Impact of Livestock farming on the environment.

thomas 123

So I was watching RTE news last night and saw the news about the new EU trade deal and the impact of South American beef on Irish farmers.

As we know Animal agriculture is a massive factor in climate change, deforestation, water usage etc. The Irish beef and dairy industry is a massive export for Ireland and herd numbers are growing.

Why do entertain things like water charges and carbon taxes on a personal level when both our government and the EU happily ignore this side of the issue?

Info: https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/tackling-worlds-most-urgent-problem-meat

News link: https://www.rte.ie/news/2019/0629/1059154-beef-mercosur-european-union/

TheEngineer1

thomas 123 wrote: »

So I was watching RTE news last night and saw the news about the new EU trade deal and the impact of South American beef on Irish farmers.

As we know Animal agriculture is a massive factor in climate change, deforestation, water usage etc. The Irish beef and dairy industry is a massive export for Ireland and herd numbers are growing.

Why do entertain things like water charges and carbon taxes on a personal level when both our government and the EU happily ignore this side of the issue?

Info: https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/tackling-worlds-most-urgent-problem-meat

News link: https://www.rte.ie/news/2019/0629/1059154-beef-mercosur-european-union/

The simple answer is we can't live without food. Yes, agriculture contributes to ghg emissions but so does every living thing on the planet.

We can change to live without fossil fuels, but we will always need agriculture to sustain the growing human population.

If something does need to be done about agriculture emissions, it should be the last resort after we've done everything else possible to slow climate change

Das Reich

Everyone that complains about Brazil producing food and exporting are from totally deforested countries. It seems no one care about environment but only about the impact on the economy. Just arrived from there the other day after many years and it was the same as when I left, people that are alarming about deforestation in Brazil are actually worried about their pockets.

thomas 123

TheEngineer1 wrote: »

The simple answer is we can't live without food. Yes, agriculture contributes to ghg emissions but so does every living thing on the planet.

We can change to live without fossil fuels, but we will always need agriculture to sustain the growing human population.

If something does need to be done about agriculture emissions, it should be the last resort after we've done everything else possible to slow climate change

I think aside from GHG emmisons there is so much other “pollution” involved in say producing a steak, all the machinery used to grow its feed, the resources that go into cleaning water for it to be drank by Cows, the transport costs of moving feed etc. Of course then you have agricultural run off.

Full disclosure I’m just after eating a steak and I love my beef, it’s just a super interesting subject, especially when your talking about adding a tax to people for carbon, when in reality it will do absolutely nothing to help the environment.

Macha

TheEngineer1 wrote: »

The simple answer is we can't live without food. Yes, agriculture contributes to ghg emissions but so does every living thing on the planet.

We can change to live without fossil fuels, but we will always need agriculture to sustain the growing human population.

If something does need to be done about agriculture emissions, it should be the last resort after we've done everything else possible to slow climate change

There's a very big difference between the carbon impacts of a steak versus a plant-based meal. We can't live without food but we can live without eating such huge amounts of meat and dairy - amounts that most parts of the world do not eat.

We are so far up ****'s creek with the climate, there is no last resort. Every sector has to rapidly decarbonise and agriculture is no exception. Temperatures just hit 45.9C in France today. The climate is ****ed and will be even more ****ed if we don't start cutting emissions dramatically.

AngryHippie

Das Reich wrote: »

Everyone that complains about Brazil producing food and exporting are from totally deforested countries. It seems no one care about environment but only about the impact on the economy. Just arrived from there the other day after many years and it was the same as when I left, people that are alarming about deforestation in Brazil are actually worried about their pockets.

Have you looked at Google Earth ?