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Having people travel to hunt the meat they eat doesn't scale, though, at all. It's quite simply not possible to use it as a way to improve land use and reduce c

Having people travel to hunt the meat they eat doesn't scale, though, at all. It's quite simply not possible to use it as a way to improve land use and reduce climate change. Suggestions like yours can be good, but they don't recognize the scale of the changes that are needed. It's the equivalent of trying to get people to buy hybrids to stop climate change - even if everyone could do it, it wouldn't make a dent in the problem. Even given that hunting provides some kind of spiritual value (which I must admit I'm very skeptical of), it's a value only available to those who are by any reasonable standard quite wealthy (excepting rural people). It takes a lot of time, costs more, and is hard work that a lot of people aren't capable of. A marked increase in demand would make this even more of a problem. >It forces you to own responsibility for killing your dinner. I wonder if, faced with this choice, most people would not simply become vegetarians.

windows_tips 8y ago
>I wonder if, faced with this choice, most people would not simply become vegetarians. Probably not if they had to forage all their foods at current densities.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  There is plenty of land that could be used for well-managed forest gardens. Bali is an example of a modern economy where people can forage a lot of their calories that way.
  - windows_tips 8y ago
    It would be real nice if our neighborhoods and streets were lined with edible plants. It seems like it could/would be a lot of work to maintain, but with the appropriate tools and planning it might be pretty simple. Non-edible (as far as I know) street trees are already watered by hand (with water trucks) here and they only seem to be used for decoration and shade. edit: one issue to be careful of is the plants collecting "pollution"
komali2 8y ago
Well, you hit the nose on the head with your final point - if hunting was the only way to get meat, there'd be a hell of a lot more meat being eaten. I'm not sure that anybody here is recommending that literally every person hunts their meat though, or that it should be the only way to get meat, so what's the point of talking about scale?
- chrisweekly 8y ago
  > "if hunting was the only way to get meat, there'd be a hell of a lot more meat being eaten" I think you meant __less__, not more, yeah?
  - komali2 8y ago
    Correct, and it's too late to edit :(
freddie_mercury 8y ago
> I wonder if, faced with this choice, most people would not simply become vegetarians. I expect that most people would quickly find that killing animals isn't that hard, that billions of people still do it today, and that natural disasters & wars have clearly shown that people can and do adapt quickly, doing things they never thought possible.
HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
only available to those who are by any reasonable standard quite wealthy What reasonable standard? A shotgun or small game rifle is < $300 at Walmart and a license is about $20. I have a really hard time seeing that as needing to be "quite wealthy." I agree with your other points, but I have to take issue with this one. I've let people we know, who live in the suburbs, hunt on our land and while I'm not a hunter, they certainly derive a great deal of pleasure from it.

windows_tips 8y ago

>I wonder if, faced with this choice, most people would not simply become vegetarians. Probably not if they had to forage all their foods at current densities.

Alex3917 8y ago
There is plenty of land that could be used for well-managed forest gardens. Bali is an example of a modern economy where people can forage a lot of their calories that way.
- windows_tips 8y ago
  It would be real nice if our neighborhoods and streets were lined with edible plants. It seems like it could/would be a lot of work to maintain, but with the appropriate tools and planning it might be pretty simple. Non-edible (as far as I know) street trees are already watered by hand (with water trucks) here and they only seem to be used for decoration and shade. edit: one issue to be careful of is the plants collecting "pollution"

komali2 8y ago

Well, you hit the nose on the head with your final point - if hunting was the only way to get meat, there'd be a hell of a lot more meat being eaten. I'm not sure that anybody here is recommending that literally every person hunts their meat though, or that it should be the only way to get meat, so what's the point of talking about scale?

chrisweekly 8y ago
> "if hunting was the only way to get meat, there'd be a hell of a lot more meat being eaten" I think you meant __less__, not more, yeah?
- komali2 8y ago
  Correct, and it's too late to edit :(

freddie_mercury 8y ago

> I wonder if, faced with this choice, most people would not simply become vegetarians. I expect that most people would quickly find that killing animals isn't that hard, that billions of people still do it today, and that natural disasters & wars have clearly shown that people can and do adapt quickly, doing things they never thought possible.

HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago

only available to those who are by any reasonable standard quite wealthy What reasonable standard? A shotgun or small game rifle is < $300 at Walmart and a license is about $20. I have a really hard time seeing that as needing to be "quite wealthy." I agree with your other points, but I have to take issue with this one. I've let people we know, who live in the suburbs, hunt on our land and while I'm not a hunter, they certainly derive a great deal of pleasure from it.