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It's not just their bodily functions (which are very significant despite your feelings), it's the enormous amount of land we clearcut and leave basically empty

It's not just their bodily functions (which are very significant despite your feelings), it's the enormous amount of land we clearcut and leave basically empty so they can graze. Also, it's not about the planet, it's about us. The planet obviously will be fine, but a lot of humans won't be.

nashashmi 4y ago
The land consumption is enormous, hence why I mentioned it (farming of livestock). There are different opportunities for optimizations here. But I don't think it falls in line with cultures of industrialization.
- burkaman 4y ago
  Ok, why do you think this? Transport needs to be decarbonized, but it's a very tiny portion of our food system's climate impact. Land use is a major portion, but it's still not as significant as cows themselves. Maybe you're underestimating the scale? There are a billion cows on earth that simply wouldn't exist if we stopped eating them and drinking their milk. It's not like a normal natural resource that we're just tapping into. They do not exist in the wild, and basically any other food (even other animals) could give us the calories and nutrients we need with far fewer emissions. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-emissions-supply-chain https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-emissions-supply-cha... https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/ https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/
  - nashashmi 4y ago
    The problem is not cows take up a lot of resources. The problem is their upkeep is too intensive that the economies of scale contribute to large scale destruction of resource. I don't buy the future decarbonization transport argument. It is a mirage. But put that aside. Cows are incredibly powerful creatures. Their uses were in not just taking up a lot of land but also moving lots of farm equipment and cultivating land. With machinery, they are displaced and no parallel uses are found. The huge consumption of meat has incentivized capitalist industries to destruct land for profit. Blaming this on cows is like blaming a worker instead of the boss. Blame the overly large consumers who cannot forgo meat, and blame the capitalists for feeding that frenzy. How despicable have we become if our arguments are now based on “lab grown meat" being a solution. Like we refuse to see our own feces as a stinker.
    - burkaman 4y ago
      Ok I see, I guess it's just a semantic argument? I do not think cows are personally responsible for climate change, I just understand that factually they emit a lot of methane and that's very bad for us. I personally don't have a problem just not eating beef or drinking cow milk anymore, but if lab grown meat get some people to stop eating beef who wouldn't otherwise, that seems like it will likely be a net positive development. I do agree that there are many problems with our food system beyond climate change, and replacing Big Ag with Big Lab-grown Ag would leave almost all of those problems in place. It's not my preferred solution.
xdennis 4y ago
> it's the enormous amount of land we clearcut and leave basically empty so they can graze. This is typical vegan misinformation to appeal to people who are concerned about global warming (as we should). Land that's used for grazing is typically land which can't be used for other purposes. People don't grow grass on flat fields of black soil because it doesn't make economic sense. Additionally, animals are also fed the leftovers that people don't eat. That is, when you grow corn, we eat the grain, and the rest of the plant (leaves and all) is given to animals. Without livestock that food would just be wasted. These are just some of the many ways vegans mislead.
- burkaman 4y ago
  I am not vegan and I don't understand why you brought them up. I am not even arguing for vegetarianism, if we all just replaced beef with pork that would be a huge improvement. Most deforestation of the Amazon is done to create more land for cattle, to give you one example. It is by far the largest driver of tropical deforestation, and almost all global deforestation is tropical. Grazing land that can't support anything else is by definition not included in statistics on deforestation or loss of biomass and biodiversity. https://ourworldindata.org/what-are-drivers-deforestation https://ourworldindata.org/what-are-drivers-deforestation It's true that a lot of cow feed is stuff humans won't eat, but it's not true that it would all be wasted if we stop raising cows. We can grow less of it, we can throw the scraps in anaerobic digesters to generate power, we can simply feed it to other animals, as a last resort we can use it for compost. I'm pretty sure vegans are less than 1% of the world, and I don't think they have some special influence over the IPCC and most climate scientists on the planet.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  There is an entire economy around growing feed for cows. They do NOT get waste products from other industries and are primarily fed with stuff grown ONLY for feeding cows. Welcome to industrialized farming.
modo_mario 4y ago
>It's not just their bodily functions (which are very significant despite your feelings) So were the bodily functions of the wild bison, and a boatload of other species that have disappeared or shrunk togheter with their methane output in rough equivalence to the growth in livestock and it's methane output (at least in the US tho I assume such calculations would be similar elsewhere.) Additionally anything they put out is a temporary problem part of a carbon cycle. The shit they fart out was once gras and will go back to it a few decades down the line. Wish to reduce that ouput to buy ourselves some time (to excuse pumping up more oil and the like for a little longer) and you basically end up with chicken and similar animals as the acceptable solution. So yeah cow farts are not the factor to look at when looking at the relentless increase in CO2 ppm. Similarly most sequestration investments and drives are often little more than a scam, copium, equivalent to the push malicious push for single use plastics recycling by plastic manufacturers or at worst a push down the price of co2 for EHR. There is one source we keep making excuses for ad nauseum that is a new introduction into this all and it's the hydrocarbons sequestered for untold years that we pump up(and methane from tundra now defrosting oh and the reduction in boglands.) No replacing those fields with forest won't be your cure. Sadly they barely sequester anything at all compared to what we're putting out even if we'd severely reduce it. They largely take it up, die, rot and release it again in the process. We can rely on it if we accept our solution to take thousands of years. >it's the enormous amount of land we clearcut and leave basically empty so they can graze. I agree it's an issue. However remove it and you'll have a different one. The fertilizer their manure makes up a significant portion of will probably be drawn even more from hydrocarbons (and rather finite resources like cheap phosphorus from morocco). The same hydrocarbons that produce an actual very long term issue. I have little trust in incentives leading us elsewhere. Perhaps you wish to avoid this by forcing techniques that will generally ... require more land for the same output or for land to be left "basically empty". I'd see some good things coming from such harsh increase in food prices and availability at least. Some negative pressure on our relentless population growth, perhaps we'll learn to more often ditch some silly concepts such as unused lawns.
- burkaman 4y ago
  Here are some objectively true facts: 1. Cows emit a lot of methane 2. Methane warms the planet 3. Warming the planet is bad for humans 4. We can easily replace cows with other animals and plants that warm the planet a lot less It doesn't matter that wild bison used to do the same thing, this is the situation we're in. Unlike with wild bison, we are in full control now and we can simply stop making more cattle without any negative environmental effects. It is a factor to look at. We are not in a position to be ignoring big factors because they taste good. > most sequestration investments and drives are often little more than a scam, copium, equivalent to the push malicious push for single use plastics recycling by plastic manufacturers I agree but it's totally irrelevant to this conversation. > There is one source we keep making excuses for Counterpoint: no we don't. Who is we? I challenge you to find a single person who both advocates for less cow consumption because of the climate impact and promotes more fossil fuel consumption. I don't think such a person exists. > Wish to reduce that ouput to buy ourselves some time [strawman removed] and you basically end up with chicken and similar animals as the acceptable solution. Yes, exactly, I'm glad we're on the same page. Quickly phasing out cattle would buy us a LOT of time, like decades. > I agree it's an issue. However remove it and you'll have a different one. I mean, ok, if you want to give up I guess I can't stop you, but can you at least keep it to yourself and not try to bring everyone else down with you? "We should just stop burning oil, nothing else matters" is a) not true, and b) equivalent to giving up, unless you have some secret plan to accomplish that extremely quickly. "Go back in time and keep all the hydrocarbons in the ground" is not an option, they've already been burned and they're already warming the planet and we're in a crisis now.

nashashmi 4y ago

The land consumption is enormous, hence why I mentioned it (farming of livestock). There are different opportunities for optimizations here. But I don't think it falls in line with cultures of industrialization.

burkaman 4y ago
Ok, why do you think this? Transport needs to be decarbonized, but it's a very tiny portion of our food system's climate impact. Land use is a major portion, but it's still not as significant as cows themselves. Maybe you're underestimating the scale? There are a billion cows on earth that simply wouldn't exist if we stopped eating them and drinking their milk. It's not like a normal natural resource that we're just tapping into. They do not exist in the wild, and basically any other food (even other animals) could give us the calories and nutrients we need with far fewer emissions. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-emissions-supply-chain https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-emissions-supply-cha... https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/ https://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/
- nashashmi 4y ago
  The problem is not cows take up a lot of resources. The problem is their upkeep is too intensive that the economies of scale contribute to large scale destruction of resource. I don't buy the future decarbonization transport argument. It is a mirage. But put that aside. Cows are incredibly powerful creatures. Their uses were in not just taking up a lot of land but also moving lots of farm equipment and cultivating land. With machinery, they are displaced and no parallel uses are found. The huge consumption of meat has incentivized capitalist industries to destruct land for profit. Blaming this on cows is like blaming a worker instead of the boss. Blame the overly large consumers who cannot forgo meat, and blame the capitalists for feeding that frenzy. How despicable have we become if our arguments are now based on “lab grown meat" being a solution. Like we refuse to see our own feces as a stinker.
  - burkaman 4y ago
    Ok I see, I guess it's just a semantic argument? I do not think cows are personally responsible for climate change, I just understand that factually they emit a lot of methane and that's very bad for us. I personally don't have a problem just not eating beef or drinking cow milk anymore, but if lab grown meat get some people to stop eating beef who wouldn't otherwise, that seems like it will likely be a net positive development. I do agree that there are many problems with our food system beyond climate change, and replacing Big Ag with Big Lab-grown Ag would leave almost all of those problems in place. It's not my preferred solution.

xdennis 4y ago

> it's the enormous amount of land we clearcut and leave basically empty so they can graze. This is typical vegan misinformation to appeal to people who are concerned about global warming (as we should). Land that's used for grazing is typically land which can't be used for other purposes. People don't grow grass on flat fields of black soil because it doesn't make economic sense. Additionally, animals are also fed the leftovers that people don't eat. That is, when you grow corn, we eat the grain, and the rest of the plant (leaves and all) is given to animals. Without livestock that food would just be wasted. These are just some of the many ways vegans mislead.

burkaman 4y ago
I am not vegan and I don't understand why you brought them up. I am not even arguing for vegetarianism, if we all just replaced beef with pork that would be a huge improvement. Most deforestation of the Amazon is done to create more land for cattle, to give you one example. It is by far the largest driver of tropical deforestation, and almost all global deforestation is tropical. Grazing land that can't support anything else is by definition not included in statistics on deforestation or loss of biomass and biodiversity. https://ourworldindata.org/what-are-drivers-deforestation https://ourworldindata.org/what-are-drivers-deforestation It's true that a lot of cow feed is stuff humans won't eat, but it's not true that it would all be wasted if we stop raising cows. We can grow less of it, we can throw the scraps in anaerobic digesters to generate power, we can simply feed it to other animals, as a last resort we can use it for compost. I'm pretty sure vegans are less than 1% of the world, and I don't think they have some special influence over the IPCC and most climate scientists on the planet.
mrguyorama 4y ago
There is an entire economy around growing feed for cows. They do NOT get waste products from other industries and are primarily fed with stuff grown ONLY for feeding cows. Welcome to industrialized farming.

modo_mario 4y ago

>It's not just their bodily functions (which are very significant despite your feelings) So were the bodily functions of the wild bison, and a boatload of other species that have disappeared or shrunk togheter with their methane output in rough equivalence to the growth in livestock and it's methane output (at least in the US tho I assume such calculations would be similar elsewhere.) Additionally anything they put out is a temporary problem part of a carbon cycle. The shit they fart out was once gras and will go back to it a few decades down the line. Wish to reduce that ouput to buy ourselves some time (to excuse pumping up more oil and the like for a little longer) and you basically end up with chicken and similar animals as the acceptable solution. So yeah cow farts are not the factor to look at when looking at the relentless increase in CO2 ppm. Similarly most sequestration investments and drives are often little more than a scam, copium, equivalent to the push malicious push for single use plastics recycling by plastic manufacturers or at worst a push down the price of co2 for EHR. There is one source we keep making excuses for ad nauseum that is a new introduction into this all and it's the hydrocarbons sequestered for untold years that we pump up(and methane from tundra now defrosting oh and the reduction in boglands.) No replacing those fields with forest won't be your cure. Sadly they barely sequester anything at all compared to what we're putting out even if we'd severely reduce it. They largely take it up, die, rot and release it again in the process. We can rely on it if we accept our solution to take thousands of years. >it's the enormous amount of land we clearcut and leave basically empty so they can graze. I agree it's an issue. However remove it and you'll have a different one. The fertilizer their manure makes up a significant portion of will probably be drawn even more from hydrocarbons (and rather finite resources like cheap phosphorus from morocco). The same hydrocarbons that produce an actual very long term issue. I have little trust in incentives leading us elsewhere. Perhaps you wish to avoid this by forcing techniques that will generally ... require more land for the same output or for land to be left "basically empty". I'd see some good things coming from such harsh increase in food prices and availability at least. Some negative pressure on our relentless population growth, perhaps we'll learn to more often ditch some silly concepts such as unused lawns.

burkaman 4y ago
Here are some objectively true facts: 1. Cows emit a lot of methane 2. Methane warms the planet 3. Warming the planet is bad for humans 4. We can easily replace cows with other animals and plants that warm the planet a lot less It doesn't matter that wild bison used to do the same thing, this is the situation we're in. Unlike with wild bison, we are in full control now and we can simply stop making more cattle without any negative environmental effects. It is a factor to look at. We are not in a position to be ignoring big factors because they taste good. > most sequestration investments and drives are often little more than a scam, copium, equivalent to the push malicious push for single use plastics recycling by plastic manufacturers I agree but it's totally irrelevant to this conversation. > There is one source we keep making excuses for Counterpoint: no we don't. Who is we? I challenge you to find a single person who both advocates for less cow consumption because of the climate impact and promotes more fossil fuel consumption. I don't think such a person exists. > Wish to reduce that ouput to buy ourselves some time [strawman removed] and you basically end up with chicken and similar animals as the acceptable solution. Yes, exactly, I'm glad we're on the same page. Quickly phasing out cattle would buy us a LOT of time, like decades. > I agree it's an issue. However remove it and you'll have a different one. I mean, ok, if you want to give up I guess I can't stop you, but can you at least keep it to yourself and not try to bring everyone else down with you? "We should just stop burning oil, nothing else matters" is a) not true, and b) equivalent to giving up, unless you have some secret plan to accomplish that extremely quickly. "Go back in time and keep all the hydrocarbons in the ground" is not an option, they've already been burned and they're already warming the planet and we're in a crisis now.