Even putting a modest dent in our rapacious desire for beef could have big environmental benefits. Via WIREDUK
Yet it turns out putting even a modest dent in our rapacious desire for beef could have big environmental benefits. Swapping just a fifth of our beef consumption for a mycoprotein like Quorn could dramatically slow the pace of future deforestation. Amodeled what would happen if people swapped out beef or other ruminant meat in their diet for mycoprotein—or continued on our current trajectory. In a world where demand for beef kept going up, deforestation rates would more than double.
“Part of the solution to this problem could be existing biotechnology,” says Florian Humpenöder, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and the lead author of thepaper. Other scientific studies have advocated for much bigger reductions in meat-eating. The EAT- per week—a little less than a single quarter pounder. The average American eats almost seven times that amount of beef alone.
For Humpenöder, a 20 percent reduction in beef consumption seemed like a more realistic goal. “Reaching a substitution share of 20 percent by 2050 sounds somewhat achievable to me. Or at least not super-optimistic,” he says. He also ran two other scenarios in which mycoprotein replaced 50 and 80 percent of beef consumption by 2050. In these two scenarios, deforestation and associated emissions were even lower.
The study highlights how even a relatively small reduction in beef consumption can pay big environmental dividends, says Michael Clark, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. The challenge is getting policymakers and individuals to translate this research into action. “We’re still in a place where diets are high-impact,” he says.
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