DEBATENATE

Topics / Climate and energy

The challenge

“Eating meat is destroying the planet”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

No. Eat the burger. The EPA's own inventory puts all of American agriculture, crops and animals together, at about a tenth of our emissions. Researchers writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences modeled removing every farm animal from the United States. Total emissions fell by under three percent, and the national diet came up short on key nutrients. Worldwide, about eighty-six percent of what livestock eat is stuff you can't, like grass and crop leftovers. A cow turns that into steak. You'll say methane is potent. It is, and it breaks down in about twelve years, unlike carbon dioxide. And Genesis nine says God gave us the animals for food. Let me ask you this. If a vegan America moves the needle less than three percent, why start with the cheeseburger? Save the planet, sure. Leave the brisket out of it.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. In America, agriculture is a modest slice of emissions. Energy and transportation dwarf it.

    The EPA's Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks attributes roughly ten percent of U.S. emissions to agriculture, far below transportation and electricity.

  2. Getting rid of every farm animal would barely dent emissions and would leave the national diet short on nutrients.

    White and Hall in PNAS in 2017 modeled removing animals from U.S. agriculture and found total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would fall by only about two point six percent, with more nutrient deficiencies in the food supply.

  3. Livestock turn grass and scraps people can't eat into dense, high-quality protein. They aren't taking food off your plate.

    Mottet and colleagues at the Food and Agriculture Organization reported in 2017 that about eighty-six percent of livestock feed worldwide is material humans cannot eat, such as grass, crop residues and byproducts.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Methane from cattle is a powerful greenhouse gas, and beef has a much bigger footprint per calorie than beans.

Nate: Pound for pound, beef has a bigger footprint than lentils. But methane breaks down in about twelve years, so a steady herd isn't stacking up warming the way carbon dioxide does. Better feed and manure handling cut it further, and nobody has to police your grill.

What he grants the other side

Beef does carry a bigger emissions footprint per calorie than beans.

The lines

Sources

  1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks (2024)
  2. White, R.R. and Hall, M.B., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nutritional and greenhouse gas impacts of removing animals from US agriculture (2017)
  3. Mottet, A. et al., Global Food Security, Livestock: On our plates or eating at our table? A new analysis of the feed/food debate (2017)
  4. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Importance of Methane (2023)
  5. The Bible, Genesis 9:3

More like this