Sure, the country might be in the midst of multiple crises, but at least the “Obama-Biden war on water pressure” has come to an end.
Sure, the country might be in the midst of multiple crises, but at least the “Obama-Biden war on water pressure” has come to an end.
I never discounted the meat and dairy industries. They’re an issue as well. However…
Fucking almonds use 14% of the water in the State and 2/3 of that is exported. That’s a ridiculous use of water for a single shitty crop no matter how you cut it.
Almonds could be removed from most people’s diets entirely with very little change on their part, hell most probably wouldn’t even notice, and recovering nearly 10% of CA’s water usage alone would do more than swapping showerheads. People would definitely notice the result of beef and milk availability dropping by a similar amount. You need to start with the things people won’t have to make active changes for.
Dairy is a big issue, like you mentioned… And milk alternatives are much better than dairy when it comes to water usage. But even then, out of those alternatives, nut based options like almond milk use a lot more water in the process than something like oat milk or soy milk. If people are already reducing their dairy usage with alternatives, there should be a larger focus on the ones with larger impact.
Also, everyone always talks trees and CO2, they’re a fraction of the global cycle, algae converts 40x as much CO2 as trees do. And it does so much faster, with a higher growth rate. But everyone is always so focused on the trees they ignore easily available alternatives.
Wow, I didn’t wake up this morning thinking I’d be recruited onto team “Fuck Almonds,” but here we are.
what makes you think that?
Empirical data.
but this is from poore-nemecek 2018. it’s not good science.
do you have something else to support this claim?
imstill reading your 2012 water footprint paper, btw
Is this better science for you?
since this study relies on poore-nemecek 2018, at least in part, I’m suspicious. they also admit they didn’t gather the data themselves, and although they never mention LCAs directly, my guess is there is a similar mishandling of source data. but I’ll read it today or tomorrow
I’m curious what source you have to discredit the poore-nemecek study. The only thing I could find was farmer’s against agriculture misinformation, which seemed biased at best and also did not cite their claims well.
The LCA studies that they cite specifically give guidance that it cannot be combined with other LCA studies. some of the studies they cite are meta studies that actually acknowledge this, but the poore-nemecek paper doesn’t even bother to acknowledge it.
Also the math for material output of a cow vs an almond tree is pretty fucking different. For the almond tree it’s basically just the almonds, I guess you probably do something with the wood but I don’t know if it’s all that useful. Where as a cow damned near every part of it is usable hide can be turned into leather, every bit of meat can be eaten, their bones can be used for a whole host of things, and their shit makes for decent fertilizer, also milk. Fact of the matter is the cow is far more useful for its materials.