{"id":239011,"date":"2025-10-20T16:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T16:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/239011\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T16:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T16:56:08","slug":"researchers-mapped-the-carbon-cost-of-meat-in-every-us-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/239011\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers Mapped the Carbon Cost of Meat in Every US City"},"content":{"rendered":"

The meat industry is a significant contributor to climate change, with livestock supply chains accounting<\/a> for roughly 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Per capita meat consumption in the U.S. is among the highest in the world, with Americans eating<\/a> significantly more meat than the global average.<\/p>\n

To gain a clearer picture of how meat consumption drives greenhouse gas emissions across the country, researchers calculated and mapped the \u201ccarbon hoofprint\u201d of every city in the contiguous United States. The findings, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change<\/a>, reveal the environmental impacts of the sprawling supply chains that deliver beef, pork, and chicken to Americans.<\/p>\n

Unique cities, one big impact <\/p>\n

Goldstein and his colleagues used the Food System Supply-Chain Sustainability platform\u2014or FoodS3\u2014to analyze the carbon emissions of U.S. meat supply chains. This platform, developed<\/a> by the University of Minnesota, consists of various data sources and models that allow researchers to simulate the movement of crops and livestock across the country.<\/p>\n

The analysis underscores the size of America\u2019s urban carbon hoofprint, estimating the total meat-consumption-driven carbon emissions from all cities to be 329 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year. That exceeds the entire annual carbon footprint of the United Kingdom and is on par with annual carbon emissions from U.S. fossil fuel combustion, according to the study.<\/p>\n

\"CarbonThe per capita carbon hoofprint\u2014the greenhouse gas emissions associated with meat consumption per resident\u2014varies greatly over cities throughout the U.S. \u00a9 B. P. Goldstein et al. Nat. Clim. Change 2025 (DOI: 10.1038\/s41558-025-02450-7). Used under a CC BY license <\/p>\n

The researchers mapped per capita greenhouse gas emissions from meat consumption for cities across the U.S., revealing significant variation between the carbon hoofprints of individual cities. This variation is strongly linked to how carbon-intensive meat production is in different regions of the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor instance, the GHG-intensity of beef in Las Vegas is 33 pounds of CO2 equivalent per pound of beef at retail compared to 21 pounds of CO2 equivalent per pound of beef at retail in Chicago,\u201d lead author Benjamin Goldstein, an assistant professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan, told Gizmodo in an email.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the GHGs of eating a burger in Las Vegas are 1.5 times that of eating the same burger in Chicago,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

As such, relying on national or regional average greenhouse gas intensities for meat production causes major inaccuracies in estimating city-level carbon hoofprints, according to the study. The researchers therefore recommend that urban carbon accounting use more precise, location-specific data instead.<\/p>\n

How to reduce your carbon hoofprint <\/p>\n

Policymakers have rolled out many campaigns and initiatives to help households reduce their carbon footprints, from subsidizing solar panel installations to offering tax credits<\/a> for energy-efficient upgrades. Even with these incentives, such projects can still be costly for homeowners.<\/p>\n

\"CarbonCombining a variety of individual actions has the potential to shrink the country\u2019s urban carbon hoofprint by half \u00a9 Image credit: B. P. Goldstein et al. Nat. Clim. Change 2025 (DOI: 10.1038\/s41558-025-02450-7). Used under a CC BY license <\/p>\n

Goldstein and his colleagues argue that simply reducing your meat consumption can offer similar greenhouse gas savings depending on where you live. They estimate that the largest carbon hoofprint reductions come from substituting beef for alternative (ideally plant-based) proteins and halving food waste. Combined, these actions would reduce the total hoofprint by 123 to 142 metric tons of CO2 equivalent from baseline, according to the study.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200b\u200bThe main takeaway for me is to consume less beef,\u201d Goldstein said. \u201cYou do not need to go vegetarian (all the power to you if you do), but less beef and more pork, chicken, or, heaven forbid, tofu are the best ways to curb the hoofprint.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The meat industry is a significant contributor to climate change, with livestock supply chains accounting for roughly 14.5%…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[2342,40649,192,28508,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-239011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-agriculture","9":"tag-carbon-emissions","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-meat","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}