If we assume that’s true, this still leaves the emission side of things which are quite high for cattle. Cattle are some of the heaviest emitters because of how they digest. Are we at least in agreement that the production level and thus consumption level should come down?

The better approach for those cases is to let the wild grazers back into the land. Cattle and other modern farm animals don’t graze like wild life did

Cows and bison differ in all behaviors — including how they stand, move and graze. Cattle spend almost double the time grazing — 45-49 percent — in comparison to bison — who spend just over a quarter of their time doing so (26-28 percent).

[…]

The types of plants bison and cattle prefer to graze on are also remarkably different. Unlike cattle, who prefer to graze steadily on flowering herbs like clover, milkweed and sunflower, free-roaming bison cover a much larger area, grazing on different varieties of grass, such as perennial grasses, but leaving certain areas of the prairie untouched.

https://sentientmedia.org/cattle-ranching-terrible-for-biodiversity/

Moreover in the net, having cattle on those is usually a net negative to the ecosystem

Livestock farmers often claim that their grazing systems “mimic nature”. If so, the mimicry is a crude caricature. A review of evidence from over 100 studies found that when livestock are removed from the land, the abundance and diversity of almost all groups of wild animals increases

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/16/most-damaging-farm-products-organic-pasture-fed-beef-lamb

Though not all agriculture is equal. We don’t need to be eating nearly so much meat, dairy, and so on though. Per capita consumption has gone through the roof in previous decades. If we are concerned about water, we should also be also reducing our consumption. For a number of other reasons too

Copying from another thread on this, but the focus on water use over electricity and emissions of datacenters does not make sense. It’s just helping datacenter by focusing on the wrong environmental issue because they are not a major contributor to water use.

Agriculture, and animal agriculture specifically, are the super dominant water users. Even in water scarce places like the Colorado river

https://archive.is/Gpibv

Animal agriculture also pollutes ground water, and at a far higher rate and frequency. They create toxic algae blooms are from the runoff which means high nitrate levels in the local water level. Cancer rates are elevated nearby animal farms

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935126006286

Meanwhile electrical usage is delaying fossil fuel plant closure, leading to new ones, leading to backup generator use, etc. Datacenters are projected to go from 5% of electricity use to 15%. I keep seeing 5x the number of posts on the water usage than emissions. It’s letting datacenters get away with their super high emissions with so much less attention to it

If the prices, animal ethics, and environmental effects weren’t enough to push people towards plant-based diets, maybe more meat recalls will do the trick

(or I guess plant-based diets that exclude lettuce anyway)

There’s a lot of causes that go into it, but one of the things that doesn’t help is this admin stopped funding a program to sterilize flies to stop the spread of screw worm. It pretty quickly has spread since then and the US has put a ban on imports from places like Mexico. It’s also starting to show up somewhat in the US which if it spread more, would kill a lot of domestic cattle from disease making beef prices go up further

Meat production is also inherently inefficient and relies on using way more plants than eating those plants directly, so costs going up on those is multiplied much more strongly. Meat receiving insane amounts of subsidies is the only reason it was not already super high in price before

There’s also drought which is amplified from climate change that this admin has slowed action on, though the causes there are a little more diffuse than just the trump admin. The meat industry is also ironically enough a big emitter too

Probably, but at least Hellman’s plant-based mayo and some other brands (I forgot which)

Maybe we’re having different things, but the vegan mayo brands I’ve had taste exactly like what I remember animal-based mayo tasting like and my friends and family (who aren’t vegan) say it’s indistinguishable for them too

People doing that at all =/= doing it at the same level and frequency. It’d be better if people were not eating it at all of course, but it’s still an improvement at the minimum