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Even if you don't want to go vegan, it's easy to eat less meat (and probably good for your health if you have a Western diet). My partner is vegetarian, I eat m
by fredley 8y ago
Even if you don't want to go vegan, it's easy to eat less meat (and probably good for your health if you have a Western diet). My partner is vegetarian, I eat meat occasionally (and when I do I eat good meat, ethically and sustainably farmed).
Reducing meat consumption is by far the easiest way to reduce your carbon footprint.
- Flavius 8y agoThat's the best way to do it. Going vegan it's not easy for everyone and possibly not healthy. But eating less meat it's a no-brainer.
- paulie_a 8y agoI make an effort to reduce energy consumption simply from a cost basis. It is better for the environment obviously, but eating less meat is simply not going to happen.
- Flavius 8y agoThis makes no sense. Eating meat is just as expensive as energy consumption. Food can be just as delicious with 20% meat instead of 80% meat. Why would you insist on eating as much as possible?
- paulie_a 8y agoI didn't say I was eating as much as possible. I said I am going to continue to eat it at the same rate I currently do. Personally I am not going vegetarian.
- mercer 8y agoI've noticed you keep making posts that boil down to 'I do/am/believe <x>' without it offering much relevance or insight to the discussion. It seems like you're just live blogging on HN. I'm very curious what your reasons are for doing so. EDIT: I'm honestly curious. It doesn't bother me too much, and I'm sure I've made comments that I thought were valuable but in hindsight were probably just me wanting to be present. It's mostly the consistency of such comments from you that fascinates me.
- paulie_a 8y agoIt's a discussion thread. I add my input, maybe you find it relevant, maybe you dont. Maybe I don't add enough insight. Fair enough. But it's honestly fucking weird that you are tracking my comments.
- thereare5lights 8y agoI think it's more weird that you that behavior weird. Many people do that. Creepy perhaps, but it's not weird.
- mercer 8y agoI often click on the user's comment history if a comment stands out positively or negatively, and I realized that I'd done so more than once with yours. I don't think that counts as weird. That said, I did write a bunch of code that actually allows me to track a user's comments. But I wrote that mostly so I can get updates if infrequent but great commenters post something. Perhaps that is a bit weird.
- paulie_a 8y agoThat isn't a bit weird, that is outright creepy and borderline cyberstalkish. I wonder what you have done before a first date.
- googlemike 8y agoI found your comment by clicking on another comment of his, in another thread. He is absolutely "live blogging". He seems to have little to no actual real world experience, conflates technological notions easily, and often comments without any understanding of the underlying subject matter. Paulie, I think we would all prefer if you returned to reddit.
- mercer 8y agoThinking that subscribing to a user's new and public comments (the equivalent of adding a blog to your feed reader) is creepy and stalking would further confirm that. Nice to hear I'm not just being crazy about this though :).
- rocqua 8y agoI believe that the climate impact of ethically raised meat tends to be a lot higher than that of mass-produced meat. The reason being that it simply takes more resources to ethically produce meat.
- type-2 8y agoAll meat is a incredibly wasteful way to grow food. Plus mass produced meat usually always is harmful to the animal's wellbeing and also due to the way they live in close cramped spaces, there is lot of antibiotic put into their feed to stop diseases. Being vegan is the best but sadly we love meat too much. I am myself no better
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- yostrovs 8y agoNonsense. Grazing animals are part of the natural cycle that has produced grasses, the topsoil, and nutrients that tie them together. Vegetarianism breaks that cycle and leads to use of chemicals for growing edible plants.
- cowsandmilk 8y ago> Vegetarianism breaks that cycle and leads to use of chemicals for growing edible plants. What? It is pretty clear cut that humans eating plants directly requires growing a lot less plants than humans eating meat, which ate those plants. Animals don't grow on sunlight, so they are basically a reactor for turning plants from one type of food into another. And the laws of thermodynamics tell us they aren't 100% efficient, so... eating meat requires more plants to be grown than eating plants themselves...
- Yetanfou 8y agoWhat the commenter probably refers to is the fact that grazing animals eat plants which humans can not eat while vegetarians eat those which are suitable for human consumption. The grass eaten by herbivores 'just grows' while the cabbages, lettuces, beans and sprouts (et al) eaten by vegetarians (et al) don't "just grow", they need to be grown purposefully on soil which has been fertilised, they need to be protected from insects and vermin, etcetera. Had the herbivores been harvested from the wild this would all be true. In practice the herbivores are fed not just grass but beans, grains and other produce. Which has to be grown just like the vegetables eaten by vegetarians. Since the 'conversion factor' - the efficiency by which an animal transforms 1 kg of fodder into 1 kg of edible animal - varies from about 2 (insects) via 5-7 (chicken) via 9-11 (pig) to 14-18 (cow) it becomes clear that it takes a lot more grains, beans and such to feed a carnivore than it takes to feed a vegetarian.
- nhangen 8y agoHate to break it to you, but there is no such thing as ethically farmed meat. If it’s killed for your plate, it’s still bad karma.
- nerdponx 8y agoThis is a matter of opinion, not fact. With dairy, you might have a point.
- adrianN 8y agoYou don't acknowledge an ethical difference between a pig that has never seen the sun and lived on barely enough room to stand and a pig that has been held in a way that accommodated its natural behaviors?
- nhangen 8y agoThere is an ethical difference yes, but it’s still a net negative. We don’t need to kill in order to eat. We just choose to.
- xyzzy123 8y agoIt gets ethically weird for me when I contemplate hypothetical pigs that had happy lives but would not have existed if they were not farmed. Kinda Logan’s run? But pigs. The utilitarian in me wants to see the existence of the pig as an ethical net positive overall.
- johnchristopher 8y agoI think the argument that eating the pig raised in dark factory is better than the pig that had a life is valid.
- nhangen 8y agoSure, but that doesn't make it "ethical." It's still killed, and nothing wants to be killed.
- pelario 8y agoThis. I have seen and experienced how a radical view of vegetarianism (or veganism) deters people from doing anything about their meat consumption. Specially people who likes meat. After meeting a couple of "relaxed vegetarians", who said something like "I'm vegetarian, but if there is no vegetarian option, I can eat meat too" my partner became pseudo vegetarian: she allows herself to eat meet one weekend per month. As myself, I became indoors vegetarian, as we do not consume meet indoors.
- hueving 8y ago>ethically and sustainably farmed There is no such meat in the beef or chicken industry. There are sustainable methods to raise and provide enough meat for the demand and there are ethical methods (e.g. cage free, free range) that are absolutely not sustainable given the demand for meat. There is no overlap.
- fredley 8y ago> "...for the demand" If demand is lowered by the population at large consuming a lot less meat, then it's perfectly reasonable to produce meat ethically and sustainably. Chickens/eggs, etc.
- agumonkey 8y agoLots suggest shifting to chicken is already a good step