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The Comforting Lie of "Climate-Friendly Meat" (newrepublic.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's really an order of magnitudes difference between any plant-based food and even best case meat production

Regardless of whether you compare the footprint of foods in terms of their weight (e.g. one kilogram of cheese versus one kilogram of peas); protein content ; or calories, the overall conclusion is the same: plant-based foods tend to have a lower carbon footprint than meat and dairy. In many cases a much smaller footprint.

[...]

If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives?The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.

https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

these conclusions are largely based on poor nemecek 2018. the methodology in that study is suspect.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There is plenty of other research finding similar conclusions. Here's a review looking at 34 different papers finding that:

there is no indication that a situation or condition may make beef burgers more environmentally friendly than these two plant-based alternatives, or that the addition of plant-based meats to vegan and vegetarian diets may reduce their environmental benefits.

[...]

This paper shows that plant-based diets and plant-based meat options are unambiguously better for the environment. This is true for modeled vegetarian and vegan diets as well as for observed diets that may include highly processed foods such as plant burgers

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/17/9926

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

this paper is fucked in about as many ways as poore nemecek. The homogenized disparate studies about LCAs when they all use different methodologies. The LCA numbers that they're using were never meant to be used in this context. it's possible they're even right but this methodology simply can't support their conclusions.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If I'm reading the methodology correctly, the paper is mainly comparing the relative findings within each study. (They do have some other comparisons that don't, yes, but they are mainly looking at relative numbers where each is computed with the same methodology)

Our focus on the percent change from a diet switch relative to the environmental impacts of the baseline omnivorous diet described in each study, makes the findings comparable across papers. Within each paper, the environmental impacts of one diet are comparable to those of another diet because these are expressed as a function of calories provided, taking as a benchmark a requirement of between 2000 and 2700 kcal/person/day

They then look at the distribution of the relative change figures. The entire range looked at here is lower emissions

We can also look at non-review studies as well. Here's one comparing emissions of farming types more directly

The aim is to compare the environmental impacts of different diets with different levels of animal product consumption, while accounting for the type of farming systems (organic or conventional) of the food consumed.

A positive link between animal-sourced food consumption and total environmental impact was observed in this large sample of French adults. By far, omnivorous had the highest-level of greenhouse gas emissions, cumulative energy demand and land occupation while vegan diets had the lowest

We found that a 100% organic omnivorous diet exhibited higher environmental pressures, suggesting that following an organic diet without changing towards a more plant-based diet is of little help, at least as regards the studied indicators

the vegan diet, whatever the indicator considered, remained less resource-intensive and environmentally damaging than other diets

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352550919304920

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

we agree about what their methodology was. given that every lca study state explicitly that it's results should not be compared to other studies, these "researchers" knew OR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that they were not doing science.