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.

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[–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Honest question, why is cheese so high but milk isn’t?

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Because it's per kg of product. It takes about 10 kg of milk to make 1 kg of cheese. Plus a bunch of extra production steps.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Cheesemaking uses even more dairy than it being in liquid form. Varies depending on what you're looking at but it can be around a 10:1 ratio. Butter from dairy milk has an even worse conversion

    Have to make up for the lost water when turning it into a solid and other stuff you strip from the milk and that's going to be from even more dairy going into it

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    I predict goat and sheep cheese is better than cow cheese in emissions, but is it about the same 10:1 ratio for output?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Why would it be better? It is a smaller animal and also ruminants, which is the important factors. Most likely worse than cattle.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Uhh, Mostly because the graph already shows lamb and mutton to be half the impact as beef.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That's a good point. I looked it up to double check and found the article from BBC "What is the lowest-carbon protein? from 13 January 2025". According to that article cattle is extra bad compared to sheep/lamb because of the extra land use. But when it comes to cheeses and milk from cattle or sheep it equalizes, because cows produces so much more milk per animal compared to sheeps.

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