Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by j-pb 1253 days ago
If you care about environmentalism then you should resonate with the fact that 68% of the Amazon is Burnt for pastures for Cattle Farming. 28% is Burnt for Agriculture, of which 60% is for soybeans, of which 77% are shipped overseas for livestock feed.

That means at least 80% is burned for livestock or livestock feed. Since part of the palm oil and other plant produced is also used for livestock feed that number probably closer to 85%.

See:

https://www.fern.org/fileadmin/uploads/fern/Documents/Fern%2...

Your proposed solutions simply don't add up. Air Travel makes up 2.5-3.5% of all GHG emissions, Air Conditioning makes up 3.94%. Livestock makes up a whopping 18%.

So even banning all air travel and air conditioning, would only give you the same reduction on GHG emissions as eating 40% less dairy and meat.

So cutting meat and dairy from your diet is one of the easiest ways to cut your CO2 footprint massively. And it's actually just a minor inconvenience once you get used to plant based cooking, calling vegan cooking "dark ages" is ridiculously overdramatic, considering that e.g. indian food is often vegan and delicious.

See:

https://www.fao.org/3/i3437e/i3437e.pdf

https://academic.oup.com/af/article/1/1/19/4638592

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation

https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2022/nrel-shows-impact-of-co....

2 comments

If meat is causing people to burn down the amazon, then don't eat meat produced from the Amazon. There is a reason why for example here in Sweden the price of imported beef from Brazil tend to be about half the price of locally produced beef. Local producers has to follow regulations and laws that Brazil producers do not.

I will generally advise that people avoid buying any products from countries who has a history of burning rain forests to produce (or we can call it subsidize) cheap exports. Similar for cheap products created from child labors, military conflicts, sweatshops, or forced labor camps.

I think you missed the bit where 77% of farmland is used for feed export. Your beef might be produced locally, but the feed for that beef, was produced on deforrested land.
While I don't expect a lot of feed is exported to Sweden, the same rule applies. Don't buy products which use imports from Brazil if those imports are created from burning down the Amazon. It would be the same as buying a locally produced shirt created from cotton that child labor picked (which was a scandal with a major Swedish clothing company).
If we can't eat all the meat we want without destroying the planet, that tells me we need to manage down the population, not the standard of living. I'm not willing to give up one single shred of my standard of living to this braindead cram as many people as possible on the planet challenge.
Good news! We're on our way to do both, scale down the population AND the standard of living!