And the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases is that we feed them oil that we dig from the ground.
Cows are extremely convenient scapegoat but truthfully they exist in a closed system that we keep feeding carbon into. Methane itself is very very harmful but lives almost no time and atmosphere experts all agree on this.
(And it is as under threat as tropical - https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/ha... )
It is a common and convenient misconception that raising cattle is not bad for the environment because it is raised on non-arable land -- the cattle still gets fed imported soy.
0: https://www.efeca.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/UK-RT-on-Su...
Cows aren't often eating the "human grade" crops, to my understanding.
I'm not making an argument that we shouldn't scale back cattle-rearing, if anything my personal preference would be to eliminate all oil-based feed and see how sustainable we can make things; I just think we've got a real convenient scapegoat here when the largest polluter is definitely car dependence as it's adding carbon to the carbon cycle.
They don't emit CO2 or Methane in any way that can run out of control unless we pour carbon into the system externally (by digging up oil and feeding it to them for example, or transporting them using cars that run on fossil fuels, or heating them with fossil fuels).
They are a scapegoat, because they can't by themselves emit anything that can't be captured and returned and reused by cattle for essentially perpetuity, yet we as humans are doing things that are not sustainable and contribute to tipping the scales.
Thanks for flagging me btw.
That aside, your primary argument if I understand it right is that there is no (or at least diminished) cost to cattle raising because the emitted carbon came from food that was sequestered as part of a cycle.
The problem I would call attention to is that the planet's carbon capacity is simultaneously nerfed by the land required for feed. About 40% [0] of arable crop land is used to feed cattle, a process which faces huge caloric efficiency losses (consider that the caloric output of meat cannot be higher than the input).
It is pretty well understood at this stage that meat consumption is a gigantic contributor to climate change. Anyway, I _also_ agree about cars. We don't need to rely on whataboutism here: we have a common objective. And, by the way, I still eat meat, but much much less than I used to, so I don't mean any of this as an attack on meat eaters.
0: https://fefac.eu/newsroom/news/a-few-facts-about-livestock-a...
The economic incentives combined with political corruption will continue FF extraction. The root problems are human nature and political in origin and require leadership to pull back on grain subsidies, tax CAFO-grown meat, tax fossil fuels (none of this "carbon offsets" in Africa fraud), and pass on the real future decline in GDP from climate change-driven floods, famines, and wars.
Cows eat "cow corn" (yellow dent corn). 5% of every bit of America is used to grow the stuff; only a tiny fraction is used to grow sweet corn. That's an absurd amount of overproduction thanks to subsidies. It gets inefficiently turned into ethanol and steaks. Instead, in most areas, that land could be used to grow healthier human crops like quinoa, lentils, or sorghum. Commercial sorghum is grown about 2 blocks from where I live.
Just like water, the consumption of water doesn’t mean it is eliminated from the water cycle.
If we need 100% efficiency yields because humans are so numerous that there can no longer by any inefficiency in the conversion of sun rays into energy fit for human consumption: then you have a point.
But we're not there, so the inefficiency of food production is not particularly relevant.
Where you and I will agree is that the scale of meat production is unsustainable, as evidenced by the fact that we are feeding cows fucking oil from the ground. If we could sustain a population of cattle and enough energy for human population then I don't see a problem, but that is obviously significantly lower than the scale we currently see cattle-rearing.
We're not talking about contributing to the carbon cycle anymore, we're talking specifically about converting rays from the sun into human consumable matter.
I think you've come into a reasoned conversation with an idealised take that meat consumption is inherently stupid, and this doesn't not necessarily make sense because inefficiency is totally acceptable as long as the needs of the system are met.
People use python for making websites, after all, one of the least efficient languages available. People move to higher efficiency languages when the system begins to demand it.
I think I'll conclude the conversation here as it's clear you're just conversing from an ideological point of view.
Methane is a problem, as discussed elsewhere in the thread, but the largest issue continues to be the fact we're digging up oil and feeding it to herds, you've not convinced me that this is not the largest issue, or not a larger issue than: air travel, cars etc;
The issue is that all that carbon and other mineral resources we dug up to power all of this ends up rapidly upsetting the balance the Earth settled in over the last million years. My point is that we could eat the same amount of calories by generating much less waste and needing much less space and energy.
I'm sure we can make things uninhabitable without doing that, but, largely when talking about climate change: it's the mere fact that we're unleashing significant amounts of stored energy into a closed loop ecosystem that cannot handle it.
I think we're saying the same thing here.
Water usage spent on watering crops used to then raise livestock (eg. alfalfa, soy) account for some 70% or more of total water usage in regions where this type of farming is done.
In arid regions (MENA, Saudi Arabia, Iran, California etc), a lot of that water is aquifer water. Aquifers take centuries, sometimes millennia to fill up.
The consequences of emptying these are rivers drying up, native flora dying off, topsoil being eroded and so on. In some cases, Tehran and Mexico City being prime examples, the depletion is sufficient to cause structural changes in the ground leading to literal collapses of land.
Growing food with an order of magnitude less inefficiencies means an order of magnitude less of these consequences.
I'm not sure how you wouldn't agree with me that cows are a scapegoat based on this fact alone.
Feed conversion ratio for beef is something like 1:6-10, and that's ignoring everything above.
And "[cows] exist in a closed system" assumes we’re not expanding herds, clearing forests, or using fossil inputs.
https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-methane-is-sho...
Long term damage is reasoned by looking at consequences of the short term effects (such as the death of plants and livestock due to extremes).
1) Bomb the Nord Stream pipeline unleashing massive amounts of methane.
2) Greenhouse gas conscious politicians use private jets and buy ocean front mansions and homes despite warning us not to do so.
3) Refuse to create consumer friendly digital currency or tackle constant 2-5% yearly inflation so everyone flocks to bitcoin and burn coal for electricity to mine useless coins.
4) We need to turn off lights to save electricity while A.I. uses massive amount of electricity to generate people with extra fingers.
No offense but have you seen the men in countries with little meat protein intake?
The recommendations / sciences - which predate concerns about greenhouse emissions etc - for how much meat you need per day is about 65 grams, or about 1/2 quarter pounder in American measurements. In macronutrient language, you only need about 46-56 grams of protein a day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Reference_Intake#Macro...).
I won't deny that good beef contains heaps of both essential macro- and micronutrients in a convenient and tasty package, but people really don't need as much per day as they are eating.
2) You are right, they are hypocrites. At least you can vote some of the politicians out - unfortunately, their electorate The bad news is that physics does not care about their hypocrisy. The good news is that neither do we have to - we can make a lot of choices ourselves. Including what we eat, how we heat, and who we vote for.
3) Why do you think "everyone" is flocking to bitcoin ? [1] the usage is still confidential enough. The GHG impact is therefore hard to evaluate ; sure it might use a lot of electricity (about as much as a small country [2]), but it depends on how valuable you value the thing.
I don't think bitcoin is more usefull than a big "gambling ponzi scheme", but I understand people have other opinions. Do you use bitcoin daily ? More than you national currency ? More than other digital services.
4) Do you believe those things to be exclusive ? In turns of carbon, we need to "turn off lights" (I suppose you mean "reduce our own consumptions") _and_ demand that AI be at least powered by carbon heavy sources (or - unpopular opinion on HN - consider not using them too heavily ?) But we also need to lobby for building carbon-light electricity sources. AND we need to reduce the impact of agriculture.
The fact that some people are oblivious to the impact of activity A does not remove the impact of activity B.
[1] https://theconversation.com/almost-no-one-uses-bitcoin-as-cu...
You'll just ruin it, nobody likes burnt beef.
Coal and renewables output the exact same thing (electricity), beef and alternatives don't. Unless they make money from coal, people don't want coal, they want electricity and they won't even know the source. But in this case people want beef. Almost every beef replacement failed so far. So it's not as straight forward as "treating it the same" because at least one generation of people will always know what they lose. The hill is steeper for this battle.
Tell that to my FiL. I dread his family gatherings since I know hockey puck burgers are going to be the only viable food on the menu because he's very proud of that expensive grill he has no talent with.
Eating animals that graze all day on the scant plant life was a necessity in many parts of the world. But in places where plants grow in abundance like India and Central America they eat them either exclusively or predominantly and their food is delicious as a result. These days the rest of the world has much better access to fresh vegetables too. I can even grow many desi vegetables in a greenhouse at home. So ditch the tasteless chunks of animal protein and eat more plants.
There is absolutely nothing special about beef. We could replace beef with palm oil, lithium, air travel, or even data centers. The same system logic applies: convert energy and resources into power, growth, and order, while displacing entropy elsewhere.
A clean planet is a planet without civilization. This is a factual observation, not nihilism.
I don't understand. It is quite clear that we are what is polluting the planet, sure.
There are multiple ways to reduce our impact and try to reach some sort of balance. Of course everything is imbalanced right now, we are only a couple of generations after the industrial revolution after all.
Ultimately it's about the energy invested to on one hand keep civilization running and on the other dispose of its products in a non-disruptive manner. There's an overabundance of it from the sun, we just haven't scaled up our means of extracting it.
A solar panel throughout its lifetime gathers way more energy than is required to produce it and later turn into materials for new solar panels. There exists a process for that and I'm sure eventually legislation will follow as the number of end-of-life panels grows.
From a theoretical perspective, that sunlight on your solar panel isn't free - there was some tree or plant who would have used it if you had not.
Even if you build over the ocean, there would be some algae grown with that light and fish who ate the algae.
From a practical perspective, good luck making and deploying huge amounts of solar panels without huge mines for materials, a big road network cutting through the forest to deliver the parts, huge cities for people to live in who operate the factories etc.
Actually, no. Plants typically use just the two chlorophyll bands and the carotenoids band and they really don't need all of the 1000W/m2 of solar radiation - you see this in how plants in direct sunlight turn red to absorb less. For the same reason they're typically green, not black.
On top of that the Earth's albedo is 0.367 - much of the energy which reaches our planet is reflected back to space.
I was addressing this comment:
> There’s no version of it that’s truly sustainable long-term, just degrees of delay or harm reduction.
Yes, we have an impact on the ecosystem, no matter what we do. But the ecosystem is also able to regenerate and sustainability is just a matter of not straining it beyond that ability. It's entirely feasible, we just need to scale up certain technologies available today.
It's also entirely possible to sustain a civilization without causing continuous damage to the planet, it just isn't allowed to be constantly growing in population and resource consumption. That's not a necessary part of civilization, it's just the way we're doing it currently.
All civilizations including ours have been doing it this way, so you can argue it is a part of the civilization. It’s a comforting fiction that humanity can fundamentally change its character, but the history proves otherwise.
True, most of the demonization of beef is moral posturing, for anyone who has looked beyond the headlines, and the counterpoints.
It would not. I said civilization "extracts resources, generates waste and disrupts ecosystems". A sponge does not disrupt its ecosystem. In fact, it keeps it alive.
> Non-native species often disrupt ecosystems when introduced somewhere new.
And how does this happen exactly? Non-native species do not just walk around - you need humans and civilization to move them around, and create exactly these kinds of issues.
That's not at all true, from either side.
To begin with, a planet can be "dirty" without any civilization. Most planets are. Look at Venus. Our own planet had already gone through 5 mass extinction events before we came up. The Great Oxigenation Event in particular does look like "pollution until planet death" without any civilization involved.
On the other side, it possible to have clean civilization - even one that cleans up more as it advances. You make it sound like it's an inherent problem - like civilization is "by definition" unclean. That is not at all the case. We have seen it is possible. What it isn't, is (as) profitable as simply not dealing with the externalities.
Civilization,Clean Planet,Maximal Profit: pick two.
They can also be clean. Look at Earth. Don't see an argument here. We are discussing whether civilization pollutes or not, not whether planets are inherently habitable or inhibitable.
> We have seen it is possible.
Where have we seen it possible?
- eat meat, and accept the impact to the environment, health risks, and mass unethical treatment of livestock
- stop eating meat, and accept that some of the foods you grew up eating, you can't eat any more
Just one day less.
- mass unethical treatment (assuming you do not mean the fact that animals are killed) is related to the conditions which are related to price
- health risks can be minimal depending on the amount and type of meat you eat
- the CO2 impact again depends on the meat and conditions. Surely chicken in your backyard can be kept without CO2 impacts with some effort.
- your very existence has a CO2 impact. By your own logic you have two choices …
Source? I really don't buy that more expensive meat producers kill their animals that much more "humanely". And even if the killing was painless, you're still killing tens of animals per year for the sole sake of a tastier meal.
> health risks can be minimal depending on the amount and type of meat you eat
True.
> the CO2 impact again depends on the meat and conditions. Surely chicken in your backyard can be kept without CO2 impacts with some effort.
I trust you raise all the animals you eat, and don't feed them with imported grains? Don't be ridiculous.
> your very existence has a CO2 impact. By your own logic you have two choices …
You're basically telling anyone who's self-conscious about their environmental impact to kill themselves. Great.
Do you believe that's inherently immoral?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaVWbdlAiCQ
EDIT: he gives these sources that, fortunetaly, are in english:
https://philpapers.org/archive/HUEDOE.pdf
https://philpapers.org/archive/HUEDOE-2.pdf
https://philpapers.org/archive/HUEDOE-3.pdf
https://philpapers.org/archive/HUEDOE-4.pdf
Takes the form of a conversation between two people, like the texts of olde.
philosophical viewpoint arguing that human beings are the central or most significant entities in the world. This is a basic belief embedded in many Western religions and philosophies. Anthropocentrism regards humans as separate from and superior to nature and holds that human life has intrinsic value while other entities (including animals, plants, mineral resources, and so on) are resources that may justifiably be exploited for the benefit of humankind.
Health risks from meat is an US-only issue. Here in Europe we have much stricter regulations on meat, so much so that American meat cannot be imported and cannot be sold here. IIRC (might be wrong on this) Canada doesn't allow importing US meat as well?
Meat is safe for consumption in Europe.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/22/eu-to-lift-its...
The larger risks to us include:
- Pandemic virus evolution of viruses from complex people<->livestock<->wildlife interactions.
- Evolving antibiotic resistant bacteria since livestock are given most of the same compounds given to humans simply for economic advantage, and in some cases, to force-feed animals with unsuitable feed like too much corn in too short of a timeframe. Some CAFO farms, their cows would die if not given antibiotics. [0]
- Water, air, and soil pollution on a large scale. Liquid shit lakes that spread manure into the air with sprayers. Runoff from pesticides and fertilizer used to grow the corn, soybeans, etc. The list goes on.
And, yes, climate change, animal cruelty, and other concerns.. but like condoning genocides, nothing will be done about it because people want their fucking Costco-sized 40 pack of cheap hamburgers, BMW SUVs, and overwatered perfectly green grass and air conditioning set to 68 F / 20 C in Phoenix AZ.
0. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/antimicrobial-stewardship/report-...
I’m not sure this is possible, at least not in a typical yard or urban garden. According to one study[1] community gardens in and around cities emit six times the CO2 per serving compared to industrial agriculture. I assume this is roughly applicable to backyard gardens too. I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t applicable to livestock—which the study appears to have excluded—but also wouldn’t be surprised if the story is similar with chickens/livestock.
I imagine that even if it is less efficient to grow your chickens in the back yard, it might be possible to approach or exceed current industrial poultry farms in CO2 efficiency. My hunch is that if those farms get incentivized by penalties on CO2 production it would be impossible though.
[1] https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/1968...
But there's a much bigger percentage of people that would be willing to eat meat less, without fully stopping. Turn meat into a delicacy you indulge in, not the default base to prepare every meal on. Try some indian food, or stuff from other cuisines that rely less on meat. Make that twice a week, you'll probably enjoy it, maybe even save some money.
Indeed. Faced with that absolute choice, I'd pick eating meat and dismiss the entire line of reasoning about meat.
And quite frankly I wouldn't even feel guilty about it: I'm pretty sure I'm already doing more than the average to lower my emissions. As a trivial example: I pretty much use public transport all the time and don't have a car. This alone probably puts me above the average american vegan driving an SUV to go from their suburbs to anywhere, in terms of carbon footprint reduction.
But even when the authors excluded embedded emissions from sources like transport and packaging, they still found that agriculture generated 24% of GHGs. According to the World Resources Institute, a research group, cars, trains, ships and planes produce a total of 16%.
It finds that animal-based foods account for 57% of agricultural GHGs, versus 29% for food from plants. Beef and cow’s milk alone made up 34%. Combined with the earlier study’s results, this implies that cattle produce 12% of GHG emissions.
They aren't fed farmed food, they forage and run wild in the Kimberley and Kakadu, and the environment is well served by routinely rounding them up for dinner and taking pressure from the grasslands.
More or less the same story for camels and wild donkeys.
"eating meat necessarily results in unethical treatment of livestock"
Sounds like a load of barnacles. Even that third one about impacting the environment is likely bogus.
Building and operating an amusement park is also incredibly inefficient just to get a giggle. If every product would be priced in a way that includes all externalities you'd see a shrink in the industries with the highest (negative) impact.
I'm setting aside the Pandora's box discussion about allowing only the rich the luxury of destroying the environment.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_animal_feeding_op...
Additionally, pointing out inefficiencies is a good thing and something we should do more of, because that's how we optimize.
> Your right to use resources ends where my impact begins.
No, it doesn't. If it did, no-one would be able to zero any resources as the planet is a zero-sum resource pool.
I have the right to use resources even where it impacts other. The limits we place on resource use are and should be only in extremis where that impact reaches a level that is particularly harmful.
Many agricultural practices meet this condition and have been banned. Many more should be. However, that does not extend to dictating that resources cannot be used for husbandry.
Following your logic, I should be able to prohibit you using computers recreationally, prevent you from travelling in powered vehicles, prevent you from having children. Each of those has a far higher contribution to resource use than husbandry.
> Additionally, pointing out inefficiencies is a good thing and something we should do more of, because that's how we optimize.
Life is not an optimisation problem. Don't waste yours approaching it this way.
That's not how optimization works. We can improve systems without descending into authoritarian micromanagement. By your logic, we should never fix anything because someone might take it too far.
There are wasteful (and horrific) forms of husbandry, but it's not a fact that meat production is wasteful. That's an opinion that's contingent on the assertion that meat is not worth the resources used for production.
> Your response is to claim I must therefore support banning computers and children?!
Yes, I am showing you the absurdity of your statement. Exactly the same logic can be used (and is used by those with extremist opinions like your own) to show that reproduction, computing, travel, medicine, art is wasteful, because it's subjective whether any result is worth the resources required.
> That's not how optimization works. We can improve systems without descending into authoritarian micromanagement. By your logic, we should never fix anything because someone might take it too far.
To be clear, your statements above are already taking it too far by declaring for others what they should be able to spend their resources on.
Like they get outspend to an incredible degree. You are not choosing, they are telling you what to choose. It doesn’t mean change isn’t possible but you are swimming against a powerful current called Lobbying and Marketing/Influencing.
Tough sell.
Hey HN moderators and users, why shouldn't this discussion be allowed? what possible reason there is to ban it from the site?
i promise, we're all adults here, we can handle a controversial topic, no need to coddle us
jen729w•4h ago