Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

The thing with plant based meat is that even with processing, it’s virtually impossible to come close to farmed meat in terms of water, energy, and feed. Since the animals eat the plants their meat is compared to, they will have eaten the equivalent of what they’re being compared to in a very short period of time to begin with. Then you are comparing the processing and delivery carbon which is negligible in the scheme of things.

People (even very intelligent people) often seem to estimate the carbon footprint of plant based diets incorrectly by several orders of magnitude.

You can look at the universe as this absurd physical machine just banging away where the suffering of another sentient being simply “is”. Yes, of course it is.

You can also look at the same absurd universe and realize that, to some degree, consciousness seems to confer some amount of agency. You get to decide what matters to you. You get to decide on what life means to you. As you go, you can construct your part of the universe to some extent.

For me, I see it as meaningful to reduce suffering as much as it’s practicable. I recognize that death, suffering, and the messy reality of nature is part of what generated my own life. I recognize that I can’t end that cycle, nor should I because most of nature relies on it.

However, within the realm of the universe that I have this agency, I can choose to try to reduce that suffering. I can try to make this corner of the universe slightly less painful. I can respect and admire the bizarre miracle of sentience, and do my best to sustain it rather than destroy it.

Perhaps that’s meaningless. I don’t have any amazing expectations.

Similar to climate change though, I ask myself “what is the harm in taking action”? What do I lose by caring enough to change?

The answer has been a dramatic improvement to my well-being, and much more peaceful and content outlook on nature and life.

It doesn’t make sense for everyone, but I urge people to consider that complacency with the natural order of things isn’t necessary or inherently wise. Eating celery is as natural as killing a deer or as eating a lentil or catching a fish. Some of these end lives we recognize as very similar to our own, others seem less destructive. We can choose to do less harm, as we wouldn’t want harm done to us. Perhaps that’s worth something. Perhaps it’s not.

No, the others can't "continue as they have been" if things change.

Most of those countries "not causing a problem" accept a great deal of food and fuel imports from the "over-contributors", never mind goods, services and financing. They literally cannot support their populations without these imports. If the global economy comes screeching to a halt as major players scale down and just see to their own needs, many of the minor players literally starve in the dark. Just look at the impact of the Ukraine/Russia wheat supply disruption on North Africa/The middle east for a tiny example of what a global disruption would look like.

The current model can be made sustainable with time, proper policy and technological advancement. If for whatever reason we can't manage that, we're screwed.

People say "growth can't continue to infinity", and technically they're right. Problem is we know what no economic growth looks like. It's some form of feudalism, where powerful entities hoard all the wealth and we all rent the rest. The only attempt at something other than that was 20th century communism, and that... didn't work to say the least. So either we make history by creating the first ever successful re-distributive economic system, on a global scale, or we keep doing what we've been doing for centuries and hope technology and enlightened democracy can save the day.

My vote's on the latter, at least it has an overall positive track record.