Deforestation is 3rd largest source of emissions

Vegetarian/vegan food is much less environmentally damaging than meat.

From Elena Sgarbossa

A vegan burger uses less than 10% land in its production than production of a beef burger does.

Which means that less forest is cleared.  And if tropical deforestation was a country, its emissions would be behind only China and the USA.  

Moreover, to the emissions produced by land clearing, you have to add in the methane directly produced by beef and mutton.  The rise in atmospheric methane is responsible for 1/3rd of the rise in global temperatures since 1850-1900.  The biggest step you can take to personally help cut emissions and global temperatures is to give up meat and milk.

Soyboy

‘While many people are now aware of how the fossil fuel industry has deceived us, there’s less recognition of the even grimmer game played by the livestock industry.’ Photograph: FORGET Patrick/Alamy

From The Guardian

Everything that makes campaigning against fossil fuels difficult is 10 times harder when it comes to opposing livestock farming. Here you will find a similar suite of science denial, misinformation and greenwashing. But in this case, it’s accompanied by a toxic combination of identity politics, nostalgia, machismo and the demonisation of alternatives. If you engage with this issue, you don’t just need a thick skin; you need the skin of a glyptodon.

You will be vilified daily as a “soyboy”, a “hater of farmers” and a dictator who would force everyone to eat insects. You will be charged with undermining western civilisation, destroying its masculinity and threatening its health. You will be denounced as an enemy of Indigenous people, though generally not by Indigenous people themselves, for many of whom livestock farming is and has long been by far the greatest cause of land-grabbing, displacement and the destruction of their homes.

You will find yourself up against those who promote paleo diets (with or without added anabolic steroids), “agrarian localists” pushing impossible dreams of feeding 21st-century populations with medieval production systems, and culinary conservatism, which ranges, in different forms, from Donald Trump to MasterChef. You will find yourself fighting not only a very modern and peculiarly vicious demagoguery, but also a very old and deep-rooted romanticism, which still portrays the pastoral life much as the Greek poets and the Old Testament prophets did. There’s a powerful, de facto alliance between the two.

Perhaps most often, you’ll be denounced as a puppet of the World Economic Forum (a target of multiple conspiracy fictions), or a stooge of corporate or institutional power, in the pay of plant-based meat, precision fermentation, Big Lettuce or Big Bug, which are depicted as monstrous behemoths stamping on traditional businesses. As usual, it’s pure projection. Between 2015 and 2020, financial institutions invested $478bn (£380bn) in meat and dairy corporations. But from 2010 to 2020, only $5.9bn was invested in plant-based and other alternatives. Astonishingly, the livestock industry also receives, across the EU and US, about 1,000 times more government funding than alternative products. This includes massively more money for research and innovation, even though meat and dairy are well-established industries, while the alternatives are at the beginning of their innovation phase. Why? Because the livestock industry’s political connections are umbilical.

Tempting as it is to turn away, we simply cannot afford to ignore this sector. A remarkably wide and intense range of impacts – from global-scale habitat destruction to the mass slaughter of predators, river pollution, air pollution, dead zones at sea, antibiotic resistance and greenhouse gas emissions – reveal livestock farming, alongside fossil fuels, as one of the two most destructive industries on Earth.

The chances of a reasoned conversation across the divide are approximately zero. That’s not an accident. It’s a result of decades of the meat industry’s tobacco-style tactics and manufactured culture wars. Clever messaging triggers men who are obsessed by (and anxious about) their masculinity, generating paranoia over “feminisation” and a loss of dominance. The industry amplifies popular but false claims about livestock healing the land and drawing down more greenhouse gases than it produces. These efforts are reinforced by a tidal wave of disinformation from far-right influencers on social media. While many people have now become aware of how the fossil fuel industry has deceived us, there’s less recognition of the even grimmer game played by the livestock industry.

This came to a head at Cop28, which was meant to be the first climate summit at which the impacts of the food system were properly considered. But by the time 120 meat and dairy lobbyists had done their worst, nothing meaningful came of it.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) unveiled a report at the summit that was shocking even by that organisation’s notoriously pro-corporate standards. It greatly underplayed the impacts of the livestock industry and proposed nothing but a series of feeble technofixes to address it, including some that have been wildly overhyped, such as feeding seaweed to cows to limit the amount of methane they produce. I call this approach guillotine syndrome. There might be a slight improvement in efficiency, but it’s still decapitation.

Where was the discussion in this report about reducing livestock production or consumption? On the contrary, it proposed that, for nutritional reasons, the poor world should be eating more meat and dairy. It’s true that many of the world’s poor should have access to more protein and fat, but new approaches, such as microbial proteins, could deliver them to everyone without the import dependency, environmental disasters and health problems caused by switching to a western diet.

So where, in the FAO’s vision, would these extra livestock products come from? Hold on to your seats, because the answer is truly gobsmacking. As the Financial Times reports, the organisation’s chief economist, Maximo Torero, explained that “the way forward was for countries that are ‘very efficient in producing livestock’, such as the Netherlands and New Zealand, to produce more meat and dairy and then ship those products across the world”. Could he really be unaware that both these countries have been thrown into severe ecological and political crisis by the scale of their livestock industries? Yet now he wants them to produce even more – and for poorer nations to become dependent on these imports? Greetings to our visitor from Planet Meat.

The FAO, as the Guardian has documented, has a long and shameful history of suppressing awareness of livestock’s massive impacts. The scientists at the organisation who tried to raise the alarm about the environmental impacts of livestock production in 2006 and 2009 were vilified, censored and sabotaged by senior management. Following the report it published this week, I feel I can state with confidence that the FAO is a major cog in the meat misinformation machine.

The meat industry also nobbled the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Earlier this year, delegates from Brazil and Argentina – major meat exporters – managed to block its recommendation that we should shift towards plant-based diets.

Huge and powerful as these forces are, we need to be brave in confronting livestock production and the dark arts used to promote it. Those of us who do so don’t hate farmers, however much some of them might profess to hate us. We simply seek to apply the same standards to this industry as we’d apply to any other. But when we raise our hands in objection, they are met with fists raised in aggression. That’s the strategy, working as intended.

[George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist]

Humanity quietly passes a remarkable milestone

From Adam Tooze

 

Humanity has quietly passed a remarkable milestone: Alcohol consumption is declining, a turning point in a habit at least as old as civilization itself. This unnoticed shift suggests other long-standing habits (from smoking to red meat consumption) could potentially fade just as effortlessly.

Not "effortlessly".  But, yes, smoking is falling in most developed countries, and vegetarianism/veganism is rising.  No government could try and stop meat-eating --- imagine the backlash! --- but as more and more people switch, it will become less and less normal to eat meat.

Kicking fossil fuel out of industry

 From Just Have a Think

Gives an interesting perspective of just how fossil fuels are used in industry, and how we can replace almost all uses with green electricity.  As so often, up-front costs are key.  And as always, a decent carbon price would encourage a more rapid transition to carbon-free industry.

There are 4 main "sectors" where we need to de-carbonise, and they each require different solutions.  The emissions from each sector are not equal, but it helps to break down the problem like this.

1.  Electricity generation.  This is, globally, the sector with the biggest share of emissions, but that varies a bit depending on the country.  The solutions here are obvious, and happening, though not as fast as is needed.
2. Transport.  A mixed bag.  Land transport is moving rapidly towards zero carbon; air and sea transport still has a long way to go.
3. Industry.  This includes steel and cement production, and chemicals and paper.  This video discusses various solutions.
4. Food.  A combination of methane emissions by grazing animals, and deforestation to produce beef.  As big as electricity generation by many analyses, but the hardest to reduce, because people have an emotional relationship with their food.  Politicians interfere at their peril, so shy away.  Yet it is abundantly clear that something will have to be done.

How big meat lies

lies and disinformation about plant-based meat

From DeSmog

This article by Sentient is published here as part of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.


The meat industry and its proponents worked hard in 2024 — not only to increase sales, but also to rebrand and remain relevant. While overwhelming climate science continues to point out the harmful impacts of animal agriculture, and plant-based competitors continue to challenge the status quo, meat promoters stepped up this year, crafting and perpetuating clever narratives to keep consumers hooked.

“Amidst a climate crisis driven in no small part by agriculture, there is a growing interest in healthy, sustainable food,” Jennifer Molidor, senior food campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, tells Sentient. “The industry has responded by flooding climate conferences with lobbyists promoting meat and dairy — in full force.”

And that’s not all. From promoting “beneficial” regenerative meat, to criticizing “ultra processed” plants, to promoting cow fat for skin care, to manipulating data, Big Meat sidestepped accountability to keep consumers coming back in 2024. 

Disinformation Trend #1: Meat Is ‘Natural’

One of the more popular PR messages regarding meat in 2024 was that animal products are healthier and more “natural” compared to “ultra processed” plant-based meat alternatives.

This messaging is not new. It’s years in the making, with full-page ads in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal back in 2021, and a $5 million Super Bowl commercial in 2020. Backed by the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), the ads vilified newly popular “fake meats” as full of “real chemicals,” highlighting “scary” ingredients like methylcellulose — a generally harmless compound used in many foods.

CCF is led by former tobacco lobbyist Richard Berman, and is supported by “restaurants, food companies and thousands of individual consumers,” according to its website. Forbes once described it as a front group for meat, tobacco and alcohol companies.

The narrative of “natural” meat versus “processed” plants persisted into 2024. The marketing tactic conveniently ignores the fact that 99 percent of animals raised for food in the U.S. are factory farmed in inherently unnatural conditions, and undergo much processing to become meat, dairy and eggs.

But this natural meat fantasy didn’t stop at food in 2024, spreading into lifestyle content, and feeding into a growing anti-technology, off-the-grid (though often still on YouTube), homesteading, carnivore and tradwife trend. Raw milk surged in popularity in 2024, as did eating raw meat, and using cow fat for skin care.

The FDA, CDC and New York State Department of Health put out statements this year warning of the health risks of consuming raw milk, and experts have taken to the media to warn of the risks associated with the carnivore diet, and with eating uncooked meat. Dermatology experts also told Sentient that the benefits of beef fat for the skin are minimal.

Though plant-based meat alternatives vary greatly when it comes to nutritional profiles, they are generally considered healthy. In fact, a 2024 review published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology found that risk factors for heart disease, such as LDL cholesterol and body weight, showed improvement when animal-based meats were substituted with plant-based meat alternatives. 

Disinformation Trend #2: Meat Is ‘Eco-Friendly’

Another pervasive meat message in 2024 was that beef — the highest-emitting meat — can somehow be good for the environment so long as raised on a farm that is regenerative, eco-friendly, carbon neutral or some other variation of such terms.

Regenerative agriculture, particularly holistic grazing, promises an alternative to our current food system that incorporates livestock in a way that can regenerate depleted soils. Such promises, however, fall short when it comes to actually curbing climate pollution.

Though regenerative agriculture aims to “bring back bovines,” as described in the 2023 documentary Common Ground, this grouping of grass-fed cattle with wild ruminants like bison is not accurate — at least as far as the environment is concerned. “That’s like comparing apples to oranges,” Molidor told Sentient earlier this year. While there is some debate about this, bison tend to graze over further distances in ways that cause less damage to plants and waterways. Cattle, on the other hand, tend to stick close together and eat just one type of plant until it’s gone.

The regenerative movement — which does offer some benefits for soil health — has also since been co-opted by the industrialized meat industry. A 2024 study by New Climate Institute found that 24 of the world’s top 30 food and beverage producers, including Cargill, Danone and Fonterra, refer to regenerative agriculture in their sustainability communication.

That said, 2024 also saw a possible win in the fight against misleading claims about climate-friendly meat, with Tyson Food’s Brazen Beef brand potentially no longer available for sale. After the U.S. Department of Agriculture rolled out a new “climate-friendly” beef label last year, Tyson soon rolled out its own version: Brazen Beef. Journalists and academics were quick to note serious issues with the claims on the product’s label, particularly the claim (with no data in support) of a 10 percent reduction in emissions.

“In order to claim a 10 percent reduction, you need to establish scientifically a baseline that everyone agrees is the common amount that beef produces,” New York University environmental scientist Matthew Hayek told Corporate Knights Magazine. “There doesn’t seem to be any data that the company itself, or the government who it created that certification in conjunction with, is able to provide.”

Tyson was subsequently sued in 2024 by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) for misleading consumers about its efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The suit asked the Superior Court of the District of Columbia to ban Tyson from making “false or misleading marketing claims.” It remains before the court.

At the time this story was published, the webpage for Brazen Meats was not functioning, and the product appeared unavailable for sale, raising questions about the future of the brand. Sentient contacted Tyson about the status of the Brazen line, but did not receive a response by email. We also called Tyson’s consumer relations hotline, and were told by the representative, “I don’t see anything active with that name.” It also appears that a New Jersey meat packer that sold Brazen Beef no longer lists the product on its website.

Caroline Leary, chief operating officer and general counsel for EWG tells Sentient that despite the Brazen Meats webpage being down, the group “remains committed to holding Tyson accountable, by demanding transparency to ensure that consumers are not deceived by false promises of sustainability,” which still exist elsewhere on its site. 

Disinformation Trend #3: Meat Feeds the World

Inflation and food insecurity were also pressing issues in 2024. Meat, dairy and egg industries were there to capitalize, particularly at climate conferences held throughout the year.

At COP28 last spring for example, the Guardian reports that meat lobbyists “celebrated the cut-through of their message that industrial animal agriculture has an important role to play in addressing global hunger.” It adds that U.S. Pork Board representative Jamie Burr also stated that COPs provide an opportunity for U.S. agriculture groups to show how they “feed the world.”

At COP29 last month, the strategy was the same, according to a report by DeSmog. Documents produced by the industry-funded Global Meat Alliance, obtained by DeSmog, encouraged members “to stick to key comms messages, including the idea that meat is beneficial to the environment and will help to ‘feed the world.’”

A spokesperson for the Global Alliance for the Future of Food told the Guardian in April that the idea that industrial agriculture is “critical to address hunger” is one of the greatest myths used by the industry to fend off criticism. Animal agriculture in fact contributes to world hunger, due to the inefficient use of arable land and resources to grow crops for animals, instead of people. Not only that, but the industry’s framing around food insecurity ignores how many climate researchers limit “eat less meat” recommendations to global north populations like the U.S., who consume far more than the global average. Studies suggest that food insecurity could actually be addressed, in-part, by transitioning to a more plant-based food system. Reducing the massive amount of land needed to grow food to feed livestock could lead to more crops being fed directly to people. One study theorizes that if everyone in the U.S. went vegan, an additional 350 million people could be fed. 

Disinformation Trend #4: Trustworthy Academic Research Supports Meat

The year 2024 also saw the meat sector lean even further into academia as a means to appear credible and sustainable.

As environmental scientist Jonathan Foley writes for Project Drawdown: “The livestock industry has spent enormous sums telling us fictitious stories of ‘environmentally-friendly’ beef,” including, he notes, “documentaries, think tanks, university labs, and social media influencer campaigns touting so-called ‘solutions’ to beef’s environmental footprint.”

In 2023, the Guardian exposed The Master of Beef Advocacy, or “MBA” program, created by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, to help meat promoters influence and educate the public on the “sustainability” of beef. That same year, the National Pork Board funded a nearly $8.5 million program with researchers from a variety of U.S. universities, to research and improve the industry’s reputation by boosting public “trust” in pork factory farms. And the year prior, The New York Times exposed how the UC Davis Clear Center did not disclose just how much industry funding it received to promote the environmental friendliness of meat and dairy, under the guise of public sector science.

In 2024, the meat industry took this method of information manipulation a step further, targeting another major competitor: cultivated meat. Once again backed by Richard Berman, another “think tank” was created, the ironically named Center for the Environment and Welfare, this time under the guise of helping “consumers, companies, and stakeholders navigate issues related to sustainability and animal welfare.” In 2024, the group conducted “research” and published media op-eds to thwart the progress of cultivated meat.

The Bottom Line

In 2024, the meat industry’s aggressive rebranding efforts, fueled by clever messaging and industry-backed research, sought to counteract competition from more sustainable plant-based alternatives.

As the inevitable impacts of climate change — along with other issues like bird flu — usher us into 2025, “it’s going to be increasingly difficult,” Molidor says, “for the meat and dairy lobby to rebrand their way out of these serious environmental and human harms.”

I became a vegetarian because I thought eating meat and fish was cruel, not for health or climate change reasons.  I thought it might be bad for my health.  In fact, it was the opposite.  I lost 15 kilos, my blood pressure is normal, my cholesterol is low, my blood sugar is normal, etc, etc.  

 

Do something direct to help the climate

From a toot by Bill Orcutt

When it comes to the #ClimateEmergency - It is not hopeless & we, the people are not helpless! If we take individual action - without asking anyone!

It’s up to us – WE,THE PEOPLE to save planet Earth by becoming #ClimateConsumers who actively mitigate global warming by our daily choices of who we donate to, vote for, invest/divest/bank in; what we buy, eat, drive/pedal; to degasifying & electrifying everything; reduce, reuse, recycle; & consume less. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2018/12/27/35-ways-reduce-carbon-footprint/

This must see short film: “Wake Up, Freak Out – then Get a Grip” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnyLIRCPajM tells us that “preventing run-away Global Warming is the single most important task in all of human history - and it is up to us to do it. If we don’t then everything else we have achieved in our lives will become meaningless”!

The United nation says: “Everyone can help limit climate change. From the way we travel, to the electricity we use, the food we eat, and the things we buy, we can make a difference.” https://www.un.org/en/actnow/ten-actions

Greta Thunberg @gretathunberg says - “Politicians are not coming to the rescue of planet Earth” https://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2022/10/greta-thunberg-guest-edit-politicians-rescue-planet & “Saving the world is voluntary…we need billions of #climate activists” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/08/greta-thunberg-climate-delusion-greenwashed-out-of-our-senses

Robert Reich @rbreich Says “A handful of billionaires now have unprecedented control over banking, the food we eat, the health care we can access and, now, the information we receive…” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_sjfchNsiM&t=15s

William Stanley Jevons said: “Value is created by the consumer, not the producer… the consumer is the ‘ultimate regulator of demand’” - https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/11/how-humans-became-consumers/508700/

Do you really care about the looming climate catastrophe?   Stop eating meat.  Anything between 15 and 25% (depending on the source of the estimates) of global emissions come from agriculture.  That's something you can do directly to cut emissions.  And reduce cruelty and animal suffering.

What the COP won't touch

From The Guardian

There are just two actions needed to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown: leave fossil fuels in the ground and stop farming animals. But, thanks to the power of the two industries, both aims are officially unmentionable. Neither of them has featured in any of the declarations from the 26 climate summits concluded so far.

Astonishingly, the sectors themselves are seldom mentioned. I’ve worked through every final agreement produced by the summits since they began. Fossil fuels are named in only six of them. Just one hints at using less overall: the others propose only to improve efficiency (which, as we have known since the 19th century, can often paradoxically increase fossil fuel use), attempt technical fixes or, in the case of last year’s agreement in Glasgow, phase down “unabated” coal burning, while saying nothing about reducing oil or gas. Not one of them suggests extracting less. If fossil fuels are removed from the ground, they will be used, regardless of governments’ vague declarations about consumption.

The other omission is even starker. Livestock is mentioned in only three agreements, and the only action each of them proposes is “management”. Nowhere is there a word about reduction. It’s as though nuclear non-proliferation negotiators had decided not to talk about bombs. You cannot address an issue if you will not discuss it.

The call to stop farming animals should be as familiar as the call to leave fossil fuels in the ground. But it is seldom heard. Livestock farming, a recent paper in the journal Sustainability estimates, accounts for between 16.5% and 28% of all greenhouse gas pollution. The wide range of these figures is an indication of how badly this issue has been neglected. As the same paper shows, the official figure (14.5%), published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, is clearly wrong. Everyone in the field knows it, yet few attempts have been made to update it.

Even if the minimum number (16.5%) applies, this is greater than all the world’s transport emissions. And it is growing fast. In the 20 years to 2018, global meat consumption rose by 58%. A paper in Climate Policy estimates that, by 2030, greenhouse gases from livestock farming could use half the world’s entire carbon budget, if we want to avoid more than 1.5C of global heating.

An analysis by Our World in Data shows that even if greenhouse gas pollution from every other sector were eliminated today, by 2100 food production will, on its current trajectory, bust the global carbon budget two or three times over. This is largely because of animal farming, which accounts for 57% of greenhouse gases from the food system, though it provides just 18% of the calories.

This issue has become even more urgent now we know the heating impact of methane is rising. Livestock farming is the world’s greatest source of methane released by human activities. Yet there is no mention of it in the global methane pledge launched at last year’s climate summit.

Governments have not ignored these issues by accident; they have resolutely looked away. A new analysis for Chatham House finds that only 12 nations name emissions from farm animals in their official climate commitments, and none seeks to reduce livestock production. Only two nations (Costa Rica and Ethiopia) mention dietary change: arguably the most important of all environmental actions, as animal farming is also the world’s greatest cause of habitat destruction and wildlife loss.

What accounts for this determined silence? I think there are several reasons. The livestock sector’s cultural power greatly outweighs its economic power. Our connection to food is more personal than our connection to energy sources. Most fossil fuel is consumed at a distance. When we use electricity, for example, we don’t think about where it comes from, as long as the lights stay on. But we think and feel a great deal about the food we eat. And, by comparison with the denial sponsored by the fossil fuel industry, the misleading claims of the livestock industry have scarcely been challenged in the media.

A scandal broke last week about an academic centre at the University of California, Davis, which turns out to have been founded and funded by livestock lobby groups. It has downplayed the impact of livestock farming, in ways that other scientists have described as highly misleading.

But this is just one aspect of the problem. Like the fossil fuel industry, livestock corporations have been ploughing money into public persuasion, using tactics first developed by tobacco companies. Some of this greenwashing has been highly effective, especially the industry’s claims about “regenerative ranching” and the false assertion that pasture-fed meat farming sequesters more greenhouse gases than it releases.

In reality, grass-fed meat is by far the most damaging component of our diets, as a result of its massive land requirement, greenhouse gas emissions, and carbon and ecological opportunity costs. Despite a plethora of claims, there is no empirical evidence that carbon storage in grazing land can compensate for the greenhouse gases livestock produce, let alone for the carbon stocks destroyed when wild ecosystems are converted to pasture.

A paper in Nature Sustainability found that if permanent livestock pasture in just the rich nations were returned to wild ecosystems, their recovery would draw down 380bn tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, equivalent to 12 years of global carbon emissions. The UK government’s Climate Change Committee reports that, in England, “transitioning from grassland to forestland would increase the soil carbon stock by 25 tonnes of carbon per hectare … This is additional to the large amounts of carbon that would be stored in the biomass of the trees themselves.”

Slowly and painfully we have become energy-numerate. Large numbers of people have begun to “do the math” on fossil fuel emissions. Now we need to become food-numerate. An extraordinary feature of this debate is that when you present data, your opponents respond with pictures, generally bucolic images of cows or sheep.

Popular food writing is dominated by a disastrous combination of aesthetics and elite tastes. Famous authors propose that everyone eats the food that they like, promoting diets that couldn’t be scaled unless we had several planets and no space on any of them for wild ecosystems. They urge us to use a Neolithic production system (grazing) to feed a 21st-century population, with catastrophic results.

We urgently need to put these foolish things aside, to follow and understand the science, and press our governments to focus on the major causes of the climate crisis. They had two jobs, and have so far mentioned neither of them.

If you really care about saving the world from climate catastrophe, this analysis makers it clear that the biggest thing you can do is become vegetarian or vegan.   

Reducing emissions with plant-based proteins

From The Boston Consulting Group

Give credit to the consumer. Our latest research shows that people around the world are buying into alternative proteins—and are very happy with what they find. The market share projections that we made in our first Food for Thought report in 2021 are bearing out: current forecast models indicate that alternative proteins will represent 11% of all protein consumption by 2035, and with some help from technology, investors, and regulators, alternative proteins could command 22% of the global market over this time frame.

This is good news for everyone involved in the global effort to combat climate change. The food system accounts for 26% of current global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Animal agriculture, the largest GHG emitter within the food system, is responsible for 15% of global emissions, roughly matching the emissions from the transportation sector. If we remain on track for an 11% share for alternative proteins by 2035, we will see a reduction of 0.85 gigaton of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) worldwide by 2030—equal to decarbonizing 95% of the aviation industry. In comparison with other solutions, such as flying less or retrofitting existing housing stock, the economic and individual consumer tradeoffs involved in shifting to alternative proteins are relatively small. Our survey shows that consumers understand this: more than 30% of consumers consider having a major positive impact on climate to be a primary reason to switch to alternative proteins.

And this is exactly what alternatives proteins do. Investing in the segment has one of the biggest impacts on decarbonization when assessed in terms of the market value of avoided CO2e emissions per dollar invested in mitigation efforts. We call this impact of capital employed (IoCE)—and investments in alternative proteins produce IoCE that is magnitudes greater than corresponding decarbonization investments in other high-emitting sectors of the economy, such as transportation or buildings, can achieve.

The protein transformation is one part of a broader remodeling of the food system. As value pools form around new technologies and processes that help address such critical issues as taste, health, and cost, the need for some long-standing processes, such as animal slaughtering and meat packing, will decline. Every stakeholder along the value chain is likely to feel the impact of the transformation, and many will find big opportunities in contributing to building a sustainable food system.

Alternative proteins have made substantial strides with consumers, who are broadly aware of this emerging food category and are favorably impressed when they try available products. (See Exhibit 1.) A 2022 survey by BCG and Blue Horizon, encompassing more than 3,700 respondents in seven countries, reveals that consumers in most markets appreciate the product attributes of taste, nutritional value, and health the most. We also found that improvements in three key areas—health, taste, and price—are key to boosting demand. Approximately 75% of respondents said that having a healthier diet is the primary motivator for them to start consuming alternative proteins. When it comes to making a purchasing decision between several products, though, taste emerges as a key criterion. Price remains a sticking point in all markets. Consumers are not prepared to pay a premium for a product that offers only taste parity with animal-based products.

Since almost a third of consumers say that they would switch their diets to alternative proteins if doing so would have a major positive impact on climate, there is a clear need for more active positioning and consumer education.

Consumers in all markets express a strong willingness to shift their consumption patterns further if their biggest inhibitions regarding the products—health and nutrition, taste, and safety—are addressed. In that case, the share of respondents who consume mostly or only alternative proteins would double (from 13% to 27%), and the number of people who balance consumption between alternative and conventional proteins would increase by almost a third.


All of this progress comes at a critical time. Reducing animal agriculture in the food value chain is an exceptionally high-impact solution to the global climate crisis.

The UN has projected that GHG emissions will reach 55 gigatons by 2030, absent any change in current government policies. In our 2021 Food for Thought report, we estimated that the shift to alternative beef, pork, chicken, and egg alternatives will save more than 1 gigaton (Gt) of CO2e by 2035—or about 0.85 Gt CO2e. This is equal to decarbonizing most of the aviation or shipping industries or about 22% of the building industry. In our upside scenario (which envisages alternative proteins capturing 22% market share), we see decarbonization of 2.2 Gt CO2e, or 4% of emissions under the UN’s current policies scenario, by 2030. If alternative proteins were to replace the total addressable market of animal proteins with like-for-like alternatives, building on current technology, global emissions would fall by 6.1 Gt CO2e —11% of projected current emissions in 2030. (See Exhibit 2.)

There’s also a climate bonus. Any significant overall change in diets toward more alternative proteins will have an immediate cooling effect on the planet, since GHG emissions from animal farming include a substantial portion of methane—as much as 50%. Methane has a much higher global warming potential than CO2 and a much shorter atmospheric lifetime. Consequently, reducing methane levels in the atmosphere doesn’t just prevent further warming; it comes with a cooling effect. [This implies that the reduction in methane emissions has not been included in the overall calculations]

This is a big opportunity for the food sector. From a macroeconomic perspective, investment in plant-based proteins has the highest CO2e savings per dollar of invested capital of any sector—and therefore the highest IoCE. But despite the favorable economics and attractive potential, including ready consumer interest, investment in sustainable foods is only a fraction of that committed to other sectors. Likewise, other sectors have received many times more mitigation capital than food production, even though emissions are much lower.

20 meat & dairy firms produce more emissions than Germany

From The Guardian

Twenty livestock companies are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than either Germany, Britain or France – and are receiving billions of dollars in financial backing to do so, according to a new report by environmental campaigners.

Raising livestock contributes significantly to carbon emissions, with animal agriculture accounting for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Scientific reports have found that rich countries need huge reductions in meat and dairy consumption to tackle the climate emergency.

Between 2015 and 2020, global meat and dairy companies received more than US$478bn in backing from 2,500 investment firms, banks, and pension funds, most of them based in North America or Europe, according to the Meat Atlas, which was compiled by Friends of the Earth and the European political foundation, Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

With that level of financial support, the report estimates that meat production could increase by a further 40m tonnes by 2029, to hit 366m tonnes of meat a year.

Although the vast majority of growth was likely to take place in the global south, the biggest producers will continue to be China, Brazil, the USA and the members of the European Union. By 2029 these countries may still produce 60% of worldwide meat output.

Across the world, the report says, three-quarters of all agricultural land is used to raise animals or the crops to feed them. “In Brazil alone, 175m hectares is dedicated to raising cattle,” an area of land that is about equal to the “entire agricultural area of the European Union”

The report also points to ongoing consolidation in the meat and dairy sector, with the biggest companies buying smaller ones and reducing competition. The effect risks squeezing out more sustainable food production models.

“To keep up with this [level of animal protein production] industrial animal farming is on the rise and keeps pushing sustainable models out of the market,” the report says.

The recent interest shown by animal protein companies in meat alternatives and substitutes was not yet a solution, campaigners said.

“This is all for profit and is not really addressing the fundamental issues we see in the current animal protein-centred food system that is having a devastating impact on climate, biodiversity and is actually harming people around the globe,” said Stanka Becheva, a food and agriculture campaigner working with Friends of the Earth.

The bottom line, said Becheva, is that “we need to begin reducing the number of food animals on the planet and incentivise different consumption models.”

More meat industry regulation is needed too, she said, “to make sure companies are paying for the harms they have created throughout the supply chain and to minimise further damage”.

On the investment side, Becheva said private banks and investors, as well as development banks such as the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development needed to stop financing large-scale, intensive animal protein production projects.

 

Pigs for slaughter

Zero carbon by 2050

If we want to stop catastrophic climate change and global heating, we need to cut emissions of CO2 and methane to zero by 2050.  Let's split those 30 years up into decades, aiming to cut emissions by 1/3rd of the 2019 level each decade.

2020-2030

This will be the decade where we have to close down as many coal power stations as we can.  The good news is that in most countries, wind or solar or both are now cheaper than (new) coal.  In developed countries, most coal power stations are old, and will soon have to be retired.  When they are, they will be replaced by wind and solar.  Even with 10 hours of storage, wind and solar are the cheapest power source in the USA, except for existing coal power stations which have been fully depreciated and have had their debt paid off.  But of course, they are precisely the power stations which will need to be retired over the next decade.

Even in China, where coal is cheap, large-scale solar will this year reach grid parity, meaning it can compete with the wholesale price of electricity, which is determined by China's massive coal fleet.  China produces 35% or world CO2 emissions, and is the largest consumer of coal.   A change here will be very important for world emissions and the global climate.

So the target is that by 2030, the number of coal power stations still operating will be small.  They'll simply be too costly to keep going.  This is much faster then even the relatively optimistic BNEF forecasts (they forecast just 25% from renewables by 2030).  Nevertheless, the cost curves as well as the increasing global panic about catastrophic climate change suggest this will be likely.

During this decade, we should also try to switch heating from gas/oil to electric, and we will start the switch to electric transport.  Of which more below.   Electricity and heat production contributes 25% of global CO2 emissions, so we'll need to find more areas to cut emissions by 1/3rd by 2030.

2030-2040

This will be the decade where we electrify transport.  Battery costs are falling by 20% compound per annum.  This means that we should cross the $100/kWh battery pack cost line by 2023, which will mean that the "sticker price" of EVs will be comparable to ICEVs.  Already, in China and India (where it is very important that the growth in demand for personal transport isn't satisfied by petrol cars) small, cheap EVs are available.   Once again, the twin pincers of public anxiety about climate change and the plunging cost of EVs will rapidly squeeze fossil fuels out of the market. Assuming EVs reach 100% of new car sales by 2030, then by 2040, almost all the emissions from road transport will have stopped, assuming a 10 year vehicle life, which is lower than what it is now, but government will likely want to accelerate the transition by banning polluting cars and lorries from town centres as well as buying back aging fossil fuel clunkers.

In developed countries, these emissions are about 1/3rd of total emissions.  In developing countries, they make up a smaller proportion on average, though the percentages vary widely.  But demand for cars is growing fast in developing countries, so a transition to EVs will prevent big rises in emissions from this sector.

It will also be the decade when we make cement production and iron & steel carbon-neutral.  We have the technologies to do this now, but these processes are still more expensive than making them the old way.  Expect carbon taxes or regulations, to force a shift.

Battery technology may well have advanced far enough that we will be able to fly long distance without using jetfuel.  Or we will have shifted to carbon-friendly jetfuel.  Or we'll be flying long distance by SpaceX's suborbital shuttle, fuelled by green methane, and short distance by electric planes.  Once again, carbon taxes will help shift air travel towards zero-carbon alternatives. 

Emissions from transport and industry (iron & steel, cement, chemicals, mostly) make up another third of global emissions.  By 2040, these will have stopped.  They'll have to.  Together with what will have been done in the 2020s, total emissions will have fallen by roughly 2/3rds, a compound rate of decline of 5.5% per annum.

2015.  Source: EPA

2040-2050

By 2040, emissions from electricity generation, transport, and industry will have fallen dramatically.  But there will remain some emissions, by far the most important being agriculture, land-use, land-clearing, etc.  There's no particular reason to wait until 2040 to deal with these.  We could start transitioning now.  After all, we have alternatives to meat.  And perhaps by 2030 or so, most ppl will be terrified enough of climate change to change their personal lifestyles.  But change here will be hard.  With electricity generation, the future is already happening now.  Renewables are simply cheaper.   With EVs that will soon be the case.  But with meat, we're asking people to change life-long habits.  It'll have to be done, it's just that politicians will postpone action as long as they can get away with it.  Once again, a carbon tax would help the shift.   If you think that the outrage generated by trying to get our economy to switch to green electricity was over the top, wait till you tell people they must eat less meat.  Yet, I have hope.  Synthetic meats are taking off.  Vegetarianism and veganism are rising trends.   And if meat substitutes taste just like the real thing but don't inflict dreadful cruelty on animals and have a huge negative effect on the environment, then why not?

2020-2050

In each decade, the necessary year-on-year percentage decline will increase, even though as a percent of the starting point, the decadal declines will be roughly the same.   If we cut emissions 1/3rd by 2030, then we have to cut emissions by 1/2 from 2030 to 2040.  And from 2040 to 2050 by 100%.  These seem to be large percentages, but they will only look like that because of previous successes.

Many of the shifts will begin before the decade I've selected for each of them, though I expect my selected decade will be when they reach their culmination.  If the transitions are sped up, maybe we can reach near-zero emissions by 2040, if we move in all sectors.  And if we start massive re-afforestation we might achieve negative emissions, and will for the first time in the last 200 years see falling atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.  We must surely hope so.

Would giving up meat help the environment?

From The Economist:

IT IS NO secret that steaks and chops are delicious. But guzzling them incurs high costs for both carnivorous humans and the planet [and the animals, too!]. Over half of adults in both America and Britain say they want to reduce their meat consumption, according to Mintel, a market-research firm. Whether they will is a different matter. The amount of meat that Americans and Britons consume per day has risen by 10% since 1970, according to figures from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.

People who want to eat less livestock—but who can’t quite bring themselves to exchange burgers for beans—might take inspiration from two recent academic papers. A study published this week by scientists at Oxford University and the University of Minnesota estimates both the medical and environmental burdens of having an extra serving per day of various food types. The health findings were sobering. Compared with a typical Western adult of the same age who eats an average diet, a person who guzzles an additional 50g of processed red meat (about two rashers of bacon) per day has a 41% higher chance of dying in a given year.

See also Agriculture's carbon footprint

Can we beat climate change with natural gas? No.

From PV Magazine.

A report by Germany’s Energy Watch Group  thinktank has said we would be better off sticking to coal and oil than switching to gas because emissions of methane, the most potent greenhouse gas, caused by gas extraction render any related carbon savings irrelevant.

[In a startling conclusion, Energy Watch Group concludes that] sticking with coal and oil-fired power and heat would give the world a better chance of hitting climate change mitigation targets than switching to natural gas, thanks to the devastating greenhouse gas effect of methane leakage.

The Natural gas makes no contribution to climate protection study published on Monday claims switching coal power and oil-fired heating to natural gas raises the greenhouse effect of the power and heating supply chain 40% because of methane emissions during natural gas production.

Rubbishing the claims of natural gas to play a part in the future energy mix because of its low CO2 emissions, the report recommends existing gas infrastructure be used solely for genuinely climate-friendly options such as biogas and green hydrogen generated by renewables-powered electrolysis – power-to-gas

And the IEA needs to clean up its act too, according to Energy Watch leading scientist and co-author of the report Thure Traber. “The IEA, which many governments regard as a reference for their energy policy decisions, deceives us with outdated figures and problematic assumptions about the actual climate impact of natural gas – with devastating consequences for our climate and the economy,” said Traber. “The economic risks of natural gas are significant: if the climate targets are to be achieved on national and international levels then it is simply impossible for investments in natural gas to pay for themselves. What will remain are stranded investments in the billions [of dollars].”

The critical point is this: over a 20 year period, methane is 86 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO₂.  So any leaks greater than about 1% risk making gas a worse choice than coal or oil.  Even without leaks, burning methane still produces half the CO₂ of burning coal.  We need to cut emissions to zero.  Methane is also produced from some oil and coal mining, too.  The best choice for de-carbonisation of electricity generation remains using wind and solar with storage, including power-to-gas. (In the chart below, enteric fermentation refers to cattle farts and burps.  Our eating habits are also causing rising temperatures.)

Seaweed and cows

Source: The BBC

From Upworthy:

Climate change deniers often mock the claim that gas expelled from cows, either through the mouth or the bottom, is a major cause of global warming.

It was even a point of debate when Republicans were discussing the Green New Deal.

But it's true. According to the United Nations, livestock farming produces about 18% of environmentally damaging gases — and about a quarter of that chunk comes from cow emissions.

When cows digest food in their intestines it ferments, which causes them to expel methane. When methane is released into the atmosphere without being burned off, it absorbs the sun's heat, warming the atmosphere.

Dr. Nick Paul, a University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) Seaweed Research Group leader Associate Professor, believes he may have a solution to the massive amount of greenhouse gasses expelled by cows.

He has discovered that when cows eat asparagopsis, a puffy pink seaweed that grows prolifically off the Queensland Coast in Australia, they stop producing methane.

"When added to cow feed at less than two percent of the dry matter, this particular seaweed completely knocks out methane production," Dr. Paul said in a statement. "It contains chemicals that reduce the microbes in the cows' stomachs that cause them to burp when they eat grass."

Plus, the cows think it's pretty tasty.

"Seaweed is something that cows are known to eat. They will actually wander down to the beach and have a bit of a nibble," Dr. Paul said.

[Read more here]

In humans, gut bacteria are vital to digestion and to the production of B vitamins and certain lipids.  What if that's also true of cows?  I have no idea.  But if this works it could reduce methane emissions substantially.   This matters because methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas:

Methane, along with carbon dioxide and other molecules, contributes significantly to the greenhouse effect. Reflected energy from the sun in the form of longer wavelength infrared radiation excites methane molecules instead of traveling out into space. This warms up the atmosphere, enough that methane contributes to about 20% of the warming due to greenhouse gases, second in importance behind carbon dioxide.

Because of the chemical bonds within its molecule methane is much more efficient at absorbing heat than carbon dioxide (as much as 86 times more), making it a very potent greenhouse gas. Fortunately, methane can only last about 10 to 12 years in the atmosphere before it gets oxidized and turns into water and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide lasts for centuries.

[Read more here]

Britain smashes coal-free record, again.

Could the UK see its first coal-free month this year?

From BusinessGreen

UK has clocked up almost 11 days of coal-free power generation, while gas power has also been running at low levels

Britain has now gone more than 10 days straight without generating any of its electricity from coal, smashing the previous record set just weeks ago. 

National Grid confirmed this morning the UK - not including Northern Ireland - is closing in on 260 continuous hours without coal-fired power generation, prompting speculation that should favourable weather conditions continue the coal-free period could last until the end of the month.

For the last 10 days England, Scotland and Wales have managed without coal, with wind, solar, biomass and nuclear, alongside electricity from European interconnectors, supplying the bulk of Britain's power.

The latest milestone far surpasses the previous record set on May 8, when the UK clocked up an entire coal-free week for the first time since the Industrial Revolution. Speaking at the time, Fintan Slye, director of National Grid Electricity Systems Operator, predicted coal-free periods would soon be "the new normal" and the UK would be able to operate a zero carbon electricity system by 2025, when the government has said it wants to end unabated coal generation altogether.

A spell of bright, blustery days has raised generation levels for wind and solar power. This, combined with low levels of demand for power has meant the grid has also been running with low levels [less than 3 GW] of gas-fired power generation in recent days.

All told, domestic fossil fuels contributed as little as 15 per cent of the electricity share on Sunday, according to energy analyst Thomas Edwards.

[Read more here]

Getting rid of coal in our generation mix world wide would be a huge step towards reducing our greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.  (The other would be cutting down on beef and pork.)

Three steps we can take:

• Build no more coal power stations, and start closing down those we already have.   Britain, the country where the industrial revolution started, is doing it.  So can we.
• Transit our vehicle fleet to electric engines.  This is happening already, but taxes and subsidies will help it happen faster.
• Eat less meat.

Agriculture's carbon footprint

In Oz, a right-wing government has just been re-elected with an increased majority.  It proposes to subsidise new coal power stations, because it knows (though it denies it) that renewables are one third the cost of coal, and so coal power stations would otherwise never be built.  In the US, you guys have had a rabid-right government for nearly three years, which like our bizarrely named "Liberal" Party, also believes in pushing the fossil fuel waggon.

Markets have moved in favour of renewables, and will go on doing so.  But expecting politicians to do something is a waste of time—they are too timid, too many are in the pay of fossil fuel companies, and too many are locked into the dotty right-wing belief system which equates environmental action with socialism.

So it's up to us.   We can buy electricity from a green supplier.  In a couple of years, we will be able to afford to buy an electric car.  In the US, the 5-year cost of a Tesla Model 3 is already better than for a Honda Accord, if you include lower fuel costs and maintenance.  It won't be long before EVs sweep away petrol/diesel vehicles, because they're better as well as cheaper.  Fine, so far.  But agriculture is responsible for 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions.  We'll need to do something about that too.  And we can take individual steps here to cut emissions.

Source: The BBC

I have to confess, I had no idea just how carbon-intensive beef was—roughly ten times as high as beans and nuts.  Eating one serve of beef once every day will create 2.2 tonnes of emissions.  Annual per capita emissions from burning fossil fuels in Australia are 15.83 tonnes, in the US, 15.53.  So not eating beef every day would by itself be the equivalent of cutting emissions from fossil fuel by 14%.  In countries with lower per capita emissions, the percentage decline would be even greater.

The biggest impactors are meats, fish and—alas!—chocolate.  The lowest are dairy, eggs, tofu, beans and nuts.  Nice to see beer is there too.  By the way, tofu has no flavour, but it absorbs the flavour of what it's cooked with.  So you can "extend" fish or meat by cooking tofu chunks with them.  Actually, I'm very partial to tofu with lemon juice, herb salt, and olive oil, myself.  But then I've been vegetarian for over 40 years.

The best can often be the enemy of the good.  Yes, it would slash your personal food emissions 95% if you became vegan. Yet, doing just a little is better than doing nothing.  Cutting your meat from every day to every second day would make a big difference.  And eating less meat would improve your health, too.

We have 30 years to slash emissions to zero.  It's not enough to wait for "them" to act.  We must do what we can ourselves, in addition to pushing for collective political change.  The problem isn't going to magically go away.  Cutting out beef and pork could cut emissions by 10 or 15% all on its own.  Add green electricity and an electric car and the carbon emissions you are responsible for could be reduced by three quarters.   Let's do it.