Let's please not go round after round of this. That we get dreadful sub-threads is one thing, but that they're so predictable is the kicker.
> industrial agriculture as a whole is not sustainable, not just meat, and switching to a plants-based diet won’t save the planet.
Just because two things both cause emissions doesn't mean one isn't much, much worse than the other. The emissions impact of meat is far worse than the alternatives - beef emits a factor of 17x as much GHG than tofu.
Industrial farming at scale can oftentimes lower the GHG emissions per unit of food (that's how scaling works, actually). The problem with factory farms is when it is applied to (you guessed it) the mass production of meat.
> Sorry, but most vegans have serious nutrient deficiencies, like proteins, vitamin B12 or K2. Humans are meant to be omnivores
First, this is just not true and nutrient deficiencies can be easily substituted for. None of this is a reason to not "reduce your meat consumption," specifically when humans today consume substantially more meat than they ever did pre-agriculture (despite being "meant" to be omnivores).
> The vegan diet is not sustainable
Based on what? It's more resource sustainable than our current level of meat consumption, for sure.
Look, you're free to make the choices you want - but don't pretend that they're more environmentally sustainable or rational than reducing your meat intake. You like meat and are putting your preference for meat above the associated environmental concerns. Be honest with yourself.
Wasn't there a story posted recently where a study found that nutritional supplements don't work?
Do you fly less? Drive less or carpool? Recycle? Live in a small home? Did you decide to not to have children? Wear only used clothing? Do you track your trash and food waste? Do you eat less? Shower less? Do you donate money to environmental causes?
The militant "your opinion is bullshit" on individual issues is precisely why the majority of people don't take climate change seriously. I'll continue to enjoy my meat and do my part in many other ways, thanks.
None of your arguments justify continued high meat consumption. I don't own a car, I recycle, I live in an apartment, don't have children, thrift, compost, ??eat less?? (no - I eat sustainably, and it more than makes up for the amount I eat).
> The militant "your opinion is bullshit" on individual issues
Thinking you're wrong isn't "militant" - it's just thinking that you're wrong. Learn to have a discussion.
People don't take climate change seriously because they're able to hide behind moral excuses for their own behavior, not because they're turned off because a vegan was mean to them once.
I listed plenty of things I do that contribute at the margins. But unless I follow your rules, it will never be good enough.
>None of your arguments justify continued high meat consumption.
I don't need to justify a single thing to you or anyone else.
>Learn to have a discussion.
Rich, coming from a person who opened up the conversation with "what a bunch of bullshit".
Now lets say we could possibly mitigate the grimness of that outcome with our actions...wouldn't it make sense for all of us to do everything in our power? What would we lose? A burger tastes good, sure, but who gives a flying fuck if the planet is essentially uninhabitable?
Under the assumption of utilitarianism, it does seem like we ought do everything in our power.
The former is honest, the latter is a bunch of BS.
I will never understand why Americans are personally affronted by the idea that they should eat less meat. What makes it such an insulting proposition?
People are bred and raised with this axiomatic, individualist "you against the world" attitude from birth. There's a huge cultural divide.
"Why the fuck should I have to ever give anything up that I don't want to, to help you? And fuck you for guilt-tripping me" is pretty much the standard fare.
I'm not American, nor can you have any possible idea what amount I eat, nor "should" be eating.
Your four examples are anecdotal, much like mine, but we also see this sort of defensiveness around other topics where the conventional morality has some problems that conventional folks don't conventionally want to grapple with. I like Ian Danskin's work in general, but the way he looks at this in particular has resonated with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExEHuNrC8yU
Or you can look at the way that many Americans (for the purposes of this discussion; I am one, and I don't have sufficient insight into other folks) react to anybody suggesting anything is wrong with the status quo. America has not a conservative problem but a reactionary one, even outside of what is generally considered "political". This is part of the American hypocrisy about "leaving politics out of it"; most folks with a political education understand that life among other people is inherently and inescapably political, but it's only those who want to change things who are accused of "bringing politics into it", while the nature of the status quo is taken as implicitly apolitical.
To this end, I often see people react as if somebody else being a vegan is translated into being an implicit threat to a non-vegan's way of life. Similarly, you see this with those "normal people" finding gay marriage to be a threat to the "sanctity of marriage" or whatever (gay people are gonna make heterosexual marriages worse, are they?) and you see it with the completely bent way that Americans have and historically have reacted to the notion of somebody being "a feminist"--well before the internet's even more bent notion of some kind of "SJW menace" arose. I tend to think that that has transmuted into this reputation as much as any "bad apple"/obnoxious jerk has been, if not more.
Were I black or gay or trans or a woman and American reactionaries are threatened by me for existing, it is not a choice. When your existence is a political question and a political threat, it is not so easy to simply "take it easy".
Everyone else is at risk, but white men are some homogeneous group that bands together to hold everyone else back. Do I have that right?
edit: I'm trying to get away from arguing with anecdotes, but let me share a more extreme illustration of how a Christian might also feel "threatened" since you clearly already empathize with the gay community and why they feel threatened. A while ago the library in the next town over hosted a "drag queen story hour". They explicitly advertized this as being an event for children ages 2-8, where kids could come and read with a drag queen. The library said this was to promote diversity and understanding. Obviously the bible thumpers lost their minds, and the library then pulled one of the performers from the event, citing concerns about that performer being bullied. I googled that performer's name as part of trying to figure out what this was all about. The first thing I found was a video of that person, outside, in public, in a major city, masturbating with a toothbrush. The second thing I found was that person in lingerie kneeling before a Christian statue with what I assume to be simulated ejaculate on their face. This person, using the same stage name, was being promoted by the local government for a children's event. And objections about the appropriateness were labelled as bullying. If you're an otherwise peaceful, church-going person who has not previously been much of a party to any LGBT discussions, do you see why these people might feel like there's a threat to their way of life as well? And why they feel disrespected? There's not a lot of openly gay people in this town. This, and media, are all the exposure any of them gets to alternative sexual lifestyles. I don't know how you come back from something like to a reasonable discussion about the real bullying that happens.
We have these ethical giants among us, screaming "bullshit" and making assumptions about the rest of us based on their personal values.
Meat, especially beef production produces an order of magnitude more emissions than crops do. Rice is quite bad among the crops because of the methane produced but even that is far better than meat. [0]
You can even cut 80% of CO_2 equiv. emissions of beef by replacing it with pork. It's THAT bad.
Half of all people depend on crops produced with artifical fertilizer, so there's no way around that at the moment. But: you could reduce a lot of the production of crops if you hadn't to feed that many cows for meat for dairy products.
I'm not a vegan or vegetarian by the way but have reduced my meat consumption by at least 50-75% without actually missing anything. Don't go into the sacrifice area, nobody likes to be there. Just cut what you won't miss anyways.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/meat-and-seafood-production-consu...
Sure, except meat is an order of magnitude less sustainable than plant, because you extract ~10% of the energy from the meat you eat, and the animals the meat comes from extract only ~10% from the plant they eat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency.
> "Also you have to take the cost to healthcare into account. The vegan diet is not sustainable [...]"
Initial comment talked about reducing consumption, not stopping it altogether, you don't need to have a steak in your plate every day to get enough vitamins/proteins.
Regarding the cost to healthcare, assuming you are in a country similar to the US, if everyone went vegan tomorrow, paying for the cost of a few pills of vitamin/protein per person compared to the disaster that is US (and most western countries for that matter) diet currently, it would be a massive reduction in cost.
If you don't want to stop eating meat because you like it so much, that's fine, but it seems like you are throwing pseudo-scientific arguments at plant-based diet to make you feel less bad about your choices.
The best diet for health and the environment[0] is high in whole grains, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, with small amounts of meat and sugar. Making meat a treat (as written above) is absolutely right.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/16/new-plan...
The goal of the digestion is not to synthesize proteins. Quite the opposite actually: it's supposed to break down proteins into amino acids. Amino acids are then recombined into proteins inside cells, according to the DNA.
Here is the DNA codon table that gives the DNA <-> amino acid translation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_codon_table
I suspect that the "sustainable farming" you're describing, if applied at scale (= enough to feed 7 billion people) would require so much land as to completely devastate and replace every natural environment still left on earth. Little crops and pastures, as pleasing as they are to the eye, are not a natural environment.
Inuit is probably used as a living reference to what other cultures did in the past.
"Sustainable" is just a label, it doesn't in itself prove
a) that the methods it describes are sustainable;
b) that the conventional, industrial methods are not sustainable.
However, I agree that nothing natural can sustain a population of 7 billion. But we can try to concentrate the necessary unnatural food production on the smallest possible area, or use less technology and spread it over a much wider area.
This is largely an overconsumption problem, not an overpopulation problem. Most of the people born today will emit less than you or I ever will.
I don't want to stop doing any of these things, they make my life great. I could radically change my entire lifestyle to something much more limited and uncomfortable, only for the gains to be eaten up because my neighbor refuses to use contraception, and refuses to teach his 5 kids to use contraception.
The onus of climate change falls on people whose carbon footprint is exponential. Not me, mine is finite. I'm not going to move mountains in my life to make a difference that's fractional compared to other people's careless reproduction.
It's true, and it's enraging. But at the same time, are you wishing for the people in the developing world to keep producing so few emissions per capita? Because they would emit as much as we do if they could, and I'm sure they dream they'll be able to do it one day. And it's fair: but then we need to think of a recipe for sustainability that factors in much higher consumption levels for the now developing countries- instead of much lower ones for the developed world.
First, absolutely right that the big problem with agriculture is its industrialization. It uses a ton of petrochemicals and relies on shipping things all over the world. And monocrops are terrible for the planet in all sorts of ways.
Second, grazing is actually good for soil, which in turn is quite effective for sequestering carbon. Potentially rivaling forests if we’re talking about replacing industrial monocrop acreage.
And I like what you say about the cost being more realistic if we switch to smaller, local farms. Beef would cost more, because it would reflect the price of growing it sustainably.
Where I disagree is the attitude against veganism. This idea that you can’t be vegan and healthy is ridiculous. If we’re talking anecdotes, then my wife and kids (who are vegan because of allergies) are a good example because they have regular annual checkups and are thriving on a vegan diet. I have a friend who lifts and went vegan, and got before and after bloodwork and is remarkably healthier now. Most of the research I’ve seen over the past several years suggests that not only is veganism a totally healthy way to live, it might actually be the healthier way to live.
Hi, I went to high school too.
Unfortunately for you this isn't true. Humans are quite capable to adapt to a meatless diet and remain healthy. You don't need the levels of protein suggested by many government adopted food guides or athletic trainers. We actually consume far more protein than is necessary for the average person.
I haven't eaten meat in years. I run 5k twice a week, cycle everywhere when the weather is good, and my doctor says I'm in good health. It's definitely possible to be healthy and not eat meat.
There are exceptions! I have friends who are allergic to complex plant-based proteins. There are people from ethnic and cultural groups who are also not able to switch to an entirely plant-based diet. That's fine! There will always be exceptions.
However the majority of us are able to reduce our meat consumption and given the current climate and indications of where it's heading I think it's great that this is finally coming to light.
> If you want policy, ask the lawmakers to stop subsidizing corn and wheat.
As far as I know, in my limited knowledge of the matter, a large part of the produce from those subsidies goes to feeding cattle. The backtracking of the Brazilian rain forest seems to be in large due to soy crops to feed cattle. (It appeared as though the campaigning to save the rain forest in the 90's was working until about the mid-aughts when it started to revert... fast).
The majority of crops are going to feed the meat industry to feed an even smaller population of humans. If enough of the human population adapted to a plant based diet we wouldn't even need most of those crops.
I used to hold the, "humans are omnivores," opinion but.. it was just an opinion. There have been some eye-opening documentaries in recent years shedding light on the data and political forces used to ensure the survival and growth of the meat industry. That's what tipped me over... being lied to that meat was such a critical part of my health when it's not... and that such campaigning has been harming the environment and hurting the climate -- something that does affect me more than missing bacon. I can live without bacon if it means my kids and their kids have a chance at making it through the next 100 years of damage coming their way.
Do some research.
Meat takes a lot of energy to produce. It makes sense intuitively: think about how much energy was spent to raise you. That energy has to come from somewhere, and producing it has environmental side effects. Enormous ones. Don't underestimate the harm done by meat production to the environment.
Sustainably farmed eggs and fish are much more environmentally responsible, and provide the vitamins you mention. In the future all the essential nutrients will also be available via bacterial cultures.
Grazing animals do seem like the better solution. They can eat natural grasses and foliage, no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers required.
No thank you.
I know vegans have an anti-meat agenda and have been promoting this idea, however industrial agriculture as a whole is not sustainable, not just meat, and switching to a plants-based diet won’t save the planet.
The elephant in the room is that sustainable farming needs to be local, it needs natural fertilizers and it needs grazing animals. Sustainable farming also needs to do away with pesticides because we are killing the insects.
Also you have to take the cost to healthcare into account. The vegan diet is not sustainable and we already have a huge health issue on it hands, not from meat, but from all the cheap corn, wheat and sugar ;-)
Sorry, but most vegans have serious nutrient deficiencies, like proteins, vitamin B12 or K2. Humans are meant to be omnivores, we do not have the digestive tract of herbivores to synthesize proteins or the ability to synthesize vitamin C like carnivores for that matter.
If you want policy, ask the lawmakers to stop subsidizing corn and wheat. Making corn more expensive will make CAFO operations and thus meat more expensive, which will in turn increase demand for animals raised using more sustainable practices.