The argument that you mention used by the critics, that plant-based eating is justified on ethical and environmental grounds (aside from whether or not it’s healthy), is actually no defence.
Yes, there’s bad livestock farming - we shouldn’t be feeding grains to cows or pigs, or factory-farming chickens. But ‘industrial’, intensive, crop farming destroys soils, kills vast numbers of animals (birds, worms, insects), devastates ecosystems and releases carbon from the soil as CO2 into the atmosphere as a result of ground disturbance (from ploughing, harvesting).
Methane from ruminants is part of the biogenic gas cycle; breaking down in the atmosphere back into the CO2 that created it. Commentators and the main stream media rarely, if ever, explain the full cycle, focusing only on one part, the emissions. Doing so is grossly misleading.
This is all outside the scope of your post. Except that the bias against livestock farming and the general lack of scrutiny of crop farming matches the meat vs plants diet prejudice. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence.
The argument that you mention used by the critics, that plant-based eating is justified on ethical and environmental grounds (aside from whether or not it’s healthy), is actually no defence.
Yes, there’s bad livestock farming - we shouldn’t be feeding grains to cows or pigs, or factory-farming chickens. But ‘industrial’, intensive, crop farming destroys soils, kills vast numbers of animals (birds, worms, insects), devastates ecosystems and releases carbon from the soil as CO2 into the atmosphere as a result of ground disturbance (from ploughing, harvesting).
Methane from ruminants is part of the biogenic gas cycle; breaking down in the atmosphere back into the CO2 that created it. Commentators and the main stream media rarely, if ever, explain the full cycle, focusing only on one part, the emissions. Doing so is grossly misleading.
This is all outside the scope of your post. Except that the bias against livestock farming and the general lack of scrutiny of crop farming matches the meat vs plants diet prejudice. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence.