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I was meeting a client yesterday at their office, they offered me coffee and asked me if I wanted milk, then whether I'd like oat or regular. I said regular (us

I was meeting a client yesterday at their office, they offered me coffee and asked me if I wanted milk, then whether I'd like oat or regular. I said regular (usually drink oat but was somehow preoccupied) and the response was "yea, fortunately that's still available". To me that was a pretty striking example of how the realities of what climage change is going to push us towards are sinking in.

sridca 8y ago
What has climate change got to do with cow's milk?
- williamdclt 8y ago
  You need lots of cows for cow's milk. You need lots of food and water for cows. You need lots of plants for cow's food. You need lots of water, pesticides, energy for plants. Plus: production of greenhouse gas, water pollution
  - sridca 8y ago
    > You need lots of cows for cow's milk. You need lots of food and water for cows. You need lots of plants for cow's food. You need lots of water, pesticides, energy for plants. And how are alternative-milks a better solution especially as they are also (but directly) plant-based? > Plus: production of greenhouse gas, water pollution If people are actually concerned about the natural environment they would be giving up their cars, instead of going on a plant-based diet, which raises the question of just what other biases cause people to do so. "Animal agriculture is responsible for 13–18% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and less in developed countries (e.g. 6% in the USA). Fossil fuel combustion for energy and transportation is responsible for approximately 64% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and more in developed countries (e.g. 80% in the USA)." https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-...
    - williamdclt 8y ago
      > And how are alternative-milks a better solution especially as they are also (but directly) plant-based? Come on. Yes you also need plants, but way way way less than using cows. In other words, cows are a very inefficient source of milk compared to oat or soy or almonds. > If people are actually concerned about the natural environment they would be giving up their cars It's not all-or-nothing you know, it's still good to do some effort, and it's way easier to give up cow milk than to give up cars (just buy a different kind of milk VS move out). And some people actually are giving up their cars. I wouldn't go as far as to say it's the same people without some statistical source.
SllX 8y ago
Today we’re (the general “we”, not you and I specifically) looking at the milk we put in our coffee with disdain, tomorrow we’ll be looking at the coffee in a similar manner. Probably someone somewhere out there already is and we’ll start seeing the headlines, blogs and podcasts about it in the near future. By building our societies around globalization, we have in some ways made our societies necessarily globalized. Everything we import/export has a fuel cost including ourselves when we’re the passengers, and that cost doesn’t stop at National borders, but incurs every time we move anything anywhere any distance. So when you have a popular crop, coffee, almonds, tea, coconuts, whatever that can only be grown in certain parts of the world, it is going to have an outsized impact on the global fuel economy relative to crops that are grown and consumed locally. The more fuel we consume, the greater the amount of carbon emissions we output, and carbon dioxide only has a global warming potential of 1 (as the base unit). Methane has a GWP of 86 across a score of years and 34 across a century. Now so far as I know, the GWP metric is only used for individual gases, but if you were to try to isolate it on a commodity by commodity basis, I’m betting Cow’s milk as transported to and sold in the supermarket today wouldn’t look great. I’ve worked in a cafe and I know approximately how much milk we went through in a week, often because I was the one buying it. Even a small mom and pop café can easily go through 40+ gallons a week, and that was hardly the only dairy product sold (cheeses of all sorts, whipped cream, ice cream, cheese cakes, chocolate cakes, pastries). I don’t even want to think about the amount of milk a single corporate chain like Starbucks or Peet’s goes through on a weekly basis. Fortunately cow’s milk is still available. That is really an understatement on your client’s part. I think humanity will sooner die out or go back to a technological dark age from which it never fully recovers before we give up cow’s milk in its entirety in just the US, never mind the rest of the world.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  That isn't necessarily true that local is better environmentally - even assuming that bulk freighters will still be carbon sourced. It may feel flattering to just think of everything in cozy communities and they may taste better from being fresher but it is more complicated than just shipping miles. There are other variables involved including farming efficiency, transportation efficiency, and the logistics of distribution. Going to get your groceries from a 5 minute away grocery store that gets their groceries from thousands of miles away in bulk shipments may ironically be more efficient than driving an hour away individually to get groceries from the local farmer's market. Essentially for the same reason that concluding that buses are worse than cars because they get lower miles per gallon is incredibly wrong.

sridca 8y ago

What has climate change got to do with cow's milk?

williamdclt 8y ago
You need lots of cows for cow's milk. You need lots of food and water for cows. You need lots of plants for cow's food. You need lots of water, pesticides, energy for plants. Plus: production of greenhouse gas, water pollution
- sridca 8y ago
  > You need lots of cows for cow's milk. You need lots of food and water for cows. You need lots of plants for cow's food. You need lots of water, pesticides, energy for plants. And how are alternative-milks a better solution especially as they are also (but directly) plant-based? > Plus: production of greenhouse gas, water pollution If people are actually concerned about the natural environment they would be giving up their cars, instead of going on a plant-based diet, which raises the question of just what other biases cause people to do so. "Animal agriculture is responsible for 13–18% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and less in developed countries (e.g. 6% in the USA). Fossil fuel combustion for energy and transportation is responsible for approximately 64% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and more in developed countries (e.g. 80% in the USA)." https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-...
  - williamdclt 8y ago
    > And how are alternative-milks a better solution especially as they are also (but directly) plant-based? Come on. Yes you also need plants, but way way way less than using cows. In other words, cows are a very inefficient source of milk compared to oat or soy or almonds. > If people are actually concerned about the natural environment they would be giving up their cars It's not all-or-nothing you know, it's still good to do some effort, and it's way easier to give up cow milk than to give up cars (just buy a different kind of milk VS move out). And some people actually are giving up their cars. I wouldn't go as far as to say it's the same people without some statistical source.

SllX 8y ago

Today we’re (the general “we”, not you and I specifically) looking at the milk we put in our coffee with disdain, tomorrow we’ll be looking at the coffee in a similar manner. Probably someone somewhere out there already is and we’ll start seeing the headlines, blogs and podcasts about it in the near future. By building our societies around globalization, we have in some ways made our societies necessarily globalized. Everything we import/export has a fuel cost including ourselves when we’re the passengers, and that cost doesn’t stop at National borders, but incurs every time we move anything anywhere any distance. So when you have a popular crop, coffee, almonds, tea, coconuts, whatever that can only be grown in certain parts of the world, it is going to have an outsized impact on the global fuel economy relative to crops that are grown and consumed locally. The more fuel we consume, the greater the amount of carbon emissions we output, and carbon dioxide only has a global warming potential of 1 (as the base unit). Methane has a GWP of 86 across a score of years and 34 across a century. Now so far as I know, the GWP metric is only used for individual gases, but if you were to try to isolate it on a commodity by commodity basis, I’m betting Cow’s milk as transported to and sold in the supermarket today wouldn’t look great. I’ve worked in a cafe and I know approximately how much milk we went through in a week, often because I was the one buying it. Even a small mom and pop café can easily go through 40+ gallons a week, and that was hardly the only dairy product sold (cheeses of all sorts, whipped cream, ice cream, cheese cakes, chocolate cakes, pastries). I don’t even want to think about the amount of milk a single corporate chain like Starbucks or Peet’s goes through on a weekly basis. Fortunately cow’s milk is still available. That is really an understatement on your client’s part. I think humanity will sooner die out or go back to a technological dark age from which it never fully recovers before we give up cow’s milk in its entirety in just the US, never mind the rest of the world.

Nasrudith 8y ago
That isn't necessarily true that local is better environmentally - even assuming that bulk freighters will still be carbon sourced. It may feel flattering to just think of everything in cozy communities and they may taste better from being fresher but it is more complicated than just shipping miles. There are other variables involved including farming efficiency, transportation efficiency, and the logistics of distribution. Going to get your groceries from a 5 minute away grocery store that gets their groceries from thousands of miles away in bulk shipments may ironically be more efficient than driving an hour away individually to get groceries from the local farmer's market. Essentially for the same reason that concluding that buses are worse than cars because they get lower miles per gallon is incredibly wrong.