Beef production causes 5x more greenhouse gas emissions than all air travel!

[Maciamo]

If you want to fight climate change, reducing beef consumption or completely stopping it would be far more effective than purchasing an electric car or cancelling your holiday plans abroad. Check this article.

The Economist: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the global food system was responsible for 21-37% of greenhouse gas emissions. Beef production alone is responsible for 8.5% of global emissions - nearly as much as for all plant-based agriculture combined!

Beef is uniquely carbon intensive among food products. Its annual emissions are 4.3 gigatonnes of CO₂-equivalent, more than the all the emissions of the European Union (3.29 gigatonnes) and Japan (1.1 gigatonnes) combined, or else more than Africa (1.4 gigatonnes) and India (2.6 gigatonnes) combined! That's just crazy.

Add to that cow's milk, which account for 1.6 gigatonnes of CO₂-e and cattle become the world's biggest greenhouse gas producer after China. If we were to ban all cattle farming worldwide, greenhouse gas emissions would suddenly drop by 11.5%.

But cows aren't just bad news for climate change. Cattle farming is the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon Forest and is responsible for the extinction of hundreds of species every single year. In my eyes this is even worse than global warming. Extinction is forever. There is just no going back, unlike CO2 emissions which should eventually diminish with enough collective efforts. By then tens of thousands of animal and plant species will have disappeared from Earth's surface, just so that people can eat beef instead of other meats than taste similar like ostrich or kangaroo, which don't emit methane and don't cause deforestation.

But the real alternative is lab-grown meat (including fish), which will undoubtedly prove healthier as it won't contain environmental toxins, bacteria, viruses, heavy metals or microplastics. It's also cruelty free and low in carbon emissions.

[Archetype0ne]

One of the main reasons I am Vegetarian, 2 1/2 years and counting.

[torzio]

If you want to fight climate change, reducing beef consumption or completely stopping it would be far more effective than purchasing an electric car or cancelling your holiday plans abroad. Check this article.

The Economist: Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the global food system was responsible for 21-37% of greenhouse gas emissions. Beef production alone is responsible for 8.5% of global emissions - nearly as much as for all plant-based agriculture combined!

Beef is uniquely carbon intensive among food products. Its annual emissions are 4.3 gigatonnes of CO₂-equivalent, more than the all the emissions of the European Union (3.29 gigatonnes) and Japan (1.1 gigatonnes) combined, or else more than Africa (1.4 gigatonnes) and India (2.6 gigatonnes) combined! That's just crazy.

Add to that cow's milk, which account for 1.6 gigatonnes of CO₂-e and cattle become the world's biggest greenhouse gas producer after China. If we were to ban all cattle farming worldwide, greenhouse gas emissions would suddenly drop by 11.5%.

But cows aren't just bad news for climate change. Cattle farming is the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon Forest and is responsible for the extinction of hundreds of species every single year. In my eyes this is even worse than global warming. Extinction is forever. There is just no going back, unlike CO2 emissions which should eventually diminish with enough collective efforts. By then tens of thousands of animal and plant species will have disappeared from Earth's surface, just so that people can eat beef instead of other meats than taste similar like ostrich or kangaroo, which don't emit methane and don't cause deforestation.

But the real alternative is lab-grown meat (including fish), which will undoubtedly prove healthier as it won't contain environmental toxins, bacteria, viruses, heavy metals or microplastics. It's also cruelty free and low in carbon emissions.

so if the world becomes vegetarian and stops eating cattle .......we need to exterminate cattle from the planet to stop greenhouse gases , breeding naturally will increase their numbers , so no choice but to cull

Australia culls kangaroos in a very huge way , yet their is still 60 million running around and what about the camel numbers which are out of control .....................

The populace numbers is also out of control ( what was that old michael york film on capping life at 30 ? ) .........an old problem we had studying while at uni , is, why do women get pregnant without orgasm a major factor of over population.

It seems everything needs to be "culled" if you want to save the planet

[Coriolan]

You do realize that cows aren't wild animals like kangaroos. And 99% of cattle in fields are cows, which can't reproduce without a bull. It's really up to the farmers whether the cows mate with the bull or not. There will always be a need for dairy cows for milk, yoghurt and especially cheese. So no mass annihilation.

[Maciamo]

so if the world becomes vegetarian and stops eating cattle .......we need to exterminate cattle from the planet to stop greenhouse gases , breeding naturally will increase their numbers , so no choice but to cull

Australia culls kangaroos in a very huge way , yet their is still 60 million running around and what about the camel numbers which are out of control .....................

The populace numbers is also out of control ( what was that old michael york film on capping life at 30 ? ) .........an old problem we had studying while at uni , is, why do women get pregnant without orgasm a major factor of over population.

It seems everything needs to be "culled" if you want to save the planet

Not everything needs to be culled. The problem with cattle is that they emit a lot of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, which many other domesticated animals do not produce (or in low quantity). Another issue is that cattle require comparatively more feed than other animals to produce 1 kg of meat. It takes 25 kg of animal feed to make 1 kg of beef, while it only takes 6.5 kg of feed for 1 kg of pork, 3.3 kg for 1 kg of chicken, and a mere 0.7 kg to make 1 litre of cow milk (source). So keeping cattle to make milk is 35 times less wasteful of resources than to make beef.

[TheProbga90x]

Wow thats insane.

[torzio]

You do realize that cows aren't wild animals like kangaroos. And 99% of cattle in fields are cows, which can't reproduce without a bull. It's really up to the farmers whether the cows mate with the bull or not. There will always be a need for dairy cows for milk, yoghurt and especially cheese. So no mass annihilation.

what is the % of dairy cattle being used for meat compared to beef cattle ?