No, because if you're directly eating whatever is being grown, the carbon is in a closed cycle. (Feedstock -> Your food -> You -> Air you exhale -> Plants turn it into feedstock.)
CO2 is not really a 'sustainability' problem for food production, because food production and consumption is steady state.[1] Methane is somewhat of a problem (Because it's a potent greenhouse gas that is not part of the food chain, but does eventually break down), but also eventually reaches a steady state, where you add emit it as quickly as it breaks down.
The bigger sustainability problem for food production comes from non-steady-state, non-reversible actions. Burning down a rainforest to permanently turn it into pasture[1]. Overfarming a plot of land, and exhausting all the nutrients from it.
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[1] Using fossil-fuel diesel-powered machinery to grow, harvest, and transport food, however, is not steady-state. That is a sustainability issue for food production. Fortunately, it's a very small part of overall human GHG emissions.
[2] Do enough of that, and this is irreversible - you can't ever turn that pasture back into rainforest, because you need existing rainforest to bootstrap new rainforest.
Livestock emits between 10% to 20% of global greenhouse gases (in carbon equivalent/100y-GWP) [1]
In contrast, all data centers (not just AI) currently use less than 1.5% of all electricity, making up less than 0.3% of global emissions [2]. Although recent increases in data center electricity usage is lamentable, even in the short term future, much of this can and more importantly _will_ be low-carbon energy, and the ratio should continue to improve with time.
A 1% reduction in livestock emissions is therefore about the same as a 50% reduction in data center emissions.
The cow farts, the important forests being torn down far cattle, the important forests being torn down for soy beans that feed the cattle, the inhumane conditions in which the cattle are raised. The problem you dismissed is indeed far larger than the one you're worried about.
It's a bit extreme to refer to that "climate" summit "guests" as cattle, but I won't deny it gave me a chuckle.
>the inhumane conditions in which the cattle are raised
Gosh, that's sad.
One way to go about it is to vote with your hard-earned and only buy meat from the Ethically Raised in the Swiss Alps Cows that look quite happy on the photos then.
> Gosh, that's sad. One way to go about it is to vote with your hard-earned and only buy meat from the Ethically Raised in the Swiss Alps Cows that look quite happy on the photos then.
In a discussion about genetically modified fungus as a meat substitute?
what is the context for this photo please? (that is not a calf btw?)
It certainly does not look very nice, are you relating this to the "Ethically Raised in the Swiss Alps Cows" in the comment you replied to?
In truth, they just take the calves away from the mothers after a short while, ship them out to the abbatoir. There is no benefit to them being in the same enclosure with a spiky nose ring, it seems that this must have a different purpose than the one you mentioned.
I suggest reading/listening a little bit outside of the PETA propaganda bubble. For example, here's a good short discussion on the topic with a cattle farmer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4cHn6NX4wQ
Just for some context, is the guy on the left with the white shirt a vegan who however supports ethical farming practices or did I get totally the wrong impression?
Meat was useful, back when we had not yet selectively bred fantastically better than natural crops of all kinds, back when we had not yet invented synthetic fertiliser that's now the ultimate source of 70-80% of the nitrogen in the body of someone in an industrialised nation, back when hunger was a bigger problem than obesity.
Now? Now meat's mostly a problem, not a good thing. Even if you ignore every ethical argument, regardless of if your concerns are your own health or the environment, meat's not good.
Data centres… well, I think this is a bubble, I also want it to be a bubble for various reasons, but the AI running on them today is in fact already useful.
Even if current AI wasn't at all useful (despite it having about half to one quarter of the market size as meat already), it does so at a cost orders of magnitude lower environmental harm than meat. Convincing half of the population to have "meat-free Mondays" (so, reducing consumption by 1/14th) would do more than switching off all the AI DCs, given the estimates from Greenpeace for AI https://www.greenpeace.de/publikationen/20250514-greenpeace-... and Our World In Data's estimates for livestock and manure https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
I'll be the first to cheer if we get rid of industrial agriculture but there's an awful lot of land in the world that doesn't receive enough rain for farming but which is still fine grazing land and when used for grazing still supports most of its original ecology. And there's a lot of damaged, blemished, etc produce that pigs are happy to eat but which can't be sold in a supermarket.
I'd like to see meat consumption to something like half to a quarter of its current level rather than eliminate it outright.
OK, but (1) also a lot of good land is being used to feed livestock, the biomass of livestock is quite a bit higher than the biomass of humans; and (2) even reducing it just by a quarter is several times more than the combined impact of all the AI data centres.
> Does this come from a Big AI talking points memo?
It comes from the evidence I linked you to.
Which includes, to repeat, *Greenpeace*.
Also to repeat: I think this is a bubble, I also want it to be a bubble for various reasons.
As in, I do not buy into Big AI's talking points about how this is "it", and we're on a path to radical AI-based abundance. Not yet. Plus I think it would be bad even if we were on that track at this point, so I want it to be "not it".
> ridiculous
The global meat market is around 1.5 trillion USD, give or take. That is literally the value of meat, which like all things in a free economic sector can be measured in money.
You may also notice from me saying that AI is 0.5-0.25 of that, that I'm not using "Market Cap" of AI in this comparison. Market cap != market size. This is about what revenue AI and meat gets per year.
