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Eating Meat Is Bad for Climate Change, and Here Are All the Studies That Prove It
(sentientmedia.org)
this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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Eating meat financially supports the raising of those animals, that was originally why I went vegetarian.
Edit: Before I get flamed, I agree with you. It's the industry not the consumer who needs to change. I decided to stop being part of the system for my own sake (and with the vague hope of putting some financial pressure on the industry).
On hunting, I'm conflicted. While yes it would be better in general, there's of course the risk of over hunting and the like. Here in Australia we have the opposite problem and have to constantly cull kangaroos to protect the environment, the meat is then available in supermarkets (it's also significantly healthier than beef, and IMO has a better taste).
those people are paid long before you walk into the store or restaurant
Sure, but I meant the demand more than anything. I know I individually won't have a noticeable effect but reducing demand will. It will take significant collective action, but it's pretty much the only option we have in the current system.
I'm sick of just accepting how things are, so I decided to stop participating, better than nothing.
In favour of hunting: the animals get a life in the wild, making methane and CO2 at the rates of mass they grow
In favour of farming: the animals are in a farmer's control, they grow bigger, give milk, have fewer parasites so you can eat the meat rare, and they can be treated to reduce their methane production
If enough people stop eating meat for a beef farm to collapse and the land to be let go wild that will turn the grass over to wild deer that will have exactly the same emissions as the cows had, but with no chance of treating them to reduce their methane
Except we won't be growing insane amounts of crops to feed them all. And I'm really not sure that what you've said is really true, unless you've got something that can back it up.
Will their population increase to replace the population of cows? A quick google suggests that before the US was settled methane from wild ruminants was around 70% of what beef in the US is now, and that number will certainly be much lower even without cattle farms. (I didn't provide that source because I don't trust it and I'm not going to do a ton of research because it's your claim, I would legitimately love to read any proper studies you have read though). Even then, that's just the US, not every country will have an effect like that. Stopping cattle farms here won't cause an increase in populations of much of anything that could cause methane production. Not to mention a lot of that land could be restored to forest in many parts of the world which is going to help with sequestration of CO2, and hopefully restore a ton of biodiversity making the environment more resilient.
I don't think we should hunt for food regardless, but that's just my opinion. I really don't see how the relatively smaller population increase is going to somehow offset the massive reductions from stopping beef farming. Especially if you consider the environmental impact (by which I mean land and water pollution) of growing all that extra feed crop.
And I didn't even consider factory farming where insane numbers of animals are crammed into tiny spaces, which apparently is almost all of US livestock :|
https://medium.com/collapsenews/un-report-factory-farming-accounts-for-37-of-methane-emissions-b31753f103c7