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How do you argue that an environmentally sustainable diet is important to someone that has no concern for environmental sustainability, nor any interest in such
by ihsw2 9y ago
How do you argue that an environmentally sustainable diet is important to someone that has no concern for environmental sustainability, nor any interest in such things?
Also, why do you assume highly intelligent people are predisposed to care about environmental sustainability?
- KitDuncan 9y agoWell obviously if health, ethics and environmental sustainability aren't a concern to you, then I don't expect you to go on a plant based diet. Many otherwise intelligent people do care about the environment though (driving electric cars) and still eat meat and animal products.
- ihsw2 9y agoOne can go on a plant-based diet for health benefits alone with complete disregard for environmental sustainability, and by the same token one can live an ethical life without regard for environmental sustainability. I'm still confused -- why do you assume highly intelligent people are predisposed to caring about environmental sustainability?
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoBecause sustaining the environment is important to all our survival?
- nxc18 9y agoEvidence? I'm all for environmental sustainability, but there are very few people who would have their survival threatened by any environmental changes in their lifetime. For those few on an island somewhere who very well could be threatened in their lifetime, there is no intervention that will prevent that change - the damage is already done. Looking further than that, technology has historically found solutions and we seem to get better at technology every day. Beyond that, climate change is just 'change' - the new may be just as livable as the old, albeit with significant differences in e.g. population distribution. If you think about what sustainability means, being unsustainable isn't all that bad; it just means you'll have to change at some point, either when you have a choice or when you don't. In the absolutely terminal case, where we don't make any effort to be sustainable, we're looking at lifestyle changes and maybe a population contraction - not the survival of the species. Sustainability is nice and good - who likes change, really? - but there is no case to be made for it being an issue of survival.
- KitDuncan 9y agoWell even if it's not for environmental sustainability, just sustainability in general is not given with the current western diet, since it takes a lot more land to farm livestock, than to farm plants. With population and meat consumption rising it will be impossble to sustain your diet. Also however you look at it, you can't agree with deforestation for cattle grazing land. The livestock industry is responsible for the extinction of most animals today. It's a shame we are sacrificing wild live diversity, just because we can't stop eating meat with three meals a day.
- nxc18 9y agoThose are all very good points. Personally I'm a big fan of sustainability and at the very least emphasizing poultry over beef would be a good move, with vegetable alternatives being a longer term aspiration. Even today I've found a lot of e.g. veggie burger type things are better than the beef alternative and more sustainable. I would just prefer to see legitimate, provable, current consequences used to convince people. The "we need it for our very survival" is unconvincing on its own right, and downright harmful when it takes the place of legitimately compelling reasoning. The public (who are the ones that need convincing) have a hard time grasping cause and effect on timescales greater than they lifespan.
- dasil003 9y agoI hear you, but I think we need to take sustainability a little more seriously now while we have the luxury of a prosperous world. I think it's foolish to assume that technology will continue to bail us out at the current level of pressure we are putting on the planet's resources. More likely we will hit an inflection point where some pillar of our economy (eg. oil) becomes too expensive, and combine that with some refugee crisis created by climate change, and the federal government will not be able to maintain control. I hope it doesn't happen, but I feel like it's the most likely outcome on a 50-200 year time frame.
- jacobwilliamroy 9y ago>but there is no case to be made for it being an issue of survival. There is the acidification of the ocean due to the absorption of carbon dioxide, which is slowly bleaching all the coral on Earth. Many developing countries' food security comes from using reefs like natural fisheries. The collapse of a national industry has many possible effects, however "massively improved quality of life" is not one of them. And ocean acidification isn't a long-term process. Right now carbon emissions are over 10 times what they were during the paleocene-eocene thermal maximum. You can expect to see these changes come to fruition within 70 years if we continue business as usual.
- ihsw2 9y agoThere are highly intelligent people that don't factor our survival as species in their decision making.