You know when you hear something so mindblogglingly stupid..Follow

...That you can't quite believe you actually heard it correctly?

Well i did hear correctly and it was still sounded stupid. But i like to think i have an open mind so i brought it to this most open minded of forums to see if anyone could answer a few of my questions generated by what i heard and hell throw your opinions in aswell cos i love you all so very much.

Ok to Business: Former beatle, all round good egg and snappy dresser Sir Paul "I'm still worth millions" McCartney has said that we should all stop eating meat to stop global warming.

The arguement goes that animal farming is producing between 10 and 15% of the greenhouse gases produced by industrialised countries. So if everyone stopped eating meat as part of thier diet we could reduce the greenhouse gas output by 10-15%.

Now i have a few small logistical questions before i move on to my opinion.

1. What is the preposal for the animals, are they to be slaughtered or left roaming around, because one option is the forced extinction of entire species and the other accompleshes nothing since said animals are still wandering around farting and such like.

2. Where do you draw the line? In africa Oxon are part of the culture and ecconomy of the tribes, or do you just propose to put the farmers out of business because they are dirty stinking capitalists?

3. Why stop at farming? Dogs fart something terrible and they must be adding to the problem, so do we ban any pets that add to the greenhouse gases aswell? What about the herds of wildebeast, Impala, Yak, they have no purpose at all, at least Cows feed us, thats useful. Can't we get rid of all the pointless animals first? lets start with Wombats.

4. should we maybe just maybe look at industry before we start looking at agriculture? maybe plant some more trees? What if we forced farmers to plant 10 trees around every field? that would ofset at least some of the green house gases long term right?

Opinion:

I really LOATHE when people try and deflect a debate away from the real isses/possible solutions by offering rampant stupidity as a viable alternitive.

Global warming is a complex problem, So complex that so far they haven't been able to detect much, if any global increase in temprature despite the early models showing massive increases by now.

Simple solutions put forward by celebretity's for organisations with Agenda's that are nothing to do with the issue they are talking about are both counter productive to the efforts made by sencible people and lead skeptics to believe that the talk of Global warming is nothing more than a smokescreen to enable govenments to bring in unpopular laws.

I do believe there is a problem but me not eating chicken Szechuan noodles tonight isn't going to solve it!

Excuse the Gbajieque length, and please Comment, ignore, derail, CJ, deride whatever you want to do.

I'm a bit torn on this issue. I love meat, I really do.

But the industry is really inefficient and polluting. Not only that, but it also uses tremendous amounts of water, which will soon be a precious commodity, even for us.

The problem isn't really with traditional animal husbandry (as you get in Africa), but intensive meat-farming.

Paulsol will explain it much better than I, but there's probably something to be done there.

Fundamentally, our way of life is not sustainable if the whole planet does it. While 3/4 is stuck in poverty it doesn't matter, but when they start to catch up, then we're in a bit of a conendrum. It's hard telling China/India "follow what I say, not what I do". Well, it's easy telling it, but they probably won't agree.

Well, the "food crisis" and the problem with the meat-industry are two different things.

And yeah, you can have sustainable traditional "organic" meat, but it will cost a hell of a lot more. I don't mind too much, but that's not the issue here. The isue is with the current state of the meat industry, which relies on intensive grazing and rearing.



It's not the "population level" that matters, it's their way of life. And that's entirely tied to the meat-industry problem.

Obviously I'm not advocating that we all stop eating meat. I'm french for fUck's sake. But I do agree that the industry is not sustainable, neither in terms of global warming, or in terms of ressources used to mantain it, and even less so if it keeps in increasing it as is the case currently.

By this logic we should cut down all the trees aswell.

http://www.carbon-info.org/carbonnews_028.htm

Not just trees, plants aswell.

So we can't eat meat, and we can't eat plants?

Better yet, lets stop using electricity aswell.

First thing I thought of.


As for the meat industry, I don't think 15% of greenhouse gas emissions is substantial enough to warrant a widescale change of human omnivorism.

And isn't it mostly cattle that's the culprit? Nothing to do with pigs, chicken or certainly fish?

Nonsense. We just need to step up development of growing meat in vats.

Mmm... delicious vat-meat.

I don't find his comments stupid. A little tunnel-visioned, sure, because vegetarianism is a cause he's espoused for most of his adult life. Doesn't mean he lacks a point, though.

Meat production costs something like 15 times more energy than the equivalent human-edible grain production. Issues of deforestation aside, that's a lot of energy loss.



Edited, Apr 22nd 2008 12:57pm by Samira

I've got to be honest here, I'm not going to stop eating meat. One of you is going to have stop eating it for the both of us. Many thanks in advance.

Since we're on the subject of unrelated stories about random people:

Last Sunday I was taking a shower, when I heard shouts and screams from what sounded like a teenager. It went on, and on, and on. I got out of the shower, opened the bathroom window, and there was a woman, early 30's, sitting on her window ledge. She was shouting "It's too late now, you should've come before, it's too late..." I kept watching for a bit, and thought I might even make a thread here about it, a kind of "will she jump or not?" live and direct from my bathroom window, with regular updates like CNN during election time.

And then it hit me. I hate this. I hate people who are fascinated by other's misery, I hate people who slow down to look at accidents, I can't stand society's fascination for things which are completely irrelevant and yet tragic. The daily horrors of humanities. It always pisses me off, cos it's not "news", it's become a form of morbid entertainment, and there is far too much of it around.

So I closed the bathroom window, glad I hadn't seen her jump. I decided to do the right thing: Roll a joint and smoke it on my balcony. I roll the joint, take my lighter, step on my balcony, and lo and behold: there were 2 police vans, 3 police cars, 2 firetrucks, 1 ambulance, between 10-15 10 policemen, all gathered right there under_my_freaking_balcony. They had cordonned off the street, and were all waiting, talking, negotiating.

No joints for Red, then.

Anyway, long story short, the screams and shouts lasted for 5-6 hours, until at around 6 in the evening she decided to come down, and they took her away.

Finally, I went on my balcony and had a joint.

MotherfUckers.

I can only speak for Americans, but that's true regardless of any environmental impacts. Americans consume way more meat than they need on average. You don't need more than a few ounces a day, roughly the size of your palm-- that's plenty for your nutritional needs (unless perhaps you're heavily bodybuilding), and it should usually be fish or something lean like chicken. Beef intake is way too high and contributes considerably to our obesity epidemic.

I can't even recall the last time I had beef personally. It was probably beef vegetable stew.

To be totally frank, I think the environmental thing is mostly irrelevant. I can't imagine many people would be socially responsible enough to avoid meat for environmental reasons (or could be persuaded to) without having enough personal responsibility to avoid excessive meat consumption for health reasons.

Course I could be wrong.

Answer the question, what would you do with all the animals that will not be eaten? For this you would have to answer for every cow, sheep, pig and chicken bred for food production including breeders.Never been to Africa have we? I lived there for 6 years and you are talking ********* All Cows produce greenhouse gases, not just factory ones, including milk production cows. Stop derailing the discussion into something about factory Vs non factory farming, this is about a claim that everyone should stop eating meat to slow production of green house gases.

I agree with you about factory farming but you are not answering any of my questions and you are going off on random tangents about issues that have NOTHING to do with global warming.Sure but what does that have to do with global warming? Again nothing at all.

I have no complaint with people campaining for factory farming and a reduction in meat in diets on health and sustainability grounds.

I do have a problem with people claiming that Cows are somehow the main cause of greenhouse gas emition increases when 200 years ago Cape Buffalo and Southern African Wildebeast populations both numbered billions and now number less than a million between them, you can also throw in North American Buffalo into that.It's the same world where we had grain mountains so huge that it couldn't be stored properly but Africa was starving.

It's the same world where Govenments pay to leave fields fallow that could be used.

Its the same world where Africa govenments have paid for weapons instead of food and infrastructure for decades knowing that the western charities, banks and Govenments would bail them out.

None of that makes sence either but it's far worse imho than using crops to feed animals.

Wow! So much anger!!





You could have a massive feast! And then turn all that land that used for supporting the meat industry into parks and forests, so that fat fucking meat eaters could run about a bit, and hopefuly get enough exercise to stave off the next heart attack.




Yes i'v been to Africa.

Link

********* Yeah its bollox if you are able to afford to eat meat every day.




I never said everyone should stop eating meat. I think everyone should stop eating it as tho its a infinite resource that has no impact on the environment. If you feel there is no co-relation between industry (be it agricultural industry or the chemical industry for example) and the environment, then thats fine. Hopelessly wrong tho. Factory farming exists to supply people with meat products. If people ate less, or better still, no meat, then factory farming would be unnecessary.

The theory that says that Man-made greenhouse gases are what is causing global warming, is a debate for a separate thread IMO. I remain completely unconvinced that man has anything other than a very minor effect on the climate.

I do believe tho, the unfettered use of anti-biotics, genetic engineering, pesticide production and the by-products of the meat industry, such as nitrogen run-off into waterways, to be a far greater environmental issue than some as yet unproven connection to climate change.



In this we agree. As I said, McCartneys a prat.




I agree again. The problem with hunger in the world has nothing to do with supply. But everything to do with distribution.

In my first reply i was specifically trying to answer the 4 questions that you posed. I'm not seriously expecting anyone to stop eating meat because of what my opinions on the subject are.

But for you to get all stroppy because I rightly pointed out that 21st century farming methods are an industry, and carry with it all the negative impacts of any major industry, pollution, negative health effects, and profit over quality modes of operating, is pretty disingenuous of you.

I personnaly don't eat meat because I don't like perpetuating an industry that I see as harmful to my health, harmful to the health of the planet and not least because it is inevitably cruel and demeaning to the animals.

The only reason I hear from people as to why they continue to eat meat, is because "it tastes nice".

IMO the manifold negatives of a regular meat diet far outweigh that selfish and blinkered statement.

I've found the solution to Global Warming, Mandatory Air Conditioners and Febreze for every home!!!

Edited, Apr 22nd 2008 10:38pm by Yodabunny