Environment

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Environmental and ecological discussion, particularly of things like weather and other natural phenomena (especially if they're not breaking news).

See also our Nature and Gardening community for discussion centered around things like hiking, animals in their natural habitat, and gardening (urban or rural).

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

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This land isn’t for you or me. It’s for the meat industry. | Almost half of the continental US is used for meat production. There’s something better we could do with it. (www.vox.com)

submitted 1 year ago by usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml to c/environment@beehaw.org

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[–] usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The autotldr isn't great here, focusing on one example and missing quotes about the broader picture like these:

All told, a staggering 41 percent of land in the continental US is used for meat, dairy, and egg production. Globally, it’s more than one-third of habitable land. Much of it was once forest that’s since been cut down to graze livestock and grow the corn and soy that feeds them.

not all agriculture is equally land-intensive. Meat-heavy diets require far more land than low-meat and vegetarian diets.

A 2020 study published in the journal Nature Sustainability highlights the immense environmental potential of changing how we farm and eat. Researchers found that if all high-income countries shifted to a plant-based diet from 2015 to 2050, they’d free up enough land to sequester 32 gigatons of carbon dioxide — the equivalent of removing nine years of all those countries’ fossil fuel emissions from the atmosphere.

[–] I_am_10_squirrels@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

I've been full vegetarian and part time vegan for the last three years. In the US, it feels like being vegetarian or vegan is almost a luxury. Eating just fruits and vegetables can get boring, so I use Beyond or Impossible products ; these aren't subsidized, so they cost what meat *should * cost, about $10/lb.