Quite the opposite, unless you think that having an habitable planet is not really important.
Militant Vegans
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That is part because of how we farm them as I said, we mass kill to keep up with demand yet a lot of that goes to waste so something has to give.
It could be done a lot better.
This needs saying 100x over.
It could be done a lot better, for sure, but the main problem is the number of cows, not the way we farm them.
Obviously is better to buy from a "loving farm", but even if all the slaughterhouse become "loving farms" instead, the number of cows necessary to sustain the demand would exactly the same, so nothing would improve environmental-wise, except for the moral aspect.
The only solution is cut meat production/consumption by half or more. Now. (we are so fecked otherwise)
How to do that? I think it should be governments forcing it upon us. If it left for the consumers (majority of selfish assholes) to wise up, we are fecked.
Out of interest, what are you basing this on - methane?
That and all the other negative externalities of the business: deforestation, water shortages, etc.
we are fecked.
Taking methane as one example, the proposition wouldn't really make sense because to save us from being fecked, implies that the saving would be statistically significant - however methane only accounts for about 28% of the environmental impact that CO2 does of which there is 200x the amount in the atmosphere than there is methane. Methane molecules can only live in the atmosphere for 10 years before they are destroyed by oxidation where as CO2 can take centuries to be destroyed. So suggesting that cutting meat production/consumption by half or more would stop us from being fecked comes across a little disingenuous because it isn't the leading contributor, not by a long shot and cutting it in half wouldn't stop the bigger problem. Additionally, more than half of methane production comes from human causes and not from cattle. Rice paddies for example, gas and oil drilling and landfills produce the majority of methane.
So essentially when it comes to methane, cutting beef consumption by the 50% you mentioned, would remove the equivalent of 14% of the environmental impact that CO2 has on the atmosphere. It wouldn't cut it, that can't be described as saving us from being fecked. This often gets conflated into like the single biggest issue facing global warming and it isn't even close.
What we could do when it comes to cattle is get more efficient with our resources, for example the US has shrunk from 25 million dairy cows to 9 million yet are producing 60% more milk through efficiencies. Given that methane molecules are destroyed over time in our atmosphere where CO2 can take centuries to be removed, if the worlds cattle population were to shrink then the already statistically insignificant impact of methane on the atmosphere would also shrink. An issue however is India, which has more cows than the US, EU and China put together yet doesn't eat them, they're used for dairy. If they were more efficient then their numbers would come down and so would methane production. That wouldn't even touch beef consumption but would have an impact on methane.
However, even with all of that, even if you took it past your original point of '50% reduction of beef consumption needs to happen otherwise we're fecked' and changed it to '50% of beef and dairy consumption needs to happen otherwise we're fecked' then still you'd be saving a small and insignificant aspect of methane production, which would translate to an also small and insignificant aspect of environmental damage whilst the real problem rampages on. What really needs to happen to save the world is for anyone consuming fossil fuels to sort their shit out considering they are contributing around 80% of the problem. 800 people could go vegan right now for an entire year and they'd offset about as much as one single Boeing 747 transatlantic flight.
It'd be fair to push veganism as a lifestyle choice to avoid the pain and suffering of animals, but it can't be focused on in a way that infers it's the problem that's causing global warming. That'd be like saying that me spending $10 on a beer one time is the reason I'm bankrupt while my $100,000 sports car sits on the driveway of my $2,000,000 2nd house.
If I have to move to a diet high in beans and pulses, I wouldn't recommend anyone stand within 6 feet of me the next day.
On a semi-serious note, I've tried eating more legumes, but my digestive system struggles with them. I'd hate to be limited like that.
On a semi-serious note, I've tried eating more legumes, but my digestive system struggles with them. I'd hate to be limited like that.
Fair enough. Still, meat farming is a nasty business and unsustainable for a long period of time. Their greenhouse gas % might not be the biggest, but still a decent number (specially if we know we don't really need to eat meat, or not that much). They leave the ground below them worthless, contaminate the under ground water sources, etc. We are suffering a water crisis in many countries, and the amount of water needed to create 1KG of meat is ridiculous.
Thousands of coal power plants are still being built today, so I don't know if waiting for clean energy to go massive will be enough.
I hope it is, but I'm still gonna do everything I can do to help, and the best we can do to help for now, reduce our meat consumption, take shorter showers, reduce the electric consumption, etc.
So yeah while I agree with your points, I still think we need to cut meat consumption, to help the environment and to avoid pain of sentient animals.
ps. I said last year in some other thread that I was going vegetarian on december 31... I failed, but I have reduced my meat consumption greatly. Once or twice a week. I hope this year is the year I cut meat off completely.
The 'we don't need to' isn't really relevant though, or at least it's the wrong way to position things. Speaking of a water crisis, we don't need to drink wine, but it takes 872 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of wine. But nobody is championing the return of prohibition. Humans do things because they want to, so saying we don't need to so we shouldn't is rarely a good enough reason. We don't need to do a lot of things that we choose to do.
We definitely shouldn't lose sight of the things that we can do, but what irks me is when these things are latched onto by a group that is either a.) only really concerned with the welfare of animals (not that there is anything wrong with that) or b.) misunderstands the actual impact of their cause, and it gets repackaged used for a bigger campaign on somewhat shaky information that positions it as the be all and end all of the problem, that should we do what they want will fix the problem when in actuality it won't even scratch the surface. It should be looked at proportionally, and we should still be focusing our efforts on the main reasons instead of losing sight of them whilst we put all of our attention on scratching the surface.
Actually it is relevant, because we do need energy. So we can't just turn off the coal plants without another energy source ready, people lives depend on it. (while we could close all the meat farms int he world and people would still be alive
But yeah, i agree meat industry is not the only one to regulate urgently. I posted a link in the global warming thread, on how the UK desperation for avocado is drying up entire regions in Chile.
The whole agriculture/meat farming/mining industries need heavy regulations urgently.
This thread reminds me of this from the other day.
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/r...l/news-story/722227ad0000e8cbf9ac8a0e8a554b95
Some stupid women trying to sue her neighbour for cooking meat, and the smell reaching her. Thankfully the case was thrown out.
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/r...l/news-story/722227ad0000e8cbf9ac8a0e8a554b95
Some stupid women trying to sue her neighbour for cooking meat, and the smell reaching her. Thankfully the case was thrown out.
I'm putting my eggs in the lab-grown meat basket saving the day.
Then I'm going to eat the eggs too.
Then I'm going to eat the eggs too.
As I said a LOT of that goes to waste.
Supermarkets throw tons of meat away per day not to mention the restaurants, we over kill and actually produce way more than is demanded.
I think we should start by saying that the reason we won't cut down on meat, is because we're selfish cnuts who don't want to give up our juicy steak. We don't need to eat meat, we'll be fecking fine without it. It's like muricans saying they need their guns.
That being said, I'm proud for now eating vegetarion for 2 days a week.
That being said, I'm proud for now eating vegetarion for 2 days a week.
Feck that, I have steak for breakfast and dinner, with eggs. Chicken for lunch. Feck green food.
I had a T-bone steak for the first time in about 15 years at the weekend. It was fecking splendid.
Now I don't know what to buy first...a steak or a uzi.
What is in bold is a massive number and frankly a lot higher than I expected. One-seventh is not "statistically insignificant" in any way shape or form, it is probably comparable to entire industries put together.
Either way - from what I understood, and also from how you're framing it, the argument isn't that we're saved if we change our diets, it is that we're fecked if we don't. With the difference being that we need a transformation much wider than diet alone to be "saved". (The assumption through all this is that as the developing countries become richer, meat consumption and overall lifestyle of their newly wealthy classes becomes equivalent to the west, and that has certainly happened in China and despite cultural issues, in India too).
As @George Owen pointed out, the greenhouse gases are one aspect of the environmental impact of meat, of which you focused on the methane emission of cattle. Expanding a little outwards from that we see rapid deforestation of the Amazon gor grazing and soy production for fodder. Both are net contrbutors to atmospheric carbon and are intimately linked to cattle farming.
Going further out, we encounter the simple biological truth of trophic levels - i.e., energy is lost at east level of consumption within a food web. Say a plant's efficiency of sunlight to carbs is 10%, the cow's efficiency of plant to meat is 10%, which means that for every unit of sunlight you get 0.1 units of plant matter and 0.01 units of animal flesh. What are the environmental implications of this? Land and water use. Fodder needed to grow animals to generate meat requires a lot more land and water than if the crops were used to feed humans directly. Same with water, and then you add the water the animals themselves need.
At this point there are 2 objections raised - one is that pasture land is not necessarily crop land, which is true, and the other is that non-factory farming doesn't need so much fodder production since you will let the animals graze.
For point one, it is true sometimes, not always, and besides the entire point of the trophic level argument is that you don't need to convert all fodder land to foodcrop land since producing crops is simply more efficient. For the second point, meat consumption at western levels requires CAFOs which are the extremely efficient energy to meat producing operations possible. Allowing all the cattle and goats of the world to graze would quickly denude massive green areas. Capitalism is good at optimising along any axes that affects profits, and CAFOs are one of the triumphs of capitalism.
Finally, the least talked-about and potentially most dangerous effect of modern efficient meat production is antibiotic resistance. Since animals can be grown quicker, with less resources like land if they're cramped together in unhygeinic conditions, antibiotic overuse to allow them to survive and grow quickly is very common in modern farms from the US to Netherlands to India. This has already created some resistant bacterial strains.
So basically we have a situation where on every metric, meat is more harmful to the envionment than a plant substitution. This has been shown in study after study, with almost all showing that vegan and vegetarian diets have the least environmental impacts. Of course this is strictly universally true - someone who lives off a single animal he shot in the wild has effetively no environmental impact. But it is impossible for 7 billion people to have that lifestyle, and on net the veg*n diets are more sustainable.
I agree that the actual best case for veg*ism is the animals case, and it is why I don't eat meat. But there is less chance of a mass public breakthrough of that message then there is of Lenin's reanimated corpse reviving the USSR. Can you expect everyne to freely choose to give themselves less of something they like?
Meat alternatives like the impossible burger will do more to stop meat eating than militant vegan moralising ever will. Meat tastes nice, better alternatives mean more people will cut back on meat consumption.
Some vegans are against the impossible burger because it was tested on animals. None of the animals were harmed, because obviously eating it is not in any way dangerous!
Some vegans are against the impossible burger because it was tested on animals. None of the animals were harmed, because obviously eating it is not in any way dangerous!
Good stuff, I eat meat but I think facing these facts is important.
We have an entire thread dedicated to your T-Bone experience in the Gen.
It was worthy of a thread.
Agreed. The meat and dairy industry see Impossible Foods as a massive threat and have been actively working to stop them from selling their products in grocery stores. That has now changed.
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/impossible-burgers-now-available-in-grocery-stores-080219.html
The idea of a vegan burger just makes me think that it probably is not any better for you than any other highly processed food.
Yeah I don’t think it is. But it’s better for the environment and the cow.
Is it though (apart from the cow bit)?
My post was around addressing the way that George framed it, which was that we're fecked if we don't make a statistically insignificant change. It infers inherently that this is the single major cause and that we can only be saved by changing it, when that isn't even remotely true. Even if we did all change it right now, it would be a drop in the ocean and wouldn't make any significant difference, let alone one that changed our course from 'being fecked'. The only thing that can stop you from being fecked is addressing the greatest contributor so that what you're left with impact wise is something that isn't as bad, not addressing something that isn't that much of a contributor and leaving the one thing responsible for 80% of the problem. Sure every little helps, and I said that it's important not to lose sight of the changes that we can make and should make really, but it shouldn't be framed as the leading argument because it doesn't even scratch the surface of the problem.
In Perth a vegan woman sued her Neighbor for having too many BBQ's, as she didn't like the smell.
So naturally the good people of the internet have organised a huge street BBQ outside of her house and on the street. Food trucks will also be there apparently. A lot of people are expected to turn up.
So naturally the good people of the internet have organised a huge street BBQ outside of her house and on the street. Food trucks will also be there apparently. A lot of people are expected to turn up.
I had a Beyond meat burger the other day at a restaurant, it tasted pretty good so I did a bit of research about the content. I think you are right and it isn't any healthier than a regular burger.
Guess we need a militant meat eaters thread!
Seems to look like it is.
https://www.fastcompany.com/9024183...w-beyond-meats-environmental-impact-stacks-up
Wonder how this will go down:
Basically it thinks the lack of certain nutrients in most vegetarian diets might be responsible.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-49579820
Basically it thinks the lack of certain nutrients in most vegetarian diets might be responsible.
Humans have evolved to eat meat thousands of years ago. Hence why we have canines. It has helped us get to where we are today.
Had to laugh at the headline and the section "So does it show vegan and vegetarian diets are unhealthy?", when the article says vegans and vegetarians (not sure why they group them together as the diets can be very different) have 10 per 1000 fewer cases of heart disease but 3 per 1000 more cases of strokes. 10 is bigger than 3, right?
Depends if your brain has been addled by excessive meat consumption or not.
I don't think this is true and the real reason our canines evolved was for fighting. Our digestive system is more suited to a plant based diet too.
Which is in a position where we are resourceful, considerate and innovative enough to not have to.
We may not have to but a lot of us want to.
And that's the real issue. People like doing the things they like doing and do not want to change. Especially if someone is trying to force them to. The same can be said about many of the major issues society is facing today.
The question is, when lives and the world as we know it are at stake, can we continue to pussyfoot around so as not to annoy people while the problems we are causing because of it worsen?
I accidentally stepped on a snail whilst out and it was thoroughly unpleasant. The crunching sound and feel on your soles is absolutely gross. But I'll get over it and forget about it in a few minutes.
It did get me thinking how a militant crazy vegan would react to doing this. Does the guilt of unwittingly killing a defenceless snail eat them up inside? Do they go around thinking about their carelessness for months? Will they ever come to terms with their molluscslaughter? I'd be interested to know.
It did get me thinking how a militant crazy vegan would react to doing this. Does the guilt of unwittingly killing a defenceless snail eat them up inside? Do they go around thinking about their carelessness for months? Will they ever come to terms with their molluscslaughter? I'd be interested to know.