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Rising Temperatures Are Threatening Italy’s Bank Reserves—Because They’re Made of Parmesan Cheese
(www.popularmechanics.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2026
391 points (99.2% liked)
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so what you're saying is that it's the population density that's unsustainable? not the milk itself?
also do you have a link that it's unsustainable? because i'm not so sure about that. the world can currently produce about 2-3x the amount of food that we actually need, i don't see that declining by more than 60% any time soon.
unsustainable for the environment, here's the source that you wanted. milk's greenhouse gas emissions are very high compared to plant based alternatives, alongside land use and water consumption.
Milk has higher environmental impact than plant based milk ≠ milk is unsustainable.
Milk is in fact a very nutritious aliment and many parts of the world depend on it as base for nutrition.
sustainable means nothing if something that is killing the planet counts as sustainable
Is milk killing the planet? That's news to me.
The fact that there are more sustainable alternatives to milk is not evidence that milk is unsustainable.
it's one of the things that's killing the planet
i wouldn't call it sustainable if the end result is an unlivable planet, if nothing is done about the emissions
You could argue vegetable milk is also contributing to killing the planet. Doing that is clearly pointless.
Is the pollution produced by the production of milk significant, in such a way that reducing it would lead to measurable changes?
well it's killing the planet much less and we need some kind of nutrition to live
is the pollution produced by private jets significant, in such a way that reducing it would lead to measurable changes?
climate change is due to a combination of a lot of things. we need to tackle a lot of different problems. none of them is killing the planet on their own, but we need to look at the big picture
Work on improving the efficiency of the Haber-Bosch process used in the production of nitrogen just 1%.
That will probably have a stronger impact than removing all milk production and private jets from the planet.
There are places in which it is more efficient to optimize since that optimization will lead to a greater benefit.
Is reducing the production of milk potentially one of these important optimizations?
is this realistic? we can reduce dairy consumption right now
"will", "probably". we can reduce emissions right now by switching to plant based products, no need to wait for alternatives pop up when climate change is much worse
it's a combination of things, reduction of consumption and working on reducing the emissions from production of dairy, since there's some people that will struggle with switching to plant based alternatives due to intolerances, allergies and stuff
most people can reduce or stop consumption of animal based products and there's no real excuse not to at least work on making some improvements
Yes, industrial processes are optimized all the time. Sometimes investment is needed: there are nitrogen production factories which were built later and are more efficient than older ones.
Yes and no, you can stop consuming dairy on your own; worldwide reduction is quite a different thing to achieve. Not impossible, but definitely not going to happen right now. Milk production has indeed been increasing steadily throughout the years regardless of the higher share of people who became vegan around the world.
I like to eat cheese.
Thus I ask, if I make the effort to not eat cheese and to have other people not eat dairy and this leads to no milk production in the next 15-20 years. Does that actually lead to any measurable difference?
Or maybe I'd better focus on doing other things?
how long will it take to be at plant milk's level of emissions?
yeah but if people think their impact doesn't matter nothing will change. same goes for voting and stuff, people just have to do it. i think the milk production increase depends on the country, i know here a huge chunk of people have switched to oat barista milk for coffee, and i've heard we're the biggest coffee drinkers in the world.
if cheese is the only dairy product you eat, it's already great progress. some people might switch out the cheese, some people might switch out the milk, yogurts etc.
yes, reduced dairy consumption is good unless we get the emissions of dairy production in control. if we somehow manage to reduce the emissions, obviously switching back is fine from an environmental perspective at least. though if we switched to plant based alternatives as the whole of humankind, people would probably be reluctant to switch back because the meat and dairy industry is pretty fucked up. that's kind off topic though so it's probably safe to leave it at that
you can focus on whatever you want. i'm just saying that making even small changes in a variety of things really does add up, and it makes sense to at least try to work towards more plant based food. u can start with maybe eating a plant based cold cut on your bread once a week. switch your fresh cheese spread with something plant based (some of these are surprisingly good!), switch to oat barista milk for coffee (me and a huge amount of people prefer the taste over dairy milk). stuff like that
if you combine this with taking the train sometimes where it makes sense, shopping at the thrift store, buying used stuff, it does make an impact. one of those on its own obviously doesn't really change much, but if we all did a bunch of small changes like this, we would be in a better situation. it won't solve the problem, but it would slow it down so we can work on things like your industrial optimization.
It possibly never have such low emissions as plant based milk production. Regardless, plant production needs nitrogen.
Milk is mostly important in poor countries, since it is a nutritious cheap food.
No data here, but I have the impression that coffee production has a greater impact than milk production.
I barely eat any cheese, but I fail to understand how that matters.
No doubts it's good. I'm asking how good it is and whether it even matters.
Policy changes matter way more than what individuals can do on their own, even if it was the case that people were to get organized and make such changes on mass.
Agreed, but rather than criticizing people for not taking trains it would be better to find a way to make it easier for people to take a train. If you have free public transport which takes you from your house to wherever you need to go you're going to take the train. If the railway is one hour away and the train ride is two hours can you really tell someone not to use their car? I don't have a car because I don't need one, but plenty people do.
The changes you advise on doing are minor nuisances that rich people in rich countries can afford to make. The effect of such changes is minor. I see the good intentions, but this is hypocritical since those same people are the ones who most pollute.