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Posted by robtherobber 1 hour ago

Beef and dairy drive 41% of biodiversity damage linked to global farmland(www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk)
79 points | 68 commentspage 2
plaguna 1 hour ago|
Sadly, this being Hacker News, it won't catch much attention and will be quickly flagged by people who have too much karma.

But I think we are making progress, slowly, sadly too slowly, with the current summer we are having in Europe, of the impact of our past actions in the weather. And make no mistake, eating so much meat and drinking so much milk, is a huge impact we are inflicting on our planet.

Please do not comment with "I do X" or "In our house, we avoid doing Y" - it is not about you and me, it is about society. I am convinced, you are convinced, we need everyone to be convinced.

hdgvhicv 1 hour ago||
Everyone apart from a few stragglers agree the climate is changing. Most people agree the world won’t change its behaviour on its own to stop that.

So we can thus incentivise change (things like renewables being far cheaper than fossil fuel) globally, and adapt to reality.

There are a vocal minority whining about how we need to stop eating beef or milk annd stop using energy and there are those who make beef and milk more sustainable and make generating energy sustainable. I have time for the latter. The former can go hand out with the coal rollers.

jcattle 57 minutes ago||
How do you make beef and milk more sustainable? I'm honestly wondering. To me it seems similar to saying: we can make coal power plants more efficient. Equivalent to more "efficient" (however you want to define that) forms of animal husbandry.

It doesn't change the fact that you're still burning coal, while you could be putting up solar.

throwawayffffas 37 minutes ago|||
Okay lets get this straight, animals do not contribute to global warming. The co2 they emit has been taken from the atmosphere from plants.

Methane breaks down to Co2 in the atmosphere on average in 9.6 years.

Animal rearing does not permanently affect the climate.

Increasing stock sizes does increase the methane level equilibrium but there are mitigations to this, there are additives to feed that can reduce methane emissions to 1%. Last I checked a few years ago, there were pilot programs to determine effects on animal welfare and product quality.

The problem we should be focusing on is fossil fuels.

ben_w 17 minutes ago|||
> Methane breaks down to Co2 in the atmosphere on average in 9.6 years.

Despite which, over a 100 year period it has 25 times the warming impact as the CO2 it turns into.

> The problem we should be focusing on is fossil fuels.

Everyone should focus on whatever they know how to make a dent with, the "sustainable" emissions rate is 0.1% of the current rate which is essentially "we need to fix everything everywhere except for pick one of grassland or North Korea".

https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector

pcrh 18 minutes ago|||
Animal-emitted CO2 isn't the problem, but methane.

The CO2 captured by plants and eaten by livestock gets converted in part to methane, a more more potent greenhouse gas. This does eventually degrade back to the original CO2, but on a scale of decades, it's currently too slow to prevent accumulation of methane.

paweladamczuk 33 minutes ago|||
FWIW, no matter the issue, this kind of tone makes me close up for any rational arguments. I wish I could look past it, but I just can't.
pastage 23 minutes ago||
It's probably not the tone. You only choose to hear that tone and close up. (From my experience)

I hold some fringe ideas, e.g. helmets are bad. So I have lots of experience with handling discussion where people close up for any rational argument. Because I am just wrong by definition. That really lets you explore how people react to ideas they do not support.

paweladamczuk 13 minutes ago||
Yeah, straight out denial of somebody's experience is another debate killer.
hackernud3s 56 minutes ago|||
Beef specifically. If everybody switched to pork, chicken and fish that would mitigate most of this and it's a much more realistic ask.
simianwords 40 minutes ago|||
I would much rather have Europe install ACs instead. Stopping meat, not installing ACs, degrowth all look like masochistic ways to show that we are repenting.
Yizahi 1 hour ago||
It will be flagged because of the manipulative headline.
nobodywillobsrv 1 hour ago||
Seems causally false.
tempfile 51 minutes ago|
What does that mean?
pvaldes 1 hour ago|
Another way of saying the same would be: Agriculture causes almost 60% of the biodiversity damage linked to global farmland.

Yep, is the miracle of literature. An hectare of cattle allows more biodiversity than the same hectare of lettuce.

facecalm 58 minutes ago||
The miracle would be to read the article which states the biodiversity damage is 14 times higher per calorie than plant-sourced foods. Which means you could reduce the 40% to 2-3% if you would replace it totally.
Buxato 27 minutes ago||
And per protein gram? Taking into account bio equivalence and bioavailability between different kinds of protein source.
pastage 19 minutes ago||
Vegetarian options are easier, cheaper and better to produce per gram of protein. Especially if you want to live in an society and not on the steppe.
tovej 1 hour ago||
You think cows are the only animals that require food production from farms?