7 ms·

Starving to Death on a Full Stomach

84 points by rzk 3y ago

sva_ 3y ago
2021 archive link https://web.archive.org/web/20210620223150/https://slothconservation.org/starving-death-full-stomach/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210620223150/https://slothcons...
- SushiHippie 3y ago
  Archive link from this month: https://web.archive.org/web/20240211064446/https://slothconservation.org/starving-death-full-stomach/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240211064446/https://slothcons... (I don't know if anything changed, just in case)
- jetrink 3y ago
  The site is working, just very, very slowly, which seems fitting.
robertlagrant 3y ago
> Eat less meat I've heard this, but is it true? Would it make that much difference if a small group of citizens stopped eating meat?
- stavros 3y ago
  It would make more of a difference than if they didn't. This isn't binary, obviously every little bit helps a little, and the more people, the more it helps. There's no threshold under which it's not worth to do anything about it.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >There's no threshold under which it's not worth to do anything about it. I'm pretty sure there is, if we're interested in any specific outcome. Below some threshold not only it wont get that outcome, but it wont even be statistically significant.
    - stavros 3y ago
      Statistical significance is relevant when you're trying to find correlations, not when you're trying to figure out whether it's worth removing a few grains to make a cup of sand lighter. If you don't want to try, don't try. If you're looking for an excuse to say "fuck it, I won't do anything, since that's what most people are doing", you won't, because it's always worth doing something right, no matter how small.
      - coldtea 3y ago
        >Statistical significance is relevant when you're trying to find correlations, not when you're trying to figure out whether it's worth removing a few grains to make a cup of sand lighter. You got it backwards. It's relevant when you're trying to find correlations, precisely because it helps measure the impact of a change. This is true whether the change is some variable change in research space searching for correlations, or real world accessment of the impact of something... >because it's always worth doing something right, no matter how small. This one is different argument though. This one is moral, the previous one (I responded to) was about efficacy. But it, too, is problematic: even in moral terms, it's not "always worth doing something right, no matter how small", given opportunity cost.
      - samatman 3y ago
        At the margin, individual efforts to abstain from this or that product are useless, let me elaborate. Let's say in an effort to reduce your carbon footprint, you abstain from beef. The effect that has, however small it may be, is to reduce demand for beef. That brings the price of beef down, making it more affordable for beef enjoyers, who buy more. The only net effect here is that you no longer eat beef. It hasn't moved the needle on your reason for doing so. You might reply that if enough people join you, this will result in supply reduction. This is a coordination problem involving the whole planet, including a few billion people who will very happily eat more beef if it were a bit cheaper. It won't work.
        stavros 3y ago
        I get your general point, though I disagree with it, but the beef issue is very US-centric. Beef isn't such a staple in most countries, even ones that can afford it.
  - masto 3y ago
    Every little bit helps, by definition. At the same time, by distracting us with arguments about plastic straws and meat, the fossil fuel industry shifts the focus off of their enormously outsized contribution to climate change. It can also result in moral license - the feeling that I recycle, so I've done my part. I'm not suggesting not minimizing your individual impact on the environment (and frankly, the elephant in the room that we can't talk about is the impact of producing children), but at the end of the day, if we keep on dumping carbon and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the destruction will continue.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- fwip 3y ago
  No, not really. > It is going to require a collective effort by the human population to reverse the already apparent effects of climate warming. All we can really do is each do our best on an individual level to reduce our carbon footprint. When we start saying that a collective problem can only be accomplished via individualism, we've basically already lost. Even the phrase "carbon footprint" is the product of British Petroleum, because they recognized that encouraging individual action would be less harmful to their business of selling oil than government action. That is, they saw clearly that individual action was so much less effective than government regulation, that they spent millions of dollars encouraging it. But Western culture (United States especially) is hyper-individualist, and we resist collective actions that would inconvenience the individual. Our government is hence limited to pushing levers to try to "encourage" or "discourage" individuals to take the "right" actions. So, our discussion of alternatives (Overton window) positions a "carbon tax" as the unreasonable leftist position, where the incidental increase in price of polluting products will hopefully nudge enough price-sensitive consumers/entities into reducing consumption enough to solve global warming. So no, climate change won't be solved by individual people deciding to eat less meat. There may come a day when our agriculture and food system is so devastated that it's no longer possible for most people to eat meat.
  - whynotmaybe 3y ago
    But aren't all polluting businesses producing stuff that in the end will be used by individuals?
    - justsomehnguy 3y ago
      No. There is a lot of shit what would be manufactured, transported to the other side of the planet, sit in the warehouse, [luckily] sit in the store and would be thrown out. Eg: all this shit made for iPhone/iPod pre-Lighting, all these thin-thick Nokia chargers made in early 2000, all USB 1.1, 2.0 gadgets. Add to this a phone/tablet cases.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        That isn't a lot, all things considered, right? Could you not fit every phone accessory ever made on a single cargo ship? That ship's carbon footprint is only so big.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  Keep in mind massive bison herds roamed North America for millenia, so large animals emitting methane isn't really an issue. Over decades, they're mostly in steady state - plants take up CO2, bison eat plants, emit CO2 and CH4, and the lifetime of the CH4 is ~10 years in the atmosphere (oxidized to CO2). The difference today is the large amount of fossil fuel energy used to produce fertilizers and fuel tractors and so on. This can all be transitioned to renewable energy. I think the vast majority of people who are saying 'stop eating meat to save the climate' are vegans concerned about the atrocious treatment of animals on factory farms, and they're trying to come up with additional reasons to restrict factory farming (which is a good idea, it is a filthy practice that relies heavily on antibiotic and hormone use, and the end product is disgustingly unhealthy as well as unethical IMO). The only realistic way to stabilize the climate is to eliminate fossil fuels from the energy mix, but even if that's accomplished in the next few decades, planetary warming is going to continue for some 100 years due to forcing-reponse lag time and side effects like permafrost melting and outgassing.
  - silverquiet 3y ago
    I'd be willing to bet that the total biomass of ruminants is much higher today than it was millennia ago due to domestication/humans. Ad a lot of that fossil fuel use and fertilizer is going to those domestic ruminants; you've gotta grow the food to feed your food, so it's a lossy process vs just eating the plants directly. It's not always that simple though; cattle can graze on marginal land and their manure/byproducts can be fed into other agricultural processes. It's not something I really know a lot about other than to know that it's all quite complicated. That said, I suspect if the world gave up beef, it would indeed make a significant dent in global warming. I'm far from a vegan and can recognize the above. When it comes to cruelty, that's a different axis. I believe beef is actually lower on that one since the cows spend a lot of their lives wandering in fields and getting to do more or less what they want. The finishing process where they are put into feedlots seems pretty bad but is rather short, and the slaughter is about as humane as can be; they are rendered unconscious instantly with a blow to the head and then insanguinated. Chickens are sort of the opposite; they are marginal in the scheme of global warming but live lives of immense cruelty. It seems hard to win.
- bocytron 3y ago
  It won't change much if only small groups of citizens starts taking individual action to mitigate their environment footprint. But I strongly believe that it is nonetheless a mandatory step towards global awareness. It is not "the magical solution", but I don't see any solution that don't starts with individuals taking action to start trends. Political action will start only when the people electing government starts caring. And that starts by individuals convincing the others.
  - b112 3y ago
    If you mandate that all meat come from field fed, hay fed sources, with no fertilizer (hay is a great rotational crop), instead of corn or other crops, solved problem. You know, like the rest of the world does it. (That is, unless you plan to shoot and kill and exterminate all bison, deer, etc, that would take over any land we leave fallow...)
    - aerostable_slug 3y ago
      > rest of the world Who is that in this context? I ask because I've met Europeans who were convinced that all of their beef was grass-fed, while I've personally seen cattle being grain-finished (and/or fed a variety of supplemental non-pasture-grass feeds like sugar beets) in places like Ireland and Germany. Marketing != reality.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > mandatory step towards global awareness Sorry - awareness? As in people will become more aware of something? Rather than it making an impact in and of itself?
- adrianN 3y ago
  Nothing a small group of people does changes anything, unless the small group happens to be politicians enacting laws to reduce carbon emissions.
- Super_Jambo 3y ago
  Individual actions to fix this kind of problem are pretty ineffective. That isn't to say it's not worth doing. In the US / UK with FPTP it's basically all you _can_ do voting and activism under FPTP is also pretty ineffective again worth doing but insufficient for this large a crisis. The basic reason for this is down to markets being very very good at resource allocation. Lets imagine you're a huge beef eater and previously ate 2 cows worth per year. You reduce to zero cows. What happens? The price of beef drops a tiny tiny bit. Other people who previously couldn't afford beef quite so often now can and increase their consumption. If a large number of people switch away from beef eventually the price reductions feed through and some farmers go bust or else reduce their production. But since the externality isn't priced in chances are _someone_ out there will consume it. To tackle this kind of thing you need the externality brought into the pricing system. Add taxes somewhere on the chain of green house gas production. It doesn't actually matter where you tax it, could be a sales tax, could be a production tax. You can even make the tax revenue neutral and pay it out to everyone. You can tax imports to keep a level playing field... Of course doing that would massively hit the profits of fossil fuel companies and their share holders so they're lobbying like crazy & paying millions to promote bullshit like the idea of 'carbon footprint' to stop it happening.
donatj 3y ago
What was the climate like in South America during the most recent ice age? I am curious how sloths survived if their gut is so sensitive to temperature changes?
- marci 3y ago
  I think they are sensitive to "rapid" temperature changes. Their gut microbiomes can adapt, but probably not that fast.
moffkalast 3y ago
> But the real problem that we need to address is the changing climate. While some people may shake their heads, there is no way to deny that the weather patterns in the tropics are becoming progressively more unstable. Unfortunately, there is also no easy fix. It is going to require a collective effort by the human population to reverse the already apparent effects of climate warming. I see it is virtually impossible to explain delayed effects to anyone. Yes we can reverse it with more collective effort than has ever been applied in the history of our species towards a single thing, but that won't save us from the immediate consequences. These are impossibly large systems that can't turn on a dime and even if we stop all emissions entirely, right now in this instant, we still bear a large brunt of the results from what we've already done so far. Sad to say it, but the time to save these sloths was 30 years ago at best.
- b112 3y ago
  To speak in HN lingo, such change would be like expecting IBM to behave as a startup.
thelastgallon 3y ago
"we are seeing a huge increase in the number of sloths that are being brought into rescue centres because they are starving to death. This is not because they can’t find enough food (there are still plenty of leaves on the trees), but rather because they can’t digest the food that they are eating. Sloths rely on a range of symbiotic gut bacteria and microbes in their stomach to break down the tough cellulose in the leaves that they eat, and these microbes are temperature dependant. When the environmental temperature drops, so does the sloths body temperature, and if it drops too low then the bacteria and microbes die. In this situation, the sloth can eat the same amount of leaves as normal but can starve to death on a full stomach because they can’t extract any nutrients. "
shmageggy 3y ago
> All we can really do is each do our best on an individual level to reduce our carbon footprint. No, that's not all we can really do. We could also choose to reform political and economic systems that make western-style societies so un-ecological.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > could also choose to reform political and economic systems that make western-style societies so un-ecological Yes on activism. Not sure where you're going with the second part. Self-destructive ecological devastation is as old as civilisation [1]. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1754565 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1754565
  - youcantcook 3y ago
    [dead]
- Zambyte 3y ago
  It's hard to expect systemic reform to be an individual effort.
  - nsvd 3y ago
    Well, a system is just a collection of individuals.
  - ryeights 3y ago
    It’s hard to expect systemic reform with no individual actions.
    - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
      It’s hard to expect systemic reform by telling the individual to change while allowing the companies to continue as they are.
      - 3y ago
anon-3988 3y ago
I think at this point we kinda have to give up most if not all of the "weird" animals that exists today. We can only pick them or the modern lifestyle. Let's think of what people will commonly refer to as a "best case scenario": World peace and equality. Are you kidding me? Think of yourself, and the lifestyle that you have. And multiply that by 8 billion people. There's simply no way for the environment to survive that considering only a fraction of extremely lucky (relatively speaking) individual will ever read this comment. Your lifestyle, right now, is not sustainable. That is not to say that corporations and lots of other big players are not responsible. But we have to be realistic.
- cloogshicer 3y ago
  Genuine question: Assuming that humanity would cooperate perfectly, what would the lifestyle we can afford actually look like? Can we afford food and heat for everyone? Electricity? Where is the line?
  - adrianN 3y ago
    Renewable energy if both cheap and abundant. Energy is not the problem. We just need to replace two centuries of fossil infrastructure in the next two decades
- michpoch 3y ago
  > Your lifestyle, right now, is not sustainable. That's quite a statement, mind to expand? Should I start walking around naked and sleep in a cave, or is it enough that I'll be eating raw vegan food? I live a pretty regular life and I do not see why it'd not be sustainable.
  - Arch485 3y ago
    I'm going off the assumption that you're an average-ish suburban american, so if you're not that, then this doesn't count... Cars use fossil fuels to run, and rare metals to be manufactured. These are inherently limited, thereby making our lifestyle unsustainable already (I say "our" because I am also an average-ish suburban american). Phones, computers, tablets, etc. etc. use rare metals in production, and last a relatively short period (5 years if you're lucky, at least ime). Also unsustainable. A lot of electricity is generated using fossil fuels. Many foods (not just meat - a lot of fruits and vegetables too) are produced in an unsustainable way. This is not to say they cannot be produced sustainably, but commonly they are not. As an example, factory farms harvesting beef are terrible for the environment, the cows, and your health. Many vegetable farms use fertilizers that are bad for the environment, but arguably necessary to sustain enough food for the human population. Luckily, you don't need to walk around naked and sleep in a cave. You can reduce your negative impact on the world and disconnect from a lot of the unsustainable practices and systems we have in modern society by buying your own property and living mostly off-grid (i.e., generating your own solar electricity, growing your own food, etc.). You don't even have to give up running water or the internet! The benefits snowball if you do this as a community, too. While many aspects of this lifestyle are still unsustainable (for example, solar panels need rare metals), it is _much more_ sustainable than the de-facto standard of society we have today. Now I'm not saying that you (or anyone) should feel morally obligated to do something like this - it's not a possibility for many people, for one reason or another. However, the more people who do it, the better!
lunarboy 3y ago
This is something I struggle with profoundly daily. Yes, my "individual" action as a 1 in 8 billion people, or 1 in 300 million Americans isn't going to move the needle. Large scale governmental and corporate action is needed. But how do you expect that to happen if not enough people want it and show they want it? I see people near me casually flying to Europe for a ski, raving about A5 Wagyu or Uni from Japan or some shit, etc. All of these are undoubtedly adding to the demand, so why would the companies stop? (Of course its because they fail to factor in the long-term cost of there will be less customers if humans can't live on this planet anymore)
- 14 3y ago
  Money,societal status, denial, just don’t give a shit are all reasons why nothing gets done. Pretty sad. It will only change when something like India or some other hot country has a wet bulb massive human and animal die off.
  - bamboozled 3y ago
    I doubt even an event like that will honestly change much. It will only change once people lose money and freedom. Once climate change impacts the economy negatively enough.
  - zhivota 3y ago
    Ministry for the Future? I found that book to be scarily plausible.
  - lunarboy 3y ago
    Yup, another thing these first world countries don't seem to get: they have dropping birthrates, while other places with lower standards of living don't seem to be slowing down. When these regions get too hot or unpredictable to live, where would the refugees want to go?
  - scruple 3y ago
    Westerners will say they care about these things but I don't think a million people dying in a heatwave in Bangladesh or India will do anything to curb their behavior or drive them to action.
dr_dshiv 3y ago
Why so many climate activists seem convinced that only moral shame will solve the climate problem is beyond me. It’s an engineering problem. We know how to do it. Balance the heat absorbed and emitted. That’s the thing. Not just carbon. Heat balance.
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  It's not an engineering problem, it's a funding problem. It needs truly massive investments, coming from taxes, which need to be accepted by the voters, who then need to understand their existence creates negative externalities which need to be paid for.
- Sabinus 3y ago
  >Why so many climate activists seem convinced that only moral shame will solve the climate problem is beyond me Capital saw the movement as an existential threat and psyoped the movement into a personal responsibility thing instead of a whole of society effort.
hwbunny 3y ago
Okay, time to gene modify the sloths so they could digest hamburgers, french fries. Influencers can stuff them with treats, record it on video, everyone profits.
concordDance 3y ago
> It is going to require a collective effort by the human population to reverse the already apparent effects of climate warming. All we can really do is each do our best on an individual level to reduce our carbon footprint. Eat less meat, utilise public transport, walk or ride your bike instead of driving, recycle and try to cut down on your use of products that negatively impact the environment (this includes plastics as well as products that stem from the monoculture plantations that are responsible for a huge proportion of deforestation – palm oil, mass produced fruit etc.). The idea of a collective effort reversing the effects of climate change is very much an unachievable fantasy. The cost benefit calculus just doesn't go the direction you would want for the vast majority of people. The actual optimal thing from a climate perspective is to take an AR15 and go to an American shopping mall. The second best would be to poison water sources with something that makes people infertile. We don't do these things because preventing climate change isn't actually our ultimate value, the thing we most care about. We care about many other things more than we care about sloths, in particular our quality of life. Whether that means raising 2.5 happy children who we take on vacation to an African Safari or being able to not worry about where the kids reusable cups are because you know McDonalds will have disposable ones or being able to eat what you want rather than some specific food in your fridge that will go bad tomorrow. Peace of mind, safety and quality time are things society has collectively decided are important. Of course, this isn't to say that the shift towards renewables won't gradually continue, just that the climate will get worse before it gets better. (Also, what's with the hate on plastics? They don't really have anything to do with the sloths plight)
archsurface 3y ago
One of the reasons people are able to roll their eyes at climate change is the politicians who show no evidence of practising what they preach, so the conclusion is that they're lying, which is not out of character.
- Sabinus 3y ago
  Expecting the rich to virtue signal a low carbon lifestyle to convince the masses that climate change exists is a little.... naive.
  - archsurface 3y ago
    I would say it's naive of them to think they wouldn't be called out.
Perz1val 3y ago
I always wonder, sloths are so terrible at everything, how aren't they already extinct? What other quirky animals there would be, if they'd be the ones to somehow survive?
maxglute 3y ago
Humans are not slothes though, humans are borgs. Cybernetic organisms (in the academic sense) who engineer their way around adversity, including the ones we caused.
meristohm 3y ago
> All we can really do is each do our best on an individual level to reduce our carbon footprint. Eat less meat, utilise public transport, walk or ride your bike instead of driving, recycle and try to cut down on your use of products that negatively impact the environment (this includes plastics as well as products that stem from the monoculture plantations that are responsible for a huge proportion of deforestation – palm oil, mass produced fruit etc.). It may seem overwhelming, but as the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead once said: “Never doubt that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”. To me, Mead's quote includes activism as a path to change. Not just setting an example, but pushing for change: calling representatives, asking others why they are doing what they are doing (maybe just "that's the way it's always been done" and no consideration until someone asked), and minimizing judgement so that others are more free to change rather than entrench. Some questions to consider: Of what importance is a sloth? Why do you celebrate the holidays you do? Why do you eat the food you eat? Why did you buy the house in the suburbs when your "hunting-gathering grounds" (where you work) are far away and, unless you're dead-set on walking four hours each way, requires a multi-ton vehicle to get you there?

84 points by rzk 3y ago

sva_ 3y ago

2021 archive link https://web.archive.org/web/20210620223150/https://slothconservation.org/starving-death-full-stomach/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210620223150/https://slothcons...

SushiHippie 3y ago
Archive link from this month: https://web.archive.org/web/20240211064446/https://slothconservation.org/starving-death-full-stomach/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240211064446/https://slothcons... (I don't know if anything changed, just in case)
jetrink 3y ago
The site is working, just very, very slowly, which seems fitting.

robertlagrant 3y ago

> Eat less meat I've heard this, but is it true? Would it make that much difference if a small group of citizens stopped eating meat?

stavros 3y ago
It would make more of a difference than if they didn't. This isn't binary, obviously every little bit helps a little, and the more people, the more it helps. There's no threshold under which it's not worth to do anything about it.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >There's no threshold under which it's not worth to do anything about it. I'm pretty sure there is, if we're interested in any specific outcome. Below some threshold not only it wont get that outcome, but it wont even be statistically significant.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Statistical significance is relevant when you're trying to find correlations, not when you're trying to figure out whether it's worth removing a few grains to make a cup of sand lighter. If you don't want to try, don't try. If you're looking for an excuse to say "fuck it, I won't do anything, since that's what most people are doing", you won't, because it's always worth doing something right, no matter how small.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      >Statistical significance is relevant when you're trying to find correlations, not when you're trying to figure out whether it's worth removing a few grains to make a cup of sand lighter. You got it backwards. It's relevant when you're trying to find correlations, precisely because it helps measure the impact of a change. This is true whether the change is some variable change in research space searching for correlations, or real world accessment of the impact of something... >because it's always worth doing something right, no matter how small. This one is different argument though. This one is moral, the previous one (I responded to) was about efficacy. But it, too, is problematic: even in moral terms, it's not "always worth doing something right, no matter how small", given opportunity cost.
    - samatman 3y ago
      At the margin, individual efforts to abstain from this or that product are useless, let me elaborate. Let's say in an effort to reduce your carbon footprint, you abstain from beef. The effect that has, however small it may be, is to reduce demand for beef. That brings the price of beef down, making it more affordable for beef enjoyers, who buy more. The only net effect here is that you no longer eat beef. It hasn't moved the needle on your reason for doing so. You might reply that if enough people join you, this will result in supply reduction. This is a coordination problem involving the whole planet, including a few billion people who will very happily eat more beef if it were a bit cheaper. It won't work.
      - stavros 3y ago
        I get your general point, though I disagree with it, but the beef issue is very US-centric. Beef isn't such a staple in most countries, even ones that can afford it.
- masto 3y ago
  Every little bit helps, by definition. At the same time, by distracting us with arguments about plastic straws and meat, the fossil fuel industry shifts the focus off of their enormously outsized contribution to climate change. It can also result in moral license - the feeling that I recycle, so I've done my part. I'm not suggesting not minimizing your individual impact on the environment (and frankly, the elephant in the room that we can't talk about is the impact of producing children), but at the end of the day, if we keep on dumping carbon and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the destruction will continue.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fwip 3y ago
No, not really. > It is going to require a collective effort by the human population to reverse the already apparent effects of climate warming. All we can really do is each do our best on an individual level to reduce our carbon footprint. When we start saying that a collective problem can only be accomplished via individualism, we've basically already lost. Even the phrase "carbon footprint" is the product of British Petroleum, because they recognized that encouraging individual action would be less harmful to their business of selling oil than government action. That is, they saw clearly that individual action was so much less effective than government regulation, that they spent millions of dollars encouraging it. But Western culture (United States especially) is hyper-individualist, and we resist collective actions that would inconvenience the individual. Our government is hence limited to pushing levers to try to "encourage" or "discourage" individuals to take the "right" actions. So, our discussion of alternatives (Overton window) positions a "carbon tax" as the unreasonable leftist position, where the incidental increase in price of polluting products will hopefully nudge enough price-sensitive consumers/entities into reducing consumption enough to solve global warming. So no, climate change won't be solved by individual people deciding to eat less meat. There may come a day when our agriculture and food system is so devastated that it's no longer possible for most people to eat meat.
- whynotmaybe 3y ago
  But aren't all polluting businesses producing stuff that in the end will be used by individuals?
  - justsomehnguy 3y ago
    No. There is a lot of shit what would be manufactured, transported to the other side of the planet, sit in the warehouse, [luckily] sit in the store and would be thrown out. Eg: all this shit made for iPhone/iPod pre-Lighting, all these thin-thick Nokia chargers made in early 2000, all USB 1.1, 2.0 gadgets. Add to this a phone/tablet cases.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      That isn't a lot, all things considered, right? Could you not fit every phone accessory ever made on a single cargo ship? That ship's carbon footprint is only so big.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
photochemsyn 3y ago
Keep in mind massive bison herds roamed North America for millenia, so large animals emitting methane isn't really an issue. Over decades, they're mostly in steady state - plants take up CO2, bison eat plants, emit CO2 and CH4, and the lifetime of the CH4 is ~10 years in the atmosphere (oxidized to CO2). The difference today is the large amount of fossil fuel energy used to produce fertilizers and fuel tractors and so on. This can all be transitioned to renewable energy. I think the vast majority of people who are saying 'stop eating meat to save the climate' are vegans concerned about the atrocious treatment of animals on factory farms, and they're trying to come up with additional reasons to restrict factory farming (which is a good idea, it is a filthy practice that relies heavily on antibiotic and hormone use, and the end product is disgustingly unhealthy as well as unethical IMO). The only realistic way to stabilize the climate is to eliminate fossil fuels from the energy mix, but even if that's accomplished in the next few decades, planetary warming is going to continue for some 100 years due to forcing-reponse lag time and side effects like permafrost melting and outgassing.
- silverquiet 3y ago
  I'd be willing to bet that the total biomass of ruminants is much higher today than it was millennia ago due to domestication/humans. Ad a lot of that fossil fuel use and fertilizer is going to those domestic ruminants; you've gotta grow the food to feed your food, so it's a lossy process vs just eating the plants directly. It's not always that simple though; cattle can graze on marginal land and their manure/byproducts can be fed into other agricultural processes. It's not something I really know a lot about other than to know that it's all quite complicated. That said, I suspect if the world gave up beef, it would indeed make a significant dent in global warming. I'm far from a vegan and can recognize the above. When it comes to cruelty, that's a different axis. I believe beef is actually lower on that one since the cows spend a lot of their lives wandering in fields and getting to do more or less what they want. The finishing process where they are put into feedlots seems pretty bad but is rather short, and the slaughter is about as humane as can be; they are rendered unconscious instantly with a blow to the head and then insanguinated. Chickens are sort of the opposite; they are marginal in the scheme of global warming but live lives of immense cruelty. It seems hard to win.
bocytron 3y ago
It won't change much if only small groups of citizens starts taking individual action to mitigate their environment footprint. But I strongly believe that it is nonetheless a mandatory step towards global awareness. It is not "the magical solution", but I don't see any solution that don't starts with individuals taking action to start trends. Political action will start only when the people electing government starts caring. And that starts by individuals convincing the others.
- b112 3y ago
  If you mandate that all meat come from field fed, hay fed sources, with no fertilizer (hay is a great rotational crop), instead of corn or other crops, solved problem. You know, like the rest of the world does it. (That is, unless you plan to shoot and kill and exterminate all bison, deer, etc, that would take over any land we leave fallow...)
  - aerostable_slug 3y ago
    > rest of the world Who is that in this context? I ask because I've met Europeans who were convinced that all of their beef was grass-fed, while I've personally seen cattle being grain-finished (and/or fed a variety of supplemental non-pasture-grass feeds like sugar beets) in places like Ireland and Germany. Marketing != reality.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > mandatory step towards global awareness Sorry - awareness? As in people will become more aware of something? Rather than it making an impact in and of itself?
adrianN 3y ago
Nothing a small group of people does changes anything, unless the small group happens to be politicians enacting laws to reduce carbon emissions.
Super_Jambo 3y ago
Individual actions to fix this kind of problem are pretty ineffective. That isn't to say it's not worth doing. In the US / UK with FPTP it's basically all you _can_ do voting and activism under FPTP is also pretty ineffective again worth doing but insufficient for this large a crisis. The basic reason for this is down to markets being very very good at resource allocation. Lets imagine you're a huge beef eater and previously ate 2 cows worth per year. You reduce to zero cows. What happens? The price of beef drops a tiny tiny bit. Other people who previously couldn't afford beef quite so often now can and increase their consumption. If a large number of people switch away from beef eventually the price reductions feed through and some farmers go bust or else reduce their production. But since the externality isn't priced in chances are _someone_ out there will consume it. To tackle this kind of thing you need the externality brought into the pricing system. Add taxes somewhere on the chain of green house gas production. It doesn't actually matter where you tax it, could be a sales tax, could be a production tax. You can even make the tax revenue neutral and pay it out to everyone. You can tax imports to keep a level playing field... Of course doing that would massively hit the profits of fossil fuel companies and their share holders so they're lobbying like crazy & paying millions to promote bullshit like the idea of 'carbon footprint' to stop it happening.

donatj 3y ago

What was the climate like in South America during the most recent ice age? I am curious how sloths survived if their gut is so sensitive to temperature changes?

marci 3y ago
I think they are sensitive to "rapid" temperature changes. Their gut microbiomes can adapt, but probably not that fast.

moffkalast 3y ago

> But the real problem that we need to address is the changing climate. While some people may shake their heads, there is no way to deny that the weather patterns in the tropics are becoming progressively more unstable. Unfortunately, there is also no easy fix. It is going to require a collective effort by the human population to reverse the already apparent effects of climate warming. I see it is virtually impossible to explain delayed effects to anyone. Yes we can reverse it with more collective effort than has ever been applied in the history of our species towards a single thing, but that won't save us from the immediate consequences. These are impossibly large systems that can't turn on a dime and even if we stop all emissions entirely, right now in this instant, we still bear a large brunt of the results from what we've already done so far. Sad to say it, but the time to save these sloths was 30 years ago at best.

b112 3y ago
To speak in HN lingo, such change would be like expecting IBM to behave as a startup.

thelastgallon 3y ago

"we are seeing a huge increase in the number of sloths that are being brought into rescue centres because they are starving to death. This is not because they can’t find enough food (there are still plenty of leaves on the trees), but rather because they can’t digest the food that they are eating. Sloths rely on a range of symbiotic gut bacteria and microbes in their stomach to break down the tough cellulose in the leaves that they eat, and these microbes are temperature dependant. When the environmental temperature drops, so does the sloths body temperature, and if it drops too low then the bacteria and microbes die. In this situation, the sloth can eat the same amount of leaves as normal but can starve to death on a full stomach because they can’t extract any nutrients. "

shmageggy 3y ago

> All we can really do is each do our best on an individual level to reduce our carbon footprint. No, that's not all we can really do. We could also choose to reform political and economic systems that make western-style societies so un-ecological.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> could also choose to reform political and economic systems that make western-style societies so un-ecological Yes on activism. Not sure where you're going with the second part. Self-destructive ecological devastation is as old as civilisation [1]. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1754565 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1754565
- youcantcook 3y ago
  [dead]
Zambyte 3y ago
It's hard to expect systemic reform to be an individual effort.
- nsvd 3y ago
  Well, a system is just a collection of individuals.
- ryeights 3y ago
  It’s hard to expect systemic reform with no individual actions.
  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    It’s hard to expect systemic reform by telling the individual to change while allowing the companies to continue as they are.
    - 3y ago

anon-3988 3y ago

I think at this point we kinda have to give up most if not all of the "weird" animals that exists today. We can only pick them or the modern lifestyle. Let's think of what people will commonly refer to as a "best case scenario": World peace and equality. Are you kidding me? Think of yourself, and the lifestyle that you have. And multiply that by 8 billion people. There's simply no way for the environment to survive that considering only a fraction of extremely lucky (relatively speaking) individual will ever read this comment. Your lifestyle, right now, is not sustainable. That is not to say that corporations and lots of other big players are not responsible. But we have to be realistic.

cloogshicer 3y ago
Genuine question: Assuming that humanity would cooperate perfectly, what would the lifestyle we can afford actually look like? Can we afford food and heat for everyone? Electricity? Where is the line?
- adrianN 3y ago
  Renewable energy if both cheap and abundant. Energy is not the problem. We just need to replace two centuries of fossil infrastructure in the next two decades
michpoch 3y ago
> Your lifestyle, right now, is not sustainable. That's quite a statement, mind to expand? Should I start walking around naked and sleep in a cave, or is it enough that I'll be eating raw vegan food? I live a pretty regular life and I do not see why it'd not be sustainable.
- Arch485 3y ago
  I'm going off the assumption that you're an average-ish suburban american, so if you're not that, then this doesn't count... Cars use fossil fuels to run, and rare metals to be manufactured. These are inherently limited, thereby making our lifestyle unsustainable already (I say "our" because I am also an average-ish suburban american). Phones, computers, tablets, etc. etc. use rare metals in production, and last a relatively short period (5 years if you're lucky, at least ime). Also unsustainable. A lot of electricity is generated using fossil fuels. Many foods (not just meat - a lot of fruits and vegetables too) are produced in an unsustainable way. This is not to say they cannot be produced sustainably, but commonly they are not. As an example, factory farms harvesting beef are terrible for the environment, the cows, and your health. Many vegetable farms use fertilizers that are bad for the environment, but arguably necessary to sustain enough food for the human population. Luckily, you don't need to walk around naked and sleep in a cave. You can reduce your negative impact on the world and disconnect from a lot of the unsustainable practices and systems we have in modern society by buying your own property and living mostly off-grid (i.e., generating your own solar electricity, growing your own food, etc.). You don't even have to give up running water or the internet! The benefits snowball if you do this as a community, too. While many aspects of this lifestyle are still unsustainable (for example, solar panels need rare metals), it is _much more_ sustainable than the de-facto standard of society we have today. Now I'm not saying that you (or anyone) should feel morally obligated to do something like this - it's not a possibility for many people, for one reason or another. However, the more people who do it, the better!

lunarboy 3y ago

This is something I struggle with profoundly daily. Yes, my "individual" action as a 1 in 8 billion people, or 1 in 300 million Americans isn't going to move the needle. Large scale governmental and corporate action is needed. But how do you expect that to happen if not enough people want it and show they want it? I see people near me casually flying to Europe for a ski, raving about A5 Wagyu or Uni from Japan or some shit, etc. All of these are undoubtedly adding to the demand, so why would the companies stop? (Of course its because they fail to factor in the long-term cost of there will be less customers if humans can't live on this planet anymore)

14 3y ago
Money,societal status, denial, just don’t give a shit are all reasons why nothing gets done. Pretty sad. It will only change when something like India or some other hot country has a wet bulb massive human and animal die off.
- bamboozled 3y ago
  I doubt even an event like that will honestly change much. It will only change once people lose money and freedom. Once climate change impacts the economy negatively enough.
- zhivota 3y ago
  Ministry for the Future? I found that book to be scarily plausible.
- lunarboy 3y ago
  Yup, another thing these first world countries don't seem to get: they have dropping birthrates, while other places with lower standards of living don't seem to be slowing down. When these regions get too hot or unpredictable to live, where would the refugees want to go?
- scruple 3y ago
  Westerners will say they care about these things but I don't think a million people dying in a heatwave in Bangladesh or India will do anything to curb their behavior or drive them to action.

dr_dshiv 3y ago

Why so many climate activists seem convinced that only moral shame will solve the climate problem is beyond me. It’s an engineering problem. We know how to do it. Balance the heat absorbed and emitted. That’s the thing. Not just carbon. Heat balance.

The_Colonel 3y ago
It's not an engineering problem, it's a funding problem. It needs truly massive investments, coming from taxes, which need to be accepted by the voters, who then need to understand their existence creates negative externalities which need to be paid for.
Sabinus 3y ago
>Why so many climate activists seem convinced that only moral shame will solve the climate problem is beyond me Capital saw the movement as an existential threat and psyoped the movement into a personal responsibility thing instead of a whole of society effort.

hwbunny 3y ago

Okay, time to gene modify the sloths so they could digest hamburgers, french fries. Influencers can stuff them with treats, record it on video, everyone profits.

concordDance 3y ago

> It is going to require a collective effort by the human population to reverse the already apparent effects of climate warming. All we can really do is each do our best on an individual level to reduce our carbon footprint. Eat less meat, utilise public transport, walk or ride your bike instead of driving, recycle and try to cut down on your use of products that negatively impact the environment (this includes plastics as well as products that stem from the monoculture plantations that are responsible for a huge proportion of deforestation – palm oil, mass produced fruit etc.). The idea of a collective effort reversing the effects of climate change is very much an unachievable fantasy. The cost benefit calculus just doesn't go the direction you would want for the vast majority of people. The actual optimal thing from a climate perspective is to take an AR15 and go to an American shopping mall. The second best would be to poison water sources with something that makes people infertile. We don't do these things because preventing climate change isn't actually our ultimate value, the thing we most care about. We care about many other things more than we care about sloths, in particular our quality of life. Whether that means raising 2.5 happy children who we take on vacation to an African Safari or being able to not worry about where the kids reusable cups are because you know McDonalds will have disposable ones or being able to eat what you want rather than some specific food in your fridge that will go bad tomorrow. Peace of mind, safety and quality time are things society has collectively decided are important. Of course, this isn't to say that the shift towards renewables won't gradually continue, just that the climate will get worse before it gets better. (Also, what's with the hate on plastics? They don't really have anything to do with the sloths plight)

archsurface 3y ago

One of the reasons people are able to roll their eyes at climate change is the politicians who show no evidence of practising what they preach, so the conclusion is that they're lying, which is not out of character.

Sabinus 3y ago
Expecting the rich to virtue signal a low carbon lifestyle to convince the masses that climate change exists is a little.... naive.
- archsurface 3y ago
  I would say it's naive of them to think they wouldn't be called out.

Perz1val 3y ago

I always wonder, sloths are so terrible at everything, how aren't they already extinct? What other quirky animals there would be, if they'd be the ones to somehow survive?

maxglute 3y ago

Humans are not slothes though, humans are borgs. Cybernetic organisms (in the academic sense) who engineer their way around adversity, including the ones we caused.

meristohm 3y ago

> All we can really do is each do our best on an individual level to reduce our carbon footprint. Eat less meat, utilise public transport, walk or ride your bike instead of driving, recycle and try to cut down on your use of products that negatively impact the environment (this includes plastics as well as products that stem from the monoculture plantations that are responsible for a huge proportion of deforestation – palm oil, mass produced fruit etc.). It may seem overwhelming, but as the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead once said: “Never doubt that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”. To me, Mead's quote includes activism as a path to change. Not just setting an example, but pushing for change: calling representatives, asking others why they are doing what they are doing (maybe just "that's the way it's always been done" and no consideration until someone asked), and minimizing judgement so that others are more free to change rather than entrench. Some questions to consider: Of what importance is a sloth? Why do you celebrate the holidays you do? Why do you eat the food you eat? Why did you buy the house in the suburbs when your "hunting-gathering grounds" (where you work) are far away and, unless you're dead-set on walking four hours each way, requires a multi-ton vehicle to get you there?