Red meat has a huge carbon footprint because cattle requires a large amount of land and water.

https://sph.tulane.edu/climate-and-food-environmental-impact-beef-consumption

Demand for steaks and burgers is the primary driver of Deforestation:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-beef-industry-fueling-amazon-rainforest-destruction-deforestation/

https://e360.yale.edu/features/marcel-gomes-interview

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-06-02/almost-a-billion-trees-felled-to-feed-appetite-for-brazilian-beef

If you don’t have a car and rarely eat red meat, you are doing GREAT 🙌🙌 🙌

Sure, you can drink tap water instead of plastic water. You can switch to Tea. You can travel by train. You can use Linux instead of Windows AI’s crap. Those are great ideas. But, don’t drive yourself crazy. If you are only an ordinary citizen, remember that perfect is the enemy of good.

  • Allero@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    True, but still

    Why is it so much worse than other plant-based foods on per-kilogram basis?

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      It’s mostly an artefact from how we measure it.

      Chocolate demand is rising, which means cocoa demand is rising. It grows best in really warm places, where there’s plenty of readily available mountainous land that’s currently covered by old growth forest. They farm cocoa very unsustainably, by illegally logging the land, growing beans for 5 to 8 years, and moving on (following the illegal loggers). We’ve decided to place the CO2 impact on the cocoa, not the wood though, probably due to lobbying.

      That land use change drives climate impact of chocolate. Milk drives the rest.