I'm less inclined to believe a blog post than I am to believe published & cited articles. Most estimates I've found put overall GHG from diet at about 15-20% of total per capita. And sources like [1] indicate that switching to a plant-based diet cuts that number in half for western countries (the UK in this study). That's 3x your number. Granted, meat substitutes are higher on GHG than eating straight plant-based meals, so it's probably more like a reduction of 3-4% from switching to Beyond or Impossible. But as with any GHG discussion, you have to consider what's actually feasible to do (ex. changing dietary components) vs. really hard (ex. reducing energy inputs to manufacturing) and optimize for the former.
So, animals being alive is the general problem now when it comes to climate? At that, the greenhouse gas problem in livestock fed artificially large amounts of grains has been solved by introducing a small amount of seaweed to their diet. That's been kind of a non-issue for the past few years as more and more commercial feeds have seaweed included already. Just because you're not in the agriculture industry doesn't mean other people aren't doing actual good and change for the better.
From all I have seen (e.f. [1])the seaweed idea was still in small scale trials as of 2018, please provide some evidence for your claim that this is now already mainstream. That said, the focus of this is on methane as one of the GHG produced by cows. This doesn't count CO2 produced by cows or the rest of resource wastage of the meat industry, from the 7:1 grain:beef ratio to the huge industry of the barns and slaughterhouses, packaging, transport, ... All these factors are much lower with vegetables/grains or even plant based options.
And that is not to mention the moral side of animal cruelty in the industry, deforestation for that Argentinian beef, or the human suffering on the processing side.
Are they really? I recently heard in a local TV show that farmers were not feeding seaweed to cows at scale because it was more expensive, and the related uncertainties. Was the information in the show outdated? The Netherlands is globally known for its high tech agriculture, so I was surprised they still were not feeding seaweed when the benefit has been known for so long.
That is about a small scale pilot. It says nothing about grazing cattle, about scaled up asparagopsis production necessary to support global beef and dairy cattle populations, or anything.
It would be more helpful if you could find what level of impact that is having, based on the article you linked it is negligible right now.
>> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
One estimate probably includes shipping emissions for food and one doesn’t would be my guess.
Of course, plant based burgers might not reduce total final product shipping emissions but they might reduce a lot of the intermediary shipping emissions since cattle require feed.
Also, there’s that thing where we apparently ship chicken to china to be cleaned and then back sometimes? That seems bad, but I don’t really know any of the numbers. I can only assume it’s on those cargo ships which use very crudely refined fuels with little emission caps.
And the plants used for vegan meat replacements need fertilizer, transportation, processing and so on.
Emission wise, bulk and container shipping are among the most efficient means of transport on a per unit basis. And that is without taking any emission reduction plans into account.
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-014-1169-1