World Bank’s climate plan: Pricier red meat and dairy, cheaper chicken and veggies ( www.politico.eu )

“We have to stop destroying the planet as we feed ourselves,” a World Bank official said, as red meat and dairy drive CO2 emissions.

Cows and milk are out, chicken and broccoli are in — if the World Bank has its way, that is.

In a new paper, the international financial lender suggests repurposing the billions rich countries spend to boost CO2-rich products like red meat and dairy for more climate-friendly options like poultry, fruits and vegetables. It's one of the most cost-effective ways to save the planet from climate change, the bank argues.

The politically touchy recommendation — sure to make certain conservatives and European countries apoplectic — is one of several suggestions the World Bank offers to cut climate-harming pollution from the agricultural and food sectors, which are responsible for nearly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

…

The paper comes at a diplomatically strategic moment, as countries signed on to the Paris Agreement — the global pact calling to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — prepare to update their climate plans by late 2025.

buzz86us ,

Lately it has been reversed.. Chicken prices have been more than pork.. Even on the chicken quarters I normally get. I'm hoping once lab grown is scaled that we'll be able to get steaks cheap.

graymess ,

As a vegetarian who's been excited for lab grown meat since I'd heard of the concept a decade ago, I wouldn't hold your breath. It's looking like one of those things that sounds great on paper, but isn't viable at larger scale.

qyron ,

"red meat"

What does this expression even means nowadays?

Beef should be expensive. It should return to what it was thirty or forty back: a luxury item. Nobody needs to eat a steak every day.

But is pork still - or again? - red meat? It had been disqualified as such some time back.

Bring on cheaper vegetables, please. I'm seeing cabbage peak at €2,19. Poultry is on average €2,29, peak on the €2,69. It's borderline as expensive to make a pot of quality soup than to make a roast chicken.

Blackmist ,

Cheaper veg means either more subsidies or more slavery. Check out the greenhouses outside Almeria. You can see that place from space, and it's chock full of African workers in 40C+ heat making a pittance.

I think meat benefits from corn being pretty much automated on a giant scale. Most veg needs workers to harvest it, and a lot of it rots quickly once picked.

qyron ,

You raise a good point and ending slavery should be a top concern.

I'm in Portugal, and we've had a few cases of slavery and abused foreign workers here as well, which is shameful for us as a nation, but we have many good examples of good practices where applying technology improved production, lowered waste, turned out better product for the consumer and allowed for less use of hand labour but with higher salaries.

The starting investment is high but the subsidies you mention could/should be converted into low or zero interest, long term loans and the money recirculated towards more improvements in the sector.

Greenhouses do consume immense ammounts of fertilizers but water is better manageable under those conditions than sowing corn, which is well known for being a syphon for water and agro chemicals, and usually leaves the soils destroyed after a few years of intense farming.

Any change for a better model done will a step forward. Cattle, as it is raised today, I don't find it sustainable.

coffee_with_cream ,

Crazy how enthusiastic everyone here is about some rich guy telling us what we are allowed to eat.

He probably flies private and eats a steak every day.

veganpizza69 ,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d191c966-0cbd-4477-bbd7-2eb464b40fd7.png

While that needs to stop entirely, the 1%' carbon footprint (yes, it applies to them too, this is what everyone here is actually pointing out) sums up to about 15% of global GHG emissions at the consumption level. Huge, but they are few, they aren't "masses".

We need GHG emissions to drop at least 100% (to 0%) and then we need to remove carbon (so that's negative emissions) to get closer to the safer atmospheric CO2.

coffee_with_cream ,

Hey, I have re read your comment a few times. Important info, but unsure how it relates to my comment. Rich people don't contribute that much to C02? So they can tell me how to live my life?

Not to mention other things besides C02. Methane, garbage, water use

veganpizza69 ,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

Hey, I have re read your comment a few times. Important info, but unsure how it relates to my comment. Rich people don’t contribute that much to C02?

There are 2 necessary changes as layers in this context:

  1. There are also studies that show the GHGs for "rich people's investments". This is important because they are in the way of necessary adaptation and mitigation. We can't do anything meaningful about climate and biosphere because that would require ending profiteering from planetary destruction, it would require decommodification.

  2. Rich people's consumption is excessive for anything. Not just their carbon footprint, but their ecological footprint. But they are a small minority, especially the richest. Being a small minority means that if they lose their... wealth and become wage workers, that's going mean only a decrease of 15% GHGs. This 15% is not meaningful to avert ruining the planet's surface. We need more than 100% (zero emissions and then removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere). This means that EVERYONE has to participate, which also means that we need cooperation. And you don't have cooperation in a capitalist class society with all this "rat race" going on, you can't, we're literally all enemies (competitors) in this game.

So they can tell me how to live my life?

That's one side of it, yes. To have any meaningful action, all sides of economic activity have to change, we need decreases in production (supply), but also in demand (consumption). If only production decreases, the demand side goes nuts and there's hyperinflation and other problems. If only demand decreases (unlikely), the production side, which is owned by rich people, may decide to force and coerce an increase in demand somehow, as has been happening at least since the end of WW2.

Here, a game: https://play.half.earth/

Apeman42 ,
@Apeman42@lemmy.world avatar

Why do I feel like we're only going to get the first half?

Tattorack ,
@Tattorack@lemmy.world avatar

How about heavily carbon taxing the rich cunts, hmm?

You know, instead of another bullshit scheme to offset the responsibility of climate change to the majority of the population with the least control over it?

stirner ,
@stirner@lemmy.ml avatar

Or just fight back against private jet overusage and giants like Exxon?

cordlesslamp ,

I'll stop eating red meat and using plastic straws when there's no private jets and yachts.

veganpizza69 ,
@veganpizza69@lemmy.world avatar

I'm not sure why it's so difficult to understand. Eating lower down the trophic levels is energy efficient, and the energy level is proportional to environmental destruction, water use, and pollution. This is especially relevant if you have a large population to maintain (food security), which is the case for humans.

Eating up the world’s food web and the human trophic level | PNAS

Abstract

Trophic levels are critical for synthesizing species’ diets, depicting energy pathways, understanding food web dynamics and ecosystem functioning, and monitoring ecosystem health. Specifically, trophic levels describe the position of species in a food web, from primary producers to apex predators (range, 1–5). Small differences in trophic level can reflect large differences in diet. Although trophic levels are among the most basic information collected for animals in ecosystems, a human trophic level (HTL) has never been defined. Here, we find a global HTL of 2.21, i.e., the trophic level of anchoveta. This value has increased with time, consistent with the global trend toward diets higher in meat. National HTLs ranging between 2.04 and 2.57 reflect a broad diversity of diet, although cluster analysis of countries with similar dietary trends reveals only five major groups. We find significant links between socio-economic and environmental indicators and global dietary trends. We demonstrate that the HTL is a synthetic index to monitor human diets and provides a baseline to compare diets between countries.

This first estimate of HTL at 2.21, i.e., a trophic level similar to anchoveta and pigs, quantifies the position of humans in the food web and challenges the perception of humans as top predators (2). Humans dominate ecosystems through changes in land use, biogeochemical cycling, biodiversity, and climate (11, 13, 14). It is not sufficient to separate humans from analyses of ecosystem processes, because there are no remaining ecosystems outside of human influence (15). Thus, investigations of ecosystems, without accounting for the presence of humans, are incomplete (13). There is a variety of other ecological indicators based on trophic ecology theory or diets, e.g., the omnivory index, that may also prove useful in assessing the impact of humans in the functioning of ecosystems. However, a first estimate of an HTL gives us a basic tool that places humans as components of the ecosystem and assists in further comprehending energy pathways, the impact of human resource use, and the structure and functioning of ecosystems.

The global increase in HTL is consistent with the nutrition transition that is expected to continue for several decades (16, 17) from plant-based diets toward diets higher in meat and dairy consumption (18–22). This 0.15 increase in HTL from 1961 to 2009 is mainly due to the increased consumption of fat and meat (SI Appendix, Figs. S5–S8), as opposed to a shift toward the consumption of species with higher trophic levels. In fact, we find that the mean trophic level of terrestrial animals that are consumed by humans has only slightly increased (by 0.01 or 0.5%) due to the higher proportion of pork and poultry in the diet (SI Appendix, Fig. S11_A_), whereas that of marine animals has decreased markedly from 2.88 in 1961 to 2.69 in 2009 (SI Appendix, Fig. S11_B_). This decline in the trophic levels of marine food items in human diets is consistent with the global decline in the mean trophic level of marine fisheries catches. This decline has been related to the consequences of fishing pressures on marine predators (23), although changes in the characteristics of fisheries over time may also influence this trend (24).

The global convergence in HTL is consistent with the convergence in diet structure between countries with diverse levels of development (18, 19), and in agreement with previous studies of the FAO (17, 25). Globalization and economic development facilitate the access to diverse foodstuffs and can enhance the rate of this convergence (18, 26). For India, China, and countries in groups 1–3, HTLs are low and rising. With economic growth, these countries are gaining the ability to support the human preference for high meat diets (18, 19, 26). For countries in group 4, the nutrition transition has reached a point where health problems associated with high fat and meat diets (i.e., high HTLs) have led to changes in policy and government-run education programs that encourage these populations to shift to more plant-based diets [i.e., lower their HTL; SI Appendix, Figs. S4–S8 (18, 20, 22)]. Similarly, countries with high initial HTLs (i.e., group 5) show decreasing trends with time (Fig. 3). For Scandinavian countries, this decline is due to government policies promoting healthier diets (18, 22). For example, in 2011, Sweden consumed historically high levels of meat due to low market prices, leading the Swedish government into discussions of a Pigovian tax to reduce this consumption (27). Changes in diet in Mauritania (decreased meat and dairy consumption) and Mongolia (increased proportion of vegetables) are linked to increased urbanization and economic development and decreased nomadism.

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