By far the biggest greenhouse impact of meat production, conveniently ignored by almost everyone, is the Carbon Opportunity Cost: not using the land for another purpose (such as rewilding). It's massive, vastly outweighing food miles and other impacts:
nature.com/articles/s4158…
nature.com/articles/s4158…
If we took the Carbon Opportunity Costs of meat into account, the total greenhouse gas impact of an average Northern European diet would be 9 tonnes CO2 per person per year. In other words, we would almost triple our TOTAL carbon footprint: monbiot.com/2019/08/13/spe…
The impact of food miles is very small by comparison even to the *current account emissions* of meat production, let alone the Carbon Opportunity Costs. pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.102…
Please remember throughout these discussions that there would probably be no sheep or cattle farming in this country at all if it weren't for public subsidies. We are paying for environmental destruction. I don't believe governments have a right to extract tax for this purpose.
If people want to keep cattle or sheep, they have a right to do so, and no one is stopping them. But they do not have a right to harvest public money for these phenomenally destructive industries.
There's another misconception that comes up frequently: only vegans eat fruit and veg, so all the problems with horticulture (and there are many) can be laid at their door.
Veganism means switching your protein and fat sources from animal products to pulses, nuts etc. And continuing to eat fruit and veg, as most people do.
We can prosper without animal products. We cannot prosper without fruit and veg.
We can prosper without animal products. We cannot prosper without fruit and veg.
