In efforts to fight climate change, there have been multiple proposals to cut back on carbon emissions, including carbon taxes, geo-engineering, or the infamous Green New Deal. A crusade to make for a healthier citizenry has seen similarly ambitious recommendations with soda bans, Medicare for All, or e-cigarette regulations. There is an issue that caught my eye that combines the environmental and health policy angles: a ban on meat. During one of the Democratic presidential debates, Kamala Harris called for reducing meat consumption. And with the recent FDA approval of selling Impossible Burgers in supermarkets, it seems like meatless meat is trending upward. With the increased demand of plant-based substitutes for meat and louder calls to do something about climate change now, meat has become a target, both on health and environmental levels. I want to take the time here to bring some skepticism to the war on meat.
Health Concerns with Meat-Eating
Most of the empirical evidence on meat-eating told us that eating red meat is bad, that it will shorten average lifespan. It was one of the reasons I decided to go vegetarian a decade ago (I have since reverted back to eating meat). It made sense at the time, although I did learn from my own eating habits while I was vegetarian that vegetarian did not automatically translate into healthy eating. That notion was upended last week with the release of five systematic reviews published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine (Zeraatkar et al., 2019) found that the effects of meat-eating on one's health are negligible. As the Left-leaning Vox explains in its coverage on the meat study, this recent study was able to overturn previous research through better science and sounder methodology. This is not confined to nutrition science. It happens in psychology frequently, and it is something that has been going on in the minimum wage debate. This is a good thing: as we gain better information and better methods, we get closer to the truth. That might be fine and dandy for an individual's health, but what about the health of the planet?
Environmental Concerns with Meat-Eating
"What about the planet?," indeed. What would happen if every human being stopped eating meat and did not use the resources (e.g., water, corn) that are used for meat production? How would that affect carbon emissions? Would that greatly stop the rise in global temperatures? After all, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report in August explaining how we should greatly decrease meat consumption to avert climate change disaster. The World Resources Institute shows how animal-based diets create more greenhouse gases (GHG) than plant-based diets (Ranganathan et al., 2016).
First is realizing that there are bigger causes of GHG emissions than meat production, such as fossil fuels and deforestation (Skeptical Science). Animal agriculture accounts for 13 percent of GHG emissions, although it is lower in developed nations. As an example, animal agriculture only accounts for 2.6 percent (White and Hall, 2017) to 2.8 percent (Pitesky et al., 2009) in the United States. Reason Magazine did a back-of-the-envelope calculation, and found that even if every citizen of the United States went vegan and stopped all livestock production, it would only reduce U.S. emissions by 3.6 percent. Based on Union of Concerned Scientists data, the United States is responsible for 16 percent of global emissions, which means that ceasing U.S. meat consumption would only reduce global carbon emissions by 0.58 percent. One could counter by saying that every bit helps, but even if the world went vegetarian, it would only reduce GHGs by 4 percent (Grabs, 2015). Reducing meat consumption might do something to mitigate anthropogenic global warming, but we should stop pretending that veganism or vegetarianism can be the silver bullet to save the planet.
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