For many, an all-American cookout featuring hotdogs and hamburgers evokes visions of summertime and family bonding. For environmentalists, the same cookout evokes visions of doomsday.
The United Nations Environment Program has called meat “the world’s most urgent problem.” Activists propose meat taxes or other policies that discourage eating bacon burgers. To environmentalists, behind every big, juicy steak or sausage lies irreversible damage to the planet.
Now corporations selling synthetic meat analogs are trying to get in on the game, marketing their food as supposedly better for fighting climate change. And there’s a lot of money at stake on the notion. Sustainability-related claims about food are on the rise.
But there’s some good news for those who love real meats and the environment: An individual’s diet has almost no impact on the climate.
According to data from the Environmental Protection Agency, agriculture as a whole is only responsible for 10 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. All livestock is responsible for just five percent of U.S. emissions.
The United States is responsible for 15 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, making American livestock’s hoofprint less than 1 percent of global emissions.
That by itself is small potatoes. But what about if we all went vegan tomorrow, as PETA demands?
A study from Arizona State University found that everyone going vegan would reduce total U.S. emissions by 2.6 percent. (After all, beans and cabbage still require resources to produce and transport.) Global emissions would be reduced by a small fraction of a percent.
And that’s with all 330 million Americans going vegan. Extrapolating further, if anyone American went vegan, U.S. emissions would go down by 0.0000008%.
In scientific terms, that’s a nothing burger.
Simply put, halting meat consumption in the United States completely would not make a slight difference in the climate.
Nor should you feel that eating that ultra-processed veggie burger is actually making a difference for the environment. (Nor are the chemicals used to make it a healthy addition to your body.)
The main complaint environmentalists have on eating meat is animals emit methane gas. Methane gas is [20] times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. On the surface, that is concerning. But that figure doesn’t tell the whole story.
Methane stays in the atmosphere for up to 12 years. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, stays in the atmosphere for up to 200 years. Of all the greenhouse gases emitted in the United States, 10 percent is methane, and 80 percent is carbon dioxide.
Animals are also not the only source of methane. Food waste is a major emitter of methane. The United States Department of Agriculture estimates that between 30 and 40 percent of all food produced is wasted in the U.S.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates that between 6 and 8 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions can be traced to food waste.
Ensuring that everything on the plate is eaten would be a more effective emissions-reduction strategy than wringing your hands over what’s on the menu.
Environmentalists often say time is running out to stop humanity from inflicting irreversible damage on the planet. If they truly believed this, targeting meat is a head-scratching strategy.
Electricity generation is responsible for a quarter of all emissions, but most environmentalists oppose expanding carbon-neutral nuclear energy.
There is also a lot of money to be made by telling people they can save the planet by avoiding meat. Impossible Foods, a meat alternative company that features a climate change awareness campaign on the homepage of its website alongside the phrase “it’s never been more delicious to save the planet,” is seeking a $10 billion valuation for its stock offering.
A diet based exclusively on Impossible Foods wouldn’t even come close to saving the planet—but it would make Impossible Foods and its wealthy institutional investors a ton of money.
Americans should do what they can to be good stewards of the tiny space they take on this planet. However, they should not be made to feel guilty for serving their families nutritious meals that feature real meat. Their plates or their palates don’t make a difference.
Read more at Washington Times
Livestock eat grass that has absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to enable it to grow.
No CO2 – no plant life at all, and therefore no human (or biota) life as we know it.
For every tonne of methane emitted by cattle or sheep etc., 2.75 tonnes of CO2 has been sequestered from the atmosphere by the plants the livestock ate.
Methane is rapidly broken down in the atmosphere by OH radicles into CO2, water vapour, etc, recycling the carbon.
This is a well recognised part of the carbon cycle but is completely ignored by the UNFCCC (who make the rules) and therefore no allowance is made for this half of the complete carbon cycle.
This falsely and incorrectly censures farmers, their animals, and all those that enjoy animal products.
If anything is an inexcusable ongoing travesty, this is it.
How do the IPCC and its advocates get away with trashing verifiable science so blatantly? They do so by trading on the ignorance of the media and general public.
It is high time to call for an open, impartial, scientific inquiry into the whole question of the underlying science of anthropogenic global warming / climate change.
This would rapidly expose the falsity of the many assumptions and claims the IPCC has been able to so far, get away with.
If the IPCC believe they are right, they would welcome such an inquiry but as they always steadfastly refuse to ever discuss the science, they would likely vociferously oppose such an inquiry as it would expose the falsity of their claims.
Their response alone would therefore be very telling.
The real urgent probleblem is the United Nations UNESCO,UNEP Etc and Liberal Stupidity
Meat controls are all about control of voters and of minds. This is a totalitarian brainwashing tactic. If they can convince ordinary people to willingly give up something as fundamental to the vast majority of human existence as meat, they have the people under their thumbs.
There is no carbon dioxide emission problem with free range meat. Even with feedlot meat, any release of carbon dioxide is beneficial to the planet in any case.
The environmental toll that would come from over seven billion vegans is frightening. This is why some seriously propose drastic depopulation. Neither of these options are sensible or ethical.
Beef farming etc needs support, lest it be slayed by a trinity of holy cows – veganism, climate catastrophism and ever-increasing regulation.
How did we get from fossil fuels to meat?
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/06/19/vegandiet/
That’a 200 years, not 2100. Sorry.
“Methane stays in the atmosphere for up to 12 years. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, stays in the atmosphere for up to 200 years.” This is simply not true. Numerous studies have shown that the half life of CO2 and methane is 5–6 years. They turn ever relatively fast. This is why the Mauna Loa CO2 graph shows monthly spikes and valleys.
It is the IPCC that claims 2100 years for CO2 and NOAA, not to be outdone, erased the ante to 1000 years.