371–380 of 481 posts
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And in case they choose "no", that carbon tax for farm animals help to think second time.
Yeah, it's much better for farming to be moved to countries with less labour and environmental regulations.
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It also ignores that animals produce the manure that is used to fertilize soil to grow crops in.
We use manure because it's coming out of the gills of the animal ag industry, not because it's necessary to enrich crop soil. Just because plastic bags are ubiquitous doesn't mean it's the only nor best way to carry items around, nor that we'd lose the ability to transport goods if they were phased out, nor that they don't come at a cost despite perceiving them as free.
Crop soil needs fertilizer somehow
What is your alternative to manure?
Bonus points if it uses less energy to produce than animals, produces less CO2 than animals, takes up less space than animals, or also produces food at the same time
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Cow farts being harmful for the environment is the silliest hoax I see repeated over and over. Spending two minutes reading about the biogenic carbon cycle destroys this misconception.
I read about the Biogenic Carbon Cycle on the UC Davis website: " As a by-product of consuming cellulose, cattle belch out methane, there-by returning that carbon sequestered by plants back into the atmosphere. After about ten years, that methane is broken down and converted back to CO2. Once converted to CO2, plants can again perform photosynthesis and fix that carbon back into cellulose. From here, cattle can eat t…
No, the difference in logic is based on the source of the CO2. Fossile fuels are burried in the ground and are not part of the carbon cycle. By removing them from the ground, we are adding new carbon to the carbon cycle rather. Coversely, if you burn wood, that carbon was (mostly) going to end back up in the carbon cycle and you've just sped up it's cycle and increased the portion of the cycling carbon that is in the atmosphere.
There are changes we can make to the cycle that do affect global warming (cutting down all the forests and killing all the kelp would greatly decrease the capacity of the cycle). Conversely, we can expand the carbon cycle by planting trees (that actually survive and form forests.)
However, you can't fix global warming by expanding the carbon cycle because you can't scale the natural cycle to match all the new carbon that is being added to it by buring fossile fuels. There are only two solutions, adding less carbon to the cycle by burning fewer fossile fuels and finding ways to remove carbon from the cycle by sequeresting it in long term ways.
Carbon taxes can fail to actually cause change if they allow fossil fuel burning to be offset by temporary bumps to the carbons cycle capacity because this doesn't really solve the problem and at best slightly delay it.
Cow "farts" (actually burps) are kinda the opposite, the methane is already part of the carbon cycle. However methane is a way more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 so by increasing amount of carbon cycle that is amospheric methane you are accelerating global warming until the methane decays into CO2.
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Could food security in case of another global crisis be a good enough reason? I don't know anything about the British situation AT ALL, but I think many in Europe think slightly different about the market-based solution when it comes to both food, medicines, and other essentials after corona. It turns out that when shit hits the fan, countries need to handle the basic needs of their population themselves.
People don't need lamb in an emergency.
Before I go into rage mode, I suppose I should ask, why Farmland? Both Denmark and Netherland are big in agriculture export and they are very good at it. I am not against planting trees but it on top of farm land doesn't make any sense to me.
Haiti cut down all their trees. When a hurricane passes through it moves what little top soil they have into the ocean.[1] Haiti overfished their costal waters. Now they do not have fish to eat and worse can not participate in the single biggest economic driver in the Caribbean, scuba diving. Planting trees on farms is incredibly important for maintaining and protecting the soil. The Americans learned that the hard w…
I am amazed by the idea (also popular among many in California) that one can “outsource” climate change to poor, developing countries by not producing for yourself
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Not really. Trees plant themselves. If it’s not being actively used for something/mowed it’ll turn back into forest.
In the US that would be a bunch of only invasive species for a long time.
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Most global deforestation involves slash and burn. This releases the carbon stored in the trees. But I think that's OPs point. A growing tree doesn't remove carbon, it temporarily stores it until it dies or burns.
Trees do pull carbon out of the atmosphere, which can be stored in the form of "wood", and it doesn't re-enter the atmosphere until burnt.
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To be more accurate - by removing subsidies, NZ farmers became more efficient and sell their products at the world price, which is quite often overseas. Subsidies and/or tarrifs always distort the market and have unintended consequences.
Not sure why you say 'more accurate'. What you state is what I implied. I hope this was clear. What removing subsidies do is unleash the potential. Lots of farming communities that live with subsidies are convinced that removing them is a dooms day scenario. However evidence often doesn't support this. Japan used to protect its market for beef. Then this was forced to be opened by the US. Japan farmer then realized t…
And the other situation is no subsidy, fewer players as they have to take what little profit there is and spend it more on overhead, and presumably less money reinvested in the local economy overall because of less economic activity from fewer players as well as that subsidy no longer being available to spend back on overhead and recirculate into the economy. And profit is presumably held by fewer and wealthier people who spend even less proportionally in the local economy than someone with less means.