Are Burgers Really That Bad for the Climate?

It was an arresting statistic in an otherwise not very statisticky (and highly entertaining) New Yorker profile of the founder of fake-meat pioneer Impossible Foods: “Every four pounds of beef you eat contributes to as much global warming as flying from New York to London—and the average American eats that much each month.”

That last bit is actually an understatement: per-capita beef consumption in the U.S. was 4.7 pounds per month in 2017, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Whether that is too much for the good of our hearts and other body parts is of course a matter of continuing debate, with a big new study out this week claiming that it isn’t so bad after all. Whether it’s really that bad for the climate turns out to be a matter of dispute as well, with knowledgeable people taking to Twitter soon after the New Yorker article went online last week to dispute its beef-to-air-travel comparison.