U.N. report obscures meat’s true climate impact

By measuring only direct emissions, the U.N. unintentionally makes a massive polluter look much more innocent than it is.

See, they’re hiding from climate change. Source: Getty

A United Nations climate report made headlines last week with a stark warning: the planet is on track to heat by 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius within the century.

The Emissions Gap Report says world leaders have continuously failed to fulfill their climate pledges for nearly a decade, thereby putting ecosystems and the economy at risk of irreversible damage. This lack of progress is by far the most critical conclusion of the U.N.’s 100-page report—especially considering that, in one month, world leaders will make a new set of climate pledges at the U.N. annual climate summit in Azerbaijan.

But during my own read-through, I also noticed something about the report that felt worthwhile to highlight: it seems to seriously undercount the climate impact of livestock, one of the most polluting parts of the global economy. 

So I reached out to one of the lead authors on the report, as well as some of my most trusted sources on animal agriculture researchers, to find out why.

Greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 by sector. Source: U.N. Emissions Gap Report, data from Source: Crippa et al. (2024); Friedlingstein et al. (2023).

Solving a meat mystery

In a graphic at the beginning of the report, the U.N. estimates that in 2023, livestock was responsible for only 6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. 

The number struck me as strange. Because in my previous reporting on animal agriculture, I’ve found that livestock—particularly cattle—are responsible for anywhere from 11 to 20 percent of global emissions, according to a range of peer-reviewed studies.

Seeing this, I immediately considered that industry influence could be to blame. Because like the fossil fuel industry, the animal agriculture industry has a history of pressuring the scientific community to downplay its role in the climate crisis. The industry has recently censored U.N. reports on livestock emissions; pressured the IPCC to remove recommendations to shift to “plant-based diets” from its most recent report; and sent lobbyists to COP28 to convince policymakers that meat is beneficial for the environment.

What I found, however, was more an issue of scientific choice. According to Taryn Fransen, global climate program director at the World Resources Institute and one of the report’s lead authors, the U.N. report only measures direct, or Scope 1, emissions. This includes methane from cow burps, manure, and fertilizer. It doesn’t include indirect, or Scope 2 or 3 emissions for livestock: things like deforestation, growing feed, pasture management, and slaughterhouse waste.

Fransen said they counted direct emissions because it’s more straightforward than counting every polluting part of the meat industry, what scientists call “full lifecycle emissions.” That full lifecycle reveals an industry’s true climate impact, but it can lead to complications at a global level. “You will end up double counting things because the full lifecycle emissions are also going to include emissions that we're counting under transport, or we're counting under land use,” said Fransen. She noted that many other scientific organizations track only direct emissions, including the IPCC, the European Commission’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), the Global Carbon Project, and more.

But the straightforward scientific explanation can make things more confusing for the general public. Only counting direct emissions “can miss a large part of the equation,” said Matthew Hayek, assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University. For example, expanding cattle pasture land is responsible for 41 percent of tropical deforestation; but deforestation emissions are in a separate category under land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).

“The undercounting problem is especially significant for livestock,” Hayek said. But other sectors are affected, too. Indeed, by relying solely on direct emissions to measure impact, the U.N. and other scientific agencies may be unintentionally obscuring the actual climate impact of all industries. While relying on direct emissions alone may be easier to accomplish, and genuinely useful in the scientific community, it’s a poor communication tool for the broader public. It results in massive polluters looking much more innocent than they actually are. 

“I think the range of relative percentages presented does start to confuse the public,” said Jennifer Jacquet, a professor of environmental science at the University of Miami. And counting some emissions sources, while leaving out others, is not truly objective—especially when an industry funds influencers, academics, and PR groups to mislead the public about its true climate impact. “These are political choices,” she said.

“These are political choices”

How much the livestock sector emits is ultimately less powerful than how much it needs to stop emitting to preserve a livable climate. That number is much higher—the industry needs to cut its pollution by 25 percent in the next six years. There are a variety of ways to achieve that reduction, including: helping cows burp less through special feed or selective breeding; cutting down less trees for cropland or pastures; making livestock more productive; and replacing meat with lower-carbon meat alternatives. 

But the main way to cut livestock emissions is for wealthy countries to produce and consume less meat and dairy. At an individual level, switching from beef and lamb to less-polluting animal products—like chicken, pork, and eggs—helps make a difference. 

Fransen acknowledged that a 25 percent reduction is a huge leap. But by publishing these gaps before COP29, she hopes that world leaders will commit to the specific emission reductions in time to prevent a climate catastrophe.

“The climate has limits, and we're running up against them,” she said. “And the longer we wait to take serious action, the steeper and more implausible these numbers are going to look.”

More takeaways from the U.N.’s report:

• There’s good news: renewable energy is helping the power sector emit less, but a lot more is needed. Solar and wind energy need to increase across the world from 210 to 500 percent by 2030.

• On the other hand, there’s bad news for fossil fuels. Coal power needs to decrease by 64 to 91 percent within the next six years. Even methane gas power—which the industry positions as a green solution—needs to decrease by 27 to 78 percent.

• Deforestation needs to decrease by 65 percent, but healthy forests could reduce emissions by as much as 20 percent by 2030 and 2035.

• Wealthy countries need to do the most work. Members of the G20, which includes the wealthiest nations in the world, were responsible for an outsized 77 percent of emissions. The U.S. was the largest emitter per capita last year, and the second-largest total emitter after China.

• Reaching net zero will cost an additional $900 billion to $1.2 trillion per year in global investment. That’s still less than the climate crisis, which experts estimate will cost a staggering $38 trillion per year by 2050.

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Further reading:

• The U.N.’s Verdict on Climate Progress Over the Past Year: There Was None. The New York Times, October 2024.

  “Theoretically, it’s still possible to stay below 1.5 degrees, but it’s not really feasible anymore,” said Christoph Bertram, an associate research professor at the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability.

• The next big climate deadline is for meat and dairy. Vox, March 2024.

  But such a peak, let alone a swift reduction in the amount of meat we eat, is nowhere in sight. Rising global meat consumption, along with vanishingly little government policy designed to change diets or cut pollution from factory farms, means we’re all but guaranteed to miss even the least ambitious targets suggested by climate and agricultural scientists in the Harvard survey.

• ‘The anti-livestock people are a pest’: how UN food body played down role of farming in climate change. The Guardian, October 2023.

  Steinfeld recalled being told by a senior official in the director general’s office: “Even if livestock contributes 18% to climate change, the FAO shall not say that. It’s not in the interest of the FAO to highlight environmental impacts.”

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