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Sorry for being off topic here: I get pushback on this opinion from my friends, so I expect this to be an unpopular opinion here also: the cost of meat should

Sorry for being off topic here: I get pushback on this opinion from my friends, so I expect this to be an unpopular opinion here also: the cost of meat should be priced to also cover external costs of water and harm to the environment. I enjoy a steak once or twice a month, so I am not talking from a vegan-purity perspective. I think that there should be a tax on meat that directly supported research and infrastructure for water and energy efficient farming, lower cost desalinization, etc. Also, some types of legumes, vegetables, etc. are much more water efficient than others. In some ways I think that “meat hurting the environment deniers” are even a little worse than climate change deniers because industrial meat production hits chaotic climate change and water resources.

junon 5y ago
Can your friends justify their opposition? Because it makes sense to me, not that politicians will ever do anything about it.
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  One friend in particular eats met every day and doesn’t want to pay more for it.
  - Hendrikto 5y ago
    What people don‘t realize is that they ARE paying the price either way, just indirectly.
    - bobbytit 5y ago
      What some people on hn do not realise is that meat is too expensive already for most. The cost of living in the West is already too high for young people to have families of their own. This is what Bill Gates and his mates want. They will never go without cars, planes, houses, meat etc. That is why some have you have been brainwashed by billionaires into wanting the further impoverishment of your fellow 99% brethren.
    - titzer 5y ago
      We're going into debt, or rather, we are emptying the large reservoir of biodiversity and consuming arable land in order to fuel short-term profits. The long-term consequences of soil depletion and biosphere destruction (with potential collapse) are not priced in.
bobbytit 5y ago
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. C. S. Lewis
- titzer 5y ago
  > C. S. Lewis Figures. Back then, corporations weren't such a huge thing. Now we've got growthism. No matter how much money a megacorp makes, it's always gotta make more for its shareholders. If the CEO and board are not going along with that, they will be replaced. Corporations are stuck on a hedonistic treadmill divorced from the finite capacity of a human stomach to be sated. Conscience? Since when did a corporation ever have need of a conscience? In short, Lewis lacked imagination.
  - svieira 5y ago
    Lewis came _after_ the East India Trading Company (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company) - he's talking about corporations that resemble the fever dreams of _Neuromancer_ and _Snow Crash_, not the (relatively) puny things we have today. He didn't lack imagination at all - he's saying that the moral busybody is _worse_ because their impetus is a better one, so they have more focus and energy to pursue their goals than the hedonist / greed-driven individual.
    - titzer 5y ago
      I understand what he is saying, I just disagree. We are blind to the horrors of our own system when we apologize for it and point the finger at things that we fear and distrust. It's nothing more than an intentional distraction from the evil that already exists in this world. I suspect that he got himself into these contortions trying to apologize for a Christian view of God as all-loving but wrestling with the problem of evil. Especially because those robber barons and mega companies of the day mouthed Christian platitudes all along their conquest. I just ran out of patience with the "socialism bad" reductionism that underlies a lot of sophisticated-sounding analyses but ultimate amounts to "just let me do whatever I want, look those baddies aren't that bad, maybe they're even good!"
Zababa 5y ago
> the cost of meat should be priced to also cover external costs of water and harm to the environment I think that should apply to everything, and not just meat. Air travel, vegetables, plastic, you name it. > I think that there should be a tax on meat that directly supported research and infrastructure for water and energy efficient farming, lower cost desalinization, etc. I don't agree with that. As long as you pay the full cost of everything, adding a tax over it seems unfair to me. > In some ways I think that “meat hurting the environment deniers” are even a little worse than climate change deniers because industrial meat production hits chaotic climate change and water resources. I think you're oversimplifying things. For example, nuts use a lot of water. More than sheep, goat, pig and chicken according to this https://www.statista.com/chart/9483/how-thirsty-is-our-food/ https://www.statista.com/chart/9483/how-thirsty-is-our-food/. Vegetarians and vegans both consume more nuts than omnivores (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5707691/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5707691/). We should take that into account to. I also wonder, how much of the water consumed by animals is just rainwater on non-arable land? Animals put on land where you can't grow anything but grass anyways is a smart utilisation of resources. Animals put on land where you could grow cereals, vegetables, or legumes is a waste. Having a way to make the distinction between the two when buying meat would be great.
- amacneil 5y ago
  Nuts definitely consume a lot of water, but your usage link compares per kg. When you adjust for calories it tells a different story, e.g. Almonds [0] have around 3x more calories per kg than Steak [1]. [0] https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/323294/nutrients https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/323294/n... [1] https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/746763/nutrients https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/746763/n...
  - Zababa 5y ago
    You're right, comparing just the weight doesn't tell the whole story. However, the same is true for calories. I think you should consider a kg of "weighted average" beef and not just steak, as steak tends to be lean. You would also have to take into account nutrients. That's why I'm not a huge fan of just comparing how much water different food need. Things are more complex than that.
cheese_goddess 5y ago
> I get pushback on this opinion from my friends, so I expect this to be an unpopular opinion here also: the cost of meat should be priced to also cover external costs of water and harm to the environment. Maybe that would have some kind of effect, but what exactly? Greenhouse gas emissions by sector: https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector > Energy: 73.2% > Agriculture, forestry and land use: 18% > Waste: 3.2% > Industry: 5.2% Each piece of the pie is further broken down and so you can see that, for example: > Agriculture etc > Livestock & manure: 5.8% > Energy > Food and tobacco: 1% The majority of emissions comes from burning fossil fuels. Additionally, fossil fuels produce gases that were buried in the soil for aeons, whereas meat production produces gasses most of which are re-absorbed by the soil. See carbon cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle To be more specific, as the article says: > Livestock & manure (5.8%): animals (mainly ruminants, such as cattle and sheep) produce greenhouse gases through a process called ‘enteric fermentation’ – when microbes in their digestive systems break down food, they produce methane as a by-product. This means beef and lamb tend to have a high carbon footprint, and eating less is an effective way to reduce the emissions of your diet. So cutting down on meat is an effective way to reduce the contribution to greenhouse gas emissions of your diet. Your largest contributions are your (direct or indirect) use of fossil fuels. Furthermore, the majority of eemissions in meat production come from ruminants. Chicken and pork should are not ruminants and you should probably exclude them from your taxation suggestion.
lenkite 5y ago
Very egalitarian. The poor should no longer eat meat - restrict this to the rich.

junon 5y ago

Can your friends justify their opposition? Because it makes sense to me, not that politicians will ever do anything about it.

mark_l_watson 5y ago
One friend in particular eats met every day and doesn’t want to pay more for it.
- Hendrikto 5y ago
  What people don‘t realize is that they ARE paying the price either way, just indirectly.
  - bobbytit 5y ago
    What some people on hn do not realise is that meat is too expensive already for most. The cost of living in the West is already too high for young people to have families of their own. This is what Bill Gates and his mates want. They will never go without cars, planes, houses, meat etc. That is why some have you have been brainwashed by billionaires into wanting the further impoverishment of your fellow 99% brethren.
  - titzer 5y ago
    We're going into debt, or rather, we are emptying the large reservoir of biodiversity and consuming arable land in order to fuel short-term profits. The long-term consequences of soil depletion and biosphere destruction (with potential collapse) are not priced in.

bobbytit 5y ago

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. C. S. Lewis

titzer 5y ago
> C. S. Lewis Figures. Back then, corporations weren't such a huge thing. Now we've got growthism. No matter how much money a megacorp makes, it's always gotta make more for its shareholders. If the CEO and board are not going along with that, they will be replaced. Corporations are stuck on a hedonistic treadmill divorced from the finite capacity of a human stomach to be sated. Conscience? Since when did a corporation ever have need of a conscience? In short, Lewis lacked imagination.
- svieira 5y ago
  Lewis came _after_ the East India Trading Company (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company) - he's talking about corporations that resemble the fever dreams of _Neuromancer_ and _Snow Crash_, not the (relatively) puny things we have today. He didn't lack imagination at all - he's saying that the moral busybody is _worse_ because their impetus is a better one, so they have more focus and energy to pursue their goals than the hedonist / greed-driven individual.
  - titzer 5y ago
    I understand what he is saying, I just disagree. We are blind to the horrors of our own system when we apologize for it and point the finger at things that we fear and distrust. It's nothing more than an intentional distraction from the evil that already exists in this world. I suspect that he got himself into these contortions trying to apologize for a Christian view of God as all-loving but wrestling with the problem of evil. Especially because those robber barons and mega companies of the day mouthed Christian platitudes all along their conquest. I just ran out of patience with the "socialism bad" reductionism that underlies a lot of sophisticated-sounding analyses but ultimate amounts to "just let me do whatever I want, look those baddies aren't that bad, maybe they're even good!"

Zababa 5y ago

> the cost of meat should be priced to also cover external costs of water and harm to the environment I think that should apply to everything, and not just meat. Air travel, vegetables, plastic, you name it. > I think that there should be a tax on meat that directly supported research and infrastructure for water and energy efficient farming, lower cost desalinization, etc. I don't agree with that. As long as you pay the full cost of everything, adding a tax over it seems unfair to me. > In some ways I think that “meat hurting the environment deniers” are even a little worse than climate change deniers because industrial meat production hits chaotic climate change and water resources. I think you're oversimplifying things. For example, nuts use a lot of water. More than sheep, goat, pig and chicken according to this https://www.statista.com/chart/9483/how-thirsty-is-our-food/ https://www.statista.com/chart/9483/how-thirsty-is-our-food/. Vegetarians and vegans both consume more nuts than omnivores (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5707691/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5707691/). We should take that into account to. I also wonder, how much of the water consumed by animals is just rainwater on non-arable land? Animals put on land where you can't grow anything but grass anyways is a smart utilisation of resources. Animals put on land where you could grow cereals, vegetables, or legumes is a waste. Having a way to make the distinction between the two when buying meat would be great.

amacneil 5y ago
Nuts definitely consume a lot of water, but your usage link compares per kg. When you adjust for calories it tells a different story, e.g. Almonds [0] have around 3x more calories per kg than Steak [1]. [0] https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/323294/nutrients https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/323294/n... [1] https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/746763/nutrients https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/746763/n...
- Zababa 5y ago
  You're right, comparing just the weight doesn't tell the whole story. However, the same is true for calories. I think you should consider a kg of "weighted average" beef and not just steak, as steak tends to be lean. You would also have to take into account nutrients. That's why I'm not a huge fan of just comparing how much water different food need. Things are more complex than that.

cheese_goddess 5y ago

> I get pushback on this opinion from my friends, so I expect this to be an unpopular opinion here also: the cost of meat should be priced to also cover external costs of water and harm to the environment. Maybe that would have some kind of effect, but what exactly? Greenhouse gas emissions by sector: https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector > Energy: 73.2% > Agriculture, forestry and land use: 18% > Waste: 3.2% > Industry: 5.2% Each piece of the pie is further broken down and so you can see that, for example: > Agriculture etc > Livestock & manure: 5.8% > Energy > Food and tobacco: 1% The majority of emissions comes from burning fossil fuels. Additionally, fossil fuels produce gases that were buried in the soil for aeons, whereas meat production produces gasses most of which are re-absorbed by the soil. See carbon cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle To be more specific, as the article says: > Livestock & manure (5.8%): animals (mainly ruminants, such as cattle and sheep) produce greenhouse gases through a process called ‘enteric fermentation’ – when microbes in their digestive systems break down food, they produce methane as a by-product. This means beef and lamb tend to have a high carbon footprint, and eating less is an effective way to reduce the emissions of your diet. So cutting down on meat is an effective way to reduce the contribution to greenhouse gas emissions of your diet. Your largest contributions are your (direct or indirect) use of fossil fuels. Furthermore, the majority of eemissions in meat production come from ruminants. Chicken and pork should are not ruminants and you should probably exclude them from your taxation suggestion.

lenkite 5y ago

Very egalitarian. The poor should no longer eat meat - restrict this to the rich.