- There's 104 million km^2 of habitable land on earth
- 40 million km^2 goes to meat & dairy (includes grazing land + land used for crops for animal feed)
- 11 million km^2 goes to plants to feed humans
- 83% of the global calorie supply for humans comes from plants vs 18% from meat (i.e. meat is very inefficient)
- Demand for meat is going to continue going up so deforestation is going to keep going up: "As we get richer, our diets tend to diversify and per capita meat consumption rises; economic development unfortunately exerts an increasing impact on land resources. If we want per capita meat consumption to be able to rise sustainably at lower incomes, per capita meat consumption at high incomes will have to decrease."
> the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has estimated that agriculture (including not only livestock, but also food crop, biofuel and other production) accounted for about 10 to 12 percent of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (expressed as 100-year carbon dioxide equivalents) in 2005[58] and in 2010.[59]
Planting trees and new technology might buy us some time, but if our idealised lifestyle is fundamentally unsustainable, we'll be back in the same situation again soon enough. I feel this uncomfortable truth is ignored by well meaning people. Waiting for lab grown meat isn't a realistic option either.
Governments have a hard time making people wear a mask that can save their lives and the one of their families. I can't imagine forcing them to stop eating meat being a solution.
And if you stop eating meat yourself there is absolutely no guarantee that it has any impact at all. If enough people do it they may marginally decrease the demand for meat and lower its price but for this price some people will start eating more meat and the net result is null.
Come visit the forests in Western Kansas where they had to clear-cut thousands of acres for the dairy farms and cattle feedlots. (sarcasm as there's probably an average of less than 100 trees per square mile here).
While I fully support the reduction in consumption of animal products, these figures don't paint the whole picture. In Great Britain, no forests have been cut down for raising livestock. The forest were cut down over thousands of years for fuel and for farming crops. The land that could support trees now is still used for growing crops. Animals roam meadows and uplands that are not suitable for growing crops and live on grass and silage. It's sustainable. In the past pigs were raised in individual households and lived on scraps from the kitchen. Unfortunately this had to stop (it's now an illegal practice) due to disease concerns.
> 83% of the global calorie supply for humans comes from plants vs 18% from meat (i.e. meat is very inefficient)
This isn't the correct statistic to make the point you want to make. If anything this would encourage more meat consumption to balance out the calorie intake. The statistic you really want is something like: "For beef it takes 54 calories of fuel to produce 1 calorie of protein." (Yes, this is also incomplete, meat has fat as well, "fuel" is very broad and vegetables use fuel as well etc., but I don't have time to find the proper stats). Essentially cows are not very efficient at turning sunlight into food.
We can't just change what we eat but also how the food is produced. Nitrogen fertilizers, based on fossil fuels, can not continue being pumped out and causing havoc. The damage to the ocean, drinking water and the large contribution to global warming is not sustainable at current levels.
We are already at the point where 50% of all lakes in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America are eutrophic with decreased biodiversity and toxicity as a result. In addition the Baltic Sea is fast turning into the dead sea, releasing additional greenhouse gases in the process. Global warming also act as an accelerator in combination with eutrophication.
The best direction that we can current go would be to transition diets towards including a significant amount of seaweed and shellfish. Insect farms are also an alternative with low foot print.
We don't need to plant trees nor use any new technology because trees come with their own way of reproduction which comes for free with each growing tree! They will spread exponentially via seeds.
If we just let trees spread themselves around instead of championing venture backed startups to use drones or something equally bizarre to do what nature would do if we just sit back we might be able to channel our guilt or desire to control nature into some other area.
If we hardly know what good nutrition is for humans, how can we assume that meat is some ancillary part of our diet?
This dogmatic view to end meat consumption is a horrible mistake, as it’s predicated on us understanding the human body in its entirety. There’s really no studies that investigate with causality a human diet. It would be unethical/expensive to properly study causality. We have epidemiological studies that find correlation, which has been wrong many times (red meat causes cancer, saturated fats are bad, etc). Epidemiology is meant to point towards a correlation for us to separately study causality, instead of these statistics game of conflating the two via attempting to remove confounding variables.
Further, you’re assuming all land that’s currently used for livestock had no prior use. Much of the land was formally used for crops (until the soil was depleted from poor farming practices, injected with nitrogen/fertilizers, then essentially decimated) if the topsoil was nutrient dense.
Deforestation is needed for crops as well, it’s not exclusively done for animal agriculture. Removing all meat sources would still require some amount of land to fill in the caloric gap. You can’t just subtract all livestock land and say you can plant trees, and thus a net gain.
We are working on this at Wren (YC 2019) — reforestation and regenerative agroforestry are very effective methods for sequestering and offsetting carbon. The more people that support these projects, the bigger scale they get.
> (Trees also provide building materials - what a great way to sequester carbon!)
Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but maybe companies should brand non-recycled paper products as carbon-sequestered paper instead, and tell people to send it to landfill rather than recycle it for maximum sequestration purposes.
Afaik fully developed forests are basically carbon neutral, so it's not a permanent way to offset carbon emissions. However we have a lot of unused, deforested land on this planet so it can be a carbon sink for quite some time.
Planting more trees has many benefits to the planet and society, and trees can be a large carbon sink - but planting trees doesn't always help mitigate climate change, and in some cases can exacerbate the problem.
If land is left alone, trees will plant themselves! Instead of using humans to plant trees, we should look at why humans are not allowing trees to grow.
Two other issues:
1) Technology is the wrong way at looking at this for most of the planet. It's only in small areas of the globe where nature needs a guiding hand via irrigation and fertilization for example. Just leaving stuff alone will work for most places.
2) Tree planting efforts are great for publicity and marketing which is mainly a human benefit. The urge to meddle and "fix nature" is both a symptom and cause of the situation we got ourselves in.
It's like buying hair transplants on your head when you could just stop shaving.
I'm glad that the trend of reforestation is happening in Europe and will contribute to co2 capture. I think it's less due to deliberate efforts and more a product of food production efficiency, closing of small farms and people transitioning to urban env.
Besides being noticeable on satellite images it also affects local climate so in my area (NW Croatia) due to reforestation they had to update the climate models due to forests holding more moisture. (another side effect is increased number of wild boar)
A question for an Entomologist - how does the woolly adelgid insect kill so many trees so quickly? They look so small and cute, is it from sucking too much sap from trees?
They measure carbon release from the soil of tree's, and data shows that the trees are storing more carbon (actually, releasing less carbon if I understand correctly) as they get older and larger, the trees referenced are 200+ years old now. I don't see anything to justify the 'warming world' mentioned in the title, but trees capture more carbon as they grow larger fwiw.
It makes me wonder if we should remove some percentage of fallen trees in forests and sequester them? Otherwise all that co2 goes back into the atmosphere.
It's good to read about these kinds of studies. Ecologists typically don't seem to account for evolution in their models for global warming. Nature is excellent at adapting to changes. If there is a surplus of anything, certain specimens will benefit from this surplus and nature will adapt and balance things out.
It might take 100000 years to achieve the balance which will be quite different balance (eg all people die and Earth populated with giant crocodiles), but technically yes, nature will adapt and balance things out.
[+] [-] seanwilson|5 years ago|reply
1) How many existing forests we wouldn't have to cut down if we transitioned away from meat & dairy ?
2) How much extra space that would also give us to plant more trees?
3) How much green house gas are from animal farming in the first place?
https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets:
- There's 104 million km^2 of habitable land on earth
- 40 million km^2 goes to meat & dairy (includes grazing land + land used for crops for animal feed)
- 11 million km^2 goes to plants to feed humans
- 83% of the global calorie supply for humans comes from plants vs 18% from meat (i.e. meat is very inefficient)
- Demand for meat is going to continue going up so deforestation is going to keep going up: "As we get richer, our diets tend to diversify and per capita meat consumption rises; economic development unfortunately exerts an increasing impact on land resources. If we want per capita meat consumption to be able to rise sustainably at lower incomes, per capita meat consumption at high incomes will have to decrease."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...:
> the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has estimated that agriculture (including not only livestock, but also food crop, biofuel and other production) accounted for about 10 to 12 percent of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (expressed as 100-year carbon dioxide equivalents) in 2005[58] and in 2010.[59]
Planting trees and new technology might buy us some time, but if our idealised lifestyle is fundamentally unsustainable, we'll be back in the same situation again soon enough. I feel this uncomfortable truth is ignored by well meaning people. Waiting for lab grown meat isn't a realistic option either.
[+] [-] toto444|5 years ago|reply
And if you stop eating meat yourself there is absolutely no guarantee that it has any impact at all. If enough people do it they may marginally decrease the demand for meat and lower its price but for this price some people will start eating more meat and the net result is null.
[+] [-] Fjolsvith|5 years ago|reply
Dairy farm street view:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.4449329,-100.8322638,3a,75y,...
You will notice the trees in the above view are clustered around the offices.
Feedlot street view:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9084198,-100.5339579,3a,75y,...
[+] [-] globular-toast|5 years ago|reply
> 83% of the global calorie supply for humans comes from plants vs 18% from meat (i.e. meat is very inefficient)
This isn't the correct statistic to make the point you want to make. If anything this would encourage more meat consumption to balance out the calorie intake. The statistic you really want is something like: "For beef it takes 54 calories of fuel to produce 1 calorie of protein." (Yes, this is also incomplete, meat has fat as well, "fuel" is very broad and vegetables use fuel as well etc., but I don't have time to find the proper stats). Essentially cows are not very efficient at turning sunlight into food.
[+] [-] belorn|5 years ago|reply
We are already at the point where 50% of all lakes in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America are eutrophic with decreased biodiversity and toxicity as a result. In addition the Baltic Sea is fast turning into the dead sea, releasing additional greenhouse gases in the process. Global warming also act as an accelerator in combination with eutrophication.
The best direction that we can current go would be to transition diets towards including a significant amount of seaweed and shellfish. Insect farms are also an alternative with low foot print.
[+] [-] thinkingemote|5 years ago|reply
If we just let trees spread themselves around instead of championing venture backed startups to use drones or something equally bizarre to do what nature would do if we just sit back we might be able to channel our guilt or desire to control nature into some other area.
[+] [-] spacephysics|5 years ago|reply
This dogmatic view to end meat consumption is a horrible mistake, as it’s predicated on us understanding the human body in its entirety. There’s really no studies that investigate with causality a human diet. It would be unethical/expensive to properly study causality. We have epidemiological studies that find correlation, which has been wrong many times (red meat causes cancer, saturated fats are bad, etc). Epidemiology is meant to point towards a correlation for us to separately study causality, instead of these statistics game of conflating the two via attempting to remove confounding variables.
Further, you’re assuming all land that’s currently used for livestock had no prior use. Much of the land was formally used for crops (until the soil was depleted from poor farming practices, injected with nitrogen/fertilizers, then essentially decimated) if the topsoil was nutrient dense.
Deforestation is needed for crops as well, it’s not exclusively done for animal agriculture. Removing all meat sources would still require some amount of land to fill in the caloric gap. You can’t just subtract all livestock land and say you can plant trees, and thus a net gain.
https://theconversation.com/yes-eating-meat-affects-the-envi...
[+] [-] WalterBright|5 years ago|reply
I'm astonished that there aren't national programs globally aimed at en-forestation.
(Trees also provide building materials - what a great way to sequester carbon!)
[+] [-] taylorlapeyre|5 years ago|reply
https://projectwren.com
[+] [-] jcranmer|5 years ago|reply
Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but maybe companies should brand non-recycled paper products as carbon-sequestered paper instead, and tell people to send it to landfill rather than recycle it for maximum sequestration purposes.
[+] [-] moultano|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _jahh|5 years ago|reply
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/pakistan-virus-idled-...
https://norad.no/en/front/thematic-areas/climate-change-and-...
[+] [-] p1necone|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doubleocherry|5 years ago|reply
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200521-planting-trees-d...
[+] [-] thinkingemote|5 years ago|reply
Two other issues:
1) Technology is the wrong way at looking at this for most of the planet. It's only in small areas of the globe where nature needs a guiding hand via irrigation and fertilization for example. Just leaving stuff alone will work for most places.
2) Tree planting efforts are great for publicity and marketing which is mainly a human benefit. The urge to meddle and "fix nature" is both a symptom and cause of the situation we got ourselves in.
It's like buying hair transplants on your head when you could just stop shaving.
[+] [-] mc32|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reustle|5 years ago|reply
https://www.globalforestwatch.org/map/
[+] [-] Kosirich|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kanobo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drewmol|5 years ago|reply
It's a very short article just read it
They measure carbon release from the soil of tree's, and data shows that the trees are storing more carbon (actually, releasing less carbon if I understand correctly) as they get older and larger, the trees referenced are 200+ years old now. I don't see anything to justify the 'warming world' mentioned in the title, but trees capture more carbon as they grow larger fwiw.
[+] [-] mrfusion|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryptica|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lightgreen|5 years ago|reply