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Comment by deevolution | Hacker News Reader

The KISS solution would be to shoot all 1.4B cows on earth. That would slow climate change significantly and give us enough time to transition the world into using renewable resources. Also before I get downvoted for suggesting such an appalling idea as going on a cow murdering genocide, stop and reflect about the origin of that big piece of meat you ate for dinner tonight. Let's kill these cows once and for all.

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Methane accounts for less than 20% of all GHG emissions (in CO2 equivalent units), and cows are only responsible for a part of that. Reducing the number of cattle is important, but killing all cattle would only buy us a few years before we have to completely decarbonize the global economy. In industrialized economies, agriculture's relative impact is even lower, since we emit so many GHGs from other sources.

It's still a significant contributor of methane. This change wont happen overnight of course but more alt meat companies such as beyond meat and impossible burger will be able to engineer superior food products that will eventually price real meat out of the market. The cow populations will suffer slowly as will their corporate slave masters.

Cows are happier being farmed than not being.

[citation needed]

The extinct elephant in the room is the fact that those cows are going to be slaughtered for food anyway.

As a human maximalist, I could care less about what those cows think. The problem we face as a society is that too many of us are cow maximalist to the point we're prioritizing these cows lives over our own. Buying that cheese burger at McDonalds is a vote for more cows which has far more negative externalities than eating veggies.

Cow meat makes me strong. Veggies makes me poop.

What you have just stated is a very good example of eco fascism.

But may nevertheless be necessary. Polite neoliberal capitalism will not see us through this challenge.

Are there any steers in the theater tonight? Get 'em up against the wall...

Cow breeding is an almost entirely human-controlled process, we could phase them out in a few years while eating them unwastefully. But the problem is not the cows, it's the owners whose livelihoods you've stolen.

Also, destroying calorie production at gunpoint is historically a great way to start mass death human famines.

Sounds good to me. The moral argument is null and void considering we already participate in immesurable evil through mechanized industrial murder of billions of animals for consumption. Killing them all, except a small breeding stock so we don't lose the genetic qualities of cattle, in order to save our environment seems like a very wise thing to do indeed. I'd vote for this in a heartbeat.

The only arguments against it are capitalist.

I did not have kids, I won't have kids. If you want to have a lasting impact on earth, refrain from having kids. Problem solved.

In the meantime, I'll keep eating beef in an effort to get rid of the 1.4B cows you want dead.

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