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Comment by Vinnl | Hacker News Reader

> 9. But if I eat less meat or take fewer flights, that’s just me – how much of a difference can that really make? > > Actually, it’s not just you. Social scientists have found that when one person makes a sustainability-oriented decision, other people do too.

This is the thing that still gives me hope. Try to do good, and people will notice - and, without so much as telling others to something, they will emulate you to some extent. At least, that's what I've anecdotally observed.

The other side of this is important as well: you don't necessarily need to be a leader in everything that can be improved. However, if you see someone taking the lead, being the first follower can get a movement going, and is less effort than leading the change to boot.

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Anecdotal, but I went vegan 3 years ago and in those 3 years, quite a few of my very close friends went vegan or vegetarian as well. It really does give me a lot of hope.

Even my parents started eating meat a lot less, basically only for big events and startet using oat milk for their coffee!

That's Awesome! It's not that long ago I went vegan myself :_) And more and more are also starting to take that option more seriously ^^

> startet using oat milk for their coffee

Are you and they using honey or white sugar from farmed sugarcanes? For the environment sake I wish that vegan diet would include honey as it has a big net-positive effect on the environment compared to farmed sugarcanes by not causing eutrophication or water pollution, and helps with pollination both for wild forests and agriculture.

I'd have suggested planting more sugar maples as a carbon sink but climate change is impacting the production of maple syrup:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/t...

While I'm with you on the issue of honey vs. sugar, it's not quite so simple... Where's that honey coming from?

Locally harvested? Great! But likely not the bulk of supply.

Supermarket honey? Transported from Goodness Knows Where -- very likely China or Chile, where the bees are intensively fed... (you guessed it!) sugar! That's why the honey is so flavourless, not to mention the Carbon footprint of all those honey-kilometres.

Bees are almost as intensively farmed as anything else, and, while the effects and outcomes are nowhere near as severe as other forms of intensive husbandry, the honey is not necessarily the pure and innocent product you might think it is.

Locally harvested is the only good option, but I would like to comment that when food is bought at lowest offer then you are likely to pay carbon-kilometres regardless if its corn, avocado, olive oil or what have you. Cheapest product in a global economy means that transportation cost is simply part of the competition to press prices down, and food prices has almost not moved at all in the last 50 years.

But for honey in particular I would say its is even more important to buy locally. It is better, safer, and better for the environment. Mixed honey has none of the unique taste that specific environments can create (my personal favorite is pollen from mixed coniferous forest, preferable with a gps coordinate to the hive). Imported mixed honey also share the same problem that plague olive oil, which is food fraud. Because honey is expensive it often get mixed with cheaper syrups or worse stuff. From a ecological perspective it is also good if the colonies are in areas that need pollination, which locally harvested usually are. Bonus points if its a small business by someone personally invested in it.

As for costs, the difference in prices from cheapest to expensive locally produced ones is normally for me about $1-2 dollar per jar. It such a small increase that just the security against food fraud is worth it (assuming you trust the local producer).

> Bees are almost as intensively farmed as anything else, and, while the effects and outcomes are nowhere near as severe as other forms of intensive husbandry, the honey is not necessarily the pure and innocent product you might think it is.

Thankyou for pointing this out. I say the same about almond milk and other products hyped by vegans that are pollinated by bees. The commercial beekeeping industry is horrific. Part of the reason wild bee colonies are collapsing is because of the diseases cultivated by commercial colonies.

I'm a backyard beekeeper myself and can say with at least some authority that there's nothing at all "vegan" or "moral" or "natural" about the way these commercial operations treat the bees and the environment.

Really? We have to be sympathetic to mindless insects now? For instance, folks raise millions of crickets in my state for flour and protein - we eat them - but the bees deserve special empathy because they're not free-range or something?

I understand folks like bees, see them in a kindly light. But they're little automatons with maybe a neuron or two total. If we raised them, crushed them and ate them, it'd be no different from how we treat other insects.

I think the GP was not referring to the harm to bees as horrific, but to the harm done to our living environment by harming bees.

I wondered, but couldn't make sense of that. How is providing commercial bees in bulk a detriment to the environment? When is another bee a problem?

I have no personal anecdotes to bring in here, but they said:

> Part of the reason wild bee colonies are collapsing is because of the diseases cultivated by commercial colonies.

So if another bee comes at the cost of multiple existing bees, that's a problem.

And why is one bee more important than the other? Not sure diseases are 'cultivated' by anyone - they are unfortunate wherever they occur. Again, not sure what the idea is.

Well, the point as I understand it is that it will eventually lead to the extinction of all/most bees - and plenty of other species, perhaps including humans.

The scale is my assumption, but the point appears clear to me.

Everytime I have seen a article or documentary on the subject the primary cause of wild bee colonies collapsing it is pesticides and herbicides, commonly used in for example sugarcane plantations.

Would you say that the average bee farming is causing more harm to wild bees than the average sugarcane farmer?

Have you been finding the jokes regarding vegans forcing veganism on others to be on the decline or is it still pretty bad?

If that sort of 'stigma' goes away I would imagine a lot more people would be going vegetarian/vegan.

That's one thing I've noticed in my environment: the number of vegetarians has exploded, there actually are several vegans now, and there is nobody loudly proclaiming how much they love meat and how they could never give that up. Likewise, nobody is claiming about activist vegans - which is probably due to the also relevant factor that none of the vegans and almost none of the vegetarians are activist. They're just setting an example, are willing to discuss it if you bring it up, and that's it.

Interestingly I eat nothing but meat (as I seem to be allergic to everything else).

Why is this the side of the ledger to work on? http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ seems like a much more effective means of mitigating the issues.

The worst things that could happen to the environment would actually be whatever happens that results in a surprise cold spell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age was such a period.

If there is a cold snap, that will likely mean MORE coal burnt in Europe, which will put greater amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, and when the cold period ends, even worse greenhouse affects.

There is virtually no situation in which carbon removal will be anything other than a net gain. We need to start removing carbon ASAP, irrespective of whether or not we can, collectively as a world of 7+Billion, reduce emissions.

The carbon removal side of the ledger is the one I think we can make meaningfully changes in fastest and with the least controversy.

It's not the side of the ledger to work on; it's one side.

However, I think it's an important side, because it's a side that will increase support for initiatives like the ones you mention.

the delusion that millions, if not billions of people are going to undergo what amounts to a spiritual revolution that directly goes against the highly pervasive & manipulative social conditioning that surrounds nearly every aspect of their lives is more absurd than even the most grandiose technological panacea. consumers can't even exercise the self restraint not to consume themselves to death.

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