Food and agriculture have a significant impact on our planet, particularly in terms of carbon emissions, water withdrawals, and land use.

        •  blindsight   ( @blindsight@beehaw.org ) 
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          1 year ago

          Great video, and I watched it to the end. Thanks for sharing! I’ll definitely show this one to my students and kids, too.

          That said, they did conclude the video saying that we can individually contribute at the polls (should be obvious) and with our wallets, by:

          • Eating less meat
          • Flying less
          • Shifting to electric vehicles (and heat pumps and so on—from earlier in the video, by buying low-emission technologies when they’re a bit more expensive to further their development and bring down the costs of production)

          Sure, individuals can’t effect huge change in systems by shifting their individual consumer choices, but developed-nation governments are selected by individuals at the polls. We need to make it a political death sentence to ignore climate change.

      • Mainy due to the fact that when trying to stop agriculture or food production it puts the blame on indivisuals who can’t afford to change their habits or lifestyles i do know that some are able to change and live differently however those changes for others can lead to large amounts of stress, normally people will correlate the stress of this change to the idea of climate change which causes them to reject the idea of it completely (think of the most stubborn person you know and what they would do if you told them to not do something because of a thing they can’t immediately see)

        The reason i say that going after billionaires and their jets is more important is because its something that a large amount of people can agree with which means that we can get momentum on that movement better, itll cause stress to less people which means less pushback and the amount of pollution that comes from their jets is absolutely massive like its insane how bad iirc

        This isn’t saying that we shouldn’t work on ways to make farming more ecofriendly (because more ecofriendly actually benefits everyone in the long run not just due to the effects on the environment but it also helps the food taste better and grow more) although it is saying that if we keep blaming individuals and their miniture actions itll just turn more people over to climate denialism

        • Animal agriculture is literally the largest cause of environmental destruction on the planet. Beef alone is the single greatest cause of deforestation. Private jets need to be abolished and billionaires need to go too. But this is absolutely the bigger issue by an order of magnitude. But we can actually do BOTH things. They arent mutually exclusive. The difference is fighting animal ag means you actually have to walk to walk so people fight against it and focus on things they can pretend they have no influence on so they can keep doing nothing but still feel good about themselves

          • Yeah beef being a magnitude order bigger issue is just wrong https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/26/flying-shame-the-scandalous-rise-of-private-jets

            The highest thing on the chart is beef which is 99kg of emmissions per kilogram of beef, to make up for 1 hour of a single private flight it would require about 20 kilograms (44lbs) of beef. Now throw in the fact that there are thousands of these flights going through multiple hours of the day and hey you can see what is the way larger problem paticularly due to the fact that these flights aren’t benefitting anyone where as the beef actually feeds people.

            But im curious why is it more important for you that billions of people immediately change in the way you view as better (so many peoples entire livelyhood is invested in the beef industry paticularly because there are so many byproducts that are also useful, leather, bonemarrow, glue ect.) rather then the few hundred thousand making a small change that barely effects them at all (this change is only billonaires learning to take public planes like the rest of us)?

            • Dude do you…do you know how many cows there are? 44lb of beef is less than one cow and theres BILLIONS of cows

              Even if we end the private jets (we should) that doesnt remove the beef problem. Even in some idealic socialist utopia that doesnt change the fact that our planet’s ecosystems are being annihilated for animals and their feed. Ethically problematic and environmentally devastating habits are a problem no matter how many people are doing them. It doesnt matter if billions of people do something, its still a problem, its only amplified by how many people are doing it.

              But you keep making up this idea I’m opposed to fighting billionaires and their jets even though i keep agreeing with you. It sounds like you’re pretending i have a problem with it so you can ignore my other point, and the marvelous fact human beings can work towards more than one goal at a time.

              •  Arystique   ( @Arystique@beehaw.org ) 
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                1 year ago

                Yes there are billions of cows. No i dont think focusing on the cows will get us anywhere and infact i think itll make more people into climate change deniers.

                You only agreed with me on billionaires being abolished once not “keep agreeing with me” (in previous posts) infact you keep ridiculing me more " keep doing nothing so they can feel good about themselves" and your entire first comment is just you ridiculing me. Even the comment about “idealic socialist society” is ridicule as im not asking for perfect im asking for us to focus our efforts on billionaires as i see the usa doing something about billionaires as more realistic then dealing with the international mess that it would be to stop ranching at all.

                Why dont we take a step back and discuss our thoughts without insulting the other.

                I’ll start and none of this is meant to insult you.

                Its been a political nightmare to stop people injecting bleach in the usa or drinking raw milk and getting sick (due to our gut biomes not being adapted to raw milk) every time in the past we’ve told them no please stop that they just do it more. No matter what we do the 360 million that we have wont listen to anyone that trys to take away a single comfort including food, beef is a heavy comfort food for a lot of americans. The thing that im trusting will solve the emission output of farm animals is the cloning food tech that we are barely getting out and i dont want to scare the 360 million by talking about it as some of them are already afraid of the word clone. I cannot imagine the nightmare of trying to convince any country that isnt hindi (iirc hindi is the correct way to say hindu in this context but brahmin are sacred in their culture and religion so thats why i brought it up) to not ranch cattle. Now recently ive come to the conclusion that the whole “reduce your carbon footprint” campaign has been an effort to try to shift the blame of climate change from the corporations onto the consumer which causes the consumers to fight eachother instead of rallying against corporations. But ive also noticed that alot of climate change deniers will start being climate change deniers when they are made to feel like everything is their fault for buying comfort food.

                TLDR: Let scientists take care of the beef emmissions, everyone else fight the selfish billionaires that are the cause of all the unnecessary emmissions and halt of progress everywhere else.

                Also apologies if i was rude at all with debating, im up way too late (grave shift) thanks for the debate and have a good day.

  • It makes the exception for land use change for chocolate, but isn’t almost all agricultural land a land use change which contributes? Most soybean and other crops aren’t as effective at sequestering carbon as the natural grasslands they took over. Orchards and other crops also took over forests and turned them into pastures and fields.

  •  Piers   ( @Piers@beehaw.org ) 
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    131 year ago

    While it’s not perfect I think emissions per calorie is a better measurement than emissions per kg (even more importantly for making comparisons of water usage.)

  • This can be misleading. For instance: raising dairy cattle in lush and water rich areas with no or limited dependency on fossil water is very different than dairy cattle being raised in the desert with 90% of the food being trucked in and the cheese also being made in the desert using extremely limited fresh water.

    Beef is certainly super high impact, generally but how we go about it super matters.