What can I do about climate change?

I think it is also important to get an education on how we have ended up in a society where these meat products are considered normal.

I was 'born vegetarian' and I struggled to eat meat. I tried my hardest and genuinely believed that if I did not eat meat like everyone else then I would end up physically weak, without a fully developed brain etc. I endured eating burgers in the belief that they were really good for me.

I never learned to cook the stuff and got over my fears of not eating meat. Laziness really, not wanting to have the hygiene problems of a contaminated kitchen. A few meat food scares (BSE) helped me to take the easy route (for me) of living without eating meat. Haven't died of a lack of B12 yet and I know plants don't have any need for B12 but we do.

Anyway, I have had time since the days of teenage fear to think more positively about what I do and do not eat. There are notable athletes, thinkers and Hollywood stars that are strictly vegetarian. My meat eating friends only seem to know of Hitler as being famous for being vegetarian but I know not everything in this world is black and white, just because Hitler didn't eat burgers doesn't mean that I should.

Now role models are all well and good, however, the history of food is far more fascinating and I really like understanding how we got here.

The Chicken Tax is what got me to do my own thinking on the history of food. My grandmother was the last generation to remember when chickens were not what you ate every day. There was a time - not so long ago - when people saved up to eat a chicken based meal, this would be Christmas or a birthday, as a treat. Chicken is now wolfed down as part of a sandwich, sat at the desk, not savoured or enjoyed in some special ritual as per seventy years ago. The farmers in the USA changed the game to the intensive farming we have for chickens, the Chicken Tax that petrol heads know of was the gateway for me to learn that story.

Eggs were not a year round product, there was Easter and maybe a 'second brood' later in the year. So even eggs - a substitute for meat - are not actually what we think they are, we have forgotten the seasonal aspect.

Then there is the the cow. For most of mankind's history with the cow the cow was a beast of burden with added milk. You didn't eat your cows in times gone past when a cow was more like a domestic appliance, for pulling the plough. Only if there was plague and famine would you want to eat the cow. Doing so meant harsh times.

The Dutch invented a new harness for the horse in the 17th century that enabled horses to pull the plough. This put the cow out of work so there was a change on the farm. At around the same time the guy that inspired Darwin and did all the selective breeding made cows into the beef product every burger scoffer so enjoys. The cows that pulled the plough were nearer goat sized, albeit podgy goat sized, hey were not these giant things we have today, stuffed with corn and killed before the diseases from their corn fed diet kill them.

Then there are the sheep. I grew up in an area where wool was what mattered. I have studied the local history and absent from it is any mention of eating lamb or mutton. The products that were shipped out of the area were wool, more wool and more wool. The world was getting clothed not fed.

Clearly our ancestors had many uses for the animals they lived with and every scrap went to 'good' use. Unless you were lord of the manor then game was off the table too. People were not at all well nourished with the chemicals we sprinkle on the land today - doors in old houses are only 5 foot 6 inches tall, they didn't need them to cater for 6' tall people.

I think it is really important to understand a little bit about how we got here and why it is that we think we need beef. The ethics of the slaughterhouse is divisive, an in-depth appreciation of history is not. Really we have been conned into believing so much of the modern life, tricked into believing we need things that we do not.

You are getting awfully close to eugenics. That points not only at the moral problem with your willingness to sort human life into desirable/undesirable. It also offers a clue as to the accuracy of this mechanism: If these fascists one hundred years ago were making the exact same prediction you are making, and yet the world today is not overrun by these supposedly reproduction-happy Untermenschen... then maybe it just doesn't work like that?

More specifically: this fear is based on observed heritability of traits like intelligence, and also social status etc. While these are indeed hereditary, they quickly dissipate when considering more than a single generation.

But my understanding is airtravel is more fuel efficient than car.

A fully loaded 747 gets about 100 miles per gallon per passanger and takes a more direct route.

If you had a fuel inefficient van and four people for the same trip you’d like burn more fuel.

One option that doesn't get mentioned often enough, also not in this article, is simply working less. For most of the HN crowd it shouldn't be that hard.

https://thecorrespondent.com/4373/the-solution-to-just-about...

In the UK, to fully charge an iPhone twice a day for a year takes £0.70 of electricity annually; the average 3- or 4-bedroom home uses £500+ of electricity a year.

Anyone who has told you smartphones are a significant consumer of power doesn't know what they're talking about.