Originally Posted by daylatedollarshort View Post
The recent U.N. Climate report has a chart on various diets that may help combat global warming and how much each one reduces greenhouse gas emissions here.
Thanks, that is an interesting chart.
Later, after more coffee, I may try to see if I can bring that down to a personal level - would changing, say a majority of my meals to meat-less, or low meat make any signification difference? IOW, how do those numbers compare to our other carbon 'budget (transportation, HVAC, making the stuff we use), etc). Yes, every little bit helps, but as has been pointed out by MacKay, it only helps a little bit.
Then there is water and land resources, etc, but still interested in the scale. I just don't know at this point.
-ERD50
OK, so as I just posted - it's complicated!
I started with water consumption, from corn to beef to plate. Wow, there are a lot of meaningless numbers thrown around out of context. I have a long way to go to make sense of them, and probably won't even try at this point, but here are a few things worth thinking about:
Some of the bogus numbers just talk about conversion of X pounds of corn to a pound of beef, but then erroneously apply it to a 1300# slaughter weight, and appear to assume that they are fed only corn (not true!).
But much (all?) of that first 750# is gained on pasture that is unsuitable for crops (the kind I saw on our way to the Grand Canyon). If we didn't have that beef to eat from pasture land, wouldn't that require additional grain for human consumption? People can't eat grass, so maybe this is actually an efficient and environmentally friendly use of this pasture land? Or it at least offsets some of the assumptions?
And there are other products from that beef, the hide, fat and bones used in industrial processes, etc.
And not all grain feed is straight from the field, it is a by-product:
In ethanol production from corn, approximately one-third of the corn grain ends up as cattle feed. This feed has no value to humans but makes an excellent cattle feed.
I don't think I'm up to putting in the effort to sort that all out, lots of moving pieces. Maybe "carbon footprint" will be a bit easier? OK, maybe it is, but I also am taking these numbers at face value, so let's see...
Carbon Footprint Factsheet | Center for Sustainable Systems
says that "http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet
On average, U.S. household food consumption emits 8.1 metric tons of CO2e each year. The production of food accounts for 83% of emissions, while its transportation accounts for 11%.
and
A vegetarian diet greatly reduces an individual’s carbon footprint, but switching to less carbon intensive meats can have a major impact as well.
For example, replacing all beef consumption with chicken for one year leads to an annual carbon footprint reduction of 882 pounds CO2e.
882# against 8.1 metric tons is a reduction of ~ 22% (IOW, we still have 78% of the carbon footprint of food).
There is an interesting chart there of the CO2e for a serving of various foods. While veggies & grains are far lower than meat, chicken and pork are already so much lower than beef that it is a bit of diminishing returns. If you already have about a 5:1 reduction by going from beef to chicken or pork, then a further 10x reduction with plants is only a few % overall. And cheese, eggs, milk are about in-line with pork & chicken (rough numbers).
I just noticed, no mention of fish?
Going bigger picture-wise, I found (and have not verified these numbers against other sources):
https://www.ccfpd.org/Portals/0/Assets/PDF/Facts_Chart.pdf
The average US household produces 7.5 tons of CO2 equivalents per year.
So if (big if) their methodology is consistent, that makes for about:
15,000 < household annual # of CO2e
3,960 < household annual # of CO2e from food
26.40%
25.00% < a WAG at food CO2e reduction if went to plant/grain
6.60% < so maybe a 6~7% reduction in overall personal carbon footprint?
Significant, but not huge either (and these numbers could be pretty far off).
So many assumptions in there, like the use of pasture and ethanol and other waste used to produce beef. Transportation, processing? But I think the take away here is that moving from beef to chicken, pork, dairy, may do near as much good as going plant-based. And that is probably more realistic for more people? And the reality is, it is better to get a large % of people to make some significant change, than to count on a small % of people making a big change. And of course, the numbers would be different for grass finished beef.
Bottom line for me? I dunno. I have not done any real analysis, but off the top of my head, most of our dinner meals are chicken, pork, fish, the occasional vegetarian-based meal (because we like it, no other reason). We certainly don't avoid beef, but now that I think about it, we don't really eat that much either. We cook burgers occasionally (2x a month?), have steak maybe that often, the occasional beef roast? Very occasional pot roast, ox tail soup, etc. Gee, really not that much beef, less than I thought. Rarely ever have any beef for breakfast (might cook up some left over steak with an egg). I'll think about it, but I doubt that I'll really make any changes, as the impact seems pretty minimal considering the amounts involved.
If anyone wants to shoot for better numbers, have a go at it!
But I think the OP was really more interested in what people think of these based on flavor, and leave the environmental and other stuff as a personal decision. I get it. And I'll repeat what I said earlier, that for me, personally, I'm not looking for any veggie dish to replace meat, I like to enjoy a veggie dish on its own, for what it is. DW makes a really nice 'mexican-spiced lasagna' that is all veggie, and I really like her bean-patty 'burgers', which I don't view as a replacement for a meat burger, I just like them.
Now, all this talk has me craving a nice juicy grilled real-beef burger! Kind of counter to the thread, but what the heck!
-ERD50