6 ms·

Ha that’s great! Hopefully we continue to see these numbers as increase as a leading indicator of a wealthy and well fed society.

vkou 4y ago
No, hopefully we can see these numbers stabilize at some long-term sustainable level, whatever that is. They aren't at that level at the moment, with large parts of modern agriculture more similar to a kind of mining - resources are extracted, with insufficient replenishment. The thing with mines is that they are eventually exhausted, and stop producing.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  We can also invent and engineer new tech that makes more production sustainable.
  - vkou 4y ago
    We can, I don't really care how we get to that point, I just want us to get to that point. We're not at that point right now, and we're not really prioritizing it.
- tomrod 4y ago
  I'm liking the research into kelp and algae farms. Go IwI!
mandmandam 4y ago
From your perspective, you just made a smart comment that adds wider context on this issue. From mine, it's something of a cosmic horror that people can think like this and be proud of themselves. We are wreaking havoc on the Earth and all life on it; strip mining it to the bone for the shallowest purposes. And some people have this strange glee about it... It's Lovecraftian to me. Like cultists worshipping death and darkness - literally. Dramatic? Sure. But you're literally cheer-leading the death of billions and billions of lives as a strong economic indicator. The fact is, we can't afford industrial farming (and many other 'indicators'). The bill is coming due for our lifestyle. Faster and closer every day. What to you is "determination to enjoy life", reads to me as blissful ignorance - but only blissful for the ignorant.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Of course people are going to be proud, the horrors of capitalism aside, we’ve completely eliminated hunger in the US (not implying we’re the only place). Not one single person is starving because we are unable to feed them. And we’re able to feed everyone with the absolute top tier of food desired by humans. It used to be an event only for special occasions to slaughter your lifestock. The only people who got a steady diet of meat were the wealthy. Cruelty aside that is something to take so much pride in. I think it’s easy to forget the bigger picture of progress here. Are we destroying the planet, oh yeah. Have we created a machine of unfathomable cruelty, also yes. But are we well fed with exactly the food we want to be eating given the choice, hell yeah and that’s an insane accomplishment. That’s something that was not possible 150 years ago.
  - throwanem 4y ago
    The question of present concern is whether it will still be possible 150 years hence.
  - fnimick 4y ago
    "We're destroying the planet with unfathomable cruelty, but at least we get to eat what we want!" This is not the accomplishment you think it is. This is absolute depravity on a societal scale and the fact that we're all so okay with it is horrifying.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      Okay we have to take a step back here, things are allowed to good and bad. I am in no way whatsoever trying to downplay the bad parts of our meat industry. I feel like there's a tendency in online discussions that if you ever point out any positive aspect of something that someone doesn't like overall, then it's taken as a full endorsement of that thing. Clearly I did not admonish the industry enough to make that clear. We're not going to get anywhere unless we can agree broadly that humans like eating meat. For all of human history it's been the most prized food and sits at the center of a lot of our rituals -- ham for Christmas, lamb for Easter, turkey for Thanksgiving, pork for New Years. I'm not assigning any value judgement to this. And so reaching a point where this thing that previously had to be savored because it was expensive and/or only available after the harvest now being a commodity is an accomplishment. You might not like the manifested will of humanity but we nonetheless did it and that's impressive in and of itself.
version_five 4y ago
Yes! Happy to see more people celebrating human achievement amidst all the usual doom and gloom that people like to leverage to push their political beliefs. The GP should be commended. Seriously, it's a bit tiring that [vegetarians] people that want to control what I eat get a pass for posting the same tired stuff every time it came up. If any other fanatic jumped in with their own agenda at every conceivable juncture, you'd expect it to be shut down. (I suppose cyclists may get a similar pass)
- dvzk 4y ago
  As a cyclist, online cyclists are among the most annoying people in the world. What’s worse is most of them aren’t even athletes.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- fnimick 4y ago
  Maybe because your meat consumption and demand for increasing land and water use to satiate your meat consumption is ruining the planet for the rest of us? If I could trap all the "unrepentant meat eaters" in a dome and let you ruin your own environment without broiling the rest of us, I wouldn't have a problem with your choices.
  - version_five 4y ago
    Consider that you may be in a doomsday cult.
    - fnimick 4y ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/climate-crisis-un-pathway-1-5-c https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/climate-... Our lifestyle is unsustainable. Take your head out of the sand.
throwawaylinux 4y ago
Strange this is getting downvotes. Protein consumption was traditionally one of the fundamental measures of social health, wealth, and quality of life, and it is on track to massively expand as population grows and huge parts of Asia and Africa (and others) continue to catch up in wealth. Apparently now we're in upside-down world were the richest and most highly consuming people on the planet believe that the production that supports their lifestyles is now immoral, and the idea that poorer people might increase their wealth and consumption a bit is so horrible to contemplate.
- pencilguin 4y ago
  Hint: you do not need to eat any meat to get plenty of protein.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    That's not a "hint", meat is a desirable food, a very good source of protein, can be a good income for poor farmers and can be raised in places that aren't suitable for cropping. But even if you set aside meat, modern lifestyles necessitate the killing of other life. Take your protein-rich plant food, for example. Do you know how modern cereal and vegetable farming is carried out? The idea is basically to create a holocaust of chemical poisons that exterminates all animal, plant, and fungal life except the crop, over millions of acres, and that is after the land has been cleared and the native plants and animals killed and wiped away. Housing, water, energy, mining, all that costs lives as well. You can't absolve yourself just by not eating meat.
    - hn-is-retarded 4y ago
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      You don't need absolution, just reduction. If the option is eating cows that eat some grass and feed from a couple of acres of desolation vs. eating beans and grains from a quarter acre of desolation, then the option is obvious. You can still eat the tenth of the cows that can survive on the grass alone. Reducing the desolation and increasing the yield by building an ecosystem rather than monocrop is better, but that is a harder transition.

vkou 4y ago

No, hopefully we can see these numbers stabilize at some long-term sustainable level, whatever that is. They aren't at that level at the moment, with large parts of modern agriculture more similar to a kind of mining - resources are extracted, with insufficient replenishment. The thing with mines is that they are eventually exhausted, and stop producing.

nemo44x 4y ago
We can also invent and engineer new tech that makes more production sustainable.
- vkou 4y ago
  We can, I don't really care how we get to that point, I just want us to get to that point. We're not at that point right now, and we're not really prioritizing it.
tomrod 4y ago
I'm liking the research into kelp and algae farms. Go IwI!

mandmandam 4y ago

From your perspective, you just made a smart comment that adds wider context on this issue. From mine, it's something of a cosmic horror that people can think like this and be proud of themselves. We are wreaking havoc on the Earth and all life on it; strip mining it to the bone for the shallowest purposes. And some people have this strange glee about it... It's Lovecraftian to me. Like cultists worshipping death and darkness - literally. Dramatic? Sure. But you're literally cheer-leading the death of billions and billions of lives as a strong economic indicator. The fact is, we can't afford industrial farming (and many other 'indicators'). The bill is coming due for our lifestyle. Faster and closer every day. What to you is "determination to enjoy life", reads to me as blissful ignorance - but only blissful for the ignorant.

Spivak 4y ago
Of course people are going to be proud, the horrors of capitalism aside, we’ve completely eliminated hunger in the US (not implying we’re the only place). Not one single person is starving because we are unable to feed them. And we’re able to feed everyone with the absolute top tier of food desired by humans. It used to be an event only for special occasions to slaughter your lifestock. The only people who got a steady diet of meat were the wealthy. Cruelty aside that is something to take so much pride in. I think it’s easy to forget the bigger picture of progress here. Are we destroying the planet, oh yeah. Have we created a machine of unfathomable cruelty, also yes. But are we well fed with exactly the food we want to be eating given the choice, hell yeah and that’s an insane accomplishment. That’s something that was not possible 150 years ago.
- throwanem 4y ago
  The question of present concern is whether it will still be possible 150 years hence.
- fnimick 4y ago
  "We're destroying the planet with unfathomable cruelty, but at least we get to eat what we want!" This is not the accomplishment you think it is. This is absolute depravity on a societal scale and the fact that we're all so okay with it is horrifying.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Okay we have to take a step back here, things are allowed to good and bad. I am in no way whatsoever trying to downplay the bad parts of our meat industry. I feel like there's a tendency in online discussions that if you ever point out any positive aspect of something that someone doesn't like overall, then it's taken as a full endorsement of that thing. Clearly I did not admonish the industry enough to make that clear. We're not going to get anywhere unless we can agree broadly that humans like eating meat. For all of human history it's been the most prized food and sits at the center of a lot of our rituals -- ham for Christmas, lamb for Easter, turkey for Thanksgiving, pork for New Years. I'm not assigning any value judgement to this. And so reaching a point where this thing that previously had to be savored because it was expensive and/or only available after the harvest now being a commodity is an accomplishment. You might not like the manifested will of humanity but we nonetheless did it and that's impressive in and of itself.

version_five 4y ago

Yes! Happy to see more people celebrating human achievement amidst all the usual doom and gloom that people like to leverage to push their political beliefs. The GP should be commended. Seriously, it's a bit tiring that [vegetarians] people that want to control what I eat get a pass for posting the same tired stuff every time it came up. If any other fanatic jumped in with their own agenda at every conceivable juncture, you'd expect it to be shut down. (I suppose cyclists may get a similar pass)

dvzk 4y ago
As a cyclist, online cyclists are among the most annoying people in the world. What’s worse is most of them aren’t even athletes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
fnimick 4y ago
Maybe because your meat consumption and demand for increasing land and water use to satiate your meat consumption is ruining the planet for the rest of us? If I could trap all the "unrepentant meat eaters" in a dome and let you ruin your own environment without broiling the rest of us, I wouldn't have a problem with your choices.
- version_five 4y ago
  Consider that you may be in a doomsday cult.
  - fnimick 4y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/climate-crisis-un-pathway-1-5-c https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/climate-... Our lifestyle is unsustainable. Take your head out of the sand.

throwawaylinux 4y ago

Strange this is getting downvotes. Protein consumption was traditionally one of the fundamental measures of social health, wealth, and quality of life, and it is on track to massively expand as population grows and huge parts of Asia and Africa (and others) continue to catch up in wealth. Apparently now we're in upside-down world were the richest and most highly consuming people on the planet believe that the production that supports their lifestyles is now immoral, and the idea that poorer people might increase their wealth and consumption a bit is so horrible to contemplate.

pencilguin 4y ago
Hint: you do not need to eat any meat to get plenty of protein.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  That's not a "hint", meat is a desirable food, a very good source of protein, can be a good income for poor farmers and can be raised in places that aren't suitable for cropping. But even if you set aside meat, modern lifestyles necessitate the killing of other life. Take your protein-rich plant food, for example. Do you know how modern cereal and vegetable farming is carried out? The idea is basically to create a holocaust of chemical poisons that exterminates all animal, plant, and fungal life except the crop, over millions of acres, and that is after the land has been cleared and the native plants and animals killed and wiped away. Housing, water, energy, mining, all that costs lives as well. You can't absolve yourself just by not eating meat.
  - hn-is-retarded 4y ago
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    You don't need absolution, just reduction. If the option is eating cows that eat some grass and feed from a couple of acres of desolation vs. eating beans and grains from a quarter acre of desolation, then the option is obvious. You can still eat the tenth of the cows that can survive on the grass alone. Reducing the desolation and increasing the yield by building an ecosystem rather than monocrop is better, but that is a harder transition.