Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
If the non-food products (which account for about 40% of the animal) are accounted for, the food-CO2 falls by ~40% to about 51.
This doesn't seem to take into account methane production and its effect on the climate either, which would probably put cows and pigs much higher.
Right. Cattle produces a lot more than just beef. Leather, horns, bones, and hooves are additional products that come from the cow. Then there's all the animal feed and plant fertilizer that come from the less desirable parts of the cow. I wonder what the carbon footprint is when the entirety of the cow is taken into account. No part of the animal is wasted during rendering.
Another "fun" chart on various food sources green house gas emissions adjusted per kilogram of food product.
I love how the chart breaks cows into multiple categories making it look that much smaller even though it's still chart topping.
Edit: Oddly enough they're citing the same data in both the one I link and OP's link.
Why is Kilograms of food product the one axis? shouldn't it be kcals or something?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore
They have that too. Beef is still the worst by a huge margin
Though this is a great chart, it isn't quite the whole picture either for climate impact. Almonds and almond milk get to be a lot worse alternative option if you consider the water consumption concerns where they are grown in California. They have many similar charts that attempt to quantify holistic carbon footprint.
Long story short, though not eating animal products is best for the environment, even just eating beef less often and not worrying about eggs and chickens can get you to over half the climate impact of full veganism and is a much easier transition for some.
it's basic physics: animal products consume more energy (calories) than they produce in food because they exert energy on living - moving, eating, converting food to energy, etc.
Eating a plant directly (or with comparable processing to meat) means less wasted energy (as in calories burned compared to calories produced as food) simply because you're going one step higher (lower?) in the food chain to obtain that energy.
Would it make more sense to compare based on calories and not weight? Since you need to eat more tofu than beef for the same calorie intake. If my math is right, tofu is about 760 kcal per kg while beef is 2500 kcal per kg so that makes it ~34 grams of CO2 per kcal for beef and ~3 grams of CO2 per kcal for tofu.
Definitely tofu is still better obviously, just wanted to compare with that metric. Not sure if it makes more sense or not.
The website has a graph for that and for protein as well. It's pretty neat
Isn't air travel and large ships far worse for the environment? I don't mean to derail a conversation, but I suspect that air travel and ocean liners have a significantly bigger impact and I don't see as much coverage on that issue.
Fortunately, we have a series of tubes connecting every computer on the planet that can help answer questions like this!
In short Aviation (1.9%) and Shipping (1.7%) are smaller than Livestock & Manure (5.8%) even before factoring in the secondary impacts that are largely driven by the livestock industry, like land use change, soil loss, and deforestation.
If you're specifically talking about transportation emissions for food, there's a graph for that as well!
Supply chain represents ~18% of the overall food footprint, smaller than livestock and land use changes.
Talking meat specifically, the transportation emissions are a tiny piece of their overall footprint, as is shown in the OP.
Damn these charts are nicely made.
Agriculture makes up a full quarter of our total emissions. Some of that is because of shipping it, of course, but there is absolutely no question whatsoever that agriculture is a huge contributing factor to climate change
Data about greenhouse emissions from transportation is talked about more frequently than any other source in my experience. I don't see the relevance to this data as beef and tofu can be produced locally or shipped overseas, so the emissions to produce the product would be a separate discussion versus emissions in transit.
I don’t see as much coverage on that issue.
No, there's plenty of coverage. If anything, there isn't enough coverage on animal agriculture because people can't fathom a world where they don't eat meat (or even just significantly reduce their consumption).
I didn't realize that there was a direct correlation between CO2 expenditure during food production and the final product's flavour
I don't like tofu. I like other meat substitutes but idk tofu is not the greatest comparison to meat in my opinion
I always find the comparison between tofu and meat a bit unfair, as it wasn't invented for that purpose. In many asian cultures it is simply a thing in its own right, only we in the West have popularized it as a meat substitute and I don't think that does tofu justice.
other meat substitutes
Tofu is not a meat substitute. Tofu is just tofu, unless someone specifically picks it as a substitute for meat and sticks to it, in which case I guess it's their personal substitute for meat.
Tofu is not a meat substitute.
Correct, however I believe it has been commonly accepted as a such because of its protein content... just clarifying what I think people mean here
I'm all in for reducing beef consumption, not just because of the green aspect but also health... having said that, this is yet another fool's errand the masses have been set to follow:
You know who says changing beef consumption is impossible so it's meaningless to even try? Beef industry spokespeople.
I mean, what's more impossible - changing Western dietary habits or changing the entire structure of capitalism and representative democracy that allows rich people to own private jets?
I was curious and went looking because I suspected it was low emissions but not how low. Research seems to suggest Kangaroo meat is significantly lower GHG per kg than tofu!
In our calculations we use 1.30 CO2 equivalents for one kilogram production of kangaroo meat which is an average of the estimates reported in the literature
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5308823/
From a quick glance, it seems they didn't consider emissions coming from exporting kangaroo meat abroad. Though I fancy the total will still be way lower than the alternatives.
This paper focuses on Australian domestic consumption although transportation is still a factor especially with the sheer size of Australia.
I guess it’s good news that Kangaroo thrive basically anywhere that isn’t sand dunes
Can I get some numbers on a bottle of Gochujang sauce?
anywhere that compares by calorie? just curious
Someone shared below, but here you go: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore
oops forgot to update comment when I saw that. thanks tho
Why is beef from a beef herd worse than beef from a dairy herd?
I think just because dairy cows live longer. Beef cows are killed younger, you don't need to wait until their milk production dwindles. It's not clear if accounting for the milk carbon footprint was taken into account or not.
The carbon that we dig out of the ground and put in the air, that is the ony one relevant to global warming. Everything else is just a change of phases in a cycle.
this is based on the poore-nemecek study and should not be regarded as "true". it's "true if they methodology reflects reality" but it does not.
Can you expand on that or at least link me to the people smarter than me?
I can just tell you: they did some looking at each production process and the inputs and outputs, then extrapolated it out to global scale.
The problem is that inputs and outputs vary wildly from place to place, that’s why some places are all corn and beans and others are cattle and yet others are something else. Given those differences are because of the economic inputs varying as opposed to the environmental inputs and outputs varying.
You can’t just go around to all the beef producers in the county and figure out how their operation works then multiply it by however much to fit the world scale because the rest of the world might be doing it wildly differently.
Although while I see the criticism of their methodology I think it means things are actually way worse, not better in terms of the environmental impact of beef.
Beef and tofu and not nutritionally equivalent.
Did I have some sort of a stroke or something? Am I hallucinating graphs that don't exist? Is OPs chart only showing tofu as an alternative and I just imagined the dozen or so other foods on the list that can be mixed and matched to build a nutritious meal with a significantly lower carbon footprint than beef?
Someone please send help, because all of these beef shills have me convinced that there are only two foods and we must all choose just one in the great food war
I think GP is suggesting that, for a better picture, you also need to include stuff like the CO2 emissions from the vitamins you'll need to eat to balance the nutritional deficit. Given how bad meat is for the environment, it wouldn't surprise me that the total balance is still way worse for meat.
Somehow I feel the need to clarify I'm not shilling for beef, but extra vitamins is something that my vegetarian SO constantly has to be keep in mind.