Will meat abstinence save the planet? The case for Rational Entrepreneurial Thinking

Damian Carrington, in his role as environmental editor for the Guardian, chose to report on certain scientific papers, promoting meat abstinence, for the ecology and the climate. Dire warnings triggers negativity-bias, suppressing humans unique ability for rational prospective thinking. That leads to a fight-flight response, or the willingness to act now! I propose rational Entrepreneurial Thinking (RET), being suspicious about the message, using numeracy, and disjunctive reasoning to reach rational conclusions. Using RET, it's obvious that the papers Carrington chose to comment on are contradicted by other papers. Why isn't mental health included in Carrington's comments? Science shows that abstaining from animal source food inhibits emotional adjustment and cognitive functioning. Why isn't the climate defined, and why isn't the Biogenic carbon cycle included? Why didn't Carrington chose a meta-perspective in his reporting? 5 pages.

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With a dramatic language, Damian Carrington of the Guardian, claims that abstaining from eating animal source food "will massively reduces the damage to the environment caused by food production, the most comprehensive analysis to date has concluded".

Humans are defined by our unique conscious ability to mentally elaborate scenarios and then run them forward in time (Gilbert and Wilson, 2007; Kaku, 2014; Spzunar et al. 2014). But deep in our minds, our reptilian and mammal responses, which for millions of years kept our ancestors alive, are lurking (Johnson, 2021). The consequence is something called negativity bias - even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature (e.g. unpleasant thoughts, emotions, or social interactions; harmful/traumatic events) have a greater effect on one's psychological state and processes than neutral or positive things (Baumeister et al. 2001). A dire warning or similar, triggers a realize of a hormon called cortisol, which blocks the hippocampus (there's one is each hemisphere) in a human brain, and activate its neighbors - amygdala (there are also one in each hemisphere) (Goleman, 2006). We instantly become ready for fight or flight, or to act now!

But the psychological science shows that acting now!, allowing your reptile or mammal responses to take charge, not necessarily lead to a positive outcome - rather the opposite.

For example, psychologists' Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (1937-1996) famously demonstrated that intuitive thinking inhibits rational prospective thinking (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979, 1982). One part of the explanation for that is that the information we use for prospective thinking is a mix of perceptions, what we read and experience in our close proximity, and memories. Some memories are facts, so called semantic memories, but some memories are episodic, which are constructive in a social manner (Schacter and Addis, 2007):

Since the future is not an exact repetition of the past, simulation of future episodes requires a system that can draw on the past in a manner that flexibly extracts and recombines elements of previous experiences.

This is also known as cherry picking, which is used to preserve a certain conviction, a mental fallacy called confirmation bias (Nickerson, 1998).

It's no the first time Carrington make these claims, and not the first time he use such dramatic language to claim similar things.

In 2018, Carrington wrote a similar piece, claiming that "Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth". Note the use of superlatives - biggest.

Carrington's messages, using his own language, has a massive impact on our mind, likely causing intuitive responses 'en masse' (that's french for 'on a big scale').

How should we go about to sort out facts from factoids?

In 2021, I proposed Rational entrepreneurial thinking (Österberg, 2021; In Swedish though). The model has a three factor structure: 

• Epistemic vigilance (Sperber et al. 2010).
• Numeracy (Brooks and Pui, 2010).
• Disjunctive reasoning (Stanovich, 2009).

Epistemic vigilance means being suspicious of a message, as well as the purpose of sending the message.

Numeracy, which is the foundation for rational thinking, means "the ability to understand, reason with, and to apply simple numerical concepts".

Disjunctive reasoning means taking all aspects into account before making a judgement or a decision.

Who is Damian Carrington and what is his role?

Carrington is hired by the Guardian as an environmental editor. The role of an editor is to "assign, review, edit, rewrite, and lay out all copy in a newspaper". That means that Carrington himself is the person who chose which research will be published, as well as how it will be presented. That includes the language. In his case very dramatic.

In 2018, Carrington wrote about a study conducted by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek. The study consists of a compilation of descriptive data, probably used for a prediction model. What's interesting, at the end of the abstract, they wrote the following:

Cumulatively, our findings support an approach where producers monitor their own impacts, flexibly meet environmental targets by choosing from multiple practices, and communicate their impacts to consumers.

My interpretation is that they conclude that decentralizing, as oppose to centralization, is the best way to go about developing agriculture. 

Carrington's current article is a comment on (Scarborough et al. 2023). In abstract they write:

Here we link dietary data from a sample of 55,504 vegans, vegetarians, fish-eaters and meat-eaters with food-level data on greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, eutrophication risk and potential biodiversity loss from a review of 570 life-cycle assessments covering more than 38,000 farms in 119 countries.

Despite substantial variation due to where and how food is produced, the relationship between environmental impact and animal-based food consumption is clear and should prompt the reduction of the latter.

So, a detailed analysis of the bits and pieces in Poore and Nemecek, and Scarborough et al. aside, I pay attention to the ending of each abstract. And in my opinion, it's read "leave the farmers alone", and "substantial question marks" (variation) in our study.

If true, why?

First, gone are the days when one study makes a landmark change. Today, researchers have moved forward, loading many studies into reviews and meta-analysis, looking for patterns based on those reviews or meta-analysis. That suggests, looking at another study can show whether Carrington is on the right path or not.

For example, in 2017 another modelling of the impact of animal food productions in the US (think the western world) on the climate was conducted. The result rejected claims of a huge impact, it was rather the opposite (White and Hall, 2017). That was followed by another study on dairy productions impact on the climate, showing an even smaller (insignificant) impact (Liebe, Hall, and White, 2020).

It's obvious that White and Hall (2017), and Liebe, Hall and White (2020) contradict Poore Nemecet (2018), and Scarborough et al. 2023.

Understanding the relation between food and climate, means understanding (1) food and (2) climate as separate concepts.

Climate is a process where trace gases move in a circular fashion between five spheres: the atmosphere, the biosphere, the Cryosphere, the Hydrosphere, and the Pedosphere. Central for this process is the carbon cycle.

When the Cambrian explosion occured, CO2-levels were 5000 -7000 ppm, oxygen-levels were 4-10%, and the temperature were 50 % higher compared to today. Since then, 95 % of the CO2 has moved from the atmosphere to the bedrock, the forests, and the oceans, the oxygen-level has doubled, and it has only become colder. And since the Oligocene, the cooling has increase (figure 1).

Figure 1. Variation in temperature and CO2-levels. (see numerous references in the subtext to the figure).

The human kind, and our ancestors:

• (1) are the result of changes in the climate (Österberg, 2022),
• (2) has adapted to an animal source diet (Aiello and Wheeler, 1995, Aiello, 1997; Mann, 2018; Pobiner, 2013, 2016; Ponzter et al 2016; Thompson et al. 2019).

Ede (2019) shows that abstaining from eating animal fat inhibits your cognitive functioning. Dobersek et al. (2021) shows that the decision to abstain from animal source food correlates with neuroticism, anxiety and depression. 

Food production, that is, farming, has its own carbon cycle, the Biogenic carbon cycle; Methane from cows transforms thru a chemical process called hydroxyl oxidation into CO2. A similar amount of CO2 is consumed by plants on arable and marginal lands thru a process called photo synthesis.

Why didn't Carrrington, in hos role as editor, include a meta-perspective in his writing?

Also read: Reframing the result from food questionnaires - animal source food is still good for you  

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