Do you have any evidence to back it up, that reducing the air travel and other extravagances wouldn't be sufficient, but that we need to give up daily pleasures?
To me, it sounds like restricting drinking water to fight the drought in California: useless, gesture actions which target the daily lives of people, causing annoyance -- while allowing almond farmers (and others) to continue the real problem, without challenge.
If climate change is actually a serious problem (and I think it is), then its time for people to stop promoting emotive witch-doctor solutions (such as restricting drinking water in restaurants to fight a drought) and start taking a serious, data-driven look at causes.
nope sorry. Decision is on another table. More like if we want to share our piece of Pie with China/India population. What do you think will happen if their income increases with 50%? Biological food? Gender Neutral clothing? No, just same way of consuming we did for the past 50 years. Each gram you are going to save is compensated by kilos that their side.
the only think we still can do is heavily putting tariffs on their services/good in order to increase our standards of living unless we want to come on equal par
Just one example: cruise ships for Carnival alone — not to even mention all the other cruise lines — pollute 10 times more than all the cars in Europe combined [1]. I’ve seen plenty of thinkpieces about not eating meat, but approximately zero about not taking cruises. Curious!
I have seen this several times and it's almost akin to fake news because of how misled people are by it.
When they say 'pollution' they are completely ignoring CO2 emissions and only focusing on things like sulphur dioxide. So yes, it's not a conspiracy that you're seeing many articles about not eating meat, and not many about not taking cruises.
From your link:
>Even so, with cars releasing so little in the way of pollutants compared to larger forms of travel, it means you don't have to feel guilty about enjoying the wastefulness that is motorsport.
From the article: “Animal agriculture produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transportation sector (all planes, cars and trains), and is the primary source of methane and nitrous oxide emissions (which are 86 and 310 times more powerful than CO2, respectively).”
You're being down voted but you're making an extremely important point. It's very, very difficult to convince people to reduce their quality of life because something bad is going to happen in the future to people who may or may not be them. You see this all over the place in other domains such as diet (people know they should eat less but don't), exercise (people don't do it), personal finance (people don't save), alcohol and drug use (people don't stop), medication compliance (people can't be bothered to take their meds), security (people can't be bothered to do best practice), etc; and those are problems that directly affect them with shorter time horizons. You're fighting human nature, and you're going to lose. Further, you have a collective action problem where no one is going to act because they don't want to be the person who has to reduce QOL while other people don't. I firmly believe that people will not get onboard with reduction of consumption en masse and that the only way to solve the problem of climate change is to innovate our way out of the problems while maintaining analogous QOL.
I applaud the general HN community for taking a stand against the problem and making sacrifices, but the reality is that most other people won't, and I think we should have that discussion.
IF this is the crisis we are being assured it is, the only solution is technological. We've spent thousands of years improving the quality of the life of the average human and now a new set of aspiring tyrants on a great moral jihad believe we must reduce our quality of life.
It won't work. And the fight that might come to pass would be a catastrophe unto itself.
We either deal with this technologically or it doesn't get dealt with at all.
We need to change the way we farm meat back to planet-positive grazing. And, we need to reclaim virgin grassland and timberland from the raping of modern agriculture. Then, we can eat the way we were intended to. Healthy meats, fish, few plants.
and what works for you should be forced into law, of course!
I dream of a world of less laws. A world where if a boss sees that an employee performs better at home, he can let them. And where he can also choose not to.
This is definitely not what's gonna happen if we want to tackle climate change. As for the remote working, I guess that more than a fair assessment from employers, there is some cultural resistance that could be changed with a bit of encouragement.
Actually, the article's point is that halting every combustion-engine automobile, boat, plane, and train forever would do less to combat global warming than a genocide of all cows and pigs.
Eat as much meat as you want, just leave away what you are eating out of habit and not because you actually want. This will go a long way already. Since you are not cutting down the meat which you actually want to eat, it does not feel like a sacrifice.
The article was a bit light on hard values, does anyone have good sources? Googling, main pages which come up seem to indicate the impact is only ~15% of total GHG emissions [1][2]. This doesn't seem like much overall for sweeping lifestyle changes, are these values wrong or am I missing something here?
Granted [1] isn't a great source, but hard to find.
This is unfortunately very black and white, which is unfortunate because the topic deserves discussion.
Eating _less_ meat (and less red meat in particular) is still beneficial. One doesn't need to go 100% off meat to have a very positive effect.
I eat a mostly vegan diet, which I think still counts, but in many people's books it doesn't matter because of the 2 servings of meat/eggs I have a week. That's ridiculous, and makes these discussions about ideology rather than positive measurable changes.
Veggie burgers are getting damn good these days too. If people would just give this a try (and leave out the politics), I think they'd find 3+ days a week without meat is no problem.
Also - this article points out some extreme flaws in the original Guardian story: https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-... , quote "in the USA, fossil fuels are responsible for over 10 times more human-caused greenhouse gas emissions than animal agriculture."
Sounds like some extreme skepticism is warranted when interpreting these numbers (as usual).
Did you read the article? This article is arguing large reductions, not complete eliminations. How is that black and white?
A talk I attended by this same author, in maybe 2010, is what caused me to dramatically decrease my meat intake. His framing was compelling: eating meat is bad for several reasons, but also enjoyable and hard to avoid, so just eat a lot less.
Since that day my intake has easily been < 50% of what it was before, probably closer to 75% less. I just don't eat meat unless I have a good reason to: social gathering/celebration, really bad alternatives, or just a day where my willpower is low due to some other emotional load.
It really hasn't been hard, and is getting easier with things like Impossible Burger.
I wouldn't be surprised if the planet is beyond saving and even if the majority of people started consuming a vegetarian diet. The real culprit is the nonexistent checks & balances for using excessive resources in industries. Laws should be doing more than fining people and where the current fines aren't being a deterrent.
The same should be said for cities refusing to build homes for affordable living and where public transportation should make sense contrary to owning personal transportation. The newer generation isn't going to just adapt to a lesser quality lifestyle in the current climate of seeing their parents afford homes in their early 20s and with higher education being without debt. The young generation has a mentality that it isn't about them at all and they're not going to adapt. The older generation is making off like bandits and similarly will do nothing.
30 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 99.5 ms ] threadThanks, I'll have my daily 400g meat.
Do you have any evidence to back it up, that reducing the air travel and other extravagances wouldn't be sufficient, but that we need to give up daily pleasures?
To me, it sounds like restricting drinking water to fight the drought in California: useless, gesture actions which target the daily lives of people, causing annoyance -- while allowing almond farmers (and others) to continue the real problem, without challenge.
If climate change is actually a serious problem (and I think it is), then its time for people to stop promoting emotive witch-doctor solutions (such as restricting drinking water in restaurants to fight a drought) and start taking a serious, data-driven look at causes.
the only think we still can do is heavily putting tariffs on their services/good in order to increase our standards of living unless we want to come on equal par
[1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/28469/carnival-cruise-ship-fle...
When they say 'pollution' they are completely ignoring CO2 emissions and only focusing on things like sulphur dioxide. So yes, it's not a conspiracy that you're seeing many articles about not eating meat, and not many about not taking cruises.
From your link:
>Even so, with cars releasing so little in the way of pollutants compared to larger forms of travel, it means you don't have to feel guilty about enjoying the wastefulness that is motorsport.
This is just sad.
I applaud the general HN community for taking a stand against the problem and making sacrifices, but the reality is that most other people won't, and I think we should have that discussion.
IF this is the crisis we are being assured it is, the only solution is technological. We've spent thousands of years improving the quality of the life of the average human and now a new set of aspiring tyrants on a great moral jihad believe we must reduce our quality of life.
It won't work. And the fight that might come to pass would be a catastrophe unto itself.
We either deal with this technologically or it doesn't get dealt with at all.
No.
I dream of a world of less laws. A world where if a boss sees that an employee performs better at home, he can let them. And where he can also choose not to.
This is definitely not what's gonna happen if we want to tackle climate change. As for the remote working, I guess that more than a fair assessment from employers, there is some cultural resistance that could be changed with a bit of encouragement.
[0]https://sustainability.ucsf.edu/1.713
Works well for me.
Granted [1] isn't a great source, but hard to find.
[1] https://www.meatinstitute.org/index.php?ht=d/sp/i/47385/pid/...
[2] http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/
Eating _less_ meat (and less red meat in particular) is still beneficial. One doesn't need to go 100% off meat to have a very positive effect.
I eat a mostly vegan diet, which I think still counts, but in many people's books it doesn't matter because of the 2 servings of meat/eggs I have a week. That's ridiculous, and makes these discussions about ideology rather than positive measurable changes.
Veggie burgers are getting damn good these days too. If people would just give this a try (and leave out the politics), I think they'd find 3+ days a week without meat is no problem.
Also - this article points out some extreme flaws in the original Guardian story: https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-... , quote "in the USA, fossil fuels are responsible for over 10 times more human-caused greenhouse gas emissions than animal agriculture."
Sounds like some extreme skepticism is warranted when interpreting these numbers (as usual).
A talk I attended by this same author, in maybe 2010, is what caused me to dramatically decrease my meat intake. His framing was compelling: eating meat is bad for several reasons, but also enjoyable and hard to avoid, so just eat a lot less.
Since that day my intake has easily been < 50% of what it was before, probably closer to 75% less. I just don't eat meat unless I have a good reason to: social gathering/celebration, really bad alternatives, or just a day where my willpower is low due to some other emotional load.
It really hasn't been hard, and is getting easier with things like Impossible Burger.
The same should be said for cities refusing to build homes for affordable living and where public transportation should make sense contrary to owning personal transportation. The newer generation isn't going to just adapt to a lesser quality lifestyle in the current climate of seeing their parents afford homes in their early 20s and with higher education being without debt. The young generation has a mentality that it isn't about them at all and they're not going to adapt. The older generation is making off like bandits and similarly will do nothing.