> Regarding carbon: "removal of livestock in the US would only lead to a net GHG reduction of 2.6% in national emissions. Similarly, removing all dairy would lead to a reduction of just 0.7%.
Methane (molecule for molecule) contributes far more to the greenhouse effect than CO2 so without knowing how much of those gases are from transportation versus digestion, it's hard to tell how much actual impact it has. Focusing on the GHG statistic also ignores the many other ecological effects of animal agriculture like runoff and forest clearing that has significant effects on our carbon stores and oxygen producers like plankton and trees.
At the same time, both transitions would create domestic deficiencies in critically limiting nutrients [White & Hall 2017; Liebe et al. 2020], which is not unexpected given that Animal Sourced Foods are valuable sources of essential nutrition [see elsewhere].
Cows need more essential amino acids from their diets than humans do and the overlap between the two needs is almost 100%. They can't synthesize atomic minerals so they're just a delivery device for nutrients we'd get from other sources anyway. Obviously I'm not suggesting we all switch to a diet of alfa alfa but the whole point of the climate crisis is that our way of life is unsustainable; something has to change and I think most people rather it be diet, even if we lean more on synthetic alternatives, than the total population. This argument made sense a hundred years ago when overwintering was a real concern and transportation wasn't fast enough to deliver unspoiled fresh food so people had to convert inedible plants to edible food.
(I'm ignoring the difficulty of getting a large group of people to switch away from culturally important or locally available staples, which is what that nutrition argument hinges on, because that seems to be the weakest link in the face of an existential threat)
Methane (molecule for molecule) contributes far more to the greenhouse effect than CO2 so without knowing how much of those gases are from transportation versus digestion, it's hard to tell how much actual impact it has. Focusing on the GHG statistic also ignores the many other ecological effects of animal agriculture like runoff and forest clearing that has significant effects on our carbon stores and oxygen producers like plankton and trees.
At the same time, both transitions would create domestic deficiencies in critically limiting nutrients [White & Hall 2017; Liebe et al. 2020], which is not unexpected given that Animal Sourced Foods are valuable sources of essential nutrition [see elsewhere].
Cows need more essential amino acids from their diets than humans do and the overlap between the two needs is almost 100%. They can't synthesize atomic minerals so they're just a delivery device for nutrients we'd get from other sources anyway. Obviously I'm not suggesting we all switch to a diet of alfa alfa but the whole point of the climate crisis is that our way of life is unsustainable; something has to change and I think most people rather it be diet, even if we lean more on synthetic alternatives, than the total population. This argument made sense a hundred years ago when overwintering was a real concern and transportation wasn't fast enough to deliver unspoiled fresh food so people had to convert inedible plants to edible food.
(I'm ignoring the difficulty of getting a large group of people to switch away from culturally important or locally available staples, which is what that nutrition argument hinges on, because that seems to be the weakest link in the face of an existential threat)