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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 suit

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.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  I have to say it takes some chutzpah for a person to just out and say their level of consumption is the correct amount and someone else's is not. Sure you can eat the beans and grains instead. You can also stop driving, stop heating and cooling your house, stop buying computers and phones and cars, stop air travel, live in a small apartment you share with several other people. I don't have a problem with the idea of reducing environmental footprint or moving consumption patterns to more efficient products. Great ideas. What I have a problem with is making choices for or passing moral judgement on other people. Your lifestyle results in the death of life and animals, and you do not do everything physically possible to minimize that, therefore you simply do not have that moral high ground. If killing animals is "wrong", then we are all wrong. "Oh but I try to minimize" is not an defense because you are minimizing according to what is convenient or valuable to you. You'll accept some killing of animals because you fly to Europe once a year or have a smartphone or heat your house and that's okay, but somebody who chooses to eat more meat than you would prefer?
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    If you're consuming 19x as many resources than someone else, and the sustainable level is 10% of the current level, then demanding they reduce their 5% share to a 1% share is not just arrogant, unfair, and greedy. It also doesn't do anything to solve the problem. Your implicit thesis is that you should not be held to account to do the extremely easy things if anyone else is asserting their right to exist at all is transparent reprehensible. > You can also stop driving, stop heating and cooling your house, stop buying computers and phones and cars, stop air travel, live in a small apartment you share with several other people. If I already do all those things (with the exception of a second hand phone I use with a 10yo monitor when I need a desktop). Then do I get to tell you to maybe drive a slightly smaller SUV or stop opposing renewable energy?
    - throwawaylinux 4y ago
      > If you're consuming 19x as many resources than someone else, and the sustainable level is 10% of the current level, then demanding they reduce their 5% share to a 1% share is not just arrogant, unfair, and greedy. It also doesn't do anything to solve the problem. If. > Your implicit thesis is that you should not be held to account to do the extremely easy things if anyone else is asserting their right to exist at all is transparent reprehensible. No it isn't. Not eating meat, by itself, does not give you any moral high ground about killing animals or consuming resources or impacting the environment.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        I'm not asserting any moral high ground. I'm saying we should stop factory farming cattle that are fed with heavily subsidized, fossil fuel grown crops, stop clearing land for more cattle, return about half of the land currently used for feed and ethanol to conservation, and hold the meat industry to some basic environmental and animal welfare standards. You're welcome to continue eating what meat is available in such a world and should thank anyone you meet who eats less so that your combined share of a sustainable world can meet your personal demands.
pencilguin 4y ago
> "meat is a desirable food" Yet I do not desire it. > "Do you know how modern cereal and vegetable farming is carried out?" I do know. The food I eat is not, in fact, produced that way. I do not need or want absolution. But I know my carbon footprint is a tiny fraction of yours. You are, in other words, personally responsible for overwhelmingly more suffering in the world than I know, by direct experience, is necessary for your level of comfort.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  > Yet I do not desire it. Irrelevant. > I do know. The food I eat is not, in fact, produced that way. Maybe. Maybe not grown in a way that's sustainably capable of feeding the world's population or even accessible to many. > I do not need or want absolution. But I know my carbon footprint is a tiny fraction of yours. You think it is, I'm sure. And you believe yourself to have the moral high ground. > You are, in other words, personally responsible for overwhelmingly more suffering in the world than I know, by direct experience, is necessary for your level of comfort. And so are you. Unlike your assumptions about my carbon footprint, I actually do know that with certainty because you are posting this message here which consumes energy. What's more your level of comfort itself is almost certainly far beyond most people on earth, and far beyond what you need to barely keep yourself alive, therefore you have made choices for your own comfort at the expense of many other life forms.

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.

throwawaylinux 4y ago
I have to say it takes some chutzpah for a person to just out and say their level of consumption is the correct amount and someone else's is not. Sure you can eat the beans and grains instead. You can also stop driving, stop heating and cooling your house, stop buying computers and phones and cars, stop air travel, live in a small apartment you share with several other people. I don't have a problem with the idea of reducing environmental footprint or moving consumption patterns to more efficient products. Great ideas. What I have a problem with is making choices for or passing moral judgement on other people. Your lifestyle results in the death of life and animals, and you do not do everything physically possible to minimize that, therefore you simply do not have that moral high ground. If killing animals is "wrong", then we are all wrong. "Oh but I try to minimize" is not an defense because you are minimizing according to what is convenient or valuable to you. You'll accept some killing of animals because you fly to Europe once a year or have a smartphone or heat your house and that's okay, but somebody who chooses to eat more meat than you would prefer?
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  If you're consuming 19x as many resources than someone else, and the sustainable level is 10% of the current level, then demanding they reduce their 5% share to a 1% share is not just arrogant, unfair, and greedy. It also doesn't do anything to solve the problem. Your implicit thesis is that you should not be held to account to do the extremely easy things if anyone else is asserting their right to exist at all is transparent reprehensible. > You can also stop driving, stop heating and cooling your house, stop buying computers and phones and cars, stop air travel, live in a small apartment you share with several other people. If I already do all those things (with the exception of a second hand phone I use with a 10yo monitor when I need a desktop). Then do I get to tell you to maybe drive a slightly smaller SUV or stop opposing renewable energy?
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    > If you're consuming 19x as many resources than someone else, and the sustainable level is 10% of the current level, then demanding they reduce their 5% share to a 1% share is not just arrogant, unfair, and greedy. It also doesn't do anything to solve the problem. If. > Your implicit thesis is that you should not be held to account to do the extremely easy things if anyone else is asserting their right to exist at all is transparent reprehensible. No it isn't. Not eating meat, by itself, does not give you any moral high ground about killing animals or consuming resources or impacting the environment.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      I'm not asserting any moral high ground. I'm saying we should stop factory farming cattle that are fed with heavily subsidized, fossil fuel grown crops, stop clearing land for more cattle, return about half of the land currently used for feed and ethanol to conservation, and hold the meat industry to some basic environmental and animal welfare standards. You're welcome to continue eating what meat is available in such a world and should thank anyone you meet who eats less so that your combined share of a sustainable world can meet your personal demands.

pencilguin 4y ago

> "meat is a desirable food" Yet I do not desire it. > "Do you know how modern cereal and vegetable farming is carried out?" I do know. The food I eat is not, in fact, produced that way. I do not need or want absolution. But I know my carbon footprint is a tiny fraction of yours. You are, in other words, personally responsible for overwhelmingly more suffering in the world than I know, by direct experience, is necessary for your level of comfort.

throwawaylinux 4y ago
> Yet I do not desire it. Irrelevant. > I do know. The food I eat is not, in fact, produced that way. Maybe. Maybe not grown in a way that's sustainably capable of feeding the world's population or even accessible to many. > I do not need or want absolution. But I know my carbon footprint is a tiny fraction of yours. You think it is, I'm sure. And you believe yourself to have the moral high ground. > You are, in other words, personally responsible for overwhelmingly more suffering in the world than I know, by direct experience, is necessary for your level of comfort. And so are you. Unlike your assumptions about my carbon footprint, I actually do know that with certainty because you are posting this message here which consumes energy. What's more your level of comfort itself is almost certainly far beyond most people on earth, and far beyond what you need to barely keep yourself alive, therefore you have made choices for your own comfort at the expense of many other life forms.