171–180 of 234 posts
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The cattle on farms wouldn't be off roaming the countryside if we didn't eat them. They just simply wouldn't exist at all.
Is unpleasant existence always better than nonexistence? Put another way, would you make the same argument if the creatures in question were people?
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You're trying to explain why you think animals can think. The desire and the ability to explain things, and not thinking per se, is (I guess) what distinguishes humans from animals.
> The desire and the ability to explain things, and not thinking per se, is (I guess) what distinguishes humans from animals. But how do you know that animals have no desire or ability to explain things to each other, at least amongst their own species? We may not be able to read it, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, we already know that a parent can 'teach' its offspring that something is dangerous, for example…
I find it incredible that in 2017 people still debate if animals can think. You just need to interact with one or more dogs to understand that they think, and in most cases they think much better than humans. Lately seeing what humans did and still do to planet Earth, and what they do to each other based on completely made up topics like religion or plain material topics like skin color is making me wonder if humans…
>Lately seeing what humans did and still do to planet Earth,
>If humans pretend to be more intelligent than animals,
My brain knows this is just someone being snarky on the internet. But I keep running into this line of bizarre reasoning and I can't resist talking about it. I'm becoming more and more paranoid that someone actually says this non-ironically.
Obviously Charles Manson is more intelligent than a hamster. That's just a plain fact. Bad/good, warm/cold, bland/savory, smart/dumb - these are different spectra...
People are smarter than animals. This enables thermonuclear annihilation and so on.
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Can you point to some to research on the subject? I would think it's not at all clear in which manner animals think, be it in terms of a language or not. Even for humans language may just be a layer on top of thought, and in fact there are those who claim not to think in any specific language.
This is called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis if you want to do more reading https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
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No offense, but the hard reality is that those things don't have much of an impact in emissions. I was like you a few years ago. Even left the world and moved to an off the grid cabin for a year until I realized I was only trying to feel better about myself. Me installing some solar panels on that cabin: http://imgur.com/5mfDVHv.jpg Everything that we do, like using the internet, is still consuming massive amounts of…
Agriculture and forestry is listed as the second largest sector with 24% of GHG emissions, second to energy production at 25% so I'm not sure where you're getting that information in your second link. Animal agriculture is a huge drain on resources and the environment. There's clear cutting of the Amazon for cattle feed and grazing. Cows and cattle emit huge amounts of methane, many times more potent in climate chang…
That second sector includes quite a few things. For example deforestation for non livestock agriculture, city building, etc. None of which are alleviated by vegetarianism.
Also note this:
> This estimate does not include the CO2 that ecosystems remove from the atmosphere by sequestering carbon in biomass, dead organic matter, and soils, which offset approximately 20% of emissions from this sector.
So in practice this 24% is really 19.2%, and less than that is really caused purely by livestock.
> Some estimates put 20 kg of grain for a single kg of beef. That is not efficient.
Indeed, but chicken or pork produce less emissions than fruits or even dairy products.
> Does that mean we shouldn't try be consious in limiting our consumption and be damage we inflict on others?
Sounds good in theory.
In practice if you care about suffering, you should realise that agriculture is one of the biggest environmental disasters of the last couple thousands years. Agriculture has destroyed (and destroys) entire ecosystems.
And before you argue about organic agriculture: that would not feed 7 billion people. Maybe aquaponics / hydroponics could save the world, but it remains to be seen.
If you do really care about emissions and your impact on the planet you could do a number of things like not having kids and getting out of the industrial lifestyle. Many have done it (I tried and failed). Otherwise there is really no moral high ground in vegetarianism.
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The hard truth is that energy consumption is the biggest factor in global warning. The second one is deforestation. The third one is industry. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
That is not what your link says at all. The second largest category is animal agriculture and forestry at 24% of global GHG emissions, the largest is power at 25%. https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?artic... Animal agriculture is extremely destructive. Forestry being in that category, one of the biggest causes of deforestation is expansion of cattle grazing and feed lands, especially in the Amazon…
> Greenhouse gas emissions from this sector come mostly from agriculture (cultivation of crops and livestock) and deforestation. This estimate does not include the CO2 that ecosystems remove from the atmosphere by sequestering carbon in biomass, dead organic matter, and soils, which offset approximately 20% of emissions from this sector.
Not only the number includes crop agriculture, but also deforestation is caused by quite a large number of factors.
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> But it's been proven that producing meat requires more resources than producing plant based foods It's true, but you can see the global sources of emissions here. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... As I hope you can see we have bigger problems to worry about. > What do you think seeing animals being killed, sliced open alive etc day in day out does to the human psyche My grandparents ki…
Thanks for that link. I'll have a look. But why can't we act on multiple fronts? We can do many things to reduce our carbon foot print, and choosing not to eat meat or reducing it is one of those things. Our meat consumption is a big problem environmentally - see https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meat-and-environm... Also, the way we farm animals now a days is completely different to when your grand parents…
> But why can't we act on multiple fronts?
Yes, as long as we don't forget where the big problem really lies and we also act there.
I've met quite a number of vegetarians that believe that not eating meat is the solution to all problems. Of course they fly to Thailand for their yoga retreat, buy food at supermarkets, buy products that have been transported all over the world, and a very long etcetera. It's easy to ride on the moral high ground of vegetarianism blindly ignoring every other facet of our modern lifestyle. From a seemingly benign Google search, to watching a movie at the theatre.
I don't like to touch this subject but another big and controversial issue is having kids. Every kid we put on this planet will produce a number of tons of CO2. About 7 on average, about 20 for a US kid.
http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/uploads/per_capita_em...
So can we act on multiple fronts?
Can we remove a glass of water from a sinking ship at the same that we pour buckets of water in it?
You tell me.
I find it incredible that in 2017 people still debate if animals can think. You just need to interact with one or more dogs to understand that they think, and in most cases they think much better than humans. Lately seeing what humans did and still do to planet Earth, and what they do to each other based on completely made up topics like religion or plain material topics like skin color is making me wonder if humans…
I find it incredible that in 2017 people still debate if animals can think. You just need to interact with one or more dogs to understand that they think, and in most cases they think much better than humans. Lately seeing what humans did and still do to planet Earth, and what they do to each other based on completely made up topics like religion or plain material topics like skin color is making me wonder if humans…
Needless to say, they're wrong, proven wrong for the reasons you've described.
