Eating less Meat won't save the Planet. Here's Why on HackerTube: recommended by 10 Hacker News commenters across 8 separate months, 2021–2026.
explainer · evergreen
Joseph Everett, with Dr. Frank Mitloehner, argues that eating less meat will not do much for the climate. He covers beef's water footprint, land and feed use, and methane.
HN commenters recommend it as a counterpoint to claims about beef's environmental cost, though some critique its methane argument.
“I was much more concerned about my beef consumption before watching this WIL video. It put things in perspective for me.”
17 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
This video changed my mind in the opposite direction. ▶ this video Stopping meat consumption would make a negligible difference in emissions. It's more valuable to focus on minimizing food waste instead.
in “The Brazilian Amazon has 'flipped' to become major producer of greenhouse gasses” · View on HN
I was much more concerned about my beef consumption before watching this WIL video. It put things in perspective for me. The efficiency of beef production in each country, how water and land use calculations are done, equivalent nutritional value compared to other crops was very interesting. It doesn't negate the moral problems with factory farming, but that wasn't the intent of the video. ▶ this video
in “Epicurious Will No Longer Publish Beef Recipes” · View on HN
I think you're overestimating that, probably because of vegan propaganda. Eg. A lot of the water you use for animals turns into milk or pee (or sweat?), and goes back to the cycle of water. I don't like posting videos but this one goes through several points: ▶ this video
in “Lab-Grown Meat Is Safe to Eat, FDA Says” · View on HN
Thats a simplification for a feel good narrative. Your source lists all land that grows anything but forest as agriculture land. Yet on large parts of those areas you cant do anything but pastures. Also, much of the cow feed isnt calories humans can process. Think byproducts of soy production. The youtube channel "What I've Learned" has a great video on it. ▶ this video What they dont mention is the large part livestock (especially cows an chicken) will have to play in producing soil from the dirt left behind after industrial agriculture. Regenerative agriculture is the term here, with rotating cows and chickens on degraded dirt patches to build top soil. All of this of course doesnt take away from the madness that is industrial meat production. But nothing has ever been solved by oversimplified narratives and action-ism.
in “‘Farms are failing’ as fertilizer prices drive up cost of food” · View on HN
Not true, live stock feed is mostly the husks and stalks of the plants that are inedible to humans, which if it weren't for livestock, would be discarded as waste. See this video for some more common misconceptions, if you're interested: ▶ this video Every plot of land used to grow crop represents countless animals that used to live there, and were wiped out by the farmer. Farmers constantly battle against pests, which too are animals, just trying to live. Vultures are often seen following combine harvesters, to prey on the corpses of field mice and other small mammals that get caught in the blades. Zero harm is a myth.
in “Which type of plant-based milk is best?” · View on HN
I disagree with this article and frustrated with those who try to push this narrative Here’s a 20 min video to show you why ▶ this video
in “Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions” · View on HN
> taking space that we now use for growing animal feed There was a recent Youtube video that explained how this isn't quite accurate: ▶ this video I'll save you the time (though you should watch it). 1. Much of the animal feed comes from agricultural byproducts. As an example, we eat corn on the cob, but much of the corn stalk is inedible to humans, but can be made into products for animals. 2. Much of the land used for animals is not suitable for growing crops. Some is, but it's not a 1:1 swapability factor.
in “Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'” · View on HN
YT channel What I've Learned goes in-depth into inflated carbon footprints like these and can explain it more concise than I can. ▶ this video
in “G7 nations committing billions more to fossil fuel than green energy” · View on HN
>90% less greenhouse emissions, 99% less water, and 93% less land This was a great video concerning those claims above.... ▶ this video
in “Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)” · View on HN
Misleading -- 94% of the water that's "used" to produce beef is just rainwater, see here: ▶ this video
in “Millions of Groundwater Wells Could Run Dry” · View on HN
“If the entirety of the US were to go vegan for a year, the reduction in GHG emissons would be 2.6%” ▶ this video I think cows get to much blame
in “Eat Real Food – Introducing the New Pyramid” · View on HN
Devil's advocate. I'll probably be down-voted, but note that ignoring details gives fuel to skeptics (as in ▶ this video ). 1. How is this 14.5% number calculated? Does it include deforestation? Grass-fed is far different than deforesting for grazing land or crop land. For instance from the FAO PDF you quoted: "extensive livestock are often kept in remote environments where deforestation and land degradation reflect weaknesses in institutions and policies". The headline then should read "deforestation and bad land policy causes climate change" not "stop eating cows". 2. Again, how are these 10x numbers calculated? Comparing e.g. industrialized agriculture to inefficient agriculture in a third-world country is not going to convince skeptics. If beef production is extremely inefficient somewhere, we should fix that. 3. If country A emits 100x the CO2 production of country B for the same end result, that needs to be noted. If my neighbor has a giant gas-guzzling monster truck spewing emissions, my neighborhood is not at fault, it's just him. 4. Agree 100%. We should be addressing the deforestation. Saying "stop eating meat" is not the solution. "Don't buy food from Brazil grown on land that had rain forest last year" is more nuanced and probably easier to follow. Matter of fact, don't buy products made by totalitarian regimes, slaves, child labor, etc. We should know where and how our products are made. I'm not advocating "don't buy sneakers" because some sneakers are made in unethic
in “Treating beef like coal would make a big dent in greenhouse-gas emissions” · View on HN
A lot of the numbers that people cite were inaccurate and revoked by the original authors, but people keep on citing the old bad numbers. The vast majority of water used by cows is 'green water' that comes from rainfall that will fall there cows or not, on top of land that you cannot use for plant crops, only for raising cattle. Ruminant animal meat is here to stay, for the plain old reason that with a lot of land and natural rainfall water, the only way you can get food from that land is from ruminant animals such as cows and sheep. To not use it would make the price of plant food skyrocket as food demand gets redirected onto plant crops from beef and plant food supply cannot redirect nearly as fast in that hypothetical situation. Source: ▶ this video
in “California moves to cut off water to thousands of farmers” · View on HN
The story with livestock is complicated. From that same Wikipedia article. > The indirect effects contributing to the percentage include emissions associated with the production of feed consumed by livestock and carbon dioxide emission from deforestation in Central and South America, attributed to livestock production So now deforestation is equivalent to livestock? Should I say shopping malls and residential areas are a problem because they require all the plants on the land to be cut down and paved over? I really wish these '% of everything' statistics would go away. It is almost always more complicated which fosters climate skeptics. Energy production - aka fossil fuel burning such as coal for electricity and gas/diesel for - is the vast majority of emissions. We should be focusing on getting our democratic voting power focused on one that one easily digested story to get things done on a nation-state level instead of getting bogged down in these micro-issues. "Everything causes climate change" is impossible to fix. "Fossil fuels and especially cars and coal" cause climate change is very possible to address. See ▶ this video and [link] for examples of more nuance.
in “Canada Records All-Time High Temperature of 49.5 Degrees: Weather Service” · View on HN
You're right. The water discussed here is just the total rain water that was in the grass the cows ate. Its not taken from aquifers or rivers like you need to irrigating crops. ▶ this video
in “Beyond Meat’s Beyond Burger life cycle assessment (2018)” · View on HN
90% of cattle water consumption comes directly from feed and feed is often made of leftover vegetable matter that would have been wasted otherwise or land that can't be harvested anyway: ▶ this video
in “California population declines for first time in more than a century” · View on HN
at around 18:21 in ( ▶ this video ), the author claims that since cows produce methane (CH4) from grass that was built by metabolizing rainwater and atmospheric CO2, and methane is subsequently washed out over the course of a decade by being broken down to H2O and CO2. True, but methane is still a potent GHG even though a less persisting one than CO2. You cannot just show that there's a chemical cycle going on and then claim there's no environmental effect; without cows' burps, there would be one less source of intermittent atmospheric methane. You'd need at least one more factor to demonstrate it's irrelevant (like it's only a tiny fraction of all methane sources, or if we were to live without that many cattle we'd inevitably produce other GHG to keep us from starving or somesuch). Earlier in the video, it is claimed that the water footprint calculations one hears so often are calculated in a misleading way, since almost all of it is natural rainwater anyway, and secondly, it's almost completely urinated back onto the land within hours or a day anyway. I agree with that and want to add that I'm for this reason skeptical of many water footprint calculations. This site [link] seems to do a fairly good job at explaining the different water sources (surface, rain, tap) and detailing where the actual contention occurs. As far as cattle is concerned though, one thing the video glances over is that cow piss is not considered potable (though some cultures have been known to use it for di
in “Eating less meat won't save the planet” · View on HN