this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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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: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 31 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I would hazard saying "environmentally effective" here unless we are willing to ignore some of the other large environmental issues with meat production outside of just green house gases emission. Plant-based foods are lower not just on GHG emissions, but water usage, land usage, eutrophication, fertilizer usage^1^, etc.

There's all kinds of other pollutants such as Nitrogen runoff. The rise of the pig farming is has helped fueled a crisis in Nitrogen runoff in the Netherlands for instance

There's the high level of antibiotic usage to maintaining the high levels of production fueling antibiotic resistance.

And so on.

If we do want to look at the suffering, we should also note that chicken farming does not just keep things the same, but actually makes it worse with more chickens required than other creatures due to their smaller size.

^1^ Even less synthetic fertilizer even compared to the maximal usage of manure per https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344922006528

EDIT: I should also mention that land use change (deforestation) factor can change as you rapidly increase these industries size. Deforestation makes up a large portion of beef's current emissions. Plant-based foods require overall less cropland due to not needing to grow any feed and removing that energy loss. This is not the case for chicken production. Currently beef does make up the majority of Amazonian deforestation, however, the second largest portion is growing animal feed primary for chickens. Switch from beef to chickens and you might risk just moving around where the deforestation comes from

[–] rimu@piefed.social 17 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yes. Sloppy choice of words on my part but this is a climate change topic, here.

Chicken meat uses 4x less water than beef. I'm not disputing your point, just firming up the perspective for anyone lurking.

chicken vs beef

Clearly, vegetables are way way better. But in terms of what kind of behavior change people are willing to consider, cutting out beef is a way way easier sell than cutting out all meat.

[–] itsprobablyfine@sh.itjust.works 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I tell people to try going without beef temporarily. What often happens is in doing so they learn to cook a bit and cut it out (maybe not fully but mostly) long term. Then they go after pork, chicken, etc. You're right that beef is the worst offender, but we want to be careful not to overemphasise and make it seem like its the only offender. I think a lot of it is setting a tone. I'm veg not vegan but pick vegan options when available. I think the more we can normalise 'eat less meat' the better as that's pretty hard to argue with

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

IMHO, the workable solution is to get people to eat vegetarian once in a while, eat less meat in general (which is even good for one's health, as at least in the West people eat way more meat per-day than recommended) and turn eating beef (and, to a lesser extent, pork) into something that is more unusual than usual.

Reduction and more climate-friendly meat consumption is way easier to sell as an idea to beings who are omnivore (so have a natural desire for the stuff) than full vegetarianism (or, worse, full veganism) and I'm pretty sure some of those people will end up mainly or even totally vegetarian and even vegan, as they get used to and appreciate meat-free meals.

However the Moralists are as usually abusing and distorting a genuine concern to push an absolutist view (as it's anchored above all on a Moral viewpoint on meat consumption, so Environmentalist objectives are at best secondary), damaging the actual Environmentalist outcomes since it's a lot easier to both convince people to slowly rebalance their meat-consumption and have it happen in a safe way for even the less informed than it is to do it with sudden total abstinence.

[–] advance_settings@slrpnk.net 6 points 10 months ago

Exactly. Don't make it a religion, just ask people to give vegetarian food a try until they crave meat. At least that approach worked for me - I could never see myself be a vegetarian. Turned out I am happy with eating meat twice a year.

[–] abraxas@sh.itjust.works -5 points 10 months ago

I mean, if we're looking at the graphs, beef really is the only "offender" (if you can call it that) and only in the current consumed amounts. If people ate a lot more chicken and less beef, the GHG effect from animals would be lower than the same number 500 years ago due to animal population culling and advancements in agricultural methane reduction.

At that point, the term "negligible effect" becomes unreasonably harsh. Even with the worst claims against the effect of livestock on the environment (many of which we might not see eye to eye on), it's simply objectively not an environmental issue if people are eating chicken and some pork as their staple proteins. You can call it an animal rights issue if you want. Considering chicken is almost objectively a correct and healthy food to eat, two thirds of the diet triforce (health, environment, animal rights) become non-issues.

And the cool thing, even if I disagree with the outcomes it's healthier for us to eat a bit less red meat as long as our meat protein intake stays reasonable from white meat and seafood.

[–] abraxas@sh.itjust.works -2 points 10 months ago

What's the impact, if any, of any of these crops/livestock in non-water-short areas? Do other areas thousands of miles away cannibalize excess water if available to prevent draught, or are these numbers sometimes meaningless in the medium-term?

[–] rimu@piefed.social -2 points 10 months ago

Yes. Sloppy choice of words on my part but this is a climate change topic, here.

Chicken meat uses 4x less water than beef. I'm not disputing your point, just firming up the perspective for anyone lurking.

chicken vs beef

Clearly, vegetables are way way better. But in terms of what kind of behavior change people are willing to consider, cutting out beef is a way way easier sell than cutting out all meat.