Grist: Debunking the meat/climate change myth

[GliderGuider]

Debunking the meat/climate change myth

I am dismayed that so many people have been so easily fooled on the meat eating and climate change issue following the UN report. The culprit is not meat eating but rather the excesses of corporate/industrial agriculture. The UN report shows either great ignorance or possibly the influence of the fossil fuel lobby with the intent of confusing the public. It is obviously to someone’s benefit to make meat eating and livestock raising an easily attacked straw man (with the enthusiastic help of vegetarian groups) in order to cover up the singular contribution of the only new sources of carbon — burning the stored carbon in fossil fuels and to a small extent making cement (both of which release carbon from long term storage) — as the reason for increased greenhouse gasses in the modern era. (Just for ridiculous comparison, human beings, each exhaling about 1kg of CO2 per day, are responsible for 33% more CO2 per year than fossil fuel transportation. Maybe we should get rid of us.) (GG: That is the best idea in the article!)

But, what about the methane in all that cattle flatulence? Excess flatulence is also a function of an unnatural diet. If cattle flatulence on a natural grazing diet were a problem, heat would have been trapped a 1000 years ago when, for example, there were 70 million buffalo in North America not to mention innumerable deer, antelope, moose, elk, caribou, and so on all eating vegetation and in turn being eaten by native Americans, wolves, mountain lions, etc. Did the methane from their digestion and the nitrous oxide from their manure cause temperatures to rise then? Or could there be other contributing factors today resulting from industrial agriculture, factors that change natural processes, which are not being taken into account?

The fact is clear. It is not the livestock; it is the way they are raised. But what about clearing the Brazilian rain forest? Well, the bulk of that is for soybeans and if we stopped feeding grain to cattle much of the acreage presently growing grain in the Midwest could become pasture again and we wouldn’t need Brazilian land. (US livestock presently consume 5 times as much grain as the US population does directly.) And long term pasture, like the Great Plains once was, stores an enormous amount of carbon in the soil.

If those people concerned about rising levels of greenhouse gasses, instead of condemning meat eating, were condemning the enormous output of greenhouse gasses due to fossil fuel and fertilizer use by a greedy and biologically irresponsible agriculture, I would cheer that as a truthful statement even if they weren’t perceptive enough to continue on and mention that the only “new” carbon, the carbon that is responsible for rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere, is not biogenic from livestock but rather anthropogenic from our releasing the carbon in long term storage (coal, oil, natural gas.) Targeting livestock as a smoke screen in the climate change controversy is a very mistaken path to take since it results in hiding our inability to deal with the real causes. When people are fooled into ignorantly condemning the straw man of meat eating, who I suspect has been set up for them by the fossil fuel industry, I am appalled by how easily human beings allow themselves to be deluded by their corporate masters.

As an ecologically conscious person who is following a very low-carb diet for the sake of my health, let me say what a relief it is to have one less pile of bullshit on my plate.

[Demeter]

1. I have adopted the policy of ignoring EVERY article saying "Don't Eat This"

because it is bullshit. The only two things that have not been warned against are distilled water and pure sand.

As we have seen over the last 50 years, there's tremendous desire to manipulate people out of their own experience and into a mind-prison erected by government and corporations and some frankly weird people, the new Austerians of all stripes.

Why?

1. Well, the first order of business is to destroy fact and scientific method, thereby dumbing down America and the 99%, world-wide.

2. The second is to shape public opinion by scaring them, playing on the fears of dying of cancer in slow, painful ways. It's always been shown that positive experiences are much more useful for shaping public opinion....but that's science, you see. Review point #1.

3. A panic-stricken populace is easily driven off a cliff. Now, why would anybody want to do that? Is this their plan for reducing the burden on the earth caused by 7+ billion? Panic is a force not easily controlled...it's far more likely to leave the 1% swinging from lampposts than setting off WWIII.

[handmade34]

4. do you really think...

this is what they are lying to us about?

[pipoman]

2. I have been highly incredulous

Of these claims and have suggested nefarious sources could be overstating the issue....usually to be admonished for daring to suggest such a thing. ..

[handmade34]

5. nefarious?

Union of Concerned Scientists
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/stop-deforestation/solutions-for-deforestation-free-meat.html
Rajendra Pachauri
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/2/024005/article
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-014-1104-5
http://www.whrc.org/
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e08.pdf
David Suzuki
http://www.ciwf.org.uk/our-campaigns/farmageddon/
Bill McKibben
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/549

to name just a very few...

[handmade34]

3. "It is not the livestock; it is the way they are raised"

well... we would not be able to eat meat at the rate we do, if all livestock was raised as the author does...

the meat/climate change "myth" is NOT a myth and not a "pile of bullshit" Eliot Coleman seems to be a nice fellow and I agree whole heartily with his ways of farming and his ideology... yes, the problem is CAFOs, not eating meat per se...

the problem is the rate of consumption of meat; there is no way to maintain healthy production of meat to satisfy the demand that currently exists... the reality is that the production of meat is unhealthy for the environment, for the animal and for the consumer...

we can continue to eat meat without guilt only if we produce our own or commit to buying and eating only meat the way the author does...

[liberal N proud]

6. It is the way corporations are raising livestock

Confinement pollution generating livestock facilities, where they cram as many animals into the smallest possible space and let the waste runoff pollute the streams and the air too.

[GliderGuider]

7. The root problem is the number of people on the planet.

That single factor is what has driven the accelerating degradation of the human diet. The move from locally raised meat and vegetables to CAFO meat, refined (i.e. storable and transportable) starches and sugars, and the universal reduction in the nutritional quality of everything we feed each other has been forced on us by the need to get 2000 kcal/day into 7.2 billion people (and climbing).

If the Earth was host to a sustainable 70 million people instead of a hundred times that number, this discussion would not be occurring. It's not though, so here we are.

[pipoman]

8. It is a cost thing..

I have raised calves on my 5 acres. The meat is far better than commercial beef but I have to supplement the diet with purchased hay. After feeding the animal for 18 months I have around $8 per pound into the packaged meat.

[handmade34]

9. that does not dismiss

the fact that mass production of meat is contributing to global climate change and other environmental disasters...

we work with what we have and if everyone cannot eat organic, sustainably grown meat (under the conditions in which we live), than we should all eat less meat... even if one wants to argue that meat is necessary (not me... vegetarian here ) we don't need nearly as much as what we presently consume



Meat Consumption at Record High

Now more than ever, America is a Nation
of meat eaters. In 2000, total meat consumption
reached 195 pounds per person, 57 pounds
above average annual consumption in
the 1950s

http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.pdf

[GliderGuider]

10. The mass production of grain contributes as much or more to AGW and environmental disasters

Singling out meat is an ideological choice.

[handmade34]

11. I would be the first

to condemn agri-business, industrial farming, etc... the issue is the problem of feeding people sustainably... yes, commercial, chemical fertilizer based grain and crop production is harmful (still not as bad as livestock production though)... there are different and better ways... I would argue that we all can help some... not all, but many people could start growing gardens of their own (If you don't have two acres of land, even with a vegetarian diet that has the lowest ecological footprint, you can still maximize what space you do have by growing vertically or in containers), work in community gardens, support local sustainable farms,...



http://unchronicle.un.org/article/feeding-world-sustainably/

your argument that "singling out meat is an ideological choice" and "The mass production of grain contributes as much or more to AGW and environmental disasters" has been disputed time and time again by many scientists and researchers...

either way, we desperately need to shake up the way we grow our food and eat it

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12936963

The heavy dependence on fossil energy suggests that the US food system, whether meat-based or plant-based, is not sustainable. The use of land and energy resources devoted to an average meat-based diet compared with a lactoovovegetarian (plant-based) diet is analyzed in this report. In both diets, the daily quantity of calories consumed are kept constant at about 3533 kcal per person. The meat-based food system requires more energy, land, and water resources than the lactoovovegetarian diet. In this limited sense, the lactoovovegetarian diet is more sustainable than the average American meat-based diet

https://www.nyu.edu/sustainability/pdf/Fossil%20Fuel%20and%20Energy%20Use%202%20FCSummit-HO-20091207.pdf

As much as Americans love to eat it, meat is the least fuel-efficient food we have. Large quantities of energy
are required to cultivate, harvest, and ship animal feed, house, transport and slaughter animals, process and package their meat, and refrigerate it until it’s cooked.

[GliderGuider]

13. According to the FAO the world produces 8 times as much cereal grain as livestock.

Yes, livestock is more resource-intensive to raise, but on an absolute volume basis (and counting in things like deforestation and desertification around the world) I remain skeptical that meat causes more damage globally than grain.

But in the end, the quality of the world's food supply is going to hell so fast, and doing so much damage in the process, that arguing over how to prorate the blame isn't terribly useful.

[GliderGuider]

16. Your comment got me wondering

How much ecological damage (not just GHG) is done by grain production relative to meat production? Here's the result of a bit of Googling and Excel-bashing.

First, I wanted to decide a reasonable proxy for ecological damage. Such measures are hard to find across such a wide spectrum of agricultural products, so I settled on using "virtual water per tonne", that I found here in Wikipedia. "Virtual water" is defined as "the volume of freshwater used to produce the product, measured at the place where the product was actually produced". It's not a great measure, but it may be accurate enough for blogging - certainly enough to get the lay of the land.

Next, I found the amount of various grains and meats produced globally in 2012. This came from the FAO database.

Last, I found the caloric content of each product in its raw state, through Google.

Then I cranked up the Excel hamsters. This is what they told me:



Looking at the bottom line, we see that in 2012 the world produced about 9 times more grain than meat. Then we see that producing this grain required twice the amount of water as producing meat. If water use is a decent proxy, this implies that global grain production caused twice the ecological damage that global meat production did.

But next I looked at the calories produced by each product, and that's where it got more interesting. 9 times more grain production yielded 15 times as many calories, mostly due to the higher water content of meat. And to top it off, grain holds a 7-fold advantage when it comes to the water (or the ecological damage) required to produce a calorie's worth of product.

The way I read it, in the end we're both right. Grain production is far more ecologically efficient than meat production on a per-calorie basis. However, due to the massive quantities of grain produced, that activity as a whole is more ecologically damaging than meat production.

[handmade34]

17. it is not quid pro quo though...

it takes considerably more grain to feed the livestock than what is consumed directly by people

"All the fertilizer, tractor fumes, transportation, ground tilling, you name it, that go into producing a pound of grain are literally multiplied by 4.5 to produce a pound of chicken breasts, or by 20 to produce a pound of ground beef."

"Producing one pound of animal protein requires 100 times more water than producing one pound of grain protein..."

http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=29892


this is not ideology for me... I have spent my life farming, researching, living it and watching the results of irresponsible behavior... I care desperately for my children's and other's future... I won't give up doing what little I can to help... I have never and will never criticize people for eating meat (my partner does) and cutting out all meat is not the answer... but, reducing the amount and type of meat (and how it's produced) that we eat is important...

[GliderGuider]

18. There's no arguing with any of that.

I'm exploring this terrain because I've discovered that I have serious metabolic syndrome. In order to regain my health I have to cut virtually all starches and sugars out of my diet. The only realistic way for me to get enough calories in that situation is to eat more meat and its associated fat. Which goes against my ecological sensibilities something fierce. So this has forced me to look more carefully at both the biophysical and by extension the moral implications of eating meat.

[poopfuel]

19. get off all grains

It may be less moral to some but diet wise, it's the smartest because of the GMOs, the inflammatory and digestive conditions that come with eating wheat, it's best to eat grains fermented, the end. I guess this post crosses over into health matters, eh? Lots of avocado and coconut oil. Vegan is often a very harmful diet because people eat so many grains on this diet. Raw vegan ends up looking better. I agree with the move to cut out starches and sugars, that will help. Best of luck.

[GliderGuider]

22. That's exactly the course I'm following

Taking the advice of people like Nora Gedgaudas, Volek and Phinney, and Gary Taubes (oh yeah, and Robert Atkins, pbuh!). I've been gluten and lactose free for over a year now, and the results have convinced me to take the final step.

But when one's dietary requirements and ecological beliefs run head-on into each other like this, there's quite the cognitively dissonant crash!

Thanks!

[upaloopa]

30. I agree with you. I have just learned about most

Of what you said very recently and late in life. Not too late that it won't have a positive effect on my life.
Two good documentaries on Netflix are
"Food Matters" and "Vegucated"

It amazes me now the twists people go through to justify our unhealthy eating habits. And that includes me just weeks ago. Most of our information about nutrition comes from the food processing industries and uniformed doctors.

[The2ndWheel]

12. Seems like mass production in general might be an issue

Could reach back all the way to sharpening a bunch of sticks the same way on that one though. Build on that, then build on that, and then build on that. The steady accumulation of knowledge generation after generation could also be one of the triggers for our environmental issues as well. There probably is only so much damage you could do if you have to basically start over again all the time.

[GliderGuider]

14. That's the premise of Craig Dilworth's book "Too Smart For Our Own Good"

He calls it the "Vicious Circle Principle". We encounter a limit to growth; we develop technology to circumvent it; that relieves the pressure of the limit; we resume growing; we encounter a new limit... Lather, rise and repeat.

Our devastating evolutionary advantage has been a brain that is primarily a limit-removal mechanism.

[Nihil]

21. That *is* the underlying problem:

> We encounter a limit to growth; we develop technology to circumvent it;
> that relieves the pressure of the limit; we resume growing; we encounter a new limit...
> Lather, rise and repeat.

> Our devastating evolutionary advantage has been a brain that is primarily a limit-removal mechanism.

[GliderGuider]

34. It's what makes Homo sapiens an inherently unsustainable species. nt

[villager]

29. Exactly. The citation in the OP actually confirms the assertion, and the connection

Since the vastly excessive amounts of meat, consumed by voracious consumers, is only made possible by industrial scale "production" of cows, etc.

Plus no discussion -- not accidental? -- of the fact that cows were not evolved for American grasslands, etc. (above and beyond the fact they're made to eat other animal parts as part of the "production process.&quot

One reason that "bison farts" weren't an issue is that all those buffalo evolved to be part of an American grassland ecosystem.

So we are right back to the necessity of needing to give up, or drastically cut back on, industrial-raised "meat products" for the good of the planet.

[caraher]

15. A lot of important points here

Upthread it was noted, correctly, that using the methods advocated we couldn't consume as much meat as we do, which is absolutely true. Is it that there are too many of us? Or that we eat more meat than we need to or should? Probably some of both.

Maybe burger meat should be $8+/pound. (That's comparable to what we pay our local farmer for beef...) Certainly even at $4/gallon gasoline is ridiculously underpriced. Both cases involve not paying the full, true cost for a product up front, which in turn distorts our choices.

Homo economicus is the worst threat to its own continued existence.

[Nihil]

20. You summarise it well.

> using the methods advocated we couldn't consume as much meat as we do
> Is it that there are too many of us? Or that we eat more meat than we need to or should?
> Probably some of both.
>
> Maybe burger meat should be $8+/pound.
> Certainly even at $4/gallon gasoline is ridiculously underpriced.
>
> Both cases involve not paying the full, true cost for a product up front, which in turn distorts our choices.
>
> Homo economicus is the worst threat to its own continued existence.

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. 1 kg per person per day (people) is less than 6.7 billion tonnes per year (transportation)

The 1 kg exhaled per person per day has a decent source: http://web.archive.org/web/20110202140715/http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/fq/emissions.html
so that's 365 kg per person per year, or about 2.6 billion tonnes per year.
Transport in 2010 produced 5.0 billion tonnes CO2 per year (road) plus 1.7 billion tonnes (other) - source: http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/news_docs/pbl-2013-trends-in-global-co2-emissions-2013-report-1148.pdf (Table 3.1)

So the exhaled CO2 is about 37% of the transportation CO2, not '33% more' (maybe that should have said "33% of"?)

These, of course, are world figures; if you compared the people/transportation ratio for developed countries, the difference would be far greater - in the US, transportation was about 32% of 5.7 billion tonnes, or 1.8 billion tonnes; .365 tonnes/person is about 0.11 billion tonnes, or 6% of transportation.

[GliderGuider]

24. And of course there's the issue that exhaled CO2 is part of the short-term carbon cycle.

The release of sequestered carbon from burning FF is not. Exhaled CO2 adds little to the atmospheric carbon load, at least directly. It adds to it indirectly though, through the growing amount of FF we use to produce the edible carbon that our bodies then exhale.

I still think that reducing the human population of the planet fairly drastically is the only long-term "solution".

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. Total CO2 equivalent from grass-based v. mixed-system cattle

Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Ruminant Supply Chains – A Global Life Cycle Assessment:

Grass-based systems and mixed livestock production systems contribute 22 and
78 percent of global beef production, and 15 percent and 84 percent of global milk
production, respectively (Figure 6).

Average emission intensities for milk and beef produced in grazing and mixed
farming systems were estimated at 2.9 and 2.5 kg CO2-eq/kg FPCM and 42.0 and
38.4 kg CO2-eq/kg CW, respectively.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3461e/i3461e.pdf (p.24)

http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/resources/en/publications/tackling_climate_change/index.htm

The difference is less in temperate zones, but the mixed (ie including some grain) system still comes out with slightly less greenhouse gases.

[GliderGuider]

26. Thanks! nt

[upaloopa]

27. I disagree completely.

As the amout of meat that is consumed is increased the more cattle pigs and othe animals there are to raise. They contribute to global warming as we all do. Eat less meat then raise less livestock. It is that simple.

[stuntcat]

31. k!

[Bill USA]

32. I'm afraid this article is so much... well, bullshit - pardon the expression.

The article indicates:

"But, what about the methane in all that cattle flatulence? Excess flatulence is also a function of an unnatural diet. If cattle flatulence on a natural grazing diet were a problem, heat would have been trapped a 1000 years ago when, for example, there were 70 million buffalo in North America..."

This doesn't mean the cattle currently alive are NOT producing methane! reducing the number of cattle being raised would help reduce the GHG emissions.

then the author says:

"only “new” carbon, the carbon that is responsible for rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere, is not biogenic from livestock but rather anthropogenic from our releasing the carbon in long term storage (coal, oil, natural gas.)."

Yes, Cow pharts and poop are recycling carbon that was taken from the atmosphere to make the plant material they eat. BUT,. methane has 75 times the heat trapping capacity of CO2 (for about 30 years until it breaks down into CO2). So Cattle are replacing CO2 with a gas which traps far more heat than CO2 does - for roughly 30 years. That is not a benign factor.

It would help if people started eating more poultry and less beef. OF course, increasing vegetable intake would be good too, but not everybody can become a vegetarian.

the author states: "what about clearing the Brazilian rain forest? Well, the bulk of that is for soybeans.."

more BS.

here's what Mongabay identifies as the greatest contributors to deforestation of rainforests:

Today deforestation in the Amazon is the result of several activities, the foremost of which include:

1.Clearing for cattle pasture
2.Colonization and subsequent subsistence agriculture
3.Infrastructure improvements
4.Commercial agriculture
5.Logging

In Brazil, soybeans are grown in the grassland areas.
(emphasis my own)

DEFORESTATION IN BRAZIL: 60-70 percent of deforestation in the Amazon results from cattle ranches while the rest mostly results from small-scale subsistence agriculture. Despite the widespread press attention, large-scale farming (i.e. soybeans) currently contributes relatively little to total deforestation in the Amazon. Most soybean cultivation takes place outside the rainforest in the neighboring cerrado grassland ecosystem and in areas that have already been cleared. Logging results in forest degradation but rarely direct deforestation. However, studies have showed a close correlation between logging and future clearing for settlement and farming

Yes, reduction of our demand for beef would help the situation. Although, it looks like it's all going down the tubes anyway as we are not going to do the things we need to do, as soon as we should do them.

[stuntcat]

33. I wondered if I should keep kicking this but

but then I thought, Well the article was already five years old so why not?
Also a good place to post this -

Bye DU.

[GliderGuider]

35. You're really going? I will miss you.

You get it.

[stuntcat]

36. Years ago DU was the only place I could find a group who cared about the one thing I did

But now I found lots more people online, with the same knowledge, same concerns, and they won't all join in a thread patting each other's backs about supporting the meat industry.
Ok thanks bye

[stuntcat]

37. Report supports shutdown of all high seas fisheries

Last edited Tue Jun 10, 2014, 05:16 PM - Edit history (2)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140605083455.htm

Hm wonder why almost all this gets from Democratic Underground is nods and back-slapping? Three people who've faced the truth and evolved.. that's all.

Here's yet another movie that will do absolutely nothing to change anyone for the better- http://www.cowspiracy.com/

And here's a 77- year-old vegan bodybuilder -

&feature=youtu.be
He must not be healthy though, how could he be, right?

http://girliegirlarmy.com/lifestyle/20140512/top-6-reasons-youre-full-of-methane-if-youre-a-meat-eating-environmentalist/

[stuntcat]

38. this proud thread needs a kick, I think!

You'll all agree with the comments made on this article about the land, water and food spent producing meat! ->
http://mic.com/articles/92421/vegetarians-may-be-the-best-weapon-against-one-of-our-generation-s-biggest-threats?utm_source=dodo&utm_medium=content


http://science.time.com/2013/12/16/the-triple-whopper-environmental-impact-of-global-meat-production/

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2014-07-01/environmental-outlook-meat-consumption-and-its-effects-planet

[caraher]

39. It might be better to post some of the links from your last 2 posts as OPs

For instance, the article on closing fisheries is quite interesting, but that particular issue is just going to be buried in an old thread like this.

Fish and aquatic life living in the high seas are more valuable as a carbon sink than as food and should be better protected, according to research from the University of British Columbia.

[stuntcat]

40. UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet

But Democrats like the "mouth feel", the torture.. or all the nutrition, I'm betting y'all are a real fit bunch!

[stuntcat]

41. 51% of human caused ghg

http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf

http://blogs.agu.org/geospace/2014/07/08/livestock-flatulence-released-methane-oil-gas-industry-2004/