Before you switch your carnivorous diet to minimize the environmental impact of meat consumption, read this npr article and the referenced nature sustainability publication which highlight a growing externality associated with conventional agriculture. There has been a lot of talk about the grains/oilseeds/air pollution connection, but not much with actual targets. The article references a quantitative study which focuses on the life cycle of conventional corn, which includes a discussion with metrics concerning the human costs resulting from pollution, dispersion transport and disruption of biogeochemical cycling. In my opinion this should be part of a true ESG measure.
More on this to come…ties into some of the broader global themes that Parag & I will be discussing in a forthcoming article.
