Meat industry blamed for largest-ever 'dead zone' in Gulf of Mexico
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
There are some maps showing the run-off situation.
Serious question, if articles like this upset you and you continue to eat meat, how do you justify it?
People can't stand being led to face the stories they tell themselves to sleep at night when they say one thing and do another. Most would rather blame you for making them feel guilty for revealing their denial and suppression than change their behavior to live be the values they claim.
Use plastics
Use car travel
Use air travel
Use some types of medicine
Use animal products (goodbye dress shoes, tons of food like eggs and pudding etc.)
etc. etc.
For everyone, at a certain point it becomes too much of an effort to deal with. They don't have the time, money or both. Who are you to decide where that line should be drawn?
The law regulates behavior that affects others. As they say, you're free to put your fist where you want, but not when it hits my nose.
If you pollute your home, that's your business. Polluting everyone else's world seems to open your behavior to regulation.
The reality is that there's an unpaid cost for many consumer goods in order to produce them at scale and at an affordable rate. Sometimes I feel that by partaking in this system you're implicitly perpetuating it. While it is difficult to give up those comforts & luxuries that we're accustomed to, humans have been around a long time without them, so we can get by without them too.
Suppose you have a simple problem of not wanting to subsidise exploitative practices in footed of coffee making. Now you have a solution that involves certification and trust or the other that involves growing your own coffee. The former has already been gamed multiple times. And growing coffee personally is not easy in most countries, neither is finding suppliers that adhere to your rules.
1. Plastics can be made biodegradable and from plant sources, and already are in a wide number of products.
2. There's already disincentive to waste fuel as it costs more, add to that an obvious demand for electric cars, I'd say people already are looking to do this.
3. Let's be honest there are far more pressing issues with air travel than the environment.
4. Yeah, this one sucks, contact lenses too.
5. There are stylish vegan dress shoes, as well as cheap dress shoes made without animal products. Both are easy to find. Unless you're vegan there's nothing wrong with pudding. Jello, gummy bears, and a wide assortment of other yummies that use gelatin, however, you're out of luck, but you can still do Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids.
I mean if we're talking about lines being drawn, we're the wealthiest country in the world, other parts of the world don't have a choice. You're right, of course, that everyone has their own point where it becomes too much but, shouldn't we be willing to be a little bit less lazy or stricter on pig farmers (the predominant producers of the toxicity problem). It's not just animal rights people and environmentalist this affects, it's causing algal blooms (Red Tide), killing off fishing industries in the Gulf, hurting the capacity of a huge natural CO2 sink, and lowering the property values of those around them. They've taken a communal resource and damaged it for everyone without recourse. Sounds pretty straightforward to me.
Meat's probably never going away, so is there a way we can incentivize the production of cleaner meat?
I don't even mean the lab-grown stuff, I mean free-range and cage-free and such. Wouldn't paying the premium for some theoretical "better meat" encourage meat producers to clean up their acts, instead of catering to people who eat meat because it's cheap and easy to cook?
Yes, by making the retail price reflect the true environmental costs of producing it.
And if that means that the supply is drastically curtailed (as it inevitably will be, as we increasingly recognize that the environmental cost is simply too high) - then so be it.
This is actually something I've been willing to bet on with the right odds (although it's not really practical). I think that there's a good chance that all fast-food chains will be meatless within my lifetime.
It would take one really serious mad-cow-ish health scare across a few major national chains to really reduce people's faith in fast food meat. It's unlikely, but not THAT unlikely, in my opinion.
Eat meat on occasion, and treat yourself to the good stuff, on occasion, like on holidays. And eat the fat, too. That satiates your appetite quickly.
I realise that eating meat is a luxury and consume it as something special.
When the aliens come I don't think they'll be too surprised at seeing humans committing violence against each other through wars, but will marvel at the extremely inefficient way we use animals for food.
Raising the price of meat to the point where one can only afford to eat it once a week is more realistic and attainable in five years. Then from there, consumers may realise they don't want to pay for the luxury and stop eating meat altogether.
Realise that people's identities are tied to their diets. To ask them to change their culture requires either a Year Zero type change, or more subtle nudging.
I'd like to pose a serious question to you as well: how do you justify singling out meat eaters over any one of the categories I list above?
You'd have much better luck asking people to cut their consumption of meat by 50% instead of trying to guilt trip them into becoming complete vegetarians.
I'm not making a judgment call here. The listed groups are not in any way worse than one another, but they all have something in common - potential to reduce their impact on the environment. I think it's quite silly to single out meat-eaters as the ones who have to justify their behavior, aside from the fact that the article at hand mentions the meat industry.
I commented on an article about the meat industry. I will happily single out those other groups in relevant articles.
1. Vegetarian since 2007 and vegan since 2010.
2. Never driven a car in my entire life.
3. Childless and vasectomized.
4. Fly once ever few years at most.
5. Grew up in a <1000 sq. foot home and have never lived in a space larger than 600 sq. feet as an adult. Average electric bill of $25USD.
I think I am doing better than most.
And the governments (and voters) subsidizing them.