241–250 of 314 posts
Which is a very good thing indeed, because it makes our food system robust by operating at a large caloric surplus. When crop failures lead to rising grain prices, ranchers respond by not buying as much grain for their animals. The result is less Prime-grade beef and a whole lot more grain available.
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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.
There is no more time left for this kind of pragmatism. It doesn’t matter it people disagree, the truth is supporting meat consumption is supporting industries that are actively killing us and the planet.
meat eating is destroying the planet.
That is patently false. It is burning fossil fuels that is destroying the planet by contributing almost 75% of the global Greenhouse Gas Emissions: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#sector-by-sec... Please don't spread dangerous lies! By saying that meat is destroying the planet you're distracting from the true source of climate change: oil .
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Pillaging, exploitation, and destruction of the commons leading to ecological and societal degradation and eventual collapse has been documented as what capitalism does since there was a thing called capitalism There's still plenty of boosters who will use fallacious arguments defending it that were just as tired hundreds of years ago. Some people let their aspirations of greed blind them from what's clearly happenin…
Capitalism is a system that gives humans agency it ain't an utopia. All of those things can be documented from the beginning of life on Earth. As a fact, ecological damage is even worse under Soviet Union. Blaming capitalism is a vague argument that says more about the author political ideology than of the many complex underlying causes.
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Agriculture consumes a lot of water in this drought stricken state. The worst part is that many of these farms pump water from the ground thereby collapsing underground aquifers. This is an irreversible change and has caused the Central Valley to sink by several feet over the last few decades. There is zero political will to solve this. Instead we waste time and energy on pointless green initiatives, desalination and…
California will never, ever, ever run short of water... unless the Pacific Ocean dries up. Cheap electricity will result in cheap desalination. The sky is not falling.
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Replacing capitalism with X will not eliminate the underlying socio-psychological factors that push humans to secure themselves at the expense of other humans and the environment. All capitalism does is give participants a high degree of agency that reveals these factors (and that’s also why regulation is needed—the market doesn’t work well when malicious actors exploit information asymmetry). In long term, we should…
Disagree. It richly rewards and strongly encourages behaviors we consider asocial and destructive. Let's take Natchez, Mississippi. In 1850, half of America's millionaires lived there. It was the wealthiest city in the country because we richly rewarded and encouraged human enslavement. The brightest minds had very lucrative careers in slave economics and slave labor studies and there was lots of focus on optimizing…
Yes, in a free society with capitalism people have more opportunities to behave this way. Yes, that’s why regulation is needed (as a stop-gap measure, not root cause treatment).
While you don’t seem to be suggesting an alternative to capitalism for some reason, I’m reasonably sure that in any of them the society would suffer from the same issues, just less visible or more localised to ruling elites (which, by the way, doesn’t mean the scale of exploitation itself would be smaller).
As abolition of slavery showed, ethical standards are evolving—and freedom is necessary for this evolution. Without freedom you are treated as an ignorant child, with decisions made for you. Made by humans who are just as fallible, with imperfect ethics, power-hungry and insecure, happy to use their positions of authority to benefit themselves, whom you’d be deemed not wise enough to elect.
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Replacing capitalism with X will not eliminate the underlying socio-psychological factors that push humans to secure themselves at the expense of other humans and the environment. All capitalism does is give participants a high degree of agency that reveals these factors (and that’s also why regulation is needed—the market doesn’t work well when malicious actors exploit information asymmetry). In long term, we should…
Disagree. It richly rewards and strongly encourages behaviors we consider asocial and destructive. Let's take Natchez, Mississippi. In 1850, half of America's millionaires lived there. It was the wealthiest city in the country because we richly rewarded and encouraged human enslavement. The brightest minds had very lucrative careers in slave economics and slave labor studies and there was lots of focus on optimizing…
> Some grain by-products, such as maize husks, are unsuitable for human food. And feeding grain to animals does generate food for people indirectly, in the form of milk, meat and eggs. However, this process is highly wasteful. For every 100 calories of grain fed to a cow, just three emerge as beef. Along with other feed crops and pasture, rearing animals also uses land that could produce human food. But we don't only…
Do you have sources for claiming animals are the most efficient source of those micronutrients? Where do those animals get those micronutrients from? Why do they still need to be injected with supplements like vitamin B12? Why do you discount use of pasture for rewilding?
Iron is probably the only nutrient I can immediately think of where there’s a significant (~2x) bioavailability difference between plants and animals. Not big enough to make the animal source "more efficient" from a resource use perspective considering the feed conversion still.
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Irrigation lets you grow corn or other crops just about anywhere. No, it does not. In this context, 'grow' means 'in a usable fashion'. Rocky, hilly soil isn't tillable, is impossible to harvest en mass, and results in poor outcomes. It's almost like you've never farmed, and are making statements based upon theory, instead of real world usage cases. Whatever agenda you have, please stop trying to claim that all soil…
Not all crops involve tilling soil, some orchards are in extremely rocky hilly areas. It’s one of the reasons olive trees are so associated with Italy. Anyway, preparing an area for cultivation is a one time cost. People actually grow crops in areas you consider impossible because someone already put the effort possibly thousands of years ago even if it’s not currently economically viable. Terraces also work in hilly…
Yes, you can grow crops anywhere, on the moon, in shipping containers, in your basement, and yes on terraces and if you spare no expense to change the land.
But all of that is silly and absurd, and not part of the context of this discussion. Some of it just is not possible in any sane fashion.
Some of the land you think is just "move a few rocks and it's fine, like people used to do" is not even remotely accurate or true. We're talking about hilly, rocky land, with 1" of topsoil (Canadian Shield), with poor soil. This land is what you throw a goat or cattle at. It's not something you import billions of dollars of topsoil per 100 acres, to make usable.
I honestly don't get your argument here.
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Every time! I don't talk to dishonest people. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Wait a minute. What did the OP say this time that is dishonest? I'm totally aware that vegans consistently invade this kind of thread on HN to promulgate their vegan propaganda, like little prophets of malnutrition sent into the world by a god of famine, but this time, what was the lie? I can't see it. As far as I can tell it's true that meat production and consumption is very unevenly distributed: the USA and Argent…