Eat your gruel peasant, the planet needs it
Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
61–70 of 314 posts
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or eat grassfed beef, which is grown consuming human-inedible grass that grows for free, instead of being fed human foods that have to be farmed. White Oak Pastures even claims to have a negative carbon footprint[0], according to a report by a third party which, if I remember correctly, also authored the report behind one of the vegan burger's sustainability claims. 0: https://blog.whiteoakpastures.com/blog/carbon-ne…
Grass-fed beef is no real solution to the grain shortage. For one the meat is more expensive, for another there is a limit to the land that can be used as meadows but not for other crops.
Can you use the meadows above the tree line for agriculture? That’s what they eat during the summer.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#63We’re all going to be living on cricket powder in 20 years.
Ssh you’re letting the cat out of the bag on Soylent’s pivot
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the math clear that meat consumption requires more emissions than non-meat consumption, on average (as in per calorie)?
Did I say somewhere that meat consumption is not problematic?
I'm responding to "people disagree with the notion that reducing meat consumption is helpful from an emissions perspective". People may disagree but it's like disagreeing that 100 > 1 -- who cares what they think?
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#65A staggering amount of California's water is used for alfalfa, which gets shipped to China to feed cows. In essence, we are allowing certain farmers to sell CA's water to China.
The alfalfa is also used for cows grown in CA for CA residents. That's also a bad thing. Cow farms should be significantly limited in arid climates. There are ecologically better alternatives.
>The alfalfa is also used for cows grown in CA for CA residents. That's also a bad thing. Cow farms should be significantly limited in arid climates
Technically, from what I understand, it's enough to limit alfaalfa in arid climates. The location of cow farms does not matter much after that, in terms of water usage.
What's also good is that enforcing alfaalfa regional restrictions is super easy - a satellite photo would be enough to spot a field, and there's not enough margin to have any organized crime to fight back.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the math clear that meat consumption requires more emissions than non-meat consumption, on average (as in per calorie)?
You should probably sit still and not move around too much in order to minimize the number of calories you need to stay alive. If that's the metric we're optimizing for, anyway.
This is the sort of childish reply I see when folks talk about emissions from meat consumption/production. What's next, are you going to tell me that every steak I don't eat you'll eat two more? That's a classic.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#67Quoted post unavailable.
There’re many ways people can reduce their impact on environment. Buying $60k+ luxury cars isn’t one.
Reducing amount of meat can be, but you can give a shit and reduce your impact much more while still eating a lot of meat.
People screaming that unless you reduce meat intake you’re killing earth are as narrowly minded focused on single issue as people screaming that unless you buy an EV, you’re killing earth.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#68Quoted post unavailable.
I generally see this argument pushed by vegans whose central issue is really animal rights, which is a valid concern, but the claim that a 100% vegan world, all other things being unchanged, would be one free from fossil-fueled global warming is simply not true.
Generally speaking the claim is that significant amounts of agricultural energy go into growing grain for animals, and that domestic animal populations result in methane emissions, so eliminating the animal populations means less methane and you'd also need less agricultural production as everyone would eat vegan diets, if I've spelled it out adequately.
However, this doesn't change the need for electricity generation and transportation fuel to move food and materials around the world, or from farms to cities, or for industrial production and heating and cooling, so that's where the electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines and storage systems are needed so we can phase out the fossil fuels from the energy mix. Yes, that's going to be cheaper and more sustainable than trying to expand uranium fission.
Furthermore, in the pre-industrial era in North America for millenia there were large populations of bison, estimated variously at perhaps 50% of the domestic cattle population (which is where the biogenic methane is coming from). For example:
(2012) "Historic, pre-European settlement, and present-day contribution of wild ruminants to enteric methane emissions in the United States"
Overall, enteric CH4 emissions from bison, elk, and deer in the presettlement period were about 86% (assuming bison population size of 50 million) of the current CH4 emissions from farmed ruminants in the United States.
There are plenty of decent arguments for eating less meat, but I don't think 'fixing the climate' is really a very strong one.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#69A staggering amount of California's water is used for alfalfa, which gets shipped to China to feed cows. In essence, we are allowing certain farmers to sell CA's water to China.
The alfalfa is also used for cows grown in CA for CA residents. That's also a bad thing. Cow farms should be significantly limited in arid climates. There are ecologically better alternatives.
If you're pumping water to grow grass in the desert just for the beef, there are better uses for the water.
However, cows have the unique ability to turn grass into protein, so if all an area can grow is grass, cows are a great way to get calories out of it. Properly allowed to graze freely, cows can be a net improvement on a particular ecology as a carbon sink (manure is an improvement to the soil), but shipping the harvested grass to feedlots is indeed an ecological disaster.
Re: Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with this kind of post is not, as you might surmise, that people disagree with the notion that reducing meat consumption is helpful from an emissions perspective. It is that the binary presentation implies an either-or when in fact both are helpful. Plus it just shits on people and nobody likes that.
Isn't the math clear that meat consumption requires more emissions than non-meat consumption, on average (as in per calorie)?
depends on the meat and the non-meat.
There is carbon-negative beef, and there are plants that require enormous amounts of artificial soil additives. Probably the biggest factor is whether the meat comes from a ranch in your general area and if the bell-pepper in your salad was flown in from holland.