Some nerd shit

"The US beef industry is creating an army of influencers and citizen activists to help amplify a message that will be key to its future success: that you shouldn’t be too worried about the growing attention around the environmental impacts of its production.

In particular, it would like you not to be especially concerned about how meat consumption needs to be reduced if we are to avoid the most violently disruptive forms of planetary heating (even if all fossil fuel use ended tomorrow).

It definitely does not want you to read scientific papers showing wealthy nations must reduce meat consumption to keep below the average global temperature rise of 2C, a threshold to stop systems collapse, mass extinctions, fatal heat waves, drought and famine, water shortages and flooded cities.

I know about these industry priorities as I am one of more than 21,000 graduates of a free, by-admission-only, online training course created by the US beef industry called the Masters of Beef Advocacy (MBA) program."

"In 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published Livestock’s Long Shadow, a report that revealed animal agriculture’s significant role in the climate crisis.

By showing that livestock production makes up a significant proportion of global emissions – around 18%, though it would later revise that number downward slightly – as well as contributing to other environmental issues including land degradation and water pollution, the report generated headlines and started conversations, helping to make the toll of meat-overconsumption front-page news.

It was also a moment that terrified the meat industry. According to Jennifer Jacquet, associate professor in the department of environmental studies at New York University, Livestock’s Long Shadow helped to inspire meat multinationals and their allies to launch a counteroffensive, working overtime to defend the environmental reputation of meat, especially beef."

"[...] two high-profile culinary institutions dropped meat to protest livestock’s outsized role in the climate crisis: food media outlet Epicurious decided to stop featuring new recipes with beef, and Manhattan restaurant Eleven Madison Park took meat off its menu entirely. The news made headlines.

And when NCBA noted the trend in its monitoring tool, it sprang into action. NCBA started by defending beef’s sustainability in a slate of paid ad buys – which ran in outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post – but it didn’t stop there.

In the private video for Masters of Beef Advocacy students, Pooley described how NCBA worked with celebrity chef Lamar Moore to write a piece insisting on a central place for beef on the plate. That story – which ran with the subhead “Why cutting meat from the menu (or magazine) is misguided”, ran in LA Weekly – and was plugged repeatedly on Twitter by NCBA (and other industry accounts) as if it had no connection to the story.

In fact, none of the pieces NCBA privately admits it played a role in – in LA Weekly, Westword and the Denver Post – disclosed the trade group’s participation.

The industry sees these messaging efforts as part of an existential battle for survival. In the training video, NCBA leaders cited data that found 47% of Americans aren’t sure about the sustainability of beef.

That persuadable middle is a top priority for the industry, they said, as whoever reaches them best has the power to sway the balance of public opinion.

are you not also concerned with the mass destruction of wild habitat? about the decline of insects and birds? about the genocide of the buffalo? about zoonotic diseases causing the next covid? about antibiotic abuse and fecal contamination? about the beautiful ocean being plundered?

The first published study about climate change (that I am aware of-- feel free to point out if there's an older one) is an 1896 paper by Svante Arrhenius. He pointed out the link between the greenhouse effect and changes in atmospheric CO2.

Plate tectonics, which the geoscience community now recognizes as near indisputable, was a fringe theory until about the 1960s.

From the article:

“If you look only at the trend of species declines, it would be easy to think that we’re failing to protect biodiversity, but you would not be looking at the full picture,” said Penny Langhammer, lead author of the study and Executive Vice President of Re:wild. “What we show with this paper is that conservation is, in fact, working to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. It is clear that conservation must be prioritized and receive significant additional resources and political support globally, while we simultaneously address the systemic drivers of biodiversity loss, such as unsustainable consumption and production.”

This massive meta analysis (for those not familiar, a study analyzing the results of many studies on similar topics) found that the vast majority of conservation efforts show much much better results than doing nothing. In many cases, biodiversity loss was not only stopped but reversed.

I will be making a comparison between animal derived proteins (beef, poultry, and eggs) and plant based proteins (tofu and pulses)

First, I looked up the CO2-equivalents (CO2e)* emitted by producing 1kg of each protein source (Source), which yields the following results:

Beef: 498.9 kg CO2e

Poultry: 57 kg CO2e

Eggs: 42.1 kg CO2e

Tofu: 19.8 kg CO2e

Pulses: 8.4 kg CO2e

So we can see that plant-based proteins emit fewer greenhouse gasses than animal derived proteins.

Next, I looked at how transportation affects these numbers. I made the assumption that (1) no transportation is needed for the animal proteins and (2) the plant proteins are shipped from the other side of the world (so 20.000km). Shipping a kg of protein by freight ship at this distance emits about 0.6kg of CO2 equivalents (source)**.

So adding it up yields the following numbers***:

Beef: 498.9 kg CO2e + 0 kg CO2e from shipping = 498,9 kg CO2e Poultry: 57 kg CO2e + 0 kg CO2e from shipping = 57 kg CO2e Eggs: 42.1 kg CO2e + 0 kg CO2e from shipping = 42.1 kg CO2e Tofu: 19.8 kg CO2e + 0.6 kg CO2e from shipping = 20.4 kg CO2e Pulses: 8.4 kg CO2e + 0.6 kg CO2e from shipping = 9 kg CO2e

So even if we produce animal proteins locally and we ship all of our plant-based proteins halfway across the world, plant proteins are still far more environmentally friendly than animal proteins.

In other words, we can produce 55kg of pulse proteins, ship them 20.000km away and have the same environmental impact as producing 1kg of beef locally.

This is not even accounting for land use, water use, nitrate pollution, phosphate pollution etc., all of which have very real environmental impacts, and all of which are more present in the production of animal proteins****.

I'm sure the indigenous people in the Amazon whose homes are being burned down to create pastures and grow livestock feed would like to have a word

You are also ignoring that climate change by itself is a crime against humanity. Climate change. Which is caused by the emissions of greenhouse gasses. About 14% of which come from animal agriculture.

Also if you want to talk about the global south, don't forget to mention the tens of millions of people who will be displaced in the coming decades because of their homes becoming uninhabitable. Don't forget the people in the Himalayas and Andes whose water supplies depends on glaciers that are dwindling year by year. Don't forget the millions who will lose their livelihoods to droughts, floods and wildfires. Most of the people affected live, you guessed it, in the global south.

I just want to gently encourage you to read this article. Big corporations are spending a lot of money to orchestrate smear campaigns against the idea that eating less meat might actually be better for us. You don't need to be doing their work for them.

by W.S. Merwin

Something I've not done is following me I haven't done it again and again so it has many footsteps like a drumstick that's grown old and never been used

In late afternoon I hear it come closer at times it climbs out of a sea onto my shoulders and I shrug it off losing one more chance

Every morning it's drunk up part of my breath for the day and knows which way I'm going and already it's not done there

Via mastodon(aka the fediverse)

I will be making a comparison between animal derived proteins (beef, poultry, and eggs) and plant based proteins (tofu and pulses)

First, I looked up the CO2-equivalents (CO2e)* emitted by producing 1kg of each protein source (Source), which yields the following results:

Beef: 498.9 kg CO2e

Poultry: 57 kg CO2e

Eggs: 42.1 kg CO2e

Tofu: 19.8 kg CO2e

Pulses: 8.4 kg CO2e

So we can see that plant-based proteins emit fewer greenhouse gasses than animal derived proteins.

Next, I looked at how transportation affects these numbers. I made the assumption that (1) no transportation is needed for the animal proteins and (2) the plant proteins are shipped from the other side of the world (so 20.000km). Shipping a kg of protein by freight ship at this distance emits about 0.6kg of CO2 equivalents (source)**.

So adding it up yields the following numbers***:

Beef: 498.9 kg CO2e + 0 kg CO2e from shipping = 498,9 kg CO2e Poultry: 57 kg CO2e + 0 kg CO2e from shipping = 57 kg CO2e Eggs: 42.1 kg CO2e + 0 kg CO2e from shipping = 42.1 kg CO2e Tofu: 19.8 kg CO2e + 0.6 kg CO2e from shipping = 20.4 kg CO2e Pulses: 8.4 kg CO2e + 0.6 kg CO2e from shipping = 9 kg CO2e

So even if we produce animal proteins locally and we ship all of our plant-based proteins halfway across the world, plant proteins are still far more environmentally friendly than animal proteins.

In other words, we can produce 55kg of pulse proteins, ship them 20.000km away and have the same environmental impact as producing 1kg of beef locally.

This is not even accounting for land use, water use, nitrate pollution, phosphate pollution etc., all of which have very real environmental impacts, and all of which are more present in the production of animal proteins****.