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0·29 days agoI think the problem here is that “climate friendly” is inherently a relative term. No amount of emissions is good to have, so you’re comparing it to other emissions sources. If we leave out the biggest comparison point (no beef at all), we’re missing the forest for the trees. We’re just optimizing the status quo a little bit
If the argument in favor was “this can maybe reduce emissions a bit” while we look to work on reducing meat consumption and production levels, it’d be one thing. That’s generally not what people touting this claim, however
How does counter scenario we can do instead not have bearing? This is something scientists should be looking at all the time. Ignoring an important counter scenario is having the status quo as an implicit assumption baked into research
Like here’s a hypothetical: we model different deserts production and find that A uses 1000 units of some resource but we’ve found a way to maybe (we’re unsure) to get it down to 900 units of some resource. Should we ignore that desert B, C, D use 10, 15, and 20 units of that resource and say we’ve made A sustainable now?
Shifting towards plant-based diets being a better than any form of beef production is very much related here. The promoters of “regenerative grazing” claim that no action is needed because of it, so the baseline is not “what if we consumed the exact way we always did”
I am not sure I follow what you mean that shifting to plant-based diets is not part of the argument? Many/most of the promoters of “regenerative grazing” claim that it negates need to do any shifts towards plant-based diets (which is the most problematic claim in my view)
TL;DR
- Beef already has too massive a baseline footprint to build a regenerative future on
- Shifting to plant-rich diets results in more food and higher carbon sequestration
- Wild ecosystems have higher and more stable soil organic carbon than pastureland
- Rain, temperature, geology, and previous land use determine soil organic carbon more than grazing techniques do
- Most grazing land is too arid to store meaningful amounts of soil organic carbon
- The regenerative case for beef relies on flawed studies without baselines or proper geographic controls
- Grass-finished cattle are still not wild ruminants
- Beef drives biodiversity loss, and even reducing grazing intensity doesn’t mean ecosystems recover
Copying my comment from earlier in this thread:
Per capita consumption of animal products have risen significantly over the past few decades. Even if 0 new people were born starting this instance, there will still be large populations for decades to come
Should we just sit around waiting for decades for a population to decrease to eventually happen and let the environment burn in the meantime?
The problem is much more than how things are produced, it’s what you produce in the first place. There is no way to do things at scale that does not turn into factory farming or make the environmental impacts even worse. This whole study talks about even some tiny changes making the emissions significantly higher
Per capita production levels and thus consumption levels have to change if we want a better world
Deleted my response before your edit since I misunderstood what you were saying
Per capita consumption of animal products have risen significantly over the past few decades. There is not much getting around that the consumption levels need to change
Even if 0 new people were born starting this instance, there will still be large populations for decades to come
This industry is happy to let manure runoff into local ecosystems and lead to massive waterway pollution and toxic algae blooms. Biogas is no better with the tanks used for holding manure for biogas regularly leaking out and/or overflow
This is not an industry that is super concerned about fertilizer shortages and usage. Animal agriculture makes fertilizer demand increase and worsens the problem, even if manure was used 100% optimally
Thus, shifting from animal to plant sources of protein can substantially reduce fertilizer requirements, even with maximal use of animal manure
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344922006528
For an example of how large the fertilizer difference can be: Producing 1kg protein from beans uses 12x less fertilizer than doing the same from beef
To produce 1 kg of protein from kidney beans required approximately eighteen times less land, ten times less water, nine times less fuel, twelve times less fertilizer and ten times less pesticide in comparison to producing 1 kg of protein from beef
To clarify, this is being pitched by the beef and dairy industry. It’s certainly not a vegan solution and it does not work as well as the industry claims
The article subheader might give some hints
Environmental groups are suing one of the largest seafood companies in the country over alleged aquaculture pollution to the Columbia River.
We don’t have to make things up. The article says they are currently 40% plant-based
Things like this tend to grow very non-linearly. Slowly for a long time then speed up a lot more when the social norms around it start shifting
Oat milk truly does wonders (or any other plant milk that you happen to like)
Pockets of progress can still exist within broader repression. Based on your profile, I’m going to guess you’re from the US? If you want some hope:
US Senate Passes Bill Giving Children the Right to Plant-Based Milks in Public School Lunches and this ended up getting signed into law 9 days ago. It also overturned an 80 year old provision that prohibited plant-milks from being offered without special request from doctor/parent in K-12 school lunches. (Which I never would have thought would get overturned now of all times)
Clean energy is still booming in the U.S. despite Trump’s best efforts. Renewables still are going into place because they are just the cheapest option, and the Trump admin has had a lot of their attempts to target renewables paused in court for now. Not that it’s not impacting it at all (it obviously is), but that it isn’t enough to stop progress entirely
NYC Set To Cut All Processed Meat In Schools, Hospitals, And Care Centers and is going to replace them with whole plant-based foods
I can keep going. There is a lot of focus in both traditional and social media about the bad news and very little about good news. But there are people trying and when people try you always have the chance to win
Don’t stop trying
That difference seems a lot higher than most of the world. Were you looking at price per unit volume or price per whatever the container was? I’d be really surprised if there’s a difference that high
There is also the option of making plant-milks yourself. Price can be a lot cheaper that way by orders of magnitude. (Though may take some experimentation to get good tasting recipes, so don’t necessarily judge off of the first taste)
The goal isn’t necessarily to change how people speak (though they would if they could), but more to make the product name on the stores shelves look less appealing to reduce sales
Those are primarily just using the same the packing as they due to places that prohibit using the term “milk”. The dairy industry has lobbied quite hard for those bans across the world at all levels of government. Under the belief that “oat drink” or the like sounds less appealing that “oat milk”
That’s been the term of choice in English for the past 800+ years
In English, the word “milk” has been used to refer to “milk-like plant juices” since 1200 CE.[11]
Plant milks go back much further than most people realize
Almond milk spread throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and was popular in parts of the Middle East. Recipes for almond milk in the Middle East date back to around the 13th century as it was mentioned in Muhammad bin Hasan al-Baghdadi’s cookbook Kitāb al-Ṭabīḫ (كتاب الطبيخ; The Book of Dishes), written in 1226. It was especially popular during Lent.[12][13][14][15] Soy was a plant milk used in China during the 14th century.[3][16] Soy milk use in China is first recorded in 1365.[17] In medieval England, almond milk was used in dishes such as ris alkere (a type of rice pudding)[18] and appears in the recipe collection The Forme of Cury.[19] Coconut milk (and coconut cream) are traditional ingredients in many cuisines such as in South and Southeast Asia, and are often used in curries.[20]
I think we are talking in circles on minutia. Seems like we’re in agreement that plant-based diets are a bigger improvement which, to me, is the more important point. I think we have different understandings of what the premise is/should be. I think it’s unlikely that either of our minds will change on what that premise is in any case