In April, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has abandoned huge report examines how humans can mitigate the worst effects of climate change. The entire report runs nearly 3,000 pages, but the things you really need to know will come 50 pages in and list all the ways we can reduce emissions right now.
Switching to wind and solar energy was listed as the two most impactful changes. But a little lower, there’s something odd: “switching to a healthy balanced and sustainable diet.” If that phrase makes you feel estranged, that’s because it is. An earlier version of the report included a recommendation that people switch to a plant-based diet, according to a report from Reuters. But this advice is watered down in negotiations after lobbying from the US, Brazil and other major meat industry countries. In the executive summary, plant-based diets are classified under a single mention: footnote on page 43.
But you can’t talk about the climate impact of food without talking about meat. Food production accounts for about 26 percent global greenhouse gas emissions, and the largest part of that comes from livestock. The highest emissions come from ruminants like cattle and sheep due to the way they take in methane gas when digesting food. For every gram of protein, beef has eight times more greenhouse gas emissions than chicken and 25 times more tofu. The impact on the land is also huge. Nearly 80 percent of farmland is used for pasture or forage crops, and Open grassland for beef causes 41% of tropical deforestation annually.
However, it turns out that putting a small dent in our desire to eat beef can also have big environmental benefits. Swapping just one-fifth of our beef consumption for a mycoprotein like Quorn could dramatically slow future deforestation rates. One new research in the magazine Nature modeled what would happen if people swapped beef or other ruminant meat in their diet for mycoprotein — or continued on our current trajectory. In a world where demand for beef continues to grow, deforestation rates will more than double. But if people traded 20% of their beef for mycoprotein, the rate of deforestation by 2050 would be half that if beef consumption continued to rise as projected.
Florian Humpenöder, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and lead author of Nature paper. Other scientific studies have supported a greater reduction in meat consumption. Eat-Lancet For example, the Commission recommends that people stop eating more than 98 grams of red meat (pork, beef, or lamb) per week — a little less than a quarter pounder. The average American eats almost seven times that amount of beef alone.
For Humpenöder, a 20% reduction in beef consumption seems a more realistic goal. “Achieving a replacement rate of 20% by 2050 sounds doable to me. Or at least not too optimistic,” he said. He also offers two other scenarios where mycoproteins replace 50 and 80 percent of beef consumption by 2050. In these two scenarios, deforestation and associated emissions are even lower. Each of these changes reduces the expected rate of deforestation by about half, but the greatest benefit comes from the relatively small replacement of 20 percent of beef with mycoprotein.
