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Comment by redleggedfrog | Hacker News Reader

I think the problem with this is plausibility. I have much more faith in humanity culling itself, by whatever misanthropic means, than behaving "amicably and rapidly."

The possible solution might not be the pleasant one.

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Basically stop eating beef and using internal-combustion cars, and the situation is vastly improved. Not impossible. A bunch of tax law changes would do it.

And that's a lot more passable than killing a bunch of people.

>Basically stop eating beef and using internal-combustion cars, and the situation is vastly improved. Not impossible.

For one, beef's not that much of a problem: https://theconversation.com/yes-eating-meat-affects-the-envi...

But second, all kinds of systems we have have been premised on economic growth year after year. When we hit some harder limits, we'll hit them hard.

Many sources would beg to differ about meat not being a problem.

https://youtu.be/NxvQPzrg2Wg

(Sources: https://sites.google.com/view/kgssourcesmeat/startseite)

So even if FAO got it wrong, I just don't see beef not being a problem.

>Many sources would beg to differ about meat not being a problem.

The "sources" in the link either reference to mistaken FAO stats, or give some numbers out of context and with no argument (e.g. "One kilogram of steak needs up to 25 kilos of grain and 15,000 liters of water" -- ok, but what's that compared to other consumers of such resources? Or "Meat just makes up 18% of our calories humans eat", ok so?)

> "One kilogram of steak needs up to 25 kilos of grain and 15,000 liters of water"

The argument is that in order to produce 1000 calories worth of meat, more resources (e.g. land, water, greenhouse emissions) are needed than to produce 1000 calories worth of plant-based food.

> "Meat just makes up 18% of our calories humans eat"

Same argument: even though meat makes up only 18% of calories in our diets, it produces 58% of agriculture-produced greenhouse gases and takes up a whopping 83% of currently farmed land, compared to overall agriculture [1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

>The argument is that in order to produce 1000 calories worth of meat, more resources (e.g. land, water, greenhouse emissions) are needed than to produce 1000 calories worth of plant-based food.

Sure, but either quantity might not be the real issue on the grand scheme of things, if it's just eg. 5% of resource use or pollution.

Unfortunately, this is not the case:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/02/un-repor...

Note that the year of publication is 2010.

Meat is not inherently bad, but there is clear scientific consensus that the world's current meat consumption is unsustainable.

Here's a list of problems with 105 sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...

At this point, denial is willful ignorance of evidence... falling in the same vein as antivaxxers and climate change denialists.

Meat is not inherently bad

I'm not sure in what sense you mean this. It sure seems 'inherently bad' in just about every sense you could mean, to me. I think often it doesn't seem 'bad' to humans, mainly because we're humans and animals aren't. As if only human life has any value whatever. The very word meat sounds grotesque to me - imagine if some other species had a nondescript word for human meat.

> I'm not sure in what sense you mean this. It sure seems 'inherently bad' in just about every sense you could mean, to me.

I mean it in the most fundamental sense: there are sustainable levels of meat consumption that do not negatively impact the diversity and longevity of our biome.

> I think often it doesn't seem 'bad' to humans, mainly because we're humans and animals aren't. As if only human life has any value whatever.

Don't fool yourself mate, we're all just organisms - existing to feed and breed. What's wrong with bears eating fish? What's wrong with men eating fish? Why is commercial chicken "worse" than commercialized corn? What form of value does any life take?

Hi. I don't see how that's 'the most fundamental sense' at all, to say the least.

"Fooling myself" meaning not agreeing with your opinions? That's not a nice or useful way to talk to people. "We're all just organisms" - I hear that and I think "ah, next comes the faulty argument that was a premise of".

What's wrong with men eating fish. Ah, good question. I don't think you're really asking it, it's rhetorical. But there's a serious vegan/vegetarian literature (I mean, in ethics, written by philosophers) if you really want to learn about the subject. I don't think me talking about that here will be any use to anyone, human or fish.

Buddy, I'm already a vegetarian. I was hoping rhetoric would lead to some critical introspection, rather than perpetuating the buck passing stereotype...

Ethics is completely subjective. Slaughter isn't for me, but there are other ethical axioms that lead to rational support of the practice. It is not inherently bad.

You cannot sway people's opinions by starting with complete disregard for their opinions, or without a thorough understanding of your own rationale.

I find almost your every sentence is snarky, unpleasantly put in some way, ie not civil at all. The only exceptions assert as facts things that don't seem to me to be true.

I don't agree at all that Ethics is completely subjective. You say that like it's an uncontroversial fact. Just restating It is not inherently bad doesn't add anything, unless you're trying to say Nothing is inherently bad. Whatever inherently means in that sense. I think your last sentence is saying I have complete disregard for your opinions? I don't think anyone has a 'thorough understanding' of their 'rationale', whatever that means exactly.

I get a very strong passive/aggressive vibe from you, like you have no idea how hostile you sound. I really don't like engaging with it, so I'll stop now. Good luck.

Freshwater habitats are the worst hit according to the article with populations having collapsed by 83%. To that we have several major causes with one being acidification from CO2, eutrophication, fresh water usage/water treatment, waste management and electrical dams. Beef and internal-combustion are part of the issue of C02, but we need to also start addressing the other issues if we want to see the trend change.

The problem with that is people are really attached to their cars and beef.

Except that my diet and car have absolutely nothing to do with the problem. You're fixating on CO2 when the problem the article talks about is clearly environmental destruction. Canada and the US produce all of our own beef. There is no environmental destruction happening here for beef production. We can in fact produce much more beef using the existing idle grasslands we have now. And the only relevant problem from cars here is the mining, which is worse with an electric vehicle. Nothing you suggested even attempts to address the issue at all.

The energy, land, and water required to produce 1 lb of beef is several times greater than the resources required to produce 1 lb of chicken, which in turn is several times greater than the resources required to produce 1 lb of the average vegetable.

Not only that, but methane emissions from cattle contribute to climate change. About a third of anthropogenic methane emissions in the US are from livestock.

Not saying we need to stop eating beef completely, but if diets shifted away from beef it would have a number of positive environmental impacts.

You should be comparing calories, not pounds. Also, it really depends on what vegetables you're comparing (there is a 50x range in the amount of calories provided per input for plants as a class). Beef is generally less resource intensive than leafy green vegetables, but more resource intensive than most starchy vegetables. Chicken is less resource intensive than basically all plant food sources except for peanuts, potatoes, oils, and grains.

A brief glance at what most vegetarians and vegans are eating leads me to believe that their diets are probably not that much more environmentally friendly than your average meat eater. The real key is shifting toward inexpensive cheeses, milk, and oils for protein and fats and then consuming a lot more carbohydrates in the form of potatoes and grains.

And, really, the biggest impact environmental impact that most people can effect with their diet is not eating out as much.

Yes if you want to get into detail, one should compare environmental cost per calorie. Even then, beef still is worse than chicken and most vegetables.

I recognize that some vegetables are far more resource intensive than others, which is why I stated 'the average' vegetable. If we wanted to shift diets towards being more environmentally friendly, we'd have to be selective and deliberate about how we do it.

I would argue that shifting diets rather than trying to get everyone to become vegetarians (that don't eat lettuce) is the most sensible path. It would be hard to convince everyone never to eat a steak again, but if you can get people to go from eating 50 lbs of beef a year to 30 or 40 lbs and shifting to chicken and legumes it could make a sizable difference. Would be even better if the developing world went straight to sustainable diets rather than roaring towards beef-heavy diets.

None of those things have anything to do with the discussion though, which is developing nations torching natural ecosystems. Neither my beef nor my car is in any way a factor in this. Also, your comparison is disingenuous. A pound of beef or chicken contains far more calories and protein than a pound of any vegetable. And grass fed beef actually requires less energy to produce than vegetables.

Beef is a product made from cows. Cows require land, food, water, and infrastructure. Producing beef leads to the destruction of ecosystems, like the Amazon Rainforest [1]. By consuming beef, you are contributing to this phenomenon the article discusses. The emissions from your car, similarly, contribute to climate change and the destruction that goes with it as well. The lifestyle one chooses to lead, the products one consumes, and the decisions a person makes are all very much factors in the reduction of animal populations.

I'm starting to believe that you aren't arguing in good faith, in part because your statements are just thrown out there without any evidence or citation. Sure, a pound of beef or chicken contains more protein or calories than a pound of vegetables. But that's a nonsensical and misleading claim - many more pounds of vegetables went into producing that pound of beef and chicken. Many of those calories, by the way, were exhausted by the metabolic processes of those animals too. A much more efficient utilization of resources would involve just using those vegetable calories directly.

[1] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/194008291300600...

for the beef : https://slate.com/technology/2010/12/is-grass-fed-beef-bette...

for the car : just stop using a car, that'll be better for the environment.

I do not understand the relevance of that tabloid article. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I said. I live in Canada. All my beef comes from Canada. The fact that people in other countries burn forests to graze cattle does not mean that Canadians consuming Canadian beef cause those other countries to burn forests. My beef consumption is 100% irrelevant, they will burn the same amount of forest regardless of what I eat, because they are not burning it to feed me.

If you stop eating beef, others can eat Canadian beef and not brazilian beef. Your consumption has an effect.

> The energy, land, and water required to produce 1 lb of beef is several times greater than

It also tastes several times greater, and in exchange is several times more expensive.

> Not saying we need to stop eating beef completely, but...

Funny, every time an activist says "we", I understand "everybody else". Pro tip: you do not make friends by telling people how to live their lives.

I think you may be wrong here. Firstly, most cattle is not grazed on open pastures:

"[…] the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply" [1]

Rather, they are kept on feed imported most likely from South America, and "Agriculture is the direct driver for worldwide deforestation" [2].

So how does attempting to minimize deforestation not address the issue?

[1] http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401 [2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120925091608.h...

Literally all beef in Canada and the US is grazed on open pastures. The majority of it is sent to feed lots for the last couple of months of their life to be fattened on grain, but they spend the first year in pasture no matter what. Second, absolutely none of the feed is imported from South America. It is from Nebraska and Iowa in the US, and Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada. Both nations produce massive amounts of grain, far more than needed to feed all the livestock we raise, much less just the cattle. Third, this is the point, it isn't attempting to minimize deforestation. My eating beef or not eating beef does absolutely nothing, as my beef did not cause any deforestation. My habits do not cause people half way around the world to change their behavior.

And just as a note of interest, your first link is quite incorrect. It uses the lowest production pasture figure for its math rather than the average, it does not consider the idea that grass fed beef becoming a major industry might involve people switching to more productive grazing systems which we know produce at least double the calories per acre. It ignores the huge quantity of idle grassland we currently have which could be used for cattle production. And it neglects to factor in the millions of acres of corn and soy fields that would no longer be needed for cattle feed and can be converted to pasture.

https://bovinepracticum.blogspot.com/2018/03/another-land-us...

to be fattened on grain

...and chicken shit, feathers etc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poultry_litter#Use_as_cattle_f...

Thanks. I'm inclined to believe you on this as it seems reasonable, although I have to say that a blogpost is not the most trustworthy source of information :)

> You're fixating on CO2 when the problem the article talks about is clearly environmental destruction. Canada and the US produce all of our own beef.

Exactly, environmental destruction caused by the beef industry, an incredibly inefficient process if you compare the land and water requirements vs other types of protein.

> There is no environmental destruction happening here for beef production.

This is a huge blanket statement to make as well as being factually inaccurate.

That's a story that's often repeated here on HN. But it doesn't hold up much under scrutiny. American pasture lands, for instance, are not normally arable lands (cannot be used for cropland). And meat animals use less resources per pound of protein that vegetable sources. Certainly less plowing.

I'm always stunned by the idea that somehow raising millions of cattle is destroying the planet, yet the millions of buffalo that roamed the prairie before we arrived were natural and therefor good.

> And meat animals use less resources per pound of protein that vegetable sources.

What? There's literally hundreds of scientific articles out there that establish the opposite, e.g. [1]

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

Edit: Where do you think the protein in cattle comes from? Isn't it… plants? That the cattle eat? Once eaten, the cattle expend some energy to live and then we kill them for meat.

By not eating animals, you cut out the middleman and waste less energy.

That premise is only accurate if you are planning to have everyone consume livestock feed. If that is the plan, then you shouldn't be fixating on beef, you should be going after almost all crops we grow, which produce just as few calories per acre as beef, and even lower protein per acre. Depending on where you draw the line, your argument effectively requires all farms to only grow a small number of very high calorie crops like field corn and potatoes.

I'm sorry, but you are completely wrong. There are many plants that produce much more protein per acre than beef: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_protein_per_unit_area_o...

Edit: I can't reply to child anymore, max comment depth reached. Anyway, I think my work here is done :) I am not demanding we stop growing lettuce, I am demanding we stop raising cattle for proteins. We can keep growing lettuce for vitamins / minerals. As for the so-called "absurd fake figure" for protein/meat land utilization, that figure is from 1970's. I'm willing to concede that number may have risen slightly with the use of antibiotics as growth stimulator ;)

P.S.: Legumes are a whole family of plants, divided into 11 major types.

You can't say "you are completely wrong" and then support that by showing I am right. You showed 5 crops that produce more protein per acre than an absurdly low fake figure for beef. That's precisely what I said, that we would have to cut down to just a small handful of highest value crops. 5 is a small handful, we currently grow thousands. You know full well lettuce produces fewer calories and less protein per acre than beef. But you are not demanding that we stop growing lettuce, just beef. Your demands are inconsistent with the premise you use to support them.

> American pasture lands, for instance, are not normally arable lands (cannot be used for cropland).

This is a fair point but unfortunately intensive animal agriculture (in feedlots) dominates US and world beef production which requires the growing of corn and other grains to feed entirely or supplement grass-fed beef, introducing further environmental impacts.

feedlots do not dominate US beef ranching. It is regularly used but the average head of cattle spends less than six months in a feedlot per it's average 1.5-2 year lifecycle. Even so advocating that feedlots are replaced by grass fed cattle is much more likely to happen and the growth of the grass fed beef industry shows that it is/can happen.

>Exactly, environmental destruction caused by the beef industry

Not in Canada or the US. We have vast prairies that used to be inhabited by millions of bison. Now a fraction of it is inhabited by cattle instead.

>water requirements vs other types of protein.

How is temporarily using local water in the US, which is returned to the natural water cycle, causing deforestation in South America or Africa or Asia?

>This is a huge blanket statement to make as well as being factually inaccurate.

Then provide contradictory evidence. I can not exhaustively prove every single ranch in the US isn't clear cutting forests. You only need to provide a single example to disprove me. Please do.

I wasn't sure about this so I did a quick google. There may have been an estimated 20-30 million bison at one point across North America. And currently something close to 80-90 million cattle today in the US alone. To answer why this is bad and bison were fine you have to remember how these creatures are being used. The cattle will be concentrated today in ways the bison never were, so the impact will be less diffuse. Second, the industrial processes around cattle production will use fuel to grow feed, pump water, and transport the beef product that previously would have stayed in the ecosystem when the bison died. These externalities are what cause the problem apparently.

No one single ranch is necessarily causing problems. It's a collective issue. No single person needs to withdraw enough water from the well to run it dry, a town can do it one cup at a time without anyone intending to cause his neighbor to go thirsty.

None of that has anything to do with the subject of discussion though. How are those US ranchers burning down the amazon? US beef consumption and production are completely irrelevant to the developing world burning forests to produce their beef, which again is what the article we're discussing is talking about.

We have a much better record of cleaning up the environment than we do have in human culling.

Compare the US of today with that of 50 - 100 years ago. The tree cover is almost back to pre-contact levels, lakes & rivers are potable, smog doesn't kill 10's of thousands of people per year, et cetera.

IOW, local environmental problems have been solved. And we know how to solve them elsewhere in the world: economic growth. Once people have their basic needs secure, they start caring about this stuff. Internalize the externalities and let the market sort it out.

The challenge is global problems; climate change is a fairly classic tragedy of the commons. The solution here is similar: internalize the externalities and let the market sort it out. A global carbon tax, for example.

We used to be able to do this stuff. We banned CFC's world-wide, for example.

Our track record in culling is much worse. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot only managed to kill about 1% of the population, and the instability they created actually increased birth rates. Mao had an impact with the one child policy, but...

>The tree cover is almost back to pre-contact levels

The number of trees is not the issue. The ecosystem is. Huge plantations of SPF in rows that are all the same age and size does not make a natural ecosystem, and biodiversity is very low.

>lakes & rivers are potable

Public drinking water isn't even potable in many places, nevermind lakes and rivers. This is pure fantasy talk.

>IOW, local environmental problems have been solved

No, they have been relocated overseas so they are out of sight and out of mind.

>The challenge is global problems; climate change is a fairly classic tragedy of the commons.

Yes, I am sure the animals going extinct really just wish we could come together and tax people for breathing. Of course they don't care about their ecosystem being destroyed to grow corn for 5 years before exhausting the land and burning down another 1000 acres of forest for another 5 years of corn.

>Our track record in culling is much worse. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot only managed to kill about 1% of the population

None of them were trying to lower the population. Funny how you want to equate "lowering global population" with "mass murder" even though you clearly are aware that limiting births is the actual strategy, which actually works.

If you look at the report, generally things are getting better in developed counties.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/1409030-ani...

All the hit is coming in developing nations.

Or more accurately, destruction is slower in developed countries, largely because there's so little left to destroy. It is pretty hard to deforest Scotland any more than it already is.

What destruction? On most metrics, they are improving.

Well, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot were actually trying to lower their target populations pretty explicitly. But grandparent is way off about the numbers.

The populations Hitler targeted lost about 50%; if he won the war they'd have done much worse.

Pol Pot killed 25% of Cambodians, not 1%.

Stalin also had a greater impact on his targets. When he created the Holodomor in Ukraine, he killed 10 million, which is much more than 1% of that population.

He didn't say anything about targets though, he was talking about total population. Which is exactly the thing, none of them were trying to reduce the global population, so their lack of success in that endeavor is meaningless. The fact that the non-violent solution actually worked is very important, but is slipped in at the end after the red herrings about mass murder.

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