AIBU to think most people don’t realise reducing meat will not save the planet and may in fact cause more climate issues.

[TreeLoverr]

I’m a farmer, but before you dismiss this as bias, I don’t have any livestock so do not sell meat.

We own a purely arable based farm and pretty much exclusively grow grain and cereals.

My family had beef cattle on the farm , but they’re sold the heard years before I was born due to lack of profits.

The reason why I say this is due to a few reasons. The soils on our farm are suffering. Especially due to lack of organic content. The soil must be replaced with actual organic matter (like in a garden, it erodes over time and you have to put compost on)

When most farms operated by rotating grazing animals this happens naturally. The grass putting roots down also stops soil erosion, and the dung from the animals too. There are other things that we are just beginning to understand like the important impact of hooves trampling and the delicate micro biome that the cows eating and pooping replenishes.

Just putting dung onto the fields is not enough. Firstly the nutritional balance gets off kilter very quickly (in a way that doesn’t really happen with livestock rotation) and secondly it is difficult to get hold of when you don’t have your own animals.

The alternative to this is fertiliser. Fertilisers are made using fossil fuels. This is far worse for the environment than animals on grassland.

Many farmland is not suitable for cropping. Too hilly/steep, rocky etc. but it is suitable for raising animals, turning otherwise wasted land into human food.

When we have a bad harvest, it often means the crops are not suitable for human consumption. This is then sold for animal feed, turning this into food further down the line as we can then eat the animals. This crop would otherwise have to be destroyed or just left in the field.

But what about greenhouse gases you might be wondering? Animals are PART of the natural cycle. They are not the same as greenhouse gasses released during fossil fuels being burned. Greenhouse gasses are trapped in the soil and plants that they eat, they release and the plants absorb again. plants literally live off carbon dioxide and methane.

How we farm can absolutely negatively affect climate change, but grass fed British beef and lamb is actually important to our ecology and an important food source in order to maximise our environment without destroying it.

Please tell me the alternative you suggest to each of my points.

im saying livestock done responsibly is essential for the long term health of the soils and therefore will benefit the climate on the whole. Emissions from cows are part of a non harmful cycle if farmed responsibly.

this should be our focus in this country.

without soils we can grow nothing, and all life will die.

Sure, will start with your methane point, which is only half the story.

So tes, methane breaks down after around 12 years into CO2 and water, but while it's in the atmosphere it's a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.

So you've effectively taken carbon that would otherwise been stored in the biosphere and turned it into a much stronger greenhouse gas that resides in the atmosphere for over a decade.

It's like taking out a £1,000 loan with a huge interest rate. Twelve years later you pay back the original £1,000, but you've already racked up tens of thousands of pounds in interest. Paying back the principal doesn't erase the damage caused by the interest. In the same way, methane eventually becoming CO2 doesn't undo the extra warming it caused while it was methane.

And because ruminants (it's not just cattle this is an issue with) are constantly emitting methane, it's not a one-off process. New methane is being added all the time as older methane breaks down, so the warming effect is continuously maintained. Humans also maintain populations of domesticated ruminants at levels that natural ecosystems would not support on their own, which further adds to this particular issue too.

The only thing that will save the planet is fewer people. Less use of everything. Less raw materials needed, less land for food, less water used, less production of god knows what. Less fossil fuels. Less gas guzzling. Less.

Fewer people. Happier planet. More space. Less burden on the planet.

Will anyone talk about the need for fewer people or devise a plan for reducing the population globally? No.

Well he’s right. The world can’t support billions of daily meat eaters. For various reasons

Doesn’t mean having a steak of lamb from a local British farm is less sustainable than shipping an aubergine over on an airplane, or eating a Jamie’s packet of pre prepped quinoa.

If this was simple it would have been solved.

Your point is not the point that the op is making into which I was responding so your comment is pointless.

In fact it is pretty simple, in western countries people can easily eat far less meat than they do. And there are plenty of sustainable plant options, besides which omni eaters already eat lots of vegetables and I'm pretty sure that they aren't all locally sourced so that's not much of an argument.

The bottom line is that if the majority of people went mostly plant-based it would go a very long way to protecting and preserving our planet but meat eaters won't do it. So they should stop handwringing about the planet's state because there is a very simple solution and none of you will bloody well do it.

I hope you will be enjoying your burgers and chicken and lamb and fish as the last tree burns down next to your grandchild.

Genuine question about climate change - I know very little about this area and posting here seems easier than research. The latest heatwave had everybody talking about climate change etc but also about breaking 1976 records. So what was the narrative in 1976? Did people blame humans or accept it as a phenomenon? I know it's been said climate change is a gradual pattern over time and it is accelerating etc and I accept this but then I can't help but wonder about the ice age too. Historically how did scientists explain this and have they changed the narrative now?

OP, you have an interesting perspective. I’m not convinced you are correct though. Please read this and let me know what you think:

https://zoe.com/learn/meats-impact-on-climate-change-and-the-environment?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=22839693769&utm_adgroup=180906452862&utm_term=&utm_content=768501564852&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22839693769&gbraid=0AAAAABejleUpBh_qaE6gTOkSnWMkERLXl&gclid=CjwKCAjw0o3SBhBVEiwAh28-jV2uxTKi4s1Y0ZsIPlEkj2yzCdlZ2GpwpDn5IeffwM6vWhsV88FSbBoCjp0QAvD_BwE

How about hydroponic vertical farming powered by solar and wind?

We are still in an ice age, in an interglacial period (or is it called between glacial maximums?)

We've fucked it up and disrupted the cycle so the next full coverage will be delayed or skipped

i’m reading a book now that touches on some of your questions. Organ Speak by Giulia Enders (I highly recommend it). It tells about the creation of our atmosphere. If I have remembered it right, jt says that
volcanic eruptions helped create Earth’s early atmosphere, but the oxygen-rich atmosphere we have today was produced mainly by photosynthetic microorganisms and, later, plants over billions of years.

From what I hear, the Earth’s rapid increase in temperature started in the 1970s. I don’t remember people talking about climate change then, but I was a primary school child. I do remember learning about the Greenhouse Effect in year 8 or 9 in both Science and Geography (in the early 1980s),

Let’s say you are correct, what is your solution to my other points.

you are only seeing one problem and not seeing that the “solution” ie lowering meat consumption has knock on effects. We need to look at the full picture, which many studies and journalism publications do not.

We have solar panels. We should not put them on farmland, but instead utilise roofs and areas that are unusable.

you cannot eat electricity so it’s not completely relevant here

I am yet to meet a vegan who isn't in denial, hasnt got a very one dimensional understanding of the world and environment and doesn't green wash massively. There are far too many massively hypocritical vegans too.

There are ways to reduce your environmental impact across the board without doing this.

I don't have a problem with veggies. I don't mind catering for vegans. I just would prefer if the ones spouting off about the virtues of their lifestyle choices had more of a clue tbh.

I love this. Damn right we can't eat solar panels.

We can only maintain the land in much of the Lake District through sheep farming. Cos it's expensive to maintain land. The idea that we could stick solar panels on it instead is quite funny from an environmental point of view.

We have to eat something. If we decide we won't farm in the UK because of the impact to the environment we just green wash and outsource food production to overseas...

We'd be much better supporting our local farming industries and working to reduce imports because the cost of shifting food long distances is the biggest environmental impact. We should be supporting our farming industry - all of it - rather than buying fruit and vegetable products from the other side of the world.

Yes your first point is correct but what works at the small scale - eg. What knepp have done, simply cannot be reproduced at the scale that matched the demand for beef and dairy that we have in the uk. The kind of “nature healthy” farming you’re (very rightly) advocating for cannot be realised in the UK because we don’t have enough land.

again, the “non-harmful” cycle you talk about no longer exists. It no longer exists because of the scale at which we consume meat. If we were to return to the scale at which non-harmful meat production is possible, it would mean that everyone only eats meat once in a blue moon. That is not financially sustainable for farmers. You cannot have it both ways- running a business that meets the scale of domestic meat demands at a price that consumers are willing to pay, and also have enough income to sustain your livelihood and also do the kind of “nature positive” farming you’re talking about. It’s just not possible.

Thank you @Error404FucksNotFoundand @dizzydizzydizzy

I remember learning about acid rain in the 80s and a lot about ozone layers in the 90s, then global warming which is now referred to as climate change. I wonder where all the acid rain went? We were told it was ruining the earth.

1. they installed “scrubbers” on coal fired power station to reduce the sulphur dioxide (which turns into sulphuric acid in the atmosphere) emitted into the air 2) they stopped using coal power in the UK for electricity, meaning that SO2 and sulphuric acid no longer produced and affecting Scandi countries.

if you go to parts of Europe where coal is still burned (eg. Poland and neighbours) you’ll see that impacts of acid rain are still keenly felt in forest and in waterways.

Oh yes acid rain! I remember learning about that too. It’s much less of a problem now because of our emissions standards. It is caused by sulphur dioxide and NOX reacting with moisture in the air to form sulphuric and nitric acid. We don’t have so many coal-fired power stations, factories and cars are cleaner so it is not as big a problem as it used to be.

Spot on.
I would also say that people should eat seasonal & locally produced food. That would reduce the carbon footprint of food in an instant!

First paragraph is exactly what you've been doing in every post.

The trees are already burning. Look at the birch. This recent heatwave will have finished a few off thats for sure.

And I dont know why you are talking about grandchildren. I said theres 20 years of agriculture soil use. That was my point. Unfortunately everyone is correct here. Which humans dont like. It means moderation and thinking.

Local soil management is not the same as climate issues.

It's a fact that eating meat results in far larger environmental impact than eating a plant based diet.

You are just the same as people who think the weather and the climate are the same thing.

I would like to know this too. I see stuff saying US=grain fed beef, UK=grass. Is this reliably true for the standard supermarket meat one buys here?

You are right, of course. The planet is only capable of sustainably supporting so much life.

The problem is however that people - individuals - don't care about that. We all have our own little problems and worries and we simply can't comprehend the idea that we are part of a bigger picture. For all our self-regarded intelligence, human beings are really fucking stupid. No other creature on the planet is wilfully fucking up their own home and laughing while doing it.