Comment by deialtrous | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deialtrous | Hacker News Reader

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>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.

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