31–40 of 287 posts
What if we all had a green wall with aquaponics ?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not interested in eating less meat so we can grow the population more. It's not a cost issue. Why do we want a population size that requires people to cut back on quality of life?
Would you eat more chicken instead of beef though? Is there a certain meat you couldn't do without and if so why? I'm not against anyone eating meat (although as an ethical - and hypocritical milk drinking vegetarian - I'd like to see animal suffering reduced) just interested in what meat eaters love about meat.
What would make people eat less beef? Since taxes seem a hard sell, would subsidizing chicken + non-meat protein help? As a vegetarian I'm trying to get my head around what would help change the behaviour of the meat eating HN members.
I think the possible benefits of this approach might be exaggerated. The uniquely "large" environmental impact of beef cattle results from methane emissions, but methane is not the big challenge; land use is. While methane is a potent greenhouse gas, it also has a shorter atmospheric lifetime than CO2/N2O, which, to me, suggests that it should be addressed after the other gases; the impact of a reduction in methane emissions will be felt quickly, and the risk of methane accumulation is lower.
Land use -- with 40% of the world's land devoted to agriculture -- is much more of a problem and I see less indication that it will be addressed by changing the relevant animal. A little, sure, but a lot of the land currently used for pasturing cattle isn't appropriate for chickens anyway, and I'm not convinced that it takes 8x as much land to raise a pound of beef vs. chicken.
Lab-grown meat is/will be a huge net win for the environment and hopefully our wallets, and I think it will be the final compromise on this front, at least for the next few hundred years. A few decades of lead time doesn't bother me for reasons discussed above.
On another front, the densest sources of plant protein after soy are hempseed, lentils and pumpkin seeds. These rarely make it into our diets, though. You need more than mere tax incentives -- the strong flavors of those seeds need to be managed somehow. I made a "curry" with a hemp-milk base once. The only thing that corrected the smell was a lot of Worcestershire sauce. Ironically, it's vegetarians who won't eat fermented anchovies.
What would make people eat less beef? Since taxes seem a hard sell, would subsidizing chicken + non-meat protein help? As a vegetarian I'm trying to get my head around what would help change the behaviour of the meat eating HN members.
I'm not interested in eating less meat so we can grow the population more. It's not a cost issue. Why do we want a population size that requires people to cut back on quality of life?
Many environmentalists say that even the current world population can't afford Western middle-class quality of life.
Efforts to limit population growth are already in place but it's mostly occurring in parts of the world too poor to do anything about it. We don't "want" higher population but short of some kind of massive neo-colonial invasion there's no way to stop it.
What would make people eat less beef? Since taxes seem a hard sell, would subsidizing chicken + non-meat protein help? As a vegetarian I'm trying to get my head around what would help change the behaviour of the meat eating HN members.
I have a mirror-image question: What will it take to convince vegetarians that a meat-based diet is actually the healthiest way to eat, and that meat can be raised in humane, environmentally-friendly ways? :-) Edit: This a serious question. Down voting is hardly a productive form of dialog.
Don’t we already know how to do this? For example, the concept of companion planting — growing plants which behave symbiotically together — is a centuries old idea. The issue is whether we have an economic incentive to.
I am not an agronomist, but my instinct is that companion planting interferes with large-scale farming, where machines or poorly paid humans in a hurry need to easy access to a single crop to harvest, and often destroy the field as they work. I'd like to think if the yields were worth it we'd have worked around that, but possibly robotic harvesters can take us there.
What would make people eat less beef? Since taxes seem a hard sell, would subsidizing chicken + non-meat protein help? As a vegetarian I'm trying to get my head around what would help change the behaviour of the meat eating HN members.
Continuing to improve artificial meat (e.g. Impossible Burgers) to get to the point where it's better than the real thing. You don't change people's minds by taking things away from them. You give them a better substitute.
What would make people eat less beef? Since taxes seem a hard sell, would subsidizing chicken + non-meat protein help? As a vegetarian I'm trying to get my head around what would help change the behaviour of the meat eating HN members.
Isn't the meat industry already heavily subsidised?
What would make people eat less beef? Since taxes seem a hard sell, would subsidizing chicken + non-meat protein help? As a vegetarian I'm trying to get my head around what would help change the behaviour of the meat eating HN members.
I have a mirror-image question: What will it take to convince vegetarians that a meat-based diet is actually the healthiest way to eat, and that meat can be raised in humane, environmentally-friendly ways? :-) Edit: This a serious question. Down voting is hardly a productive form of dialog.
I'm sure we could produce more meat, raised in more sustainable ways, but that would involve people taking a major decrease in the amount of meat they eat. Modern levels of meat intake are at their highest levels in history. We can easily afford to lower are intake.
I'm also not a vegetarian, just know quite a few and have been around when the arguments come up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a mirror-image question: What will it take to convince vegetarians that a meat-based diet is actually the healthiest way to eat, and that meat can be raised in humane, environmentally-friendly ways? :-) Edit: This a serious question. Down voting is hardly a productive form of dialog.
Actual scientific data proving something that's actually scientifically untrue. Every nutritionist suddenly bribed by a the meat lobby to throw out years of data to the contrary. Proof that the animals being made into food are entirely incapable of thought or physical feeling. That would probably cover everyone.