New open access publication in Nature concludes: meat should be more than twice as expensive if we take climate damage into account.

short thread
nature.com/articles/s4146…
ht @JMoVS
First I should be more precise:
- This is for the German situation.
- It looks at the price for farmers.
- There are large differences between types of meat and whether they are produced conventionally or organically.
This table shows the emissions per foodstuff in kg CO2eq per kg of foodstuff:
Beef 37 kg
Poultry 16-20 kg
Pork 6-10 kg
Eggs 1-2 kg
Milk 1 kg
Cereal 0.2-0.4 kg
Fruit 0.2-0.3 kg
Root crops 0.1 kg
Vegetables 0.0 kg
The authors then multiply with a CO2 price of €180/kg as per IPCC recommendations to get costs per kg

I've taken conventional production and rounded off:
Beef €7/kg (+200% on farmer price)
Poultry €3/kg (+170%)
Pork €2/kg (+130%)
Even you take a very low CO2 price of e.g. €40/kg the price signal would be very significant

And just to be clear: according to economists we are already paying this in the form of (largely future) floods, droughts, etc. This is a way to introduce a "polluter pays principle"
I would propose we introduce this a.s.a.p.

Not in a way that punishes the farmer but in a way that links his or her income to the actual value for society. It would enable farmers to become more sustainable and it would improve their bond to the land and to society.
Off course it's also a great way to improve the business case for plant based meat alternatives and clean meat that would enable us to eat what we like while reducing land use for agriculture.
Conclusion
This research specifies the ignored societal costs of agriculture and especially meat. It enables us to create a level playing field for farmers that want to make agriculture more beneficial to society. I hope we are going to use it.
/end

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More from @AukeHoekstra

3 Jan
The @guardian has a new piece on the well known problems related to electric vehicles, solar and wind.

I think the focus on resource use and responsible mining is great. As long as we also remind ourselves that fossil fuels are worse.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
Remember that a car burns ~ 25 000 liters of fossil fuel over its lifetime. Do you really think that's better than 200 kg battery materials that's recyclable? And cobalt is also used for cleaning fossil fuel.
Apart from climate change the amount of ecosystem degradation, direct human suffering, conflict and corruption due to oil is much larger but that apparently generates less clicks.
doi.org/10.1111/rode.1…
Read 5 tweets
27 Dec 20
Der @BILD (large German magazin) claims that electric vehicles emit MORE particulate emission according to a new @OECD report.

This is a lie, plain and simple, if you actually read the report. Which I did because I research this at the @TUeindhoven.

I made a graph to show it.
This thread that I made a while ago contains all the details.
The report is very friendly about gasoline and diesel bc it conforms to official tests that we know are too optimistic about exhaust (e.g. from #dieselgate) but even then it just claims the problem won't go away when using EVs although there's a small but significant improvement.
Read 4 tweets
23 Dec 20
Some people want us to believe there's not enough solar energy available to cover our worldwide energy needs

They often use EROI (Energy Return On Investment) as their metric

This is a rant against these EROI people misinforming the debate, based on a rebuttal of a 2020 paper
In essence the approach of the paper is straightforward:

1) Discard water and 96% of land because it's supposedly unavailable

2) Assume solar cells on just 1/5th of the remaining 4%

3) Complain that production of solar panels takes a lot of energy
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
About 1) (available land)

Discarding 96% of land seems pretty extreme:
30% of the world's land is barren
40% of the world's land is used for meat

I think we could find more than 4% if we tried
(but we don't have to: we need less than 1%)
ourworldindata.org/land-use
Read 11 tweets
22 Dec 20
EVs DO NOT EMIT MORE PM

Recently @OECD published a report about particulate matter (PM) from road transport. Newspaper headlines blared that electric vehicles where worse than combustion vehicles. That conclusion was wrong according to the report itself.

Let me show you.
The report (published december 7) can be found here: oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/no…
It's main point is well taken: as cars get cleaner, fine particles emitted by brakes, tires and road surfaces will become more important.
The table comparing electric and combustion engines is on page 92. I took averages of low and high values to get the graph in the first tweet.
Read 15 tweets
21 Dec 20
We have another winner coming up with what he thinks is a novel idea: "Additional electricity requires coal plants to produce more energy hence electric vehicles run on coal."

Let me point out why that is wrong.
elektroauto-news.net/2020/meinung-d…
First: the German mix gets cleaner as time goes one which means electric vehicles get cleaner as time goes on and coal is phased out before the electric vehicle is scrapped. Leaving that out makes this whole thought experiment a bit nonsensical anyway.
Second: electric vehicles will probably use 'smart charging' (to time the moment of charging) within a couple of years because it saves money for driver, energy producer and grid operator.
elaad.nl/research/smart…

That means that electric vehicles will charge relatively green.
Read 12 tweets
9 Dec 20
Electrofuels or eFuels are all the rage now.
The reason: lovers of combustion engines that wake up to realise their engine is really on the way out.

But eFuels into combustion engines is NOT a realistic solution for cars. Let me explain -again- why.
autocar.co.uk/opinion/indust…
eFuels are not a new idea. So I've made these calculations 15 years ago and many times since. That some people have just woken up doesn't change fundamentals that made them a bad option for cars then and make them a bad option for cars in the future.
The most basic problem is in the basic process:
electricity -> hydrogen
hydrogen -> eFuel
eFuel -> electricity

That means that you have to produce ~5x (!) more low carbon electricity. Think about the costs, space and raw materials required!
Read 8 tweets

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