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.

  • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
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    3 days ago

    Where do you think most of the world’s red meat is coming from? Brazil is one of the top producers and exporters of red meat, deforestation is ravaging the Amazon.
    3rd world countries are not eating red meat, we are. The link between rich countries and meat consumption has been established for a long time now.

    Most cattle eat soy, not grass, that’s also a myth. Simply because soy is a whole lot cheaper, and a lot more abundant and easier to grow than grass. Also, grass is only slightly better than feed, but it generates more GEG overall because of digestion.

    We need soy, so we need monocultures of soy, and that’s catastrophic, just like you said.

    Transport is actually not that big of a problem with red meat. Land usage and the actual cattle are. They’re the top source of GEG emissions from agriculture.

    You were talking about thermodynamics earlier. Red meat is incredibly inefficient converting resources to usable calories. 1kg of beef requires 25kg of feed.

    You’re also using a lot of straw men in your arguments, living in a grass hut instead of a concrete building, or electric vehicles for cattle transportation?

    You can enjoy red meat but you can’t argue in good faith that it’s not completely awful for the environment at pretty much every level.

    A few sources to support my claims:

    https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production

    https://bonpote.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Emissions-de-GES-a-travers-la-chaine-dapprovisionnement-1-scaled.png

    https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/23/americas/brazil-beef-amazon-rainforest-fire-intl/

    https://e360.yale.edu/digest/grass-fed-beef-climate-change