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Comment by sweetheart | Hacker News Reader

As stated in the article, the reason that this is happening is because of the increasing demand for animal products, so the forest is cleared for cattle and soy, most of which is used as feed for livestock.

When we read daunting articles like this and feel a sense of panic or urgency, there is at least one small thing we can do to prevent this issue from worsening: eat as few animal products as possible, which should ideally be none. It has a real effect, and is (in almost all cases) trivial to start.

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I watched some documentaries on exactly this effect years ago and went full veggie because of it. Prior I would eat meat when I was out on special occasions but even that was not worth it.

There are projects out there to rebuild and regrow the forest. I hope with strong policy and social movements to reduce our demands for animal products that it may recover one day.

> It has a real effect

Let me play devil's advocate here. Because I worry a lot about this.

In as much as it affects the outcome of climate change you're wrong: not eating meat, driving and flying less, etc. will not, in any meaningful way, save us from what are increasingly alarming predictions regarding climate change. What you're talking about are straw men.

In fact I worry that the effect is negative because everyone pats themselves on the back for these kinds of activities and thinks they've done everything they can when, as I say, the impact of what they've done is essentially negligible and draws attention from what really is driving climate change (and noone seems to talk about).

And what really is driving climate change (and numerous other environmental issues - see massive over-fishing, environmental destruction by dredging for sand / mining for minerals, etc.) is the massive shift out of poverty of billions in people in China and India and their demands for housing, cars, travel, construction, etc. The US and Europe have had (fairly dramatically) decreasing carbon emissions for some time now, but all of those decreases (and then some) are erased by the increases in India and China. Particularly China which built 184 new coal plants in 2020 and increased its own CO2 emissions by 4% in the second half of 2020 alone: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-coal-idUSKBN2A308U .

Hopefully it does not need to be said that you cannot fault these countries for massively improving the welfare of their citizens or say that this is a bad thing. To be fair to both India and China: both are aware of (do not deny) the problem and are devoting large amounts of resources to finding solutions.

But those are the facts. You can virtue signal all you like about being vegan but really you are doing nothing to address the actual problem (and may actually diverting attention away from it).

Yes, the things you described also have a profound effect on our carbon emissions. Agriculture also accounts for a large portion (those people leaving poverty gotta eat! And they wanna eat meat), and a large portion of agriculture is animal agriculture. So if eliminate or drastically reduce our reliance on animal agriculture, it stands to reason that we'd have an effect on overall carbon emissions.

Are there other things that can be done alongside reducing our demand for harmful products? Totally, and a lot of those things will involve regulation of industry, not individual changes in habits.

But the good thing is that we don't need to do one or the other, we can do both. I invite you to start doing what you can.

> and may actually diverting attention away from it

I find it hard to believe that trying to get people to change their consumptions habits in order to reduce our reliance on CO2 and Methane heavy industries is going to result in more carbon and methane. Do you have anything that actually says that folks who are motivated to make changes like this are somehow _less_ motivated to address climate change after?

It seems more likely that folks who want to virtue signal ("Climate change is awful, but _I_ won't do anything to help") are those who already weren't gonna do shit, so no loss there, really.

Here's the only solution that's going to solve the climate crises: every person of the world is going to have to realize they they are responsible for their own CO2 output. The goods you buy, the transportation you use, how you heat and cool your home - these are all your choices and all impact your C02 output. Americans on average produce double the amount of CO2 than the Chinese do on average. Americans produce more C02 than Europeans, who in turn also produce more CO2 than the Chinese.

Once you realize your CO2 output is your personal responsibility then you can take care of your own business and strive to make changes to reduce your output. You can create demand for green power (not demand, create demand - actually buy green energy), you can make choices as to your thermostat settings, you have choices in what you eat, you have choices in what your purchase - all of these are within your control. Small changes made by hundreds of millions of people can have dramatic impact - in fact that's how we got into this mess in the first place.

What doesn't look good is Americans, who produce more C02 than anybody else in the world - by far - throwing up their hands and saying it's hopeless because of India and China, who's citizens are producing far less CO2. It's time for us to clean up our act and lead by example.

You stop, another hundred million in China will eat it.

Too many people and too much demand. The balance has been lost for now.

Horrible argument. You make it sound like you stopping is going to cause more people to start eating, when in fact you know that's not the case.

Perhaps you're trying to articulate that it's futile - since "there are many people who do not care", but that's like stabbing a baby saying "well, in our culture many people do this already".

Individual choices matter: buying less meat reduces supply (it's what economists call elastic) - your supermarket will buy less meat when you stop consuming it, and that propagates up the chain. If not 1-to-1, it may be 1/1000 chance of reducing the next 1000 lb order - which is basically equivalent to 1-to-1 response (especially in the long run).

And finally, with all the alternatives of substitute meats (on the market now) and cultured meats (coming to market soon), you have numerous options to reduce your meat consumption. So don't hide behind panic to do something bad - that's like seeing looting in the store and saying "well, I want some of that free stuff I haven't earned - at someone else's expense, and others are doing it".

Can I also add that one person doing something has a knock on effect on other people's behaviour. Similar to the drink-drive argument before which was 'everyone does it' whereas these days, where I live, it absolutely isn't. If I drive at 30mph through a residential road that most people speed through, I might actually influence other people's behaviour who may feel it isn't appropriate to speed if other people aren't.

I guess I'm trying to say individuals can help normalise things that previously wasn't normal.

But meat is a primary food source for humans.

I went through the whole cowspiracy, went vegetarian for 2-3 years thing and I commend it, but it's pretty hard to get enough protein without being starving and vegetarian cooking takes way longer.

Idealy, you'd like to think that we can all just quit meat, but IMO it's for poeple who can afford the time and money to do so.

> buying less meat reduces supply (it's what economists call elastic)

Uhhhh, buying less meat will reduce price, not supply.

You're just claiming things based on theory you remember. I'm going by research:

> "If someone gives up 1 lb of chicken, total consumption falls by 0.76lb in expectation."

https://reducing-suffering.org/comments-on-compassion-by-the...

How rude - especially since you don't understand the article you just quoted.

Of course consumption falls if I give something up. That's not Supply.

Your original statement was "buying less meat reduces supply", while the quote you just gave as evidence talked about "consumption", which is the demand side of the equation (technically "quantity demanded", but I'm simplifying).

If you don't like my knowledge, maybe this will help [0]. Please don't tell me I'm "just claiming things based on theory I remember" - or anyone else on HN - it's rude.

[0] - https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec...

Sorry it was rude of me to assume what the source of your claim was. It is inappropriate of me to make it sound like I have a deep understanding of economics - I certainly don't.

If you have the patience, perhaps you can explain to me where the mechanism I describe fails.

If in a town 10% of people stop buying beef, grocery store will stop stocking their shelves as much as they did prior. Going up the supply chain, when more stores do this, the supplier will decrease production. Of course this takes time, but given a few-years time horizon, the effects of lower consumption do propagate to the supply.

Is your comment just a nitpick with my misunderstanding the technical language economists use? Perhaps you're commenting with an assumption of a shorter time horizon than what I have in mind?

Thank you - I appreciate your comments.

I wasn't nitpicking. This is actually a confusing part of economics, and the language of economics (which I'm trying to avoid) makes it worse. :)

Let me give you a few real examples, but with contrived numbers for illustration.

1 - Suppose you can buy either chicken or beef. Both cost $1. Now, due to some reason, the price of beef rises. What will happen, is that some people will buy more chicken, even though the price of that didn't change. (Maybe they can't afford the beef now, maybe they're frugal, etc.)

2 - Next, suppose the same $1 for each, but the price of beef drops. Now, since it is the cheaper source of protein, some people will buy the beef instead of the chicken, simply because it's cheaper.

3 - Third example (a bit more involved): The prices of both are again $1. You and a bunch of friends decide to go without beef for a month. The price of beef will drop. Now (and this is the key part), because the price of beef is now cheaper, some number of people will buy it instead of chicken.

What has happened in example 3, is that the second half of that example is actually the same as example 2. In your example of the town buying 10% less beef, then supply will eventually self-correct, but only if nothing else (prices, prices of substitutes, supply of substitutes) changes. This push-pull action on prices and quantities tends to bounce around - that's why prices of beef, chicken, oil, timber, etc tend to change frequently.

I hope this helps.

Thank you for the explanation. I guess we all know that if 100% of people stop buying beef, companies will stop growing cows (with minor exceptions of leather etc). A challenge for a group of us, people who would like others to reduce their meat consumption, is to communicate clearly that ever without 100% reduction in supply, there will be positive change (fewer animals raised in factory farms).

The argument I lay out is that even if supermarkets aren't 100% sensitive to demand, on average, reduction of consumption does propagate through the market, and at least a part of the effect is lower "production" (fewer animals raised in the future).

I think you're 100% right that when there's more supply than consumers, it's likely that the price will drop, and with lower price, more people will be eager to buy. But I still see all this as short-term effects. When looking across a lifetime of action (consuming literally TONS less meat), an individual's choice to eat less meat makes a difference.

Perhaps I should stay away from "elasticity" in my wording, as it brings in needless attention to economic theories that can make thinking about this issue harder, not easier.

One approach to look at is a tax (the tobacco tax as an example). By increasing the price of tobacco products, people will naturally migrate away from them.

Although the taxes were/are astronomical in the US, some people continue to buy them. Many fewer people, but still $ billions in sales every year.

You can take this approach with pretty much anything - tobacco, beef, soft drinks, carbon-based energy, foreign imports, etc., and it keeps it simple.

I'm all in favor of meat taxes. I suspect that most people (in the US at least) are in favor of change of how animals are treated in factory farms. But their refrain from changing anything about their behavior is "the government should do something about it". While government action would be the best scenario (outlawing battery cages, adding taxes on meat, etc), doing nothing isn't an appropriate personal response.

Before I reduced my meat consumption to virtually zero, my last concern was "how could I, a tiny individual, make any difference?" And then I heard the expected value argument (where my purchase could result in an extra bulk order from the supplier - so even if low probability, it was still better to abstain).

Yes, there are many people who will continue to demand these products. That's exactly why its so important for everyone else to start now. It's not binary; we can reduce the scale of the issue as more and more people stop demanding these things, and that will have a tangible effect on the emissions.

The life time carbon footprint of an average American exceeds 20 tons, it's important that you don't have children, you could save the planet even more!

People try to show symbols of wealth by wasting resources . It should be a sign of wealth if you can avoid polluting your environment. China has one of the richest vegetarian traditions and just recently has developed this absurd craving for meat IMHO, so this is no automatism.

We should start putting customs duties on all meat products. German chicken e.g. have destroyed eg. the African chicken market. Live stock is transported over high ways because it is too expensive to slaughter locally. Free trade of animal products just leads to the most absurd effects.

Well the real answer is large-scale political action. But the (American) political system is designed on the assumption that a tendency to do nothing is safer than a tendency towards action/change. Unfortunately doing nothing isn't the safe choice now, and even worse many of the checks and balances intended to be brakes now just act as a stick through the spokes.

Not helped by how many people are blatantly propagandized into objectively false positions by Fox News & similar.

> Not helped by how many people are blatantly propagandized into objectively false positions by Fox News & similar.

I dunno, I think that’s confusing cause and effect. The solutions being proposed (e.g. be vegetarian) aren’t what people want. The same goes for lots of problems it seems. In my mind, somebody turning to Fox News et al. is a kind of effect of that.

People aren’t going to suddenly want to become vegetarian if Fox News goes away. There will probably always be somewhere people can listen to talking heads rant about the solutions they feel are being shoved down their throats.

I think there are, for lack of a better concept, tiers to climate change actions.

Eating less meat would be something very personal, and I think you're right on there being an aversion totally unrelated to news, or propaganda of any kind.

On the other hand, there are measures like increasing investment in climate research, green energy, carbon capture, etc. These have a much smaller personal effect on each individual.

These two categories both, on Fox News and contemporaries, exist under the same umbrella. If the demand was really going from ground-up, then we might see segments about how eating meat doesn't really contribute to global warming next to segments about how we could create jobs with green energy investment. But we don't.

Instead we see a widespread denial of climate change itself on the top level, falling back to denial of man-made climate change, then to some idea that climate change isn't worth fixing, then to climate change is real and dangerous but it's the plastic straws & personal responsibility that we need to think about.

This, in my mind, strongly implies that it is not a bottom-up demand for climate change denial, but a mix of bottom-up and top-down demand, but with a heavy lean towards top-down. And much of the bottom-up demand has been created artificially (in the Manufacturing Consent style of "artificially")

To be clear, I agree with the narrow point you actually made, I don't expect Fox News has some controlling factor over how many people want to be vegetarian. Vegetarianism isn't even a majority in deeply left-wing communities. Fortunately there's a lot of ground to be gained on switching to bird meats, or even just dodging the issue entirely with cultured meats. It's a shame Fox News disdains these options too.

You make an excellent point; according to the United Nations [0], in 2021 there are 957 million people across 93 countries who do not have enough to eat.

Clearly extraordinary times require extraordinary measures, while some efforts are being proposed (e.g. recent EU Climate Action [1]), it is far too too little, much too late.

[0] https://www.un.org/en/food-systems-summit/news/2021-going-be...

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57833807

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