Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth

[8ball]

I reject the notion that environmental problems can be truthfully defined by corporately-funded talking shops that somehow get on the news without having mass support or even actually achieving anything of note.

There seems to be generally growing support for the idea that we're eating too much meat.

 

[NoXion]

So what is your plan for the way forward? I'm all for what works.

Replace fossil fuels with nuclear fission and renewables. Build high-speed electric rail systems to replace local flights. Replace freight by bunker oil powered container ships with something else - renewables would be nice, if they can work, but nuclear powered cargo ships have been proven plenty functional. Plentiful power thanks to fission, and electrification of the transport network, would make free public transport for everyone much easier to implement. It would also power desalination plants in efforts to help push back desertification, along with the usual planting of trees etc. Recycling too, since as good for the environment as it can be, it is often energy-intensive. That kind of thing.

Of course, the chances of anyone with significant power and influence actually listening to any of my suggestions is close to nil, so I'm not hopeful that any of that will happen without a lot more trouble occurring along the way.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Replace fossil fuels with nuclear fission and renewables. Build high-speed electric rail systems to replace local flights. Replace freight by bunker oil powered container ships with something else - renewables would be nice, if they can work, but nuclear powered cargo ships have been proven plenty functional. Plentiful power thanks to fission, and electrification of the transport network, would make free public transport for everyone much easier to implement. It would also power desalination plants in efforts to help push back desertification, along with the usual planting of trees etc. Recycling too, since as good for the environment as it can be, it is often energy-intensive. That kind of thing.

Of course, the chances of anyone with significant power and influence actually listening to any of my suggestions is close to nil, so I'm not hopeful that any of that will happen without a lot more trouble occurring along the way.

I can get behind some of that. I don't think we're going to find the solution in any single element. We're going to have to do a lot of things all at once, and probably with fewer resources. I don't think we should be relying on some unknown technology yet to be developed either, as a lot of my techie friends suggest. It would be nice if it happened, but I'm not counting on it. TBH, I think we're fucked, but I don't see any harm in trying.

<edited to add>
I suspect that when the shit really starts to hit the fan, that the people in power are going to see things in a rather Malthusian light, and decide that vast numbers of us are disposable.

 

[NoXion]

I can get behind some of that. I don't think we're going to find the solution in any single element. We're going to have to do a lot of things all at once, and probably with fewer resources. I don't think we should be relying on some unknown technology yet to be developed either, as a lot of my techie friends suggest. It would be nice if it happened, but I'm not counting on it. TBH, I think we're fucked, but I don't see any harm in trying.

<edited to add>
I suspect that when the shit really starts to hit the fan, that the people in power are going to see things in a rather Malthusian light, and decide that vast numbers of us are disposable.

Yeah, relying on unproven technology is not the way forward. This is a big, multi-headed problem and so if a tech solution is necessary to solve some particular part of it, we need stuff with a proven track record.

At the risk of sounding a bit hippie-ish, I also think that people need to feel more of a connection with the rest of the society that they live in. Anomie is counter-productive, I can't see how we can protect our common environments if people feel their world is not worth saving. Bit of a catch-22 there I fear.

 

[NoXion]

I suspect that when the shit really starts to hit the fan, that the people in power are going to see things in a rather Malthusian light, and decide that vast numbers of us are disposable.

That's why I'm suspicious of all these organisations with slickly-produced materials proclaiming the "inevitable". I can't help but feel some really rather nasty groundwork is attempting to be laid in the public consciousness.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

That's why I'm suspicious of all these organisations with slickly-produced materials proclaiming the "inevitable". I can't help but feel some really rather nasty groundwork is attempting to be laid in the public consciousness.

I think its rather telling that one of the fastest growing businesses in the US is in luxury survival shelters for the uber-wealthy. It's just not in their business plan to save the rest of us.

 

[8ball]

I think its rather telling that one of the fastest growing businesses in the US is in luxury survival shelters for the uber-wealthy. It's just not in their business plan to save the rest of us.

It never has been in the case of an extreme event.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

It never has been in the case of an extreme event.

That's why I think we have to do what we can for ourselves. If that means giving up meat, protesting, or monkey wrenching, then we might have to resort to that. You just can't rely on the people in power to do the right things. I realize that it has serious limitations, but its better than the "worse than nothing" policies my government is going toward at the moment. Maybe it will buy us enough time to get better government policy in place. You have to start where you are.

 

[TomUS]

The meat industry will fight back as they did before....

A number of radio stations in America's cattle country have dropped Grammy-winning singer k.d. lang's records after her participation in a "Meat Stinks" campaign for the Washington-based advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals...In the Midwest, LS Radio Inc., a Wichita-based company with seven stations in Kansas and one in Oklahoma, pulled lang's records from the air Thursday. So did the Shepherd Group, which has three stations in Missouri and one in Montana. A Nebraska station started its ban Wednesday...PETA also points out the beef industry has had its share of problems with its own spokesmen. James Garner was dropped after undergoing quadruple bypass surgery, while Cybill Shepherd was dropped after confiding to a fashion magazine that one of her beauty tips was not eating meat.

- The Washington Post

 

[8ball]

The meat industry will fight back as they did before....

Obviously this is to be expected.

eta: sorry, realise how much that sounded like something Chomsky could say, but without any real insight or moving anything along

 

[NoXion]

Stuff like this certainly needs to fuck off:

The US has a 2.5 billion-pound surplus of meat. Let’s try to visualize that.

Are people even going to get to eat any of that?

 

[MightyTibberton]

They're going to try!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/articl...eterson-daughter-mikhaila-meat-carnivore-diet

 

[8ball]

Stuff like this certainly needs to fuck off:

The US has a 2.5 billion-pound surplus of meat. Let’s try to visualize that.

Are people even going to get to eat any of that?

Got talking to a guy at the pub about the former EU meat mountain. It was frozen and used for stuff like pies - a lot of the time people would be eating meat that was decades old. He still works in the industry.

 

[MightyTibberton]

I wonder if our post-Brexit US trade deal is going to include a huge number of pie clauses?

 

[8ball]

They're going to try!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/articl...eterson-daughter-mikhaila-meat-carnivore-diet

Well, two of them.

edit: Although they're both Canadian, so it might not be the same mountain.

 

[8ball]

I wonder if our post-Brexit US trade deal is going to include a huge number of pie clauses?

So long as it's a proper pie and not some kind of casserole-pastry-lid abomination, I could possibly get on board with that.

 

[MightyTibberton]

"We shall export our fine pastry - and let no-one doubt my commitment to the UK pastry industry, the finest in the world - to the United States and it will be returned to us as Meat Product 311/22/346 Victory Pies that can be shipped straight to the Globalist front lines outside Brussels," said Minister of Brexit Forever, Dr Field Marshall Liam Fox.

 

[NoXion]

Got talking to a guy at the pub about the former EU meat mountain. It was frozen and used for stuff like pies - a lot of the time people would be eating meat that was decades old. He still works in the industry.

Capitalist "efficiency" at work. Production for profit leads to massive amounts of food being squirrelled away when oops it turns out that it can't be profitably sold in those quantities. An inferior product may be salvaged later to cover losses. Praise be to the Invisible Hand, eh?

 

[8ball]

Capitalist "efficiency" at work. Production for profit leads to massive amounts of food being squirrelled away when oops it turns out that it can't be profitably sold in those quantities. An inferior product may be salvaged later to cover losses. Praise be to the Invisible Hand, eh?

I'm not really familiar with the market principles that would lead to it being squirreled away given storage costs etc. Seems to me you would need socialised State-backed measures to aid that.

 

[NoXion]

I'm not really familiar with the market principles that would lead to it being squirreled away given storage costs etc. Seems to me you would need socialised State-backed measures to aid that.

The bourgeois state and capital typically go hand in hand. In the US they are especially cosy with each other. In spite of the hypocritical rhetoric I was mocking.

 

[8ball]

The bourgeois state and capital typically go hand in hand. In the US they are especially cosy with each other. In spite of the hypocritical rhetoric I was mocking.

Well, yeah, that was kind of my point.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

The bourgeois state and capital typically go hand in hand. In the US they are especially cosy with each other. In spite of the hypocritical rhetoric I was mocking.

Socialize costs. Privatize profits.

 

[8ball]

I wonder whether this "carnivore diet" thing is linked to the meat industry in any way (it seems unlikely for a number of reasons), or is reacting to veganism's increased media presence on some level. Or just part of the old media fad diet cycle...

 

[danny la rouge]

This wouldn’t surprise me. I sometimes get people at parties telling me that they’re “virtually vegetarian”. They then go on to list all the meat they eat. “Well, we do have a fry up on a Sunday. And a roast. And Dave likes chops. But only once a week. And if I’m having curry I like lamb”. Etc.

 

[cybershot]

Ffs!





Is it really that common a mistake? (Pescatarians obviously don’t count they know what they are doing) Or are people actually that stupid. And this is the shadow Secretary of State for EDUCATION!

 

[danny la rouge]

 

[littlebabyjesus]

'Fish aren't animals'

I've heard that, more than once, from adult humans trying to justify eating fish as part of being 'vegetarian'.

 

[danny la rouge]

Fish aren't animals'

https://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/is-a-bird-an-animal.295289/#post-11285388

 

[editor]

View attachment 162124

This wouldn’t surprise me. I sometimes get people at parties telling me that they’re “virtually vegetarian”. They then go on to list all the meat they eat. “Well, we do have a fry up on a Sunday. And a roast. And Dave likes chops. But only once a week. And if I’m having curry I like lamb”. Etc.

Does he back up this pro-meat PR offensive with any actual figures?

 

[danny la rouge]

Does he back up this pro-meat PR offensive with any actual figures?

No. Not in the piece I read. (Telegraph).