By merely eating chicken instead of beef half the time and only throwing half as much meat in the trash, Americans could magically erase the CO2 emissions of, say, the Netherlands. And no cheeseburgers need to be pried from anyone’s cold, dead hands. Think they’ll do it?

26 comments

1. From Bloomberg:

   “The study of cities offers several options. In one example, call it the Carnivore’s Delight, we could reduce meat’s climate impact by up to 43% simply by *occasionally* eating chicken or pork instead of beef, which accounts for 73% of meat-related pollution, and by cutting food waste in half. Or maybe we could keep a little more beef in our diet but just throw less than half of it in the trash. Those emissions savings could amount to something like 142 megatons of CO2 equivalent per year. Congratulations: You have just eliminated the annual pollution of Ukraine, Nigeria or the Netherlands.”

2. Y’all can afford beef?

3. explaining sustainability to an american: you can still eat cheesebuger

4. Beef is weird tasting tbh after not eating it for a while. Kinda weird, tangy flavor.

5. This is largely known. Take all the studies, with whatever estimate they give and beef is consistently the worst.

   Just changing type of meat rather than becoming vegan already does wonders and most of the heavy lifting.

   Variety, reduction, no waste, improved efficiency in production and better water management. All these are sufficient to extremely reduce the ghg emissions and environmental impact of meat industry. Without even requiring vegetarianism or veganism.

   (Which makes this a way more popular way to promote the concept to the generic public and we should focus on these points if we want to insist on the meat topic. Which we also should keep in mind is marginal, with estimates going up to, at most 20% of emissions)

   Also beef is expensive.

6. Just over half the voters in America just literally said “screw the climate, screw the planet.”

   So no, “Americans” will never broadly make that level of sacrifice. In fact, a bunch would go out and eat *extra* red meat that week just for it being suggested to them.

   We can hope that maybe half might eventually though I suppose.

7. The only universe in where this happens is when stuff is too expensive.

8. It would be easier if they were hinduists.

9. Netherlands is not a huge emitter.

   China is the largest, by far, and emits about 100x what the Netherlands emits

10. No. Until the price of these products reflects their actual cost to society, nothing will change. A carbon tax would be the most straightforward solution to this.

11. Meanwhile I’m here cutting out meat entirely. It’s not that hard with products like impossible, beyond, and daring on the shelves.

12. Beef is basically so expensive that this is occurring naturally! An organic movement so to speak.

13. Why not just promote veganism or vegetarianism? It would even further reduce your footprint and impact on global ecosystems, and you are making an ethical choice to not harm animals, who nobody needs to eat in our modern first world country for survival. Fishing trawls create more waste than all the other marine industries put together and kill millions of non-target fish, mammals, and other animals as by catch every year, and the oceans are literally being emptied of their communities.

14. The amount of animal death would radically increase as it takes many more chickens to die to produce the same amount of meat (because they are much smaller). The suffering would also be much greater as chickens have fewer legal protections (at the federal level none at all), and are treated much worse. This is not the way.

15. Just watch Dominion

16. they will most certainly not

17. You’d first have to invest in a system of education

18. I rarely eat meat at all. I feel great and I’m in great physical shape. You don’t need to eat a lot of meat in your diet, you’ll live longer and have a better quality of life if you don’t.

19. Who’s throwing meat on the trash?

20. I think big meat knows this and is behind the push on instagram to eat more red meat and rub your face and balls in beef tallow.

21. I’d be very suprised.

22. Do Europeans have the same attitude towards restaurant food as Americans? In the sense that, if not absolutely perfect at all levels from McDonald’s to Nobu, it must be returned to the chef and likely tossed? It’s rampant here; we toss a third of our food in the garbage. Perfectly good huge steaks not the right kind of pink? Every day all day every steakhouse in the country.

23. Or eat a plant based burger which is even better

24. What if we buy beef from Argentina?

25. The best way to get people reduce keat intake is for the government to stop subsidies as well as having stricter laws and regulations with regards to how livestock is raised. Banning factory farming would beca good start. If people see the true cost of meat then they will eat less of it. Perhaps incorporate a more diverse diet. I have been a vegetarian for years and I am an active guy in his 30’s that lifts heavy.

26. I already did this, it’s not even hard.

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