Have you seen the air in "easter-style societies"? I'm thinking of India and China as the two largest non-western populations in the world totaling a bit less than half. To take a Socratic turn: Do you think that air pollution comes from solar or renewable use? How has the increase in low cost labor and manufacturing affected consumption? Was this driven by governments or individuals and what is "non-western" about them or is everything western society now?
I'm all for making democracy better, but arguing for authoritarian solutions seems a path to war, destruction, and far greater ecological toll than all but the most extreme (lets bring on the end times) parties in western politics.
This is, at best, a weak reading of the comment. Of all the damaging and un-ecological features of Western society, in a comment about climate change, the personal automobile and the effects thereof should top everybody's list.
You've taken this as a chance to farm karma and dunk on China and authoritarianism, but reading GP's comment in good faith, per the HN guidelines, suggests we need better transit, more walkable cities, and the ability to move people and their purchases without taking 3 tons of steel along for the ride. Think smaller vehicles like South-East Asia (Thailand, Veitnam), available and reliable transit (Hong Kong), and the ability to get someplace without dying, on foot (Japan)
East vs West doesn't need to always boil down to "China and Chinese allies bad". Sometimes it can be a chance for reflection, and to see where we could do better.
I see all sorts of problems with the "western" (as if the Americas much less Europe and the US and/or Africa could be painted with that broad a brush) consumer economics led growth. I also see problems with "eastern" (as if China and India, Japan/Malaysia/Indonesia etc are all very similar) production led growth (eg mercantilism). The imbalances caused by the combination of these have led to have not only increased inequality (especially local), lowered efficiency (increased total waste and consumption), but also risk to actual global stability. Perhaps questions about this should not be posed?
Your statement, "reading GP's comment in good faith, per the HN guidelines, suggests we need better transit, more walkable cities, and the ability to move people and their purchases without taking 3 tons of steel along for the ride", is to be found nowhere in the one sentence comment I responded to.
I find the commentary on my reading of the comment and karma farming odd, the conflation of China with India strange, and the acceptance (glorification?) of authoritarianism bizarre. How are cars western when the people who build and drive them not? Why is that not also a personal decision? Why shouldn't authoritarianism be criticized? Please justify why only democracies should "reform" themselves with something greater than personal decisions/votes. Why do people in all parts of the world not have both responsibility and agency? Why is self aware analysis of commentary for me (and the author of the original post) and not for thee. We can do better.
We includes everyone in this conversation. Please reflect on that. Try going somewhere in HK new territories (outside the city), in Japan outside Tokyo, or in Shanghai from the Pudong airport. I have and without cars and maybe busses they are miserable. LAX sucks, and it's better.
> I see all sorts of problems with the "western" (as if the Americas much less Europe and the US and/or Africa could be painted with that broad a brush) consumer economics led growth.
Then, surely you agree with the OP, who wrote for reference “We could also choose to reform political and economic systems that make western-style societies so un-ecological”.
There was no comparison with anything other than what western society could be, no need to get the Chinese bogeyman.
I am European. I have no clue about how to fix India, for example, because I don’t know the country enough. I don’t really want to live there, or in China, because I think that for all their flaws, life in European democracies is rather good. I am still advocating for “reform[ing] political and economic systems that make western-style societies so un-ecological”. What is the problem in that?
Why assume nastiness when reading other people’s posts?
Last time I arrived in LAX I remember wanting to take public transport or walk down town. I actually tried to walk from LAX to find some public transport . You’re not actually “allowed”. There is like no path to follow. I ended up in a cab after waiting like an hour for a bus which was full when it arrived.
Perhaps you were on the wrong (upper) level? There are 24hr airport terminal shuttle busses that loop LAX and multiple ways to take public transport to DTLA (eg FlyAway busses at terminals 4-7, which might have been full?). You can also take a 10min Lyft to the Mariposa MetroC and take trains all the way to downtown. I've never heard of it being full.
Generally, Google Maps works in LA even if the distances are long and infrastructure lacking. The same cannot be said for the Shanghai Pudong Airport (PDX) and getting PuXi (anywhere in the main city west of the HangPu river). I mean, I like the maglev, but it's really the only "public transport" and since it was never completed, it doesn't go anywhere convenient. Everyone takes taxis everywhere.
The FlyAway bus terminal had a line like a like a mile long, and I waited there for about 45 minutes before anything showed up.
In the end I just got a Lyft down to Santa Monica for some lunch between flights (I had a 6 hour lay over). I was hoping to get on a fast train or something.
I think China - the world's biggest polluter - will take offense at being called a "western-style society"..
In fact Western societies are the only ones seeing the need for radical climate change prevention measures. The Asians, Indians, Latinos, Muslims, and Africans all happily fire up one coal power plant after the other.
They might, but that doesn't change the fact that Western-style societies basically exist in the East now. Cars, sky scrapers, western medicine, suits. The 1800s and 1900s basically converted us all to a Western colonies.
Talking about absolute emissions when comparing countries with massive population differences is disingenuous. China is bad, but Europe and the US are worse.
Shutting down discussions on what we should do here by saying that it’s bad over there is also disingenuous.
The entire concept of "personal carbon footprint" is a distraction. The behavior of individuals is both random and highly variable (e.g., cyclists vs coal-rollers), and even in the practically impossible situation every individual moves in the same good direction, is still dwarfed by the institutional and industrial scale
It is not only "also" reform political and economic systems, it actually the only path to a real solution.
(Of course, do what you can to incidentally optimize footprint when it's an A/B choice. But if it's two hours of extra work to avoid some personal carbon output/use, it's better to spend that two hours on some political or economic action)
Since “I’m in this photo”, I think it is mainly because she ch paths generally don’t seem effective. Changing the structure of society doesn’t happen very often, and tends to have undesired side-impacts.
I don't disagree, but the current trajectory might very well mean billions of people not having inhabitable land to live on (and the resulting mass migration, wars), so my risk tolerance for side effects of structural changes goes up.
But that’s not the point that was made. Reforming political and economical systems is not “telling the individual to change while allowing the companies to continue“, it’s pretty much the opposite.
Or we can accept that massive geoengineering is going to be required and start setting up the engineering and legislative frameworks to minimize the risks.
That's a bandage on a wound, when we could be treating the cause- too many of us use too many resources.
I'm writing from a friend's massive house heated to 21C/70F, and built to last what, thirty years at best? Of a lot of plastic materials, and stuffed with extra electronics and vehicles that also cost a considerable amount to make and dispose of. Most of this stuff is unnecessary junk.
Geoengineering, if we opt for it, absolutely must be coupled with toothy regulations governing resource harvesting and use. Don't pick the first berry you see, and don't pick the last.
We've kicked this can so far down the road that effecive reform on our habits will be worse than pulling teeth. It won't be easy, and will involve things like respecting a woman's right to govern her own body (I'm in the USA where this is increasingly a concern), respecting other animals' right to exist, treating meat as a rare luxury and maybe going so far as to stop farming meat and return to hunting, and getting our entertainment closer to the local seasonal patterns of life on Earth. Get my drift?
Another example: Electric cars are not a solution; using cars less is the way to go. It won't be an easy life, lesss reliant on technology, but it will be more meaningful.
I wish you luck on the pursuit of your ideal world, it is not mine. I won't conflate woman's rights (which I don't disagree with you) with environmental regulation.
I don't disagree in general, I believe we need to be more aware of our consumption but what you describe is an ideal that I believe most individuals in the world do not share. Its a world that would require massive depopulation, how are we going to get there?
> I won't conflate woman's rights (which I don't disagree with you) with environmental regulation
Without conflating them, you have to have noticed that the same people tend to be on the wrong side on both issues. Which is a shame, because there is nothing more conservative than safeguarding one’s environment and way of life, but it is what it is.
I don’t say that to be rude but an honest so what if the observation is true or not? Despite what the GP may think, that’s not the way to drive change for the environment.
Right. What geoengineering and how would you go about doing it in a time frame compatible with avoiding untold death and suffering in the meantime?
The consequences are here already, we cannot wait for something that might be working or not eventually, in a century. We cannot depend on hypothetical future technology that will save us all. And none of the possible solutions he have now can scale to the extent needed, by multiple orders of magnitude. None of the flashy carbon capture demonstrations hold up to scrutiny because fundamentally the problem is to extract ppm out of humongous volumes.
By all means, let’s keep researching and developing solutions (that’s what’s paying my bills for now, so I am not going to complain). But don’t assume that there will be a magical “solve it” button. There won’t.
will that be enough? what is the carbon footprint of an army in conflict? this seems much bigger even than the carbon and pollution produced by an economy at peace.
it might sound defeatist but humanity will not be able to change its programming for the purpose of reducing our carbon footprint.
I think at this point we kinda have to give up most if not all of the "weird" animals that exists today.
We can only pick them or the modern lifestyle. Let's think of what people will commonly refer to as a "best case scenario": World peace and equality.
Are you kidding me? Think of yourself, and the lifestyle that you have. And multiply that by 8 billion people. There's simply no way for the environment to survive that considering only a fraction of extremely lucky (relatively speaking) individual will ever read this comment.
Your lifestyle, right now, is not sustainable. That is not to say that corporations and lots of other big players are not responsible. But we have to be realistic.
Renewable energy if both cheap and abundant. Energy is not the problem. We just need to replace two centuries of fossil infrastructure in the next two decades
I'm going off the assumption that you're an average-ish suburban american, so if you're not that, then this doesn't count...
Cars use fossil fuels to run, and rare metals to be manufactured. These are inherently limited, thereby making our lifestyle unsustainable already (I say "our" because I am also an average-ish suburban american).
Phones, computers, tablets, etc. etc. use rare metals in production, and last a relatively short period (5 years if you're lucky, at least ime). Also unsustainable.
A lot of electricity is generated using fossil fuels.
Many foods (not just meat - a lot of fruits and vegetables too) are produced in an unsustainable way. This is not to say they cannot be produced sustainably, but commonly they are not. As an example, factory farms harvesting beef are terrible for the environment, the cows, and your health. Many vegetable farms use fertilizers that are bad for the environment, but arguably necessary to sustain enough food for the human population.
Luckily, you don't need to walk around naked and sleep in a cave. You can reduce your negative impact on the world and disconnect from a lot of the unsustainable practices and systems we have in modern society by buying your own property and living mostly off-grid (i.e., generating your own solar electricity, growing your own food, etc.). You don't even have to give up running water or the internet! The benefits snowball if you do this as a community, too.
While many aspects of this lifestyle are still unsustainable (for example, solar panels need rare metals), it is _much more_ sustainable than the de-facto standard of society we have today.
Now I'm not saying that you (or anyone) should feel morally obligated to do something like this - it's not a possibility for many people, for one reason or another. However, the more people who do it, the better!
> I'm going off the assumption that you're an average-ish suburban american, so if you're not that, then this doesn't count...
Well, I am not. That is not an "average" person at all, how many people in the world would that be, 5%?
> Cars use fossil fuels to run, and rare metals to be manufactured. These are inherently limited, thereby making our lifestyle unsustainable already
Ok, so we need to step-up recycling and run EVs or CO2-neutral fuels. That's not that far.
> Phones, computers, tablets, etc. etc. use rare metals in production, and last a relatively short period (5 years if you're lucky, at least ime). Also unsustainable.
I believe we're already pretty good at recycling these? It's also not that large amount, maybe 10 phones and 10 computers per person per lifetime?
> A lot of electricity is generated using fossil fuels.
That's not a lifestyle problem, more of technological problem.
It all sounds like a matter of progressing further and expanding on what we're already doing. I imagine the sub-urban lifestyle would be something that needs to change, but it's such a corner case that in the global scale it won't matter that much.
Are you serious? A pretty normal live depends on mountains of non-renewable resources. There are no simple fixes to this problem, but that does not make it less of a problem
This is something I struggle with profoundly daily. Yes, my "individual" action as a 1 in 8 billion people, or 1 in 300 million Americans isn't going to move the needle. Large scale governmental and corporate action is needed. But how do you expect that to happen if not enough people want it and show they want it?
I see people near me casually flying to Europe for a ski, raving about A5 Wagyu or Uni from Japan or some shit, etc. All of these are undoubtedly adding to the demand, so why would the companies stop? (Of course its because they fail to factor in the long-term cost of there will be less customers if humans can't live on this planet anymore)
Could there a be a future where consumption is met with equal parts restoration and environmental investment by the companies themselves? I'd like a progressive system where whole foods nutrition, clean water, shelter, and medical care is subsidized below cost, but then everything else requires us to pony up when purchasing.
That's the only system that will work. Environmental impacts need to be in the product price and the company on the hook for disposal.
But because that would increase costs the lobbyists forbid it. Plus you would probably need a tarrif system on top to prevent cheap dirty foreign goods from replacing all your domestic manufacture.
Money,societal status, denial, just don’t give a shit are all reasons why nothing gets done. Pretty sad. It will only change when something like India or some other hot country has a wet bulb massive human and animal die off.
Westerners will say they care about these things but I don't think a million people dying in a heatwave in Bangladesh or India will do anything to curb their behavior or drive them to action.
Yup, another thing these first world countries don't seem to get: they have dropping birthrates, while other places with lower standards of living don't seem to be slowing down. When these regions get too hot or unpredictable to live, where would the refugees want to go?
Why so many climate activists seem convinced that only moral shame will solve the climate problem is beyond me. It’s an engineering problem. We know how to do it. Balance the heat absorbed and emitted. That’s the thing. Not just carbon. Heat balance.
It's not an engineering problem, it's a funding problem. It needs truly massive investments, coming from taxes, which need to be accepted by the voters, who then need to understand their existence creates negative externalities which need to be paid for.
> But the real problem that we need to address is the changing climate. While some people may shake their heads, there is no way to deny that the weather patterns in the tropics are becoming progressively more unstable. Unfortunately, there is also no easy fix. It is going to require a collective effort by the human population to reverse the already apparent effects of climate warming.
I see it is virtually impossible to explain delayed effects to anyone.
Yes we can reverse it with more collective effort than has ever been applied in the history of our species towards a single thing, but that won't save us from the immediate consequences.
These are impossibly large systems that can't turn on a dime and even if we stop all emissions entirely, right now in this instant, we still bear a large brunt of the results from what we've already done so far. Sad to say it, but the time to save these sloths was 30 years ago at best.
> All we can really do is each do our best on an individual level to reduce our carbon footprint. Eat less meat, utilise public transport, walk or ride your bike instead of driving, recycle and try to cut down on your use of products that negatively impact the environment (this includes plastics as well as products that stem from the monoculture plantations that are responsible for a huge proportion of deforestation – palm oil, mass produced fruit etc.).
It may seem overwhelming, but as the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead once said: “Never doubt that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”.
To me, Mead's quote includes activism as a path to change. Not just setting an example, but pushing for change: calling representatives, asking others why they are doing what they are doing (maybe just "that's the way it's always been done" and no consideration until someone asked), and minimizing judgement so that others are more free to change rather than entrench.
Some questions to consider:
Of what importance is a sloth?
Why do you celebrate the holidays you do?
Why do you eat the food you eat?
Why did you buy the house in the suburbs when your "hunting-gathering grounds" (where you work) are far away and, unless you're dead-set on walking four hours each way, requires a multi-ton vehicle to get you there?
"we are seeing a huge increase in the number of sloths that are being brought into rescue centres because they are starving to death. This is not because they can’t find enough food (there are still plenty of leaves on the trees), but rather because they can’t digest the food that they are eating. Sloths rely on a range of symbiotic gut bacteria and microbes in their stomach to break down the tough cellulose in the leaves that they eat, and these microbes are temperature dependant. When the environmental temperature drops, so does the sloths body temperature, and if it drops too low then the bacteria and microbes die. In this situation, the sloth can eat the same amount of leaves as normal but can starve to death on a full stomach because they can’t extract any nutrients. "
> It is going to require a collective effort by the human population to reverse the already apparent effects of climate warming. All we can really do is each do our best on an individual level to reduce our carbon footprint. Eat less meat, utilise public transport, walk or ride your bike instead of driving, recycle and try to cut down on your use of products that negatively impact the environment (this includes plastics as well as products that stem from the monoculture plantations that are responsible for a huge proportion of deforestation – palm oil, mass produced fruit etc.).
The idea of a collective effort reversing the effects of climate change is very much an unachievable fantasy. The cost benefit calculus just doesn't go the direction you would want for the vast majority of people.
The actual optimal thing from a climate perspective is to take an AR15 and go to an American shopping mall. The second best would be to poison water sources with something that makes people infertile. We don't do these things because preventing climate change isn't actually our ultimate value, the thing we most care about.
We care about many other things more than we care about sloths, in particular our quality of life. Whether that means raising 2.5 happy children who we take on vacation to an African Safari or being able to not worry about where the kids reusable cups are because you know McDonalds will have disposable ones or being able to eat what you want rather than some specific food in your fridge that will go bad tomorrow. Peace of mind, safety and quality time are things society has collectively decided are important.
Of course, this isn't to say that the shift towards renewables won't gradually continue, just that the climate will get worse before it gets better.
(Also, what's with the hate on plastics? They don't really have anything to do with the sloths plight)
I always wonder, sloths are so terrible at everything, how aren't they already extinct? What other quirky animals there would be, if they'd be the ones to somehow survive?
Humans are not slothes though, humans are borgs. Cybernetic organisms (in the academic sense) who engineer their way around adversity, including the ones we caused.
Okay, time to gene modify the sloths so they could digest hamburgers, french fries. Influencers can stuff them with treats, record it on video, everyone profits.
One of the reasons people are able to roll their eyes at climate change is the politicians who show no evidence of practising what they preach, so the conclusion is that they're lying, which is not out of character.
> It is going to require a collective effort by the human population to reverse the already apparent effects of climate warming. All we can really do is each do our best on an individual level to reduce our carbon footprint.
When we start saying that a collective problem can only be accomplished via individualism, we've basically already lost. Even the phrase "carbon footprint" is the product of British Petroleum, because they recognized that encouraging individual action would be less harmful to their business of selling oil than government action. That is, they saw clearly that individual action was so much less effective than government regulation, that they spent millions of dollars encouraging it.
But Western culture (United States especially) is hyper-individualist, and we resist collective actions that would inconvenience the individual. Our government is hence limited to pushing levers to try to "encourage" or "discourage" individuals to take the "right" actions. So, our discussion of alternatives (Overton window) positions a "carbon tax" as the unreasonable leftist position, where the incidental increase in price of polluting products will hopefully nudge enough price-sensitive consumers/entities into reducing consumption enough to solve global warming.
So no, climate change won't be solved by individual people deciding to eat less meat. There may come a day when our agriculture and food system is so devastated that it's no longer possible for most people to eat meat.
Broadly speaking, sure. But I can't name any crisis that was solved by people individually deciding to purchase less of a bad thing.
US slavery wasn't ended by people boycotting goods produced with slave labor. We didn't go to the moon by holding a fundraiser. The ozone hole was repaired by banning the harmful chemicals, not by consumers deciding to pay more for refrigerators that didn't use CFCs.
Asking consumers to research every product they buy for its "carbon footprint" (including the whole supply chain and transportation) and modify their purchasing decisions accordingly is doomed to be ineffective. Some people will be very passionate about it and make a big change. More people will avoid some terrible offenders. And most people will make only small changes that don't inconvenience them much, because they already have 90 other things to worry about in their life.
(And now that it's been politicized, you get people "rolling coal" and purposefully creating extra emissions to... stick it to the libs, I guess.)
There is a lot of shit what would be manufactured, transported to the other side of the planet, sit in the warehouse, [luckily] sit in the store and would be thrown out.
Eg: all this shit made for iPhone/iPod pre-Lighting, all these thin-thick Nokia chargers made in early 2000, all USB 1.1, 2.0 gadgets. Add to this a phone/tablet cases.
That isn't a lot, all things considered, right? Could you not fit every phone accessory ever made on a single cargo ship? That ship's carbon footprint is only so big.
> Could you not fit every phone accessory ever made on a single cargo ship
Why do you focus attention only on the phone accessories? But even if we do focus on it:
there were not a one big single cargo ship what moved them, there was a lot of trucks, trains, ships what were involved in bringing the raw materials, bringing the processed materials to the factories, from the factories to the warehouses, from the warehouses to the docks and depots, from the docks and depots to the warehouses again, to the shops, from the shops to the garbage piles.
Everything in the process generated some pollution which ended up futile. And while some of it can be somewhat negated, ie it was only 1 ISO container from the hundreds on the supercargo ship - but again, that container could be with something more useful than a phone cases what nobody would buy.
And yes, this is not only about phone, smartphone and computer accessories. There is a lot of shit what is made and ends up in the garbage pile. Clothes, kitchen and other consumer appliances, plastic shit for everything, Christmas decorations, automobile parts... the list is long.
> Why do you focus attention only on the phone accessories?
If you recall, they were the majority of your examples.
I'm not saying what you're saying isn't true. Maybe all phones are futile, by some definition. Maybe pollution generated by your comment was futile. It's just an unfalsifiable claim.
Individual actions to fix this kind of problem are pretty ineffective. That isn't to say it's not worth doing. In the US / UK with FPTP it's basically all you _can_ do voting and activism under FPTP is also pretty ineffective again worth doing but insufficient for this large a crisis.
The basic reason for this is down to markets being very very good at resource allocation. Lets imagine you're a huge beef eater and previously ate 2 cows worth per year. You reduce to zero cows. What happens?
The price of beef drops a tiny tiny bit. Other people who previously couldn't afford beef quite so often now can and increase their consumption. If a large number of people switch away from beef eventually the price reductions feed through and some farmers go bust or else reduce their production. But since the externality isn't priced in chances are _someone_ out there will consume it.
To tackle this kind of thing you need the externality brought into the pricing system. Add taxes somewhere on the chain of green house gas production. It doesn't actually matter where you tax it, could be a sales tax, could be a production tax. You can even make the tax revenue neutral and pay it out to everyone. You can tax imports to keep a level playing field...
Of course doing that would massively hit the profits of fossil fuel companies and their share holders so they're lobbying like crazy & paying millions to promote bullshit like the idea of 'carbon footprint' to stop it happening.
It would make more of a difference than if they didn't.
This isn't binary, obviously every little bit helps a little, and the more people, the more it helps. There's no threshold under which it's not worth to do anything about it.
>There's no threshold under which it's not worth to do anything about it.
I'm pretty sure there is, if we're interested in any specific outcome. Below some threshold not only it wont get that outcome, but it wont even be statistically significant.
Statistical significance is relevant when you're trying to find correlations, not when you're trying to figure out whether it's worth removing a few grains to make a cup of sand lighter.
If you don't want to try, don't try. If you're looking for an excuse to say "fuck it, I won't do anything, since that's what most people are doing", you won't, because it's always worth doing something right, no matter how small.
>Statistical significance is relevant when you're trying to find correlations, not when you're trying to figure out whether it's worth removing a few grains to make a cup of sand lighter.
You got it backwards. It's relevant when you're trying to find correlations, precisely because it helps measure the impact of a change.
This is true whether the change is some variable change in research space searching for correlations, or real world accessment of the impact of something...
>because it's always worth doing something right, no matter how small.
This one is different argument though. This one is moral, the previous one (I responded to) was about efficacy.
But it, too, is problematic: even in moral terms, it's not "always worth doing something right, no matter how small", given opportunity cost.
At the margin, individual efforts to abstain from this or that product are useless, let me elaborate.
Let's say in an effort to reduce your carbon footprint, you abstain from beef. The effect that has, however small it may be, is to reduce demand for beef. That brings the price of beef down, making it more affordable for beef enjoyers, who buy more.
The only net effect here is that you no longer eat beef. It hasn't moved the needle on your reason for doing so.
You might reply that if enough people join you, this will result in supply reduction. This is a coordination problem involving the whole planet, including a few billion people who will very happily eat more beef if it were a bit cheaper. It won't work.
I get your general point, though I disagree with it, but the beef issue is very US-centric. Beef isn't such a staple in most countries, even ones that can afford it.
Beef consumption is high among Muslims in Asia, and of course in South America where beef culture is very strong (Brazilian and Argentina steak houses aren’t just a misunderstanding). Australia, New Zealand, and Canada also eat lots of beef (as new world countries with lots of land for grazing).
It isn't in any sense US centric. Most countries do eat less than the US, some eat more, but this too is not relevant to my point. Beef is esteemed in Africa, yet they eat very little of it. As African countries become wealthier they eat more of it, so it stands to reason they also eat more of it when it becomes more affordable. The billion-ish people in India who never eat it have no effect on beef production, why would one person in the US abstaining, or a few tens of thousands, change this dynamic? The answer is that it doesn't.
With that attitude nothing would ever change unless there is immediate visible change from a very small group of people making said change.
Instead the point here would be to try and "go viral" so to speak. Start small and grow your group of supporters "around the edges". At some point you may achieve exponential change.
Of course certain things that affect the entire planet make such things exponentially hard to pull off in the end. Also, you are very unlikely to convert literally everyone to whatever it is you are trying to change. You usually only need to reach a certain level to have an effect.
And in the end not all endeavors will succeed either but it doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying.
That said I will definitely never switch to these commercial meatless meat alternatives. Given what they do to make those that's one of the least healthiest things you can do.
>With that attitude nothing would ever change unless there is immediate visible change from a very small group of people making said change.
It's more the opposite: unless there is immediate visible change from a very small group of people making said change, nothing will change in the end.
Which is precisely where all the "personal responsibility", "do it and others will follow" wishful thinking mottos have gotten us thus far: nothing ever changed.
Every little bit helps, by definition. At the same time, by distracting us with arguments about plastic straws and meat, the fossil fuel industry shifts the focus off of their enormously outsized contribution to climate change. It can also result in moral license - the feeling that I recycle, so I've done my part.
I'm not suggesting not minimizing your individual impact on the environment (and frankly, the elephant in the room that we can't talk about is the impact of producing children), but at the end of the day, if we keep on dumping carbon and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the destruction will continue.
It won't change much if only small groups of citizens starts taking individual action to mitigate their environment footprint. But I strongly believe that it is nonetheless a mandatory step towards global awareness.
It is not "the magical solution", but I don't see any solution that don't starts with individuals taking action to start trends.
Political action will start only when the people electing government starts caring. And that starts by individuals convincing the others.
If you mandate that all meat come from field fed, hay fed sources, with no fertilizer (hay is a great rotational crop), instead of corn or other crops, solved problem.
You know, like the rest of the world does it.
(That is, unless you plan to shoot and kill and exterminate all bison, deer, etc, that would take over any land we leave fallow...)
I ask because I've met Europeans who were convinced that all of their beef was grass-fed, while I've personally seen cattle being grain-finished (and/or fed a variety of supplemental non-pasture-grass feeds like sugar beets) in places like Ireland and Germany. Marketing != reality.
Keep in mind massive bison herds roamed North America for millenia, so large animals emitting methane isn't really an issue. Over decades, they're mostly in steady state - plants take up CO2, bison eat plants, emit CO2 and CH4, and the lifetime of the CH4 is ~10 years in the atmosphere (oxidized to CO2).
The difference today is the large amount of fossil fuel energy used to produce fertilizers and fuel tractors and so on. This can all be transitioned to renewable energy.
I think the vast majority of people who are saying 'stop eating meat to save the climate' are vegans concerned about the atrocious treatment of animals on factory farms, and they're trying to come up with additional reasons to restrict factory farming (which is a good idea, it is a filthy practice that relies heavily on antibiotic and hormone use, and the end product is disgustingly unhealthy as well as unethical IMO).
The only realistic way to stabilize the climate is to eliminate fossil fuels from the energy mix, but even if that's accomplished in the next few decades, planetary warming is going to continue for some 100 years due to forcing-reponse lag time and side effects like permafrost melting and outgassing.
I'd be willing to bet that the total biomass of ruminants is much higher today than it was millennia ago due to domestication/humans. Ad a lot of that fossil fuel use and fertilizer is going to those domestic ruminants; you've gotta grow the food to feed your food, so it's a lossy process vs just eating the plants directly. It's not always that simple though; cattle can graze on marginal land and their manure/byproducts can be fed into other agricultural processes. It's not something I really know a lot about other than to know that it's all quite complicated. That said, I suspect if the world gave up beef, it would indeed make a significant dent in global warming.
I'm far from a vegan and can recognize the above. When it comes to cruelty, that's a different axis. I believe beef is actually lower on that one since the cows spend a lot of their lives wandering in fields and getting to do more or less what they want. The finishing process where they are put into feedlots seems pretty bad but is rather short, and the slaughter is about as humane as can be; they are rendered unconscious instantly with a blow to the head and then insanguinated. Chickens are sort of the opposite; they are marginal in the scheme of global warming but live lives of immense cruelty. It seems hard to win.
Estimates hover around there being ~2x as many cows in North America today than there were bison in 1500, but there were also large deer and antelope populations at the time. The carbon went from atmospheric CO2 -> grassland biomass -> animal biomass + CH4 + CO2, and the CH4 was oxidized back to CO2, so this was largely a steady state situation, and it certainly can be a model for sustainable meat production. Estimates of the human population are more contentious (genocide denial is an issue) but 50 million for North America might be the upper bound.
If everyone stopped eating meat, while fossil fuel production and consumption remain unchanged, there would be little or no noticeable effect on our current climate trajectory. If everyone kept eating meat, while eliminating fossil fuel use, then atmospheric CO2 and CH4 would stabilize in ~100 years.
Practically, if meat was raised humanely without fossil fuels, it would be a good deal more expensive, so people would eat less of it, perhaps leading to a 50% cut in meat production.
No, that's not all we can really do. We could also choose to reform political and economic systems that make western-style societies so un-ecological.