pawsforthought
“We can expect an influx of weapons in Europe and beyond. We should be alarmed and we have to expect these weapons to be trafficked not only to neighbouring countries but to other continents.”
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/ukraine-weapon...
[1]: https://everythingisamazing.substack.com/p/in-search-of-a-fl...
Absolutely, and use of pesticides and fossil-fuel-derived fertilizers in crop production and horticulture is also a huge problem.
Fact is though, the same quantities of calories or protein as beef or lamb require vastly more land and energy to produce than plant-based alternatives: roughly 100 times as much [1]. That’s owing both to pastureland and to the fact that half of all the world’s cereal crops are fed to animals.
Granted, livestock raised purely on marginal (i.e. non-arable) pastureland is relatively low impact in terms of carbon emissions. There’s still the factor that carbon dioxide is converted to methane, which in the short-term (that we actually care about) is much more potent in its warming effect.
That model does not represent most animal agriculture, however.
As for tropical deforestation, the United States is one of the chief importers of Brazilian beef [2], so as a country is absolutely implicated in the practice.
You’re right that clearing land for grazing is not the only economic incentive to destroy forest, but equally it cannot be discounted in its contribution to the trend.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
[2]: https://eu.wisfarmer.com/story/news/2022/01/05/brazil-ranks-...
Land use is a huge concern, given we already use half of the world’s habitable land for our agriculture [1], putting immense pressure on ecosystems and biodiversity due to this habitat loss.
Organic agriculture is less intensive, meaning for the same total food production, it must be more extensive — it requires more land [2].
That’s not to say there aren’t very good reasons to shift to organic agriculture. Fertilizer runoff leads to vast ocean dead zones, such as that in the Gulf of Mexico [3]. Further, we have an estimated 60 years of farming left if soil depletion continues at its current pace [4].
If we are to both curtail our land use and switch to regenerative farming methods, we must curtail meat production.
It takes around 100 times as much land to produce 1 calorie of beef or lamb versus plant-based alternatives (similar for the same quantity of protein) [5], such that we could reduce our land use for farming from 4 billion to 1 billion hectares and still feed the whole world on plant-based diets.
I’m not sure if I’ve connected the dots here especially well, but I hope I’ve at least conveyed that sustainability is multi-dimensional, and goes far beyond just getting off fossil fuels — even though that is a vital step.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
[2]: https://ourworldindata.org/is-organic-agriculture-better-for...
[3]: https://oceantoday.noaa.gov/deadzonegulf-2021/welcome.html
[4]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...
2.1 million hectares (5.2 million acres) of tropical forest is destroyed every year to make way for beef herds [1]. That’s 41% of all tropical deforestation (which is where 95% of the deforestation occurs).
This is a disaster both in terms of the vast stores of carbon being released, and the destruction of habitat in the world’s most precious and biodiverse ecosystems.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/what-are-drivers-deforestation
And sadly, beneath all the headlines about AI sentience, this is what Blake Lemoine was actually trying to draw attention to, and that executives consistently dismiss these kinds of concerns [1].
What of the consequences when these corporate values become embedded in AI that plays an ever greater role in our lives?
Take a look at the Environmental Justice Atlas [1], which tracks 3711 cases and counting.
[1]: https://ejatlas.org/
Our perceptions of risk are massively skewed by the (literally) explosive nature of nuclear disasters compared to this silent holocaust to which we’re shockingly normalized.
From Our World in Data [2]:
> Nuclear energy, for example, results in 99.9% fewer deaths than brown coal; 99.8% fewer than coal; 99.7% fewer than oil; and 97.6% fewer than gas. Wind and solar are just as safe.
That’s per unit of energy generated.
Curiously, while most can likely name Chernobyl and Fukushima (perhaps fewer Windscale and Three Mile Island), what of the Banqiao Dam disaster, which killed an estimated 171,000 people the 1970s?
All that said, extrapolating the lethality of nuclear generation to a world with many more nuclear plants is fraught, precisely because there are so few data points.
There’s no escaping the fact that these are incredibly complex and expensive machines, which can fail in unexpected ways, no matter how scrupulously they’re designed to be passively safe — especially when compared to a solar PV park.
[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00139...
[1]: https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-...
For example, electroconvulsive therapy in its early days. To quote the Mayo Clinic [1]:
> Much of the stigma attached to ECT is based on early treatments in which high doses of electricity were administered without anesthesia, leading to memory loss, fractured bones and other serious side effects.
[1]: https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/electroconvulsiv...
We already have the solutions for the future of transport, but they’re not sexy like self-driving cars, and they don’t prop up the auto industry. Walking, bikes, buses, trams, metros, combined with more dense mixed-use zoning everywhere.
From the article:
> Looked at from this emerging angle, where people discuss which children’s books to pack in a bug-out bag or which movies to store in a portable device, “prepping” starts to drift awfully close to “living.” The users are aware of this, and skeptical of some of the bright lines the mostly male preppers draw between “normal” life and the emergencies they’re readying themselves for. It’s a fascinating question: Is the objective of prepping to create some kind of continuity with life as it is ordinarily lived, or to adjust (violently, if necessary) to a jagged new reality characterized via pared-down survival measures?
Especially if you consider, car-centric development is bankrupting many smaller US cities. There’s a strong economic case for promoting dense, mid-rise, mixed-use development: it brings in much more in property taxes relative to the cost of city services required.
Simply put, every foot of road or pipe or power cable serves far more people (and economic activity) with dense development.
Add to that urban freeways with enormous junctions ringing this supposedly dense core, cutting off surrounding areas from car-free access.
Yes, the city center has some tall buildings. The car is still dominant on its streets though.