The article has 'no data' for Rhinos in China, but this is false. Rhinos previously existed in what is now southwest China, in Yunnan, and probably in Sichuan. They were hunted to extinction. We know this with certainty at least from Tang Dynasty texts like the Man Shu, but also from earlier texts. The Man Shu specifically states the hunting technique used was pit trapping. It also states that the bodies were used to produce shields and armour, not only for meat.
Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans
371–380 of 447 posts
Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to say it takes some chutzpah for a person to just out and say their level of consumption is the correct amount and someone else's is not. Sure you can eat the beans and grains instead. You can also stop driving, stop heating and cooling your house, stop buying computers and phones and cars, stop air travel, live in a small apartment you share with several other people. I don't have a problem with the idea of…
If you're consuming 19x as many resources than someone else, and the sustainable level is 10% of the current level, then demanding they reduce their 5% share to a 1% share is not just arrogant, unfair, and greedy. It also doesn't do anything to solve the problem. Your implicit thesis is that you should not be held to account to do the extremely easy things if anyone else is asserting their right to exist at all is tr…
> If you're consuming 19x as many resources than someone else, and the sustainable level is 10% of the current level, then demanding they reduce their 5% share to a 1% share is not just arrogant, unfair, and greedy. It also doesn't do anything to solve the problem.
If.
> Your implicit thesis is that you should not be held to account to do the extremely easy things if anyone else is asserting their right to exist at all is transparent reprehensible.
No it isn't.
Not eating meat, by itself, does not give you any moral high ground about killing animals or consuming resources or impacting the environment.
Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You think the single celled organisms and plants responsible for producing oxygen, those responsible for decay, even those present within the digestive tracks of all animals, are not more important/valuable than humans? Weren't we talking about most important animal? But when it comes to most important, things a million different species can do are much less important. Let alone the fact that we can produce oxygen…
> Weren't we talking about most important animal? You’re right. I slipped into talking about species on the whole, my bad. That said, I think it’s really important to clarify what we mean by important. Do we mean powerful, impactful? Or do we mean the lives of the individuals of that species are more valuable? Back to powerful/impactful, if we’re talking about purely animals, then I’d look to pollinators. Would you a…
> If we were to rely purely on humanity’s ability to produce oxygen and decay organic matter
But again this is about a single species. If you remove one random type of algae or plant it's not going to make a huge difference.
> 1) What exactly do we mean by important?
The impact they have, the breadth of skills, the monuments and constructs and art, the potential for what they can do in the future. Including spreading life through the solar system eventually, or things like that. I might be missing some parts, it's late.
> 2) What are the boundaries of ability by which we can define humans as interchangeable, but humans and nonhuman animals as not, that are not rationalized after the fact?
I don't want to double down on this too hard. I just think most humans are in a pretty narrow band and this band is pretty far away from any other species.
Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're consuming 19x as many resources than someone else, and the sustainable level is 10% of the current level, then demanding they reduce their 5% share to a 1% share is not just arrogant, unfair, and greedy. It also doesn't do anything to solve the problem. Your implicit thesis is that you should not be held to account to do the extremely easy things if anyone else is asserting their right to exist at all is tr…
> If you're consuming 19x as many resources than someone else, and the sustainable level is 10% of the current level, then demanding they reduce their 5% share to a 1% share is not just arrogant, unfair, and greedy. It also doesn't do anything to solve the problem. If. > Your implicit thesis is that you should not be held to account to do the extremely easy things if anyone else is asserting their right to exist at a…
I'm not asserting any moral high ground.
I'm saying we should stop factory farming cattle that are fed with heavily subsidized, fossil fuel grown crops, stop clearing land for more cattle, return about half of the land currently used for feed and ethanol to conservation, and hold the meat industry to some basic environmental and animal welfare standards.
You're welcome to continue eating what meat is available in such a world and should thank anyone you meet who eats less so that your combined share of a sustainable world can meet your personal demands.
Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Easy: eliminate the zoning restrictions that forbid corner grocery stores. When you can walk five minutes to the store, you can buy just what you need for today (and maybe tomorrow). Then you will eat it and not throw it out. It will cost more per, but since you are not wasting any of it, you still pay less.
dont grocery stores and restaurants throw away the most? and then you also need like daily delivery trucks for these spots... im not against bodegas and more grocery access. just not sure its gonna solve anything here. but idk
43% from homes, 40% from restaurants, grocery stores and food services combined. [1]
Makes sense, restaurants are businesses whose focus is on reducing their food costs. Restaurant soup is yesterday's scraps - in a good way.
[1] https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/
Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans
#376Going off on a tangent, but the scale of production is very hard to grasp. I'm probably not the first person to observe this, but I once did some napkin math about steel production, and what I realized kind of blew me away. About 1.9 billion tonnes in 2020. Like with billions of dollars, I have no intuition for such numbers. Context is needed. Global steel production just before WW I was about 70 million tonnes. So p…
> Every single tonne of steel manufactured by humans from prehistory until about a century ago -- the entire output of the industrial revolution -- amounts to less than one year at current production.
That is the nature of exponential growth. The nth term in a geometric sequence is always related to the sum of all previous terms.
Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats an interesting way of looking at it, but seems kind of misleading to use a cow. Pigs can live anywhere and eat pretty much anything and are a much more common meat. Beef has always been a luxury meat in most places.
Beef was cheaper than pork, porknubbins . https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/roman-economy/roman-goods-pric...
Wow not what I would have expected, though a lot of my intuition about Rome is probably wrong. I respect your effort in looking up ancient pork prices. I may have to change to Beefnubbins.
Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you're consuming 19x as many resources than someone else, and the sustainable level is 10% of the current level, then demanding they reduce their 5% share to a 1% share is not just arrogant, unfair, and greedy. It also doesn't do anything to solve the problem. If. > Your implicit thesis is that you should not be held to account to do the extremely easy things if anyone else is asserting their right to exist at a…
I'm not asserting any moral high ground. I'm saying we should stop factory farming cattle that are fed with heavily subsidized, fossil fuel grown crops, stop clearing land for more cattle, return about half of the land currently used for feed and ethanol to conservation, and hold the meat industry to some basic environmental and animal welfare standards. You're welcome to continue eating what meat is available in suc…
> I'm not asserting any moral high ground.
Wonderful.
> I'm saying we should stop factory farming cattle that are fed with heavily subsidized, fossil fuel grown crops, stop clearing land for more cattle, and hold the meat industry to some basic environmental and animal welfare standards.
Oh, I didn't see where you were saying that.
Almost all global food production has large fossil fuel based inputs, land clearing is the unfortunate reality of growing population and consumption but at least the market allocates it somewhat efficiently, and its quite fungible, so it makes no more sense to say no more land to be used for cows than it does to say no more land to be used for almonds or tomatoes or quinoa. And in the western world at least animal farming and the meat industry is held to some basic environmental and animal welfare standards.
> You're welcome to continue eating what meat is available in such a world and should thank anyone you meet who eats less so that your combined share of a sustainable world can meet your personal demands.
I don't know or care about your fantasy world, but I am quite welcome to eat meat that is available in the world I find myself living in. Just like you are quite welcome to buy a new iphone every year or go on frivolous vacations to ski or sight-see whenever you choose to.
Re: Wild mammal biomass has declined by 85% since the rise of humans
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not asserting any moral high ground. I'm saying we should stop factory farming cattle that are fed with heavily subsidized, fossil fuel grown crops, stop clearing land for more cattle, return about half of the land currently used for feed and ethanol to conservation, and hold the meat industry to some basic environmental and animal welfare standards. You're welcome to continue eating what meat is available in suc…
> I'm not asserting any moral high ground. Wonderful. > I'm saying we should stop factory farming cattle that are fed with heavily subsidized, fossil fuel grown crops, stop clearing land for more cattle, and hold the meat industry to some basic environmental and animal welfare standards. Oh, I didn't see where you were saying that. Almost all global food production has large fossil fuel based inputs, land clearing is…
> Almost all global food production has large fossil fuel based inputs, land clearing is the unfortunate reality of growing population and consumption
Well no it's not. Said population (which we should be stabilizing) can be sustained on a fraction of the land used today by eliminating the inefficient uses such as ethanol, cattle and almonds.
> but at least the market allocates it somewhat efficiently,
Nice slight of hand. Markets optimise for the goals of the people with capital. Efficiency is only meaningful once an objective is selected, and wellbeing of the majority is a different objective to increase in wealth of the already wealthy.
> And in the western world at least animal farming and the meat industry is held to some basic environmental and animal welfare standards.
This is patently untrue. The penalties for even recording or photographing factory farm operations are much bigger and more consistently enforced than the penalties for violating what scant animal welfare laws there are.
> I don't know or care about your fantasy world, but I am quite welcome to eat meat that is available in the world I find myself living in. Just like you are quite welcome to buy a new iphone ever year or go on frivolous vacations to ski or sight-see.
So we're back to you having no accountability for your personal actions and no change to the system that enables and subsidizes them being permissable. This is just a reframing of you getting to do whatever you want if you are powerful enough to do it.
So I guess I am asserting the moral high ground after all. Because I'm not lying and gasghting and demanding you subsidize my lifestyle while I and the systems I support destroy the lives of everyone around you.