Abstract
Despite the importance of animal-based agricultural greenhouse gas emissions as drivers of climate change, the climate costs of such emissions have not yet been quantified in an integrated way. Using a macroeconomic-climate framework, we coupled global agricultural and industrial economies to estimate these costs at a regional level. To be consistent with end-of-century temperature increases of 1.5-3 °C, we found that every 10-percentage-point increase in agricultural emissions required a compensating 1.5-percentage-point reduction in industrial emissions-the 'emissions opportunity cost' of animal-based foods. Alternatively, if agricultural emissions were not offset in the industrial sector, diets high in animal protein contributed US$72 per person per year in additional climate damage-approximately half of the annual climate damage produced by the average passenger vehicle in the United States. Our analysis revealed geographic heterogeneity in climate costs by diet and food type, suggesting opportunities for mitigation policies while recognizing food insecurity risks.
Highlights
Despite the importance of animal-based agricultural greenhouse gas emissions as drivers of climate change, the climate costs of such emissions have not yet been quantified in an integrated way
Under a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, DICE-FARM projects that animal agriculture will account for 0.4 °C of the approximately 3 °C of warming at the end of the century (Fig. 2, left)
The temperature gap between the BAU scenario and a hypothetical reference scenario in which emissions from animal agriculture are immediately set to zero (‘Vegan’) opens immediately and grows modestly throughout the twenty-first century (Fig. 2, left). This difference is consistent with the 12–18% livestock-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions cited in past studies[2,23,37] and indirectly illustrates the challenge of staying under a 2 °C temperature target without global dietary change
Summary
Despite the importance of animal-based agricultural greenhouse gas emissions as drivers of climate change, the climate costs of such emissions have not yet been quantified in an integrated way. Other work has used life cycle assessment or observational analysis methods[16] to demonstrate the potential role of technological mitigation options, including changes to livestock feed, manure management, land use for sequestering soil carbon and animal genetics and health These studies suggest that while such innovations represent promising options to reduce emissions in this sector, they will probably not achieve net-zero emissions[1,5,17,18]. Past work has largely been silent on quantifying the trade-offs and costs associated with livestock-related emissions using integrated economic–climate frameworks Work in this general area focuses on the climate benefits produced by a small set of policy scenarios—namely, emissions reductions arising from changes in animal product consumption or land use resulting from researcher-specified emission taxes[11,19,20,21,22,23]. Estimating climate costs from animal agriculture emissions requires explicit representation of non-CO2 GHGs and their distinct impacts on the climate system
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