research suggests cutting down on, or cutting out meat and dairy can have a big impact on CO2 emissions. I’m going to listen to the climate scientists on this one. They have been right for the last 5 decades.
Well yes the research does indicate cutting down or eliminating meat/dairy would reduce CO2 emissions. But couple problems. The research calculates the CO2 emissions reduction by assuming the animals in question cease to exist.
Now, mass extinction of cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, etc would reduce CO2 the most, but to do so would be collapsing our ecosystem (whole book of explanation there suffice to say one reason is to fertilise Fields where we grow crops as there are nutrients from them that cannot be replaced by compost alone).
In other words, we have to have large populations of these animals even if we do not eat them or milk them to maintain the ecosystem we all depend on for long term survival as a species. Some CO2 is unavoidable.
So obviously, while we can get CO2 reduction by cutting down on meat/dairy, we cannot get CO2 reduction from eliminating it because even if we stopped eating/milking them they’d still be out there living and breathing out CO2.