Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 577 posts

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#251

Post by blunte »

onion2k wrote: post #227
blunte wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more. I'm not willing to agree that it would reduce emissions more than ending meat consumption. It would help, however. Like most problems, there is not just one solution. Multiple modest to moderate changes in behavior can make a big difference. - redesign cities to include more and better public transport (less car/truck traff…

> A carbon tax fixes this. Not really. You're conflating the tax with spending the tax revenue. You don't need to spend any of the revenue on carbon sequestering projects. Just implementing a carbon tax that pushed the price of things like air travel up to the reflect the real cost would do a huge amount to reduce the amount people pollute. If the price of a flight doubled then fewer people would fly.

Actually I'm thinking of the industrial approach to generating carbon credit offsets, then selling those on the market to polluting industries.

Regarding air travel specifically, it's less (and decreasing) in terms of pollution relative to other forms of transportation. One of the sources: https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/policy_guidance/env...

Cars in sum produce more pollution than planes (at least in the US), and recent estimates say that the 15 largest ocean freighters produce as much pollution as all cars globally for a year.

So my feeling is that reducing global shipping - eliminating consumption of junk - and reorganizing cities to enable more walking/biking, would have a far greater benefit than focusing on air travel.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#252

Post by ppseafield »

growlist wrote: post #220
harimau777 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very niche reason, but one of the classic diets for beginner weight lifters who want to gain weight is to add a gallon of whole milk a day to their existing diet. For people that are trying to consume more calories and protein, I don't know of an alternative that combines comparable calorie & protein density, low cost, ease of consumption, and zero preparation time. More generally, I think that one of the b…

I got a free sample of pea protein powder with some whey one time. It was truly disgusting!

Unflavored pea protein is pretty bad, but there are a ton of delicious vegan protein powder options out there.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#253

Post by blunte »

goatinaboat wrote: post #247
blunte wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If everyone stopped traveling for fun, that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions even more. I'm not willing to agree that it would reduce emissions more than ending meat consumption. It would help, however. Like most problems, there is not just one solution. Multiple modest to moderate changes in behavior can make a big difference. - redesign cities to include more and better public transport (less car/truck traff…

redesign cities to include more and better public transport Concrete is a massive source of CO2 emissions. Rebuilding cities is really, really not going to help.

Concrete is big but much less in total than car emissions. However, I'm not advocating building new things; I'm suggesting changing the use of existing things: more public transport options, more park and ride locations, more city bike stands, etc.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#254

Post by TheAlchemist »

There is an interesting film coming soon on meat consumption: The Game Changers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSpglxHTJVM

Produced by James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan it follows several top level athletes and investigate the myth about the need for animal proteins

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#255

Post by tom_mellior »

dagw wrote: post #231
tom_mellior wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trouble with organic is that those cows live longer Interesting. Do you have a source? I don't see a good reason for this off the top of my head.

At a guess cows that are grass fed and not given growth hormones grow much slower and thus take longer to reach 'slaughtering' weight.

Good point, thanks. The 60% number cited above does seem oddly specific, like it would come from a concrete source. Though as others in this thread have pointed out, methane seems to be less of an issue than it's sometimes made out to be.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#256

Post by blisterpeanuts »

In the early 1800s, there were an estimated 60 million bison in North America. They were hunted nearly to extinction, and today there are an estimated 31,000 (wikipedia).

Meanwhile, there are about 120 million cattle in the U.S. and Canada (over a billion worldwide). It's possible that cattle therefore have a larger impact on the ecology than did the buffalo, but there were always large grazing herds in the world, and far more numerous prior to the Industrial Age. It's possible that there are in fact fewer ruminants today than in pre-industrial times, if the great herds of millions of reindeer and similar creatures that once roamed the plains of North America and Siberia are taken into account.

Last year I began bow-hunting for deer in my part of New England, where there is an excessive population that damage forests, endanger drivers, and spread disease. I'm also hoping to raise meat chickens and egg laying chickens in the near future.

Hunt for your own meat and stop buying factory meat that has been pumped with all sorts of hormones and antibiotics. I love a good beefsteak and I do hope such will continue to be available, but harvesting your own meat is probably the best thing for the planet and gives you a much stronger connection to (and respect for) the game animals that we eat!

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#257

Post by nullreference00 »

produce less meat

Eating less meat just means more waste. We need to stop talking about climate change as a problem individuals can solve with ecological lifestyle choices. We need international economic planning and the seizure of carbon extracting industry.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#258

Post by berdon »

LegitShady wrote: post #229
diyseguy wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its interesting to hear anecdotal stories like these because they contradict the conventional wisdom nowadays that says you have to eat meat as protein every day - clearly that wasn't the case in prior centuries.

what was the life expectancy? what was the standard of living? trying to call back to 1930s belarus as an example to live from is crazy. It doesn't even logically follow that we should avoid meat because poor farmers in belarus didn't each much. Where's the logical argument?

Is this just being down voted because of tone?

The premise seems valid: just because you can "survive" off of a low-to-no protein diet doesn't mean it should be espoused.

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#259

Post by gwm83 »

harimau777 wrote: post #180
lol768 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>adult don't need to drink any milk and many don't digest it well, by the way Never understood the obsession with drinking milk on its own (though I never liked the taste of it myself either). There's plenty of calcium to be found in other sources: kale, leafy greens, almonds, fortrified grains, beans/pulses etc.

This is a very niche reason, but one of the classic diets for beginner weight lifters who want to gain weight is to add a gallon of whole milk a day to their existing diet. For people that are trying to consume more calories and protein, I don't know of an alternative that combines comparable calorie & protein density, low cost, ease of consumption, and zero preparation time. More generally, I think that one of the b…

I haven't heard of this and I know a good number of weight trainers. Doesn't this give people massive squirts? Can anyone digest a whole gallon of milk in a day? Gross

Re: Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet

#260

Post by [deleted] »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #254

There is an interesting film coming soon on meat consumption: The Game Changers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSpglxHTJVM Produced by James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan it follows several top level athletes and investigate the myth about the need for animal proteins

[deleted]
Post reply on HN