Eating less Meat won’t save the Planet. Here’s Why

What I’ve Learned
1.83M subscribers

Big thanks to Dr. Frank Mitloehner for chatting with me. You can find him on twitter under @GHGGuru

Navigation:

00:00 – Why are people saying Cows are bad for the planet?

1:14 – How much would Americans going plant based actually reduce GHG emissions?

2:56 – Do cows really take all the water?

4:53 – The real problem with water

7:01 – Do Cows really take all our Food?

7:53 – Livestock make the whole food system more efficient.

10:17 – Do Cows really take all our Land?

12:30 – You can’t just grow whatever wherever.

13:54 – Why Global numbers are Misleading

15:45 – United States cattle are super efficient

16:48 – What about methane?

20:52 – Something more worth talking about than meat

✍️ “DEBUNK” RESPONSE 🥩 https://www.patreon.com/posts/51285771 📑 (PDF) – Here is my reply to a popular plant-based youtuber’s attempt at “debunking” this video.

✍️Actually, there’s been a lot of youtubers attempting to “debunk” this video. Here is my reply to another one: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50919460  I’ll get to the others as I have time.

🌎The discussion with Dr. Mitloehner was immensely helpful but for those of you worried that I’m relying on one source: plenty of research was done before and after our conversation. I double checked all of his points and they are all backed up by research that is not his own. (All sources are in the below link.)

🐄This video is talking about conventional beef, not grass fed beef.

🥩There’s actually still a ton more to talk about that  couldn’t fit in this video, how many of you guys would like to see another video expanding on this topic?

LINK TO A PDF WITH SOURCES: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50493370

Also, check out the documentary “Sacred Cow” by Diana Rogers, narrated by Nick Offerman – well made, informative and engaging. The graphic design for the animation at 17:26 was based on an infographic from the Sacred Cow website – https://www.sacredcow.info/helpful-resources

▼Newsletter signup: https://mailchi.mp/a58275fd1906/josepheverettwil

▲Patreon: www.patreon/com/WILearned

▲Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeverettlearned

▲IG: www.instagram.com/jeverett.whativelearned/

▲FB: https://www.facebook.com/What-Ive-Learned-Joseph-Everett-102321408680549

HT/Paul Homewood

Get notified when a new post is published.
Subscribe today!
4.9 10 votes
Article Rating
186 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Bruce Cobb
July 17, 2021 7:54 am

Here’s an idea: How about everybody shut up about how much healthier/better their diet is? That includes meat-eaters. Can it already.

John Hultquist
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
July 17, 2021 12:11 pm

I don’t like canned meat!

Tom in Florida
Reply to  John Hultquist
July 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Thinly sliced SPAM, fried until crispy and slightly burned on the edges tastes just like bacon without all the grease.

rah
Reply to  Tom in Florida
July 18, 2021 4:06 am

SPAM (Shoulder Pork Ham) was concocted by a French Chef for Hormel as an efficient way to use the meat in pork shoulder). It has saved countless lives from starvation. We sent 1,000s of tons of the stuff to Russia during WW II. We sent 1000’s of tons more to the various countries liberated during that war and then to the Germans afterward. It helped keep Berliners alive during the airlift.

In the US military during WWII it was a staple in many places. It went under the nomenclature, “luncheon meat, canned”. An Essex class aircraft carrier would typically stow away 4 tons of the stuff before deployment.

I keep a couple cans of the low sodium stuff in the larder in my truck. Very satisfying when cut in the appropriate size and eaten on a cracker with a little Buffalo sauce or perhaps Arby’s Horsey sauce on it.

At home we sometimes fry it up or cube it and bake it into mac & cheese.

Reply to  rah
July 18, 2021 10:59 am

Field geologist (the only real kind) – northern Canada (also Nigeria, Tanzania, Benin,Togo… but no spam there). Yeah, fried spam was what we used when the bacon was gone. Re-supplied every 2 weeks by float plane, longer if an active forest fire season. Tasted pretty good.

Dave Fair
Reply to  John Hultquist
July 17, 2021 3:26 pm

I do.

July 17, 2021 8:35 am

What is often left out by the alarmists is the fact that there were an estimated 60 million bison in north America at the start of the 19th century

Olen
July 17, 2021 8:44 am

How objectionably convenient that a small well connected group presumes to tell us what to eat, drive, say, live in and own in our daily lives and going about our own business.

Social mores and codes along with business are established by the society, not by politicians, kings and potentates, and investment busybodies.

Joe
July 17, 2021 11:15 am

Just an observation. Watching the video I did not notice any information about the pet food industry nor the corn to ethanol impact on the planet.

David Blenkinsop
July 17, 2021 11:26 am

Great video, very informative.

David Blenkinsop
Reply to  David Blenkinsop
July 17, 2021 11:33 am

One of the reasons why I think that debunking the vegan climate alarmist message is important (besides the fact that they are actually wrong), is that the world saving fervor of their message is clearly aimed at government policy, along with all the other bad alarmist prescriptions, of course!

That is to say, on the level of forcing a reduction in meat use, the activists will do *that* if they can, or even *ban* meat use ultimately. What concerned do-gooder doesn’t want to ban whatever is said to be wrecking the world?

Dave Fair
Reply to  David Blenkinsop
July 17, 2021 3:27 pm

People used to dismiss them as busybodies.

michael hart
July 17, 2021 12:23 pm

Wow, so food goes off if people don’t eat it?
Before today’s more efficient agrochemical/food industry, the food use to go off before it even got to the consumer. In the past people ate more unsafe food and consequently suffered more food poisoning and related GI cancers.

Excellent video.
Unfortunately, this has all been known for a long time. The saddest thing is that so much of the population is being lied to about such things as the beef industry. Most people probably still believe all the “green” BS that is thrown at us.

Reply to  michael hart
July 18, 2021 11:43 am

Working in remote fields geology) we had occasion to pick maggots out of bacon and beef hung in a screen box from a tree that an occasional fly or two got into.

The bacon we also washed with a bit of vinegar. Groups of larvae on the beef could be scraped off. The outer surface of the beef was pretty hard and dry. Cutting steaks from the beef, you trimmed the dry border, salted it and put it in a jar with small perforations in the lid to be used later in a stew.

On occasion at home these days, if the bacon slab gets a bit of mold I wash this off with vinegar (before my wife sees it and throws it out).

Wasted food could be reduced considerably with a little foreplanning. Cook up vegetables before they go off to make stew, soup, spaghetti sauce shep pie… Fruit, pies….. Buy in sensible amounts.

H.R.
July 17, 2021 1:18 pm

Why are vegans riding the Climate Change® gravy train? I thought they were against gravy.

Reply to  H.R.
July 17, 2021 5:49 pm

Riders are ready for orders.

09D5A5B7-1FD7-4B7A-802D-073DAB4C6C73.jpeg
Graeme McElligott
July 17, 2021 3:03 pm

Concerns about the environmental impacts of cattle farming shouldn’t be confused with the ethical nature of “veganism”, which is really more about how we treat others. We are already vegan in how we treat other people, the issue is to do with how much we extend that kind of moral concern to other animals. That has much broader scope than simply rejecting meat in your diet.

That said, there are many problems relating to eating meat and dairy and good reasons why we should do a lot less of it, given the environmental damage and poor animal welfare caused by modern production methods.

Gregg Eshelman
July 17, 2021 8:59 pm

The anti-science craziness of the vegans just won’t end. Humans are omnivores.

Van Doren
Reply to  Gregg Eshelman
July 18, 2021 12:49 am

Doesn’t mean it’s the healthiest way to eat.

Reply to  Van Doren
July 18, 2021 12:47 pm

Mad cow disease came about through feeding cows sheep entrails and other slaughter house waste.

Why would you think that there is a healthier way than what you evolved to eat. You are a vegan but a half dozen nutrients critical to brain, heart, muscle fcn and red cell production need to be added to your diet.

Before such nutrient knowledge, natural vegetarians lived shorter lives than generally healthy meat, dairy, egg and fish eaters.To me, you have simply removed the bulk mass of these foods, added more vetables and substituted prime nutrients of these ‘forbidden’ foods into what has become an ersatz diet.

Moreover, you have probably bought into the massively over-wriiten agendized literature on tofu (diet/supplement multibillion industry), another manufactured principal ingredient in the vegetarian diet. This one has a literature on the two tofu ingredients that mimic estrogen. Studies show that many men that eat a lot of tofu and/or, apparently, almond milk, a ‘disorder’ known as gynecomastia (formation of man boobs) results. The pooh pooh post normal agendized over-writes “debunk” these ‘assertions’ to your satisfaction. I’m sure you have ready links to re-educate me.

“Beam me up, Scotty”
” No thanks”

ozspeaksup
July 18, 2021 2:55 am

pity it wasnt GRASSfed NON CAFO beef figures
annoying the same old pics of steamclouds from industry made to look dark n “evil” too

TomR
July 18, 2021 2:59 am

Almost everybody is doing wrong this one: mixing carbs and fat in the same high-calorie meal. This triggers inflammation via Randle Cycle.

In Randle Cycle, in presence of high amount of energy substrates in cells:

  • lots of fat block intake of carbs
  • lots of carbs block intake of fats

thus leading to negative health effects

The general idea to avoid it is to:

  • eat high calorie meal with fats and protein (eg. meat as a meal) but without carbs.
  • eath high calorie – high carb, no-fat or very low fat meal (eg. potatoes)
  • keep multi-hour time distance between high-fat and high-carb meals (preferably next day)
  • eat very low calorie meals (temporarily – not sustainable for a long term), only low calorie eating can have mixed carbs and fats

Randle cycle means humans are hunter-gatherers, but not at the same time, at a given time we are either hunters (low carb, high fat meal) or gatherers (high carb, low fat eating).

Reply to  TomR
July 18, 2021 11:22 am

Hunter-gatherer “diet” based on Randle cycle needs contextual relationship with a circadian transcrip-tome. Hunter-gatherers, if like other humans, naturally experience rhythmic phase changes in up to 237 gene transcripts (in 6.4% of our transcrip-tome). Of this portion of the transcrip-tome up to 228 genes’ expression can be de-synchronized with circadian rhythms.

Randle cycle is integrated with liver dynamics; which (liver) normally has rhythmic gene expression patterns occurring throughout the day that themselves occur at generally even intervals. Hunter-gatherers sleep & wake pattern is unlike most of our contemporary circadian experience; our modern sleep/wake pattern negates the liver’s normal (hunter-gatherer) fairly even phased genetic expression and now our (moderns) liver genetic expression pattern becomes just dual (not multi) phasic.

This means that unlike hunter-gatherers the majority of our phasic liver genes’ are not evenly cyclic, but rather up-regulated (at peak operating capability) either at light of day or when dark begins. This in turn has a knock-on effect of liver genes that themselves are not classically (hunter-gatherer) rhythmically expressing types of liver genes; namely, in 2 paradigms: some non-rhythmic genes alter their normal levels of expression (up-/down- regulate from their individual standard of base-line activity), and also some normally non-rhythmic liver genes become rhythmic actors.

Robert Maginnis
July 18, 2021 3:42 am

Seventy percent of US grain is feed to animals.

Sorry but
July 18, 2021 5:16 am

My daughter ,aged 47,has been a vegan for 29 years, but there are personality issues which predated her decision and cause it to persist

Jake J
July 18, 2021 8:04 pm

There seems to be a non-trivial non-American audience here, so let me horrify you.

I am an American with a whole lot of ammo and 16 guns, including the dreaded AR-15. And a 1,000 lb gun safe, framed in and bolted to the floor. It’s a combo of collecting and target shooting, with personal safety an added benefit in case I need to fight off a horde of starving vegans intent on stealing our Spam and toilet paper.

Come ‘n get it, Portland! I need the practice. LOL

sadbutmadlad
July 19, 2021 12:12 am

The other problem with veganism is that it requires food from far flung corners of the Earth. If vegans kept to just local plant food they would die pretty quickly. They cheat and harm the environment by having fancy foods with the extra vitamins, minerals, etc from distant countries.

Steve Safigan
July 19, 2021 12:42 pm

I wish I could send this to my vegan son and daughter-in-law. They’ve given up meat purely for environmental reasons. Unfortunately this one video can’t undo everything they’ve “learned” by watching videos affirming their position almost daily. And if I want to have a good relationship with them, I have to refrain from giving them anything that would refute their belief. 100 videos in support of a position beats 1 video against, right?

Steve Safigan
July 19, 2021 12:51 pm

I’d always wondered about the water usage of cattle. I reasoned, “Don’t they just drink the water from the mud pond and then pee it out?” As it turns out, yes. Yes they do.

July 20, 2021 4:44 am

More about meat and climate change

https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/06/19/vegandiet/