this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
348 points (87.8% liked)
Science
13192 readers
43 users here now
Subscribe to see new publications and popular science coverage of current research on your homepage
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If you think veganism will save the world, you should probably look at a graph of greenhouse gas sources.
I don't drive. I've already done more than vegans ever will. Got an electric car? Good for you, but in the US that will still be powered by 60-70% coal and gas.
The only thing vegans have is the moral superiority on animal cruelty.
The only thing that will save the world is to stop burning fossil fuels. The only people that can force that change are governments. Once again those in charge have turned the people on each other. "Look at him, he's eating meat! Doesn't he know he's killing the planet?", while they're authorising another gas powerplant being built, or pushing back the banning of petrol cars by five years.
@Blackmist no, I don’t think veganism will save the world on its own. No single solution will… but veganism will be part of the solution. Animal farming contributes about 10% of the green house gasses, so it’s not an insignificant amount.
The world could ban office work in favour of remote work tomorrow. Eliminating the daily commute for a large portion of people would be a huge win fighting gas emissions. They can then repurpose those empty skyscrapers as lab grown meat factories.
Even there, the 10% (and I've seen figures between 8% and 15%) is mostly going to be from the extra fossil fuels used in the production of it, growing the corn, etc, that feeds them, transporting the feed, transporting all the livestock and meat around, refrigeration... Aside from the livestock breathing and farting, it's nearly all power.
@Blackmist it’s my understanding that two thirds of the greenhouse gasses produced by animal farming is from burping/farting. Even if we could clean up the costs of production, transportation and energy, we’d still need to massively reduce the number of animals.