Eating less meat won't move climate change needle

For example, The Guardian’s headline read like this: Huge reduction in meat-eating ‘essential’ to avoid climate breakdown. Their article goes on to explain that, “U.K. and U.S. citizens need to cut beef by 90% and milk by 60% while increasing beans and pulses between four and six times… Reducing meat consumption might be achieved by a mix of education, taxes, subsidies for plant-based foods and changes to school and workplace menus…”Alternatively, The Hill’s headline declared, “In order to ‘feed the world’ we must stop factory farming our animals.” And then piles on by asserting: “Worldwide, animal agriculture is responsible for 90% of methane emissions and the U.S. habit of raising animals for food contributes more than half of our carbon footprint.” Stop right there -- “raising animals for food contributes more than half of our carbon footprint?” That’s not even close to being right. The Environmental Protection Agency designates all of agriculture, collectively, as contributing only 9% of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the U.S. (versus 28% for both transportation and electricity, respectively). EPA further designates livestock as representing “almost one-third of the emissions from the agriculture economic sector.” In other words, livestock are responsible for about 3% of total GHG emissions in the U.S. -- a long ways from half.