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The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet

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Re: The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet

#141

Post by jrootabega »

anonyfox wrote: post #12

No matter where you stand (some meat eaters tend to become extremely emotional on this): The fact that the scientific results and recommendations get utterly censored like this before publication makes me really angry. It’s somewhat fine for me if people/governments choose to ignore or argue against these results after publication, but this is just absurd… and is then used from people all over the world to point to „…

> Meanwhile, of course a vegan diet is better for the environment

This is not a matter of course. Humans are part of the environment, and it is not a matter of course that a vegan diet is healthy for humans. The idea (I don't want to say fact, but I believe it) that meat and dairy consumption/industry are currently happening at a scale that is harmful does not mean that meat and dairy are bad for the environment.

Re: The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet

#142

Post by midland_trucker »

hbogert wrote: post #138
midland_trucker wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pointing out that you don't seem to realise how insanely resource inefficient meat is: [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/feed-required-to-produce-... [2] https://cbey.yale.edu/our-stories/disrupting-meat Napkin maths from the first source suggests 5kg of feed to produce a 200g steak. All while losing all but 4% of the original calories. This is of course ignoring the vast water consumption and emissions (and…

Of course it's more complicated than just naming numbers. Why is water consumption an issue perse? What did the 5kg of food consist of? Is that 5kg we humans could've ate? I doubt it. Throughout time we've given our animals scraps which we think is beneath us. Take for example a cow in England eating grass and drinking water which directly came from the rain. What is inherently bad about that? Don't get me wrong, I t…

It was a specific rebuttal to the parent comment which seemed to not understand the reality of resources in vs resources out of animal agriculture. Of course you can caveat a lot about my comment, beef for instance is arguably the most inefficient example of meat you could cite (amongst slightly less inefficient alternatives) but illustrates the problem well. That is the nature of compressing such a complex issue into a small HN comment.

> Why is water consumption an issue perse? What did the 5kg of food consist of? Is that 5kg we humans could've ate? I doubt it. Throughout time we've given our animals scraps which we think is beneath us.

Right - the discussion is about land use. We don't typically eat animal feed but allocate an enormous sq footage that could have been used to grow something we would might like to consume directly.

> Take for example a cow in England eating grass and drinking water which directly came from the rain. What is inherently bad about that?

Agree, we have plentiful access to drinking water in the UK and so have enough to allocate to irrigation and all the other water intensive activities involved to do this. Unfortunately on this particular point, the majority of the beef you eat does not come from here. This issue becomes much more pertinent if you live in say California or Spain.

Re: The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet

#143

Post by ajsnigrutin »

vintermann wrote: post #112
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is, that the giant corporations can pollute the environment (eg. coca cola in a plastic bottle, with a plastic cap, with a plastic label, wrapped in a plastic 6-pack, with a plastic handle, on a plastic pallet wrapped in plastic foil), and rich environmentalists then fly their private jets to some 'green' conference and tell an 'average joe' that he shouldn't drive his car and eat meat, and should pa…

Most people who complain about rich environmentalists flying on private planes seem to be on the right. I don't quite get this: you aren't opposed to the existence of millionaires, are you? You already accept that some people, through their hard work or inheritance or whatever, are entitled to a larger share of material goods. Why shouldn't they also be entitled to a larger share of the total emissions we decide we c…

If you fly on a private jet, you atleast shouldn't come on a climate conference and tell poor people not to eat meat and drive their car.

Re: The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet

#144

Post by ajsnigrutin »

flangola7 wrote: post #110
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is, that the giant corporations can pollute the environment (eg. coca cola in a plastic bottle, with a plastic cap, with a plastic label, wrapped in a plastic 6-pack, with a plastic handle, on a plastic pallet wrapped in plastic foil), and rich environmentalists then fly their private jets to some 'green' conference and tell an 'average joe' that he shouldn't drive his car and eat meat, and should pa…

Just because they're hypocrites doesn't mean they're wrong. Carpooling or using public transportation and reducing meat intake (especially beef) are empirically direct actions that reduce emissions. There's obviously a lot more power structures could do like stop using taxpayer money to subsidize oil and meat company profits, but that won't stop me from doing what I can with my own two hands. Refusing to engage in go…

But the environmental factor of one Joe Average carpooling with a Bob Average is a lot lower than if Sir Rich Guy uses a Tesla instead of his private jet.

This is like a burning tire yard owner telling people to stop smoking cigarettes to keep the air cleaner.

Re: The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet

#145

Post by ajsnigrutin »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #100
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is, that the giant corporations can pollute the environment (eg. coca cola in a plastic bottle, with a plastic cap, with a plastic label, wrapped in a plastic 6-pack, with a plastic handle, on a plastic pallet wrapped in plastic foil), and rich environmentalists then fly their private jets to some 'green' conference and tell an 'average joe' that he shouldn't drive his car and eat meat, and should pa…

That's true, but I don't really see how the existence of assholes should give me a free pass for being an asshole myself.

Are you really an ashole if you want to eat a steak every now and then? Compared to people who use a private jet to fly 31 miles[0]?

If you want a cleaner planet, start with those who pollute the most, and then go down towards stuff normal people do and use.

[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/11/02/revealed-a...

Re: The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet

#146

Post by dTal »

jrootabega wrote: post #141
anonyfox wrote: post #12

No matter where you stand (some meat eaters tend to become extremely emotional on this): The fact that the scientific results and recommendations get utterly censored like this before publication makes me really angry. It’s somewhat fine for me if people/governments choose to ignore or argue against these results after publication, but this is just absurd… and is then used from people all over the world to point to „…

> Meanwhile, of course a vegan diet is better for the environment This is not a matter of course. Humans are part of the environment, and it is not a matter of course that a vegan diet is healthy for humans. The idea (I don't want to say fact, but I believe it) that meat and dairy consumption/industry are currently happening at a scale that is harmful does not mean that meat and dairy are bad for the environment.

I don't understand the structure of your argument. What do you mean by "not a matter of course"? There is plenty of evidence that 1) vegan diets are associated with improved health outcomes, broadly speaking and 2) animal consumption has a disproportionate environmental impact for the nutrients obtained (which is unsurprising from a physics perspective, since the animals eat plants that humans could eat directly).

Perhaps these things are not "inherently" true in that one can easily come up with edge-case counterexamples, but they are true on the whole.

Re: The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet

#147

Post by ajsnigrutin »

anonyfox wrote: post #105
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, how about we ban private jets, both for rich guys and average Joes?

why not? its clearly an inefficient way of travelling, probably MUCH worse than even ordinary flights, which already is a problem. Every bit counts, so lets start with that. (I'd allow some solar powered ultra-light jets (the emission-free thingys), though.) Once enough people are making sacrifices on their own, the tolerance of assholes polluting freely should finally become less and less, this can get the ball roll…

But we didn't.

We're pushing down on average working class of people while the rich can do whatever they want. Average joe can't get a plastic bag anymore and has to pay more for even worse alternatives (thick plasic bags need MANY reuses compared to thin plastic bags, plus joe now needs to buy plastic bin liners [0])... but coca cola (company) can still sell sugary water in ten layers of plastic, because reusable glass bottles would cut into their profits.

People are getting more and more fed up with this already.. luckily for some, there are bigger things happening, and people protest for those, but it's a mark of a wider trend happening all over the western world, where there are a set of rules for rich and influential and another for 'normal people'.

[0] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220329142327.h...

Re: The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet

#148

Post by fredrikholm »

cfn wrote: post #62
fredrikholm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? The problem is that cattle consumes orders of magnitude more water compared to plants, on top of the fact that they also eat plants, of which they convert a small portion of into (edible) mass. Their urine, en masse, is highly toxic to the local environment as it kills plants (high salt content, fertilizer burn) and pollutes rivers (pH, over-fertilization, algae blooming).

I live in a very small island where the main industry has been cattle (meat and milk production) for several decades. If the urine of the cows was toxic, the island would have been deserted a long time ago. It is as green as it has ever been, just lookup the Azores for some pictures. It is true that lot feeds and industrialized cattle production create massive amounts of pollution but so does industrialized agricultu…

Cheers; you're right. 'En masse' wasn't sufficient in communicating what I wanted, which was to say "in large, repeated and undiluted amounts".

> The problem is on the how and not on the what

If we could realistically supply the entire demand for beef with cows grazing on fields on the same amount of land, without raising the price directly or by subsidizing the cost, I'd be all in. This is literally impossible as industrialized cattle production is that much more efficient, no matter how revoltingly disgusting it is.

Re: The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet

#149

Post by nebulousthree »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #143
vintermann wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who complain about rich environmentalists flying on private planes seem to be on the right. I don't quite get this: you aren't opposed to the existence of millionaires, are you? You already accept that some people, through their hard work or inheritance or whatever, are entitled to a larger share of material goods. Why shouldn't they also be entitled to a larger share of the total emissions we decide we c…

If you fly on a private jet, you atleast shouldn't come on a climate conference and tell poor people not to eat meat and drive their car.

There's really not as much of a logical connection between the two as you think. Replace "fly on a private jet" with any other rich person activity and your sentence still works. So it's not really about flying on a jet.

Re: The meat industry blocked the IPCC’s attempt to recommend a plant-based diet

#150

Post by jrootabega »

dTal wrote: post #146
jrootabega wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, of course a vegan diet is better for the environment This is not a matter of course. Humans are part of the environment, and it is not a matter of course that a vegan diet is healthy for humans. The idea (I don't want to say fact, but I believe it) that meat and dairy consumption/industry are currently happening at a scale that is harmful does not mean that meat and dairy are bad for the environment.

I don't understand the structure of your argument. What do you mean by "not a matter of course"? There is plenty of evidence that 1) vegan diets are associated with improved health outcomes, broadly speaking and 2) animal consumption has a disproportionate environmental impact for the nutrients obtained (which is unsurprising from a physics perspective, since the animals eat plants that humans could eat directly). Pe…

You say "of course" when something is a matter of course. It is similar to begging the question.

1. Compared to what?

2. Animal consumption or current patterns of animal consumption?

Note too that I do not claim that meat and dairy are proven more healthy, or better at any scale. Just that we must be careful not to let greenwashing make us think they're evil and gross as a kneejerk reaction.

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