Comment by rv-de | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rv-de | Hacker News Reader

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The best reason for exactly these individual changes you are describing is that - and this is a really funny and convenient coincidence - you are benefiting of them first and foremost yourself!

> - Stop flying to conferences. Go to a local meetup. It's fun. And cheaper. If you really need to get out of town, take a train.

No unnecessary hassle and stress from flying to far away places or getting stuck in traffic jams.

> - Start working part time, and part of that part time remotely.

Not sure why this is beneficial to those species or climate or anything but working less gives you time to focus on family, friends and hobbies.

> - Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. Don't go all the way vegan, but make meat a special treat not a commodity.

Meat is unhealthy - period. It's a nice to have but it is at the end of the day just not good for you.

> - Don't upgrade your phone. Seriously.

Applied shift of focus away from materialism and unimportant fuss like whatever new feature and gadget just come out.

You are the one gaining happiness and satisfaction of those steps right now! And on top of that - you're reducing your footprint :)

> Not sure why this is beneficial to those species or climate or anything

"...A number of studies (e.g. Knight et al. 2012, Rosnick and Weisbrot 2006) have found that shorter work hours are associated with lower greenhouse gas emissions and therefore less global climate change. The relationship between these two variables is complex and not clearly understood, but it is understandable that lowering levels of consumption, holding everything else constant, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

This paper estimates the impact on climate change of reducing work hours over the rest of the century by an annual average of 0.5 percent. It finds that such a change in work hours would eliminate about one-quarter to one-half of the global warming that is not already locked in"

-- Reduced Work Hours as a Means of Slowing Climate Change. http://cepr.net/documents/publications/climate-change-worksh...

Chicken, fish, and turkey are some of the healthiest delivery mechanisms for protein on the planet.

They can be grown sustainably, as well, so again, veganism isn't required. At the supermarket, just get the expensive chicken breasts - I'm guessing the vast majority of us on this website can afford it.

> Chicken, fish, and turkey are some of the healthiest delivery mechanisms for protein on the planet.

Observing the diets of blue zone populations, it definitely seems like meat should be consumed rarely. Although they consume different forms of meat, they seem to share in common meat consumption of roughly 1-2 servings per month. This is far rarer than the average American diet.

If you're going to be pedantic about the parent's "meat" generalization, you should probably be more precise than "fish".

Many commonly eaten fish are considered too dangerous to eat frequently thanks to pollution levels.

Nah man, just eat the plants those animals are eating. You can't get away from the 10x energetic penalty.

But the animals strip out the fiber/carbs and over time convert it into efficient stores of protein/fat.

I need ~140g protein a day to perform in the gym, I don't really want to get that from beans and be chew through 3,500 calories of carbohydrates to get to that protein.

"Hey guys I'm all for saving the world and stuff but I have to beat my squat PR so it doesn't apply to me because chewing beans is annoying compared to eating chicken"

This is exactly why we're doomed. Everybody wants to "save the world", everybody knows what to do, nobody does it because it's incompatible with our current self destructing life style.

No you don't >need< 140g of prot a day, you can hit all the macro/micro nutrients your body needs easily even with very low amount of meat. Who cares about gym performances, we're talking about the future of an entire planet/eco system.

> At the heart of capitalism is a vast and scarcely examined assumption: you are entitled to as great a share of the world’s resources as your money can buy. You can purchase as much land, as much atmospheric space, as many minerals, as much meat and fish as you can afford, regardless of who might be deprived. If you can pay for them, you can own entire mountain ranges and fertile plains. You can burn as much fuel as you like. Every pound or dollar secures a certain right over the world’s natural wealth.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr...

I sympathize with the environmentalist cause, because I am an environmentalist.

I listened to a podcast by Dan Harmon once, where he was talking about a fictional protest at Berkeley, with antifa on one side and nazis on the other. One of the Berkeley protesters in the skit says "While I don't support almost any Republican principles, I actually do think I should be allowed to own a gun." The Berkeley students, enraged, push him to the nazi side.

I've also heard this called "fallacy of the pure movement." There's lots of words for it, but the basic idea is someone alienates all but the True Believers from their cause.

In your mind, I must be a vegan to be a true environmentalist. There is No Good Reason to eat meat. A bit silly, there are plenty of Good Reasons to eat meat. I just named one. Another is culture - isn't a tribe of fisherman that have been fishing for 2,000 years entitled to continue to pass down their recipes for cooking fish to future generations?

Kinda moot though, because the dangerous thing you're opening yourself up to here is a retort of raw values - when was the last time you took a flight? How DARE you? Used a car? Why didn't you spend 2 hours biking instead? How DARE you not sacrifice every centimeter of your well being for the environmentalist cause?

There is no True Believer. Not even you are the True Environmentalist. Accusing me of not being True doesn't help.

alright that's enough flaming from you for today

You're the one that called me delusional lol where am I flaming?

> A bit silly, there are plenty of Good Reasons to eat meat.

Yes, but no reason to eat meat every day / multiple time a day.

> I must be a vegan to be a true environmentalist.

No, just act according to your beliefs. If you willingly do something going against what you preach then you should look into yourself, you're either lying to us or lying to yourself.

You don't have to be an extremist, if everyone was acting on the low hanging fruits [0] it would already help immensely.

[0] Eat local food, don't waste food, reduce meat consumption, don't overuse AC/heating, don't be one of these guys who take the plane every weekend, don't buy useless low quality gadgets, &c.

Also: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...

If an olympic level athlete can reach peak success [0] while "chewing beans" - you can do that too.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/ju...

Swimmers, tennis players, and runners. No weightlifters.

Why the attacks? I don't buy pounds of factory farmed beef a week. I'm buying free range chicken and turkey, sustainable fish, free range egg and cheese. This supports the cause. We are on the same side.

> This supports the cause. We are on the same side.

No definitely not you're delusional.

Personal attacks? Seriously?

This is no true Scotsman or some version of it. I don't get to be an environmentalist because I'm not a vegan? Nevermind the composting, bicycling, lobbying, donations, volunteering, picking up of trash, lack of a car, love of nature.

What if I turned this argument around? What if I claimed you can't be an environmentalist if you ever purchase petroleum based products (plastics)? And then I called you delusional for thinking otherwise? How would you feel?

> No weightlifters.

I've suspected that you'll write this.

https://www.riseofthevegan.com/blog/only-male-us-weightlifte...

Why do you think that 1kg of free range chicken is more ecofriendly [0] than the factory farmed one? I'd agree free range chicken is better from the ethical stand-point, but from pure efficiency of producing 1kg of chicken from available resources, I'd speculate that free range is not more ecological.

We are talking about the fact that people are not fitting on this globe anymore and some sacrifices need to be made. Why are we destroying forests to make land to grow crops to produce meat with 10% efficiency versus if we'd use that land to feed ourselves directly? Growing animals just to slaughter them sounds extremely inefficient, land and resource consuming. 10% efficiency is pretty shitty efficiency when we are low on resources.

[0] in terms of CO2 required, in terms of land required to grow same amount of animal meat, in terms of clean water required, etc.

> meat is unhealthy - period. It's a nice to have but it is at the end of the day just not good for you.

[citation needed]

I just invested 17 seconds into your health, buddy :)

Here you go:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26780279

Important note here is that it's primarily red and processed meat. I think fish and poultry are still considered healthy in moderate amounts.

Not to be a pedant but the study states "increasing amounts of red meat and particularly of processed meat" and even says the negative association "has been absent with white meat". I imagine the [citation needed] comment was more calling all out the blanket-ness of "meat is unhealthy - period". I think it'd be more accurate to say "large amounts of meat, especially red meat, are unhealthy - period".

Not sure how that proves "meat is unhealthy - period." This study specifically calls out red meat and processed meat. It says nothing about poultry or fish. Did you read the entire abstract?

> The association has not always been noted with red meat, and it has been absent with white meat.

So white meat is fine. Furthermore, the protein need is so great that for those over 70, restrictive recommendations should not be applied:

> Restrictive recommendations should not be applied to subjects above about 70 years of age, as the studies quoted herein did not examine this age group, and the inclusion of sufficient protein supply (e. g. in the form of meat) is particularly important in the elderly.

So, pretty obviously shown from your own source that "meat is unhealthy - period" is a false claim.

As others have already pointed out that paper doesn't say meat is bad, it says that the culprit is processed red meat. It's not the meat that's bad, it's the vat of carcinogenic chemicals that processes the meat that's the problem.

Just think about it a little bit, man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years eating meat, there's no way that it's bad for you.

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