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Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

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Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#171

Post by eropple »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #125
fcarraldo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can continue to enjoy your meat, but still ensure your diet contains a responsible amount of it. A diet with proportionally less meat is both healthier and more environmentally sustainable. I will never understand why Americans are personally affronted by the idea that they should eat less meat. What makes it such an insulting proposition?

In many places in America, the only (or at least the most vocal / visible by far) vegans you'll encounter tend to be weak, unhealthy, and obnoxious about their veganism. The hypocrisy makes it hard to take a rational look at the health benefits. These are the last 4 encounters I remember myself or someone close to me having with vegans: (1) Someone who spent 2 weeks traveling with family to a country that eats mostly…

I would submit that a lot of the idea that "vegans are obnoxious" comes from defensive projection. I know a decent number of vegans. I've known more at various points in my life. (I'm not one; I don't have the inclination or the discipline if I did.) And I have observed non-vegans transmute "no thanks, I'm a vegan" into a perceived attack and perceived moral superiority when it was not intended waaaay more than I've seen somebody getting a morality-boner over being a vegan.

Your four examples are anecdotal, much like mine, but we also see this sort of defensiveness around other topics where the conventional morality has some problems that conventional folks don't conventionally want to grapple with. I like Ian Danskin's work in general, but the way he looks at this in particular has resonated with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExEHuNrC8yU

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#172

Post by _rpd »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #114

So? Isn't this just evolution in action? Isn't this what's supposed to happen? We kill off 1M species, we eat the planet, humans eventually go through a winnowing process, from lack of resources, or nuclear war, or AI, and in a couple hundred million years, everything adapts to fill out the prevailing ecology again. What makes us think we're so special? I'm only being partly sarcastic here. With 500 MILLION years of…

If nothing else, each species is a precious example of a DNA sequence that works. We are burning the book of life. It's worth the effort to preserve.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#173

Post by ak217 »

bad_user wrote: post #56
perfunctory wrote: post #11

We keep hearing that individual actions don't matter and that we need a system change instead. I used to hold the same opinion for the very long time. However, since recently I started to turn around. For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. What makes us think it will be any different in the coming years. Scientists keep producing report after repor…

> “ Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don't go all the way vegan, but make meat a special treat not a commodity. ” No thank you. I know vegans have an anti-meat agenda and have been promoting this idea, however industrial agriculture as a whole is not sustainable, not just meat, and switching to a plants-based diet won’t save the planet. The elephant in the room is that sustainable farming needs to be…

Just because there are issues with pesticides, subsidies, and other aspects of agriculture, doesn't make your statements on meat true.

Meat takes a lot of energy to produce. It makes sense intuitively: think about how much energy was spent to raise you. That energy has to come from somewhere, and producing it has environmental side effects. Enormous ones. Don't underestimate the harm done by meat production to the environment.

Sustainably farmed eggs and fish are much more environmentally responsible, and provide the vitamins you mention. In the future all the essential nutrients will also be available via bacterial cultures.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#174

Post by eropple »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #166
MiroF wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think has more to do with the fact that any sort of vocal veganism is considered obnoxious in the US. So yeah, anyone who tells you they're vegan will be labeled as obnoxious.

Yeah if only we could figure out how it got associated with obnoxious people in the first place.

I guess, sure, you can chalk it up to "those annoying people" and just be done.

Or you can look at the way that many Americans (for the purposes of this discussion; I am one, and I don't have sufficient insight into other folks) react to anybody suggesting anything is wrong with the status quo. America has not a conservative problem but a reactionary one, even outside of what is generally considered "political". This is part of the American hypocrisy about "leaving politics out of it"; most folks with a political education understand that life among other people is inherently and inescapably political, but it's only those who want to change things who are accused of "bringing politics into it", while the nature of the status quo is taken as implicitly apolitical.

To this end, I often see people react as if somebody else being a vegan is translated into being an implicit threat to a non-vegan's way of life. Similarly, you see this with those "normal people" finding gay marriage to be a threat to the "sanctity of marriage" or whatever (gay people are gonna make heterosexual marriages worse, are they?) and you see it with the completely bent way that Americans have and historically have reacted to the notion of somebody being "a feminist"--well before the internet's even more bent notion of some kind of "SJW menace" arose. I tend to think that that has transmuted into this reputation as much as any "bad apple"/obnoxious jerk has been, if not more.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#175

Post by mistrial9 »

perfunctory wrote: post #11

We keep hearing that individual actions don't matter and that we need a system change instead. I used to hold the same opinion for the very long time. However, since recently I started to turn around. For the last 30 years governments and politicians have proven incapable to do anything about global heating. What makes us think it will be any different in the coming years. Scientists keep producing report after repor…

this heartfelt yet trivial response makes the worst fodder for those seeking to block or ridicule those serious about this topic. Absolutely down-vote on this, due to more significant systemic approaches needing the attention.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#176

Post by mcdramamean »

We need to do something; and that's heal our psychology. We can't just save the planet because all the thing that are killing it are things that we make "to feel good". Most of our economy is based on consuming things we don't need. Most of the pollutions comes for the energy sector and all the containers that get shipped across the ocean. Ocean Cruises are pretty bad also.

We need to focus on how to get the entire planet to execute on the same actions. That is our only hope. If 80% of the planet goes green, but 20% is still emitting pollutions, we are still in the same boat (just not sinking as fast). Getting individuals to do what is necessary will simply take pricing things correctly and making laws; most humans don't want any trouble and will easily be able to live a more sustainable life just through peer pressure.

FOCUS ON INTERNATIONAL CONSENSUS. This will serve us in all problems, not just global warming.

To put it another way, if you have a cold, you don't solely focus on making the cough go away. Just drinking cough syrup isn't going to fix it. Global warming is the "cough" to our "cold". If we just "fix" global warming, we still have soooooo many other psychological issues as a species that it's not going to "save the planet". We can't even agree if humans should live or die. There is so much nihilism that there are lots of people who are content on doing whatever; until they die. Lo, they prolly want death and are just to scared to do it themselves.

This is a legit problem; that many humans (either through religion or personal belief) don't WANT humans to live; or don't think we deserve to live. How are you going to solve that by solving global warming? We can't even agree that, regardless of our impact on the climate, we should be as clean to our environment as we can. Half the population only cares about GDP.

Go back to first principles and let's SOLVE THIS. We all watch the Avengers, but don't come out wanting to BE THE HERO. We can solve this. We can't save all the animals; but we can solve this.

So stop bitching, let's come up with solutions. Until the last second on the game clock ticks, you are in the game. Make a friggin' play. (YES YOU!)

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#177

Post by whiskers08xmt »

rv-de wrote: post #142
mfatica wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> meat is unhealthy - period. It's a nice to have but it is at the end of the day just not good for you. [citation needed]

I just invested 17 seconds into your health, buddy :) Here you go: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26780279

Important note here is that it's primarily red and processed meat. I think fish and poultry are still considered healthy in moderate amounts.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#179

Post by MiroF »

mcdramamean wrote: post #176

We need to do something; and that's heal our psychology. We can't just save the planet because all the thing that are killing it are things that we make "to feel good". Most of our economy is based on consuming things we don't need. Most of the pollutions comes for the energy sector and all the containers that get shipped across the ocean. Ocean Cruises are pretty bad also. We need to focus on how to get the entire p…

> If 80% of the planet goes green, but 20% is still emitting pollutions, we are still in the same boat (just not sinking as fast).

I'm not sure this is actually representative of the facts. We don't need 100% of the planet to go green to stabilize our temperature below a threshold and there are negative feedbacks on carbon emissions.

Re: Up to one million species are on the verge of extinction, U.N. panel says

#180

Post by francisofascii »

MiroF wrote: post #84
bryanlarsen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next U.S. federal election is an excellent opportunity to address climate change. Ensure that the Democratic primary chooses a leader with a good plan, and then ensure that he/she wins in 2020.

I'm not confident any of the Democratic candidates have a good plan and even if they do, voters would not support it. Even with mild assumptions about a duty to not harm future generations (say if we substantially discount the livelihood of our children and their children in favor of our own), we would need to take action that dramatically reduces our emissions. American voters will not vote for anything even remotel…

Unfortunately you are correct. If you ever read the comments section of news piece regarding gas taxes or steps to reduce carbon emissions, the average American voter freaks out at the mere suggestion of increasing energy prices just a little bit.
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