noammohr’s Recent Comments

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  Requested references

  I'm not sure why you called my post a rant, or which references you want, but here are a few. On transportation being 13%, see IPCC (http://www.mnp.nl/ipcc/pages_media/FAR4docs/final%20pdfs% ...). On aerosols, Hansen (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/18/9875) or UCS's review of that paper (http://www.ucsusa.org/ssi/archive/ucs-review-for-alternat ...). Note that your pie charts are not useful for looking at the effect of livestock, because that industry's emissions are spread out among several different pie slices. The UN report put them together and pegged their effect at 18% of total global emissions, which is higher than other industries.On Veganism: All or nothing? posted 2 years, 1 month ago 30 Responses

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  Riddled with errors

  This article is riddled with inaccuracies. For example:

  • "According to this chart, livestock activity is behind power stations and about tied with transportation and industrial processes from a global perspective." Charts like those are a shell game, because they divide the effect of livestock into a number of categories, including "agricultural by-products", "land use and biomass burning", "waste disposal and treatment", "power stations", and "transportation". Livestock are a major contributor in all of these categories. The UN report teased out all of the effects and found that livestock are nearly 1/5 of the entire global warming problem.

  • "It says livestock activity contributes an "estimated" 18 percent, which is bigger than transport, but not by much." In fact, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, transportation accounts for 13% of global warming, which is a lot lower.

  • Note that none of these numbers take into account the effect of aerosols, which mask the warming of CO2 sources but not of methane or nitrous oxide sources. That means methane and nitrous oxide sources are causing more warming than these numbers show -- and livestock are the #1 source of both.

  • Saying power plants emit more than the livestock industry makes little sense. Part of power plant emissions are a result of fueling the livestock industry, which is very energy intensive. If you compare livestock to another industry -- like the chemical industry or the mining industy -- livestock produces more greenhouse gas.

  Even more annoying to me are the blatantly anti-environmental arguments made, for example:
  • Claiming that since America is a small part of the world, so going veg (or anything else we do as individuals, for that matter) is not going to make a significant dent. I've been hearing these arguments against the US taking action on global warming for years... from the oil industry.

  • You say that the livestock industry -- and the destruction of the Amazon -- employs a lot of poor people. Every environmentally harmful industry employs people, both poor and rich. This is not an excuse the continue global warming, which will have devastating effects on the poor, any more than it is a reason to keep clearcutting the rainforest.

  • You noted that meat consumption was on track to double by 2050 and that conversions to veganism weren't keeping pace, but instead of logically concluding that we need to start urgently pushing reductions in meat consumption, you throw up your hands and say going vegan won't make a dent. Of course it will, as much as anything an individual can do. The underlining outlook, that you're only one person and nothing you do makes a difference in this global problem, is insidious.

  The UN report doesn't talk about veganism because they think it's a hard sell. Our job should be to educate the public and make it more mainstream, so that it is no longer off the table, just as we have for renewable energy and organic farming. For the average person, short of giving up having children, reducing and ideally eliminating animal products from their plate is probably the most powerful thing they can do to reduce their carbon footprint, and probably the most convenient too. But most people don't know this. We need to spread the word. On Veganism: All or nothing? posted 2 years, 1 month ago 30 Responses