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I still think meat vs not meat is the wrong approach when addressing the climate: is eating a chicken you raised on your land worse for the environment than consuming the equivalent number of calories from fruits and vegetables imported from another continent? My hunch is no. You can be an environmentally conscious omnivore or an not-so environmentally conscious herbavore. The meatiness of what you eat has absolutely nothing to do, necessarily, with your actual environmental impact.

The ethical issues of consuming animals are another can of worms.

Exit: spelling.

If everyone raised their own chickens, or bought from a small local farm, then yea, of course.

Except that this is objectively not the case for the majority of people in the developed world.

If people bought the same number of chickens from separate smaller farms instead of one big farm, would that actually make any difference?

It’s an interesting question. It’s not only how local the farm is, it’s also the type of farming practices. Not every small farm is going to farm sustainably. However, most big farms today do not farm sustainably. Farming meat at the scale demanded by consumers today means lots of derforestation and soil erosion, which means more carbon in the atmosphere. Of course, there are ranchers out their who farm sustainably — but again, exceptions to the rule.

My guess is that this level of consumption can’t be sustained, environmentally. Buying from small farms would likely be more expensive, which would in turn lead to a decrease in consumption.

> However, most big farms today do not farm sustainably

Is this true in the West though? It's not like we have a lot more forest to destroy... Soil erosion is definitely an issue, but AFAIK it primarily applies to growing plants (with e.g. artificial, fossil-carbon-based, unsustainable fertilizers), not animals.

The problem here is that a huge amount of the plants grown go towards feeding animals. [1] That’s probably one explanation for why estimates regarding the carbon impact of meat production vary widely.

1: http://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-mi...

Yes, based on the research being quoted by anyone stating that plant based products produce less green house gases.

But wouldn't the same argument apply for vegetables?

Yes to this as well. They found a variation of +/- 50% of gasses produced based on the individual practices.

Exactly. Locally grown veg are better than imported veg as well. Go for that whenever possible.

But using this to present some false dilemma between a chicken raised on your own land and imported vegetables is just nonsense.

Obviously it was a cherry picked example, but to me the falsity is in the claim that “if you are eating vegetables you are necessarily more environmentally conscious than those who eat meat”. There are degrees of environmental friendliness on both sides and, certainly, I think most people would agree that most meat-eaters do not appropriately weigh the effects of their consumption. But I think the same is true of many vegetarians who just assume because they are eating vegetables they are definitely making more environmentally aware choices than all omnivores.

That was my only attempted point.

I have neighbors that used to raise chickens. When they went on vacation, I used to care for them for a week or so at a time. It's a lot easier than you might think. They are fairly low-maintenance, as animals go. And if you just eat eggs, it keeps things simple.

Also, the eggs were way better than anything you get from a supermarket.

> is eating a chicken you raised on your land worse for the environment than consuming the equivalent number of calories from fruits and vegetables imported from another continent?

Out of the universe of possible alternatives one could present, this pair seems rather carefully chosen.

If you read the research that indicates that climate change is conributed to by eating meat there is a very wide variation in the contribution within each industry. Most of them had a +/- of 50% based on the individual practices of the farmer, and butcher/processing plant.

It is a contrived example but also a realistic example. While there was no situation in the article I can remember where the best farming practices produced less green house gases than plant based food, it was a pretty wide spectrum.

Not really.

I live in a temperate zone. During the colder months there are not a lot of options for local plant based foods. They are for the most part shipped long distance from somewhere else. Local animals are available year round though.

I attended year round "local food" potlucks in Indiana. People had local food available year around. During the winter it kept in cool storage (like onions), or had been frozen, dehydrated, canned, or grown in a greenhouse.

If year-round local plant-food was more of a priority for people, more could be produced.

Besides, where are the local animals getting their food during the winter? The options are basically the same: either they have local food that's been preserved or their food is getting shipped in too, making a rather inefficient way to deliver calories to humans.

I was with you until your position that animals eat the same food humans do (because if people can't find local food, how can animals?). This is very, very wrong - even in pretty bad climates where nothing edible will grow for humans it isn't impossible to raise some sort of cattle that grazes. That's more or less the point of cattle: to take a thing you cannot eat and turn it into something you can.

Sure thing, but if you look at the first example I found regarding meat consumption by type [1], what you claim seems disconnected the reality, because only 1.1 percent of all meat consumed is lamb or mutton. And I'm sure most of it is produced in ways that pay off (that is big scale operations, same as with all the other meat on the market).

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/189222/average-meat-cons...

You are replying to statements I have not made. Even if what you say is technically true, I have not made any claims about percentages or majorities - I was merely pointing out a configuration of reality that exists and was not kept in mind when the person I was responding to wrote his comment.

I also don't understand why you are bringing up lamb and mutton, as those are far from the only animals you can keep in the conditions I mentioned. It's not unthinkable that you are making a point of some sort there, but without elaborating on it further the reader is left guessing.

This isn't entirely unrelated to how many marginal ecosystems are currently being destroyed by domesticated grazing animals, which are typically invasive species that will overpopulate the area either because of lack of predators or because humans are protecting them from predators.

This maybe wasn't such a big deal centuries ago when natural forces also placed stronger limits on the size of the human populations in those areas. Nowadays, though, I think we very much have to think about the possibility that, regardless of any romantic notions about traditional ways of life, using livestock to live in places we otherwise couldn't is not something we do to respect nature, it's something we do that's destroying it.

This is the sort of black and white rhetoric that I think does not do a service to the reality involved. Of course you are correct that overgrazing is a problem, but to go from that to "using livestock to live in places we otherwise couldn't is something we do to destroy the environment" is plain wrong. I would instantly concede your point if you could moderate it to "we need to stop overdoing things", which I think is compatible with what we both see and still has merit.

Someone concerned about the environment can consider both plant-based food and more local, seasonal foods. There's no need for the two approaches to be considered at odds.

But if you care to, you can check out a ranked order of top solutions to climate change. We need to work all items on the list, not just the top ones, but you'll find "Plant-Rich Diet" as #4 on the list:

https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank

Improving transportation doesn't even show up until #25 on the list.

Consider that 3% of calories that go into beef production end up as calories that a human consumes. The practice is so inefficient that about 50% of the land in the US is devoted to grazing cows:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/img/2018...

Imagine how much more local food we could grow across the country if we weren't so inefficiently filtering our calories through cows, adding cholesterol and saturated fat in the process.

I just read an article saying that owning a dog/cat was a huge contributor to climate change as well.

My dog died a few months ago and I'm just considering not getting another one.

EDIT: I'll take the downvotes on this topic, but it's kinda hypocritcal to go after people for not eating meat because of green house gasses but to ignore the fact that that our pets also contribute.... I don't mind being wrong but I prefer a good discussion to down votes.

And yes, my dog of 14 years really did die, and this is a factor in me not having another dog already.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2017/08/02/whats-yo...

EDIT 2: I also want to make clear that eating meat can be more-wrong because it has multiple dings: green houses gases, modern practices, you don't like eating animals, etc. But you shouldn't use that argument in one place while ignoring it in another.

That's interesting. When my wife had a smaller dog, she walked it around the neighborhood. Now she has a bigger higher-energy dog, she sometimes drives it to the dog park so it run off leash more. (And still walks around the neighborhood some, too).

One thing that ranks even higher than plant-rich diets as a solution is addressing food waste ( https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank ).

Solution: Feed fido leftover scraps when you can!

That's a really good solution. Food waste is a huge problem. I think we can all agree that eating food we purchase is way better than wasting that same of food.

>> Meat production is such a big contributor to climate change that I’m all for this kind of research.

How big is the contribution of meat production on climate change? The following page has a pie chart of global emissions by gas (the site is the US Environmental Protection Agency):

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

I don't know when the data is from. Methane, which as I understand it is the primary emission from livestock, makes up 16% of overall emissions (CO2 is, unsurprisingly, the largest contributor with 65%).

Another chart a bit further down shows emissions by sector. Agriculture and forestry and other land use takes up 24% of that (another quarter+ is energy production). The text accompanying the graphic states that most of it is from crops and livestock, without further clarifying the contribution of each. I also can't tell how much of the contribution of farming is due to methane produced by livestock and how much from CO2 emitted by transportation etc.

Overall, I'm none the wiser about exactly how much meat production contributes to climate change. I have to say I remain very skeptical that farming is a heavier burden on the environment than transportation and energy production, not mention deforestation and desertification by urban sprawl etc.

What the EPA defines as 'agriculture' in that chart isn't really the same as what we'd consider the entire 'food system'. For instance, they include the emissions from ammonia used in farming – but the agriculture sector of that chart doesn't include the emissions that come from producing the ammonia in the first place. That figure is incorporated into the industrial processes and product use category. Ammonia is near the top of that section’s list, which accounts for 5% of emissions, and farming is one of the biggest commercial uses of ammonia. [1]

Same with transportation. 28% of the total pie. 23% of that is from medium to heavy duty trucks. How many of those trucks are hauling food? Airplanes bringing cherries from across the world in December?

The section on land use and conservation shows our biggest carbon sink. Land that's healthy, not eroded, growing perennial plants, trees, etc. Alternative farming is all about restoring damaged land to be a carbon sink rather than emitter. While that graph shows how much agriculture practices contribute to climate change, it doesn't show how much we would swing things the other direction if instead of growing endless acres of mono-crops – largely to feed animals in industrial feedlots – we transitioned to sustainable farming practices that build and repair soil, and sequester gigatons of carbon in the process.

1: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2019-02/documents...

I think this is easier to do depending on where you live. For example, being a vegetarian in California is far more practical than in Korea or Vietnam.

I say that because your environment depends on how difficult this transition will be, don’t put too much pressure on yourself.

Nitpick, but given how widespread Buddhism is in East Asia, I would not be surprised if it were also quite practical to be vegetarian in both Korea and Vietnam. I do agree that there are locations where being vegetarian would be more difficult - more rural, meatcentric towns in America come to mind for me.

If you care about environment impact, even switching from beef to pork and especially chicken helps a lot. I haven't been in rural American towns but I think both should be available without any difficulties.

Yet if you also care about non-human pain and suffering, then that won't really help.

Yet swapping from factory farmed beef to locally sourced free range chicken will help with both.

Neither caring about the environment, nor caring about non-human pain and suffering are binary choices. What is better for animal well being may be worse for the environment (plastics in lieu of leather), and vice versa (forest clearing for Palm oil plantations). It's important to care about both and to do what _you_ believe is the most important.

You should strive to make better choices, even if they are imperfect.

> You should strive to make better choices, even if they are imperfect.

Definitely. If some unachievable ideal of perfectionism is preventing us from doing anything at all, it's quite harmful.

> What is better for animal well being may be worse for the environment (plastics in lieu of leather), and vice versa (forest clearing for Palm oil plantations).

This claim is often used as an argument to stay away from soy products even though the amounts of (mostly GM) soy used to feed livestock are larger by an order of magnitude.

Buddhists aren’t restricted to vegetarianism. A friend of mine was a monk in Thailand for years and ate what was given during alms rounds. Tibetan monks will often consume meat as well, as the plateau isn’t great for fresh veggies all year round.

It’s often just cultural whether the local Buddhist lineage will eat meat or not. My acupuncturist, who is Chinese, always tells me I should eat meat at least occasionally. Personally I have no desire to after going vegetarian and really don’t miss meat at all. The idea of lab grown meat has zero appeal to me, even if it’s ethical and not horrible for the environment.

The best place to travel as a vegetarian is India. It’s so nice to have pure veg kitchens and to not have to worry if a restaurant will have an option for me on the menu.

It’s more difficult than you might imagine. I find Hindu countries are much easier as like others have suggested, not all Buddhists take vegetarianism as seriously as people think.

In Japan there is a type of vegan cuisine which monks eat, however it’s considered a kind of fundamentalist diet and it’s difficult to find outside of certain temples.

I’ve lived in Vietnam for nine years. Good Buddhists will forgo meat for at least two days every month so there are loads of vegetarian restaurants around. If you don’t mind cooking at home it’s even easier.

> Meat production is such a big contributor to climate change that I’m all for this kind of research. But, I also think more people will simply go some form of mostly vegetarian / vegan in the coming years (optimistically).

Even with a fairly optimistic time frame, by the time lab grown meat is replacing a significant number animals it will be way to late climate change wise, at least a 3-4 degree rise will locked in by then.