Most of the people I know, even if they have some issues with American capitalism, think is seems to work pretty great at "creating wealth" (these are all middle-class white folks, fwiw). They look at their relatively spacious houses, abundance of cheap consumer goods, two cars, etc and think yeah, this is all pretty great, thank you capitalism.
What I've tried to impress on them is a.) this wealth is due in no small part to exploiting workers in the global south, and b.) this wealth is also do to unsustainable exploitation of the environment.
So assume that this data is accurate - that we are using up the equivalent of 5 times the resources of earth. Current US annual GDP per capita is about $65k. Does this data mean that about 80% of this GDP or $52k is based on unsustainable exploitation of the environment? That what they attribute to the miracle of capitalism is really just ripping everything we can out of the planet? I get that GDP /= consumption, but I feel on a national level is near enough to make no difference. And even if 5X is high... say it's only 2X after making various adjustments. That still means HALF of what we attribute to capitalist wealth creation isn't about capitalism at all, just unsustainable greed (which is, of course, definitely capitalism)?
That's still from fossil fuels though... If we replaced all fossil fuels the "contribution" of meat consumption would go down with it. If only 10% comes from livestock (assuming you mean cow farts), then that's a 90% reduction in that sector's emissions without changing anything about our consumption from that sector.
The problem is that our entire food supply is intertwined with fossil fuels. Without fertilizer and pesticides, the American agricultural sector would collapse. The amount of meat production we have now is impossible without fossil fuel powered industrial processes.
It's a highly complex problem and a massive shift away from industrial agriculture is needed to leave fossil fuels behind without starving millions of people.
What? Fertilizer and pesticides aren't fossil fuels.The effect of replacing every vehicle used for transportation with electric, and replacing every Watt-hour of electricity used with green energy would be much higher than any effect cow farts, fertilizer, and pesticides have. And both of those replacements are 100% compatible with changing nothing else about the industry.
Most emissions attributed to a lot of industries are purely about electricity and transportation, not the industries themselves.
Bro. Fertilizer is made with natural gas. Natural gas either extracted through fracking or as a waste product of oil extraction.
Pesticides are a chemical product created in chemical factories that get their base chemicals from oil byproducts. There are ways to create fertilizer without fossil fuels, but not to the scale needed for industrialized farming.
So yes. There will need to be a massive shift in diet if there's a shift from fossil fuels.
Ok fine. But fossil fuel or not they are still an extremely small amount of emissions compared to electricity and transportation. I know I said fossil fuels but I basically meant electricity and transport (and maybe heating). Those are where the focus should be.
Again if you change those we would have a very significant reduction in emissions without changing our diets. Do you at least acknowledge that?
I never said we shouldn't. Just said that meat is a huge contributor to fossil fuel consumption and is basically one of the primary reasons we aren't switching. Without those byproducts, America starves.
This is also coming from someone who is by no means vegan, I just know how fucked it is that our entire food supply is so mixed up in fossil fuels.
Why would meat be a primary reason we aren't changing cars to electric and electricity to green? The meat industry can get along just fine with those changes, it would be literally no different. Eating meat doesn't force us to use gas in vehicles, eating meat doesn't force us to burn coal for electricity.
No. No it can't. That's literally what I've been saying.
And I've been telling you why it can...
Meat doesn't care if it's transported in an electric truck (or better yet, train). Meat doesn't care if the machines used the process it are powered by nuclear or solar. You don't get less meat from those changes.
You're completely ignoring fertilizer and the industrial processes required for the actual farming of meat.
Because it's nowhere near as significant.
Non-energy emissions from "agriculture, forestry, and other land use" as a whole make up 20% of total emissions. Energy (so electricity and transport) makes up 73%.
This has become totally pointless. I never disagreed that energy is the bigger greenhouse gas producer. I was just saying that because of the active and intentional effort by the oil industry to intertwine food production with fossil fuels, there would in fact need to be a massive shift in diet if we were to cut out fossil fuels entirely.
Meat as we know it today only exists as a byproduct of energy production. Can you at least agree with that?
My whole point from the start was that energy is the most important thing and matters much more than some measurement of "consumption".
Again, you haven't shown how food production is "intertwined" with a certain method of energy production. Yeah it uses some fossil fuels for non-energy purposes, but that's not stopping us from switching from fossil fuels for energy purposes. If the only fossil fuels we extract were for stuff like fertilizer and pesticides, that would be a major reduction in fossil fuels extracted, no?
Of energy, yes. Of the relatively small percentage of fossil fuels not used for energy, yes. Of fossil fuel powered energy by necessity, no.