4 ms·

As usual, unmentioned is an individual's biggest single energy impact: dietary choices. Just a single semester's worth of thermodynamics study (the 2nd Law in

by limist 16y ago

As usual, unmentioned is an individual's biggest single energy impact: dietary choices. Just a single semester's worth of thermodynamics study (the 2nd Law in particular) would make that clear. Some background includes: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-... http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm No one who claims to be worried about energy consumption and climate change should be taken seriously, unless they cut down on their meat consumption first. Al Gore and "An Inconvenient Truth" was a case in point, but Gore finally started changing his tune on his diet, to his partial credit: http://www.ecorazzi.com/2009/11/04/al-gore-agrees-that-going-vegetarian-helps-the-environment/ http://www.ecorazzi.com/2009/11/04/al-gore-agrees-that-going...

gaius 16y ago
It is not that long ago that if you wouldn't use animal products or labour in most of Europe you would starve and/or freeze. Veganism as a lifestyle is utterly dependent on huge energy subsidies. They love to play tricks with statistics too, comparing the calories in an acre of simple carbs in crops to the calories in the complex proteins in a cow. That's where the energy has "gone"...
- kragen 16y ago
  Dried soybeans are 36% protein by weight. Muscle beef is 32% protein by weight, although other parts of the cow are lower in protein. A steer is 4% of the soybeans it's fed, by weight. So feeding soybeans to cattle is even less defensible as a way of providing protein to people than as a way of providing calories to people: you waste 96.5% of the protein that way. The picture is a little less egregiously bad if you look at some other foods (sweet corn is only 3.2% protein, so if you could get your cattle to grow on corn without supplementing their diet with soy or other protein, you'd only be wasting 60% of the protein). But it still isn't good. The fundamental constraint here is that animals can't produce protein from carbohydrates or fat. Animals can only produce protein from protein. In fact, most plants can't produce protein from carbohydrates or fat or carbon dioxide or water, either. They need to take up nitrogen compounds from the soil to make protein. As far as we know, animals can't aminate carbohydrates using other sources of nitrogen, the way plants can. So the protein that comes from your crops is the most protein you can possibly get. Processing it through animals can only reduce the protein yield per acre of crops. The complexity of the proteins in the cow isn't an advantage, either. You have to break those proteins down to individual amino acids before your ribosomes can use them to build proteins of your own. If foreign peptides (protein fragments) get into your bloodstream, your immune system will destroy them. From the standpoint of nutrition, the less complex the proteins are, the better. On the other hand, animal processing can make the protein and calories considerably easier to eat. Ruminants' symbiotic bacteria can extract useful calories (and massive amounts of methane) from cellulose, even if they only pass 5% of them on to their predators; your body doesn't support these bacteria at all. And cows have these massive jaws and teeth for grinding up cellulosic material to extract the nutrients from it. So, veganism as a diet (I'm not sure what you mean by "as a lifestyle"} isn't dependent on "huge energy subsidies". It's just dependent on crops you can stand to eat and that provide you adequate nutrition. Eating animals is a huge cost to your primary productivity; the compensating advantage is that it renders you more adaptable in your crops. Eating animal products is somewhat less of a huge cost. As for freezing, it's fairly unusual for people to heat their homes by burning animals, and in Europe, it was unusual for people to insulate their homes with animals or animal products. Not freezing is really more a matter of thermodynamic engineering than it is a matter of acquiring adequate energy. A good thick thatch roof, a couple of meters of straw bales in the walls, and some whitewash on the inside will allow you to heat even a largish habitation with a small fire. No huge energy subsidies required. (Please don't start complaining about the embodied energy of the whitewash.)
  - maukdaddy 16y ago
    The soy that vegans use to replace animal fats and proteins is horrendously grown here in the US. Most of our soybean crop is of a monocropped, GMO variety using heavy amounts of pesticides and fertilizers. See the recent articles on dead zones in the oceans due to excess nitrogen. To insinuate that a vegan diet is better for the planet than meat is insincere. In the end it's probably a wash, for various reasons.
    - kragen 16y ago
      98% of the US soybean crop is used to feed livestock, according to Britannica http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/557184/soybean http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/557184/soybean . Eating the soybeans directly, instead of converting most of them to animal manure, uses dramatically less pesticide and fertilizer. I request that you withdraw your accusation of insincerity and substantiate your extraordinary claim that "it's probably a wash, for various reasons". (Disclaimer: I am not a vegan.)
- dejb 16y ago
  > Veganism as a lifestyle is utterly dependent on huge energy subsidies. What? You are confusing technological development with energy. People used to rely on burning wood for heat also but do you think this is energy efficient? Do you really think that a horse is more efficient for labour than machinery? In the past people used these inefficient methods because that was the best technology they had available. There is no way we could sustain our current world population if we all attempted to return to their lifestyles.
  - gaius 16y ago
    Yes but you can't discount that. Another example: cycling is only a viable means of transport because of the extensive road network built for (and by!) oil-powered vehicles.
    - dejb 16y ago
      > Yes but you can't discount that. In terms of guiding what we should do now it can and should be discounted to zero. > Another example: cycling is only a viable means of transport because of the extensive road network built for (and by!) oil-powered vehicles. Another example of what? Of one technology being dependant on the history and environment that preceded it? Isn't that true for everything? As to the specifics of your example : you know that bicycles were popular before cars don't you? 'Bicycles and horse buggies were the two mainstays of private transportation just prior to the automobile' From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle
RK 16y ago
I'll have to disagree and say that the biggest single energy impact is having children.
- adolph 16y ago
  Or living in general. Oh, and wait, if everyone died that would have tremendous ecological impact too.
- limist 16y ago
  But as a human being, it's inevitable you'll need to eat. It follows we should weigh the consequences more heavily for inevitable choices. Having children - at least in richer countries - is a choice, and not inevitable. On a larger scale, it's arguably inevitable that humanity seeks to perpetuate itself. In that sense, having children is not a choice at the species-level. But we have the unique power, individually and collectively, to reflect on whether and how to perpetuate ourselves sustainably. Finally, the difference between a vegetarian/vegan diet versus say, the Standard American Diet, has orders of magnitude differences in water, fuel, land, and waste products (that 2nd Law thing again). That means the same resource base and ecosystem could support tens to thousands more vegetarians than meat-eaters. A very large vegetarian family would still have less impact than a single meat-eater.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

by limist 16y ago

gaius 16y ago

It is not that long ago that if you wouldn't use animal products or labour in most of Europe you would starve and/or freeze. Veganism as a lifestyle is utterly dependent on huge energy subsidies. They love to play tricks with statistics too, comparing the calories in an acre of simple carbs in crops to the calories in the complex proteins in a cow. That's where the energy has "gone"...

kragen 16y ago
Dried soybeans are 36% protein by weight. Muscle beef is 32% protein by weight, although other parts of the cow are lower in protein. A steer is 4% of the soybeans it's fed, by weight. So feeding soybeans to cattle is even less defensible as a way of providing protein to people than as a way of providing calories to people: you waste 96.5% of the protein that way. The picture is a little less egregiously bad if you look at some other foods (sweet corn is only 3.2% protein, so if you could get your cattle to grow on corn without supplementing their diet with soy or other protein, you'd only be wasting 60% of the protein). But it still isn't good. The fundamental constraint here is that animals can't produce protein from carbohydrates or fat. Animals can only produce protein from protein. In fact, most plants can't produce protein from carbohydrates or fat or carbon dioxide or water, either. They need to take up nitrogen compounds from the soil to make protein. As far as we know, animals can't aminate carbohydrates using other sources of nitrogen, the way plants can. So the protein that comes from your crops is the most protein you can possibly get. Processing it through animals can only reduce the protein yield per acre of crops. The complexity of the proteins in the cow isn't an advantage, either. You have to break those proteins down to individual amino acids before your ribosomes can use them to build proteins of your own. If foreign peptides (protein fragments) get into your bloodstream, your immune system will destroy them. From the standpoint of nutrition, the less complex the proteins are, the better. On the other hand, animal processing can make the protein and calories considerably easier to eat. Ruminants' symbiotic bacteria can extract useful calories (and massive amounts of methane) from cellulose, even if they only pass 5% of them on to their predators; your body doesn't support these bacteria at all. And cows have these massive jaws and teeth for grinding up cellulosic material to extract the nutrients from it. So, veganism as a diet (I'm not sure what you mean by "as a lifestyle"} isn't dependent on "huge energy subsidies". It's just dependent on crops you can stand to eat and that provide you adequate nutrition. Eating animals is a huge cost to your primary productivity; the compensating advantage is that it renders you more adaptable in your crops. Eating animal products is somewhat less of a huge cost. As for freezing, it's fairly unusual for people to heat their homes by burning animals, and in Europe, it was unusual for people to insulate their homes with animals or animal products. Not freezing is really more a matter of thermodynamic engineering than it is a matter of acquiring adequate energy. A good thick thatch roof, a couple of meters of straw bales in the walls, and some whitewash on the inside will allow you to heat even a largish habitation with a small fire. No huge energy subsidies required. (Please don't start complaining about the embodied energy of the whitewash.)
- maukdaddy 16y ago
  The soy that vegans use to replace animal fats and proteins is horrendously grown here in the US. Most of our soybean crop is of a monocropped, GMO variety using heavy amounts of pesticides and fertilizers. See the recent articles on dead zones in the oceans due to excess nitrogen. To insinuate that a vegan diet is better for the planet than meat is insincere. In the end it's probably a wash, for various reasons.
  - kragen 16y ago
    98% of the US soybean crop is used to feed livestock, according to Britannica http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/557184/soybean http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/557184/soybean . Eating the soybeans directly, instead of converting most of them to animal manure, uses dramatically less pesticide and fertilizer. I request that you withdraw your accusation of insincerity and substantiate your extraordinary claim that "it's probably a wash, for various reasons". (Disclaimer: I am not a vegan.)
dejb 16y ago
> Veganism as a lifestyle is utterly dependent on huge energy subsidies. What? You are confusing technological development with energy. People used to rely on burning wood for heat also but do you think this is energy efficient? Do you really think that a horse is more efficient for labour than machinery? In the past people used these inefficient methods because that was the best technology they had available. There is no way we could sustain our current world population if we all attempted to return to their lifestyles.
- gaius 16y ago
  Yes but you can't discount that. Another example: cycling is only a viable means of transport because of the extensive road network built for (and by!) oil-powered vehicles.
  - dejb 16y ago
    > Yes but you can't discount that. In terms of guiding what we should do now it can and should be discounted to zero. > Another example: cycling is only a viable means of transport because of the extensive road network built for (and by!) oil-powered vehicles. Another example of what? Of one technology being dependant on the history and environment that preceded it? Isn't that true for everything? As to the specifics of your example : you know that bicycles were popular before cars don't you? 'Bicycles and horse buggies were the two mainstays of private transportation just prior to the automobile' From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle

RK 16y ago

I'll have to disagree and say that the biggest single energy impact is having children.

adolph 16y ago
Or living in general. Oh, and wait, if everyone died that would have tremendous ecological impact too.
limist 16y ago
But as a human being, it's inevitable you'll need to eat. It follows we should weigh the consequences more heavily for inevitable choices. Having children - at least in richer countries - is a choice, and not inevitable. On a larger scale, it's arguably inevitable that humanity seeks to perpetuate itself. In that sense, having children is not a choice at the species-level. But we have the unique power, individually and collectively, to reflect on whether and how to perpetuate ourselves sustainably. Finally, the difference between a vegetarian/vegan diet versus say, the Standard American Diet, has orders of magnitude differences in water, fuel, land, and waste products (that 2nd Law thing again). That means the same resource base and ecosystem could support tens to thousands more vegetarians than meat-eaters. A very large vegetarian family would still have less impact than a single meat-eater.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]