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Maybe we could finally stop subsidizing cows / dairy industry. Cows use 3/4 of our agriculture land, same amount of land as all current forests. Beef / dairy i
by myshpa 5y ago
Maybe we could finally stop subsidizing cows / dairy industry.
Cows use 3/4 of our agriculture land, same amount of land as all current forests. Beef / dairy is also a leading defforestation driver. And for cheese/milk there is a lot of plant-based alternatives.
If we could afforest this land again, we would not only stop Anthropocene extinction, but we would also remove a good amount of CO2 from the atmosphere (maybe several decades worth).
Then, why stop there and not afforest steppe countries (Mongolia, Kazahstan, Sahel ...) and pay their indigenous populations not to devastate it with their herds of camels/horses/sheep ? We could easily cover large swaths of land with new forests. We could even reforest our deserts, it seems very easily and cheaply (few percents of world's gdp).
Why look at Mars, when we could start some serious geoingeneering here at Earth, with few seeds and some inovative methods (like Miyawaki, syntropic agriculture ...).
Indians in Amazon did this. They converted pretty arid land into rainforest (terra preta). Some speculate, that extinction of Indians in this region and follow-up grow of Amazonian rainforest after Spaniards came and killed them with viruses caused little ice age in 16th century.
Why not repeat it (plant new rainforests and new forests) and solve few problems with in one go. You know, we don't have only CO2 problem. Our children, or children of our children, will know tigers, giraffes and rhinos only from picture books, right after dinosaurs and mammoths (which we also ate to extinction, btw).
We don't need bilionaires to do this. No technological solution will appear in a reasonable timeframe. We need public to take their heads out of their a$$3$ and demand political changes.
Of course, this problem is very complex and needs to be attacked from multiple dimensions. But some solutions are easier than others, and people are ignorant (this post won't even reach front page), our leaders are only interested in their pockets and status quo (and so they lie and then do nothing). I'm hopeless and depressed.
(english is not my first language, sorry)
- SnowProblem 5y agoYep. Eating animals, when you add up their methane + respiration, the feed for the animals, the deforestation, and transportation, is arguably our biggest cause of climate change [1], and it's avoidable. The longest living people in the world are plant-based. So agree, it would be great if we stopped the animal subsidies and simply let the market react. As a side effect, perhaps our healthcare costs would go down. Just today I read the average american spends $1200/year on medications, largely for problems like high blood pressure and cholesterol that for many people go away when they eat more plants. [1] I know that animal agriculture being 51% of greenhouse gases number has been questioned a lot, but from what I can tell it's closer to the truth than those who want to say it's 18% or less. Ether way, it's large. New stanford study agrees that "reducing or eliminating animal agriculture should be at the top of the list of potential climate solutions" https://news.stanford.edu/2022/02/01/new-model-explores-link-animal-agriculture-climate-change/ https://news.stanford.edu/2022/02/01/new-model-explores-link....