Animals Are Dying in Droves. What Are They Telling Us?
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- The majority of deforestation (particularly in the Amazon), is driven by livestock farming. By reducing demand for animal products, we could slow or even reverse the trend of habitat destruction, thus preserving biodiversity.
- Growing plants to feed animals and then consuming those animals is an inefficient way of obtaining calories and nutrients. Shifting to a plant-based diet would allow us to feed more people with less land, reducing the pressure on wild habitats.
- Animal agriculture is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
- Overfishing is a major threat to marine biodiversity. By reducing our consumption of fish, we can help protect marine ecosystems.
- Animal agriculture is also a significant source of pollution, including runoff from farms that can create dead zones in oceans and rivers, harming aquatic species.
- Intensive animal farming can create conditions ripe for the emergence of new diseases (zoonotic diseases), some of which could potentially leap to humans and cause pandemics, as well as decimate animal populations.
I think about this all the time. We need to get the US to stop subsidizing beef so that it can be priced according to its trophic level and not according to its favor with lobbyists.
What would your response be to my question 1) and question 2)
What would your response be to my question 1) and question 2)
Regarding this point, it's important to remember that animals have the ability to transform materials we can't get any sustenance from, because they're not edible, into food. To get the idea, think how pigs have been historically such a popular food in many countries. They would basically eat anything, the owners get the pig fat, then they eat the pig.
Another thing to remember is that proteins coming from vegetables are low quality compared to their animal counterparts. For the great majority of the world population a vegan diet is inaccessible. You simply don't get all the nutrients you need from vegetables alone. Friends who maintain a vegan diet for ideological reasons have to supplement it with a heavy dose of pills and other compounds lest they have have problem maintaining their energy levels, even if they have calorie rich diets.
I'm aware. Not necessary in 21st century (in most of the world).
> proteins coming from vegetables are low quality
Protein "quality" relates to the presence of essential amino acids. Animal proteins contain all nine essential amino acids and are thus considered "complete."
Plant proteins often lack one or more essential amino acids. However, they aren't "low quality" - you just need to consume a variety of plant proteins (like legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains) to get all the essential amino acids.
This process is called protein combining. As long as you're eating a varied diet throughout the day, your body can assemble the necessary amino acids. Plus, plant proteins provide other nutritional benefits like fiber and antioxidants (as opposed to inflamation-inducing effects of meat and dairy).
> Friends who maintain a vegan diet for ideological reasons have to supplement it with a heavy dose of pills ...
Also not true - only B12 is necessary. It's often a part of animal feed anyway, so why not skip the intermediary.
Having a “varied” diet is much easier said than done. Even people who are well off, living in rich and developed countries have difficulty maintaining this balance. This is a personal observation, but I suspect a lot of people underestimate how hard it is to maintain this lifestyle.
Another aspect that I don’t see discussed anywhere is that you need to have diversity of vegetables just to maintain a functional diet, what will happen to people when for some reason there are problems in the supply chain of a specific crop, you have a bad year with low yields and the price goes to the roof?
Another false assumption is that everyone can accommodate a purely plant-based diet.
But all other things will never be equal because animal protein costs 10x more energy to produce.
> what will happen to people when for reason there’s a problem in the supply chain of a specific crop or you have a bad year with low yields and the price goes to the roof?
Have you been to a produce department? Most of them in the US could be reduced to 25% their current size and still have 200% the diversity of the meat department. Being unable to find one or more amino acids is just not a problem that vegetarians have.
The problem is constantly having to cook for yourself because vegetarian options at most restaurants (or prepared by well-meaning carnivore friends) are just "leave the meat off" and not designed from the ground up to be nutritional without meat. Cultural change would make it easy.
I think you overestimate what varied means in this context, usually two or three different protein sources are enough.
Consider a random day where I tracked my food intake: I ate some oatmeal for breakfast and dinner, and noodles with chickpeas for for lunch. In the end I had between 120% to 250% of the RDA for the different essential amino acids.
Edit: Also "Another false assumption is that everyone can accommodate a purely plant-based diet". Do you have a source on that, with maybe an estimation to what percent of the population this applies to?
Your first point is misleading because we currently grow a lot of food to feed animals to eat, and clear out forests to make pasture. - "More than three-quarters (77%) of soy is used as feed for livestock."[1] - "Seventy per cent of formerly forested land in the Amazon, and 91% of land deforested since 1970, is used for livestock pasture."[2] - 38.7% of Corn produced in the US is for livestock feed.[3]
1: https://ourworldindata.org/soy#:~:text=More%20than%20three%2.... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Brazil#Rates:.... 3: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-uses-of-cor...
What would your response be to my question 1) and question 2)
How much of that land could be used for farming food for humans? Brazil has famously poor soil.
What would your response be to my question 1) and question 2)
I'm not carried away by credentials. There are some morons around with Phds. And I'm sure that you will find some Phds who will find fault with with what is espoused in gamechangers. My point is just because you look at a documentary, or even published papers, you as an individual cannot decide easily, because there are opposing views even among people with a lot of credentials. Of course most people choose to go with consensus. But then consensus itself can be quite wrong.
Come on my friend, at least try. And without even thinking about my nutrition I am a healthy vegan since 9 years, not taking supplements and eating cheap localish food.
Not true. Ruminant grazing animals (like cows) use land that generally is not fit for farming plants that humans would consume. They make land productive that otherwise would not be. Also, farming for the staples of plant-based diets annihilates animal life. In order to farm soy beans or whatever plant you eat, you have to tear up the soil and in doing so you will kill every ground squirrel, ground nesting bird, snake, vole, groundhog and rabbit that lives in that plot. Then you have to spray chemical pesticides that will annihilate anything you haven't already mechanically killed with the combine. Not to mention ruminant grazers enhance the soil through their compaction, manure and urine while plant farming has to constantly add external fertilizer to maintain yields.
> grazing animals use land that generally is not fit for farming plants ... make land productive that otherwise would not be
Not every land has to be "productive". This thinking got us where we are.
> In order to farm soy beans or whatever plant you eat, you have to tear up the soil and in doing so you will kill every ground squirrel, ground nesting bird ...
Crop fields do indeed disrupt the habitats of wild animals, and wild animals are also killed when harvesting plants. However, this point makes the case for a plant-based diet and not against it, since many more plants are required to produce a measure of animal flesh for food (often as high as 12:1) than are required to produce an equal measure of plants for food (which is obviously 1:1). Because of this, a plant-based diet causes less suffering and death than one that includes animals.
https://yourveganfallacyis.com/en/vegans-kill-animals-too
> Then you have to spray chemical pesticides that will annihilate anything
Dtto.
> Not to mention ruminant grazers enhance the soil through their compaction, manure and urine
Use compost / compost tea / companion / nitrogen fixing plants.
The beef are in lots as soon as they are taken from their mothers and are fed from soy and other crops.
Most of the beef production is not fed grass - or it is a byproduct of giving them access to outside, but isn't their main nutrition.
What would your response be to my question 1) and question 2)
Sidenote: I am with you as to what happens to the brains of vegans :)
While it's true that cattle are often raised on grasslands, the global demand for beef has led to many operations utilizing grain-based feedlots, which do have environmental implications. It's estimated that about a third of the Earth's arable land is used to grow crops for animal feed.
Furthermore, the conversion of forests and other natural habitats to grassland for cattle grazing is a significant driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss, particularly in places like the Amazon.
> The existence of a feedlot does not change the fact that for the vast majority of the animal's life it is on a grassland eating grass that would otherwise just grow and die in the winter. The vast majority of the energy that goes into growing cattle would otherwise go completely unused without them. That is why ruminants are special. They turn grass into protein, which is necessary for life, especially brain function.
Indeed, ruminants play a unique role in converting grass into protein. However, the issue isn't as straightforward as just utilizing grasslands. The environmental footprint of raising cattle, even on grasslands, includes water use, greenhouse gas emissions, and land degradation. This, combined with the growing global demand for meat, creates a sustainability challenge that cannot be overlooked.
> You just want to eat your disgusting soyburger and treat it as some kind of penance so you can then parade around as if you are morally better than people who eat meat. Sorry, we will never stop eating meat and you will never acknowledge the reality that ruminant grazing is good for the environment.
It's not about moral superiority but about finding sustainable and ethical ways to meet our nutritional needs. While ruminant grazing can have some environmental benefits, it's not universally "good" for the environment given the issues like:
- Greenhouse gas emissions
- Deforestation
- Land degradation
- Water pollution
- Water overconsumption
- Loss of biodiversity
- Antibiotic resistance
- Ocean dead zones
- Inefficient land and resource use
- Ethical concerns regarding animal welfare
- Contribution to zoonotic diseases
- Air pollution
- Eutrophication
- Soil erosion
- High energy consumption
- Chemical runoff from pesticides and fertilizers
- Destruction of habitats and ecosystems
- Inequality in global food distribution
- Public health risks from foodborne illnesses
- Nutrient pollution
- Strain on waste management systems
> You will never consider why there were tens of millions of ruminant bison covering North America for thousands of years. They were a tool of the balance of nature that helped the ecosystem.
The comparison between modern cattle farming and historic bison populations is not entirely valid. Bison roamed freely, contributed to nutrient cycling, and didn't contribute to the same environmental problems associated with large-scale livestock farming.
What would your response be to my question 1) and question 2)
> Not true. Ruminant grazing animals (like cows) use land that generally is not fit for farming plants that humans would consume.
You are arguing a different point from GP. They were talking about growing and farming animal food, feeding that to the animals, and then eating the animals. You're talking about feeding animals directly from the land.
Productive according to our fictions re: "value", destructive according to the ecology of systems that we rely on for survival.
Why were there tens of millions of bison in North America before human development?
>value
This entire discussion is about the proper use of land. That discussion is impossible without some notion of value, or highest and best use. Any other consideration just ends in "all humans should die". If that's your position then its a waste of time even discussing the situation with you.
Most humans also want their grandchildren to grow up in an environment that isn't teetering on collapse--which is not something that the dominant values system is considering. So my issue with "value" is not that it's useless, but that we're using it in a way that fails to acknowledge that different people value different outcomes. We're instead encouraged to seek value of an unspecified type and leave it to other people to decide which outcomes actually result from that seeking. It's a sort of blindness and it's leading us off a cliff.
Extant emissions from the people there dwarf the Amazon's deforestation so it's a much better fix.
What the Germans did then, the Brazilians do a fraction of now.
40% forest cover lost. And now, Germany has almost no primary forest. And Germans burn oil and coal and gas like no other.
The net effect of Germany on the Climate is the effect of an Environmental WMD.
What we need is a Green Treaty of Versailles.
Thinking in terms of money and debt is what got us into this situation. I'm doubtful that it will get us out of it.
In fact, turning our backs on the logic of the market is probably part of the fix. We need a jubilee so that the people made powerful by causing these problems aren't powerful anymore.
Typical of discourse today is to let off the societies that industrialized first with no complaint while simultaneously moralizing against those who are industrializing now.
Europe hoards nuclear technology and won't share it with the developing world. Europe burns oil and gas and coal in vast quantities to live. All while Europe says that all past carbon emissions must be considered forgiven debt and all present carbon emissions must be considered sin.
The developing world will do as Europe did to get to Europe's standard of living. The developing world will not listen to the moralizing of Europeans who won't do their part. And Europeans can clutch their pearls about the Amazon, but the people who live there will raze it for industry just as the Europeans did. And it will be right.
Maybe jubilee wasn't the right word. I'm saying we stop accepting money for money's sake. So the reaped rewards would no longer be valuable.
Instead we need a system backed by something auditable, so that when a stranger offers it to you, you can investigate and decide if you actually value the activity that created it. Thus creating an incentive to work on projects that are more solution than problem.
> We ... thus concluded that P. multocida serotype B was the primary cause of the disease. [1]
> P. multocida is a ubiquitous organism, most probably widely present in the saiga antelope population in its latent form. The potential pathogenicity is inherent in the organism and can be triggered opportunistically at any time in response to environmental triggers. [1]
I used to think "environment changes" -> "animal populations must adapt, not always successfully". But what seems to be killing entire populations at a time is not mal-adaptation to environment per-say, but an otherwise dormant life-form that we live with every day, suddenly waking up and deciding its time to change the world.
It's not that 3C increase might make the globe too warm to be a comfortable place to life. It's that 3C increase might wake up an incredible evil that has been sleeping for a quarter million years. Evolution is a long-con - some of the billions of strains of dormant, boring, inactive bacterium we've yet to study may actually be the most sophisticated weapons the world has ever developed - just waiting for the right time to deploy themselves. We know there have been mass extinctions we've yet to understand, and we know most of them happened when the world was considerably warmer than it is today.
That's not to downplay the impact of habitat loss and other factors, but if say for example 40% of bird randomly get themselves killed every year then the marginal increase in deaths from wind power looks very different than if they don't.
1)Individual 1 is a vegan. he is given 10 acres of land, He is free to grow whatever he wants and eat. The restriction here is he cannot raise any animals whatsoever including insects for food.
2) Individual 2 is a animal products eater, is also is given 10 acres of land, he can raise whatever he wants: pigs, chickens, cows etc. The restriction here is he cannot any eat any vegetation directly. He can eat only meat, eggs, milk etc.
Conditions:
Both these individuals should be independent, that is there should be no external resources provided to them. For example the person who raises cows, should not be provided with hay. Or the vegan should not be provided with pesticides.
Assume that both these farmers have identical resources otherwise: same type of land, access to the same amount of water etc.
Questions:
1) Who among the 2 do you think will will be more healthy?
2) Who among the 2 do you think will be more destructive to the environment?
If it were 100 farmers and 10000 acres, the it would be 1) vegan 2) carnivore.
This is because you need more diversity to be healthily vegan than you do to be healthily carnivore.
Carnivore is more damaging in both cases because however your slice it, you're going to have to dedicate more overall land to farming if you're eating animals, and that's a greater footgun probability re: eliminating a keystone species and disrupting your food supply.
If you repeated this experiment until you had no more room on the planet, then I think the carnivores would go extinct because of problems either re: the soil chemistry or re: the pollinators. The vegans would survive because so much less of the overall space would be dedicated to farmland.
Are you really sure about the "overall space" part? I mean have you really examined it? Do you have direct experience, as in having lived in a farmland, Or have you talked to a farmer? Or have you closely listen to accounts of farmers on videos or essays?
Given a fixed amount of sunlight and a fixed time window, you've got W available Joules. Only X makes it into plant biomass. If you're eating a consumer, only Y makes it into animal biomass, and then only Z is available to the human.
In all known cases W > X > Y > Z, generally by factors of 2 to 20. The vegans are going to need X/Y times less farmland to meet their energy needs. Maybe they need a bit more than that to account for the nutritional diversity they require, but I doubt that'll offset it.
The biggest loss is gonna be W, and if you compare crops to grazing land it's pretty clear which one has more sun-facing chlorophyll.
I don't take that as a given. Of course there are vegans who are unhealthy, but eating vegan is not straightforwards. You do actually have to do some amount of research to not develop problems eating vegan (B12 deficiency is a common side-effect of yolo eating vegan) and have some idea about nutrition. There is no such requirement to eating whatever. Unless you eat one thing exclusively (like an all-beef-and-only-beef diet), as an omnivore you'll get all the nutrients you need.
Are you proposing that there's an ongoing experiment somewhere in practice that might inform my view? I'm open to that, but my impression of actual farmers is that they're bound by so many artificial constraints that their experience is unlikely to align with sound experiment design.
Yes, there are. Or at least relatively close to the thought experiment. I have seen them over the years. If I find a good article or a video I will post it.
This is not an individual choice problem, so neither people who live in tiny apartments and don't drive NOR people who compete relentlessly to have and use more than others, are the topic.
Science of measurement and analysis has advanced faster in the last thirty years than the 300,000 years before it. Yet, we have quite a lot of science on say, body burden "forever" chemicals, the accumulative destruction of pesticides or the dust of tires from highways. The economic engines associated with making consumer products are not relenting their favorable economic niches. So this is a political problem.
The kind of "stall and crawl" solutions produce some short-term stability, but obviously, it is not making a significant dent. Secondly, frenzied all-out protest and disruption rarely make positive change over time in themselves, so "complete teardown" kinds of solutions are also not the thing.
Media mechanisms are part of political change, but this YNews place (high tech with ads) seems like it has over-stimulated media, and filled it with short-sighted content.
The training wheels for the species are offically "Off" now.
It's wild how when it comes to the biggest problems, people will say "let's not be so emotional about this" and then produce suggestions borne exclusively of their emotional coping mechanism.
Also, 2020 should have been a huge reversal of emissions fortune with the low amount of travel and recreation. If 2020 didn't make a dent in climate change, then you're never going to convince me that individual contributions can accomplish anything.
[0]https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/ghost-flights-pandemic-gr...
Since collectively we can't be bothered because we all need the newest electric vehicle, you can also accept that mass extinction is a byproduct of humanity.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
Capitalism says that's good because market is growing.
Recent submission, a video on Singer's paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35718342 https://youtu.be/KVl5kMXz1vA
Furthermore, the challenge isn't in figuring out the individual changes you list it's figuring out how to convince everyone to adopt them.
I don’t know how to make everyone do that, so, I still don’t know what to do.
The idea that individuals have no responsibility or power is part of how it has been poisoned. I've known people who genuinely would say something like "did you know a half dozen companies put out the majority of emissions? so we don't need to consume less or differently, everything is those companies' fault".
We act like all the options are is a)Being mindful of your emissions (Which will change nothing for the planet) b)Do nothing (Also changes nothing)
While the actual option is to stop the corporations by any and all means. Native americans have a history of doing this with little support form the rest of americans.
If global warming is a real issue, is ''buying an EV'' or ''taking the bus'' an acceptable solution to you? Sincelrely, is it at the height of the problem? Shouldn't you have more - say - radical, views?
Calling for other people to do things you yourself won't do (how many acts of ecoterrorism have you done lately?) isn't really helping, it's the same self-serving logic I was complaining about.
Funny you went to ecoterrorism - I wouldn't have called what Native Americans were doing eco terrorism - they were defending their way of life.
There are many things you can do that are more impactful than taking the bus and that aren't blowing up pipelines - chatting with representatives, working with journalists to help undercover situations, working with activists you support the actions and reasoning of....see what I mean?
I think your logic is self serving - if everyone thinks like you, are things going to change? Because they sure don't seem like they will. But you feel comfortable in your daily life.
(And to add - objectively better can be right even if the ''positive value'' is imperceptible. Are you doing actual efforts to solve the issue or just enough to not feel like it's your responsibility?)
- somebody
Ghandi also started a massive political movement so I think he did a lot of doing in between his being.
Edit: it looks like the ratio has shifted now
My life does not fit within walking distance of a 110m2 box.
The house doesn't make me happy.
Not hearing my neighbors music blasting through the floor at 2am makes me happy.
Not hearing my neighbors screaming at each other every day makes me happy
Being able to paint my walls any color I want makes me happy.
Having a plot of land I can dig up and plant stuff on or build a workshop on makes me happy.
Having a place that is my own that I can do basically anything I want with makes me happy.
Renting apartments is shit. Even condos, which you own on paper but cannot just do whatever you like with, sucks.
Hacker spaces don't exist everywhere by the way, and the ones I have been to sucked.
I don't want every facet of my life outside of my home to be public and shared. I want a private yard, not a communal park and garden. I want a private shop, not a public maker space. I want peace and quiet and a bit of distance from my neighbors, not shared walls.
Because I've lived the apartment life and it honestly did make me want to kill myself. I don't know how people just live like that.
(As an aside, it seems a lot of people unwittingly are making this choice which I find both curious and very depressing)
I am expressing that I would rather die than live in the miserable, joyless sounding purgatory that was described.
"you are next" !?
“700 million tons of dead tissue (a mass equivalent to one million Christ the Redeemer statues).”
Animal: goes extinct
Humanity: Why would nature do this!?
All this without causing any pain or suffering.
I hope you're having a great time in a way that others (especially children) can see and emulate. I hope you're enjoying projects that will be appreciated after you're dead, especially if they're the sort that people with kids don't have time for.
If we care about the children of the future, we've got to make this look good for its own sake.
It's the same non-sense argument of "imagine if everyone invested in index funds". It cannot happen, because at some point the right arbitrage opportunity becomes too obvious to ignore. Here is the same, at some tipping point there would be so many resources available per capita that it would make complete sense to have kids again without screwing up the environment.
All the downvotes simply prove, in my opinion, that people get really offended when confronted with the uncomfortable fact that having kids is, by far and on average, the single most negatively impacting choice they will make on environmental resource consumption in their lives, but they'd rather blather about not taking that one flight or eating organic quinoa for lunch, missing the forest for the tree. I don't blame anyone for that, it's very much biological.