Climate Change, Meat Consumption, and Anthropology: An Essay

This anthropology essay critically examines the relationship between meat consumption and climate change, arguing against the widespread belief that abandoning meat will significantly mitigate climate change. The essay challenges the notion that the livestock sector produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transport sector, citing statistical inaccuracies and illogical assumptions. It presents data from various research studies and reports, including FAO statistics, to demonstrate that livestock production in Australia has decreased its greenhouse gas emissions despite increased production. The essay further deconstructs the methodology behind comparing livestock emissions with those of the transport sector, pointing out the omission of factors such as infrastructure and manufacturing emissions in the transport sector's carbon footprint analysis. It concludes by emphasizing the need for a more nuanced understanding of the impact of meat consumption on climate change, advocating for a balanced perspective grounded in accurate data and comprehensive analysis.

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To whom it may concern
Global warming is a representative of one of the numerous facets of climate and refers to the
mean increase in the global surface temperature. Global warming is one of the causes of climate
change. As the degree of impacts of change in the climate become more alarming, meat has
turned out to be a popular target termed to be of concern (Havlík et al., 2015). Reduction of
consumption of meat has been agreed to be one of the possible ways of significantly reducing
climate change and its impacts. To this extent, I differ with the notion in two ways:
1. Abandoning meat will not save the climate as held by most of the people.
2. The information found in some printed and electronic sources of information that
livestock sector produce more effects of carbon footprint that the entire transport sector
combine is statistically incorrect and depends on numerous illogical assumptions.
While most of the people still hold to the idea that forsaking meat to the extent of eat beef once
in a week would result in significant change in the climate towards the positive side is a wrong
ideology. This can be supported by a research that was carried out in the recent past by a scientist
that even if all the animal protein in Australia were eliminated from the diet, the reduction in the
greenhouse emissions would be lowered by just about 2.7 per cent. Another research still
established that adopting a culture of a meatless day across Australia among all the citizens
would result in a reduction of greenhouse emission by just 0.5 per cent.
How then would one argue from these research statistics that abandoning meat and livestock in
their entirety would result in a significant reduction in greenhouse emission and hence carbon
footprint? As per the statistics contained in FAO, the total greenhouse emissions from the sector
of livestock that is reared in Australia has lowered by approximately 13% since the year 1961

despite the increase in production of livestock since then by about double the initial number
(Vetter et al., 2017). The effects of livestock and meat consumption on climate change if
significant would then be felt to be on the increase or more if the allegations are anything to go
by as the number of livestock increase. By the percentage reducing with an increase in the
number of livestock, this is an indication that there is no correlation if not negative correlation
between livestock rearing and hence consumption of meat and climate change.
A large part of the bad side of meat is regarding the notion that livestock has been treated as the
largest global source of greenhouse gases. One of such findings was a presentation in an analysis
carried out in 2009 as published Worldwatch Institute that is located in Washington DC declared
that about 51% of the total amount of greenhouse gases come from processing as well as rearing
livestock alongside livestock products.
Generation of electricity, transportation and industry represented the lion’s share of the
greenhouse gases emisions sources in Australia in 2016 as per the Australian Environmental
Protection Agency. All the agriculture in the nation during the time represented a mere 9% of the
cumulative production. Of the entire agriculture production, animal agriculture represented
almost half of the same volume that represented 3.9% of the entire greenhouse emisions in
Australia. This is seemingly difference from making allegations that livestock is representing to
the tune of the volume accounted for than transportation (Mottet et al., 2017).
Each of the factors which were associated with the production of meat was taken into
consideration in such an analysis which included emission from fertilizer production, changing
land from forest and direct emissions from the animals such as manure and belching from the
time of birth till death.

A look into the transportation carbon footprint, the impacts on climate change imposed by
materials and car parts manufacture, assemblage alongside maintenance of the roads and airports
besides bridges was deliberately not included. Instead, only the released by the finished
components were considered (Rojas-Downing, Nejadhashemi, Harrigan & Woznicki, 2017).
Thus the comparison as made by FAO between emissions of greenhouse gases from livestock as
well as from the transport industry was significantly distorted. The initial allegation of urgency
that production of livestock represented for the largest share of the emissions of greenhouse
gases worldwide has been extensively covered.

References
Havlík, P., Leclère, D., Valin, H., Herrero, M., Schmid, E., Soussana, J. F., ... & Obersteiner, M.
(2015). Global climate change, food supply and livestock production systems: A
bioeconomic analysis
Mottet, A., Henderson, B., Opio, C., Falcucci, A., Tempio, G., Silvestri, S., ... & Gerber, P. J.
(2017). Climate change mitigation and productivity gains in livestock supply chains:
insights from regional case studies. Regional Environmental Change, 17(1), 129-141
Rojas-Downing, M. M., Nejadhashemi, A. P., Harrigan, T., & Woznicki, S. A. (2017). Climate
change and livestock: Impacts, adaptation, and mitigation. Climate Risk Management, 16,
145-163
Vetter, S. H., Sapkota, T. B., Hillier, J., Stirling, C. M., Macdiarmid, J. I., Aleksandrowicz, L., ...
& Smith, P. (2017). Greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural food production to
supply Indian diets: Implications for climate change mitigation. Agriculture, ecosystems &
environment, 237, 234-241