Eating less meat ‘like taking 8m cars off road’

"new" study, draws half it's methodology from referencing older papers, including the problematic poore-nemecek 2018 piece.

There are an estimated 1.475 billion cars/trucks/vans in the world, as of 2023. 8 million is 0.005% of 1.475 billion.

Now, if they're going by the number of vehicles in the UK, then that number is obviously different. 41.2 million estimated vehicles in the UK. 8 million is a significantly larger percentage in that equation (19.4%). They also don't mention whether they're talking about ICE or electric cars, but I think it's safe to assume ICE. In 2023 there were 851,000 licensed zero emissions vehicles in the UK, up 57% from the prior year.

I'm a strong proponent for cutting your beef, lamb, cheese, coffee, and chocolate consumption , as they're among the worst, emissions-wise (bearing in mind this chart is by kilogram, not by calorie) by a long-shot, but we should be realistic about the things that are likely to do the most good.

We recommend four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year). These actions have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (four times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (eight times less).

^{https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541/pdf}

Its also way better for you.

Legit, I was so warned about eating disorders when I was young, I never learned to just eat light and how fasting is a thing.

Eat some nuts and enjoy some other stuff. Meat shoumd ve cuts, and it should only 2-3 times a week.

Hey how about you cut down on private jets and I keep eating my burgers

You transition out of meat to save the environment.

I transitioned out of meat because of meat recalls and all the chemicals they sneak in a cow, and was ripping the hardest farts that would clear out a room.

We are not the same.

8 metres of cars??? What is that these days, one ford f150?

"I want to help save the earth!"

"Great! Eat less meat."

" . . . . No."

I've seen very few 8 metre cars on the road...

great. but why don't we go double and also take 8m cars off the road?

I wish cloned meat was a viable thing. No animal suffering, far less pollution, sticking it to the vegan.

While I support not eating meat, I am also realistic and reducing is good enough.

But the problem is that not every meat is created the same. There is one footprint for meat feom animals that are grazing and are used in regenerative agriculture and much bigger from industrial farming of cows fed with irrigated alfalfa in desert.

If eating no meat at all is too hard, from a climate perspective eating no beef will have the biggest impact. Eating no ruminants to be specific, but hardly anyone is eating bison/sheep/goat on the regular.

How many cars off the road does a dead executive take?

What about Taylor swift...

I am all about eating less meat for various reasons but this some idiotic thesis.

A bit underwhelming when put into the context of the estimated number of cars being closer to 1.5B, but worthwhile to pursue regardless.

why are the slabs of meat in little towels like they're on a spa day

I am a fan of context. There were about 29.1 million vehicles on the road in the USA in 2023.

8 million is a lot, and part of the overall solution.

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/859950/vehicles-in-operation-by-quarter-united-states/

We could delete every car from existence ever, and it wouldn't be a drop in the bucket. Cargo ships burn the worst fuel and excrete a years worth of car emissions per day. The Nash Equilibrium to all this - the math says it's still the best way to do it. Banning single use plastics, regulating petroleum products, and nuking China will all help alleviate climate change.

Except it's not because the industry is not going to reduce its production and instead of being used it will just be thrown away at the store. They would require a significant chunk of the population to get on board with this to such a degree that it forced them to reduce production which will literally never happen there's other more realistic things we can be doing

As long as billionaires are allowed to run around and do what ever the fuck they want I will continue eating meat and not giving a fuck about recycling.

As long as billionaires have zero consequences then I will have zero sacrifices.

Fuck you all as long as you let billionaires destroy the earth while the poors take the hit.

Nah fuck all that shit.

If you want me to stop eating meat then fucking make me.

Fear porn. Keep eating meat. It’s far more nutrient rich than any of the overly processed vegan garbage. And I know because I was vegan for more than 8yrs.

Why don't we start by making private planes illegal instead? That amount of pollution to just move around a couple of rich assholes is insane.

Also, let's force the industry to repair and upgrade all their infrastructure to apply more recent carbon filters. That way, we could block a "very" big chuck of the problem at his source.

But no... Let's keep taking away things from the middle classes instead. After all, who needs meat, bugs are way cheaper, right?