Hacker News Reader

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

Let's please not go round after round of this. That we get dreadful sub-threads is one thing, but that they're so predictable is the kicker.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What a bunch of bullshit. I'm not a vegan, even though I'm sure you'll label me as having an "anti-meat agenda." I have substantially cut down on my own meat consumption due to the environmental impact.

> industrial agriculture as a whole is not sustainable, not just meat, and switching to a plants-based diet won’t save the planet.

Just because two things both cause emissions doesn't mean one isn't much, much worse than the other. The emissions impact of meat is far worse than the alternatives - beef emits a factor of 17x as much GHG than tofu.

Industrial farming at scale can oftentimes lower the GHG emissions per unit of food (that's how scaling works, actually). The problem with factory farms is when it is applied to (you guessed it) the mass production of meat.

> Sorry, but most vegans have serious nutrient deficiencies, like proteins, vitamin B12 or K2. Humans are meant to be omnivores

First, this is just not true and nutrient deficiencies can be easily substituted for. None of this is a reason to not "reduce your meat consumption," specifically when humans today consume substantially more meat than they ever did pre-agriculture (despite being "meant" to be omnivores).

> The vegan diet is not sustainable

Based on what? It's more resource sustainable than our current level of meat consumption, for sure.

Look, you're free to make the choices you want - but don't pretend that they're more environmentally sustainable or rational than reducing your meat intake. You like meat and are putting your preference for meat above the associated environmental concerns. Be honest with yourself.

>What a bunch of bullshit. I'm not a vegan, even though I'm sure you'll label me as having an "anti-meat agenda." I have substantially cut down on my own meat consumption due to the environmental impact.

Do you fly less? Drive less or carpool? Recycle? Live in a small home? Did you decide to not to have children? Wear only used clothing? Do you track your trash and food waste? Do you eat less? Shower less? Do you donate money to environmental causes?

The militant "your opinion is bullshit" on individual issues is precisely why the majority of people don't take climate change seriously. I'll continue to enjoy my meat and do my part in many other ways, thanks.

There is a drastic difference between saying: I still want to eat meat because I like it and I don't care about it's impact (or I offset the impact some other way like you say you do), and saying: vegan diet is not healthy or sustainable and thus no one should do it, and here are a bunch of pseudo-scientific facts to back my made up claims.

The former is honest, the latter is a bunch of BS.

You can continue to enjoy your meat, but still ensure your diet contains a responsible amount of it. A diet with proportionally less meat is both healthier and more environmentally sustainable.

I will never understand why Americans are personally affronted by the idea that they should eat less meat. What makes it such an insulting proposition?

> What makes it such an insulting proposition?

People are bred and raised with this axiomatic, individualist "you against the world" attitude from birth. There's a huge cultural divide.

"Why the fuck should I have to ever give anything up that I don't want to, to help you? And fuck you for guilt-tripping me" is pretty much the standard fare.

>I will never understand why Americans are personally affronted by the idea that they should eat less meat.

I'm not American, nor can you have any possible idea what amount I eat, nor "should" be eating.

Sorry, didn't realize I was talking to someone who believed making changes at the margin don't matter.

None of your arguments justify continued high meat consumption. I don't own a car, I recycle, I live in an apartment, don't have children, thrift, compost, ??eat less?? (no - I eat sustainably, and it more than makes up for the amount I eat).

> The militant "your opinion is bullshit" on individual issues

Thinking you're wrong isn't "militant" - it's just thinking that you're wrong. Learn to have a discussion.

People don't take climate change seriously because they're able to hide behind moral excuses for their own behavior, not because they're turned off because a vegan was mean to them once.

I think it kind of gets lost in this debate- but lets say that the facts point towards a very grim outcome in the relatively near future.

Now lets say we could possibly mitigate the grimness of that outcome with our actions...wouldn't it make sense for all of us to do everything in our power? What would we lose? A burger tastes good, sure, but who gives a flying fuck if the planet is essentially uninhabitable?

I recommend reading some essays on climate justice/meta-ethics, these are very interesting questions!

Under the assumption of utilitarianism, it does seem like we ought do everything in our power.

>I was talking to someone who believed making changes at the margin don't matter.

I listed plenty of things I do that contribute at the margins. But unless I follow your rules, it will never be good enough.

>None of your arguments justify continued high meat consumption.

I don't need to justify a single thing to you or anyone else.

>Learn to have a discussion.

Rich, coming from a person who opened up the conversation with "what a bunch of bullshit".

>>First, this is just not true and nutrient deficiencies can be easily substituted for.

Wasn't there a story posted recently where a study found that nutritional supplements don't work?

I didn't say supplements - I said substitutes. Nutritional yeast is yummy and is an easy source of B12 (mind you - many meat eaters are also deficient in B12, so not really a vegan problem)

That was a pretty incoherent rant, so not sure where to start.

Meat, especially beef production produces an order of magnitude more emissions than crops do. Rice is quite bad among the crops because of the methane produced but even that is far better than meat. [0]

You can even cut 80% of CO_2 equiv. emissions of beef by replacing it with pork. It's THAT bad.

Half of all people depend on crops produced with artifical fertilizer, so there's no way around that at the moment. But: you could reduce a lot of the production of crops if you hadn't to feed that many cows for meat for dairy products.

I'm not a vegan or vegetarian by the way but have reduced my meat consumption by at least 50-75% without actually missing anything. Don't go into the sacrifice area, nobody likes to be there. Just cut what you won't miss anyways.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/meat-and-seafood-production-consu...

One extremely low hanging fruit is to replace beef with pork or chicken wherever you're not really tasting and enjoying the beef. E.g. for tacos, where the flavor is dominated by spices anyway - at least for me it's equally good with minced pork.

> "however industrial agriculture as a whole is not sustainable, not just meat, and switching to a plants-based diet won’t save the planet"

Sure, except meat is an order of magnitude less sustainable than plant, because you extract ~10% of the energy from the meat you eat, and the animals the meat comes from extract only ~10% from the plant they eat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency.

> "Also you have to take the cost to healthcare into account. The vegan diet is not sustainable [...]"

Initial comment talked about reducing consumption, not stopping it altogether, you don't need to have a steak in your plate every day to get enough vitamins/proteins.

Regarding the cost to healthcare, assuming you are in a country similar to the US, if everyone went vegan tomorrow, paying for the cost of a few pills of vitamin/protein per person compared to the disaster that is US (and most western countries for that matter) diet currently, it would be a massive reduction in cost.

If you don't want to stop eating meat because you like it so much, that's fine, but it seems like you are throwing pseudo-scientific arguments at plant-based diet to make you feel less bad about your choices.

The message you're replying to specifically said not vegan. Your points about farming might be good but the vegan stuff is a straw man.

The best diet for health and the environment[0] is high in whole grains, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, with small amounts of meat and sugar. Making meat a treat (as written above) is absolutely right.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/16/new-plan...

> we do not have the digestive tract of herbivores to synthesize proteins [...]

The goal of the digestion is not to synthesize proteins. Quite the opposite actually: it's supposed to break down proteins into amino acids. Amino acids are then recombined into proteins inside cells, according to the DNA.

Here is the DNA codon table that gives the DNA <-> amino acid translation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_codon_table

> sustainable farming needs to be local, it needs natural fertilizers and it needs grazing animals.

I suspect that the "sustainable farming" you're describing, if applied at scale (= enough to feed 7 billion people) would require so much land as to completely devastate and replace every natural environment still left on earth. Little crops and pastures, as pleasing as they are to the eye, are not a natural environment.

Nothing "natural" would sustain 7b+ people anyway, so what's your point against "sustainable" as a reasonable (and considerable) improvement?

The point is that local and "natural" is not sustainable. We need scale for a reason.

Scale is not sustainable either. What we REALLY need is population reduction.

Silly to advocate for population reduction when people in the developed world (esp. the US) emit multiple times as much as those in the developing world.

This is largely an overconsumption problem, not an overpopulation problem. Most of the people born today will emit less than you or I ever will.

> Silly to advocate for population reduction when people in the developed world (esp. the US) emit multiple times as much as those in the developing world.

It's true, and it's enraging. But at the same time, are you wishing for the people in the developing world to keep producing so few emissions per capita? Because they would emit as much as we do if they could, and I'm sure they dream they'll be able to do it one day. And it's fair: but then we need to think of a recipe for sustainability that factors in much higher consumption levels for the now developing countries- instead of much lower ones for the developed world.

Meat is great. Driving anywhere I want as often as I like is great. Cooling my house in the summer is great. Buying products made of plastic is great.

I don't want to stop doing any of these things, they make my life great. I could radically change my entire lifestyle to something much more limited and uncomfortable, only for the gains to be eaten up because my neighbor refuses to use contraception, and refuses to teach his 5 kids to use contraception.

The onus of climate change falls on people whose carbon footprint is exponential. Not me, mine is finite. I'm not going to move mountains in my life to make a difference that's fractional compared to other people's careless reproduction.

> what's your point against "sustainable"

"Sustainable" is just a label, it doesn't in itself prove

a) that the methods it describes are sustainable;

b) that the conventional, industrial methods are not sustainable.

However, I agree that nothing natural can sustain a population of 7 billion. But we can try to concentrate the necessary unnatural food production on the smallest possible area, or use less technology and spread it over a much wider area.

Yeah, this sounds like typical carnist propaganda. Meat has some magical ingredient needed for health that no one can name? Almost all peer-reviewed studies show that vegans (diet done properly) are the only group within healthy range for almost all markers; most meat eaters are deficient in B12 etc etc. It is strikingly similar to smoking: educating the public takes a very long time, laws are always behind and good news about your bad habits become industry-funded public "knowledge". Maybe we will have figured out how not to kill ourselves by the time we colonize mars

Like with most things, it depends. Something jumps in and shakes up the simplicity Sometimes it's an eskimo getting his vitamin C from animal organs.

Never do I hear so many ordinary people caring about the Inuit as when I mention veganism. Really makes you think

Only very recently did we stop eating organ meats for the most part.

Inuit is probably used as a living reference to what other cultures did in the past.

It doesn’t make sense that vegans would be short on protein give that there are copious sources of vegetable protein such as beans. B12 is an issue, but you could also make a list of vitamins that an average person doesn’t get in their diet because they eat fast food and ramen.

A lot of what you point out is fair, but there are some points I disagree with.

First, absolutely right that the big problem with agriculture is its industrialization. It uses a ton of petrochemicals and relies on shipping things all over the world. And monocrops are terrible for the planet in all sorts of ways.

Second, grazing is actually good for soil, which in turn is quite effective for sequestering carbon. Potentially rivaling forests if we’re talking about replacing industrial monocrop acreage.

And I like what you say about the cost being more realistic if we switch to smaller, local farms. Beef would cost more, because it would reflect the price of growing it sustainably.

Where I disagree is the attitude against veganism. This idea that you can’t be vegan and healthy is ridiculous. If we’re talking anecdotes, then my wife and kids (who are vegan because of allergies) are a good example because they have regular annual checkups and are thriving on a vegan diet. I have a friend who lifts and went vegan, and got before and after bloodwork and is remarkably healthier now. Most of the research I’ve seen over the past several years suggests that not only is veganism a totally healthy way to live, it might actually be the healthier way to live.

> Sorry, but most vegans have serious nutrient deficiencies, like proteins, vitamin B12 or K2. Humans are meant to be omnivores

Hi, I went to high school too.

Unfortunately for you this isn't true. Humans are quite capable to adapt to a meatless diet and remain healthy. You don't need the levels of protein suggested by many government adopted food guides or athletic trainers. We actually consume far more protein than is necessary for the average person.

I haven't eaten meat in years. I run 5k twice a week, cycle everywhere when the weather is good, and my doctor says I'm in good health. It's definitely possible to be healthy and not eat meat.

There are exceptions! I have friends who are allergic to complex plant-based proteins. There are people from ethnic and cultural groups who are also not able to switch to an entirely plant-based diet. That's fine! There will always be exceptions.

However the majority of us are able to reduce our meat consumption and given the current climate and indications of where it's heading I think it's great that this is finally coming to light.

> If you want policy, ask the lawmakers to stop subsidizing corn and wheat.

As far as I know, in my limited knowledge of the matter, a large part of the produce from those subsidies goes to feeding cattle. The backtracking of the Brazilian rain forest seems to be in large due to soy crops to feed cattle. (It appeared as though the campaigning to save the rain forest in the 90's was working until about the mid-aughts when it started to revert... fast).

The majority of crops are going to feed the meat industry to feed an even smaller population of humans. If enough of the human population adapted to a plant based diet we wouldn't even need most of those crops.

I used to hold the, "humans are omnivores," opinion but.. it was just an opinion. There have been some eye-opening documentaries in recent years shedding light on the data and political forces used to ensure the survival and growth of the meat industry. That's what tipped me over... being lied to that meat was such a critical part of my health when it's not... and that such campaigning has been harming the environment and hurting the climate -- something that does affect me more than missing bacon. I can live without bacon if it means my kids and their kids have a chance at making it through the next 100 years of damage coming their way.

How on earth are you going to get farming local in NYC? Where? Thinking that making all roofs farms will make even a small dent is absurd, especially since it would be competing with solar.

> Sorry, but most vegans have serious nutrient deficiencies, like proteins, vitamin B12 or K2. Humans are meant to be omnivores, we do not have the digestive tract of herbivores to synthesize proteins or the ability to synthesize vitamin C like carnivores for that matter.

Do some research.

Just because there are issues with pesticides, subsidies, and other aspects of agriculture, doesn't make your statements on meat true.

Meat takes a lot of energy to produce. It makes sense intuitively: think about how much energy was spent to raise you. That energy has to come from somewhere, and producing it has environmental side effects. Enormous ones. Don't underestimate the harm done by meat production to the environment.

Sustainably farmed eggs and fish are much more environmentally responsible, and provide the vitamins you mention. In the future all the essential nutrients will also be available via bacterial cultures.

I completely agree. The only reason grains and soy are more 'sustainable' at the moment is because we're spraying the planet over in petroleum-based fertilizers. These mono crops drive up insect populations that like to eat those crops, so they have to use oceans of pesticide.

Grazing animals do seem like the better solution. They can eat natural grasses and foliage, no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers required.