8 ms·

Finding solution is not a problem, human nature is a problem. > stop eating animal-based foods Good luck with that. Sad true is that people don't want to chan

by lossolo 10y ago

Finding solution is not a problem, human nature is a problem. > stop eating animal-based foods Good luck with that. Sad true is that people don't want to change their life style. If you ask them for solution they will tell you exactly the same thing as you wrote, but most of them will not implement any of this solutions in their life. They want to eat meat, they want to consume, look at global warming, everyone know what is happening and what do they do on their own to stop that? Looking at my friends, people around me I see everyone recognize the problems, talk about solutions but no one is really doing anything.

banach 10y ago
I have actually seen a surprising trend to the contrary among my friends. These are people with very different backgrounds (anything from the hardly-ever-employed working class to researchers), but over the past year I can count at least five people who have started eating vegetarian most days of the week. Just like tattoos and beards, these things can become trendy, and then peer pressure takes care of the rest.
- jsmthrowaway 10y ago
  The individuals one chooses to involve in one's own life are, without question, a misleading barometer for understanding much of greater humanity. We surround ourselves with the qualities that we seek within, and it is often tempting to overlook that in pursuit of broader conclusions.
  - banach 10y ago
    You are right, but in this case my friends are a pretty good sample of the over-all population. I live in Sweden, where 10% of the population is vegetarian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country. This seems to be a growing trend as well, also elsewhere: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/news/number-of-vegans-in-britain-rises-by-360-in-10-years/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/news/number-of-veg....
    - lexhaynes 10y ago
      Sweden is not the whole world.
      - banach 10y ago
        Your point being?
ivan_gammel 10y ago
People want to live a comfortable life and they'll give up with natural meat if they'll be given good artifical alternative (especially, with genetically identical alternative). Green energy, effective water recycling, disposable packing materials and automatic sorting and processing of garbage are the things that, given the adequate technology, can make the sustainable life style smooth and easy. We don't need to change ourselves and consume less - we need to be innovative enough, so that our consumer life style will not harm the nature.
- meric 10y ago
  The effort to make existing life sustainable could be spent making life more comfortable, slapping an excuse for caring the environment on the way. Meat can be improved by giving them more land and organic food sources, car transportation can be improved by a better designed electric cars, and that's what we are getting, instead of research into artificial meats(which do exist in an inferior state) or improvements to public transportation (public transport in many cities is neglected). One could always go back to a life of eating meat once a week, riding bicycle to and from work, living in a developing country with broadband internet, electricity and clean water and thereby remove almost completely their carbon footprint, but who is in the mood for that, let's make life more innovative and even more comfortable than before, while telling ourselves these innovations are for the environment also! We eat organic and drive electric and pay $1000 a month for health insurance! Go us!
- intoverflow2 10y ago
  Sad that tech types seem to take dystopian sci-fi as a blueprint not a warning.
chiefofgxbxl 10y ago
I would add that there is poor, and inconsequential information directed at people on how to mitigate the causes of climate change. For instance, I've seen in my surroundings a disproportionate emphasis on recycling. Whatever happened to reducing and re-using? While recycling reduces our need to extract more resources, it still requires energy to transport to processing facilities and process. The real issue is not cutting your shower time by 30 seconds, or turning off the tap when you brush your teeth (although both these waste resources). It's the rise of sprawl and the dependence on cars that makes our society unsustainable. Driving a single mile releases roughly 1 pound of CO2 (assuming ~20mpg). Now multiply that by the 25.4 minute commute time [0] and the rising number of cars per household [1] to accommodate our poor suburban designs, and that equals a lot of carbon emissions. But if the American responds to climate change by recycling, they'll be mislead that their efforts are actually helping. They are not. Recycling a Starbucks coffee cup will not cancel out the effect of driving an SUV 5 miles round-trip that you used to get there. What we truly need is effective altruism, and a public service campaign that goes after the top 3 or so most destructive behaviors of Americans. Not whether we can design water bottles that have a "slim cap" design. > Huge quantities of fossil fuels are burned daily just so hundreds of millions of Americans can go back and forth between two points 5 times a week. It doesn't make sense; cars can be useful for certain things, but regular and predictable commutes are best done with public transit. (http://www.treehugger.com/cars/average-commute-times-usa-interactive-map.html http://www.treehugger.com/cars/average-commute-times-usa-int...) [0] https://project.wnyc.org/commute-times-us/embed.html#5.00/42.000/-89.500 https://project.wnyc.org/commute-times-us/embed.html#5.00/42... [1] https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UJuMkdu2LWC6AavNsVuY-mHHjIE=/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3647774/chart_3.0.png https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UJuMkdu2LWC6AavNsVuY-mHHjIE...
- pdonis 10y ago
  > regular and predictable commutes are best done with public transit. In places where public transit has dense enough coverage to make commute times reasonable, yes. But that's not most places where Americans are commuting.
  - ryhamz 10y ago
odonnellryan 10y ago
We're basically able to literally grow meat anyway.
lttlrck 10y ago
appropriate financial incentives along with scarcity could do wonders.
jcoffland 10y ago
What are you doing?
kirykl 10y ago
Not that I'm advocating this as viable but you could just ban the raising of livestock, and have a DEA type agency that infiltrates illegal animal farming operations
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  So your solution is to encourage rebellions? I consider the pursuit of nutritional sufficiency to be an inalienable human right. Attacking my ability to produce my own food, in whatever form I find desirable or convenient, is a sure way to undermine my consent to be governed.
  - kirykl 10y ago
    Said I'm not advocating it. Just stating it as thought experiment.

by lossolo 10y ago

banach 10y ago

I have actually seen a surprising trend to the contrary among my friends. These are people with very different backgrounds (anything from the hardly-ever-employed working class to researchers), but over the past year I can count at least five people who have started eating vegetarian most days of the week. Just like tattoos and beards, these things can become trendy, and then peer pressure takes care of the rest.

jsmthrowaway 10y ago
The individuals one chooses to involve in one's own life are, without question, a misleading barometer for understanding much of greater humanity. We surround ourselves with the qualities that we seek within, and it is often tempting to overlook that in pursuit of broader conclusions.
- banach 10y ago
  You are right, but in this case my friends are a pretty good sample of the over-all population. I live in Sweden, where 10% of the population is vegetarian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country. This seems to be a growing trend as well, also elsewhere: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/news/number-of-vegans-in-britain-rises-by-360-in-10-years/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/news/number-of-veg....
  - lexhaynes 10y ago
    Sweden is not the whole world.
    - banach 10y ago
      Your point being?

ivan_gammel 10y ago

People want to live a comfortable life and they'll give up with natural meat if they'll be given good artifical alternative (especially, with genetically identical alternative). Green energy, effective water recycling, disposable packing materials and automatic sorting and processing of garbage are the things that, given the adequate technology, can make the sustainable life style smooth and easy. We don't need to change ourselves and consume less - we need to be innovative enough, so that our consumer life style will not harm the nature.

meric 10y ago
The effort to make existing life sustainable could be spent making life more comfortable, slapping an excuse for caring the environment on the way. Meat can be improved by giving them more land and organic food sources, car transportation can be improved by a better designed electric cars, and that's what we are getting, instead of research into artificial meats(which do exist in an inferior state) or improvements to public transportation (public transport in many cities is neglected). One could always go back to a life of eating meat once a week, riding bicycle to and from work, living in a developing country with broadband internet, electricity and clean water and thereby remove almost completely their carbon footprint, but who is in the mood for that, let's make life more innovative and even more comfortable than before, while telling ourselves these innovations are for the environment also! We eat organic and drive electric and pay $1000 a month for health insurance! Go us!
intoverflow2 10y ago
Sad that tech types seem to take dystopian sci-fi as a blueprint not a warning.

chiefofgxbxl 10y ago

I would add that there is poor, and inconsequential information directed at people on how to mitigate the causes of climate change. For instance, I've seen in my surroundings a disproportionate emphasis on recycling. Whatever happened to reducing and re-using? While recycling reduces our need to extract more resources, it still requires energy to transport to processing facilities and process. The real issue is not cutting your shower time by 30 seconds, or turning off the tap when you brush your teeth (although both these waste resources). It's the rise of sprawl and the dependence on cars that makes our society unsustainable. Driving a single mile releases roughly 1 pound of CO2 (assuming ~20mpg). Now multiply that by the 25.4 minute commute time [0] and the rising number of cars per household [1] to accommodate our poor suburban designs, and that equals a lot of carbon emissions. But if the American responds to climate change by recycling, they'll be mislead that their efforts are actually helping. They are not. Recycling a Starbucks coffee cup will not cancel out the effect of driving an SUV 5 miles round-trip that you used to get there. What we truly need is effective altruism, and a public service campaign that goes after the top 3 or so most destructive behaviors of Americans. Not whether we can design water bottles that have a "slim cap" design. > Huge quantities of fossil fuels are burned daily just so hundreds of millions of Americans can go back and forth between two points 5 times a week. It doesn't make sense; cars can be useful for certain things, but regular and predictable commutes are best done with public transit. (http://www.treehugger.com/cars/average-commute-times-usa-interactive-map.html http://www.treehugger.com/cars/average-commute-times-usa-int...) [0] https://project.wnyc.org/commute-times-us/embed.html#5.00/42.000/-89.500 https://project.wnyc.org/commute-times-us/embed.html#5.00/42... [1] https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UJuMkdu2LWC6AavNsVuY-mHHjIE=/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3647774/chart_3.0.png https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UJuMkdu2LWC6AavNsVuY-mHHjIE...

pdonis 10y ago
> regular and predictable commutes are best done with public transit. In places where public transit has dense enough coverage to make commute times reasonable, yes. But that's not most places where Americans are commuting.
- ryhamz 10y ago

odonnellryan 10y ago

We're basically able to literally grow meat anyway.

lttlrck 10y ago

appropriate financial incentives along with scarcity could do wonders.

jcoffland 10y ago

What are you doing?

kirykl 10y ago

Not that I'm advocating this as viable but you could just ban the raising of livestock, and have a DEA type agency that infiltrates illegal animal farming operations

logfromblammo 10y ago
So your solution is to encourage rebellions? I consider the pursuit of nutritional sufficiency to be an inalienable human right. Attacking my ability to produce my own food, in whatever form I find desirable or convenient, is a sure way to undermine my consent to be governed.
- kirykl 10y ago
  Said I'm not advocating it. Just stating it as thought experiment.