4 ms·

Humans need to start living in harmony with nature. We need to stop using artificial fertilizers that end up in the ocean and slowly suffocating and starving an

by belorn 4y ago

Humans need to start living in harmony with nature. We need to stop using artificial fertilizers that end up in the ocean and slowly suffocating and starving animals. I like oxygen and so do they. We must also stop spraying literal poison on the land and exterminating the insect population that other animals need to survive. We must stop cooking the planet and especially the oceans, and stop burning forests in order to grow things like avocado. However I understand that people do need to eat something, and thus I would encourage people to consider their diet based on the more complex plane than vegetarian vs meat. Most food, especially cheap food, do have negative consequences on the environment. If you can, look into the background of food you buy, alternative raise and farm your own food (chickens are excellent pets and one of the best way to keep grass down without using machinery, and they eat practically everything that would go into a compost). It doesn't scale but it do reduce the problem. Those that want to take a even bigger step can try the few environment friendly choices like say seaweed and shellfish. There is zero risk of mussel genocide, through one has to be aware of the farming method.

tap-snap-or-nap 4y ago
Humans cannot help themselves disturb the delicate balance in many natural systems. Corporations are the real extremists today and a difficult challenge our society faces due to the effects it has on human society and all other species on this planet.
kortilla 4y ago
> We need to stop using artificial fertilizers 80% of the population will starve to death if we do this. Is that what you want?
- belorn 4y ago
  As I began in my second paragraph above, people do need to eat something. Right now that means sacrifice the environment if we want to keep everyone alive in the short term. Long term we could have farming that has zero environmental impact, like vertical farming with fully contained and controlled environment. It would cost huge amount of money and with the current economical system it would be impossible to feed everyone on the planet, but the technology is technically there. Right now however, a person should to take into account the environmental impact that different food has. Going into a store and buying a avocado will leave the buyer with some blood on their hands. They can try to reduce the amount of blood by making a difference choice depending on how a specific food is produced, but it will be more complex than just looking if it contains meat.
  - drewm1980 4y ago
    IMHO going vegan is the only practical strategy for reducing the impact of your diet. You have no practical way of knowing most of what's going on in the supply chain for most products, or their true carbon footprint, but overall, the footprint of growing plants and feeding them to animals is way higher than just eating plants yourself. The laws of physics are, to some extent, "on your side" when it comes to boycotting animal products for sustainability reasons. There ~are some plant products with well publicized ethical or sustainability scandals like coffee, chocolate, date palm, and avocados, that are worthy of looking into once you've already gone vegan. By all means look into those and try to source them carefully if you can or add them to your boycott, but be careful not to buy into the greenwashing false-equivalence that because some plant products ~are wasteful, it's OK to eat meat.
    - belorn 4y ago
      For some people it will feel like the best way to only have some amount of blood on their hand will be a vegan diet. Obviously not all vegan diets are the same, and foods like avocado which is popular in vegan diets are quiet bad and should be avoided. Basically anything which on the purchased packet says imported from an country that has rain forests should be avoided if one want to avoid having the blood of animals that live in rain forests. Being a mass murder of fewer victim than some other mass murders can be an important distinction for some people. Still I would highlight that a small scale farmer or hobbyist who raises his own animals has likely less blood on their hand than a vegan who live in a city and eat imported fresh veggies. There is also the aspect of long term strategies. Vegan diets are not sustainable and long term we do need to change how we produce food. Shell fish and seaweed are one of the few sources of food that we could produce in very large quantities without harming the environment around us. Insect farms would be an alternative, but those seems much less likely to be effective in term of changing the world. There is a lot of green washing in crop farming. Practically all production of artificial fertilizers uses natural gas, and leaks from those operations is one of the major contributors to global warming. We have waters as large as the Baltic ocean being turned into a desert from runoff. People may feel happy to not eat fish, but fish were killed in order to produce the food that people eat. The deaths "just" happen to be a byproduct that accumulate slowly under the surface, and slowly moves towards mass extinction.

by belorn 4y ago

tap-snap-or-nap 4y ago

Humans cannot help themselves disturb the delicate balance in many natural systems. Corporations are the real extremists today and a difficult challenge our society faces due to the effects it has on human society and all other species on this planet.

kortilla 4y ago

> We need to stop using artificial fertilizers 80% of the population will starve to death if we do this. Is that what you want?

belorn 4y ago
As I began in my second paragraph above, people do need to eat something. Right now that means sacrifice the environment if we want to keep everyone alive in the short term. Long term we could have farming that has zero environmental impact, like vertical farming with fully contained and controlled environment. It would cost huge amount of money and with the current economical system it would be impossible to feed everyone on the planet, but the technology is technically there. Right now however, a person should to take into account the environmental impact that different food has. Going into a store and buying a avocado will leave the buyer with some blood on their hands. They can try to reduce the amount of blood by making a difference choice depending on how a specific food is produced, but it will be more complex than just looking if it contains meat.
- drewm1980 4y ago
  IMHO going vegan is the only practical strategy for reducing the impact of your diet. You have no practical way of knowing most of what's going on in the supply chain for most products, or their true carbon footprint, but overall, the footprint of growing plants and feeding them to animals is way higher than just eating plants yourself. The laws of physics are, to some extent, "on your side" when it comes to boycotting animal products for sustainability reasons. There ~are some plant products with well publicized ethical or sustainability scandals like coffee, chocolate, date palm, and avocados, that are worthy of looking into once you've already gone vegan. By all means look into those and try to source them carefully if you can or add them to your boycott, but be careful not to buy into the greenwashing false-equivalence that because some plant products ~are wasteful, it's OK to eat meat.
  - belorn 4y ago
    For some people it will feel like the best way to only have some amount of blood on their hand will be a vegan diet. Obviously not all vegan diets are the same, and foods like avocado which is popular in vegan diets are quiet bad and should be avoided. Basically anything which on the purchased packet says imported from an country that has rain forests should be avoided if one want to avoid having the blood of animals that live in rain forests. Being a mass murder of fewer victim than some other mass murders can be an important distinction for some people. Still I would highlight that a small scale farmer or hobbyist who raises his own animals has likely less blood on their hand than a vegan who live in a city and eat imported fresh veggies. There is also the aspect of long term strategies. Vegan diets are not sustainable and long term we do need to change how we produce food. Shell fish and seaweed are one of the few sources of food that we could produce in very large quantities without harming the environment around us. Insect farms would be an alternative, but those seems much less likely to be effective in term of changing the world. There is a lot of green washing in crop farming. Practically all production of artificial fertilizers uses natural gas, and leaks from those operations is one of the major contributors to global warming. We have waters as large as the Baltic ocean being turned into a desert from runoff. People may feel happy to not eat fish, but fish were killed in order to produce the food that people eat. The deaths "just" happen to be a byproduct that accumulate slowly under the surface, and slowly moves towards mass extinction.