Statement about the 480M animals killed in NSW bushfires since September | Hacker News Reader

Statement about the 480M animals killed in NSW bushfires since September

sydney.edu.au

32 pointsvo2maxer32 comments

Ironically, hundreds of billions of animals are killed every year for food, contributing massively to climate change, which is the root cause of these massive fires. But no one seems to care about _those_ animals.

EDIT: This was linked below which further illustrates my point: https://twitter.com/mbeisen/status/1212959832522625024?s=21

"if you find the death of 500,000,000 mammals, birds and reptiles in weeks of australia wildfires mind blowing and horrifying, note that more were killed worldwide for food in the same period of time - and these facts are not unlinked"

1) That's not ironic

2) Do you not see the massive obvious difference between killing an animal with a PURPOSE (sustenance), vs ones that die completely without any side benefit?

3) Plenty of people care about animals being killed for food. That's why there is continuous progress and campaigns to A) change how they are raised (more humanely), B) how they are killed (ditto), C) reduce overall consumption of meat by meat eaters, and D) change entire diets to cut out meat entirely.

4) The animals killed for food are MOSTLY (exceptions - certain forms of hunting and fishing) raised for that purpose, and therefore their populations and species are entirely sustainable. The animals that died in wildfires are wild ecosystems, some of which may not recover (see: Koala population)

The irony I see is that people suddenly care about animals being killed for no purpose.

Regarding your #2, no, it is not a necessity to raise and slaughter animals. You can survive just fine on an entirely plant-based diet. It's detrimental to the world which is literally on fire right now. To add to this, there is no sustainable way we can raise them "more humanely" as the population increases and countries like China raise the demand exponentially. Factory farming exists for a reason.

Regarding #3, there is no way to humanely raise an animal only to kill it unjustifiably. If we needed them to survive, that would be a different story. But we do not.

#4, I don't even know what point you're trying to make here.

> no, it is not a necessity to raise and slaughter animals. You can survive just fine on an entirely plant-based diet. It's detrimental to the world which is literally on fire right now.

Surviving purely on plant based diet and remaining in your top form will require more than stop eating meat and solving

- Cost - Availability - Education

and few more major issues. That is for consumers only, corporations have different problems. They won't suddenly disappear and if they did, it might become a problem for you indirectly through state.

> the population increases and countries like China raise the demand exponentially.

Population is declining everywhere except Africa and some odd balls.

> there is no way to humanely raise an animal only to kill it unjustifiably.

That depends entirely on you. Although I agree humanely way to kill is more of a need for humans than animals, it seems.

Consumers need to be educated, you are right on that. But corporations will evolve like they always have - look at Nestle buying SweetEarth brands. Tyson entering the plant-based market. They will adapt and overcome. But it all starts with the consumer.

>Population is declining everywhere except Africa and some odd balls

Then why do projections put us around 10 billion people in the next 30 years?

>That depends entirely on you

It depends on individual morals yes, but on the grand scale of things, I don't think any sound-minded human would, without outside influence, find it completely alright to murder an animal. If you give a child an apple and a bunny, do you think they'd kill the bunny or eat the apple?

> Then why do projections put us around 10 billion people in the next 30 years?

I didn't mean population globally but China isn't contributing to it as much as you think it is anymore.

> I don't think any sound-minded human would, without outside influence, find it completely alright to murder an animal. If you give a child an apple and a bunny, do you think they'd kill the bunny or eat the apple?

Let's do an extreme take, giving apple is not comparable as it is [1][2] already 'murdered' compared to a bunny. A better comparison would be prepared bunny meat and sliced apple. Would you say the kid will choose one over other out of instincts?

1] https://m.dw.com/en/when-plants-say-ouch/a-510552-1

2] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligen...

Just meant to illustrate that when we think of suffering, it needs to be visible for us to do something about it and see it as a problem. Buying meat from a grocery store doesn't help your perception, so I wouldn't blame people for not caring as much.

I think it is hypocritical to neglect plants that can show stress and feel that they are being literally eaten alive and advocate for less suffering by asking people to eat them instead of meat but that's not pragmatic.

My take on point #4 is this:

Humans have plentiful incentives to keep breeding domesticated animals (whether for food, pets, or whatever). So we will try to keep the population stable, and that helps prevent the extinction of these species (and accompanying loss of biodiversity). However, for undomesticated animals, the same incentives do not exist. We don't try to breed these animals, so the population is not as stable in the face of disasters like this (man-made or natural). The result is that undomesticated animals are more likely to face the threat of extinction (and accompanying loss of biodiversity).

Just arguing against eating animals isn't sufficient. It would be beneficial to argue in favor of preserving biodiversity as well.

>The irony I see is that people suddenly care about animals being killed for no purpose.

There's nothing ironic about people being upset about a negligent waste of a massive amount of resources.

#2 - I never said it was a necessity. I said it has PURPOSE. Which it does. It has value. Whether the value offsets the costs is a separate question. But that's why people are upset about an entirely purpose-less waste of resources

#3 - That's an absolute statement. On a relative scale, there are farmers that raise and slaughter their animals more humanely than dying horrifically in a forest fire. I won't pretend a mass market slaughterhouse is more humane, but I just mean it is a sliding scale

#4 - The death of 1 cow of which there is almost 1 billion worthwhile is not equivalent to the death of 1 koala, of which there are less than 50,000. All the cows we kill around the world do not endanger the cow species. That is not the case with koalas who may never recover from this fire.

Koalas probably won't ever go extinct, they may do so in the wild but they'll be plenty in zoos.

You seem to do. :)

Though, it's kind of interesting how we discriminate between animals on the basis of their species, breed, age, gender, location, color and what not perfectly fine.

Exactly. For some reason people see wild animals differently, and use words like "innocent", while an animal born into a world where it's destination is a grocery store aisle somehow deserves it.

Their species are not in danger. In fact, they are succcessful because they sort of domesticated us (like wheat). Think in the survival of bees, the ones that spread the genes is the queen, so the death of laborers don't damage the specie (I know hat won't be of any consolation for the cows that die daily).

In the other hand, in that massive number you may end having many extinct species (that may or not be critical for the Australian ecosystem, but still after they are extinct is over forever), and putting many others on the verge of extinction (either for the amount of individuals killed or the ecosystem damage).

If the concern is species extinction, the largest contributing factor globally is deforestation, which is primarily driven by industrial agriculture so we can produce more grain and soybeans to feed animals. So again it ties back to the animals we eat for food.

We're already torching millions of acres to make room for more plants to feed back to animals. And those are intentional fires and logging operations!

Ultimately what I'm saying is that our bottomless need to consume meat directly contrasts with our desire to prevent wildfires and species extinction. In fact, the first thing is directly causing the second.

> But no one seems to care about _those_ animals.

This is demonstrably false.

Care to elaborate? Just to be clear, I was referring to no one caring (at least, the vast, vast majority) about animals killed for food. Else 98% of us wouldn't be meat eaters.

What can be demonstrated to counter this?

> no one caring (at least, the vast, vast majority) about animals killed for food. Else 98% of us wouldn't be meat eaters

This is a false dichotomy. It is common to care about the animals you eat. Maybe not in the way you would like, and maybe it is hypocritical in the same way as giving a condemned prisoner a final meal is. Caring is why we have free range animal products.

Someone else addressed the false dichotomy which is an obvious problem with your argument.

But for the sake of completeness, let's discuss vegetarians specifically. I don't know where you got the 98% number for meat-eaters, but it's not correct.

Worldwide stats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#Demog... US stats: https://news.gallup.com/poll/267074/percentage-americans-veg...

Most vegetarians give up food for ethical and animal rights reasons (I'll leave the easy to find sources as an exercise for the reader).

Vegetarians and vegans are frequently reminded of animal suffering -- a visit to the grocery store or a look at a restaurant menu is all it takes. So in effect you've reduced to "no one" a 5% slice of the population (in the U.S.) which repeats the same principled decision on a daily basis. That's a lot of people to call "no one".

Here is an interesting thread expanding on your point. It starts with,

“if you find the death of 500,000,000 mammals, birds and reptiles in weeks of australia wildfires mind blowing and horrifying, note that more were killed worldwide for food in the same period of time - and these facts are not unlinked”

https://twitter.com/mbeisen/status/1212959832522625024?s=21

This is exactly what I was saying. Thanks for sharing.

Here's a couple of quick visualisation supporting your point:

- Animals killed for food counted per second (Global) https://thevegancalculator.com/animal-slaughter/

- Animals killed for food in USA in 2020 (so far) https://animalclock.org/

It's January 7th and there's already been over 1 billion animals killed for food in the USA.

> Ironically, hundreds of billions of animals are killed every year for food, contributing massively to climate change, which is the root cause of these massive fires.

This is simply false. It's one of these routine lies told by vegans. Livestock do not contribute "massively to climate change". It's embarrassing that this is the top comment here. Also, "hundreds of billions" of animals are not killed for food. Billions yes, but not hundreds of billions. Billions of human beings have to eat.

> "if you find the death of 500,000,000 mammals, birds and reptiles in weeks of australia wildfires mind blowing and horrifying, note that more were killed worldwide for food in the same period of time - and these facts are not unlinked"

And hundreds of trillions of animals are killed by nature and other animals each year? What is the point?

"The figure includes mammals, birds and reptiles and does not include insects, bats or frogs."

I wonder what the figure for just mammals would be.

Can someone tell me how quick and easily nature can bounce back? I guess the speed of tree growth might be a bottleneck.

This question is complicated by the presence of other ongoing pressures, such as climate change. Realistically, nature won't just "bounce back" to the way it used to be because of these ongoing changes.

Unknown, but unlikely in relevant time scales. The fires have been much larger and hotter than typical. The vegetation that does regrow probably wont be the same as we lost, ie pyrophillic scrubland replacing forrest. The fires are also destructive enough to destroy pyrophytic plants that would resist previous bushfires. Both of these are going to disrupt the regrowth of the ecosystem in unexpected/abnormal ways. Concern is that it leads to a long term cycle of more, hotter, larger fires and permanent habitat loss.

Edit: as a comparison I was just out on the tasman penninsula which burned in 2013. It was doing well enough, with medium sized trees and full ground cover.

>I guess the speed of tree growth might be a bottleneck.

Also depends on what grows back in their place. For example, re-forestation efforts in places like Ireland have lead to an "ecological dead zone" [0] due to the choice of the trees that have been planted, the Sitka spruce and its sheddings offering or removing habitable areas for animals to prosper.

Without an expensive and concerted effort to clear the floors of ash and re-plant animal-friendly, indigenous fauna I would imagine we won't see much of a recovery in our lifetimes, if ever.

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/10/trees-...

This is Australian bush we are talking about: there won't be any ash clearing or replanting. The indigenous flora will regrow by itself.

Out here (Southern CA) we had devastating fires. We used to have thousands of rabbits. A year later and they’re still gone. And they’re supposed to be the first ones to bounce back.

One of the problems is the bounce back is not evenly distributed. The fastest breeding animals bounce back fast, the slow breeding animals take hundreds to thousands of years, if they ever recover at all.

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