Comment by sarahj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sarahj | Hacker News Reader

One of the (many) reasons I went vegan was to cut my impact on the environment. I don't own or use cars. Where I can I walk, where I can't I take public transit. I've made considerable changes to what and how I buy, to source food with less of a total impact. I've started to look at alternative clothing and technology strategies to reduce my environmental impact there too.

I know there are plenty of geeks who have done similar things. The truth is that a new tech or more companies aren't going to solve this problem - the problem is we (who live in large economies) now live in a world which is completely separated from the daily realities of where our stuff comes from. We have spent the last 50 years enabling large mono-cultures and promoting specialization - which has done amazing things for food availability - at the expense that now a single plate of food easily contains ingredients from every continent - at a huge environmental impact. Similar trends have happened in manufacturing, textiles and practically every other industry.

Trends in tech that might help us:

* Hyper-local agriculture

* Locally-efficient down-cycling / recycling programs - for clothes, tech...pretty much everything.

* Teaching people how to buy and cook produce.

But the truth is that every individual needs to make a transition in how they live - that means eating less (hopefully no) meat and animal products, repairing instead of buying new, developing ethical supply chains (starting by knowing the supply chain is a good start!)

And yes, companies need to change and adapt too...that means more environmental regulation, more incentives to develop and adopt renewable sources of energy - how we structure those is completely beyond my expertise though...and I don't have much hope there.

> I went vegan was to cut my impact on the environment

Maybe you can explain to me then how it is that this makes a significant difference in global warming. The carbon that is released by cows and humans after consumption of plant matter was derived from said plant matter. The carbon in those plants came from the air. Hence, this is a closed system where carbon is taken from the air by the plants, consumed by the animals, and then put back into the air by the animals. There cannot be a net gain of carbon from this. The only reasonable argument I have thought of so far is that of methane, although in theory that can be pulled from the air and used as fuel (whereafter it becomes available to plants again).

The burning of fossil fuels, on the other hand, puts more net carbon into the air since those fossil fuels are being pulled from deep reservoirs that otherwise would be keeping their carbon to themselves. The fossil fuels are being burned far faster than they are being deposited back into the earth, which lacks the balance that the grass-cow-human-air-grass loop has.

I completely agree that transportation should use electricity and related energy sources wherever possible. However, I don't believe this will come any sooner than economics demands it. All the countries in the world cannot be controlled. Just look at all the unsuccessful wars where one country tries to control another's internal affairs. Without the majority agreeing to bite the bullet and use green energy, the first-world nations would become even less competitive than they currently are, making first-world jobs harder to find. Even many of the jobs related to building green technologies would most definitely be outsourced to lower-cost nations who don't follow the guidelines. Outside of fully socialised (zero-profit, public-benefit) production of green technologies, the cost is too prohibitive.

One of the reasons why this topic is rarely discussed here is because people often get very emotional. I hope people can understand that I'm simply trying to point out the problems with non-socialised green. Please don't shoot the messenger, as I care about the environment more than the average person; but that doesn't give me or you magical powers to make people stop using fossil fuel.

> Maybe you can explain to me then how it is that this makes a significant difference in global warming. The carbon that is released by cows and humans after consumption of plant matter was derived from said plant matter. The carbon in those plants came from the air. Hence, this is a closed system where carbon is taken from the air by the plants, consumed by the animals, and then put back into the air by the animals. There cannot be a net gain of carbon from this.

Instead of the energy taken to grow those plants going to feed people - they are used to grow animals. This takes an enormous amount of input energy from farming the plants, to transporting them to the animals. Not forgetting water transport also. Then there is the energy that is taken to manage the huge sums of waste that these animals produce (most of which is stored in huge silos or pits, which ends up leaching into ground water - but that's another thing). Then there is the energy to transport, kill, transport, package, transport and eventually sell - so the energy / calorie of animal food is no where near efficient as it is for plants and beans. Basically, it is not a closed system - we input so much energy into sustaining our meat habit (as well as the ethical implications of killing 100,000,000-500,000,000 sentient animals a day - including fish and the resulting bycatch)

I think we agree when it comes to the impact of a solution - there needs to be a HUGE concerted effort to even make a dent - people can't immediately change the nature of the worlds largest companies - but I believe that our only hope is to promote local change (to get people to commit to a lifestyle change that has to happen one way or another) - and push for governmental reform - will it be perfect? no. Will it be easy? nope. But we have to start somewhere - and I think diet and local economies might be a good first step.

> we input so much energy into sustaining our meat habit

Well, the energy alone wouldn't really be a problem if we were using green energy. The Sun provides more than enough energy for all sorts of human endeavours. At the same time, I absolutely agree that much of the current production and delivery system, food and otherwise, is inefficient. Efficiency is an important matter, but alone it's probably not enough to curb global warming in the long run, especially not if the population keeps growing.

As you might have guessed, I eat meat. The funny thing is, I don't do it for taste reasons. I do it because it's cheap protein that works well with my digestive system. For some reason, I can't consume more than 15g fibre per day without problems, and I've tried for months at a time before to see if I would simply adjust, but that didn't happen. If there were affordable, safe (no mercury or other contaminants), and quick-to-prepare plant-based food that went well with my body, I would certainly be on it. So far I haven't found such a thing. One of the most peculiar aspects of all this is that I constantly hear about how efficient plant-based foods are supposed to be in terms of production, yet plant based protein (without high fibre) is never cheap. It's always more expensive than meat/egg/milk based protein. How is it that plants are so expensive when they're supposed to be so efficient? Without that efficiency being seen by the consumer, it's unreasonable to expect everyone to switch.

On the topic of changes in the system, I personally would prefer the government-based approach where essential technologies for green energy were at least subsidised enough that they were on-par with fossil fuels. The problem is that companies might take advantage of the subsidies to increase their own profit margin, which is why I suggested that the production be fully socialised, so that profit doesn't get placed at higher priority than the environment. Moreover, there would be no unreasonable burden on individuals, as would be the case to expect everyone to simply buy a Tesla.

One of the reasons for the relative expense is the heavily-subsidised corn (and a few other) industries which pretty much all goes to animal feed.

That being said, my food costs were easily cut in half when I went vegan (and now, they are about 1/4 after some fine tuning of some other recipes) - I mostly get protein from chickpeas, kidney beans and lentils - which are all super-cheap compared to meat. I also eat a fair bit of tofu (which is very low in fibre and which is also very cheap compared to meat). Tempeh is another option, but I don't tend to make it often. We generally cook a big batch of food at the beginning of the week - which means time to prepare is amortized nicely (and frying tofu is very quick also)

I will admit that processed vegan meat-alternatives do tend to be more expensive than their animal derived counterparts, and not the healthiest - so I tend to avoid them - most of the expense is due to small production runs and limited quantity - and the extra processing.

I just looked up the price of bulk tofu, and it looks like the protein/price ratio is less than that of ground beef but ~2x that of milk or eggs. I can't say I've actually tried tofu. Maybe some day I'll give it a whirl.

For years now, I've wanted to see a wider availability of affordable plant-based proteins, particularly at normal grocery outlets. At the same time I understand that for many folks, beans are ideal since they're quite affordable. Soy milk is a prime example of the difference in cost between plant and animal protein. Not only does soy milk cost about 2x what cow milk costs, but it has only about 65% the protein per serving, making it more like 3x the price. Perhaps there will come a day when these things are more affordable, but I fear it may never happen since food seems only to get more expensive with time.

The main thread was talking about technology, so maybe someone can come up with a way to process and distribute plant products more efficiently. There is a certain dilemma here in that many plant-goers like small-scale operations, when large-scale operations and bulk processing are necessary for the lowest prices. In this sense, there seem to be two separate goals being combined together -- the desire to return to the olden days of family farming, and the desire not to eat meat. I have also felt that there is something of an elitist culture surrounding some of the vegan circles, where much of the food is very high quality yet rather pricey. Perhaps it dates back to Hitler's plant-based diet, which was also seen as high-class and elite. I can't help but wonder if the prices are kept where they are as a result of this elitist culture.

There's a great documentary on Netflix called Cowspiracy. It's very well sourced[1] and quite entertaining too.

1: http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/

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