Can someone be pro environment and eat meat?

[Tyrianth]

all of those things sound really expensive for the end user. and we already have lab grown meat...except they're just called farms and not labs. You have a lot of people that would be against eating lab grown anything without significant proof its healthier and/or not dangerous. Collecting that kind of data could take a long time...like 20-30+ years to prove its not going to cause genetic issues.

electric cars are out of the average consumers budget and theres only so much renewable energy. Isnt solar the most inefficient alternate energy?

All new technology starts expensive and gets exponentially cheaper as time goes on.

Farm meat is NOT lab grown in anyway. Lab grown meat is already in the works, and is looking to be cheaper than farm grown while tasting exactly the same. The first lab grown burger was ate in 2013.

Solar is not the only alternative to fossil fuels, and even solar is becoming more and more efficient as the technology gets invested in. My province is 50% nuclear (while not strictly renewable it's still leaps and bounds better than fossil fuels) and 50% Hydro-electric, solar, and wind.

[zenkai]

Well, for one it doesn't make sense.

The cows eat plants, plants that filter CO2 out of the air. So now those plants aren't filtering the CO2 while the cow is releasing more CO2.

Counter. Grass is still alive and filtering CO2

No cow, now they need to cut the grass with a tractor that produces CO2

[TwoNineMarine]

Yes. Because keeping animals at manageable numbers is a good thing.

[falagar112]

Taking the burger is the mistake here.

Eat anything but cow meat, and it starts becoming a lot more environmentally friendly. But cows are staple diet for us in the west, so it is hard to eliminate.

I can tell you if everyone in the world would switch to eating meat (including those that now do not eat meat) but avoid cow in their diet - it would solve most of the issue.

Also (talking as someone that is very pro environment) - I have no problems with humans eating meat, I have problems with how we raise meat for consumption. I've been vegetarian, I would consider myself a flexitarian now - I don't buy meat myself unless I know 100% where it came from etc - same with fish - but I won't raise hell if one of my friends cooks something with meat, I'll happily eat it - not like me not eating it would have stopped him cooking it in the first place

When me and my ex lived a little north of Oulu, Finland - we would hunt our meat, underground natural freezer - 6 months of meat really for the two of us. Never ever had to actually buy meat. That kind of "you want meat, go hunt it" attitude would serve us well. Then you start appreciating where it comes from and don't take more then you need.

[Tojara]

We kill deer around here because there are too fucking many of them. Their population explodes because natural predators are being pushed out, I suppose in such a situation it's not really ethical to kill a wild animal in their prime? Letting them die because of lack of nourishment and overpopulation is probably a better route. In other scenarios you have invasive species of fish that get introduced to a new ecosystem that they don't really belong in, and absolutely destroy what has been native there for years. Is it wrong to catch them and eat them?

You can be pro environment and eat meat. I think it's largely more to do with what's economically and regionally available to you. It doesn't make sense for people in Canada's fucking north to be on a vegan diet because of pretty obvious reasons. Of course I could do it where I live, but it's still cheaper to use that giant resource called the ocean to get my meat from. Considering they have seasons and sustainability programs for lobster, fish and shellfish around here to make sure they maintain numbers, I can't really see how it's a problem to eat seafood.

There is a reason why people where I live live off potato's and fish, and that's because it's cheap and readily available for the region that we live in. You can buy beef around here from the supermarket, but most people don't because it's expensive compared to the alternative.

I get vegan/vegetarian ideas to a point (mostly when it comes to cows and pigs), but I'll never understand not using animal products or eating meat when it's regionally available to you and cheap. Lets live in coastal areas and not use the ocean! Okay!

[zenkai]

Taking the burger is the mistake here.

Eat anything but cow meat, and it starts becoming a lot more environmentally friendly. But cows are staple diet for us in the west, so it is hard to eliminate.

I can tell you if everyone in the world would switch to eating meat (including those that now do not eat meat) but avoid cow in their diet - it would solve most of the issue.

Also (talking as someone that is very pro environment) - I have no problems with humans eating meat, I have problems with how we raise meat for consumption. I've been vegetarian, I would consider myself a flexitarian now - I don't buy meat myself unless I know 100% where it came from etc - same with fish - but I won't raise hell if one of my friends cooks something with meat, I'll happily eat it - not like me not eating it would have stopped him cooking it in the first place

When me and my ex lived a little north of Oulu, Finland - we would hunt our meat, underground natural freezer - 6 months of meat really for the two of us. Never ever had to actually buy meat. That kind of "you want meat, go hunt it" attitude would serve us well. Then you start appreciating where it comes from and don't take more then you need.

Cows are a lot more useful other than meat. Their bones is used in many things medicines and what not, the hides are useful as well.

[cubby]

Other source: https://www.skepticalscience.com/how...ute-to-gw.html

In addition to that knowledge, we haven't discussed side effects like deforestation for pastures, water polution, etc. And we havent even discussed other meatproducts Just hamburgers.... let's think about that for a second.

Can someone really be pro environment / claim they care about the environment while at the same time contributing to the biggest source of carbon footprint, deforestation and water pollution / waste by eating meat?

Your conclusions and analysis are faulty. Eating meat doesn't cause what you claim it causes. Giant meat "producers" do. If I lived on a farm and raised my own chickens and pigs and cows, I would have almost not footprint, possibly even a negative one, which chowing down on drum sticks and pork chops (dammit, now I'm hungry).

[falagar112]

Cows are a lot more useful other than meat. Their bones is used in many things medicines and what not, the hides are useful as well.

The amount of cows you would need for solely that, pales in comparison to the amount that are raised for purely meat consumption, though.

Most animals are useful in some way. A chicken diet is still a lot more environmentally friendly as a cow diet. Cows take up most of our agricultural space, and produce a shit ton of methane gas. We could grow twice as much if not for the cows.

That means you wouldn't have to cut all the trees either.

That said, trees are overrated by most activists. The lungs of the Earth are algae, not trees/plants. Everything that grows on land maybe does 30% of the co2->oxygen conversion.

[vaeevictiss]

Cows are a lot more useful other than meat. Their bones is used in many things medicines and what not, the hides are useful as well.

Thats not necessarily a good thing. Mammal is used in things it doesnt even need to be used in...like medicine. You would be amazed if you knew everything mammal byproduct was used in. Then take someone say...with a red meat allergy (alpha gal) makes you allergic to anything mammal (except humans, apes and old world monkeys) and those people are screwed from using things. It screws you out of taking many kinds of medicine because the bone is used as filler. flours and sugars are often mixed and sifted through bone meal. Certain types of fryer grease is mammal based. certain flavorings, extracts, and artificial coloring has mammal in it. This also comes down to dairy as well but thats more obvious.

The medicine is a big one though because it is mixed into so many kinds of drugs including antihistamines. So say you have an allergic reaction to something you ate that apparently had mammal in it...what do you take for allergies? Antihistamines...

its pretty common too. If youve ever been bitten by a tick there is a good chance you have it. Severity varies.

the only reason mammal bones are used in so much stuff is because its cheap.

[Raelbo]

Well, for one it doesn't make sense.

WTF do you mean it doesn't make sense?!? Do you have any actual understanding of science, chemistry and biology? It may not make sense to you, but it absolutely makes sense!

The cows eat plants, plants that filter CO2 out of the air. So now those plants aren't filtering the CO2 while the cow is releasing more CO2.

How to explain this in simple terms.....

Here is how it works: It's a closed system. Carbon is simply moved around, from the air, to the plants, to the cow, back to the air. And so the cycle continues. As long as new plant matter is grown to feed the cow the amount of CO2 emitted by the cow will never exceed the amount of CO2 taken out of the atmosphere by those plants.

To use a practical example: You have a cow in a field enclosed by a big glass dome to keep the air enclosed, but let sunlight through. Effectively a closed system. Every day the grass grows a bit, but the cow is constantly moving through the field eating the grass where it is the longest. So the cow starts in the middle and slowly spirals out, eating enough grass to sustain it, until it reaches the edge of the system. The system is of a size that it takes approximately a week for the cow to get there, so by the time it is done eating all the grass at the edge, the grass in the centre has grown to the same length it was just before the cow ate it the first time. So the cow returns to the centre and starts again, progressing in the same spiral outwards, always getting to the new grass at the same time it reached its old length.

Now when the grass grows, it sucks CO2 out of the air and converts it, with the aid of sunlight, into plant matter. When the cow eats the grass it digests it and turns it into energy to sustain the cow, and CO2.

In this system, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will remain constant. It will neither increase nor decrease as long as the system remains in balance. If the cow dies, then the grass will grow until it exhausts all the CO2 in the environment and it too will die. If the cow eats the grass too fast, it will eventually run out of grass and it will die (at which point the grass will probably eventually recover and eventually kill itself).

That is what is meant by sustainable farming. It means farming in such a way that you never take more out of the system than you put back in. Sure, if the cow leaves a desert in it's wake it will have a nett output of CO2, but honestly, if that was the case, the real threat to us is not climate change, it's a destruction of our ability to use the earth to produce food.

So I stand by my initial assertion:

Farmed sustainably, meat products have a nett contribution of 0 to the carbon footprint, because everything they ate to produce the CO2 in the first place pulled CO2 out of the atmosphere. Farmed sustainably, meat products don't have any other negative environmental impacts.



The CO2 content of the atmosphere is changed (effecting climate change) by reducing the amount of total biomass in the system (ie the planet). Biomass exists both as plant and animal matter in the ecosystem as well as fossiled form (fossil fuels) like coal, oil, gas etc. The biggest culprit in terms of Carbon footprint is burning fossil fuels because we can't put those back. Also cutting down forests which have say, 10 tons of biomass per square meter and replacing them with corn fields that have a few kgs of biomass per square meter would also contribute to CO2 in the atmosphere - but at least that damage can be repaired.

Animals (including people) eating plant matter that is grown at the same rate it is consumed are carbon neutral.

Here's another piece of logic for you: Planting a tree is not going to neutralise your Carbon footprint unless it is to replace a tree you cut down. While it's true that a true will suck a bunch of CO2 out of the atmosphere, at some point the tree will die and decompose meaning that at some point in time ALL of the CO2 that tree ever took out of the atmosphere would be returned, unless the wood is removed from the system somehow. The only way that a tree will cancel out the carbon footprint created by your (direct or indirect) use of fossil fuels is if you found a way to take the wood and ensure it is stored in the same way that fossil fuels have been stored for millions of years.

[ComputerNerd]

Is growing a fruit and shipping it half-way across the world pro-environment ?
No.

[Eazy]

You cannot be pro enviroment and be vegan.

[Bodakane]

Counter. Grass is still alive and filtering CO2

No cow, now they need to cut the grass with a tractor that produces CO2

They're filtering less.

And the grass wouldn't need to be cut at all.

[zenkai]

They're filtering less.

And the grass wouldn't need to be cut at all.

Considering most oxygen comes from phytoplankton, I am not worried about animals eating grass.

[Bodakane]

Those plants would not exist if it wasn't for the cow industry to begin with.
It is zero-sum in the same way that biomass fuel is accounted for.

That's true.

However, there'd be other plants there instead like trees, for example. These things are bulldozed to make grazing land for livestocks.

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Has none of you ever heard of open grazed cows? It's a very common practice to have cows roam and eat in area's were farming isn't feasible.


https://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/grazing.html

And? I don't see how that relaly refutes anything I said.

By the way, to make sure there is enough graze for livestock, the BLM rounds up and slaughters 1000's of wild horses every year. Basically, robbing Peter to pay Paul.

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You cannot be pro enviroment and be vegan.

Well that's just a ridiculous thing to say devoid of fact and logic.

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Is growing a fruit and shipping it half-way across the world pro-environment ?
No.

Yes. The carbon footprint of shipping produice is considerbaly less than producing meat.

[Blur4stuff]

At the very least a person would have to reduce their meat consumption if they cared about the environment.

I did just that quite awhile back. I avoid pork and beef products. I still eat birds and fish, but less than I used to. Right now I'm planning on dropping birds by the end of this year.

[Wolfman31]

I care about the environment and I eat meat. I eat what I hunt.

[Bodakane]

WTF do you mean it doesn't make sense?!? Do you have any actual understanding of science, chemistry and biology? It may not make sense to you, but it absolutely makes sense!



How to explain this in simple terms.....

Here is how it works: It's a closed system. Carbon is simply moved around, from the air, to the plants, to the cow, back to the air. And so the cycle continues. As long as new plant matter is grown to feed the cow the amount of CO2 emitted by the cow will never exceed the amount of CO2 taken out of the atmosphere by those plants.

To use a practical example: You have a cow in a field enclosed by a big glass dome to keep the air enclosed, but let sunlight through. Effectively a closed system. Every day the grass grows a bit, but the cow is constantly moving through the field eating the grass where it is the longest. So the cow starts in the middle and slowly spirals out, eating enough grass to sustain it, until it reaches the edge of the system. The system is of a size that it takes approximately a week for the cow to get there, so by the time it is done eating all the grass at the edge, the grass in the centre has grown to the same length it was just before the cow ate it the first time. So the cow returns to the centre and starts again, progressing in the same spiral outwards, always getting to the new grass at the same time it reached its old length.

Now when the grass grows, it sucks CO2 out of the air and converts it, with the aid of sunlight, into plant matter. When the cow eats the grass it digests it and turns it into energy to sustain the cow, and CO2.

In this system, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will remain constant. It will neither increase nor decrease as long as the system remains in balance. If the cow dies, then the grass will grow until it exhausts all the CO2 in the environment and it too will die. If the cow eats the grass too fast, it will eventually run out of grass and it will die (at which point the grass will probably eventually recover and eventually kill itself).

That is what is meant by sustainable farming. It means farming in such a way that you never take more out of the system than you put back in. Sure, if the cow leaves a desert in it's wake it will have a nett output of CO2, but honestly, if that was the case, the real threat to us is not climate change, it's a destruction of our ability to use the earth to produce food.

So I stand by my initial assertion:

Farmed sustainably, meat products have a nett contribution of 0 to the carbon footprint, because everything they ate to produce the CO2 in the first place pulled CO2 out of the atmosphere. Farmed sustainably, meat products don't have any other negative environmental impacts.



The CO2 content of the atmosphere is changed (effecting climate change) by reducing the amount of total biomass in the system (ie the planet). Biomass exists both as plant and animal matter in the ecosystem as well as fossiled form (fossil fuels) like coal, oil, gas etc. The biggest culprit in terms of Carbon footprint is burning fossil fuels because we can't put those back. Also cutting down forests which have say, 10 tons of biomass per square meter and replacing them with corn fields that have a few kgs of biomass per square meter would also contribute to CO2 in the atmosphere - but at least that damage can be repaired.

Animals (including people) eating plant matter that is grown at the same rate it is consumed are carbon neutral.

Here's another piece of logic for you: Planting a tree is not going to neutralise your Carbon footprint unless it is to replace a tree you cut down. While it's true that a true will suck a bunch of CO2 out of the atmosphere, at some point the tree will die and decompose meaning that at some point in time ALL of the CO2 that tree ever took out of the atmosphere would be returned, unless the wood is removed from the system somehow. The only way that a tree will cancel out the carbon footprint created by your (direct or indirect) use of fossil fuels is if you found a way to take the wood and ensure it is stored in the same way that fossil fuels have been stored for millions of years.

Your numbers aren't correct. You have a basic understanding of the process but you don't understand it on an actual practical level. You don't understand the sheer amount of vegetation is takes to feed a cow or what even needs to be clear cut for grazing land. You have this false notion that X size of grassland filters the same amount of CO2 that cow produces in eating that X amount of grass. You also have no idea how long it takes to replenish the amount of grass that was eaten for there to be a steady amount of grass to sustain the cow's growth. Then on top of all that, you are acting like the average cow of today is a naturally occurring animal that is suited to eat and sustain life in a natural way. They've been bred to produce more meat per square inch than a cow from even 20 years ago.

Again, you know a basic amount of stuff, the problem is you seem to have the arrogance to think that's enough.

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Considering most oxygen comes from phytoplankton, I am not worried about animals eating grass.

Cool story.

Have you looked into the damage that livestock production has been doing to water...even sea water?

In any given year there's a minimum of 25 billion farm animals on the planet...you think those are natural numbers? Natural enough that all the air scrubbers nature put out there can handle it?

[vaeevictiss]

Well that's just a ridiculous thing to say devoid of fact and logic.

Actually its not. You have to look at it this way. with the evolution of humanity, we have drastically changed ecosystems through urbanization and natural resource collecting. Now you have vegans which are opposed to humans killing any type of living creature even though many of them live in places where animals used to graze but were displaced and killed or died off for humanities comfort. So now all these various creatures are forced to live in different habitats which forces other animals to different habitats and so on. Now, populations of these animals are thriving to points where it is dangerous to them so we as humans need to manage this through hunting and other conservation efforts.

By being a vegan, and not killing and eating animals, you (not you specifically unless you are a vegan) are doing far more damage to the ecosystem. Quite frankly if anything, its just selfish. Your fellow humans completely fucked these species over but you dont want to claim any responsibility for it nor do you want to be a part of what it will take to bring them down to manageable levels.

Especially when these creatures are either prey or predator to other species. There are far reaching consequences.

[Eazy]

Well that's just a ridiculous thing to say devoid of fact and logic.

That was a joke, just like this thread.