this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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YSK that apart from not having a car and voting, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat. (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Wulri@lemmy.world to c/youshouldknow@lemmy.world
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Red meat has a huge carbon footprint because cattle requires a large amount of land and water.

https://sph.tulane.edu/climate-and-food-environmental-impact-beef-consumption

Demand for steaks and burgers is the primary driver of Deforestation:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-beef-industry-fueling-amazon-rainforest-destruction-deforestation/

https://e360.yale.edu/features/marcel-gomes-interview

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-06-02/almost-a-billion-trees-felled-to-feed-appetite-for-brazilian-beef

If you don't have a car and rarely eat red meat, you are doing GREAT 🙌🙌 🙌

Sure, you can drink tap water instead of plastic water. You can switch to Tea. You can travel by train. You can use Linux instead of Windows AI's crap. Those are great ideas. But, don't drive yourself crazy. If you are only an ordinary citizen, remember that perfect is the enemy of good.

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[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 40 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Unfortunately grass-fed production is no solution. It both does not scale or help reduce emissions

We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates

[…]

If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 30 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Not scaling could be a feature and not a bug. It would raise the price of beef and thus lower demand.

[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 9 points 3 days ago

To an extent, yes it would likely do that. Though on the other hand running into the maximum capacity limitations would not look pretty. Even countries that have a just bit higher grass-fed production than others have a fair number of issues (and still use plenty of supplemental grain)

For instance, in New Zealand, they use a massive amount of synthetic fertilizer on grasslands to try to make it keep up for dairy production

The large footprint for milk in Canterbury indicates just how far the capacity of the environment has been overshot. To maintain that level of production and have healthy water would require either 12 times more rainfall in the region or a 12-fold reduction in cows.

[…]

The “grass-fed” marketing line overlooks the huge amounts of fossil-fuel-derived fertiliser used to make the extra grass that supports New Zealand’s very high animal stock rates.

https://theconversation.com/11-000-litres-of-water-to-make-one-litre-of-milk-new-questions-about-the-freshwater-impact-of-nz-dairy-farming-183806

Or in the UK and Ireland where grass-fed production leads to deforestation and they still need additional grain on top of it

Most of the UK and Ireland’s grass-fed cows and sheep are on land that might otherwise be temperate rainforest – arable crops tend to prefer drier conditions. However, even if there were no livestock grazing in the rainforest zone – and these areas were threatened by other crops instead – livestock would still pose an indirect threat due to their huge land footprint

[…]

Furthermore, most British grass-fed cows are still fed crops on top of their staple grass

https://theconversation.com/livestock-grazing-is-preventing-the-return-of-rainforests-to-the-uk-and-ireland-198014

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com -2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

the first time in probably a year i've seen someone explain supply and demand correctly. thank you.

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

What?!?

It doesn't mean that you must supply me with everything I demand?!?!

[–] Sl00k@programming.dev 2 points 3 days ago

A huge aspect of this is ranchers not cycling their land and allowing it to regrow native grasses properly, which does end up running into the land use problem again. But right now we're very unoptimized with land regrowth and there's a huge difference that can be made with just properly handling the land and to stop ranching in literal deserts.