I make this point and several more here, with some emissions figures: https://map.simonsarris.com/p/veganism-and-moral-intuitions
replyThe ecology of it, including emissions, isn't really that bad if you're American. We're very efficient at beef production. It's really the global south that's most of the novel emissions, and that's mostly from counting land-use changes.
I think the problem is how we keep the cattle.
replyIn natural environment, they cohabitant with other animals. They migrates.
When we farm them, we remove anything not our primary product.
That is not how we keep cattle in the United States. In the US about 82% of grazing land is rangeland, which continues to support the natural ecosystems (prairies, shrublands, steppes, etc).
replyIn places like Ireland, where cows have existed for 6000 years, they're also part of the ecology by any meaningful metric. There are a lot of more recently arrived species considered native! Mice, hedgehogs, rabbits, and red deer all came later.