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Eating meat with lower carbon footprint often means killing more animals
- yosito 2y agoWhile I do think the overall point of the article is an interesting one, it seems to me an odd assumption that the life of a single cow is somehow equal to the life of a single chicken or a single fish. At what point does it stop being equal? Is the life of a human equal to the life of a mosquito?
- satvikpendem 2y agoIt seems like the sibling comment is exactly what you're asking about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40847318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40847318
- stabbles 2y agoThe handbook for utilitarians prescribes that the life of one cow is worth the life of seven chickens
- adriand 2y agoWhy wouldn’t the life of a cow be equivalent to the life of a chicken though? I’m not asking rhetorically. As soon as you get into gradations of value based on things like size or perceived intelligence, things get muddy pretty quickly. For instance, we don’t value the life of a small child less than the life of a grown adult, even though the child is smaller and less “intelligent” than the adult. Similarly, we don’t value adult humans based on their intelligence. Perhaps the metric should be capacity for suffering and our goal should be to minimize suffering. Does a human have greater capacity for suffering than a mosquito? I think there are many good reasons to think yes. Does a cow have greater capacity for suffering than a chicken? I don’t know that that is nearly as clear.
- dgfitz 2y ago> For instance, we don’t value the life of a small child less than the life of a grown adult, even though the child is smaller and less “intelligent” than the adult. Similarly, we don’t value adult humans based on their intelligence. On the contrary, children are valued higher than adults, generally speaking. We _absolutely_ value adult humans based on their intelligence, this is generally reflected in things like… salary. What are you on about? > Does a cow have greater capacity for suffering than a chicken? You have quite obviously never spent time around either chickens or cows if you think this is some sort of salient point. It’s not.
- dgfitz 2y agoCan’t edit: chickens are awful animals, and having known a handful of chicken farmers, they’re universally despised. Cows are the opposite in just about every way.
- Concrete3286 2y agoI suppose that to a person who a) is already eating beef burgers and b) is considering swapping the meat in their burger to chicken for environmental reasons, the value of the life of a cow and the life of a chicken are both functionally nil. Perhaps not "without value", but too difficult to quantify against each other to be meaningful when decision making.
- nradov 2y agoWhy does capacity for suffering matter? How do we quantify suffering? Can you prove that plants and fungi don't suffer?
- s1artibartfast 2y ago>Does a cow have greater capacity for suffering than a chicken? I don’t know that that is nearly as clear. If you have much experience with cows and chickens, I think the difference in capacity for suffering is pretty clear. >we don’t value the life of a small child less than the life of a grown adult, even though the child is smaller and less “intelligent” than the adult. Similarly, we don’t value adult humans based on their intelligence. I think when forced into a decision, humans and societies will make distinctions along these lines. e.g. saving the mother or child during birth or famine, Prioritizing scientists or even sacrificing soldiers during wartime.
- 1234554321a 2y agoOne cow costs $2500, one chicken costs $10. So one cow life is worth approximately 250 chicken lives. Q.E.D.
- senkora 2y agoRelevant SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-10-09 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-10-09 TL;DR: Pandas and koalas are the most ethical source of meat.
- satvikpendem 2y agoIt seems more like they'd want a braindead animal cultivated for meat, as seen in the latest season of Rick and Morty (among other areas).
- bena 2y agoThat’s kind of what he said. Pandas and koalas are pretty stupid
- satvikpendem 2y agoThey're still sentient though so to fully maximize the function value, you'd need braindead animals, or better yet, muscle cells formed into common cuts of meat.
- gadders 2y agoI think I read somewhere that blind chickens get less stressed in battery environments, so there's an ethical minefield we could jump into (metaphor intended).
- teddyh 2y agoRelevant: • <https://angryflower.com/377.html https://angryflower.com/377.html> • <https://angryflower.com/602.html https://angryflower.com/602.html>
- bena 2y agoBut we’re looking for existing animals that fit the function until we get to that point.
- looofooo0 2y ago
- satvikpendem 2y agoGiven that most people want to eat meat, as an axiom, looks like you will have to choose one or the other. In this case, if one is concerned for sentient animal welfare, then insects could be a great solution (although they'd be more of a protein source, not actually meat), or better yet, lab-grown meat, since that's ideally identical to animal-cultivated meat.
- candiddevmike 2y ago> Given that most people want to eat meat Nature vs nurture? I think most people want to eat good tasting, ideally nutritious food.
- satvikpendem 2y agoProbably nature, due to the preponderance of evidence for it, and that likely evolved into a cultural phenomenon too. There is a reason all societies eat meat in one form or another.
- SoftTalker 2y agoYes, humans are omnivores. Meat is a natural component of our diet.
- candiddevmike 2y agoThere is evidence of vegetarian communities and tribes too though: Native Americans: https://www.ivu.org/history/native_americans.html https://www.ivu.org/history/native_americans.html Indians: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y agoThe substantive difference is that we don't need to look for evidence of meat-eating communities and tribes. They're all around.
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- bdcravens 2y agoFor the environmentally minded, it's almost always a tradeoff. Electric car? Less pollution, more lithium mining (for now) Avoid plastic? Glass jars are heavy (and added emissions to transport), and more likely to need replacing. Avoid clothing with microplastics (like polyester)? Cotton is one of the most water-intensive crops, and production of bamboo cloth requires heavy chemicals usually, polluting the local environment etc ...
- darth_avocado 2y agoOr buy fewer clothes, reduce unnecessary plastic (my bananas don’t need to be individually wrapped), use public transportation etc.
- jp57 2y agoWhere do they sell individually wrapped bananas? I’ve never seen them in the US.
- sawmurai 2y agoI have seen this in Japanese convenience stores… I was quite puzzled :)
- wappieslurkz 2y agoAnd go plant based, I'd like to add...
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoAs gets pointed out semi-regularly, it was "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, in that order." I suppose it makes sense to consider "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Use less impactful materials and processes, probably in that order"?
- fsflover 2y ago[flagged]
- lm28469 2y agoPeople who care about the moral aspect already don't eat meat People who only care about the ecological aspect don't care about killing more animals Also, how do you even quantify that ? Is killing 30 cage raised chicken better or worse than killing a single grass fed free range cow ? Are all lives worth the same ? If so bug based food would be extremely problematic
- lxe 2y agoI know this is a naive view, but in an efficient economy of scale where we are cutting costs to produce a good, the lower the costs, the higher the efficiency to produce that good. Depending on the efficiency of the economy, if something is expensive, it required more energy or time or resources to produce. Producing (and buying) organic small batch things yields lower _net_ efficiency than mass-produced stuff. Now, increasing efficiency may mean that _net_ impact is minimized, but tradeoffs are pretty wild. For example, we trade off pollution for cheaper energy production, etc... Of course this is only fully realized in a spherical economy in a vaccum, but still, some of this is applicable to the real world.
- coldcode 2y agoFixing greenhouse gases requires focusing on the largest % contributors, not tiny little amounts. It's like optimizing code only used on startup instead of runtime. See https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-overview https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-overv...
- pelasaco 2y ago[flagged]
- gpm 2y agoI agree that targeting tiny amounts doesn't work - but I don't think your source supports the idea that raising livestock is a tiny amount. It quotes the amount for "Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use" at 22% and describes it as "Greenhouse gas emissions from this sector come mostly from agriculture (cultivation of crops and livestock) and deforestation".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kasperni 2y agoLivestock accounts for somewhere between 10-20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That is roughly in the same order as emission from transport. [1] https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-agriculture-environment/livestock-dont-contribute-14-5-of-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-agriculture-environm...
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoYes but… not all “greenhouse gas emissions” are the same. Emissions from cattle get recycled through natural processes, which is not the same as fossil carbon that hasn’t been part of the ecosystem for billions of years. I’m way more worried about fossil carbon.
- blacksmith_tb 2y ago
- justaman 2y agoGrow more of your own food. Preserve it in glass jars you reuse every year. Hunt and eat venison.
- dyauspitr 2y agoAgreed but all the CWD in US deer is making venison a risky proposition. What a world we’ve made, nothing is safe anymore. The fish are full of heavy metals, the animals full of prion diseases and the woods full of Lyme’s disease causing ticks.
- throw0101b 2y agoMeta: parts of animals that are not as popular for food get used for lots of things. > Gone whole hog: Here's what happens to the rest of your Easter ham: Pig parts are used in everything from gelatin to fabric softener. * https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thefridgelight/gone-whole-hog-here-s-what-happens-to-the-rest-of-your-easter-ham-1.4598590 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thefridgelight/gone-whole-hog-here-... > Cow Parts: Mad cow disease could wreak havoc in the US because nearly everything we taste has cow in it * https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/cow-parts https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/cow-parts
- kkfx 2y agoSorry but this article is pure PR. Nature is a cycle, animals do not "consume" food or "produce" meat. They live. A cow eating grass feeds the grass with its excrement and stimulate it's growth. The "issue" is for business who have to harvest food for their livestock to produce enough to sell enough at a price sufficient to earn their life. Calculating "carbon footprint" is just calculating astrology, a narrative to scam their customers. Canada's wildfires last years polluted more than all antropic emission combined https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/27/canada-2023-wildfires-carbon-emissions https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/27/canada... similarly Darvaza gas crater pollute much more than all flatulence and methane leaks from animals and humans together. The point is that to feed enough human we need enough land for enough livestock and actually the current food production systems can't adapt to the climate change, huge number of humans AND BUSINESS so they try other ways to remain in business instead of evolving.
- akamaka 2y agoCarbon emissions calculations aren’t astrology, there has actually been a lot of detailed data collected. For example: https://www.fao.org/4/i3460e/i3460e.pdf https://www.fao.org/4/i3460e/i3460e.pdf
- kkfx 2y agoThey are. Because they have some measure and collected data, and some other measures totally invented. How can you state I "save CO₂ emissions" producing energy from my p.v.? How can you state up front that only CO₂ emissions count in pollution and climate change? This is not science, it's a kind of religion, to convince people formed with a kind of scientific mindset but not really inhabited to reason individually, but to accept as truth what they read. Starting from the "data collected" form certain institutions who have NO PROOF of their collection, meaning their data are not really reproducible. Just a modern variant of the old colored glass to trade gold with certain populations.
- gpm 2y agoThe Canadian wildfires last year produced less than 1/10th the CO2 emissions of the anthropic ones last year, using the numbers from the link that you misrepresented as saying they exceeded anthropic ones (which the link simply does not support in the slightest) and anthropic numbers from here [1]. [1] (Note: change "Count" to "Country" to get worldwide data) https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions#explore-data-on-co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions#...
- amai 2y agoTypical straw man article to make people claim a lower carbon footprint is bad. Instead people should focus on the real super polluters: https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyv5mm/5-of-earths-power-plants-create-73-of-the-energy-sectors-emissions https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyv5mm/5-of-earths-power-pla...
- spants 2y agoHow about we dont eat animals? It is easy to do now.