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> sustainable farming needs to be local, it needs natural fertilizers and it needs grazing animals. I suspect that the "sustainable farming" you're describing,
by Udik 8y ago
> sustainable farming needs to be local, it needs natural fertilizers and it needs grazing animals.
I suspect that the "sustainable farming" you're describing, if applied at scale (= enough to feed 7 billion people) would require so much land as to completely devastate and replace every natural environment still left on earth. Little crops and pastures, as pleasing as they are to the eye, are not a natural environment.
- zdkl 8y agoNothing "natural" would sustain 7b+ people anyway, so what's your point against "sustainable" as a reasonable (and considerable) improvement?
- MiroF 8y agoThe point is that local and "natural" is not sustainable. We need scale for a reason.
- homonculus1 8y agoScale is not sustainable either. What we REALLY need is population reduction.
- MiroF 8y agoSilly to advocate for population reduction when people in the developed world (esp. the US) emit multiple times as much as those in the developing world. This is largely an overconsumption problem, not an overpopulation problem. Most of the people born today will emit less than you or I ever will.
- Udik 8y ago> Silly to advocate for population reduction when people in the developed world (esp. the US) emit multiple times as much as those in the developing world. It's true, and it's enraging. But at the same time, are you wishing for the people in the developing world to keep producing so few emissions per capita? Because they would emit as much as we do if they could, and I'm sure they dream they'll be able to do it one day. And it's fair: but then we need to think of a recipe for sustainability that factors in much higher consumption levels for the now developing countries- instead of much lower ones for the developed world.
- homonculus1 8y agoMeat is great. Driving anywhere I want as often as I like is great. Cooling my house in the summer is great. Buying products made of plastic is great. I don't want to stop doing any of these things, they make my life great. I could radically change my entire lifestyle to something much more limited and uncomfortable, only for the gains to be eaten up because my neighbor refuses to use contraception, and refuses to teach his 5 kids to use contraception. The onus of climate change falls on people whose carbon footprint is exponential. Not me, mine is finite. I'm not going to move mountains in my life to make a difference that's fractional compared to other people's careless reproduction.
- Udik 8y ago> what's your point against "sustainable" "Sustainable" is just a label, it doesn't in itself prove a) that the methods it describes are sustainable; b) that the conventional, industrial methods are not sustainable. However, I agree that nothing natural can sustain a population of 7 billion. But we can try to concentrate the necessary unnatural food production on the smallest possible area, or use less technology and spread it over a much wider area.
- sc4les 8y agoYeah, this sounds like typical carnist propaganda. Meat has some magical ingredient needed for health that no one can name? Almost all peer-reviewed studies show that vegans (diet done properly) are the only group within healthy range for almost all markers; most meat eaters are deficient in B12 etc etc. It is strikingly similar to smoking: educating the public takes a very long time, laws are always behind and good news about your bad habits become industry-funded public "knowledge". Maybe we will have figured out how not to kill ourselves by the time we colonize mars
- stOneskull 8y agoLike with most things, it depends. Something jumps in and shakes up the simplicity Sometimes it's an eskimo getting his vitamin C from animal organs.