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[...] Agricultural data from 38,700 farms plus details of processing and retailing in 119 countries show wide differences in environmental impacts — from greenhouse gas emissions to water used — even between producers of the same product, says environmental scientist Joseph Poore of the University of Oxford. The amount of climate-warming gases released in the making of a pint of beer, for example, can more than double under high-impact production scenarios. For dairy and beef cattle combined, high-impact providers released about 12 times as many greenhouse gases as low-impact producers, Poore and colleague Thomas Nemecek report in the June 1 Science.
[...] The greatest changes in the effect of a person’s diet on the planet, however, would still come from choosing certain kinds of food over others. On average, producing 100 grams of protein from beef leads to the release of 50 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions, which the researchers calculated as a carbon-dioxide equivalent. By comparison, 100 grams of protein from cheese releases 11 kg in production, from poultry 5.7 kg and from tofu 2 kg.
[...] Producing food overall accounts for 26 percent of global climate-warming emissions, and takes up about 43 percent of the land that’s not desert or covered in ice, the researchers found. Out of the total carbon footprint from food, 57 percent comes from field agriculture, livestock and farmed fish. Clearing land for agriculture accounts for 24 percent and transporting food accounts for another 6 percent.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tfried on Thursday June 07 2018, @07:07AM (2 children)
Absolutely. However, what baffles me most, is that each and every message of the type "we should reduce meat consumption, overall" is perceived as "everybody shall stop eating meat, entirely", invariably. Granted, the article mentions "switching", rather than "shifting" to a plant-based diet, so that may not be an ideal choice of words. Also granted, there is no shortage of very vocal activists who will advocate just that. But I definitely cannot shake the feeling that a lot of people apply an all-or-nothing reading to any message about the downsides of meat consumption, actively. It's just so convenient: Stretch the message so much that it is easy to refute, then conclude that it is obviously wrong from the start. No need to even think about your personal contribution, then.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Thursday June 07 2018, @12:27PM
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 07 2018, @05:19PM
It's just so convenient: Stretch the message so much that it is easy to refute, then conclude that it is obviously wrong from the start. No need to even think about your personal contribution, then.
AKA the slippery slope fallacy. [softschools.com]