Eating Less Meat 'Like Taking 8 Million Cars Off the Road' (bbc.com) 373
"Having big U.K. meat-eaters cut some of it out of their diet would be like taking 8 million cars off the road," reports the BBC:
That's just one of the findings of new research that scientists say gives the most reliable calculation yet of how what we eat impacts our planet.
The Oxford University study is the first to pinpoint the difference high- and low-meat diets have on greenhouse gas emissions, researchers say... [Oxford University] professor Peter Scarborough, who is part of the Livestock Environment And People project surveyed 55,000 people who were divided into big meat-eaters, who ate more than 100g of meat a day, which equates to a big burger, low meat-eaters, whose daily intake was 50g or less, approximately a couple of chipolata sausages, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans... The research shows that a big meat-eater's diet produces an average of 10.24 kg of planet-warming greenhouse gasses each day. A low meat-eater produces almost half that at 5.37 kg per day. [Fish diet: 4.74 kg. "Vegetarian" diet: 4.16 kg] And for vegan diets — it's halved again to 2.47 kg a day.
The analysis is the first to look at the detailed impact of diets on other environmental measures all together. These are land use, water use, water pollution and loss of species, usually caused by loss of habitat because of expansion of farming. In all cases high meat-eaters had a significantly higher adverse impact than other groups...
A separate study also published in Nature Food in 2021 concluded that food production was responsible for a third of all global greenhouse gas emissions. And an independent review for the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) called for a 30% reduction in meat consumption by 2032 in order to meet the UK's net zero target.
"The meat industry said the analysis overstated the impact of eating meat."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader beforewisdom for sharing the article.
The Oxford University study is the first to pinpoint the difference high- and low-meat diets have on greenhouse gas emissions, researchers say... [Oxford University] professor Peter Scarborough, who is part of the Livestock Environment And People project surveyed 55,000 people who were divided into big meat-eaters, who ate more than 100g of meat a day, which equates to a big burger, low meat-eaters, whose daily intake was 50g or less, approximately a couple of chipolata sausages, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans... The research shows that a big meat-eater's diet produces an average of 10.24 kg of planet-warming greenhouse gasses each day. A low meat-eater produces almost half that at 5.37 kg per day. [Fish diet: 4.74 kg. "Vegetarian" diet: 4.16 kg] And for vegan diets — it's halved again to 2.47 kg a day.
The analysis is the first to look at the detailed impact of diets on other environmental measures all together. These are land use, water use, water pollution and loss of species, usually caused by loss of habitat because of expansion of farming. In all cases high meat-eaters had a significantly higher adverse impact than other groups...
A separate study also published in Nature Food in 2021 concluded that food production was responsible for a third of all global greenhouse gas emissions. And an independent review for the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) called for a 30% reduction in meat consumption by 2032 in order to meet the UK's net zero target.
"The meat industry said the analysis overstated the impact of eating meat."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader beforewisdom for sharing the article.
In a follow-up study... (Score:3)
Give up cars, meat, AC, heat, and homeownership (Score:5, Insightful)
just as long as you don't do a damn thing to disturb the profits of multinational corporations, cargo shipping, and China/India's relentless pollution.
You will own nothing and be happy, citizen of the districts. The Capitol knows what's best for you and that's why they're allowed to have private transport, private security, private gated communities with multiple private beachfront homes, and of course they work so hard leading the citizens of the districts to a better future they're entitled to eat a nice steak in an air conditioned home.
Re:Give up cars, meat, AC, heat, and homeownership (Score:4, Insightful)
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China/India's relentless pollution.
Everybody understand that China/India co2 emissions are just outsourced co2 emission from the rest of the world, right? Stop producing things in china, the result will be ugly for the economy but co2 will drop for sure.
they're entitled to eat a nice steak in an air conditioned home.
This is the likely path we are heading to. Elites will never change their lifestyle but won't mind enforcing restrictions on the mass.
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That's the point of people like that. They point to corporations and India/China. Corporations point to smaller companies and individuals buying their products and refusing to spend more time or money on more efficient products. India and China pointing to the west because the west uses way more per capita. Meanwhile nobody is doing anything while everyone is pointing at someone else. That the oil companies aren't burning up oil themselves but that in the end it's humans doing it is brushed aside.
They don't
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cargo shipping, and China/India's relentless pollution
What are you proposing to give up instead? I mean cargo shipping and China's relentless pollution specifically is all in the aid of you and your cushy western lifestyle propped up by outsourcing your pollution to them.
Maybe rather than blaming other people for your problem, people whose per capita emissions are a fraction of yours, consider looking at the "made in" sticker on the back of whatever device you use to post on Slashdot, and throw that device away in protest. That way we are all spared.
Re:Give up cars, meat, AC, heat, and homeownership (Score:4, Insightful)
You first ... comrade.
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Whatever you say, comrade.
Re:Give up cars, meat, AC, heat, and homeownership (Score:4)
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So that's far more than a cow. Why aren't we eating them! Vegetarian humans are basically cattle anyway.
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The CO2 of a Chinese person and about 3 Indians all added together is still less than one American.
The old debunked 'per capita' argument. It is what they march out now to bash American since they can no longer to it based on over all emissions. It is the only way they can continue to make China look good while making anyone else look bad.
The truth is we have already had this argument and it was decided then that it was bullshit. We will stick to the over all emissions and not the per capita. As stated, the environment doesn't care about per capita. That is why its bullshit.
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It's bullshit because I said it was bullshit. I'm sure that isn't good enough for you but it should be. But if you still don't think its bullshit I have two suggestions for you. Understand what it means then you will see its bullshit. An the other is to look back through 6 years or so of posts and you will find the great bullshit debate on why its bullshit. then you will understand why is bullshit and we prefer to leave it as bullshit.
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1 kg of CO2 is 1 kg of CO2. Newsflash: the atmosphere doesn't care if it took 1 American or 3 Chinese to make it.
Yes, but look at which of the two is throwing the stones and refusing to do anything about their wasteful lifestyle
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Yet there are more Chinese than there are Americans. And the American is actually lowering his CO2 footprint without (necessarily) making sacrifices at home or at work to do so.
Re: How ironic and stupid are you? (Score:2)
So Chinese people arenâ(TM)t allowed to live the same lifestyle that Americans do because there are more of them? Great logic.
Crowing (Score:2, Troll)
Meat is CLIMATE Murder.
My burger is practically a war crime.
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I don't mind studies that quantify the climate effect of various activities. They can be useful for prioritizing what needs to be adjusted first to get the largest benefits. What I do mind is comparisons that seem impactful and profound, but are actually manipulative and therefore only serve to muddy the waters. I also mind when it is made seem like individual habits are the problem and not government policy and industry.
9 million cars seem like a lot! There are about 32 million cars in the UK, so 9 mill
Oh stop (Score:2)
Meat is CLIMATE Murder ... My burger is practically a war crime.
Don't be dramatic. Or, if you're being sarcastic, then include more clues because Poe's law is very much at work in your statement.
The problem with this study is that the majority of the greenhouse gas emissions noted in it are simply the trickle-down effect of using fossil-fuel-burning processes in the transportation of everything involved (seed and fertilizer for feed, the feed itself, harvesting, and processing) of all the intermediary steps. So basically you can pick any industry in the world, especia
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Mmm.... delicious war crimes ...
Re: Crowing (Score:2)
So close...
Mmm...forbidden donut burger...
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I like mine better. With a hint of luck, it makes the professionally outraged crowd shit their panties.
You optimise for what you measure (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You optimise for what you measure (Score:5, Insightful)
But they don't measure how men employed in manual labourer roles might actually require a high-protein diet
like ... beans?
Re: You optimise for what you measure (Score:3, Informative)
Plant based protein being equivalent to meat based protein has been debunked like 50+ years ago.
The problem is that unlike herbivores, omnivores donâ(TM)t have the capacity (7 chambered stomach and gut microbiomes for example) of breaking down and absorbing the plant proteins and vitamins quite as effectively.
Itâ(TM)s why long term vegans have problems with dehydration, wasting, osteoporosis etc and why plant based diets would require much more human grade fruits and vegetables (at least three tim
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The problem for your argument is, unlike herbivores, we skipped 6 of those stomachs for learning to cook food & kept a gut microbiome that adapts to our diet.
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Ah don't you worry, we do it with them as we do it with all laborers. Hire them, use them 'til they are damaged beyond repair, throw them away and get new ones.
Why do you think we abolished slavery and instead of owning people we rent them now?
Lumping it all together (Score:2)
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Environmentalists being idiots as usual (Score:2, Interesting)
You just irrevocably tainted your research because you couldn't keep your fucking politics out of it. Nothing will be done because now people will eat meat OUT OF SPITE, you idiots. The ten people who would limit their diet to save the planet are already vegans.
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With all the recent and ongoing crises like Corona, inflation, energy issues, housing pr
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It is amazing how obvious and doable (albeit with a lot of work) the most beneficial actions are, but environmentalists keep grasping at straws and issuing "thou shalt" remodels of society, because they can't fathom that anything but "back to nature" could work. It's like a religion.
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Where is the politics here? This is a very fine scientific article showing connection between meat eating and GHG emissions. There are almost a billion vegetarians on the planet irrespective of their political affiliation.
100g is not a big burger (Score:2)
what else has this study got wrong?
"30% reduction in meat consumption " (Score:2)
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The easiest way to do that would be to stop handing out subsidies to the cattle production industry.
But since we can't do that, that would get a few very powerful lobbies upset, maybe we can pay them off to produce less and raise the price that way so people can't afford it anymore.
Grace Slick, before her vegetarianism ... (Score:2)
She wrote an amazing song, Silver Spoon, for the Sunfighter album. :)
A neighbor who'd complained of the smell from her barbecues inspired the lyrics, lol.
Grace, a cancer survivor, is an imperfect vegetarian though, as she says she doesn't ask questions about milk having been used when chocolate makes an appearance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://genius.com/Paul-kantne... [genius.com]
https://youtu.be/7Is2OeUZ6Sg [youtu.be]
Cars off the road by WFH (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cars off the road by WFH (Score:5, Funny)
All of them?
But it kills the real estate value of the office buildings. And imagine the horror, we might have a planet we can live on but the office buildings are worthless!
Could you live with yourself, knowing that you have a livable planet but you ruined bankers and investors?
The promotion of poison (Score:4, Interesting)
The promotion of a plant based diet is merely encouraging people to put more sugar into their diet. And sugar is nothing but a sweet tasting poison that is highly addictive.
Your caveman ancestors did not eat wheat thins and rice cakes. They ate rabbits, squirrels, deer, antelope and the occasional small fruit when they could find it. A long way from corn flakes for breakfast.
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Considering that the average life expectancy also was about 25-30 years back then, I dunno if copying that lifestyle is so much more healthy.
Re: The promotion of poison (Score:2)
The average was low because of child death. The median person, if they survived for the first 3 years of life had similar average lifespans.
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Erh... no. Even excluding infant mortality, life expectancy didn't exceed 40 years until only a few 100 years ago.
There are a bunch of factors with accidents, famines, diseases, civilian and military conflict and of course our diet. Our medical knowledge was far away from what we know today, and our diets only came under scrutiny a very brief time ago. Vitamins were mostly discovered in the past century.
One could simply take a look at the nobility through the ages so we can exclude death causes based on the
Re: The promotion of poison (Score:2)
So...how much for the private jet? (Score:3, Insightful)
How much could we save if our climate priesthood would refrain from using private jets to visit various illustrious vacation spots to talk about the climate or, maybe, fly coach. Or, dare I suggest, sit down in a zoom call about it?
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Not much, there aren't so many taking private jets that it would make much of a difference. While there is something to be said for those few you can point to walking their talk it's just drops in the bucket.
We live in a "you must not do this" time (Score:4, Interesting)
Ever noticed? How both sides changed from "just do it" to "no, you have to be the way I deem right"?
Back when I was young, we had a left that was anti-authoritarian and a right that wanted as little interference from anyone as possible. Remember those times? They're gone. Today, both sides want to tell you how you MUST be. Not just should, that's not a new one. MUST. Or rather, how you MUST NOT be. At first glance, this looks a bit less draconian, but in the end it has the same goal: Controlling your behaviour.
There are actually a couple things both sides can agree on. Mostly, that you must not fly certain flags and that you must not say certain things. The flags and words differ, but essentially it's the same again. With maybe at least the difference that from the left, they can point at actual people who would get offended by certain flags and words while all the right can point to is their favorite imaginary friend.
And while this may look like the left has a better case, I wonder just how many of those allegedly affected by those words and flags really give a shit about some idiot flying and saying them. And how many would rather want you to actually do something to actually improve their situation rather than limit your support to showy grandstanding and the same fucking bigotry I already get enough of from the right.
I'm done trying to cater to either side of the political fringe. Fuck off. Both of you. You on the left with your pretending to care about the plight of the underprivileged and you on the right hiding behind your faith trying to defend your small mindedness. I have no use for either of you.
It's time we move on past you. Go and fight each other instead of trying to drag us down into your cesspool. With a hint of luck, you end up in mutual annihilation and the world will be a better place.
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Yes, the far right wants us all to be tolerant of intolerance because personal freedom, and the moderate right (such as Clinton [bbc.com] and Biden [politicalcompass.org]) wants us to be intolerant of it because social justice. So somehow, freedom and justice have become enemies.
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If voting tests can be racist, [slate.com] then why not math tests also?
I've never heard anyone claim that math lessons are explicitly designed to fail people of color like those voting tests did, but culture-specific math problems can still seep in. A white person might do better at word problems involving names that sound white, for example, or foods or hobbies and so on, just because they sound more familiar and more comforting.
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Ever noticed? How both sides changed from "just do it" to "no, you have to be the way I deem right"?
No I've not noticed this because it's something you've made up in your head. At no point is any declaration of what you need to do made by either researchers or the BBC. They are objectively saying only the research findings and comparison to other activities, findings which are refuted by another party who also didn't tell you to do anything.
What has got you so scared that you're making up non-existent instructions in your head?
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You want to dispute that both, the political left as well as the political right, go out of their way to tell everyone what they must and what they must not do and say?
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But you must not smoke! You must not smoke indoors, because it upsets the other patrons. You must not smoke outdoors, because it upsets whoever is passing you by. You must not smoke in your own home because the kids will be harmed ("But I have not kids" "But kids COULD come over, couldn't they?"). And in the meantime we'll shame you with pictures on your cigarette boxes and call you names for being so stupid to poison your body.
And that's just the left, don't get me started on the shitstorm the right would
Fuckwits (Score:3, Interesting)
Stop looking at the little guy with no power.
It's not "Eating less meat solves all the problems." It's "PRODUCING less meat solves all the problems." Not saying that second part is accurate, but you get my meaning.
It's works for energy too:
It's not "Drive your car less." It's "Stop making driving cars necessary assholes!" or "Get us a REAL EV solution maybe?"
In short, point your high powered mouth at the 1% raking in the money and giving nothing back.
Meat eaters unite! (Score:3, Funny)
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C'mon /. meat eaters, these 'scientists' (Huh, what do they know?) are criticising your diets! You must fight back. What about your consumer choice? Are they proposing to ration meat in some new world order totalitarian state? What if we like being obese, having digestive disorders, an aversion to fibre & micro-nutrients, & having a high probability of bowel cancer? Let's take up arms & fight for our meat freedom!
Yeah, you might want to read up on newest nutritional science. Turns out it's excess carbohydrates that do all of that, meanwhile people are dropping weight like crazy on their carnivore or keto diets.
Also, MY health isn't YOUR fucking concern, thank you very much.
private jets produce tons of co2 (Score:4)
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You know the billion+ people in China, the billion+ people in India and billion+ people in Africa all look up and see you as the elites from your story right?
You seem to want to keep doing what your doing, but not let any of them do the same things. Why can't they have the wasteful luxurious lifestyle of an American? It's bad for the environment. Why can Americans have it? Because they're Americans, or something. Nobody seems to explain that part.
A lot of angst here in the comments (Score:2)
There's one high scoring comment ranting about right wing and left wing - oh my, some people really don't bother to read before they rant!
A lot of fuss over this:
> Having big UK meat-eaters cut some of it out of their diet would be like taking 8 million cars off the road.
There's a word in that sentence, perhaps some of you ranting decided to ignore it before getting on your high horses.
That word is _some_
The suggestion here is nothing other than that - a suggestion to cut _some_ meat consumption.
Anyone a
This is not my submission. (Score:5, Informative)
This is not what I submitted.
Slashdot changed the content and formatting of my submission.
The content changes are significant
Here is a screenshot [paste.pics] of my version of the submission.
In my opinion the content Slashdot chose over mine significantly changes the message(s).
I would rather have had the suggestion rejected than have something else substituted in under my username.
Happy Sunday.
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TBF your submission needed to be changed (Score:2)
Take some tips from the all-time top article submitter Hugh Pickens http://researchandideas.com/in... [researchandideas.com]
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That is not how it works. That is not how it has ever worked. Back in the days when editors edited, they would regularly merge multiple submissions and give credit to all of the users, for example.
If you don't want your submissions to be edited, don't submit them to a site that has editors. I mean, they're not very good editors, but it is literally in their title and you have to expect that they might do their job occasionally. Your submission was a mess.
100g of meat a day is a lot? (Score:2)
As has been mentioned (comment about Texas), there are places where that's considered a small snack.
They want us to eat bugs (Score:4, Insightful)
They want us to eat bugs - while they keep eating meat.
They want us to stop using gas and oil - while they fly around the world in private jets.
They say climate change is ruining the planet - while they dump toxic chemicals in our rivers.
They want us to vote for Joe Biden - while they rig the election so no votes really matter.
This is the world we're living in now. Some of us see the truth, and the rest of you support the lies like your life depends on it.
There's a lot of people posting here from Silicon Valley. You're a big part of the problem. You helped create this mess. Now try fixing it?
Re:They want us to eat bugs (Score:4, Interesting)
Who's "they"?
I have never, not once in my life, heard anyone say I should eat bugs.
Humanity will not improve without outside force (Score:2)
In a democratic society full of shitters who rationalize unethical hedonism with either stupid arguments, or just persist in it out of laziness, you can't really put a stop to meat eating. You can guilt people into carbon taxes, but trying to individually target the cost of meat is a fool's errand, they will vote for whoever they need to get the tax gone. Conservatives, national socialists, I don't care ... whatever it takes I will have my steak.
As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefield
If people were serious about the environment.. (Score:3)
We'd see politicritters calling for hundreds of U.S. military bases around the world to be closed. Since we don't see that, we know the experts, owners and bureaucrats aren't serious about mitigating climate change. Eating bugs isn't going to be enough.
Re:Meat eating country... (Score:4, Interesting)
"...if we close the borders between Texas and the real world we'd all live safer lives."
You probably wouldn't. After a few months without support from the rest of the US, a significant number of "rugged individualist" Texans would be escaping to other states, where average people behave in a neighbourly way and help each other out.
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We should build a wall to keep those spongers out.
Re:Meat eating country... (Score:5, Funny)
if we close the borders between Texas and the real world we'd all live safer lives.
You probably wouldn't. After a few months without support from the rest of the US, a significant number of "rugged individualist" Texans would be escaping to other states, where average people behave in a neighborly way and help each other out.
We should build a wall to keep those spongers out.
I bet Mexico might actually pay for that one. :-)
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Charity so far has failed to solve poverty, and leftists had nothing to do with its failure.
Government also has failed to solve poverty, but only because the religious right won't allow it to. And some of them point to the first part of Mark 14:7 [biblegateway.com] to justify their interference.
Also, tossing a few coins to a poor person every now and then makes people feel good about themselves, and they don't want to lose that.
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Just to put some international perspective, the fraction of people living in poverty in the US (15.1% according to the CIA World Factbook) is pretty good in a global context. But the EU, which is less wealthy than the US, has a poverty rate of 9.8%. Taiwan has a poverty rate of just 1.5%. So we're doing OK-ish on poverty, but that's largely a function of our enormous economy and wealth. We could be doing better.
In that respect it's interesting to look at Taiwan, which has achieved 1/10 our poverty rate w
Re:Meat eating country... (Score:5, Informative)
Government has failed to solve poverty because of "the religious right"? No. Not at all. Not even close.
Where do people get these stupid ideas?
Probably from the congressional record of the candidates the religious right supports. And news reports. And the words that come out of the mouths of the religious right leaders.
You know, facts.
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Correct. [wikipedia.org] And more recently. [sfgate.com]
The state is not as politically homogenous as many people think.
Re:Meat eating country... (Score:4, Informative)
Strange how the worst homeless,
Highest homeless rate by state: California. [usafacts.org] Majority Democrat
poverty,
Highest poverty rate by state: MIssisippi. [worldpopul...review.com] Majority Republican.
drug,
Highest drug overdose rate by state: West Virginia [americanad...enters.org]. Majority Republican.
and crime areas
Highest Crime rate by state: Alaska. [usatoday.com] Majority Republican.
are in top-to-bottom blue controlled areas
You managed to be incorrect on three out of four. You would have done better by simply flipping a coin.
Re:Meat eating country... (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of "being rugged" is depending on the local community instead of the government
Which is why Ted Cruz fled the country when things got a bit chilly because the government couldn't keep the power on, then blamed it on his daughter.
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Yup, they're rugged individualists in Texas, and damn friendly. That's why they are enamored with guns. Christ was a big believer in gun rights. All this love your neighbor crap is merely woke propaganda. Why, they are so friendly they seek to "help" non-binary genders by beating the Gospel of Christ into them. And they are such individualists, they've decided that individual women have no rights for abortion.
And they are so friendly, they've decided workers have no rights for water breaks during a heat wav
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Sell your cloak, buy a sword.
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UK actually does eat a lot of meat. About 2/3 as much per-capita as US, so about the same per body mass.
That is still over 200g per day for the average Brit, so the study classifying "over 100g/day" as a high-meat diet is a bit extreme.
Rich telling poor to eat less... Again. (Score:2, Insightful)
Once again this is the rich and comfortable who can afford living on fresh produce while living hundreds of miles from farms, in urban areas - arguing that those living paycheck to paycheck should eat less.
Guess what else could remove millions of cars from the roads? Removing cars!
But then some people, living in urban areas, would not be able to get to their vegan restaurants and bespoke supermarkets and still eat their lettuce while it is fresh.
Worse yet, they might have to use public transport and see a p
Re:Rich telling poor to eat less... Again. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually dense urban areas simplify the logistics of delivering food of all kinds. Its suburban sprawl -- or in the US Southwest, *urban* sprawl, that makes cars and huge home refrigerators the vital "last mile" of our food distribution network. When I lived in a dense (albeit wealthy) Northeastern US city, I could go downstairs and I'd be steps from a bodega which had most things I needed on a day to day basis. I was about five minutes walk from an actual *greengrocer*. This wasn't a bullshit luxury goods juggernaut like Whole Foods, this was a small, locally owned business that catered to people of every socioeconomic class, from hotel maids and security guards up to doctors and university professors.
When I moved to the suburbs, I'll never forget the first time I woke up to find I was out of cream for my coffee. Before I would have grabbed coffee and a bear claw from the bakery around the corner, but now I had to get in my car and drive for *miles* to the supermarket. And that supermarket's produce section was small and sad; the vast bulk of the place was full of ultraprocessed food products made from government subsidized wheat and corn.
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Imagine if they did that in a REALLY big country, like Texas. WooHoo!! No more cowboy steaks, no more noxious emissions
Headline says "less".
First line of summary says "some".
Would it kill the cowboys to eat 12 ounces instead of 16?
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If you removed all the people, climate change wouldn't matter so much anymore, would it?
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This is a false statement. Human activity is far from the primary driver of climate change. In fact long before humans there were times that Earth had a higher CO2 level. The carbon from fossil fuels was one part of the biosphere - it was fauna and flora. This isn't new carbon we pulled in from some non-Earth source.
Stop believing everything people with an incentive or bias tell you.
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This kind of research always makes me laugh. Gotta love statistics and multiplying them by population numbers. One can always make funny arguments such as "If every insert_your_enemy_party_here member woul
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My doc said that much saturated fat is unhealthy for me.
Dude this website doesn't even support unicode (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Slashdot going wokey woke (Score:2, Informative)
The goto phrase of snowflake idiots triggered by a few colours
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Your numbers seem a bit higher than what I found.
Worldwide, the health care sector is responsible for as much as 4.6 percent of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which include carbon dioxide, methane, and ozone, among others. In the United States, where the share is 8.5 percent, the health care system is becoming more, not less, polluting: emissions increased 6 percent from 2010 to 2018. These emissions exacerbate climate change and its negative health impacts.
https://www.commonwealthfund.o... [commonwealthfund.org]
And your claim that 85% of all medical care is treating diabetes is also a bit high. Perhaps you read the report that explained where 85% of the yearly cost of diabetes is spent.
The total estimated 2017 cost of diagnosed diabetes of $327 billion includes $237 billion in direct medical costs and $90 billion in reduced productivity.
The largest components of medical expenditures are:
Hospital inpatient care (30% of the total medical cost)
Prescription medications to treat complications of diabetes (30%)
Anti-diabetic agents and diabetes supplies (15%)
Physician office visits (13%)
https://diabetes.org/about-us/... [diabetes.org]
[Edit: Looking at the 2016 data, diabetes IS the highest expenditure for public insurance payments, followed by heart disease, muscular ailments, and hypertension. For private insurance, the top five are muscular a
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Re: Numbers are made up bullshit (Score:2)
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Carbon dioxide has a half life of about 120 years, methane 10.5 years.
methane is basically a constant now, as meat production has relatively stable for more than 10 years.
Thats of course ignoring the real physics of saturation effects on heating, but those only make the problem less, so you wont care about that either.
The fact is that atmospheric methane is dropping, CO2 is the thing that is rising.
atmospheric methane has also been MASSIVELY higher in the past, because it tends to be a side effect of a lot
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longhorn and some other cattle was specifically bred to survive long droughts and eat inedible (for humans) crops.
All cattle was bred from animals which already ate plants that humans can't live on, but that's not what's most relevant in this situation. Cattle are still grazed, yes, but most are also given supplementary food (like hay) which has become less available and thus also gone up in price due to drought.
The climate is now reverting to pre-1900s cycles of drought and rain, which will bring with it failed harvests, blighted crops and meat produce will have to be once again bred to sustain that. More people will have to eat more meat, not necessarily just beef, but sheep, goat etc as well.
Yes, goats are going to take over in still more places. It's already the world's most popular meat for the reason that they can eat pretty much anything.
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And their private jets.