moral ground to defend your position: "I don't want deaths; yes they happen but they are not a necessity for my beliefs".
All that without considering the damage we could be making to the human race. We don't know the impact of large scale veganism on long term health.
Rats and rabbits are killed all the time on farms, it’s just how it is.
> That is, while crop deaths may happen, it is not a requirement that it does.
I don’t understand how ignorance that your diet kills sentient beings is an excuse.
> We could in fact engineer machines that don't kill animals while harvesting crops
That’s not the case now though
What if the best way to decrease (unnecessary) deaths is to consume animals?
For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't eat my dog, but I'd eat a dog with no reservations.
You wouldn't much like the taste, or the act of it?
As an analogue, I might have a car I like. The car could be worth more to me than its fair market value because of an emotional attachment, and that may mean I prefer not to sell it. If I'm in dire need of money, however, I'd probably sell it anyway.
Livestock agriculture is the leading driver of climate change AND biodiversity loss. It emits more GHG than all forms of transportation combined. Additionally, if we would let nature reclaim the land that's currently used for livestock agriculture, it has the potential to capture >100% of the CO2 emissions until 2050.
Some recommended reading:
https://blog.yeticheese.com/eating-local-has-tiny-environmen...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4
https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987
Edit: This seaweed won't even start solving this problem.
I am pretty sure that's not correct, not even close [1]. Transportation is the main driver of gas emissions (28%) followed by electricity production (27%) and industry (22%). Agriculture (livestock and crop) is <10%.
In most countries, livestock can graze in areas where cultivations cannot happen (Australia is a good example iirc) and can help with soil health.
> Additionally, if we would let nature reclaim the land that's currently used for livestock agriculture, it has the potential to capture >100% of the CO2 emissions until 2050.
Most of the food livestock consume are leftovers of human-grade crops. So we would still "need to" have that cultivations going and throw the leftovers anyways. Or most likely some company would find a way to feed humans that.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
Total food emissions: 26%
Direct livestock + fish: 31% of that 26%
Due to livestock land use: 16% of that 26%
Due to crops for animal feed: 6% of that 26%
Due to supply chain (1/3 of total): (18/3)% of that 26%
Total: ((31+16+6+(18/3))/100)*0.26 = 15.34%
And according to this[1] Our World in Data article, transport makes up about 16.2% of emissions.
The analyses can differ depending on how far you "travel up the chain" of production, but it appears that transportation and animal agriculture are within the same ball-park, plus or minus 5% perhaps.
> Most of the food livestock consume are leftovers of human-grade crops.
This is incorrect. Most livestock feed is soy, and humans can and do eat soybean meal. About 98% of soybean meal is used for animal feed and only 1% is used to produce food for people.[2] For soybeans as a whole, only about 6% grown worldwide are turned directly into food products for human consumption.[3]
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
[2] https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/where_do_all_these_soybeans_go
I would like to see where that 98% really comes from, the links you posted talk about 70% (and most of that being consumed by poultry, not cattle). And even that seems excessive [1]. I would love to see a clear separation between the soybean. meal (leftover from oil and soybean grinding) and explicit feed grade soybeans.
[1] https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/coexisten...
That's right that Australia doesn't have a lot of natural forests, but even there natural vegetation is better at sequestering carbon than land that has been converted to be used for agriculture. But if you look at this map here [0], you'll see that Western Europe, South America, Southern Africa and South East Asia all have great potential to capture CO2 if we let the natural vegetation regrow.
> Most of the food livestock consume are leftovers of human-grade crops.
No it's not. Furthermore, from a protein and nutrition stand-point, the plants we grow today are enough to feed the whole world.
0: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4.epdf?shar...
To the extent that the problem extends much further than level of consumption of cattle, that is true. But if widespread adoption of feed can effectively reduce methane emissions from cattle, as you said it targets one of the primary drivers - that's more than a start. This helps you visualize the impacts of various solutions, notice what happens when all other things held equal you drop methane - https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=45&...
> if we would let nature reclaim the land that's currently used for livestock agriculture, it has the potential to capture >100% of the CO2 emissions until 2050.
This is a moot point considering that trees and plant numbers could be increased in many other areas, particularly where they are felled in high numbers, and not all pasture land is appropriate for plant agriculture or otherwise.
There is a short-term battle and a long-term one. We do need to curb emissions in the short-term substantially, which will require innovation and policy changes. Long-term, the fact is land encroachment and destruction scales with the population; we all have an environmental footprint, and slightly increasing its efficiency will never outpace and counteract the impact of perpetual population increase. It's projected to curb more in the future as more of the global population gets lifted out of poverty, and access to contraceptives is more universal - however, this could be accelerated. There's no reason we can't quash global poverty further right now.
This seaweed additive they propose is a distraction. Even if it would work, it's a band-aid at best. The real, more simple, cheaper and healthier solution is to make meat and dairy from plants directly.
What are you referring to when you say "usable land"? What means usable? Presumably you refer to agriculture and I'm not sure where your number comes from. 42 percent of the land acreage of Canada is covered by forests. This is the percentage forest cover by each State in the U.S. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_cover_by_state_and_terr...
> In which other areas do you propose to increase trees and plants?
Anywhere else appropriate.
> This seaweed additive they propose is a distraction
It's a solution, given that among the problems framed is the level of methane emissions.
> Even if it would work, it's a band-aid at best.
There has been research papers illustrating the impact of seaweed in cattle feed for years now - it works.
No one is framing this as the entire solution to global warming. If it can curb methane to that extent, it has a substantial impact.
> The real, more simple, cheaper and healthier solution is to make meat and dairy from plants directly.
We already have "alternative" products on the market which aren't that popular, but no actual lab-grown meat on the market. The "real" solution (to this minor subset of a larger issue) is one that exists, or could viably be cost-effective enough to consumers tastes. I see no suggestion that lab-grown meat would be cheap, or healthier, or simpler.
I'm not talking about lab-grown meat, I'm talking about plant-based meat and dairy. The most important thing to do is to creat plant-based meat and dairy alternatives that are better than animal-based products. It's hard but it's possible already possible today (e.g. see Impossible Foods).
> but I can’t help feel we should focus on the bigger, more high value targets first?
I don't buy this line of thinking as it makes the assumption that a society can't tackle or talk about multiple issues at once.
I’ve tried living mostly off soybeans and I can tell you, it was a depressing and miserable existence, at least for me.
I legitimately has no energy and felt depressed for a long time.
Yes I also ate other legumes. It just didn’t really work well for me. Maybe I’ll try again someday.
Even when I was vegetarian, I was freaking out about all the food that was imported and the emissions from that.
You’re kind of screwed if you do and screwed if you don’t. Which is the inspiration for my original post I guess. I don’t truly feel I can stop climate change via my diet.
I decided not to own a car and be more flexible with my diet instead...I’m much happier now.
People get very passionate about our food source being the cause for climate change but really, what about the real ultimate more severe causes?
Fracking, mining, burning coal and oil ? Nuclear and renewables makes these things obsolete, but we still need food.
Edit: Want to add I’m fully onboard with the east less meat crowd and minimising deforestation, but I can’t help feel we should focus on the bigger, more high value targets first? Worrying about food production feels more like a distraction ?