back to article Amount of meat we eat will barely affect future climate change

For the last few days, the mainstream British media have been assuring us that rich westerners must seriously cut down the amount of meat we eat - and the rest of the world must keep to its current meat-light diet - in order to stave off planetary apocalypse. But what are the facts? The reports are all based on this paper in …

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    1. Battsman
      Childcatcher

      Re: Only partial picture

      "One very significant argument is that our human bodies are simply not evolved into consuming the amount of meat products, included in the western mans diet nowdays. For thousands of years (actually until 100 or 200 years ago) the level of meat consumption was much less that the present one in the western world thus a reduction in meet consumption will also have a personal positive health effect."

      I'm reminded of the picture of the 50 year old vegan who looks like a troll and the 50 year old chef who loves butter, eggs, meats, & cheeses and looks like quite the hot dish on her own. What is a "personal postiive health effect" for one, might not be for another. In truth if you really want to improve the health of the typical modern human dump the "fortified flour products," corn syrup derivatives, etc. that completely screw up a modern human's insulin levels.

      With regard to protein consumption specifically, I'll observe that the average height, size, etc. of the modern human is significantly larger than even just a few hundred years ago - it may be that protein consumption of a few hundred years ago wasn't as adequate to a positive health effect as one might assume on face value.

      1. Antony Smith
        Thumb Up

        Re: Only partial picture

        Re: 50 Year old vegan that looks like a troll, this one's not bad for 72 -

        http://www.lowdensitylifestyle.com/media/uploads/2010/01/600mimikirk-269x300.jpg

        Could be the genes she's got would keep her looking like that even is she'd eaten dog dirt for the past 20 years but who's to say the Vegan you're on about would look any different either.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Only partial picture

      "One very significant argument is that our human bodies are simply not evolved into consuming the amount of meat products, included in the western mans diet nowdays".

      While understandable given the amount of misinformation circulating, this is very likely the exact opposite of the truth. There is reason to believe that eating a lot of meat was one of the critical factors that contributed to our evolution as homo sapiens - meat provides much more energy than plants, as well as all the nutrients we need. (True: check it out if you doubt me). We seem to have evolved as hunters: healthy humans whose bodies have not atrophied due to "civilized" lifestyles can still run further without having to stop than virtually any other mammal. A suitably trained runner (such as a Tarahumara Indian) can comfortably jog 100 miles non-stop, whereas a horse, deer, or even wolf cannot.

      So our prehistoric ancestors probably lived for approaching 1 million years as hunter-gatherers, opportunistically eating whatever was available locally - from bison and mammoths to hares and mice, seafood, bugs, birds and their eggs, and whatever fruit and nuts they could find. Until very recently such tribes as the Inuit and Masai lived essentially on meat and fat - eked out, in the case of the Masai, by milk and blood.

      About 14,000 years ago farming was invented, and large numbers of people began to appear in settlements. The land could not begin to support so many hunter-gatherers, so they had to farm and live on bread and other cereals, vegetables, and whatever small amounts of meat they could afford. Over time, meat became almost an exclusive privilege of the rich and powerful - for example, in medieval times venison from the deer in England's royal forests could only be eaten by the king and his household. Incidentally, examination of human remains has shown that the palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, like modern ones, were taller, stronger, and healthier than the farmers who succeeded and replaced them.

      The epidemic of obesity that has overtaken the "civilized" world has coincided almost exactly with increased consumption of sugar, refined flour products, and processed foods and drinks; meanwhile per-capita consumption of plain unadulterated meat, fish, and dairy products has fallen.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Who are the "western mans" anyway?

      I've heard they eat a lot of meat in Texas. Also in Pakistan. But here in the UK even non-vegetarians don't eat very much meat: if they removed from their diet everything apart from the meat they would probably die of starvation. Most of people's calories come from wheat, potatoes, etc.

      It is clearly possible for some people (Eskimos, some Africans, ...) to live healthily on a diet consisting mostly of meat. It is also clearly possible for some people (lots of Indians, some English people, ...) to live healthily on a purely vegetarian diet. Are all diets possible for all people, or might different people have different dietary requirements? Not sure ...

      A vegetarian diet works well for me and my family, but:

      * We eat quorn and soya and quinoa and other stuff which would not be available to my ancestors.

      * We eat quite a lot of cheese which is, to some extent, I've been told, a by-product of meat production; I'm not sure what would happen to the agricultural economy if everyone switched from beef to cheese.

      1. Sir Runcible Spoon

        Re: Who are the "western mans" anyway?

        " I'm not sure what would happen to the agricultural economy if everyone switched from beef to cheese."

        Double the gas output?

      2. Furbian
        Meh

        Re: Who are the "western mans" anyway?

        The vast majority of the poor, the majority of the populace being poor in the first place, in Pakistan can't afford meat anyway, it's much more expensive, relatively, than it is in the developed world. They're end up being vegetarians due not being able to afford not only meat, but are are also malnourished as they can't afford much food anyway.

        http://chartsbin.com/view/bhy

        Case in point, meat eaten (per person, per year), UK, 85Kg, India, 3Kg, Pakistan 13Kg, US, Australia 122Kg!

        1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
          Thumb Up

          Re: Who are the "western mans" anyway?

          Crikey. Actual numbers and a quoted source.

          +1

    4. JeffyPooh
      Pint

      Re: Only partial picture

      Ideally, meat is a garnish. A 6-oz steak should be a very rare treat. Never, ever order a double burger.

      Limit yourself to just three or four strips of bacon per serving, not more than four or five times a week (plus the weekends of course). Oh, sorry, is this one not like the others?

  1. Elmer Phud

    Food?

    That meat production usually means using a lot more land and producing food for producing meat is usually forgotten about as the argument concerning cow farts rages.

    1. MJI Silver badge

      Re: Food?

      Quite often land unsuited to arable farming is very good for meat farming, also do we want pastures replaced with crops?

      As to CO2 - try planting more trees

      1. Spotthelemon

        Re: Food?

        current developments in meat production means pasture will become a thing of the past soon with part of that land being covered by giant factory sheds, the high- yield cattle they're producing can't be fed on grass they must have carefully controlled high-tech feed & be kept almost permanently indoors.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Food?

          "current developments in meat production means pasture will become a thing of the past soon with part of that land being covered by giant factory sheds, the high- yield cattle they're producing can't be fed on grass they must have carefully controlled high-tech feed & be kept almost permanently indoors".

          Apart from being cruel and barbaric, this practice confuses the dietary issue magnificently. Because meat from animals who have been kept indoors all their lives, for all the world like couch potatoes with no TV, and fed on corn and other starchy foods, is probably far less healthy than that from wild animals allowed to range freely and eat their natural foods such as grass.

  2. Bob. Hitchen

    Same s*** different day

    Here we go again yet another round of drip fed crap. Every other day some other subsidised idiot comes in with a story on how the sky is falling. Get a photo of the polar bear/penguin while you can they'll be gone before you can blink - yeah right. Just like the Himalayan glaciers! Oh and the sea level rise odd I can walk the same distance at low tide even 20 years after Gore's alarmist innundation video.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Same s*** different day

      You do realise there is some sort of shindig for watermelons coming up shortly - hence this sudden mad rush of 'scientific' papers to support it - don't you?

    2. Jim Birch
      WTF?

      Re: Same s*** different day

      Did Gore actually say that we'd be inundated after 20 years. I think not. You made that up.

      You can read the IPCC reports and see what they actually say if you can be bothered. If you don't want to be drip fed crap go to the authoritative sources.

      Climate change is slow. It's not cataclysmic, now, next year, next decade. More like a slow accumulation of some negative impacts - albeit with some positives. On time scale of a hundred years or two there will be significant negatives and they'll be wondering why we let it happen for a marginal short term benefit. If you don't care about the future of the world past your lifetime you don't have to worry much about climate change. And if you find small modifications of your own behaviour for the common good just too offensive to contemplate, well, that's you. What really beats me about you guys is that you need to believe these crazy factoids to feel ok.

  3. Turtle

    The really beautiful thing about it....

    The really beautiful thing about AGW is that it gives its supporters a pretext to interfere in every aspect of human life and society, bar none.

  4. Crisp
    Paris Hilton

    Can I still eat bacon sandwiches?

    Although, there's every chance that I'd carry on eating bacon sandwiches even if it did destroy the planet.

    1. TRT Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Can I still eat bacon sandwiches?

      Well you've already destroyed it for one poor pig at least.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gareth is still right though

    Whatever the ins and outs of the original article - Gareth is absolutely right about current and projected population levels being a very real problem. Anyone who thinks it is not - with respect - is living in cloud cuckoo land. If you want to co-exist with increasing numbers of other people (and thus traffic, noise, pollution, scarce resources, disappearing wildlife, disappearing land space) don't vote for "population reduction" (by fair means not foul). Stick your head in the sand and enjoy the ride - it's down hill all the way.

    So - stand up and say it - "the world is over populated and it's going to get worse!"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Gareth is still right though

      Both you and Gareth are very wrong.

      There are vast tracts of land, even in the UK, where you can go and live and rarely see another soul. There are whole abandoned villages in Italy, Spain and France that you can purchase for a pittance. For a small upfront cost the Scottish government will subsidise you to become a smallholder.

      Life like that is not "efficient" and it couldn't support the sort of numbers the more populated areas of the planet have. However, there are still huge areas, capable of supporting hundreds of millions of people quite happily. Ironically, such a life consumes less "natural resources" than average.

      It's also quite hard work...

      If you think the planet's crowded, its because you have chosen to live somewhere that's crowded. There are many advantages to it. Humans tend toward it if they have a choice. The population drift from rural to urban areas is a very visible side effect of modernising countries.

      The planet is good for about 20 billion people by today's standards. I doubt we'll ever get above 10. Google Hans Rosling.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Gareth is still right though

        Not to forget the "population bomb" had us running out of resources some time in the late 70s, IIRC.

        We may need to stop the rate of increase and accept that not everyone can eat meat at every meal. We'll probably also need to stop being arrogant and using utterly inefficient methods of food production like organic. The chances are we'll be alright, though, without a population cull.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "There are vast tracts of land, even in the UK..."

        The UK has 58 million square acres, and 60-odd million people.

        Just figure I'll throw that one at ya.

        1. Chris Miller

          Re: "There are vast tracts of land, even in the UK..."

          The UK population isn't very evenly distributed - almost half of them live within 100 miles of London. So there are large tracts of north and west Scotland (and bits of England and Wales) that would count as relatively empty by most people's definition.

          BTW what are these square acres of which you speak? Is this some measure of 4-vol of which I've been previously unaware?

      3. JeffyPooh
        Pint

        Re: Gareth is still right though

        AC "...vast tracts of land..."

        Exactly right. The rural areas in my jurisdiction are depopulating. The metro is growing fast.

        It's going to be quite pleasant for the retired folks that want to get outta town for some peace and quiet.

        Hmmm... I predict that they'll eventually have self-contained residences, linked by cheap satcom, powered by who-knows-what (wind, solar?), extracting water from the air, that they'll helicopter into isolated, remote and beautiful locations with spectacular views (e.g. Namibian coast). Once a month, in exchange for your pension check, they'll chopper in groceries.

    2. Chet Mannly

      Re: Gareth is still right though

      ""the world is over populated and it's going to get worse!""

      Given we produce far more food than is necessary to feed every person on the planet (I've heard figures of double necessary production) I disagree that we are overpopulated now.

      Most starvation is due to wars preventing food from getting to those that need it (eg Sudan now), and bad government policy (eg farm ownership policies of Mugabe).

      Theoretically if the human population continues to grow then obviously we may reach that stage sometime in the future, but it aint now.

  6. Tim Parker

    Media coverage

    "For the last few days, the mainstream British media have been assuring us that rich westerners must seriously cut down the amount of meat we eat - and the rest of the world must keep to its current meat-light diet - in order to stave off planetary apocalypse. "

    Really ? I don't normally think of myself as reclusive but i've not seen anything about this. Has it been in the rags ? Ah well, back to sleep...

    1. Tim Parker

      Re: Media coverage

      What's with the downvote for a question ? Sheesh - if there's been coverage just point it out, I said i'd missed it not that it didn't happen.

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Re: Media coverage

        "What's with the downvote for a question ?...." You DARED to question The Truth! At least, that's how the Greenies will see it.

  7. Steve Knox
    Boffin

    Numbers

    Ah, Lewis.

    One can always count on you to appeal to rationality and then be completely irrational. Your numerical analysis has one major flaw. Let's take a quick look, shall we?

    In other words the difference between the high-meat future and the low-meat one is just 12 parts per million. The OECD thinks that atmospheric CO2 is likely to climb from present levels of 394 ppm to 685ppm on that timescale, a rise of nearly 300 - 25 times the saving Mr Powell is offering. There is a notional aspiration to hold the level to 450 ppm, but this is widely acknowledged to be a lost cause and much modelling in recent times has sought to predict the consequences of a doubling in CO2 to say 780 ppm.

    If the goal, as you say, is to hold the level to 450ppm, then we have an acceptable rise of 56ppm. So the "magic number" is not 291ppm ("nearly 300") but 235ppm. 12 ppm is just over 5% of than number. Now that's not that great -- it's almost exactly 1% more than the 4%+ you get if you use 291ppm. This may seem like splitting hairs, but I do it to show that the way you adjust and round the numbers is consistently to marginalize the results. This directly relates to the significant flaw in your logic.

    To be fair, regardless of which side of the climate change debate a given commentator is on, they tend to make this same mistake. It also happens quite frequently in other fields.

    The mistake, of course, is to expect any single proposition to be "the answer" -- in this debate especially. No-one who's read the science believes that one single aspect of human society is responsible for the entirety of the carbon emissions we have generated. So to expect one single change to reverse all of it is equally absurd.

    No, we need to look at multiple solutions, carefully considering those which rise above a certain threshold -- something around 5%, I think...

    1. scatter

      Re: Numbers

      Also this reduction is achieved through a really quite modest cut in meat consumption:

      "To make a really significant difference, however, we will need to bring down the average global meat consumption from 16.6 per cent to 15 per cent of average daily calorie intake – about half that of the average western diet."

      But Lewis makes it sound like the evil commie scientists want everyone to go vegan.

  8. Peter Dawe
    Flame

    Bacon sandwiches yes, Cucumber no!

    Cucumbers have massive water use and very high carbon footprint, using heated greenhouses and cool-train logistics. In addition, the wastage rate is one of the highest in fresh food 9 especially in the kitchen).

    More importantly, the cucumber has virtually no nutritional value.

    Its the salad muchers that are wrecking the planet!!!

    1. TRT Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Bacon sandwiches yes, Cucumber no!

      Quite so! And the crust wastage is unforgivable.

  9. John A Blackley

    Why not conflate?

    It has been suggested that the _real_ climate problem is too many people on the planet.

    It has also been suggested that eating too much red meat vastly increases one's risk of cancer.

    So why not propose that everyone on the planet eats huge amounts of red meat until enough of us die of cancer to make life on the planet sustainable?

  10. Eddie Edwards
    Thumb Down

    Is Lewis in the 1%?

    Anyone who's ever had to balance a paycheck should understand the concept that marginal savings here and there can be the difference between red and black at the end of the month. The argument that you shouldn't bother with marginal savings only works if you have larger savings available, or if you don't need to save anyway. Mr Page hasn't really demonstrated that either is the case here. But I envy his bank balance.

    1. Alan W. Rateliff, II
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Is Lewis in the 1%?

      "I envy his bank balance."

      Therein lies the cancer which is killing our societies. I suppose you exist in the real 99% which is in the starving third-world? Personally, I am not in the so-called "1%" and I will happily pay a premium for certain items I deem worthy. I also realize that means shunting funds from another expenditure or working an extra bit to accommodate both.

      (Bear in mind, also, that the "1%" and "99%" monikers are completely arbitrary and not based upon any real numbers in real life or in this post.)

      Paris, on a fourth-world of her own.

    2. Chet Mannly

      Re: Is Lewis in the 1%?

      If you are posting comments on the web then you are also part of the 1%, everyone on the Western world pretty much is.

      Maybe take a trip to Africa to meet the real 99% before accusing a web journo of being some rich elitist and seeing your glass house shatter around you..

  11. Just_this_guy

    Lewis undermines his own claims to rational analysis when he says things like this:

    "Against this sort of picture, a paltry few-percent-at-best saving to be gained by somehow compelling most people in the world to remain on their present not-very-nutritious diets and (even more difficult) getting westerners to join them in this ... well, it hardly seems worth bothering with."

    Nobody would wish people to remain on, much less adopt, a "not-very-nutritious" diet. The original research evidently advocates reduced meat consumption, not poor nutrition. No nutrients obtained from meat cannot be obtained elsewhere.

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: Just_this_guy

      "....No nutrients obtained from meat cannot be obtained elsewhere." WHOOT, WHOOT! Veggie propaganda alert! Yeah, heard that bumph before. Truth is meat is a very condensed form of many nutrients. To get the same from non-meat products requires either eating massive quantities of items such as nuts, or using supplements (which require polluting and resource-hogging manufacturing processes). Nuts are a very grund-intensive, require lots of water, and are a limited season source of nutrients, much more than open-field cattle farming. Sorry, that piece of Veggie FUD has long-since been debunked.

  12. Blitheringeejit

    @Peter Dawe - lay off the 'cumber!

    *MY* cucumbers don't need heated greenhouses or any logistics beyond me remembering to pick them - and they have lots of nutritional value - just not in the form of calories or protein. They are particularly rich in vitamin K, so are an ideal pick-me-up for clubbers on a night out. <ahem>

    A lot of salad-munchers grow their own salad and eat more seasonally than burger addicts - so don't knock them unless you have a Gloucester Old Spot in your garden shed.

    Flame-extinguisher icon please? Could use the pint, but it would be a shame to waste it.

    1. Fibbles

      Lovely organic cucumbers...

      Grown in artificially produced fertilizer or even worse, muck from those evil methane producing cows.

      I'm not having a go but arguing about what is better for the environment / people's diets / population size at anything less than a global scale seems a bit silly to me.

  13. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Uni of Exeter?

    Immediate lack of credibility. Apart from call girl autobiographies, have they ever published anything of real note? Cambridge and Oxford must be laughing at the wannabes.

  14. Doug Bostrom

    Hall of mirrors

    Sweet paragraph of self-cite Gish gallop at the end of the piece. Thank you for snapping me out of the impending hypnosis you induced, Lewis!

    As usual I'm left wondering what else in The Register is credible.

  15. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    So that's why climate modellers assume *doubling* CO2

    Because that's what they *expect* to happen.

    It's fair that it's to say that *no* single policy change/law/investment/clever hack would solve this problem.

    But 14ppm for a Draconian lifestyle change across the world. I don't think so.

    But what about the low hanging fruit. of reduce *other* atmospheric pollutants as described in other papers listed in El Reg? Better stoves, toilets that collect biomass, Methane reducing diets for cows.

    As for population changes better sanitation (fewer diseases), better healthcare (lower infant mortality) and better state support (don't need to breed your own care staff).

    A planet of 7 billion people on starvation level resources is likely to be a desperate place to be.

    A planet of 7 billion well educated well fed individual could advance further and faster than any civilization in history.

    To the stars or the graveyard.

    What would you rather have?

    1. Chet Mannly

      Re: So that's why climate modellers assume *doubling* CO2

      Well said!!

      I've never understood the human desire to revisit the dark ages expressed by a lot of alarmists...

  16. Volker Hett

    Everything is fine, no need to worry

    And it doesn't matter if we agree to change or diet or not when 1.3 billion chinese and 1 billion indians start buying all the oil to do farming as we did when we could afford it.

  17. Peddler
    WTF?

    Before the cattle came...

    bison were said to darken the North American plains. Are bison more polite than cattle? Do they refrain from passing gas? If a given amount of plant material is not eaten by a cow, would it not be eaten by a moose, 4 or 5 deer, or 70,000 crickets? And won't they produce more or less the same amount of GHG as the aforesaid cow? Who does the maths for these studies?

    1. Chet Mannly

      Re: Before the cattle came...

      "If a given amount of plant material is not eaten by a cow, would it not be eaten by a moose, 4 or 5 deer, or 70,000 crickets? "

      Biggest source of methane on the planet are termites - where is the conservationist war on those little critters, who are doing far more damage than cows are.

  18. Shannon Jacobs
    Boffin

    Is there ANYONE out there who believes ANYTHING this moron writes?

  19. Martin Budden Silver badge
    Childcatcher

    "a paltry few-percent-at-best saving"

    I've read lots and lots of El Reg articles which say doing <whatever> isn't worth the effort because it will only result in "a paltry few-percent-at-best saving". I can't help but think that if all those few percents were added up the total could be significant indeed.

  20. Alan Brown Silver badge

    "agricultural efficiency"

    Driven by oil - mostly used in fertilizers, not as motive power for farm machinery.

    The biggest single driver for climate change is population, not average meat consumption. If everyone stopped eating meat tomorrow, fertilizer usage would be back up to current levels within 5 years.

    THAT is the man behind the curtain that all the handwaving is trying to distract everyone from.

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