Earth to Politico: eating meat enlarges a person's carbon footprint

Having been a strict vegetarian since 1970, I've enjoyed almost fifty years of dietary self-satisfaction. (Vegetarians aren't as smug as vegans, but we're close.)

So when I saw a Politico headline today, "Democrats bite on burgers and straws -- and Republicans feast," I anticipated that the article was going to irritate me, which indeed it did.

Politico engaged in some questionable analysis of the lengthy CNN climate forum featuring Democratic presidential candidates. Here's some burger-related observations.

Democrats’ verbal targeting of everything from plastic straws to cheeseburgers is stoking fears among anti-Trump forces that they’re unwittingly playing into Republican culture wars.

...Andrew Yang, in the same [GOP] web ad, said, “We’re going to be OK if the vast majority of the world goes vegetarian immediately.”

“I just don’t even know what to do with ‘Burgergate,’” said Colin Strother, a veteran Democratic strategist from the cattle-rearing state of Texas. “It is such a fringe position that is out of step with an overwhelming majority of Americans — and let us not forget that a pretty wide swath of the country including Texas and the ‘Breadbasket’ are major beef producers.

Well, the plain fact is that eating meat, especially beef, results in much higher carbon emissions than a vegetarian diet.

Here's part of an answer to a question in the August 17, 2019 issue of New Scientist that asked, "From an environmental perspective, is it better to eat imported foods like tofu, quinoa and sweet potato or beef from the farm a few kilometers up the road?

This question is easy to resolve. In a paper in Nature last year, a team led by Timothy Searchinger of Princeton University examined the impact of various foodstuffs in terms of carbon. This shows that protein from beef is 73 times worse than protein from soya.

A kilogram [2.2 pounds] of beef protein has the equivalent carbon emissions of a passenger flying from London to New York and back. The overall carbon cost of a kilogram of beef protein is equivalent to 1250 kg of CO2. Aircraft emissions for long haul flights are roughly 110 grams per passenger per kilometre, and the return distance is 11,170 km -- so 1229 kg of CO2.

However, there are caveats. That's the way of science: things are complex. A simple answer may be true -- beef is much more carbon intensive than tofu -- yet needs some explication. Here's part of what I found via a dive into Google's response to "eating meat carbon emissions."

It's a myth that going vegan or vegetarian is the key to fighting global warming. So says Skeptical Science. (Tagline: Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism.)

Animal agriculture is responsible for 13–18% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and less in developed countries (e.g. 3% in the USA).  Fossil fuel combustion for energy and transportation is responsible for approximately 64% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and more in developed countries (e.g. 80% in the USA).

...So, animal agriculture and meat consumption are significant contributors to global warming, but far less so than fossil fuel combustion.  Moreover, fossil fuels are an even bigger contributor to the problem in developed countries, which use more energy and have increased livestock production efficiency.

Still, switching from beef to chicken, or better, tofu, reduces dietary carbon a lot. So says a National Geographic story.

Replacing the carbon-heavy beef on your plate with carbon-light chicken will cut your dietary carbon footprint a shocking amount: in half. That’s according to a first-ever national study of U.S. eating habits and their carbon footprints.

...The evidence is clear regarding the need to shift diets to less meat and more plant-based proteins for both health and environmental reasons, says study co-author Martin Heller of the University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems at the School for Environment and Sustainability.

Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on our planet. So says a The Guardian story based on research published in the journal Science. 

Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to the scientists behind the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet.

The new research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife.

The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. Other recent research shows 86% of all land mammals are now livestock or humans. The scientists also found that even the very lowest impact meat and dairy products still cause much more environmental harm than the least sustainable vegetable and cereal growing.

...The analysis also revealed a huge variability between different ways of producing the same food. For example, beef cattle raised on deforested land result in 12 times more greenhouse gases and use 50 times more land than those grazing rich natural pasture. But the comparison of beef with plant protein such as peas is stark, with even the lowest impact beef responsible for six times more greenhouse gases and 36 times more land.

So while Republican deniers of global warming can joke all they want about Democrats wanting to ban burgers, science has the last laugh. Meat-eating isn't good for the planet.

Comments

[Rain Trueax]

This annoys me as it annoyed you only the other way around. If all humans switched to soybeans, where would they be grown? Maybe cutting down forests, which are important with carbon, as has been happening in Argentina. They are worried a lot about the rain forests being cut down in Borneo for palm oil. And what about turning the Amazon into food production by cutting down the forests and plowing the ground?

Here's the thing with beef-- if you buy grassfed from someone like us who graze land that can't grow anything but grass, it's not the same as if you go into a grocery store and buy it from corporate, what I call Holocaust cattle operations called feed lots. The idea that cattle put out too much methane only is an issue if it's all in one place, but if cattle are bad, are bison worse? How about elk? If humans reach a point where the only life they value is human life, pretty much anything else can go except maybe pets-- who can be big consumers of processed foods. So end all open land to turn it into soybean production and see where that gets the world for climate.

What never seems to happen with any of these things is to ignore righteous self-satisfaction and use common sense. Eating too much of anything can be a burden on the human body as well as the planet. Choose to eat or not eat meat but in moderation. These fake hamburgers they are creating to taste like hamburger are loaded with ingredients including chemicals. Down the line watch them find it's bad for people.

I have no problem with people choosing to be vegans but when they get that holier than thou look about it, I find it a total turnoff (as I pretty much find all of them in the running for the DNC's nomination-- thank goodness i am now unaffiliated).

Yes, I do eat beef, I don't like to eat a lot of it, despite the fact that we are ranchers. I don't not from moral reasons but because too much doesn't agree with me. BTW, I feel guiltier at eating chicken and eggs because I am not buying direct from a small grower. The way corporate chicken is produced is truly not humanitarian. Likewise with the cheese I buy for the big dairies.

Small foods and diverse are the way to go and grow as much of your own as you can. But it's easier to get on a high horse and put down other people. It's why we make no progress on pretty much any important issue like guns or immigration.

[Rain Trueax]

Incidentally, listening to a bunch of democrat wantabes about anything is not the best way to get facts. GOPers that i've heard don't deny climate change. They deny what we can do about it and whether the suggestions are socialist more than scientific. The fear talk of only 12 years before mankind is done for is aimed at a power grab. Hey, mankind might be done for eventually. Other species have been long before humans came into the picture. Most GOPers that I hear are more apt to believe what is happening is part of earth's cycle, of which man's only been around to observe it a minuscule amount of time.

[tucson]

I agree with Rain's posts above 100%.. Well explained. I seem to agree with her often.

In regard to soybeans: Non-fermented soy foods like tofu, protein powders, soy milk, imitation meat burgers, etc. are high in phytic acid which is an anti-nutrient that binds minerals in the digestive tract and carries them out of the body which can lead to mineral deficiency. Processed soy foods contain trypsin inhibitors which inhibit protein digestion exacerbating the relatively low amounts in soybeans of the essential amino acids cysteine, methionine and tryptophan. Traditional fermented soy products (tempeh, natto, tamari, etc.) due to bacterial activity are better assimilated and utilized by the body because some of the issues mentioned are eliminated or diminished. My point is that tofu and processed soy products may not be the ideal food to save the world. Not for me anyway and many others.

I was a strict vegetarian for about 28 years. I ate a lot of tofu. I developed a chronically stuffed up nose. I was addicted to nasal spray. An electro-acupuncturist found that I was allergic to soy. My body produces a histamine immune system reaction to it.

Meat raised according to Rain's methods may be a better food for many people and the planet.

[Scanstan]

Reducing meat and dairy consumption and increasing the consumption of plants is irrefutably better for the environment and is generally better for most people’s health.

Everything about cars (making them, what it takes to drive them, what they spew out, etc.) is even worse for the environment than the meat and dairy industries.

Current food systems are too inhumane (for workers and animals) and too toxic to the environment. There’s too much corporate profit to be had in the way we mass produce foods.

Locally raised meat from a small farm is more expensive to the consumer and not readily available. Most cannot afford it or would not pay the premium. By the way, there was a recent NY Times article featuring a few former vegetarians and vegans that become these artisan, hipster butchers. Their rationale is more or less similar to Rain’s.

Rain, why don’t you buy eggs from a local producer? Cost? Availability?

[Rain Trueax]

Scanstan, it's totally availability where I live. Once in a while someone will put out a sign but there is no one place to market them and I eat a LOT of eggs-- my favorite food. We have raised chickens but with a second home in Tucson, we aren't here all the time. Also if you raise chickens, they don't lay forever and you have to kill the old ones, which I'd hate doing. I would though buy from a local if there was one. They are better for you than the corporate run ones.

Our beef is not more costly but it's hard also to find and for us to market. We sell at auction price plus the cut and wrap charge by the local packing plant (family operation and not grade A inspected but it's how it always was done and it's a very clean business). Buyers buy a half or quarter and sometimes divide that up. Our cattle lead a herd and range life until the moment the guy arrives with the truck; and with a bullet through the brain, it's over with no fear to send out hormones. There are others like us, but it does take looking.

We have been lucky on our lamb as a Muslim from a nearby town takes all we will sell him when they are the right age. He kills mercifully because it's their religion, and it goes to feed his community. When he stops doing it, we'll have more problems.

I don't look forward to the season when the young must be sold. It is though the only way we can keep the old ones. It's not cheap feeding big livestock but ours are grown on grass and hay. Some don't like it for the gamier taste and with less fat, it's tougher. It's also much healthier.