Can someone be pro environment and eat meat?

[therealbowser]

Amazing that there are people trying to refute eating meat as some kind of terrible thing for the environment, with the basic idea that if you do not literally do everything for the environment and live only to make it better, then you are not 'pro-environment'.

Eating meat and the meat industry itself is such a small issue compared to, say, the rapid consumption of fossil fuels. A better way to preserve the environment would be to adjust how you drive vehicles. This is something you can contribute directly to. Ride more bikes, take more walks, drive more efficient vehicles or at the very least don't drive everywhere by yourself in a car that is incredibly inefficient.

The simple fact here is that you can do any number of things to be pro-environment. It's not the individual that is pro-environment but rather the actions you take. And if you replace bad habits with good ones -- even something as simple as choosing to recycle instead of throw something in a trash can -- you are being pro-environment. If you try to overwhelm people with nonsensical views about some fantasy world where everyone lives only for the environment, you are going to do more for pushing people away from it than helping.

Eating meat does not, and should not have any real impact on how you feel about the environment. There are a ton of better ways to do a lot more for the environment than that. The only reason you should be a vegan is if you are choosing to do so for the sake of health and nutrition. Period.

It truly fascinates me how intense this issue is to people. Are you really pro-environment or do you just want to feel good about not eating animals? This sounds like a personal problem for people, not a serious environmental issue. Let's stop the straw men arguments, especially when people are choosing to flat out ignore facts that would settle the argument simply and quickly.

[Bodakane]

Amazing that there are people trying to refute eating meat as some kind of terrible thing for the environment, with the basic idea that if you do not literally do everything for the environment and live only to make it better, then you are not 'pro-environment'.

Eating meat and the meat industry itself is such a small issue compared to, say, the rapid consumption of fossil fuels. A better way to preserve the environment would be to adjust how you drive vehicles. This is something you can contribute directly to. Ride more bikes, take more walks, drive more efficient vehicles or at the very least don't drive everywhere by yourself in a car that is incredibly inefficient.

The simple fact here is that you can do any number of things to be pro-environment. It's not the individual that is pro-environment but rather the actions you take. And if you replace bad habits with good ones -- even something as simple as choosing to recycle instead of throw something in a trash can -- you are being pro-environment. If you try to overwhelm people with nonsensical views about some fantasy world where everyone lives only for the environment, you are going to do more for pushing people away from it than helping.

Eating meat does not, and should not have any real impact on how you feel about the environment. There are a ton of better ways to do a lot more for the environment than that. The only reason you should be a vegan is if you are choosing to do so for the sake of health and nutrition. Period.

It truly fascinates me how intense this issue is to people. Are you really pro-environment or do you just want to feel good about not eating animals? This sounds like a personal problem for people, not a serious environmental issue. Let's stop the straw men arguments, especially when people are choosing to flat out ignore facts that would settle the argument simply and quickly.

I suggest you do actual research.

51% of global greenhouse gas emissions are due to livestock and their by-products.
13% of global greenhouse gas emissions are due to due transportation (air, land, rail, water)

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Since we do not want to leave their carcass to rot in the field after they die of old age or disease it is common practice to kill them earlier and eat them, the alternative, if they die of old age where they are too stringy to eat, would be to grind their corpses down and feed them to carnivorous animals like pigs or to humans.
If they die of disease they will need to be burned, which is worse than eating them early in regards to the enviroment.
Grinding them down is slightly better and the result is needed for many things (even medicine, not just treats), but eating them young is better for the enviroment overall otherwise.

One thing is for sure: You do not want to keep them alive like pets until they need modern medicine to survive. It is cruel and makes it so that their remains cannot be used, thereby creating a need for another animal to live and die in their stead. Thus not eating them in time is counterproductive on top of being cruel.

Livestock can and should be composted after they die.

[Elim Garak]

I suggest you do actual research.

51% of global greenhouse gas emissions are due to livestock and their by-products.
13% of global greenhouse gas emissions are due to due transportation (air, land, rail, water)

Ooooh, let's do some research indeed!


Hint: Livestock is under Agriculture.

[Noradin]

Livestock can and should be composted after they die.

And then we go and chemically design surrogates from crude oil to make up for our medical and dietary needs?
Make shoes from plastic because we composted the skin of the animals that died?
That is your idea of saving the enviroment?

I see that you were never interested in informing yourself you want to pose with your fluffy do-goodism and feel superiour to others.
I suspected this from the start with your questions, but I always assume genuine interest first.

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Ooooh, let's do some research indeed!


Hint: Livestock is under Agriculture.

Maybe he included workers in China under livestock?

[Deleted]

Yes. Native Americans ate meat; they simply respected the animal and did not waste it. If you can do the same (IE not waste food), you can eat meat and respect the environment.

Why does this feel like a loaded question?

That's actually incorrect. Native Americans slaughtered animals in droves for their meats and pelts. They would chase hoards of cows on horseback of the edge of cliffs.

[Noradin]

That's actually incorrect. Native Americans slaughtered animals in droves for their meats and pelts. They would chase hoards of cows on horseback of the edge of cliffs.

That was after they got influenced by the Europeans.
How do we know? On horseback.

In truth the "Native Americans" weren't a single homogeneous group, they had different cultures, and some had to be more careful with their ressources than others.
The same was true for Europeans.
Do you know why there are so many meat dishes around in Europe?
Because those were what you served guests and ate for special occasions thus they were the most distinct and best documented.
Why did they serve so many that contain pork? Because many people had a pig. Why? Because pigs can be used to make use of the leftovers. If you had enough people to feed, then you could feed a pig for free off of the parts humans cannot digest.

[Bodakane]

Ooooh, let's do some research indeed!


Hint: Livestock is under Agriculture.

Yeah, let's do that: http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/...e%20Change.pdf

The numbers in your chart are segmented differently. They are lumping all transportation together, instead of putting the transportation numbers directly related to meat production/sales under agriculture. Same with electricty, etc.

But then again you think a forrest is one giant organism and roots are nerves.

And then we go and chemically design surrogates from crude oil to make up for our medical and dietary needs?
Make shoes from plastic because we composted the skin of the animals that died?
That is your idea of saving the enviroment?

I see that you were never interested in informing yourself you want to pose with your fluffy do-goodism and feel superiour to others.
I suspected this from the start with your questions, but I always assume genuine interest first.

Have I been rude to you? No I haven't.

You are jumping to all kinds of stupid conclusions. I've responded to you instead of just blindly accepting your bullshit, so you decided to lash out. It's pretty typical of people on your side.

[Phlegethon]

http://www.theecologist.org/green_gr..._its_way.html#
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...al-living-soya

Can someone be pro environment and eat Soja?

Or use plant based bio-diesel...

All questions are answered with yes.
Besides, it's not like vegan, vegetarian or bio- is in any way more environmentally friendly. OP had better removed himself from the world, that's the best thing you can do for nature as a whole. Oh and never have children. Do not reproduce.

[Bodakane]

Or use plant based bio-diesel...

All questions are answered with yes.
Besides, it's not like vegan, vegetarian or bio- is in any way more environmentally friendly. OP had better removed himself from the world, that's the best thing you can do for nature as a whole. Oh and never have children. Do not reproduce.

Jesus.

OP wasn't rude. OP didn't even make a conclusion, merely asked questions for others to answer based on information OP found....and people come on here and wish him dead and to never have kids.

But please, tell me again how vegans are the ones that pushy and confrontational....

[Shibito]

Funny how people think vegans save the world. You dont save the world by bragging about not eating meat.

[Thage]

Yes. Native Americans ate meat; they simply respected the animal and did not waste it. If you can do the same (IE not waste food), you can eat meat and respect the environment.

Why does this feel like a loaded question?

This. It's a false dichotomy. Someone who eats meat, but also takes the time to plant seeds in deforested areas and walks or bikes more than they drive, isn't being a hypocrite just because they like to chow on a hamburger. Humans are omnivorous creatures, we're meant to eat a balanced diet of meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. It's all about managing your intake and doing something to pay back to the land (even something as simple as planting a tree once a year).

[Deleted]

Yea you can be pro environment and eat meat. Absolutely no problem what so ever, next time you eat meat put a tree branch next to the meat!

I might be wrong here but if we want to stop fucking over the environment more all major countries in the world would have to agree towards lowing their industries etc and that would create a lot of problems. I might be wrong here though.

[unbound]

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?

Keep in mind that the biggest reason for deforestation and water pollution is actually because we have too many people on this planet. If you want those things well-preserved, we shouldn't go above about 3 billion people across the planet. The fact that meat is an inefficient process when you look at a single dynamic (either pounds of edible food or calories of edible food) is actually a secondary consideration.

Importantly, facts that pro-vegetarians refuse to acknowledge include understanding that food is complicated. To be healthy under a vegetarian diet requires that you have a good variety of vegetarian foods in your diet and artificially produced vitamins, minerals, and amino acids (some of the micro-nutrients vegetarians claim are in vegetarian food are actually analogues which are not the same thing). To be healthy with meat in your diet is pretty dirt simple (you can actually get everything your body needs with a pure meat diet if you include more of the animals such as liver which will cover your vitamin C needs if you don't massively overcook it), and doesn't require a great deal of variety.

Furthermore, back to the population issue, going vegetarian is only delaying the inevitable. We already farm enough of the planet that we are having major ecological impacts to the environment and, assuming the population doubles (which is likely unless we address overall wealth inequality across the world quickly...people in better economic conditions with reasonable quality of life always have fewer children, population would stabilize), we will continue to drastically have a negative impact to the environment.

Finally, it is important to note that part of the inefficiency problem is that cattle raising is typically done on bad land. E.g. cattle raised in East Africa are on bad lands with bad grasses and have, literally, a hundred times worse ecological impact than cattle raised on feedlots in the US. Planting better grasses would improve the situation drastically.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/...better-pasture

[Thagrynor]

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?

These numbers are misleading because they seem to imply that the burger itself accounts for that "carbon footprint" while not explicitly stating that, while the numbers might be accurate, they are also removing some of the numbers elsewhere in the system from others, such as the farmer who raises the cattle, grows the crops to feed the cattle, grows the produce, etc. They jump to pseudo-scare tactics with those total numbers by implying that each individual person who eats burgers is solely responsible for that carbon footprint, yet it ignores the opportunity cost (namely, the cows were going to be raised anyway, the feed still grown, the produce still grown, etc). Without stating that, these numbers are as such but it also means that the farmer who raises the cattle, who grows the feed, who grows the produce, now have 0 carbon footprint (because those numbers have been passed on to the consumer, similar to a tax), it makes it seem like a far greater impact to the whole.

This is basically the same as trying to argue that the end user of a table is solely responsible for deforestation. Is there some impact by the end user/consumer? Yes. But to imply that the entirety of the process lies solely on the consumer is a bit ridiculous and misleading.

[Bodakane]

Keep in mind that the biggest reason for deforestation and water pollution is actually because we have too many people on this planet. If you want those things well-preserved, we shouldn't go above about 3 billion people across the planet. The fact that meat is an inefficient process when you look at a single dynamic (either pounds of edible food or calories of edible food) is actually a secondary consideration.

Importantly, facts that pro-vegetarians refuse to acknowledge include understanding that food is complicated. To be healthy under a vegetarian diet requires that you have a good variety of vegetarian foods in your diet and artificially produced vitamins, minerals, and amino acids (some of the micro-nutrients vegetarians claim are in vegetarian food are actually analogues which are not the same thing). To be healthy with meat in your diet is pretty dirt simple (you can actually get everything your body needs with a pure meat diet if you include more of the animals such as liver which will cover your vitamin C needs if you don't massively overcook it), and doesn't require a great deal of variety.

Furthermore, back to the population issue, going vegetarian is only delaying the inevitable. We already farm enough of the planet that we are having major ecological impacts to the environment and, assuming the population doubles (which is likely unless we address overall wealth inequality across the world quickly...people in better economic conditions with reasonable quality of life always have fewer children, population would stabilize), we will continue to drastically have a negative impact to the environment.

Finally, it is important to note that part of the inefficiency problem is that cattle raising is typically done on bad land. E.g. cattle raised in East Africa are on bad lands with bad grasses and have, literally, a hundred times worse ecological impact than cattle raised on feedlots in the US. Planting better grasses would improve the situation drastically.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/...better-pasture

No, the inefficiency problem is that it takes 8700 lbs of food to produce just 500 lbs of meat.

[Deleted]

That was after they got influenced by the Europeans.
How do we know? On horseback.

In truth the "Native Americans" weren't a single homogeneous group, they had different cultures, and some had to be more careful with their ressources than others.
The same was true for Europeans.
Do you know why there are so many meat dishes around in Europe?
Because those were what you served guests and ate for special occasions thus they were the most distinct and best documented.
Why did they serve so many that contain pork? Because many people had a pig. Why? Because pigs can be used to make use of the leftovers. If you had enough people to feed, then you could feed a pig for free off of the parts humans cannot digest.

I'm aware of this.

Did you know that in some places they feed cow with fodder made out of meat? Simultaneously there are people that feed vegetarian fodder to salmon, which are carniverous fish.

Food is weird.

[Macaquerie]

I'm aware of this.

Did you know that in some places they feed cow with fodder made out of meat? Simultaneously there are people that feed vegetarian fodder to salmon, which are carniverous fish.

Food is weird.

It's odd, for such a food-obsessed society, we have very little understanding of the realities of food production, since as far as most of us are concerned, it just miraculously appears on the supermarket shelf for us to buy. And in our never-ending quest to find healthy and natural food that's in tune with Mother Earth or whatever, we've seemingly forgotten that everything we eat has been selectively bred over thousands of years specifically to be food for humans. There's no sense in worrying about the ethical dilemma of raising cattle for food, since none of them would last a day in the wild what with their meaty haunches and docile demeanor making them a perfect target for predators. If people really want to go green, try a diet of insects and tree bark, there are still plenty of tribes out there who rely on these and other truly "organic" food sources to stay alive.

[Bodakane]

It's odd, for such a food-obsessed society, we have very little understanding of the realities of food production, since as far as most of us are concerned, it just miraculously appears on the supermarket shelf for us to buy. And in our never-ending quest to find healthy and natural food that's in tune with Mother Earth or whatever, we've seemingly forgotten that everything we eat has been selectively bred over thousands of years specifically to be food for humans. There's no sense in worrying about the ethical dilemma of raising cattle for food, since none of them would last a day in the wild what with their meaty haunches and docile demeanor making them a perfect target for predators. If people really want to go green, try a diet of insects and tree bark, there are still plenty of tribes out there who rely on these and other truly "organic" food sources to stay alive.

There is the ethical dilemma of these animals suffering. That has nothing to do with how and why they were bred.

[Macaquerie]

There is the ethical dilemma of these animals suffering. That has nothing to do with how and why they were bred.

Those animals exist to suffer - we bred them to live short, miserable lives that give them just enough time to get fat and marbled before ending up on our dinner table. That might be fucked up in and of itself, but there's no turning back from it now. Not only have people grown accustomed to eating meat-heavy diets, it's also become a major part of our economy that can't be easily replaced, because as you pointed out we'd also be growing far fewer crops to feed those animals.

[Deleted]

pretty stupid question: Can someone be pro environment and eat meat?
It would be the same to say:
Can someone that took childeren be pro environment by increasing the human population.

In my opinion if you dont take childeren but you eat meat you think more about the environment then the other way around.