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It's old news but Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding

It's old news but Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding... If we all did it today we would make a huge difference to a collpasing system. https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Accepted%20Manuscript.pdf https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Acc...

fallingfrog 5y ago
I echo this- went vegan last year. It’s not as scary as you think. There are lots of sources of good vegetable protein (tofu, peas, beans) and you can have one of those impossible burgers if you’re craving meat on a particular day.
- bwindels 5y ago
  or if you're not up for going cold turkey, just drastically reduce your intake. If you eat meat only once a week rather than every day, this already reduces your footprint massively.
  - feanaro 5y ago
    This isn't realistic advice for most people eating meat every day. It's better to suggest trying to not eat meat for a single day per week as a start.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  Jeez people downvoting this comment maybe we deserve to all collapse
- uxcolumbo 5y ago
  Thanks for making the effort. Why folks are down voting your post, especially here on HN - a group apparently made up of rational and logical thinking folks - beats me. Feeding the world with animal meat is not sustainable, it requires more energy and resources. I guess it's called meat addiction for a reason.
  - fallingfrog 5y ago
    I think that for some people they feel like they are being attacked if someone suggests a change in behavior. It’s not my intention to attack anyone though, just to give words of encouragement. I’m just like everyone else, making it up as I go along.
jwr 5y ago
Yeah, but… We won't all do it today. And this is really just blame-shifting and conscience-cleaning: we'll kind-of try to reduce our impact on Earth, feel better about ourselves, but the total impact will be minimal. Also, if you look closely at meat production, by far the biggest problem is methane, and that's a problem that's been pretty much solved (seaweeds added to diet), except there is no incentive to implement the solution on an industrial scale. Instead of avoiding meat, we should make sure that the solution is actually used. I believe the first step towards actually dealing with the problem is putting a significant price on carbon emissions (CO2 and CH4) and sticking to it worldwide. The current attempts, unfortunately, are half-assed. It should be really expensive to emit CO2, so expensive that everybody would immediately start looking for mitigations. Unfortunately, I also believe that humanity is too stupid and disorganized to do it, what with the local politicians pulling this and that way. Personally, apart from trying not to do stupid things myself (e.g. avoid buying an SUV, ride an E-bike around the city, etc), there isn't much I can do. If I were young, I would look to join one of the companies trying to implement carbon capture, because that's the only thing that can save us.
- bingidingi 5y ago
  so is this a “no”?
- tchvil 5y ago
  An animal hate about 5 times, if I remember well, the quantity of food you will get by eating its meat. Add then the energy to grow it and its food, shelter, kill, transport, and cool the meat to preserve it. Add then quantities of single use plastic for some of these steps. I eat less meat than before more because of this than CH4 emissions.
- Isinlor 5y ago
  You should read about "cap and trade system" implemented by European Union. The idea is to cap emissions according to the Paris Climate agreement and auction resulting remaining emissions. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Trading_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Tradi...
brandmeyer 5y ago
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/2018_complete_report.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-01/documents/20...
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  Reminder that the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed, in Brazil, as we speak, to grow more beef. Let that sink in.
  - bookofsand 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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."

fallingfrog 5y ago

I echo this- went vegan last year. It’s not as scary as you think. There are lots of sources of good vegetable protein (tofu, peas, beans) and you can have one of those impossible burgers if you’re craving meat on a particular day.

bwindels 5y ago
or if you're not up for going cold turkey, just drastically reduce your intake. If you eat meat only once a week rather than every day, this already reduces your footprint massively.
- feanaro 5y ago
  This isn't realistic advice for most people eating meat every day. It's better to suggest trying to not eat meat for a single day per week as a start.
joelbluminator 5y ago
Jeez people downvoting this comment maybe we deserve to all collapse
uxcolumbo 5y ago
Thanks for making the effort. Why folks are down voting your post, especially here on HN - a group apparently made up of rational and logical thinking folks - beats me. Feeding the world with animal meat is not sustainable, it requires more energy and resources. I guess it's called meat addiction for a reason.
- fallingfrog 5y ago
  I think that for some people they feel like they are being attacked if someone suggests a change in behavior. It’s not my intention to attack anyone though, just to give words of encouragement. I’m just like everyone else, making it up as I go along.

jwr 5y ago

Yeah, but… We won't all do it today. And this is really just blame-shifting and conscience-cleaning: we'll kind-of try to reduce our impact on Earth, feel better about ourselves, but the total impact will be minimal. Also, if you look closely at meat production, by far the biggest problem is methane, and that's a problem that's been pretty much solved (seaweeds added to diet), except there is no incentive to implement the solution on an industrial scale. Instead of avoiding meat, we should make sure that the solution is actually used. I believe the first step towards actually dealing with the problem is putting a significant price on carbon emissions (CO2 and CH4) and sticking to it worldwide. The current attempts, unfortunately, are half-assed. It should be really expensive to emit CO2, so expensive that everybody would immediately start looking for mitigations. Unfortunately, I also believe that humanity is too stupid and disorganized to do it, what with the local politicians pulling this and that way. Personally, apart from trying not to do stupid things myself (e.g. avoid buying an SUV, ride an E-bike around the city, etc), there isn't much I can do. If I were young, I would look to join one of the companies trying to implement carbon capture, because that's the only thing that can save us.

bingidingi 5y ago
so is this a “no”?
tchvil 5y ago
An animal hate about 5 times, if I remember well, the quantity of food you will get by eating its meat. Add then the energy to grow it and its food, shelter, kill, transport, and cool the meat to preserve it. Add then quantities of single use plastic for some of these steps. I eat less meat than before more because of this than CH4 emissions.
Isinlor 5y ago
You should read about "cap and trade system" implemented by European Union. The idea is to cap emissions according to the Paris Climate agreement and auction resulting remaining emissions. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Trading_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Tradi...

brandmeyer 5y ago

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

hypertele-Xii 5y ago
Reminder that the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed, in Brazil, as we speak, to grow more beef. Let that sink in.
- bookofsand 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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."