barely a blip on the Global Warming Radar (6% of total methane from all sources)
6% of all methane is not a blip, are you kidding? There isn’t one single easily solvable source of methane worldwide. There are many smaller sources and most of the larger sources are hard to replace.
we could easily take action to fund offsets and make the dairy industry 100% carbon neutral in the US
Offsets are a scam, and offsetting would require more subsidies or make cow’s milk more expensive. Instead of offsetting something that we can easily replace with something less polluting, we can offset the things that are much harder to replace.
nutrient density versus cost, cow’s milk is always going to win
Is it though? I live in the Netherlands, and in Europe we have really high milk subsidies. As far as I can tell we have essentially no soy milk subsidies. We have the third highest milk consumption as well, with a long history of production and plenty opportunity for efficient production ar scale.
Despite that, home brand skim milk is €0.99/L with a cheaper brand available at €0.85/L versus €0.89/L for home brand (fortified and unsweetened) soy milk.
No, I’m not kidding. Methane is a moderate contributor, and we are one of the lowest contributors per-calorie, per person, whatever. Also, it would arguably be cheaper to just go carbon neutral with current cattle (which the cattle industry intends to do within 20-30 years) than to retrofit our entire grocery economy and re-educate (force) people away from it. Finally, it’s STILL a band-aid. US’s methane impact is only 20-30% higher than pre-colonial days (due to reduced populations of naturally-occuring animals like buffalo), and a mass-culling of cattle will be “helping out” by us merely having a lower-than-natural methane impact.
Offsets are a scam
In your words “are you kidding?”. But I’m going to explain instead of being shocked. Carbon gasses are a closed system. If I buy a large area of non-arable dead land, keep cows in part of it and coerce a forest out of the other part of, I’ve created a carbon neutral arrangement. Hell, much less natural, I merely need to fund a carbon-sequestering operation to the same amount as the gas production and I’ve fully become carbon neutral. Genuinely carbon neutral. We could hypothetically go full coal if we could find a way to sequester an equal amount of emissions (but unlike meat, that would be a disgusting waste of money and the coal companies have no intention to do it. The meat industry absolutely wants to go carbon neutral, so that vegans can stop trying to make eco claims about them.
nutrient density versus cost…
subsidies
I can’t speak for the Netherlands, so maybe you have it different… In the US, dairy subsidies are generally a bit of a scam but so are most of their detractors. A large percent of farmers never see a penny (or sometimes have to pay in, see next paragraph). The price you see a gallon of milk on the shelf for is likely not going to go up much (if at all) if those subsidies go away. Executive bonuses will be cut.
The biggest scam of them I’m aware of in the US is the feed subsidy that makes up most of the complaints about dairy being subsidized. The fund is paid for in a large part by fees/taxes paid by farms on their meat/dairy production (people often miss that many farm subsidies are actually paid by farm-specific taxes), but only a few large cattle operations see any of them… and many of those large cattle operations have loopholes to themselves avoid the feed subsidy taxes.
Despite that, home brand skim milk is €0.99/L with a cheaper brand available at €0.85/L versus €0.89/L for home brand (fortified and unsweetened) soy milk.
Nice. I can’t get either for less than twice that in the US.
6% of all methane is not a blip, are you kidding? There isn’t one single easily solvable source of methane worldwide. There are many smaller sources and most of the larger sources are hard to replace.
Offsets are a scam, and offsetting would require more subsidies or make cow’s milk more expensive. Instead of offsetting something that we can easily replace with something less polluting, we can offset the things that are much harder to replace.
Is it though? I live in the Netherlands, and in Europe we have really high milk subsidies. As far as I can tell we have essentially no soy milk subsidies. We have the third highest milk consumption as well, with a long history of production and plenty opportunity for efficient production ar scale.
Despite that, home brand skim milk is €0.99/L with a cheaper brand available at €0.85/L versus €0.89/L for home brand (fortified and unsweetened) soy milk.
No, I’m not kidding. Methane is a moderate contributor, and we are one of the lowest contributors per-calorie, per person, whatever. Also, it would arguably be cheaper to just go carbon neutral with current cattle (which the cattle industry intends to do within 20-30 years) than to retrofit our entire grocery economy and re-educate (force) people away from it. Finally, it’s STILL a band-aid. US’s methane impact is only 20-30% higher than pre-colonial days (due to reduced populations of naturally-occuring animals like buffalo), and a mass-culling of cattle will be “helping out” by us merely having a lower-than-natural methane impact.
In your words “are you kidding?”. But I’m going to explain instead of being shocked. Carbon gasses are a closed system. If I buy a large area of non-arable dead land, keep cows in part of it and coerce a forest out of the other part of, I’ve created a carbon neutral arrangement. Hell, much less natural, I merely need to fund a carbon-sequestering operation to the same amount as the gas production and I’ve fully become carbon neutral. Genuinely carbon neutral. We could hypothetically go full coal if we could find a way to sequester an equal amount of emissions (but unlike meat, that would be a disgusting waste of money and the coal companies have no intention to do it. The meat industry absolutely wants to go carbon neutral, so that vegans can stop trying to make eco claims about them.
I can’t speak for the Netherlands, so maybe you have it different… In the US, dairy subsidies are generally a bit of a scam but so are most of their detractors. A large percent of farmers never see a penny (or sometimes have to pay in, see next paragraph). The price you see a gallon of milk on the shelf for is likely not going to go up much (if at all) if those subsidies go away. Executive bonuses will be cut.
The biggest scam of them I’m aware of in the US is the feed subsidy that makes up most of the complaints about dairy being subsidized. The fund is paid for in a large part by fees/taxes paid by farms on their meat/dairy production (people often miss that many farm subsidies are actually paid by farm-specific taxes), but only a few large cattle operations see any of them… and many of those large cattle operations have loopholes to themselves avoid the feed subsidy taxes.
Nice. I can’t get either for less than twice that in the US.