[brandmeyer]

I hear this meme all the time, and its absolute garbage.

The entire agriculture sector of the US economy produced 8.6% of US carbon emissions in 2016. About half of that is from fertilizer (soil management). Even if you impute the entire carbon footprint of us ag to beef production, combustion for transport beats it by 3.5x. Combustion for electricity also exceeds it by 3.5x.

Meat is a tiny slice of your CO2 footprint.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-01/documents/20...

[hypertele-Xii]

Reminder that the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed, in Brazil, as we speak, to grow more beef. Let that sink in.

[brandmeyer]

Beef is not to blame for this, though. Beef just happens to be the most economical right now. If it wasn't beef, it would be something else. Possibly soybeans since they are the world's largest exporter of them.

[Vivtek]

It's almost like Brazil is switching from a crop (oxygen) which pays nothing to another (beef - or literally any other use of that land) which will.

If the richer nations cared about the Amazon rainforest, we'd pay rent on it.

[fartcannon]

It's not to grow beef, it's to make money. If we all went vegan tomorrow, they'd grow soybeans there.

Now lets start to argue over what plants to replace the rainforest with and we've lost to point.

The rain forest is being destroyed for greed. Fix greed and you can fix the planet.

[hypertele-Xii]

Human consumption of soybeans requires less farmland than human consumption of beef, because humans can eat the plants the cows would've needed to eat.

So less rainforest needs to be felled for the same amount of nutrition.

Arguing what the land should be used for is the point. Some uses are more destructive than others.

"If we didn't put gasoline in our vehicles, we'd just put something else in them, so arguing over what to put in our vehicles for fuel is besides the point."

[asdff]

Whether they grow soybeans or beef or doing whatever they are cutting the same amount of trees. The crop choice doesn't change the fact that forests aren't protected, and the market will expand to fill available space like a gas.

[hypertele-Xii]

Have you ever cut a tree? It's hard work. No one clears forest unless it makes for profit. If beef doesn't sell, there's no need for excess farmland.

[asdff]

If beef doesn't sell the landowner will grow something else that does sell. They own the land, they don't want it to sit idle.

[Vivtek]

Brazil is well within their rights to say, "Fuck you. Pay me."

[bookofsand]

The Amazon rainforest is being destroyed to grow more money. Money is fungible, if beef were banned they's cut the forest to do something else with the land.

[david422]

If it's being cut down for beef it _might_ be cut for something else. You can only control what you can control. Maybe ecotourism would be more lucrative if beef were off the market.

[uxcolumbo]

Meme?

That research was done by Oxford University over a 5 year period.

It's not a meme - it's scientific research.

But I get it, it's easier to label it a meme, so we can continue our destructive lifestyle.

And it's not just about GHG, it's also about biodiversity and habitat loss caused by the large scale animal agriculture industry.

But hey, burgers first, right?

And screw future humans having to live on a more hostile planet.

[cmurf]

Well, ironically, the behavior will eventually make the planet less hospitable to humans. Fewer humans, fewer problems. We either adapt to continue. Or we end. Just like millions of other already extinct species.

I think humans needed to be this remarkably selfish to get to this point. But now selfishness risks a quick demise. Quick as in faster than evolution can be an aid.

If there isn't a technical solution that's economically and politically equitable, we will end.

[brandmeyer]

Other way around. Misinformation about climate impacts leads to poor choices. Replacing your electricity with personally-owned solar, upgrading your vehicle to a high-efficiency hybrid or electric, and lowering your HVAC costs on your home are all far more impactful to your CO2 footprint than changing your diet.

[uxcolumbo]

So Oxford Uni and other academic institutes are now spreading misinformation. Ok got it.

And buying solar panels and upgrading to a hybrid or electric car which costs thousands is easier than replacing your meat burger with a plant-based meat burger. Makes total sense and lets ignore biodiversity and habitat loss while we're at it.

Why not do both?

Why not eliminate / reduce consumption of large scale dairy and meat products AND use renewable energy sources?

Surely you would agree doing both is actually even more impactful, no?

[gdubs]

The EPA graphs on Agriculture emissions are misleading. They don’t include things like the petrochemical production that goes primarily to creating fertilizer, the transportation costs that are baked into the global food production system, and they don’t adequately account for land use change related to agriculture. On land use alone, if we ignore the fact that natural forests have been destroyed for mono crop animal feed production, we’re missing a huge carbon sink. That land wasn’t always farm land.

[brandmeyer]

I urge you to read the report. It is quite accessible by the lay reader without resorting on the media to filter it for you.

For example, there are detailed models and measurements for both soil management (significant) and fertilizer (negligible).

[gdubs]

I have read the entire report — several years ago. I also own a farm that’s converting from conventional to regenerative practices, and around 20 acres of conservation projects to restore natural savanna and oak woodland.

What you’re seeing under Agriculture fertilization is the application of fertilizer, not the production of it. They’re talking about the c02 released by using it, or the c02 expended generating the fertilizer in the first place.

Land use change is an entirely different category in the report. So even though the reason we’re changing land use is to farm feed crops for animals primarily, it’s listed as it’s own thing.

It goes on and on.

For an actually accurate picture of how land and agriculture actually affect the climate, see the incredibly well-researched, encyclopedic book “The Carbon Farming Solution”.

[brandmeyer]

There are separate line-items for the industrial process to create urea and the release after application to soil. Both of them are very tiny fractions of the total CO2 budget.

[gdubs]

It sounds like you feel strongly that agriculture is accurately represented by this very outdated EPA assessment. I really don’t have time to have a drawn out debate on it and we’ll have to agree to disagree.

But for you or anyone else who wants to see an alternative take, a quick search pulled up this McKinsey analysis which, while I’ve only skimmed it, seems much more in line with my understanding which is that agriculture — when fairly measured — represents more like a quarter of our emissions. And there’s no getting around the fact that the vast majority of that is currently tailored towards meat production, directly or indirectly.

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/agricul...