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> detailed how extreme weather has hurt her family’s ranch. Animal agriculture is also a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, dead zones, and habitat l
by PretzelPirate 3y ago
> detailed how extreme weather has hurt her family’s ranch.
Animal agriculture is also a big contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, dead zones, and habitat loss. Her family's ranch my not align with her fight against climate change.
- denimnerd42 3y agovery complicated issue as animal grazing also has tremendous environmental benefits
- tomweingarten 3y agoCan you provide some additional citations on this?
- denimnerd42 3y agohttps://today.tamu.edu/2021/08/10/grazing-cattle-can-reduce-agricultures-carbon-footprint/ https://today.tamu.edu/2021/08/10/grazing-cattle-can-reduce-... where I'm from the drive them down the highway on horseback and load them up on trains and drive them to the slaughterhouse. the land is kept similar to when however many thousands of bison roamed on it. as opposed to the nearby cities whose parks are overgrown with invasive brush or trimmed with petrol tractors.
- dqv 3y agoWild animal grazing where we're not killing them and breeding more every year has tremendous environmental benefits. Killing them and eating them is not compatible with the environmental benefits of grazing: >Small numbers of grazers may be consistent with healthy ecosystems and have minimal greenhouse gas impact, but only if their populations stay within ecologically defined limits. https://newrepublic.com/article/163735/myth-regenerative-ranching https://newrepublic.com/article/163735/myth-regenerative-ran...
- justrealist 3y agoTaking as a given that we've eliminated 99% of natural predators, there's nothing inherently ecologically wrong with humans eating cattle instead of wolves eating bison.
- jwells89 3y agoI believe the distinction here is scale. The rate at which natural predators killed bison is only a small fraction of the rate that cattle are killed for food. If human livestock consumption were closely matched to natural grazer consumption, essentially acting as a 1:1 replacement, this argument makes more sense. I don’t think that’s been true for at least a century at this point though.
- justrealist 3y agoI agree with this, I was disagreeing with the broad complaint in the OP > Killing them and eating them is not compatible with the environmental benefits of grazing which does not attempt to qualify the disagreement at all.
- e93849 3y agoCitation needed. A quick Google search says the US has about 90 million heads of cattle, while the peak population of wild bison was 60 million and of wild deer was 40 million. That seems pretty close.
- dqv 3y ago>That seems pretty close. You're wildly off in your calculations because you've failed to account for replacement rate. It's 90 million heads of cattle with 30 million killed each year. https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/rx913p88g https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/rx913p...
- e93849 3y ago
- Aachen 3y agoOne win at a time. Better have cows and clean electricity than cows and coal energy (article says Montana has the largest coal deposit and always granted mining applications).
- qingcharles 3y agoThis would come under the doctrine of "unclean hands," where the plaintiff is also culpable in the matter they are suing for. I think it would be an affirmative defense the defendant would have had to plead before trial, so they've forfeited it, IMO. Source: I play a lawyer on TV.