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by johnisgood 2487 days ago
> It is not difficult to connect the dots between rapid clicks-and-likes driven social media to the burning of Amazon forests.

Would you please elaborate on how "rapid clicks-and-likes driven social media" leads to the burning of Amazon forests?

I would also like to add these two related paragraphs:

> According to various reports on the subject (Greenpeace, FAO), livestock farming, including soya production, is responsible for about 70 to 80% of deforestation in the Amazon region. The development of intensive livestock production, combined with the increasing consumption of meat in developed countries, is thus the main cause of Amazonian deforestation.

> According to the WWF, It’s estimated that deforestation caused by livestock is responsible for the discharge of 3.4% of current global emissions of carbon to the atmosphere every year. That’s why the late 2018 IPCC report stood out that reducing meat consumption by 90% is the single biggest way to reduce global warming. Some studies also show that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by over 75%. In this way, reducing your meat consumption is also a big step to stop not only deforestation but also global warming on a larger scale.

Source: https://e-csr.net/definitions/what-is-definition-deforestati...

2 comments

I'd rather not redirect this discussion to Amazon forests. It was just one example... and I probably could have picked a better one.

The dot chain I see is social media -> stronger tribalism, social bubbles -> strengthening of nationalist movements, particularly far right -> electing Jair Bolsonaro -> rejection of foreign aid, support of these farming techniques.

Perhaps I'm wrong in my reasoning... but I'd much prefer to be wrong about this particular example and right about the general trend.

So we could reduce something that accounts for just 3.4% of global emissions by 75%?
I'm pretty sure that's wrong or the wrong data point. Livestock is the largest source of methane emissions and methane plays a larger role in climate change.

Not to mention that eating less meat is just karmically/ethically way more optimal, regardless of what the data says.

Note that there is a difference between methane and carbon. My quote only mentioned carbon.

> The most important greenhouse gases from animal agriculture are methane and nitrous oxide. Methane, mainly produced by enteric fermentation and manure storage, is a gas which has an effect on global warming 28 times higher than carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide, arising from manure storage and the use of organic/inorganic fertilizers, is a molecule with a global warming potential 265 times higher than carbon dioxide.

Additionally, he missed the fact that deforestation has other negative impacts besides contributing to climate change.

All things considered, meat consumption is pretty much the main reason for the destruction of Amazonian rainforest, using up incredible amounts of land, food, and water, as well as producing a statistically significant amount of pollution. Then there is desertification, MDR pathogens, and so forth.

If you want the total percentages per sector: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

Some more reading (website is currently down for me but it was available a couple of minutes ago): https://www.fao.org/gleam/results/en/