Huge reduction in meat-eating ‘essential’ to avoid climate breakdown

[GreatGutsby]

I think everyone should use public transport and nobody should have a car

 

[8ball]

I think everyone should use public transport and nobody should have a car

I think people should stop moving.

 

[nuffsaid]

I think everyone should use public transport and nobody should have a car

Yeah that's fine when your home is in a location where you have that choice. I'm not talking about rural areas, in the home counties there's loads of developments 2, 3, 4 bed houses being built and not a bus stop in sight, commuters drive to train stations to then go to work.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

I'm coming round to thinking that the past fifty years or so may turn out to have been some increasingly weird aberration at the end of which people were able to do things like have honeymoons in China and cars got bigger and bigger and people covered half their plates with meat.

I remember my first Berni meal: that 7oz steak was fucking enormous, and not just because I was 12. When we sat down to a chicken dinner, eight people shared a chicken that would do for two these days; obviously it was padded out with spuds, veg, bread sauce and so on.

As a side note it's interesting that in Spanish what English calls 'chicken with rice' is 'rice with chicken'.

It's indicative of an attitude that wouldn't be that hard to get back to. Which may be forced on us.

The same applies to grasping the sheer unnecessary size of modern Fiat 500s and the like. Or the dawning realisation that it's possible to live a full life without travelling halfway round the world.

This is not an exercise in pointless nostalgia, lots of the past was horrible and drear, but it may be that 'after' when it comes is going to a bit like 'before' in some ways.

 

[nuffsaid]

The same applies to grasping the sheer unnecessary size of modern Fiat 500s and the like.

Never mind Fiat 500s, what about every flippin' 4x4, there's really no need for these monstrosities in a city, or the suburbs. You go to any public car park and the spaces marked out are increasingly too small for the ridiculous size of cars that get made these days.

There was a protest group in France called something like 'Degonflers' - (deflaters) that would deflate the tyres of peoples 4x4s in their driveways. Apparently just letting the tyres down in France is not seen as causing criminal damage, or it wasn't at the time. A good idea I thought.

 

[yield]

Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals
17/07/17

And a study released on Thursday claimed it had figured out the single best way to fight climate change: I could swear off ever having a child.

These pervasive exhortations to individual action — in corporate ads, school textbooks, and the campaigns of mainstream environmental groups, especially in the west — seem as natural as the air we breathe. But we could hardly be worse-served.

While we busy ourselves greening our personal lives, fossil fuel corporations are rendering these efforts irrelevant. The breakdown of carbon emissions since 1988? A hundred companies alone are responsible for an astonishing 71%. You tinker with those pens or that panel; they go on torching the planet.

The freedom of these corporations to pollute – and the fixation on a feeble lifestyle response – is no accident. It is the result of an ideological war, waged over the last 40 years, against the possibility of collective action. Devastatingly successful, it is not too late to reverse it.

First article is from last year but is doing the rounds again

It’s Already Here
10/10/18

What’s more is that the very idea embodied in the Paris Agreement—a transition to sustainability within existing political, economic, and social systems—is simply not plausible. To use the language of the administration’s study, such efforts are not currently “economically practicable.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released just a week after the administration study emphatically underlines this point: at every turn, mitigation and adaptation efforts are “limited by economic, financial, human capacity and institutional constraints.”

Yet the period of world history since the 1980s has been the most extractive in human history. Nearly 56 percent of all atmospheric carbon since the dawn of the industrial revolution has been produced in these past four decades.

The crisis of the Anthropocene is not a story about individual consumption choices, or one about technology per se. It is about a system that requires infinite accumulation in a finite world, about fundamental-system preservation at the highest costs possible.

We should think less about how “we” are destroying “the world” and more about how the particular set of conditions that has accommodated more than seven billion people thus far is being profoundly reorganized and destabilized by the need to maintain high profits, long past the point where economically they should have collapsed.

The Emergency Brake
09/10/18

Although the Trump Administration, it was recently revealed, concluded that it’s too late to do anything to avert catastrophic climate change (and, so, why even bother), the UN just announced that there’s still time to avoid mass death and suffering – if there is “massive, immediate transformation.” But how would such an immediate transformation unfold?

This is where the messianic notion of the emergency brake enters the picture – rupturing history and releasing its utopian essence. As Benjamin famously put it in his essay’s paralipomena; “Marx said that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps things are very different. It may be that revolutions are the act by which the human race traveling in the train applies the emergency brake.”

 

[SpookyFrank]

My response to this is 'OK'. I've got no beef with reducing my meat intake (see what I did there?). As long as I don't have to give it up completely. Is fish included in this?

There's a lot of people who will say fuck off though.

Any meaningful reduction is good. People who tell you that you have to be 100% vegan or nothing understand neither how numbers work nor how communicating with human people works.

 

[crossthebreeze]

Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals
17/07/17


First article is from last year but is doing the rounds again

It’s Already Here
10/10/18




The Emergency Brake
09/10/18

Yes this - any changes need to be systemic - and really need to include massively changing industrial processes and curbing consumption by the capitalist class and probably outright revolution. Guilting low and moderate or income people into changing their diet without even referencing shops, supply systems, and policy is bullshit.

 

[lazythursday]

I really don't think these things are either systemic change from above or collective campaigning or individual action. It has to be all of them. Greater availability of plant based options are only taking off because there is demand. We might only start seeing the repurposing of agriculture away from meat once demand starts to fall. I don't think we should either pretend that this can be solved through guilt tripping people or that everyone should sit back and wait for capitalism to collapse / radically change itself.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Yes this - any changes need to be systemic - and really need to include massively changing industrial processes and curbing consumption by the capitalist class and probably outright revolution. Guilting low and moderate or income people into changing their diet without even referencing shops, supply systems, and policy is bullshit.

I read an article recently that said that 50% of the emissions caused by "lifestyle" choices are caused by 10% of the population, and of those, the people in the top 1-2% produce half of that. The richest in America emits 10 times the amount of the poorest. Tasking low income people to make changes isn't where you're going to be able to reduce emissions in an efficient way anyway. Would it hurt if everyone became vegan? Absolutely not. It would help "some", but the big reductions are all out of the hands of the poor.

 

[ferrelhadley]

You're quite welcome to dip your toe in if you have better ideas.

I have in the past put a lot of time to trying. It is a complete and utter waste of time here.

 

[Baronage-Phase]

I may be delusional but I hope science finds a way to sort this out because if we have to rely on humans stopping doing things like driving, flying and eating meat...I don't think we will manage to fix this.

I'm down to eating any kind of meat only once a week for one meal. (Ot does happen to sonetimes be a FIB though)
And I am not so good at cutting back on cheese. It is my favourite food.

 

[8ball]

I read an article recently that said that 50% of the emissions caused by "lifestyle" choices are caused by 10% of the population, and of those, the people in the top 1-2% produce half of that. The richest in America emits 10 times the amount of the poorest. Tasking low income people to make changes isn't where you're going to be able to reduce emissions in an efficient way anyway. Would it hurt if everyone became vegan? Absolutely not. It would help "some", but the big reductions are all out of the hands of the poor.

Inequality, the race for endless "economic growth" and what follow from them are imo the two biggest immediate existential threats we face.

 

[NoXion]

Looking forward (not really) to the bourgeois state cynically adopting neo-Malthusian policies and issuing reproductive licences to the "deserving" as a means of social control. They'll have "the science" to back them up (and you can't argue with "the facts" now can you?), and all sorts of evil cunts and useful idiots will defend that shit. Pentti Linkola will be proud, assuming he's still around by the time that happens.

 

[lazythursday]

I may be delusional but I hope science finds a way to sort this out because if we have to rely on humans stopping doing things like driving, flying and eating meat...I don't think we will manage to fix this.

I'm down to eating any kind of meat only once a week for one meal. (Ot does happen to sonetimes be a FIB though)
And I am not so good at cutting back on cheese. It is my favourite food.

It probably is delusional. Sorting it out is likely going to require fancy science and humans eating less meat, flying less etc.

And (with political will) I don't see that it's that hard to see how it would be achieved. There are only really two options - either some form of carbon rationing so we can each choose whether to spend it on a bit of bacon or towards a flight etc, or through carbon pricing so the vast majority of us just can't afford those things any more and the very rich carry on regardless. Or some mix of the two.

For meat specifically it's not just the carbon impact that is likely to see the price go way higher - it's the associated pressures on land and water use. We won't be relying on humans choosing to eat less, they will just be forced to through price unless collectively people push for a fairer system.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I have in the past put a lot of time to trying. It is a complete and utter waste of time here.

I've always thought you were a worthwhile poster. While I don't always agree with you, I usually find what you post something to consider.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Ah, here's one of the articles I recall reading that reports that it's a relatively small number of people/companies that emit most of the greenhouse gases. Nothing most people do to cut back won't make a difference on an individual level if this isn't dealt with. To deal with it, it has to be reined in at a national and international level. Or, at least, I know I don't have much power to change it (doesn't keep me from trying, I guess):

Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to a new report.

The Carbon Majors Report (pdf) “pinpoints how a relatively small set of fossil fuel producers may hold the key to systemic change on carbon emissions,” says Pedro Faria, technical director at environmental non-profit CDP, which published the report in collaboration with the Climate Accountability Institute....

The report found that more than half of global industrial emissions since 1988 – the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established – can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned entities. The scale of historical emissions associated with these fossil fuel producers is large enough to have contributed significantly to climate change, according to the report.

Here's the bit that shows how its only a handful of corporations that do most of the damage:

ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are identified as among the highest emitting investor-owned companies since 1988. If fossil fuels continue to be extracted at the same rate over the next 28 years as they were between 1988 and 2017, says the report, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 4C by the end of the century. This is likely to have catastrophic consequences including substantial species extinction and global food scarcity risks.

Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says

<edited to add>
I will say that one way that individuals contribute to emissions is buying into the consumerist meme that's pervaded society for the last few generations. We're misordered our priorities toward valuing people according to their wealth and/or what they own. I've bought into this a couple of times myself when I was younger. When I was able to buy my first vehicle all on my own, I thought I was hot shit tooling around in my little red pickup truck.

 

[lazythursday]

Ah, here's one of the articles I recall reading that reports that it's a relatively small number of people/companies that emit most of the greenhouse gases. Nothing most people do to cut back won't make a difference on an individual level if this isn't dealt with. To deal with it, it has to be reined in at a national and international level. Or, at least, I know I don't have much power to change it (doesn't keep me from trying, I guess):



Here's the bit that shows how its only a handful of corporations that do most of the damage:



Just 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions, study says

I think this seems a bit simplistic. It may be the oil companies that have extracted the oil but it's a much, much wider responsibility for actually using that oil in all manner of industrial processes.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I think this seems a bit simplistic. It may be the oil companies that have extracted the oil but it's a much, much wider responsibility for actually using that oil in all manner of industrial processes.

Yes, it is simplistic, but I think the idea was to boil down the problem in a way that most people will understand. A lot of science reporting tends to dumb down the science so much that it ceases to mean what the original report meant. Overall, the Guardian has been ahead of most news sources on this topic.

 

[Humberto]

So when it starts, who will be in charge of it, Donald Trump, Clinton? Because the rich will still have the power, and they will control what happens. Who gets to live where? Donald Trump for instance, is just embarrassing. Why? He doesn't come from the world of you and me. He doesn't care, and sees that as a virtue.

So, lets make it a crime. Large producer of Co2; fined, shut down. Why not? Your salary, shareholder dividends is of no concern. Get them. Shut the worst offenders down. Its not even radical, its desperate.

Tell me its too late because of the system. It isn't. Fuck you. Fuck your money and social status. What is an economy? A dozen corporations owning shit, surpassing people's interests? Ruining the world?

Its a clear case of left against right. Win or lose. They should be begging forgiveness. I KNOW people aren't stupid. Fuck off mega corporations and all their media and monetary corrupters.

The whole economy is a joke. Which, despite the evil scale of inequality would burble on if it wasn't for the fact that your kids are being robbed. Their kids too. Now I know it has been established that this is a systemic problem, but the answer is every one, take from your ancestor, give to your progeny.

 

[Yossarian]

Enormous report on the need for urgent action across the board to cut CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions and this is the best this place can come up with.

IPCC say 12 years to limit climate change

 

[yield]

Ah, here's one of the articles I recall reading that reports that it's a relatively small number of people/companies that emit most of the greenhouse gases.

It’s Already Here 11/10/18

The Trump memo rightly implies that there are “winners” and “losers” in what the natural scientific literature ironically calls “business as usual.” The memo outlines a form of right-wing climate realism whose winners and losers are obvious. The evidence has been visible for some time in what might be called “detachable infrastructure” for the 1 percent (private transportation networks, drone-ports, luxury-survival architecture, and the like), and in tax policies that don’t seem concerned for the basic social reproduction of society.

The billionaires and lifeboatism.
Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand

 

[GreatGutsby]

I think people should stop moving.

I think they should move with the help of public transport

 

[GreatGutsby]

Yeah that's fine when your home is in a location where you have that choice. I'm not talking about rural areas, in the home counties there's loads of developments 2, 3, 4 bed houses being built and not a bus stop in sight, commuters drive to train stations to then go to work.

Yeah, that's why there needs to be a better public transport system.

 

[rich!]

It’s Already Here 11/10/18

The billionaires and lifeboatism.
Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand

That's one of the things that makes me tempted to spit on my hands, hoist the black flag, and so forth.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

It’s Already Here 11/10/18

The billionaires and lifeboatism.
Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand

Yes, I've noticed things like that too. We have a lot of old missile silos around and about and they're popular for just that purpose.

Surviving doomsday: Underground condos bring wealthy to Kansas

Also, if you look closely, you'll find that they're working on monetizing water. As water becomes scarcer and scarcer, anyone who "owns" the right to water, will be making a killing. I keep seeing what they're doing and think that at some point all of the rest of us are going to stop being a profit center and start being a liability. I wonder what will happen then?

 

[yield]

Yes, I've noticed things like that too. We have a lot of old missile silos around and about and they're popular for just that purpose.

Surviving doomsday: Underground condos bring wealthy to Kansas

Also, if you look closely, you'll find that they're working on monetizing water. As water becomes scarcer and scarcer, anyone who "owns" the right to water, will be making a killing.

Nestlé makes billions bottling water it pays nearly nothing for
21 September 2017

The company’s operation in Michigan reveals how it’s dominated the industry by going into economically depressed areas with lax water laws.

There are the usual costs of doing business, including transportation, infrastructure, and salaries. But Nestlé pays little for the product it bottles—sometimes a municipal rate and other times just a nominal extraction fee. In Michigan, it’s $200.

Billionaires are the leading cause of climate change
11/10/18

there is no "free market" incentive to prevent disaster. An economic environment where a company is only considered viable if it's constantly expanding and increasing its production can't be expected to pump its own brakes over something as trivial as pending global catastrophe. Instead, market logic dictates that rather than take the financial hit that comes with cutting profits, it's more reasonable to find a way to make money off the boiling ocean.

Nothing illustrates this phenomenon better than the burgeoning climate-change investment industry. According to Bloomberg, investors are looking to make money off of everything from revamped food production to hotels for people fleeing increasingly hurricane-ravaged areas. A top JP Morgan Asset investment strategist advised clients that sea-level rise was so inevitable that there was likely a lot of opportunity for investing in sea-wall construction.

I keep seeing what they're doing and think that at some point all of the rest of us are going to stop being a profit center and start being a liability. I wonder what will happen then?

"It's not a bug, it's a feature."

 

[Mr.Bishie]

Would you eat slaughter-free meat?

 

[not-bono-ever]

It’s enough to make you start thinking about anarchism again. It’s been a long time. I’m supposed to be getting more right wing with age

 

[Reno]

Would you eat slaughter-free meat?

I would. I’ve reduced the amount of meat I eat for purely ethical reasons but I like the taste of meat, which is why I haven’t gone totally veggie. If this becomes viable and doesn’t put more strain on the environment, that’s the only meat I would eat. There will be a lot of prejudice around “Frankenstein meat” like there is with any GMO but if you look into the science, genetically modified food isn’t harmful and has many benefits.

In the article people argue against it with emotive knee jerk reactions, like it’s traditional and meat should start out alive and with four legs. Animal welfare concerns are exactly the problem I have with meat, apart from the strain on the environment. I’d much rather my bacon comes from cell cultures than from a pig, shot up with antibiotics, who spends its short life in a cramped pen.