Completely agree. Reducing or getting rid of livestock animal agriculture will help with many major challenges we have today, like climate change, loss of biodiversity, animal cruelty, antimicrobial resistance. But hey, gotta have that cheap burger, huh?
We, the people, have the power to improve this situation. Call your representatives, do activism, talk to your friends about it, vote for the right candidates.
> We, the people, have the power to improve this situation. Call your representatives, do activism, talk to your friends about it, vote for the right candidates.
And stop eating meat and fish! It's insane for many reasons even if you don't care about how the animals are treated:
* Biodiversity loss: because we kill everything in the sea by fishing, and we kill everything in the fields for intensive agriculture (which is needed to feed the cattle). And because of deforestation of course.
* Antibiotic-resistance: because putting so many animals (fishes or cows) together brings diseases we need to treat.
* CO2 emissions: it's super inefficient, we all know it.
Not being a vegetarian in 2025 is just completely unreasonable.
We had Greta Thunberg talking to politicians, but actually I'm looking forward to when kids will ask their parents: "So you know you are killing us in so many ways, and you can't be arsed to eat less meat? Aren't you supposed to care about us?"
By this logic, having a car in 2025 is "just completely unreasonable". Taking plane in 2025 is "just completely unreasonable". Use of AC unless life threatening circumstances is "just completely unreasonable". Wasting rainwater and use drinkable water to wash your car (or yourself, actually) is "just completely unreasonable". Eating cashew/almond or other highly water intensive crops grown in a dried out area (California...) is "just completely unreasonable".
Note that apart from the rainwater one, I do none of the above, so I'm not even pleading for myself and my "way of life". I'm just showing how easy it is to boldly state that "it is obvious, we just all have to be reasonable" while, in fact, _not_ being "reasonable" yourself.
Yes! I'm not sure what the your intended upshot here is, but those absolutely would be beneficial changes in behavior and are perfectly in line with prevailing recommendations of ways behaviors need to change to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change, and related recommendations more broadly in line with environmental conservation and public health.
Far from a counterpoint, they testify to the reasonableness of the request in this instance, of stepping away from factory farming, because it belongs to a class of similar and well respected recommendations. Getting people to actually change their behavior is an important issue, and the purpose of recognizing it should be to reckon with it in a serious way rather that use it to tee up complaints about hypocrisy that seem to imply the futility of doing anything.
The thing is, I'm not arguing against the fact (yes, the fact) that doing this would beneficial. I'm saying that stating how "simple" and "reasonable" are these actions is missing the point.
Again, not a personal attack, but do you follow all of these actions (I could add more similar ones)? Do you own or use a car? Have you ever taken a flight? Went on a cruise? Ate cashews or almond milk? If so, why are you doing this? Why are you (to use the terms stated by OP), so unreasonable, unwilling to do so simple things for your children?
I'm not saying that any action is futile, but that the cost (monetary or otherwise) to take them is _vastly_ underestimated and basically swept under the rug with arguments of reasonableness and simplicity.
And, just to restate, I am not defending my own lifestyle, it's not an emotional argument to make for me.
I might have missed something, but I don't see anyone suggesting such changes are easy. If anything, I feel like I'm seeing opposite arguments, imploring people to understand that we're working against human nature.
My concern is that both sides are frustratingly obvious and are corrections in search of someone or something to be corrected. I don't think that anything you're saying is strictly wrong, but I think it's baffling to offer in this context where it seems to be a counterpoint in a room full of people who already agree with it (except for maybe that I-want-my-cheeseburgers-at-any-price guy). This is what I mean about Learned Sage comments, and I think the fix is to cover your bases with charitable interpretation.
Not sure what's your point though. I do think people will always do "some" unreasonable things, but doing all reasonable things at once and as much as we can is probably not smart so we should at least discuss it. How large should a burger be? How many times per day should you wash your car? What temperature should you use for your AC? Don't know, but if someone tells me they eat 1kg burger at each meal, they wash their car 3 times a day and they put the AC to 15 in the summer I would tell them they are not reasonable and that they can enjoy life better if they change a bit their habits.
This, I absolutely agree with.
Yes, there are small things you can do which (collectively) _can_ have an impact.
I'm arguing against : "So you know you are killing us in so many ways, and you can't be arsed to eat less meat? Aren't you supposed to care about us?"
You can replace "to eat less meat" by basically a thousand different "reasonable" things. Does that mean that _literally everyone on earth_ is willingly "killing their children and not caring about them"?
I really dislike those arguments patronizing everyone. They achieve nothing -- actually quite the contrary, at _best_ they do nothing for someone who do not feel targeted, at worst they turn people against your cause. There's a difference between stating that each of us can and should take action because those are needed and saying that everyone not doing X is a child killer. If someone suggest that I should stop drinking almond milk, I would consider it. If they introduce this by telling how ashamed I should be and how my children will hate me for this -- but not for long since they will soon be dead anyway because of me -- well, maybe I'll just ignore an otherwise perfectly reasonable and fact-based suggestion.
Definitely it should not be patronizing. Presentation was so bad for various important topics (burning fossil fuels, nutrition habits, sex stuff, etc.).
Still, personally I try to let myself challenged even if the argument is patronizing. I don't want to say "I will not do X because you made a patronizing argument!". But for the cases I conclude it is actually a good idea, I will try to explain to the people making the argument "you would have convinced me easier if communicated like this".
I call this bad faith. You're right, living the way we live is unsustainable. That's why almost all species are dying, and that's not yet a consequence of global warming. Now, some things are harder to change than others, and have more or less impact.
Stopping to eat meat/fish is probably the one thing that is reasonably easy, cheap (vegetarian food is globally cheaper), and would have a huge impact.
Well, humans and other omnivores species do need the rapport of animal diet.
And raising cattle dates from the dawn of civilization. It was sustainable tens of thousands of years and suddenly became unsustainable in the last ten years?
It is natural for humans to eat and desire to eat meat. You might as well criticize people for having sex drives (which clearly sometimes lead to negative outcomes), or needing to urinate, or criticizing dogs or lions for their eating of meat. I think we can and should develop alternatives and put our higher levels of intellect to use, but that isn't going to change our natures and it's not reasonable to expect large amounts of people to voluntarily choose to become monks and forsake the natural man. If you really want to fix things, developing more sustainable and healthy replacements is the way, not trying to shame them for their naturally-endowed characteristics.
At this point we're trafficking in tediously obvious truisms. This is Learned Sage Warns Powerball Not As Much After Taxes territory. I don't think anyone imploring us to change agricultural practices is unaware of these fundamentals about human nature. Presenting them in this context as if they represent a counterpoint implies that there's a fundamental futility to even trying, which I think takes the convo in the wrong direction.
> I don't think anyone imploring us to change agricultural practices is unaware of these fundamentals about human nature.
I don't disagree necessarily, but to be clear my comment was't directed at a wide audience, but rather directed at GP who did say something that to me would indicate heavily that they are either unaware of or choose not to acknowledge those fundamentals about human nature:
> You wanting the burger has all these negative consequences for humans, animals and nature.
I fully concede that I may be reading it too literally, but I don't think it's unreasonable to take what people say at face value. In fact I think that's the most reasonable thing to do as attempting to read minds over the internet quickly deteriorates conversation into talking past each other and people assuming you're lying/misrepresenting your true intentions (aka, reddit). I don't think I've interpreted their statement uncharitably either, though if I have that was inadvertent and was not my intention.
But also, my main point was more about the path to success than the tediously obvious truism. My main point is that shaming people for their nature isn't generally effective. I've seen this first-hand having grown up in a religious environment that heavily shamed sexual feelings/activity outside of marriage. The path to success (IMHO of course) is to develop palatable alternatives to meat.
>I don't think anyone imploring us to change agricultural practices
Before discovering agriculture, we were hunters gatherers.
Practicing agriculture allowed human population to expand tremendously.
If you forbid agriculture, how do you wish to proceed with eugenics and euthanasia? Because not practicing agriculture will probably only allow 2% of mankind to survive.
You can't just say something is bad and expect billions of people to change their wants in order to achieve your political and moral goals.
I'm fine with the cost of a burger pricing in all these externalities, but I also don't like the idea of turning something like meat into a luxury good where only well-off people can afford it.
What are the downsides of taking a relatively affordable good that people enjoy and making it a luxury good for the rich only?
Is there a word that’s the opposite of “tautology”? Because this question seems like an example. It maps to “what are the downsides of decreasing quality of life for most people”.
It is about choices. You gain a certain amount of money and you can do various things with them. You can choose to eat 100 burgers I can choose to eat 100 carrots and buy a TV.
Antibiotic resistance implies "killing most of people faster" which in my book is worse than "decreasing quality of life for meat eaters".
I do eat meat occasionally, but I generally I am not able to eat all that I like each day (think: different cuisines, deserts, etc.) so maybe people just did not try enough stuff to enjoy more than one/two dishes... which in itself sounds sad to me.
It only has been a "norm" for a few thousand years during the agricultural era for the poorest of the poor, who could neither obtain hunting privileges, afford to keep their own animals, had no access to food, work or communal programs, which provided them with some meat, or there were significant famines which made the culling of livestock necessary.
Beyond that I'd argue we should strive to minimize class-based access restrictions to food rather than artificaly enforce them.
What is the downside of the scenario where only the rich can afford to own houses or land? After all historically, the rich owned the land and just allowed the poor to live there.
I'm not seeing how that context makes your comment make more sense. I am not seeing that they were charged with any kind of unreasonable extrapolation along the lines of "wanting to end meat consumption," nor why that would create context that sets up your dichotomy.
Now it sounds like you're saying you know there was a middle ground but were saying it anyway to make some kind of rhetorical point, but I don't know what rhetorical point you are making.
I think part of whywhywhywhy's point was that many (though likely not all) of the negative externalities of meat consumption could be fixed by taxing them and raising the price of the burger, without outright banning it
Right, and if that's what they meant, I honestly don't think it's that bad of an idea. One of the objections here is that it shouldn't be a luxury for the rich which, well fine, channel it all through a redistributive system then.
Though I suspect cheap lab grown meat (absent some reactionary political backlash like we've seen in Florida) can make it cheap and accessible to everyone and possibly bypass the concerns about antibiotics.
When bears, badgers and raccoons start factory farming and training bacteria to have antibiotic resistance, we can talk about those.
And if and when they do, our response would be to consider interventions, not to treat it as a reason to disengage from the problem of antibiotic resistance.
Many people accept that swimming in polluted area is a bad idea and that they will have either to move to another pond or just not swim at all. So why can't we just accept that eating (way) too much meat is not good...
Since people’s behavior in these cases is different (as you say) perhaps “we” should instead accept that the situations are different enough to merit different behavior?
Trying to read them as charitably as I can, I think they are suggesting they're okay with moving away from destructive practices that make red meat so cheap and paying the higher cost that comes with it.
Do you know how many animals are killed farming a wheat field? We used to have to purge colonies of prairie dogs each spring in order to plant. Then there are the birds that get caught in the harvesters and the insects killed by the pesticides. It’s a horror show either way.
Be honest about the timescale, I understand why climate activists use the "10 years" timeline because its hard for people to care about something beyond that and the idea that we need to panic about it to enact mass change but I think anyone can thinking critically for even a moment can see nothing will have significantly changed in 10-15 years on this matter.
Personally I think lying about the timeline just gives ammunition to climate denialists because each time it's rolled out it creates a data point a denier can point at and say "look nothing happened".
Realistically if this is a problem it's my adult grandkids at most or great-grandkids who it would begin to impact.
As one example: 10 years ago we had winters with typical snowfall and summers that weren't constantly in the extremes. 10 years from now we'll have some other notable difference that is noticeable in everyday life, particularly given the disappearing groundwater around the globe (we can even set aside the guaranteed continued loss of biodiversity) and rising ocean temperatures.
We won't be in a post-apocalyptic hellscape in 10 years if that's your measuring stick for negative effects.
Ok so just to be clear we’ve downgraded from “you’ll have to apologize to your kids” to “Winters will be colder but not as cold as they were 210 years ago”.
To think that the only visible impact will be in 210 years just shows how uninformed you are.
From the scientific models we have, we're pretty much screwed. From the measurements we make and compare to the models, it appears like the models are optimistic.
What's sad is that people like you now say "it's not as bad as they say" and 20 years from now you'll be the first ones to say "we didn't know, why didn't they tell us?".
Doesn't really feel like a good faith engagement with the larger point, much less the specific point. I'm inclined to debate, but what's the point? The reality and impacts of what's happening are documented and easily available to those privileged enough to not feel any personal experience from what's happening in and to the world if you're ever more curious than you are right now.
It's already impacting people today. The same logic that you employ to deny that it's happening today can be used 80 years from now to deny that it's happening then: the change is too gradual for people to notice (insert quip about boiling frogs here), and the coping strategies will develop alongside.
I meant 10-15 years as in "when they are 16-20 years old and actually start to understand how fucked we are".
> Realistically if this is a problem it's my adult grandkids at most or great-grandkids who it would begin to impact.
It's already impacting us. We are measurably living in a mass extinction that is happening faster than the one of the dinosaurs.
The way it's going, GenZ (probably millenials) are more likely to die from this than from age. After having lived in global war times. Anyone in their thirties or less being anxious about their retirement are missing the bigger problem they will be facing at that age.
1) This is a collective-action problem. Stop blaming individuals for failures of the collective, it's counterproductive. The only thing that will happen is that people will entrench themselves in their current position (and might make them start voting for orange convicts whenever they can).
2) Your ire is misdirected. Whether this individual does or does not eat meat has 0.000000001% impact on the meat production industry. Your energy is much better spent advocating for policies that reduce overall meat consumption, as the GP was voicing their support for.
The person GP is responding to made it clear they’re willing to pay a premium for a burger that isn’t based on a pyramid of misery, which makes the response all the more misplaced.
There are models of agriculture that achieve better sustainability by using a small number of livestock as unskilled labor to emulate the wild environments that the plants our gene stock come from were adapted to. This will likely be the model moving forward, especially as petrochemical fertilizers get more expensive.
“Just enough” livestock will still get too old to breed or provide labor. They will still have too many babies in good weather and need to be culled in subsequent bad years. That doesn’t put T-bone steaks on everybody’s plate, but it does provide enough animal protein to approximate the traditional Asian diet of a few ounces of animal protein per day, as soup stock and a bit of variety.
The future will still have chicken soup even if burger joints go away.
Wait, what? "Stop blaming individuals who proudly say that they don't give a shit, because it's counter-productive"? Is that your point?
We're at a point where whoever thinks we're fine is totally uninformed. We're living in a mass extinction that is measurably happening faster than the one of the dinosaurs (spoiler: they disappeared). We're going for 4 degrees warming (and that's a conservative estimate), which means that half of the planet will become uninhabitable (as in, if you stay outside without life support, you die). What happens when half the planet wants to move (together with all their military force) where the other half of the planet is?
And what's the answer to that? "Hmm I think we will miraculously find a solution, in the meantime I want my burger".
Please quote the part where the parent you responded to said "I don't give a shit", or where they said "I think we will miraculously find a solution". You're tilting at straw men.
And you're in bad faith. The parent I responded to was responding to this:
> Completely agree. Reducing or getting rid of livestock animal agriculture will help with many major challenges we have today, like climate change, loss of biodiversity, animal cruelty, antimicrobial resistance. But hey, gotta have that cheap burger, huh?
They said "I don't care if it's cheap, but I want my burger".
The healthiness of dairy is about 75% propaganda from the dairy association of America.
Cheese has been with us for millennia. About half as long as we have had civilization. Other cultures (yogurt, etc) for I don’t know how long. But the fixation on milk is largely a product of oversupply.
Ehh, I don't think the problem is so much that we eat meat, it is how we produce it. Beef for example is raised primarily with alfalfa, a legume that puts nitrogen in the soil for free rather than having to turn fossil fuels into nitrogen fertilizer or spending substantial fractions of the total world's electricity generation on its production. Plus the fertilizer from the cow shit itself. Its not like we are short on land capable of growing grass, farmland utilization has been dropping for decades, a lot of those places get regular rainfall and alfalfa is nearly free to grow and harvest.
Of course getting people to learn about these things and politicians to adopt sensible policies about it is a whole other game.
the latter. people even claim to want change, but then they go about doing the same old things every day. they want others to lower their quality of life or spend more.
Sure, because people have limited bandwidth for caring about things. I wish all livestock was raised humanely, and that the cost of meat accurately reflected that actual costs to society.
But I like to eat meat, and I have lots of other things in my life to worry about; doing something to improve this situation is nowhere near the list of things I will actually have the bandwidth to work on.
> they want others to lower their quality of life or spend more.
This is the other sucky part: while we should be paying the "real" cost of meat, I don't think it's fair to make meat only affordable to those who are fairly well-off. That sounds like something out of a dystopian speculative fiction novel.
That's because many people just don't have time to take action or inform themselves, because all they care about (and rightly so) is how to bring food on the table for their kids.
Of course, this is exactly what authoritarian governments want. People who are exhausted, just poor enough but not too poor to start a revolution. People who don't have the time to read (really read, not watch TikTok videos) about important issues.
We, the people, have the power to improve this situation. Call your representatives, do activism, talk to your friends about it, vote for the right candidates.