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6,000 sheep will soon be grazing on 10,000 acres of Texas solar fields (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by wallybeavis@lemmy.world to c/upliftingnews@lemmy.world

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The largest solar grazing project in the U.S. will reduce mowing costs and emissions — and make for some happy sheep.

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[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Different vegan here. I’ll be blunt about it: There’s facts about animal agriculture, which are uncomfortable, if you’re not vegan.

Thats just it. This isn't an article about animal agriculture. Its an article about solar power first, and reduction of carbon from mowing second. Both of these are good things! What the OP vegan did was look past all of that positive to try an extra a negative from it.

Actually being ignorant about them rarely happens as a conscious decision,

Strange phrasing, but I believe you're describing "willful ignorance".

it’s more a matter of it just not making for a great smalltalk topic when you’re not vegan.

That can be true of lots of distasteful, but necessary topics necessary for life. I don't usually engage in small talk about mortuary science, sewage treatment, or surgical removal of tumors, but all of those are certainly incredibly important to life as we are biological animals ourselves.

Animal agriculture organizations will also gladly add to the confusion, by talking only about CO2 emissions, when they should be talking about CO2-equivalents. This post has too little info to really know what’s going on, but it happens that people think grazing animals are 100% climate-neutral, so it mentioning lots of grazing animals and a reduction in emissions also had me wondering, if that is actually true.

Assuming the sheep are only fed from the grass they eat on-site, how are they NOT carbon neutral?

This sounds like a "perfect is the enemy of good" situation. Saying using sheep used here to eat the grass around solar panels is not good enough encourages abandoning the idea and going back to fossil fuel based mowing. Or worse, that this is a "problem with solar" and "solar should be abandoned".

If you google the title you find this article which is the one I assume OP used.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That can be true of lots of distasteful, but necessary topics necessary for life. I don't usually engage in small talk about mortuary science, sewage treatment, or surgical removal of tumors, but all of those are certainly incredibly important to life as we are biological animals ourselves.

Yes, but we have experts for these topics, like we also do for animal agriculture. It's just that the broad public has relatively much knowledge for certain topics, like sports, whereas it's quite natural that most non-experts are relatively ignorant of less sexy topics. That's all I wanted to say with that, that I'm not berating anyone for not being an expert here.

Assuming the sheep are only fed from the grass they eat on-site, how are they NOT carbon neutral?

You're correct that they take in the same number of carbon atoms as they eventually exhale/excrete/etc.. So, in that sense, they are carbon-neutral.

But that doesn't mean they're climate-neutral, because when you combine carbon atoms with 4x hydrogen, you get methane, which for physical reasons has a significantly stronger greenhouse effect than CO2.
And ruminants (like sheep and cows) belch out lots of methane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant#Ruminants_and_climate_change

That's why even people who would immediately choke to death, if they ate a vegetable, could still help out on the climate front, if they switched from beef (and mutton) to poultry and pork.
See this graph, for example: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/food-footprints

And yeah, reading through the article, I'm happy that it's being used for solar, I'm happy that if we're already raising sheep, they're at least being used relatively efficiently, I'm even happy that the sheep are living a relatively happy life.

What I'm less happy about, is that OP vegan was pretty spot on.
They're raising additional sheep for this endeavour. And no one had the expert knowledge to ask, if the belching sheep maybe somewhat undermine the climate advantages of solar.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Assuming the sheep are only fed from the grass they eat on-site, how are they NOT carbon neutral?

You’re correct that they take in the same number of carbon atoms as they eventually exhale/excrete/etc… So, in that sense, they are carbon-neutral.

But that doesn’t mean they’re climate-neutral, because when you combine carbon atoms with 4x hydrogen, you get methane, which for physical reasons has a significantly stronger greenhouse effect than CO2. And ruminants (like sheep and cows) belch out lots of methane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant#Ruminants_and_climate_change

I wondered if you were going to go the methane angle. Like most of the points here, you're not wrong, but focusing on it negates the overall good.

That’s why even people who would immediately choke to death, if they ate a vegetable, could still help out on the climate front, if they switched from beef (and mutton) to poultry and pork. See this graph, for example: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/food-footprints

But every conversation has to be injected with this message?

And yeah, reading through the article, I’m happy that it’s being used for solar, I’m happy that if we’re already raising sheep, they’re at least being used relatively efficiently, I’m even happy that the sheep are living a relatively happy life.

What I’m less happy about, is that OP vegan was pretty spot on. They’re raising additional sheep for this endeavour. And no one had the expert knowledge to ask, if the belching sheep maybe somewhat undermine the climate advantages of solar.

Because that wasn't the choices. It was mow with fossil fuels or mow with sheep. This is what becomes so tiresome about the vegan injection. Yes things can be better. Yes this isn't perfect. No, veganism isn't the only way to achieve improved results.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Cool. So, why did you pretend to not know about methane? Was it really necessary to waste my time explaining it?

[–] Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They didn't do that. They were talking about other aspects of the situation that make this preferable to people mowing the fields. You just assumed that, since they didn't specifically discus methane emissions, they didn't know about it, or pretended not to. This is weird.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago

I wrote:

it happens that people think grazing animals are 100% climate-neutral

To which they responded:

Assuming the sheep are only fed from the grass they eat on-site, how are they NOT carbon neutral?

Then follows my lengthy explanation about methane. And then they write:

I wondered if you were going to go the methane angle.

So, they knew that climate-neutral ≠ carbon-neutral.
They knew that "Assuming the sheep are only fed from the grass they eat on-site, how are they NOT carbon neutral?" is just the wrong question to ask.

I cannot see how I should have not interpreted that as a technical question by someone who does not know about methane.
I wouldn't care, if they didn't now also tell me off for giving a technical answer.