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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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There is something ironic in the fact that most people here on the taco stand are deeply concerned about global warming, which they believe is (somehow) caused by and thus reversible by human activities, yet these same people don't seem to see any connection concerning global dietary trends.
For consistency, such people should be concerned about the mowing down of the rainforests, and I would assume that such people are indeed thus concerned. However....
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/forests/how-cattle-ranching-chewing-amazon-rainforest-20090129
The commercial cattle industry continues to grow, as demand increases worldwide. The irony I referred to is that we are literally swapping out huge swaths of CO2-scrubbing rainforest (plus all the unknown benefits there that we have not even discovered) for CO2 (and other greenhouse-gas)-producing cattle.
The scale at which this is being done is particularly concerning in the context of global warming concerns. Even swapping out rainforest for soya is concerning, but at least you are much more greenhouse-gas-neutral than the forest-for-cattle swap we're currently getting.
Just another piece of the very complicated puzzle.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Laramie
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The solution to reverse global warming is going to take far more co2 and methane reduction that what we'll get by going veggie head.
How abut a lithium ion battery that can hold 10 times the present charge density and switching to nuclear power?
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Why is meat so cheap and produce so expensive comparably? What am I missing?
At least part of the answer involves federal subsidies, with (by far) the largest share of subsidy dollars going to the production of animal feed....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_States
Another significant factor is the scale upon which various agricultural activities occur. The cattle industry (especially considered as including the acreage devoted to producing feed) utterly dwarfs the production of, say, tomatoes and other food items that would be commonly thought of a "produce."
So, salads just cost more per pound than does beef. Again: very complicated puzzle with many (sometimes moving) pieces.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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seems Vegans fart A LOT! Methane release certainly larger for them. When the personal greenhouse taxes are levied,, i hope they realize that one!;-)
ROFL....
Ron, we agree about a lot, most times. But if you think that vegan-farts compare to deforestation (and the mega-acres of new cattle, all farting), well, I'll have to hunt down, shoot, and eat YOU myself! Gene-pool issues in play with that too!
You haven't bred yet, have you? If you have, I'll have to deal with your spoor as well.
LOL
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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ROFL....
I mean: spew through my nose laughing. Almost destroyed a keyboard over that.
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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Thanks Madbolter1 and Khanom for explanations. (I made my comment on my phone and missed many posts here.) It IS complicated.
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Snowmassguy
Trad climber
Calirado
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Why is meat so cheap and produce so expensive comparably? What am I missing?
Subsidies are a factor and they impact the price of both meat and produce delivered to your friendly large chain grocery store. Weather also plays a big role in produce costs.
Seasonality of produce and transportation(fuel) costs are a big percentage of the per lb price of just about everything that is not " local" grown.
That tasty organic berry you are eating frequently starts a long way from its origin and has traveled great distances while burning fuel to get to your table in the middle of a ( place that is not Mexico or the Central Valley of CA)) winter. MMMM, that banana is good. Chances are it was not grown in the Central Valley lol.
Ultimately, the world population needs cheap and sustainable (contradiction?) animal based protein to survive.
The problem is that we as human race eat too much meat. We are out of balance.
Also, GM foods and Monsanto are evil and we are all gonna die!
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plasticluvr
Gym climber
ft lauderdale fl
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 7, 2013 - 04:53pm PT
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I agree with Climbski2 “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Lighter is better especially for climbing.
I also agree with WBraun,
All that violence against those living beings comes back as violence in endless wars.
Stupid Americans have no clue what they're doing .....
Don't you think it is important that the animals you eat have not been tortured their whole lives?
Why not pay more for free range and eat less meat and eggs.
Also throwing away less food is important at least 10 percent of food purchased gets thrown away.
If we could just do that we would contribute less greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. It's a start anyhow.
We might sleep better at night too!
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froodish
Social climber
Portland, Oregon
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Re: pricing. Yes factory meat is subsidized in many ways, some direct like government subsidies for grain and below market rate water and grazing land; some indirect like externalities that are not bourne directly by the producers and consumers (what is the cost to society of antibiotic-resistant E. coli?)
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Snowmassguy
Trad climber
Calirado
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I agree with Climbski2 “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
You are actually agreeing with author Michael Pollan. In Defense of Food and The Omnivores Dilemma are good reads.
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froodish
Social climber
Portland, Oregon
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But the environmental impact is clearly every bit as bad as meat raised at CAFOs
Sorry, but that's simply not true. Cattle are just not as efficient at storing energy. All thing being equal, calorie for calorie, meat is less efficient and you're living in a dream world if you think we can produce enough meat to fulfill the current (not to mention growing) demand for meat on small integrated farms.
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goatboy smellz
climber
Nederland-GulfBreeze
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I only eat grass fed vegetarians from local sources plus all the fish I can catch.
Khanom is on the right path, I can hear tomatoes scream when I pick them.
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WBraun
climber
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In the old days 99% of the people were vegetarians and lived 100,000 years.
Protein comes from milk.
Stupid Americans can barely live 80 years now ......
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TheTye
Trad climber
Sacramento CA
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WBraun- That av life span is being propped up by using massive amounts of reactionary medicine to treat problems caused by unhealthy lifestyles that are preventable through diet much of the time... Let that common american diet run free without the help of modern pharmaceuticals and see where that lifespan heads...
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froodish
Social climber
Portland, Oregon
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khanom, I think we're mostly in agreement. Perhaps you missed the part where I said: "current (and growing) demand" for meat.
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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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Oh look, a deer/elk/cow--click, click, boom! Meat.
How about the TIME that it takes to produce Produce...
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karen roseme
Mountain climber
san diego
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The meat industry is one of the top contributors to climate change, directly and indirectly producing about 14.5 percent of the world’s anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and global meat consumption is on the rise.
People generally like eating meat—when poor people start making more money, they almost invariably start buying more meat.
As the population grows and eats more animal products, the consequences for climate change, pollution, and land use could be catastrophic.
Attempts to reduce meat consumption usually focus on baby steps—Meatless Monday and “vegan before 6,” passable fake chicken, and in vitro burgers.
If the world is going to eat less meat, it’s going to have to be coaxed and cajoled into doing it, according to conventional wisdom.
But what if the convincing were the easy part? Suppose everyone in the world voluntarily stopped eating meat, en masse. I know it’s not actually going to happen.
But the best-case scenario from a climate perspective would be if all 7 billion of us woke up one day and realized that PETA was right all along. If this collective change of spirit came to pass, like Peter Singer’s dearest fantasy come true, what would the ramifications be?
At least one research team has run the numbers on what global veganism would mean for the planet. In 2009 researchers from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency published their projections of the greenhouse gas consequences if humanity came to eat less meat, no meat, or no animal products at all.
The researchers predicted that universal veganism would reduce agriculture-related carbon emissions by 17 percent, methane emissions by 24 percent, and nitrous oxide emissions by 21 percent by 2050.
Universal vegetarianism would result in similarly impressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. What’s more, the Dutch researchers found that worldwide vegetarianism or veganism would achieve these gains at a much lower cost than a purely energy-focused intervention involving carbon taxes and renewable energy technology.
The upshot: Universal eschewal of meat wouldn’t single-handedly stave off global warming, but it would go a long way toward mitigating climate change.
The Dutch researchers didn’t take into account what else might happen if everyone gave up meat. “In this scenario study we have ignored possible socio-economic implications such as the effect of health changes on GDP and population numbers,” wrote Elke Stehfest and her colleagues.
“We have not analyzed the agro-economic consequences of the dietary changes and its implications; such consequences might not only involve transition costs, but also impacts on land prices. The costs that are associated with this transition might obviously offset some of the gains discussed here.”
Indeed. If the world actually did collectively go vegetarian or vegan over the course of a decade or two, it’s reasonable to think the economy would tank.
According to “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” the influential 2006 U.N. report about meat’s devastating environmental effects, livestock production accounts for 1.4 percent of the world’s total GDP.
The production and sale of animal products account for 1.3 billion people’s jobs, and 987 million of those people are poor. If demand for meat were to disappear overnight, those people’s livelihoods would disappear, and they would have to find new ways of making money.
Now, some of them—like the industrial farmers who grow the corn that currently goes to feed animals on factory farms—would be in a position to adapt by shifting to in-demand plant-based food production.
Others, namely the “huge number of people involved in livestock for lack of an alternative, particularly in Africa and Asia,” would probably be out of luck. (Things would be better for the global poor involved in the livestock trade if everyone continued to consume other animal products, such as eggs, milk, and wool, than if everyone decided to go vegan.)
As the economy adjusted to the sudden lack of demand for meat products, we would expect to see widespread suffering and social unrest.
A second major ramification of global vegetarianism would be expanses of new land available. Currently, grazing land for ruminants—cows and their kin—accounts for a staggering 26 percent of the world’s ice-free land surface.
The Dutch scientists predict that 2.7 billion hectares (about 10.4 million square miles) of that grazing land would be freed up by global vegetarianism, along with 100 million hectares (about 386,000 square miles) of land that’s currently used to grow crops for livestock.
Not all of this land would be suitable for humans, but surely it stands to reason that this sudden influx of new territory would make land much cheaper on the whole.
A third major ramification of global vegetarianism would be that the risk of antibiotic-resistant infections would plummet.
Currently, the routine use of antibiotics in animal farming to promote weight gain and prevent illness in unsanitary conditions is a major contributor to antibiotic resistance.
Last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that at least 2 million Americans fall ill from antibiotic-resistant pathogens every year and declared that “much of antibiotic use in animals is unnecessary and inappropriate and makes everyone less safe.”
The overprescription of antibiotics for humans plays a big role in antibiotic resistance, but eradicating the factory farms from which many antibiotic-resistant bacteria emerge would make it more likely that we could continue to count on antibiotics to cure serious illnesses.
(For a sense of what a “post-antibiotics future” would look like, read Maryn McKenna’s amazing article on the topic for Medium and her story about a possible solution for chicken farming in Slate.)
So what would be the result, in an all-vegetarian world, of the combination of widespread unemployment and economic disruption, millions of square miles of available land, and a lowered risk of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea?
I can only conclude that people would band together to form communes in order to escape capitalism’s ruthlessness, squat on the former pasture land, and adopt a lifestyle of free love.
I kid. Mostly. It’s easy to get carried away when you’re speculating about unlikely scenarios—and sudden intercontinental vegetarianism is very much an unlikely scenario.
But if the result of a worldwide shift to a plant-based diet sounds like a right-winger’s worst nightmare, it’s worth pointing out that continuing to eat as much meat as we currently do promises to result in a left-winger’s worst nightmare: In a world of untrammeled global warming, where disastrous weather events are routine, global conflicts will increase, only the wealthy will thrive, and the poor will suffer.
Let’s try a middle path. We’re not all going to become vegetarians, but most of us can stop giving our money to factory farms—the biggest and worst offenders, from a pollution and public health perspective.
We can eat less meat than we currently do, especially meat from methane-releasing ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats, etc.).
Just because a sudden global conversion to vegetarianism would have jarring effects doesn’t mean we can’t gradually reduce our consumption of meat, giving the market time to adjust. We not only can; we must. After all, with the world’s population slated to grow to 9 billion by 2050, we’ll be needing to take some of the 25 percent of the world’s land area back from the cows.
Read more: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/feed_the_world/2014/05/meat_eating_and_climate_change_vegetarians_impact_on_the_economy_antibiotics.html#ixzz30knpagRd
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Anyone who eats meat, yet is unwilling to be eaten by other animals, does not have the right attitude.
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Flip Flop
Trad climber
Truckee, CA
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One sign of intelligence is the ability to accept that one's own behavior can be wrong. One sign of a small mind is the need to justify one's own behavior as good.
How do you handle cognitive dissonance?
( in plain speak: Don't believe your own bullsh#t.)
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