You think it’s more realistic (and better for the environment) to farm seaweed at global beef production scale? You’d have to dredge up so much seaweed and ship it all the way to the cows, it would be insanely bad for marine environments and so expensive to do at that scale. Meanwhile growing feed from the ground can be done right beside the cows at rock bottom prices.
There are millions (billions?) of people that don’t eat cows, it is not unrealistic for people to stop eating them, culture changes very quickly
“I don’t know why we need birth control, people can just stop having sex until they’re ready to reproduce”
When you start your response from a place that is unreasonable, nobody is going to give you the time of day. Telling people to just stop eating beef is both unreasonable and just flat out not going to happen in at least several generations with many steps in between - if it ever happens.
I'm gonna invoke Poe's law here, but respond genuinely.
The only reason beef is so popular is because it's available. It's pretty inefficient in terms of energy input to calorie output and produces even more carbon as a byproduct of it's production. Carbon-cost wise, it should be seen as a luxury.
I also really don't think it would be an issue health-wise and diverting the market to other forms of food wouldn't really put too much strain on people's ability to provide enough food, calories- and protein-wise
> The only reason beef is so popular is because it's available.
Wait, what? Beef is popular because it tastes good. You don’t pay $50+ for a chicken breast, salmon filet, or pork chop. People consume beef because it tastes good. It’s “available” because people like it. If deer or bison sold for more than the price per lbs of beef, the cattle industry would collapse and be replaced overnight. But it doesn't, because people don't like the taste as much.
$20 for a steak, maybe. I would argue that $50 or even $100+ for a steak has far more to do with the scarcity (fillet mignon is, after all, a very small part of the animal) and definitely the status involved.
Also, bison absolutely cost more per pound than beef. Beef sells because it's cheap, not because it's expensive.
No offense, but you're either getting ripped off on the salmon or ordering a cut of steak that's the absolute lowest grade possible. Even decent steak is roughly double the price of salmon per oz. Something like waygu is 10x.
And yes, taste is subjective and the numbers make it pretty obvious that the majority of the population subjectively prefers beef.
Perception is not taste, I'm talking about your idea that "meat has to be better than salmon" that is you perception and it forms how you think meat tastes vs. salmon.
> Carbon-cost wise, it should be seen as a luxury.
Virtually every meaningful part of our lives is a luxury.
Your profile mentions you are a musician and artist: many many people in the world would consider your choices as unnecessary luxuries. In some parts of the world you would be deprived of your choices for the good of others. Surely we could even find people that would judge your art and music as a negative worth to the world.
A world where we only work for the minimum needs necessary to survive (food, shelter, etcetera) would not be worth aspiring for.
Whether or not music and art are a luxury, and should be eliminated because of that, is definitely an interesting discussion
Note that I never argued for the abolition of cattle production, just that it's carbon-cost is not considered a much as it should be (as is the case with most things, I think)
I also never argued against luxury goods or only working for the most efficient means of survival. Luxury is fine, but I think everyone in modern society is going to have to give up at least some amount of the comforts of modern society.
> [meat’s] carbon-cost is not considered a much as it should be (as is the case with most things, I think)
Oh, I strongly agree.
However the majority of the greenhouse gas contribution from meat is methane, which decomposes over many decades. So in the long term, not eating meat is expected to only decrease your carbon footprint by 2% to 4%[1][2].
But meat is expensive, and I suspect that whatever you substitute instead of purchasing meat would generate CO2, so my guess is the impact would be much closer to 0%.
Personally I use money as my proxy for calculating carbon footprint. So your long term footprint is highly correlated and mostly dependent upon your income and the economy you belong to, almost regardless of your actions.
Unless you are doing direct action to capture carbon, not having children, killing people, or reducing your economy’s usage of CO2, then action at an individual level makes very little difference IMHO. Not to say we shouldn’t try!
Edit: also note the 60% headline figure is of 35% agricultural emissions, so actually about 20% of personal emissions. And presumably that is very strongly dependant on the country you in (buying meat from).
> The only reason beef is so popular is because it's available.
You don't think cultures eating meat and integrating meat into their traditions has anything to do with it?
It's difficult to separate the chicken and the egg here because farming meat was super cheap, accessible and beneficial (nutritionally, environmentally and financially) for a lot longer than the last 100 years.
It's "good" to transition to a meatless diet for the sake of the environment. The world is going to have to massively change in order to do that, and the cultures and traditions of a lot of people are going to be casualties along the way. Please don't be so dismissive of that.
"Popular" was probably the wrong word. "Currently ubiquitous" would probably be better.
> was super cheap, accessible and beneficial (nutritionally, environmentally and financially) for a lot longer than the last 100 years.
Interesting sidenote, I recently heard someone talk about how cattle was an extra good form of livestock because it "converted" an inaccessible form of energy (grass, which humans can't eat) that would otherwise be sitting there useless, into a useable form. With (most) modern farming, this is no longer the case.
Note that I never argued for a meatless diet, or even a beef-less one, and I don't think going to that extreme would be necessary or even the best outcome. And I recognize that doing so would mean many many generations of cultural shift and concerted effort. Just that beef farming in its current form should be considered more of a luxury in terms of cost to the environment than it currently is
Because it relies on the majority of the population to unanimously change their mind and diets. Between economic reasons (alternative diets can be more expensive to a family that has no time to cook every meal), health reasons, traditional reasons, societal conceptions, and downright stubborn people, it's essentially not possible without multiple generations worth of effort. That's much less realistic than changing mandated farming practices which could be done in a matter of years.
Seaweed per year for cow population := 31,025,000,000kgs
Global seaweed production := 6,350,293,180kgs
So, we'd need to increase seaweed production by 5 times. We would then need to distribute this from the largest producers (China, Japan, Korea) the countries that consume the most (Europe, US). This isn't a problem that can be solved by mandated changes in a matter of years, and I have no idea what the CO2 output would be for this sort of production and shipping.
None of this needs to be binary this or that though. We can limit or eliminate our intake of meat products through personal choice AND engineer solutions to minimize environmental harm. We can do both and it does not have to be unanimous.
Also, there absolutely is a very real cultural shift happening right now that is embracing flexitarian/vegetarian/vegan diets.
I also don't have data on this, but I think there has been a much bigger rise in performative veganism than actual veganism. For example many popular twitch streamers say they are vegan, and then the next week viewers point out they are eating a cheeseburger on stream and they'll say "well I'm not today obviously".
There are millions (billions?) of people that don’t eat cows, it is not unrealistic for people to stop eating them, culture changes very quickly