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If the price is saving the planet is turning it into the dystopia we seem to be zooming towards full speed, I will be happy to not pay it and suffer the consequ

If the price is saving the planet is turning it into the dystopia we seem to be zooming towards full speed, I will be happy to not pay it and suffer the consequences of our civilization collapsing. I’m not changing my behavior and I will fight vigorously for it. If you stopped all meat production today it would not save you. (Post)industrial society itself is what is unsustainable. There is no way around that. There is no technological solution - we can barely maintain the pretense of keeping up with all the problems our tech causes. You can buy time (maybe), that’s all. Technological man cannot seem to grasp humility. There is no controlling the world. This article and some other comments go into some great detail. >might cause minor inconvenience for you. My current great health is not a “convenience.” It is an incredible blessing and I will fight to maintain the things that seemingly contribute to it.

jacquesm 3y ago
It's not a binary choice, it's a gradient and you decide to pick one of the extremes. Meat is a luxury, always has been for 'ordinary' people. One day per week if you were lucky until sixty to seventy years ago or so. The exception: farm owners and the wealthy.
- Amezarak 3y ago
  > Meat is a luxury, always has been for 'ordinary' people. One day per week if you were lucky until sixty to seventy years ago or so. The exception: farm owners and the wealthy. I guess we have different perspectives. For me, for most of human history, "ordinary people" were farmers (or hunters.) However, even among urbanites, "once a week" is probably too rare. For example, see this paper on the mid-Victorian diet: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ > Red herrings were a staple of the working class diet throughout the year because they were easily cooked (e.g. Idylls of the Poor). Other favourites were cheap and easily obtainable varieties with better keeping qualities than the more vulnerable white fish, including sprats, eels, and shellfish (oysters, mussels, cockles, whelks). > Consumption of meat was considered a mark of a good diet and its complete absence was rare: consuming only limited amounts was a poverty diet [23]. Joints of meat were, for the poor, likely to be an occasional treat. Yet only those with the least secure incomes and most limited housing, and so without either the cooking facilities or the funds, would be unlikely to have a weekly Sunday joint; even they might achieve that three or four times a year, cooked in a local cookhouse or bakery oven. Otherwise, meat on the bone (shin or cheek), stewed or fried, was the most economical form of meat, generally eked out with offal meats including brains, heart, sweetbreads, liver, kidneys and ‘pluck’, (the lungs and intestines of sheep).
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    There is a reason there is a Van Gogh painting called 'the potato eaters' and it isn't called 'the sides of beef' eaters. Eating meat was a luxury simply because the vast majority of the people was poor. Poor beyond our present day imagination. In between the hunter gatherers (who had a diet that went from 'gluttony' to 'starvation' twice annually) and the industrialized production of meat (and chicken, and fish) there is a long period where poverty was the norm, and meat indeed an occasional treat. 'Urbanites' were the exception, living on or near the land was the rule. If you were lucky enough to live inside the walls of a city you were already rich. The idea that you could eat meat 7 days per week, whenever and whereever you wanted is a historical anomaly, so don't present it as normal, or even a right. It isn't.
    - Amezarak 3y ago
      It was absolutely normal for most times for most people. I cited a source for you. I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time in my life studying social conditions and the daily experience historically. I get the feeling we’re not going to be able to meet on this. If expertise isn’t enough for you, well, it is what it is.
      - dopidop 3y ago
        Your source do talk about the introduction of tinned and canned meat. I haven’t find ratio or quantity. But furthermore I find this bit problematic in the context of this conversation. “ This period was, nutritionally speaking, an island in time; one that was created and subsequently squandered by economic and political forces” In the light of this last paragraph, it seems incorrect to use this source to qualify the diet or the ( nebulous ) “past”. It seems to apply only for the Victorian era.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        Sorry, but AC's don't get to claim expertise.
matthewmacleod 3y ago
Honestly, absolutely wild that you view “reduce meat intake to environmentally sustainable levels” as dystopian. Nobody’s saying you have to eat bugs for every meal.
- Amezarak 3y ago
  It's easy for me to see how my comment could be read that way, but I would consider that only a very small contributing factor to to what's going wrong with society. Instead, read my reference to "we can barely maintain the pretense of keeping up with all the problems our tech causes" as having a lot to do with it, which even carbon-neutral will cause the destruction of ecosystems and continue the increase in cancer rates. We could also talk about the total loss of privacy, atomization, the obliteration of communities, anomie, the accelerating decline of democracy and increase in bureaucratic authoritarianism, the grim future we can expect from things like genetic engineering, etc.

jacquesm 3y ago

It's not a binary choice, it's a gradient and you decide to pick one of the extremes. Meat is a luxury, always has been for 'ordinary' people. One day per week if you were lucky until sixty to seventy years ago or so. The exception: farm owners and the wealthy.

Amezarak 3y ago
> Meat is a luxury, always has been for 'ordinary' people. One day per week if you were lucky until sixty to seventy years ago or so. The exception: farm owners and the wealthy. I guess we have different perspectives. For me, for most of human history, "ordinary people" were farmers (or hunters.) However, even among urbanites, "once a week" is probably too rare. For example, see this paper on the mid-Victorian diet: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ > Red herrings were a staple of the working class diet throughout the year because they were easily cooked (e.g. Idylls of the Poor). Other favourites were cheap and easily obtainable varieties with better keeping qualities than the more vulnerable white fish, including sprats, eels, and shellfish (oysters, mussels, cockles, whelks). > Consumption of meat was considered a mark of a good diet and its complete absence was rare: consuming only limited amounts was a poverty diet [23]. Joints of meat were, for the poor, likely to be an occasional treat. Yet only those with the least secure incomes and most limited housing, and so without either the cooking facilities or the funds, would be unlikely to have a weekly Sunday joint; even they might achieve that three or four times a year, cooked in a local cookhouse or bakery oven. Otherwise, meat on the bone (shin or cheek), stewed or fried, was the most economical form of meat, generally eked out with offal meats including brains, heart, sweetbreads, liver, kidneys and ‘pluck’, (the lungs and intestines of sheep).
- jacquesm 3y ago
  There is a reason there is a Van Gogh painting called 'the potato eaters' and it isn't called 'the sides of beef' eaters. Eating meat was a luxury simply because the vast majority of the people was poor. Poor beyond our present day imagination. In between the hunter gatherers (who had a diet that went from 'gluttony' to 'starvation' twice annually) and the industrialized production of meat (and chicken, and fish) there is a long period where poverty was the norm, and meat indeed an occasional treat. 'Urbanites' were the exception, living on or near the land was the rule. If you were lucky enough to live inside the walls of a city you were already rich. The idea that you could eat meat 7 days per week, whenever and whereever you wanted is a historical anomaly, so don't present it as normal, or even a right. It isn't.
  - Amezarak 3y ago
    It was absolutely normal for most times for most people. I cited a source for you. I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time in my life studying social conditions and the daily experience historically. I get the feeling we’re not going to be able to meet on this. If expertise isn’t enough for you, well, it is what it is.
    - dopidop 3y ago
      Your source do talk about the introduction of tinned and canned meat. I haven’t find ratio or quantity. But furthermore I find this bit problematic in the context of this conversation. “ This period was, nutritionally speaking, an island in time; one that was created and subsequently squandered by economic and political forces” In the light of this last paragraph, it seems incorrect to use this source to qualify the diet or the ( nebulous ) “past”. It seems to apply only for the Victorian era.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Sorry, but AC's don't get to claim expertise.

matthewmacleod 3y ago

Honestly, absolutely wild that you view “reduce meat intake to environmentally sustainable levels” as dystopian. Nobody’s saying you have to eat bugs for every meal.

Amezarak 3y ago
It's easy for me to see how my comment could be read that way, but I would consider that only a very small contributing factor to to what's going wrong with society. Instead, read my reference to "we can barely maintain the pretense of keeping up with all the problems our tech causes" as having a lot to do with it, which even carbon-neutral will cause the destruction of ecosystems and continue the increase in cancer rates. We could also talk about the total loss of privacy, atomization, the obliteration of communities, anomie, the accelerating decline of democracy and increase in bureaucratic authoritarianism, the grim future we can expect from things like genetic engineering, etc.