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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

What bugs the hell out of me is that we know how to solve the biggest problems of the world today. We just don't want to do it. Lets hit three:

1. CO2 emissions.

2. Water scarcity

3. Trade imbalances

(2) Is an agricultural problem. Drip-feed everywhere. (1) has a agricultural solution - stop using livestock in agriculture. (3) Well, this has lots of issues, but start with the easiest. End completely the use of agricultural subsidies in the developed world.

Three things, all pretty much the same solution, all uncosted and not backed up with references, which can be done with no technological inventions, and will drop the big issues of the day by a ridiculous amount.

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You could probably also help (2) by stop using livestock in agriculture, since rainforest and jungle are often cleared for animal grazing land, which then lead to flash flooding and drought as the soil can no longer hold the water.

Which is a shame, as from my non-agricultural engineering background, getting people to stop eating meat and livestock-related produce seems like the hardest one to solve, both culturally and nutritionally.

Could we not harness the CO2 emissions and use them to create extremely dense forests (or other plants that need CO2 to grow), then pump the oxygen created by the plants and use it to feed the animals?

I don't think that CO2 is the limiting reactant in plant growth. If I remember my bio/chem right, plants use sunlight to produce sugars using the carbon from CO2. The sugars act as an energy store, and the energy can later be reclaimed by doing the inverse reaction, which involves taking O2 and producing CO2. Providing more CO2 would increase the theoretical capacity for them to store energy, however CO2 is abundant and it would not help with the limiting reactant, sunlight.

Stop using livestock in agriculture? What do you mean?

Livestock produce methane which is a greenhouse gas and contributes significantly to global warming.

CO2 emissions for producing enough food to feed someone on a meat-based diet are significantly greater than on a vegetarian diet.

I may be wrong but I think the vegetarian diet needs to be close to vegan (or at least dairy free) to have a major impact though as cattle are a significant part of the issue.

Tyrannosaurs is basically right - get rid of cattle sheep and pigs (plus assoc others) from our food chain. India has hundreds of millions of people living like this today so it's a viable cultural and agricultural option

It's also more or less guaranteed to slash co2 to the bone, fix enourmous run-on problems and help trade

And frankly will never happen until after we live on mars on a vegan diet and so make it cool and desirable

Basically mandatory vegetarianism?

You will be forced to live on a low cost healthy diet that will extend your lifespan by an average of ten years while at the same time saving the planet from ecological meltdown and the consequent loss of millions of lives.

The Nanny State. It's crap isn't it :-)

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I've been a vegetarian and absolutely hated every minute of it. I love eating meat too much and its substitutes aren't comparable! If I had to cut dairy out too (no butter?!) I'd just stop enjoying food.

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