Can someone be pro environment and eat meat?

[The One Percent]

Most hunters I've known are far more environmentally aware than the vegan city hippies I've known who eat organic pre peeled oranges in plastic containers. Not to mention the majority of the money they pay for hunting permits goes directly to the parts of the government that protects and maintains wilderness.

[Alvito]

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?

Those animals have a huge carbon footprint. That is the point. Even if you use 100% of a cow the feed, water and biproduct of the animal is huge.

[Bodakane]

I wouldn't mind going vegan if the taste profile is comparable or better than eating a mixed diet. I like the taste of meat too much to give up on it.

Unfortunately, of all the vegan fare I have tasted, nothing ever comes close to just eating a mixed diet. I like my salads just well, but I can't imagine eating one without a good portion of fresh chicken breast or smoked salmon.

I won't lie, when it comes to beef there's only one product that comes close and that is the Beyond Burger. There are a number fo other products that come close to various chicken offerings. Cheese is getting closer too. It will take a little more time.

It is a sacrifice. There's no denying that. Hopefully soon they get the lab grown stuff right.

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Most hunters I've known are far more environmentally aware than the vegan city hippies I've known who eat organic pre peeled oranges in plastic containers. Not to mention the majority of the money they pay for hunting permits goes directly to the parts of the government that protects and maintains wilderness.

A whole lot of what you said 100% wrong.

Hunters hurt the environment. Deer overpopulation is way more about our hunting practices then anything else. If it was just land encroachment, nature would cull the deer populations naturally. Hunters take the best instead of the weakest. taht leads to all kinds of problems from increased breeding/population to more interaction with human areas because of the easier food.

[zenkai]

[IMG]http://nebula.wsimg.com/44ca102644f0004439c4543054520da7?AccessKeyId=352F39E993ABDC87A6CF&disposition=0&alloworigi n=1[/]

Linking shitty facebook post doesn't help your argument.

[Bodakane]

Linking shitty facebook post doesn't help your argument.

I couldn't care what you believe.

Disprove the facts, I challenge you.

[zenkai]

I couldn't care what you believe.

Disprove the facts, I challenge you.

http://www.sciencealert.com/vegetari...nt-study-finds

[Deleted]

The issue is that there's evidence to support that there's no single bigger thing you can persoanlly do for the environment than go vegan.

This, of course, is a silly perspective by any standard.
The argument going for the meat industry being such a large contributor is scale and growth. You admitted already that much: the contribution of GHG accounts to zero on any arbitrarily sized production. It's only an issue because it's used land that could be used differently or left alone to begin with (trees or whatevs).

It follows that any human process that continuously grows produces more and more GHG. Such is the case with most industries; you only have to account production and delivery differently than usual to have meat be the biggest culprit.
Now, fancy accounting is fine. But the conclusion that what one can do personally for a bigger contribution yada yada is silly. Let's see:
Ignoring the elephant in the room (that the actual biggest contribution is to off yourself, and the next one is to never have children so you don't contribute to the growth of the industry), the accounting presumes everything remains the same. If and only if distribution and current practices remain, the biggest contributor may be meat. But they don't remain the same. They can't remain the same. Because the accounting that ends up with that conclusion is that current practice *doesn't* remain the same: the industry grows. If it didn't grow, the emissions zero-out production side; the rest is a mater of specific implementations (loss of efficiency through transportation, specific energetic requirements for each species, etc).

And that is ignoring that the 51% accounting is not from a scientific paper, but an opinion article.
Folks know very little about the impact of our consuming. Which is a shame. But vegan think tanks are doing their best to obfuscate the issue even further.

And also ignoring that "going vegan" has several implementations. Most of them likely unproductive. It's not only a mater of eating veggies: some veggies are worse than others. Eggplant, for instance, is very inefficient, if we account for its transportation. In fact, most of the veggies we like are very inefficient: we're transporting tons and tons of what is composed in its majority by water. It's not surprising that what we feed the cows with is the dry, transport-efficient, plants. A much better "single bigger thing" is to choose a whole grain diet.

Unsurprisingly, before the vegan fad, the mantra used to go: the best you can do is consume local products.
I'll also note that vegans are kind of yesteryear already. The next wave of advise on the "biggest personal contribution" train is to stop flying.

[Elim Garak]

Goddammit, you're the worst.

Who said anything about meat being valid or not? I mean what the fuck are you even talking about?

I'm saying animals suffer so don't kill them or cause them to suffer.

Lack of reading comprehension AND inconsistent mental state.
How am I gonna eat meat if we can't kill animals?

MORE DEFLECTION PLEASE

And stop linking idiotic info-graphics. No one cares for twisted statistical data.

[therealbowser]

Natives? Their numbers were so few...
I'd compare it to littering. If I throw my trash out in the forest it wouldn't make much of a dent.
But if everyone did that? There would be no more forest.

The question of meat comes down to the scale of production. Maybe the topic is better phrased as... we've gone above and beyond the number of humans that should inhabit the planet.

If you feel that way, then it's a separate issue. And it's probably true, but what can you do? Try to enforce birth laws? Even if this was the case, we would have to work on it as a world; the most populated places on the planet are ones we have no control over. And trying to change that is extremely foolish. This is just a massive can of worms and I don't want to derail the thread about it, honestly.

Ultimately, though, meat production is such a tiny, tiny issue compared to other environmental issues. Early posters put it just fine by saying that there are plenty of ways to be pro-environment, and ultimately eating meat doesn't matter much. Realistically, the most pro-environmental thing we could do is not exist, since the world works much better when we aren't there to manipulate it into our own design and comfort. Do you think that sounds rational?

We live here on this world, and we have adjusted it to work in a way that suits us as a species. There is no way to change this. What we can do, is change certain habits and make the world sustainable. If we do nothing, we will destroy the world we are living in, but that doesn't mean that if we refuse to do absolutely everything we are not pro-environment. This is just one big "no true scotsman" argument.

Encourage pro-environment instead of trying to exclude people who don't participate in one specific part of your belief. Excluding in this way just makes them entirely against it instead of working for it in a small way. You can't change everyone in the world entirely, but you can change most people in some way.

[Forogil]

Communication as they've chosen to classify it, does not equal the ability to feel pain. Sending out a chemical distress isn't the same thing as feeling pain. They have no nervous sytem to turn that distress into pain. You can't suffer or feel pain without a brain.

An arbitrary distinction you have made up.
I can equally well make the distinction that only the ones (i.e. humans) that can describe pain in words feel pain; as people did in recent history.

Let's see what Wikipedia says about pain in animals ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_animals ) :

Zimmerman: "an aversive sensory experience caused by actual or potential injury that elicits protective motor and vegetative reactions, results in learned avoidance and may modify species-specific behaviour, including social behaviour." Non-human animals cannot report their feelings to language-using humans in the same manner as human communication, but observation of their behaviour provides a reasonable indication as to the extent of their pain.

Nociceptive nerves, which preferentially detect (potential) injury-causing stimuli, have been identified in a variety of animals, including invertebrates. The medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis, and sea slug are classic model systems for studying nociception. Many other vertebrate and invertebrate animals also show nociceptive reflex responses similar to our own.

No brain required; just looking at behaviour.

And I doubt that someone quoting an infographic where animal poop is listed as a problem has any knowledge about farms.
Oh, and for your information - most non-vegans don't eat a whole pig every day.

[Noradin]

Pointing out that you're wrong doesn't mean I've been rude to you. It just means you're wrong.

You didn't point out anything, you claimed to have no clue, then turned around claiming I was wrong.
Did you think you lied when you made the first claim or when you made the second?

[MonsieuRoberts]

"Can someone have opinions?"

Yup! Next thread.

[Noradin]

I won't lie

Really? Are you sure?

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Who said anything about meat being valid or not? I mean what the fuck are you even talking about?

I'm saying animals suffer so don't kill them or cause them to suffer.

Nice goalpost-shifting...
Remember what you wrote to me?

[Forogil]

http://www.sciencealert.com/vegetari...nt-study-finds

Interesting.

However, to add to the other caveats in that article the environmental friendliness of rice is not that clear. Production of rice (similarly as cows) produce methane (CH4) and NO2 - that are powerful greenhouse gases.

But exactly how much is unknown - it is somewhere between 25 and 170 Gg CH4/year according to IPCC; depending on how the rice is actually grown. So, the ranking is very unclear and it is even more important to select the right variant of the food-type - instead of the right type of food.

[soulzek]

Yeah sure....it is about the amount you eat and the source how it was brought up?

There was nothing wrong about it 50 years ago when you went to the farmer in your neighborhood and got meat for the family as a special sunday dinner.

There was nothing wrong with lead being in gasoline 50 years ago.

[imoom]

I think its funny when vegans and environment activist are against meat consumption, then fly all over the world for vacations..

[Ravingmad]

Well, since cows are creating a lot of Methane, which is one of the source of global warming, eating them helps the environment, so yes, eating meat (beef) is being pro environment.

[Ratboy]

I think its funny when vegans and environment activist are against meat consumption, then fly all over the world for vacations..

Or they buy their vegetables from greenhouses that consume a massive amount of electricity, water and will burn natural gas, bunker oil or even coal to keep them warm during the winter.

[Bodakane]

http://www.sciencealert.com/vegetari...nt-study-finds

You clearly didn;t read the whole thing. Not surprised though.

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This, of course, is a silly perspective by any standard.
The argument going for the meat industry being such a large contributor is scale and growth. You admitted already that much: the contribution of GHG accounts to zero on any arbitrarily sized production. It's only an issue because it's used land that could be used differently or left alone to begin with (trees or whatevs).

It follows that any human process that continuously grows produces more and more GHG. Such is the case with most industries; you only have to account production and delivery differently than usual to have meat be the biggest culprit.
Now, fancy accounting is fine. But the conclusion that what one can do personally for a bigger contribution yada yada is silly. Let's see:
Ignoring the elephant in the room (that the actual biggest contribution is to off yourself, and the next one is to never have children so you don't contribute to the growth of the industry), the accounting presumes everything remains the same. If and only if distribution and current practices remain, the biggest contributor may be meat. But they don't remain the same. They can't remain the same. Because the accounting that ends up with that conclusion is that current practice *doesn't* remain the same: the industry grows. If it didn't grow, the emissions zero-out production side; the rest is a mater of specific implementations (loss of efficiency through transportation, specific energetic requirements for each species, etc).

And that is ignoring that the 51% accounting is not from a scientific paper, but an opinion article.
Folks know very little about the impact of our consuming. Which is a shame. But vegan think tanks are doing their best to obfuscate the issue even further.

And also ignoring that "going vegan" has several implementations. Most of them likely unproductive. It's not only a mater of eating veggies: some veggies are worse than others. Eggplant, for instance, is very inefficient, if we account for its transportation. In fact, most of the veggies we like are very inefficient: we're transporting tons and tons of what is composed in its majority by water. It's not surprising that what we feed the cows with is the dry, transport-efficient, plants. A much better "single bigger thing" is to choose a whole grain diet.

Unsurprisingly, before the vegan fad, the mantra used to go: the best you can do is consume local products.
I'll also note that vegans are kind of yesteryear already. The next wave of advise on the "biggest personal contribution" train is to stop flying.

There's nothing silly about it. You did an awful lot of talking and produced very little facts. If the infographics I used are wrong, I welcome proof. And since what I said is soooooooo silly to you, it shouldn;t hard for you to disprove it.

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Lack of reading comprehension AND inconsistent mental state.
How am I gonna eat meat if we can't kill animals?

MORE DEFLECTION PLEASE

And stop linking idiotic info-graphics. No one cares for twisted statistical data.

Sigh.

I should get a medal for arguing with you.

Valid doesn't mean you're pretending it does in the context you used it.

So far we've determined you don't understand the difference between plants and animals and basic words. I wonder what other basic concepts you struggle with.....tying shoe laces perhaps? Do zippers baffle you too? I'm not saying they do, I'm genuinely curious.

Oh and one more thing:

[Manabomb]

The problem isn't the products being shipped, it has far more to do with the methods of shipment. Let's face it, 90% of those carbon emissions comes from shipping huge freight long distances. At the end of the day, you have to look at the methodology, not the supply/demand for the product.

And literally by this logic you could say -all- foods produced at farms and shipped beyond 2~miles is adding to the carbon footprint. No shit, that's why it's such a fucking gigantic problem.