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Dr. Helen Harwatt, farmed animal law and policy fellow at Harvard Law School, advises that getting protein from plant sources instead of animal sources would drastically help in meeting climate targets and reduce the risk of overshooting temperature goals.
For the first time, Dr. Harwatt proposes a three-step strategy to gradually replace animal proteins with plant-sourced proteins, as part of the commitment to mitigate climate change. These are:
1) Acknowledging that current numbers of livestock are at their peak and will need to decline ('peak livestock').
2) Set targets to transition away from livestock products starting with foods linked with the highest greenhouse gas emissions such as beef, then cow's milk and pig meat ('worst-first' approach).
3) Assessing suitable replacement products against a range of criteria including greenhouse gas emission targets, land usage, and public health benefits ('best available food' approach).
Harwatt further elaborates that recent evidence shows, in comparison with the current food system, switching from animals to plants proteins, could potentially feed an additional 350 million people in the US alone.
You can eat plants or insects, but not meat.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @12:57AM (2 children)
Every now and then this crap comes up.
Until these numbskulls learn agronomy and logistics, they have nothing. The simple facts around productive land and rates of return and sources of fertilisation for the land render their arguments meaningless.
Why on earth do people who study this stuff for a living and do this stuff for a living not get listened to? I thought the left wing was against science denialism?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @07:46PM (1 child)
What science is that exactly?
productive land and rates of return: are you saying it takes less land to raise animals? Or you just mean there is plenty of pasture land not suitable for farming that may as well support livestock? Rate of return? Plants win hands down, more nutrition per acre.
sources of fertilization: what? what what what?? You mean planting seeds? Is this a dig at Monsanto and costly seed prices?
Elaborate on the science bit, and aside from that this isn't a political issue so don't make it one.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 29 2018, @01:33AM
What science: start with agronomy. You can go on from there.
Productive land and rates of return: you can (and do) raise animals on land that is not useful for conventional row crops such as wheat and soy. Rate of return? SOME plants win over SOME animals for SOME forms of nutrition. Carbs ain't fats ain't proteins ain't minerals, and so on.
Sources of fertilisation: how about the fact that we're mining out our phosphate sources? Start there, and go on to petrochemical fuels for the rest.
And fuck yes it's political. Food is always political. Just ask about the propensity for people to riot and rebel when food gets hard to come by. Why do you think farmers get subsidies? Just because they wanna? Sure they wanna, but in reality hard-nosed people realise that they had damned well better make sure there's a food surplus, because the alternative looks really ugly.
(Why in the name of holy mexican jumpin' beans isn't this stuff taught in freaking middle school? I just don't know ...)