Going Vegan Won’t Save the Planet | Hacker News Reader

Going Vegan Won’t Save the Planet

bloomberg.com

59 pointsmancerayder113 comments

> farms growing crops have been just as destructive as those raising animals

This comparison does not make sense. What this reporter and the public, in general, fail to realize still in 2019, is that most of the farms producing crops are doing so to produce cattle feed.

The majority of agricultural fields are planted to feed livestock, not humans. Only a relatively small amount of crops goes directly to humans.

This is why eating plants directly is much less wasteful and more resource-efficient. If more people eat plant-based, much less land will be needed for crops, that's the point.

It's a lot less efficient to grow almonds than livestock-grade soybeans, so perhaps almond milk is worse for the environment than cow's milk? The article doesn't really go into that sort of analysis though, and it's difficult to imagine that the average vegan has a bigger ecological impact.

Soy crops are a good example, the majority of them are to feed livestock but they are a great crop to feed humans instead, and without all the waste involved in having to feed a cow first and then eat parts of it.

You can make plant milk with soy too, its a very versatile crop. With it, you can feed the same amount of people with a fraction of the land, water, and pollution.

You didn't address, and I don't know: what is the relative environmental impact of growing human-grade soy vs. livestock-grade soy? Is there even necessarily a distinction?

As far as I know it's all just beans, they are all eatable by humans. The difference between resource consumption of different types of soy crops, if any, is not comparable to the difference between eating the soy directly or feeding it first to an animal, the second is a much more wasteful and environmentally impactful as you can imagine.

You won't need to grow livestock-grade soy if you don't have livestock to feed. But we will always have humans to feed (because we're humans).

AFAIK there is no human-grade soy vs. livestock-grade soy. But the soy grown for livestock can usually be fed in the ratio of <soy for one animal>:<soy for many humans> (this ratio varies based on which animal and farming practice you consider).

Barley crops are a good counter-example. There are three main purposes: malting, milling & animal feed. A good chunk of the feed barley on the market is barley grown for malting or milling but wasn't good enough for those purposes and is fed to chickens. The alternative to feeding it to chickens is to throw it away. That's hardly environmentally friendly.

Some barley is purposefully grown for feed rather than aiming for the higher price that malting or milling will get. Yields on such variants can be as much as 3 times that of a nice malting or milling variant.

Given that a chicken can convert 1.5 grams of barley protein into 1 gram of meat protein, you can see how it be more environmentally efficient to "eat" barley by running it through a chicken first.

Well then lets no plant Barley to feed humans, let's use something else. The thing is a good portion of the surface of the Earth is covered with agricultural fields, most of them aimed at feeding cattle, not humans.

It's a bit insane if we think about it. I doubt that conversion from barley to chicken is so efficient. There is more nutrition in barley than the protein, there are carbs as well and fiber and micro nutrients that would be good for humans, besides only the protein.

A better comparison would be in calories, considering the waste of slaughtering the chicken and all the parts with don't eat, plus all the waste produced by the chicken and the water used.

Not plant Barley? Hate to tell you, but when they said 'malting' that means 'malted barley' as in the primary ingredient in beer. We are not going to stop planting that any time soon.

Feed barley also yields almost 2X that milling wheat does on dryland Canadian prairie, so switching species rather than variants doesn't change the argument.

And if you want to use calories instead of grams of protein, be my guest. It'll just help my argument. Chickens eat unhulled barley; the hull is almost half the weight of the kernel. Humans eat hulled barley and still a good chunk of its calories are indigestible fiber. That may help your digestive system but you're not extracting any energy from it.

Sure, that's true from a purely ecological perspective, but your argument does not capture the general inhumane practices that go on within the diary industry (e.g., caging, keeping cows perpetually pregnant, separating mother / calve at birth, etc.). All of these combined create a life of significant distress for all the animals involved and should be captured as an "environmental cost" in your equation above.

You are making the mistake of assuming that just by growing livestock-grade soybeans you magically have milk. You still have to make this animal drink about 3 gallons per 100pounds, per day.

https://beef.unl.edu/water-requirements-for-beef-cattle

You're right the water consumption of livestock raising is very important too, besides the huge amount of excrement produced.

To answer your question, it takes a lot more soy beans to feed a cow, that then will digest them and use only part of them, produce waste, consume water.

The cow will be slaughtered and only part of the body will be consumed (gut, head, for example, make for a huge part and are not usually eaten), some of the eatable parts will be wasted in the food chain.

If you count for everything, the amount of land and resources used to produce a gallon of cow's milk is always going to be much higher than anything done with a crop directly, because you cut out the middleman, the animal.

For the specific case of almonds, why not use soy milk instead for a better comparison. I'm sure you will agree that you can produce a lot more soy milk by using the soy directly then by feeding to a cow, impregnate it, shooting the calf on birth if its male, etc. the whole process.

Not to mention the copious amount of cow excrement produced and the impact on global warming due to methane emissions of the cows intestines.

cows dont eat soy, too much fat, it makes them sick

You can grow (maize and grass for) cattle in places where you can't grow crops.

Yes like in the Amazon where the forest is taken down for soy crops and for grazing mostly. A lot of the grazing land we have was created through human burning and deforestation in the first place.

And yet, in reality, the vast majority of meat comes from factory farms fed with corn and soy.

Even technically called free-range meat gets fattened up in the last portion of their lives in factory farms to get the slaughter weight so they also get fed corn and soy just less.

Farms grow crops that you can't eat, to feed to animals that you can.

Name the protein and fat sources that will replace meat. Tofu? We already grow soy for animal feed as a cash crop and it's pesticide and fertilizer intensive, and if people eat it directly instead of as an animal feed additive its production will grow at the expense of forests and soil health.

Nuts? I'm all for perennial woody agriculture, but the calorie/acre ratio is not great, and they are labour intensive for picking, netting, processing. I say this as a person who has an orchard of my own with hazelnuts and chestnuts in it.

The reality is that should meat be gone, we'd have to replace it with other foods, grown on a mass scale on agricultural lands. Animals can graze on products (grass, hay, soy, dent corn) that are marginal or useless for human consumption, and turn it into high protein, high fat calorie rich food.

There are populations that eat primarily vegetarian, but mostly they are also heavy on the dairy. But the moment you bring dairy into the equation you're also bringing in non-productive male calves -- in other words, veal. Similar story for eggs.

What we need to be doing -- along with reducing meat consumption some -- is coming up with more ecological ways to raise meats, and diversifying our meat products. Raising insects as feed stock for chickens, for example. Increasing perennial woody agriculture instead of cash crops, with small scale grazing of meat and dairy animals inbetween rows.

Cutting animals out entirely actually leads to a nutrient deficiency. The classic pre-green revolution family farm forms a kind of nutritive circle with manure, grazing, and rooting being an important part of soil health and maintenance. That didn't scale out in the last 100 years, but it's a model we need to look at.

EDIT: wow, the downvotes. Go vegans go!

”We already grow soy for animal feed as a cash crop and it's pesticide and fertilizer intensive, and if people eat it directly instead of as an animal feed additive its production will grow”

Only if farmers keep feeding soy to cows that nobody will buy anymore.

As long as you are eating a variety of plants and getting enough calories it is practically impossible to be protein deficient.

Technically, it is possible to be low or deficient in certain amino acids, but having legumes (including foods such as soy and chickpeas) and lentils regularly will cover that.

This vegan was almost to the end and ready to hit the upvote button...and you just had to do the EDIT, didn't you? Have a NULL value instead, and try to quit worrying about imaginary internet points. (No, you can't turn them in for prizes, I found out.)

How much protein do you think a normal person needs? Valter Longo recommends ".31 to 0.36 grams per pound of body weight). That comes to 40 to 47 grams of proteins per day for a person weighing 130 pounds, and 60 to 70 grams of protein per day for someone weighing 200 to 220 pounds." Why would you really need meat at all if those numbers are correct?

https://valterlongo.com/daily-longevity-diet-for-adults/

Normal person?

What about abnormal athletes, or people who do weight training?

How many peas are required if you want both a calorie surplus and 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per lb of body weight?

And do you think this is a real problem because a relevant amount of people are doing weighttrainig?

I don't think so. I would even bet that the amount is way below 1%

"Normal people" are dying not just because of their poor diets, but because of their lack of activity. The "normal person needs X protein" comment above doesn't consider this, because "normal people" are doing it wrong. They're statistically sitting at desks in in cars, so it doesn't matter what they need. Not to mention that is a pulled-out-of-a-hat cherrypicked statistic. No one agrees on how many grams of protein is needed, anyway.

Seems to be 4g of protein per 85g (1/2cup) of peas. I weight ~72 kg (~160lb); recommendation is 1.5-2g of protein per kg, so I'd need 142g of protein per day on the high end, which equates to roughly 3017.5g, 71 cups, of peas daily.

Frozen walmart sweet peas are .84c per bag, each bag contain 4 servings, roughly $7.45 in peas per day.

For comparison, chicken breast @ 100g (3.5oz or .45 lb) is 31g of protein. I'd need 458g of chicken breast, around 2.25lbs. I can get it for $1.99/lb, but the better quality stuff is $6.99/lb, so $4.48 to $15.72/day. When I'm eating to put on muscle I buy the cheap crap and slow cook it and toss hot sauce on it.

Lentils are a better choice than peas, you'd probably need half as much. I'd rather eat chicken than copious amounts of a plant alternative, but I have started eating more lentils b/c they're not at all as bad as I thought they'd be. I hate peas though.

I'm not sure how realistic eating 3kg of peas per day is. People would just get bored real fast, if they even manage to ingest that volume of food.

it would be awful. carbs are 11g per serving, I can't imagine how crappy you'd feel eating 71 cups of peas in a day.

It's a myth you get more than enough protein on a plant-based diet. I hear that those numbers are bloated and that most people would do fine with 30 to 40g.

Soy would give all the protein you need and then some. Eat soy, lentils, beans, chickpeas. Awesome food for you. Worst case, pea protein powder for body building, but indeed whole foods is ideal instead of highly processed foods.

You should watch the Game Changers movie for more information on vegan body building. Not that I would know anything about it, I haven't been to a gym in 10 years.

The only nutrient deficiency that is rather difficult to circumvent with a vegan diet is Vitamin B. Meat is one of the only places humans can obtain it.

Everything else is trivial to obtain via plants.

You mean B12? This is produced by bacteria in the dust. It gets injected to animals in factory farms, that's why they have it in that environment. We can also take the supplement directly.

Cobalt is produced in the dirt. Cobalt is used by animals to produce B12.

Pasture-raised meat ideally gets its cobalt from the ground, but most of the time there is a lack of cobalt so the animals need supplementation themselves. Factory-farmed animals, however, are always directly supplemented. Ironic, isn't it?

Personally, I have no choice but to supplement my B12s, as meat causes my body to produce kidney stones.

The nutrient deficiency I'm referring to is soil health, not human. Classic pre-industrial agriculture makes heavy use of animal manure as a soil amendment, as well as the use of grazing and rooting animals for soil modification. It's a very effective way of returning NPK to the soil and maintaining long term viability. It just doesn't scale out to large industrial operations.

> Name the protein and fat sources that will replace meat.

All sorts of beans like soybeans and others, legumes, chickpeas, lentils, tempeh and tofu yes are good products. More than enough protein to feed people, much healthier too.

Look ,its just not true there is nothing magical about meat. It's highly environmentally impactful and completely optional.

>if people eat [soy] directly instead of as an animal feed additive its production will grow

But will it though? Cutting out the (rather wasteful) bovine middlemen should increase efficiency rather significantly.

It's like you didn't read the parent post you're replying to. If you can't address the quantity argument, the rest of your post is moot.

I absolutely read it. The point is that the land and crops used for animals are disjoint from the land and crops that humans need, and the entire reason why pastoral economies developed in the first place was to take advantage of the fact that we can raise animals as food in conditions that humans couldn't.

The key question is quantity of _what_. It's not a one for one trade.

I'm not a vegan or vegetarian but your statement is utterly wrong.

We do not need meat. Eating meat is less efficient in production then plant based. Inform your self properly.

And yes we have many countries with people who do not eat meat every day.

"Inform your self properly" is a pretty presumptive and arrogant statement.

My wife was vegan for several years. A very educated and committed one. She had chronic health problems that went completely away once she started eating modest amounts of meat and fish.

Please recognize the diversity of human biology and cultural experience. A few hundred thousand years of omnivorous lifestyle can't be waved away with strident statements.

It can. Enough people do it.

Nonetheless here in Germay when you are vegetarian or vegan a doctor will recommend regular blood test.

And yes you have to be careful or more aware when you live a vegan lifestyle.

Also the educate statement was a remark to the comment of efficiency of plants vs. meat.

I'm not even advocating a meatless diat. Low meat on the other hand I do.

petri dish seeds: nuts, legumes etc. Its probably easier to just grow cereals?

Paul Graham:

I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

News Guidelines:

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

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

A better way to say it would be that a lot of grazing land isn't useful as farmland.

> farms grow crops that you can't eat, to feed to animals that you can.

You can then grow crops that people can eat instead, and feed those people using much less resources.

> Cutting animals out entirely actually leads to a nutrient deficiency.

This is scientifically just not true, a proper plant-based diet is adequate to all stages of life - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864

You didn't read. I was talking about soil nutrient deficiency, not people.

Crops need NPK. Manure is a great source.

> Name the protein and fat sources that will replace meat.

Insects?

vegans don't eat honey, I don't think you will see them eating bees either.

Some plants have exceptional environmental properties; things like soy, oats (0.1g CO2e/kcal!!) and potatoes. Others are worse than eating meat; if you get your calories from fresh tomatoes (12.22g CO2e/kcal, heated greenhouse) you have an order-of-magnitude higher impact than if you get it from chicken (~1.58g CO2e/kcal, depending on part).

The food system is not easily grouped into "climate-conscious" and "bad"; a vegan diet is better than a western one in every study I've seen, but we could do much, much better.

I highly recommend this study as a starting point, though you need to convert the unit they use, kg CO2e / kg, to the unit we eat in, kcal: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261...

And, shameless self-promotion: I maintain a food blog that attempts to build an evidence-based low carbon collection of recipes at https://www.carboncook.com

Nobody really eats tomatoes for the calories though. People (with meat-based or plant-based diets) use tomatoes for flavour and other nutrients.

Tomato pastas like pomodoro and putanesca were my go-to lunches before I learned about this, and tomato soups remain super popular, so I disagree that they are simply a condiment.

Still, perhaps they are a bad general example.

Perhaps a better one would be rice (~2g CO2e/kcal). There the problem is the massive methane emissions produced from the cultivation approach.

Point being: There are huge differences between different foods, and they are non-obvious.

It's precisely because feeding humans is so environmentally impactful that we should not be feeding mostly animals, only to eat them.

The CO2 impact of rice and grains in general can't be compared the impact of animal products, here is a graph - https://i0.wp.com/shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads...

In your examples, the tomatoes were the flavour element you enjoyed, not the main caloric driver. That was the pasta (probably wheat). Your example agrees with the GP.

I really wonder: how is it possible to even consider getting calories from tomatoes? They're tasty, but they will never stop your hunger

I mean come on, a diet of 100% tomatoes does not make any sense, right?

The bulk of human calories on a whole food plant based diet comes typically from beans, legumes chickpeas, soy, root vegetables like potatoes and sweet potatoes, starches in general, grains like whole rice, quinoa, etc.

Then another good portion of the calories typically comes from fruit, and another good portion comes from vegetables and salads.

A diet of 100% tomatoes does not make any sense from a nutritional perspective, they are mostly water, but they are a good addition to a balanced whole food plant-based diet.

You're right, it's a poor example. I guess I was thinking of tomato pastas and tomato soups, for instance.

A better one, like you mention, is rice - again a crop with substantially worse carbon impact than chicken.

Fruits are even more complex - if you get them in season, locally and actually eat them, they are fantastic. If you buy them out of season, due to their short shelf-life you'll find they are often air shipped and have outsize waste at the retail level. Avocado is a good example here, water issues aside. In season they have a small impact, out of season they are air-shipped from South America to the rest of the world.

My point being: There are large and non-obvious differences, and they do not clearly align with traditional diets.

Meat is also shipped across the world a lot, like every other food. So the impact of transportation adds up to the impact of production, which is huge.

It's precisely because feeding humans is so resource-intensive that we should not waste so many resources feeding animals.

> A better one, like you mention, is rice - again a crop with substantially worse carbon impact than chicken.

Do you have a source for that? The data at [0] indicates that chicken is about 50% worse than rice in terms of CO2e per Calorie. In fact, chicken is worse than every vegan food listed there except for broccoli, which has very few Calories to begin with.

[0] https://sustainability.stackexchange.com/questions/5883/why-...

AFAIK, the problem with rice is methane not CO2.

That’s accurate. But the data cited in the page I linked is based on CO2 equivalent, which accounts for the higher global warming potential of other gases, including methane. I suspect that the high global warming potential of methane is the main reason that rice is more impactful than the other non-animal-based foods.

Prepared tomato products are not made from greenhouse tomatoes.

They are made from varieties that taste good and they are picked ripe instead of for shipping.

For cooking, canned tomatoes are usually better than fresh store tomatoes. The fresh ones are for salads or whatever.

Let us stop consuming ruminants meat first then. Beef and lamb are not even that good but require so much resources.

> Undoing this damage [...] includes less meat, less intensive and more intelligent farming, and the application of new technologies, including ways to produce high volumes of food for cities.

So “going vegan won’t save the planet” by itself, but it plays a major role in doing so. Makes sense, especially if one considers that the production of meat presupposes the production of plant-based fodder worth about 10 times the energy.

The title is misleading, or simply clickbait. Then again, it helps tricking your meat-loving friends into clicking on it...

> The title is misleading, or simply clickbait. Then again, it helps tricking your meat-loving friends into clicking on it...

I’d rephrase the latter part as “it helps tricking your meat-loving friends into sharing it without reading or analyzing what’s true”. Most other places on the web don’t get into value or fact based arguments.

Okay article, terrible headline.

No single action in isolation will save the world from climate collapse. The problem stems from countless actions taking place today that do not pay for the external cost of emitting carbon into the atmosphere. The defeatist attitude that something should not be done because it doesn't solve the entire problem need to stop in order for us to begin to make progress.

I'm going to say something very unpopular:

If your plan to save the world includes requiring all 9 billion people to fundamentally change their lives (especially if its perceived as a degradation of their current quality of life), it's never going to work.

Now I'll speak for myself. I will not go vegan, given the current offering of vegan foodstuffs. It just doesn't taste as good. I know it may be better for me than my current diet, and I know it could help decrease my overall carbon footprint. I still have no plans to do it.

Perhaps it makes me greedy. Perhaps it makes me an asshole in the eyes of the next 20 or so generations. But I look at it in the larger context - the ship has sailed, our course towards permanent (on a human scale) climate change was set by the industrial revolution and the speed set to flank by global increases to our quality of life.

So yeah, I frankly refuse to permanently sacrifice my quality of life to have no effect on the future.

Interesting, I've never felt any quality of life loss when going vegan. Just the opposite. I feel much better and food is delicious now that I have discovered a whole new range of food that I never considered before.

I'm glad you feel that way. I've looked at the array of foods I'd have to give up, and it's not worth it.

> now that I have discovered a whole new range of food that I never considered before.

Here's the awesome thing from my point of view: I can eat vegan foods and hamburgers. :) Nothing about eating meat prevents me from also eating vegan dishes.

I can do so too. However, I would never really discover all those great options if I haven't seriously tried to limit my meat consumption in past few years.

I do eat meat, but these days ~90% of my diet is vegetarian. My favorite burger place around is... a vegan one. I never tried it before, now it's my number one when I crave for a burger. Go figure.

Some people go vegan because they care about morality and "purity", but the fact is - if everyone really tried to consider alternatives to meat and eat it only occasionally, even without taking any moral stance about it, the environmental impact of meat production would look completely different than it does now (and would actually be less problematic morally as well).

Current generation here (I'm 20). There's a lot of steps you can take without decreasing your quality of life - is that cut of steak _really_ that important to your quality of life?

If, aware of the problem of climate change AND of the solutions, you choose to do nothing then you won't just be an asshole in the eyes of the next 20 generations, you're an asshole in the eyes of my generation too.

It's not just steak. It's tacos, hamburgers, roasted (or friend) turkey, pork chops, ham, BLTs, chicken tenders, milk, cheese, lattes, milk chocolate, white bread, clam chowder (any chowder for that matter), sushi... The list of non-vegan foods is quite long.

> you're an asshole in the eyes of my generation too.

I'm willing to accept that. The hate of a group of anonymous people is something I have no problems with.

Current generation? So am I like dead or something (30)?

The OP and billions of other meat eaters may be assholes, but I think it's a salient point that any solution will have to cater to these assholes to be effective. Just calling them assholes probably wont influence them to change their ways.

I agree we are probably past the point of no return and I am a (non-orthodox) pescetarian (sp?).

Here is why...

I have never owned a car and bike everywhere and I also basically just eat peanut butter+jelly/ cereal/ 'rabbit food' as my old HS XC used to call it - and try to stay alive by also drinking kefir. This is all because I am cheap and lazy and increasingly set in my ways.

So I do not really have a decrease in my already low quality of life by sacrificing meat or not driving, and in fact I think biking increases my quality of life.

I really don't get the need to eat all this meat though. It's alright, but there are just as many delicious things that aren't meat. And if you are eating meat all the time that's not all-that-natural and frankly kind of gross.

Lastly, that chicken or burger or bacon (ok, bacon is delicious) came from an animal that suffered a lot for your increased quality of life. Is the trade-off really worth it? I think that if you think it is because you are a human, then you are either not thinking about what you are doing or you are and are very cruel.

One does not need to eat meat with every meal to still enjoy eating meat. Salads, tofu, pasta, all make great meals. But so do ham sandwiches, BLTs, and yes, the occasional steak.

> animal that suffered a lot for your increased quality of life

How much sea life has suffered to ship your computer from china to you? How many people suffered in the conditions used to build your computer? How many people suffered and died mining the materials used in your computer?

How many people have suffered and died to provide you with electricity? How many migrant workers suffered in the sun for low wages to provide you with the fruits used in your jelly?

Suffering is not limited to animals to provide us with the life we're living.

Yeah you are right. The funny thing is I just had this discussion with my roommate last night. He was inebriated and stuffing his face with pounds of pork - and insisted I try some. I declined, and then he made the same points as you but less sober and cohesively (sorry Jake, but it's hard to take you seriously with all that bbq sauce on your face).

I think there is a scale, this is why I am not orthodox about it. If I went to Mexico City (and I would fly there) I would have to try the tacos. But my personal desire for meat is usually outweighed by my dislike of how the animals are treated.

Fish is meat.

You're not sacrificing anything by eating just fish.

Maybe there's some sort of religious distinction for you, but meat is any muscle tissue from a living creature.

> I will not go vegan, given the current offering of vegan foodstuffs. It just doesn't taste as good.

This may be, especially regarding texture. But think about it the other way: steak etc. is a poor substitute for the whole universe of flavours of plant-based dishes. As long as you are not clinging to meat substitutes, you are not missing out, quite the contrary.

If you are looking for a seamless segue from meat to plant, try vegan sausages. I found them to be indistinguishable from meat sausages. As long as texture is ground away, your taste buds won’t care about the type of protein involved, more about the spices used.

Doesn’t speak for the quality of industrial meat I suppose...

As I responded to a sibling comment - there's nothing about eating meat that prevents me from also eating various vegetarian and vegan dishes. I've had some pho with tofu, and it was fantastic (if expensive).

There's also milk, and milk product that I would have to give up or accept substitutes for.

Of course. Just to state the obvious: asking for puritan veganism is not necessary, and diplomatically irresponsible.

A friend of mine loves meat dishes, but has no problem eating vegetarian or vegan for days in a row. For him, meat is an optional ingredient, alongside cabbage and beans, not the staple of a healthy or even psychologically necessary diet.

That’s the mindset that is feasible and that we need. Not the religious zeal of that which calls itself veganism.

> If your plan to save the world includes requiring all 9 billion people to fundamentally change their lives (especially if its perceived as a degradation of their current quality of life), it's never going to work.

> Now I'll speak for myself. I will not go vegan

I agree with your logic, people like you are why it will not work. When the shit hits the fan, I hope your grandchildren can reserve some empathy for their ancestor who so loved his lifestyle that he was willing to watch the world burn rather than reduce his consumption.

As has been pointed out in other threads, it will take more than two generations of people for the lives of humanity to really be changed. And, in all likelihood, humanity will simply use technology to adapt to the changed circumstances.

My hypothetical grandchildren's grandchildren will be dead of old age well before humanity will have to do more than move from one city to another to preserve their way of life.

> And, in all likelihood, humanity will simply use technology to adapt to the changed circumstances.

That doesn't strike you as a convenient thing to believe because it means not having to give up anything? You remind me of smokers 20 years ago who assured me that medicine would cure lung cancer before they caught it so they didn't worry about it.

I believe in it, because it's already happening. Air conditioners counter heat. Heaters counter the cold. The Venetians have proven that they can hold back storm surges, and live in a city slowly being flooded. The Dutch have proven they can hold back the ocean itself. We are capable of planting and harvesting crops on previously unfarmable land. Biodomes have been tested (and work) at a small scale, and show promise at their ability to scale up. We can desalinate and clean water at the cost of mere electricity - something we're making more and more abundant and less reliant on fossil fuels.

Moving from these technologies that exist today to live in a harsher world tomorrow is nowhere near as big a jump as curing cancer.

'older' person here (48) - so I'm not the next generation, etc. I've been mostly vegetarian (and sometimes vegan) for the last couple of years.

A lot of it does taste better than meat to me. Not everything, but then there's plenty of bad meat meals around that I'd avoid anyway (most burgers, etc). I had a vegan burger last night that was tasty and succulent - the kind of thing that I think a blind taste test would mean a meat eater would think it was good.

I occasionally eat meat, but make sure that it's good (last time I made a real effort was a steak house for my birthday while I was in Barcelona, it was incredible). Most of the time I feel better heath-wise for eating a mostly vegetarian diet (which is often vegan) - I don't feel like I've been violated (which with hindsight was how I felt after many meat-based meals), and don't feel like I'm eating loads of fat. In addition I can actually eat more than I used to, which is great.

The ship may have sailed, but we can permanently change its course if we each individually choose to do so. People often complain that there's no such thing as democracy any more, etc., but you can make a difference in your individual purchasing an lifestyle choices, and if everyone (or even a significant percentage of people) did the same, the world would be better off.

Without wanting to start a comment war, it sounds to me like you're being a bit selfish, and then trying to legitimise what you want to do by saying that it'll have no effect on the future. If everyone acted like this, the world would be in a terrible state.

I am being a bit selfish - but I think that applies even to philanthropists. They do it because it makes them feel good, or to atone for past sins, or to make future generations look upon them as "good".

But I also disagree that my individual effort will have even the smallest effect. I'm one of nine billion. We frequently underestimate how big a number that is, and how insignificant the individual is when looked at as part of the whole.

You could count people at a rate of 10 a second, and still take 70 years of non-stop counting to count everyone in the world.

You are not the only person in this world. Maybe the change will need to be forced upon us, but there are big changes that started grass-roots

No, I'm not the only person in the world. But I'm also not very unique in most of my point of views. There's a lot of people who, when asked these same questions will provide very similar answers (especially once you move past any "politeness").

I agree and I don’t think you’re an asshole.

There is a bigger problem before a one-size-fits-all-no-meat solution, climate change deniers.

If you can’t get people to acknowledge the problem is real, you aren’t going to get them to make a big life change to help address it.

I’m on the same page as you regarding meat. I love it. One of my hobbies is cooking it. That’s said, I acknowledge there is a problem and I want to do my part, despite that it may not do much in the grand scheme of things.

We are now a single electric car household, I walk or ride my bike to most things, I take a ride share if I have to go across LA.

Three dinners a week are vegetarian/vegan from Veestro (prepared meals) so I don’t have to _work_ to have a “lower quality” meal.[1]

I moved east in LA so I could own property to start growing my own food (not fully self sustained - yet)

All the vegans still driving cars, how green are those cars? Are they getting more efficient? How green are the trucks moving the produce you buy? Why do you live in a big city paying rent instead of having a home with land that you can grow your own food?

Use a phone? Gotta get that new phone as soon as it comes out?[2] Live in a house? Look out a window? What’s the carbon footprint of processing the sand to make this things?

People need to spend more time pressuring governments and corporations and finding any way that they can personally help that keeps them happy with their quality of life and less time looking down their nose at other individuals for not following their holier-than-thou solution.

[1] veestro isn’t low quality, it’s pretty good. I meant lower quality in my eyes because it’s lacking a key ingredient

[2] I only buy refurbed phones because I know sand is a bitch.

Edited for more ‘tude

>Undoing this damage, while also managing to feed the nearly 10 billion people expected to populate the earth by 2050, is going to require lots of ideas integrated together.

Back of the envelope calculation: The global cattle population is around 1.5 billion. A cow eats between 8 and 16 Mcals per day, which is roughly 4-8 times what is recommended for an average adult (2 Mcals). If we diverted all those calories to humans we could feed 6-12 billion of them (neglecting protein, vitamin and mineral content).

This seems to ignore that cows eat calories that humans cannot.

Those calories are the way the world handles crop failures.

Let's assume that normally 2/3 of the grain calories are fed to livestock. Then we get a massive crop failure and global yields are 1/3 of expected. Price of grain goes up, farmers can't afford to feed their cattle so slaughter their breeding stock and the price of meat goes down. In the short term meat consumption goes up to counter-act the loss of grain calories due to the failure. In the medium term the smaller amount of livestock eating grain means humans eat a higher percentage of the grain grown. In the long term it's a new harvest and cycles repeat...

I am wondering if there will really be a clever technical solution to climate change. Maybe we just need to come to terms with the fact that we have been living drastically above our means and we need to adjust our standard of living accordingly.

Having written patents and helped build a satellite now in orbit, I wondered about clever technical solutions until I finally concluded what many had long before me: the belief and hope for and implementations of clever technical solutions cause our environmental problems.

Take electric cars. If their greater efficiency makes them a green solution then the Watt steam engine's greater efficiency should have made it one of the greatest sustainability solutions of all time.

On the contrary, it's the poster child of the industrial revolution. Each use used less coal, but overall coal use went up. Increasing efficiency is orthogonal to lowering total waste.

Making a polluting system more efficient pollutes more efficiently. Everyone who isn't an economist can see the results of our world: more efficient than ever and creating more total waste than ever.

Changing a system's goals, say from growth to enjoying what we have and from externalizing costs to stewardship, will change its outcomes.

I think you're right- the solution is going to be a combination of carbon capture, agricultural technology, energy storage, and some degree of energy austerity enforced with carbon taxes. How much austerity depends on how soon we begin addressing the problem.

Electricity, transportation, and manufacturing add up to about 80% of all GHG emissions. If you want your diet choice to have the biggest impact purchase locally produced and unprocessed foods.

I don't doubt this is true in the least, but do you have a source I could provide to others?

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

Hmm interesting, thanks. That is all GHG emissions though. I wonder if there are numbers around buying produce or meat at the store, how much of the GHG emissions tied to that product are agricultural vs the packaging, transportation, etc.

In other words, how big of a difference does 'buying local' have when buying food? Just wondering aloud, not necessarily asking anyone in particular.

I use to have the sources somewhere but I'm not finding them at the moment. So let's just do this as a mind exercise.

Take into consideration that while ships are tremendously more efficient, they travel significantly more miles. When comparing a single shipping container, a cargo ship burns 0.3 gallons of bunker fuel per hour and a semi truck burns 10 gallons of diesel. If you add distance into the calculation, a cargo ship from Brazil to NYC takes 122 gallons of bunker fuel while something produced locally takes 1/12 of that in diesel. Further more, bunker fuel exceptionally worse than diesel when comparing emissions.

This is just for the transport side of things too. The electricity production in many other countries produce an increased amount of green house gasses compared to the United States.

Can't we just eat both? I eat vegan, vegetarian and meat dishes in moderation, and my health has never been better.

Honest question: of all of the things people can do to make the world greener, why is it mostly (a subset) of vegans that look down their nose at other people?

You don’t see people driving electric cars pulling up at red lighted and giving people shit for driving an SUV

People in middle America don’t come into your city and shit on you for how far food has to drive to get to your ass.

People that grow their own food aren’t protesting your grocery stores.

Chill out.

Going vegan isn't the only option. Humans need to give more consideration to edible insects. (seriously)

See the history of eating lobsters for an example of how attitudes can change.

> See the history of eating lobsters[0]

Also, see lobsters themselves and ask why we are so freaked out about eating bugs.

Of course some people will refuse to eat both bugs and lobsters for the same religious reasons.[1]

[0]: https://oceanpointinn.com/blog/?p=74

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Islamic_and_Jewi...

By coincidence, this newsletter just arrived:

https://angel.co/newsletters/youll-be-eating-crickets-soon-1...

IIUC, someone who flies to far away vacation destinations, drives a car and eats meat will reduce their carbon footprint the most by becoming a vegetarian. Myself I'd like to become a vegetarian because I eat too much meat and it's something I feel a little guilty about. But it's hard. And I'm lazy.

Obviously one solution isn't going to solve the problem, but we'd get a lot further if the single solution people adopted was eating less/no meat instead of (say) not using plastic straws.

I'm very curious about lab grown meat how it'll change the balance of the arguments posed here.

Any chance, any of the readers here are researching on it actively?

The article title is obviously click-bait-y.

I don't disagree with any of the technological solutions discussed: I think vertical farming seems neat, and hopefully promising, and I believe local farming with special care given to rotating crops and maintaining soil health is also important.

Given that I personally eat eggs and honey on a semi-regular basis, and am not fully vegan like my wife, I also agree with the idea of buying local eggs. But the article's actual contents do very little to support the title, since everyone knows no one thing is going to save the planet.

TL;DR Not just one change is going to magically save the planet, but let me take this technicality as a chance to call out veganism for more clicks.

Going vegan is missing the point. There are too many people on this planet, period. Im not going to eat an unhealthy diet just so we can squeeze 3 billion more consumers into the economy. We need reproductive freedom and education in any countries that are above replacement rate.

Please, educate yourself before coming here to say things like that. Do yourself this favour.

The UK currently produces about 60% of its own food requirements (60% of 66 million ≈ 40 million), however I’ve seen it reported that switching everyone in the UK to a vegan diet would increase that to supporting about 200 million people.

That doesn’t mean it would be easy — I am a motivated to become vegan and still failing.

If I extrapolate that to the rest of the planet, the world should be able to support around 38.5 billion.

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