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

That means that cows are responsible for 2% of global warming.

Sounds about right, and it could probably safely be cut by resorting to pork, farmed game animals (there's a ************* plague of deer out here already, and I think you can probably raise about twice the hanging weight of venison per acre vs. beef) and the like.

Mostly I just want to see venison readily available in stores for $2/lb.

Until people become aware that the factory farmed meat industry is harmful to the planet because of its methods, the animals because of its cruelty, and the consumer because of its inferior end-product, then it will continue.

As long as the 'industry' continues to tell people that its meat is cheap and healthy to eat AND continue to sell it at such artificially low prices, then people will still expect to consume it every day. Sometimes 2 or 3 times a day.

The impact on the planets resources is MASSIVE!

If you dont want to believe that, fine. But even half an hour of research should do to begin to make you question that belief.

Water resources. Effluent run-off. Fertilizer run-off into waterways. Massive land clearance. Uninhibited use of anti-biotics and hormones. (You reckon they all somehow dissapear from the animal when its killed????) Reduction in bio-diversity. And yes , perhaps even some effect on the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Meat might be cheap to buy today. In the same way that you can buy that cheap tat made out of plastic from China today. But, really, is anyone here on this board really think that any of that 'cheap' stuff is actually cheap?

Or are we just busily using up our resources in an incredibly careless and short-sighted manner?

Its up to you.

I try as hard as I can to do the right thing.

I re-cycle everything. I keep chickens to do my composting. I heat my water with the sun. I don't buy stuff from China, just because its cheap. I buy it from a local source if I can. i make a lot of stuff around the house, rather than buying new cheap stuff from overseas. i try to only eat locally produced in- season fruit and veggies. And i grow as much as i can be ***** to.

Sure, I drive. but until someone invents a car that works as well as the one i've got now in a less environmentally harmful way, then I'm stuck with it. Meat? I havn't eaten it in 20 years. So I guess it isn't actually essential to my healthy and active life.

And I dont do any of this stuff 'cos i'm worried that the ice-caps are melting. I do it because i believe that respecting the planet that i live on and the people who are going to want to live on it 100 or 1000 years from now, is the 'right' thing to do.

Eat your cheap meat. Buy your plastic stuff from China. Get your mahogany furniture imported from an indonesian rainforest. But be aware that it might be cheap for you today. But someone somewhere is going to have to pay for it.

If not today. Tommorrow.



Edited, Apr 24th 2008 5:06am by paulsol

Did anyone tell Paul that if we stopped killing animals for food then there would be an enormous amount of animal flatuence which is just as bad? On top of that they would reproduce at an alarming rate which would cause over population. I am all for protecting animals rights but get real, we are also part of the food chain. You know why you don't see penguins speaking out against sharks? Because they can't flippin talk... If Paul wants to help the world tell him to stop doing **** like marrying one legged gold diggers just to get on TV and still be seen.

I'm afraid you seemed to miss my point. I was simply stating that compared to the nutritional reasons why one should cut down on meat consumption, the environmental reasons seem fairly irrelevant.




Also missing the point, for presumably related reasons.

Look, if someone isn't prepared to reduce meat intake for the reason that it will significantly improve their personal health, what would make one think that they are going to be socially responsible enough to reduce meat intake for a very marginal environmental difference? If personal health won't motivate someone, what makes you think a tiny bit of everyone else's health will?

Relate it to your smoking example. Smoking almost certainly also contributes to global warming, albeit on a very small scale. It causes air pollution. Do you think most people quit smoking for their own health, or out of environmental concern?

It's mostly irrelevant because if you're going to try to encourage someone to reduce their meat intake, they'll probably find the nutritional reasons far more compelling. I'm just saying that I haven't met many people who are environmentally friendly but don't particularly care about their own health. By not many, I mean zero. I wouldn't expect to either. It pretty well flies in the face of Maslow's and simple logic of human behavior.

Also, constructive criticism. Just saying "false" really does nothing for your argument.

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.

Logical fallacy that simplifies the problem and only offers two solutions neither of which is viable in an attempt to discredit the point. Kudos on pulling a Gbaji. Ruminants are the source of 90% of all biological methane (read;farts). Methane is the second leading greenhouse gas. The problem is once again compounded by the destruction of rainforest for grazing grounds which is also a serious cause of both greenhouse emissions and a myriad of other things.

There has been talk of using antiobiotics to cut the emissions but that is only viable in most 1st world countries and would cut into profit.


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?

Almost a slipper slope, neh? One can say that non intensive production used by tribesman for hundreds if not thousands of years is a non issue. It is the mass production, or production at the expense of carb sinks like the rain forest that are an issue.\

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.

Facetious. It is a word I drop when I want to look smart, its kind of awesome.

Well if flatulence is goign to be banned then I'd be one of the first to go. I pass out more methane by weight than food I put in.

"After years of almost eating no meat..." --Flea

There's a joke in there somewhere.

Totem

Except for that one night, when she passed out drunk on the couch and Joph took advantage of her gaping, snoring mouth...

Other than that, no meat.

First, global warming really refers to human influenced climate change, which is not predicted to be uniform warming in all places. The science is pretty consistent on the basic trends, although details vary. It is based on computer models, not the most exact way to do anything. Even if the science turns out to be wrong, the right thing to do is follow the advice anyhow, as that is acting on the best data we have at the moment.

Pretending it doesn't exist is insane. I'm not going to detail exactly how it works that information is widely available. Anyone who can ignore all that coverage simply isn't going to listen to an anonymous internet forum.

The actual rise in food prices is a result of increased demand generated by the increase in wealth around the world. Likely this will continue for some time as there are a lot of people yet to come out of poverty, and I doubt there is a great deal of additional land to farm of the quality we use now (and other reasons, like the subsidies which have held food prices quite low for some time are unlikely to scale up, in fact it is likely they will scale back - since this was mostly in rich countries, the poor will do better, eat more meat, etc).

Trying to convince people to convert to no meat seems like wasted effort. Perhaps trying to get them to eat just a bit less, or drive slightly more efficient cars, or use more efficient electrical devices, or even just buy more insulation for their homes would seem vastly more likely to work.

Your version of the 'real world'?

Umm..No thanx.

And yet life expectancy keeps on rising.

Ok? Are you arguing this is the result of people's personal ability to forecast their health risks from environmental factors as opposed to regulation of those factors by government?

I just think it's ironic that we are consistantly told this or that is bad for us while life expectancy is rising and has been for decades.

It's been a while sine i was in biology class but i think i remember that the natural life expectancy for a human being given a normal heart beat is about 45. Slower heartbeat = longer life if yuou look at it purely from a animal perspective, so a life expectancy of 65/70 is pretty good.

No kidding! Lol.