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Re:Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission by maxxxxx on Thursday December 27, 2018 @10:34AM (#18770000)
You can eat plants perfectly fine which in addition is much easier on the environment. At a minimum meat consumption could be reduced a lot.
Re:Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission by merb on Thursday December 27, 2018 @10:50AM (#18770142)
some plants would kill the planet as well. let's take almonds for example, they need a huge amount of water. and still more and more products will include them.

if everybody eats plants we would also need a huge amount of water/field sizes to feed everybody. guess the best thing is a healthy mix of everything.

Re:Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission by hjek on Thursday December 27, 2018 @11:03AM (#18770234)
> if everybody eats plants we would also need a huge amount of water/field sizes to feed everybody.

Keeping non-human animals for the purpose of eating their flesh requires even huger amounts of water/field sizes; so much in fact that half of the world's crops are fed to non-human animals[0].

[0]: https://www.treehugger.com/green-food/half-of-world-crop-is-...

Re:Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission by cataphract on Thursday December 27, 2018 @01:00PM (#18771163)
Those numbers are way off, even if industrial animal husbandry is highly inefficient. You may want to read Meat: a benign extravagance by Simon Fairlie: https://www.amazon.com/Meat-Benign-Extravagance-Simon-Fairli...
Re:Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission by hjek on Thursday December 27, 2018 @01:48PM (#18771510)
Here's some numbers from a peer-reviewed analysis from 2018[0]:

> The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.

I know I was responding to a specific comment about land usage, but I probably wouldn't read that book as I also believe that we should prevent unnecessary pain and suffering, e.g. even if we hypothetically found out that the smoke from the ovens in concentration camps didn't contribute significantly to air pollution, they still wouldn't be a good idea, so of course I object to a book that describes ongoing mass killings as "benign".

But if you have the specific numbers from the book handy, I'd still like to give them a look.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

Re:Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission by jamil7 on Thursday December 27, 2018 @12:10PM (#18770782)
Animals need even more water and space, both for themselves and for the huge amount of plant crops we grow to feed them. Which one do you think is more effecient to eat?
Re:Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission by nec4b on Thursday December 27, 2018 @01:51PM (#18771525)
How much grass can a human eat? There are huge swathes of land where nothing but grass grows. Animal can graze it and people can eat animals.
Re:Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission by jamil7 on Saturday December 29, 2018 @09:10AM (#18783609)
This argument that certain areas _only_ support grass / ruminants gets brought up a lot but isn't accurate. Grasslands are some of the richest areas for growing plant-based crops in the USA.