> For those sharks who have perished due to becoming bycatch, this allows a unique opportunity to have their livers provide valuable products like biodiesel, squalene, and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) –including eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA; also icosapentaenoic acid) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Afterall, the major constituents of WSLO are triglycerides (TG), diacylglycerol ethers (DAGE), and squalene.
Oh wow I caught a shark, conveniently enough though, I happen to have this factory with the exact processes necessary to extract materials out of the shark.
So sorry we accidently killed you. In order to give your life some meaning, we've come up with "unique opportunity to have their livers provide valuable products"
That isn't an argument that Capitalism is good, or better. In Capitalism, if you don't work, you don't eat. So finding a quote about communism that says same thing, is not making any point that one is better or worse.
The difference is in Communism, there should always be 'some work'. If you are willing to work, there is work. Even if it is some public works project.
In Capitalism, maybe not. Nobody is looking out for you. If you don't have the skills for what is in demand right now, then so sorry, go ahead and die.
sure. 'some work' under communism will yield you a bed and and a few bowls of gruel per day.
in the US, there are 'working poor'. under communism, there are 'working poor and starving'.
at the time when skilled blue collar workers in the US had two story houses and multiple cars per family, the same people in the USSR lived in communal apartments (with 3-4 people per room and 3-4 families per bathroom and kitchen) and commuted to work in overcrowded buses.
even towards the end, in the 80's, after several decades of relative peace and prosperity, even engineers and scientists had a standard of living far below the level of 'working poor' in the US. having a small concrete box in a commie block and a shitty car (that you had to wait several years for the privilege of being allowed to buy for a very sizeable amount of money) was the Soviet dream.
1. Often the failure of the USSR is used to say communism failed. This totally ignores the after effects of WW2, where the US had rapid industrial growth to supply arms, and critically, did not get bombed. And USSR had been pretty much destroyed. The starting lines were pretty different.
2. And. Different point. These quotes on working to eat, also are meant to apply to the rich. In the US, the rich can just sit by the pool and do not contribute to society. The communist quote is meant to mean, everyone contributes. Whereas in capitalism, you can live off inheritance or interest rates, and not contribute anything. Be a parasite.
I'm not sure it's possible to be "too cynical" in the commercial fishing space. If there is even the remotest financial incentive to do something, we should expect people to maximize profits and do it. The concept of "intent" doesn't really need to enter the discussion, I don't think.
There's no effort being made to avoid catching sharks, just catching everything in the area, and preventing anything else from living in the area anytime soon by environmental destruction
This idea really disgusts me. If an animal is “accidentally” killed then the first action should be to punish the people who did this and then take steps to ensure it does not happen again. Just allowing capitalism to continue to wreak havoc on our planet is so obviously not moral thing to do.
Whaling continued until much more recently. I knew a guy in the early 2000s that made his money in the whale oil business and he was around 70 at the time.
"Save the whales" was the cliche environmental slogan when I was growing up in the 1980s. They even made a Star Trek movie where that was a major plot point.
> meat that can exist anywhere with deforesting the amazon for meat alternatives ingredients.
Is this the case? A major problem with beef is that so much of it comes from the cleared Amazon. Also, meat intrinsically takes more space than vegetables because we still have to clear land to grow feed for the meat, so a 1:1 replacement of Amazonian beef with soy and chickpeas or whatever would be a massive increase in yield.
If one discovers that a brand of tshirt is being manufactured using slave labor, a reasonable response is to buy another brand of tshirt. Clearly more is needed to solve the problem, but the slave labor doesn't "rub off" on the other tshirt, it's obviously silly to say "don't wear tshirts, some of them are made by slaves".
It's no different with beef. Most beef in the USA comes from the USA, and you might raise various objections about the treatment of cattle, pollution from runoff, and so on, but it isn't contributing to rainforest deforestation, so that isn't a good reason to not eat it.
Crops grown for animal feed is still a major cause of deforestation and USA beef can still be culpable for contributing. Realistically, I think most US cattle is fed from domestic feed, but I know Brazil exports a lot of animal feed to Asia and Europe.
To expand on your metaphor, not only are the t-shirts made with slave labor, but the cotton grown is harvested and milled by slave labor and without supply chain transparency it’s impossible to know if the new brand is also using the slave-labor cotton.
grass fed or grass finished? Because if they graze for a bit, but then still have to fed a ton of feed crops to fatten them up fast enough, it's a distinction without a difference.
In the end, all versions of beef production remotely possible are either insanely inefficient in yield or in resource usage or objectively cruel (aka factory farms). A vegan diet is absolutely going to be the better choice on every reasonable metric for the vast majority of people and life situations (aka Inuits don't count).
> A vegan diet is absolutely going to be the better choice on every reasonable metric for the vast majority of people and life situations (aka Inuits don't count).
Is that true of a vegan diet high in fake meat? Highly wasteful because it extracts and uses a small amount from the input material and often the waste is old as animal feed. On top of that extra transport and energy inputs required, etc.
ON the other hand cattle can be part of a natural carbon sink environment. In Scotland (and other places) they are releasing cattle into the wild as part of rewilding!
>Highly wasteful because it extracts and uses a small amount from the input material and often the waste is old as animal feed. On top of that extra transport and energy inputs required, etc.
All of these apply to cattle as well and fake meat will still use less resources than real beef.
>On the other hand cattle can be part of a natural carbon sink environment
Not technically incorrect, but this is absolutely greenwashing
> Realistically, I think most US cattle is fed from domestic feed
I believe you could make this "all" without loss of accuracy, at least to three significant figures. Might have to relax "domestic" to cover Canada and Mexico, neither of which is deforesting to produce fodder.
The US is a major exporter of the crops fed to cattle, and livestock in general. The lack of supply chain transparency your counter-analogy relies on is nowhere in evidence in US agriculture.
Considering that alfalfa production is drying up the Colorado(?) river, wastefully and destructively producing feed crops at home instead of importing them is not the win you think it is.
> it isn't contributing to rainforest deforestation, so that isn't a good reason to not eat it.
Yes it is, only indirectly, as it's driving climate change. It's also destroying local ecosystems which you might have an interest in? Beef is just insanely inefficient as a food source. It's like finding out all t-shirts are manufactured using a process that throws 10lbs of manufactured cloth into a landfill for every shirt made.
> Not all beef is equal. Almost all the beef I eat is from the UK, and most of it grass fed.
I mean, all beef is equal in the sense that it's not an efficient use of resources, including space, to feed cattle vs growing crops that feed humans. That's basically true no matter where the land is.
Anyway, if we are talking about the Amazon, there is absolutely no conversation to be had that doesn't center on beef. Talking about Amazon deforestation specifically being driven by anything other than cattle ranching is so wrong it's evil, and plenty of UK beef also comes from the Amazon.
Which is an efficiency not required by us at the moment, and a mode of production that couldn't cover even a percent of the entire current or future meat production.
Our problem isn't tetris with land. We have way, way, way more land to produce food crops than we need to feed everyone, we don't need to optimize for the few places where we can raise a few cattle exclusively. We can feed the same amount of people using far less water, land, and power using a vegan-ish diet.
If tomorrow everyone switches to your proposed vegan diet, where does all the saved power, water and land go towards?
growing cattle keeps the land from turning into concrete. If you actually want to conserve land you want to use as much already deforested as possible for growing crops and then never deforest new land. Slowly you should work onto getting conservation NGOs to integrate it into government protected land.
Seems to me like a fools errand to optimize land use. The optimal use in the Americas for example was likely already there 14,000 years ago before humans arrived in Americas. We obviously can't go back, but we can improve land, but optimal ....
Are you seriously arguing that cattle ranching is what's keeping our lands healthy right now? I'm pretty sure just leaving them fallow would be infinitely better for the health of the soil and ecosystems within a few years.
Ok, then let's move all cattle production to lands that's not suitable for growing crops. I'd be extremely happy with that solution as it will eliminate almost all cattle ranching.
Most of the land cleared recently in Amazon is used to grow plants to feed to cattle. The knock on effects are kinda incredible, most recent Planet Earth series showed a bit.
I'm actually very surprised by these numbers, namely that all other top five importers except the UK are net exporters. My mental image of Netherlands and Germany (where I eat too much meat) was that of huge net importers, whose plant production output was in large parts an echo of the animal feed imports (feed gets converted into meat and dung...). Perhaps they are only net exporters by market value, but net importers by nutrient amount?
I would guess that imports are a small proportion of all animal feed in the UK. UK cattle are grassfed, albeit usually grain finished. ALso the breakdown does not say feed for what animals rather than where from: as the UK is right next to net exporters I imagine most of it comes from neighbours rather than half the planet away.
Shout out to the folks at Global Fishing Watch doing amazing work tracking unregulated fishing activity. Just need policy to catch up with reality now.
I feel like if global actually policy helped we wouldn't be in this "never ending increase in CO2 emission" hellscape we live in now.
Like, not to knock on someone else's work, but I bet if we had globally enforced regulation while we may get nice bylines of "the blue fin tuna has made a rebound" the global fish populations would continue to plummet and the oceans acidify even further.
Definitely. Shout out to the effort they've put into their api's as well. I've integrated them into a product and raise awareness of sustainable fishing for several major retail outlets.
There are other threats to the deep ocean other than fishing - From what I understand, whale falls are a big driver of biodiversity in the deep ocean, so while it wouldn’t appear intuitive that reducing the number of whales in our oceans would have that kind of effect, ecosystems are closely intertwined and one change can have far reaching effects.
Are we going to keep avoiding the fact that the population growth can not be the goal any more? In fact it's better for this planet if the number of people actually decreased? BTW no on is advocating doing it forcefully, but just through distributing contraception and educating women, that seems keep the population stable.
The "exponential growth forever" microsecond of human history will be looked on as a fever dream in the future, and hopefully the masses who support that ideology will be remembered with the same contempt as slavers.
Then we need to shut down the "Western world". A blanket ban on excess overbreeding and polluting technology. Maybe the NWO should consider using their stockpiles of sterilization drugs bound for the water supplies...
Degrowth as a concept is about economic growth. Not only is it popular with the far-left/environmentalist intersection, they don't seem to want to consider population at all. Part of this is because it feels incongruent with their stance on immigration, even though they aren't the same things.
Even those enthusiastic about economic growth are at least more likely to be honest with themselves that scaling up is creating pressure on the environment, despite the improvements in innovation. This is because of soaring global demand (particularly from the East). There are, of course, techno-optimists who want to believe that a sustainable future is a foregone conclusion. Even if we think we'll get there eventually, the damage in the meantime can be considerable.
we can support a larger population, but we can't support a larger population at the current meat consumption levels
I guess we'll find out if we're willing to eat less meat, or if we'd rather a certain % of the global population to starve... so far it's looking like the latter
> we can support a larger population, but we can't support a larger population at the current meat consumption levels
All environmental encroachment and emissions scale with demand. It's reductionist to only talk about meat; it's not the only reason people want to migrate to the West. Notwithstanding, demands for alternatives have shot up in Western countries and land-use for cattle has not actually increased in the US. As countries in developing world lift themselves out of poverty, they consume more meat (and fuel, gadgets, etc).
Even if you hypothetically cut down meat consumption in the West, emissions would still rise to levels that would exacerbate climate change. It's not enough. And "degrowth" is such an injust hardship to demand of developing countries that it's amazing people consider it an actual possibility. Some combination of tough policy measures (in the short-run) and innovation is what we can expect, probably after things get worse.
Ultimately global population growth is going to stall, in less than 100 years. by then whether people eat meat will be a moot point. Demand won't grow, and renewables will have taken over the market.
people who think it can’t be done are either rich, or terrified of the rich
the tax system can eliminate the extreme waste at the top and make the lives of vulnerable people better
we don’t need private jets, yachts, cruise ships, 3 ton personal vehicles, people who own multiple private homes, private golf courses, lawns in deserts, almond farms in deserts, iot garbage, plastic everything…
we refuse to stop opulent garbage, it’s mental illness
> people who think it can’t be done are either rich, or terrified of the rich
This is a wishful projection.
> the tax system can eliminate the extreme waste at the top and make the lives of vulnerable people better
I'm pro progressive taxation, but that really has no bearing here.
> we don’t need private jets, yachts, cruise ships, 3 ton personal vehicles, people who own multiple private homes, private golf courses, lawns in deserts, almond farms in deserts, iot garbage, plastic everything…
You don't need almost everything you own and take for granted to survive. Who's going to decide what people need, you? The great thing about liberal democracy is we can decide for ourselves.
At any rate, the increases in global emissions are owing to growing global demand particularly from East Asia as they are developing their middle class. You're overestimating the impact of things like private jets; the ultra-wealthy are few in number, and the new affluent class leans left (see: tech billionaires). Even if you put restrictions on these (and we can, why not), it would not make much of a difference.
Restrictions can be warranted (say, for SUV purchases, though this will be moot once they all switch to EV), but customers respond better to incentives. A good example of this is Green HOme subsidies in many countries, that give cash to citizens for improving their home insulation, which lowers heat/AC use, which lowers emissions. Milk alternatives and plant based products are also wildly popular with consumers even if they don't go vegan officially.
The simple issue is that in the calculation "amount_of_people * amount_of_consumption > carrying_capacity", only one of them is easily advocated for in an ethical manner. We have a loooooooong history of measure taken to reduce population always fucking over the minoritized. Ironically, those are the people least likely to have caused the problem in the first place.
TLDR: Veganism is easier to advocate for than not having kids. I say that as a childfree vegan.
That's a personal step which is good to take for credibility, but the only two effective things to do are:
1. Violence against corrupt capital-owners (I'm not advocating this, for legal reasons, just saying it could be effective)
2. Organizing your fellow malcontents (that is: people who give a quarter of a fuck about human dignity), which is hard work but can really pay off systematically. Note though that you may still end up with some of the same legal risks as #1.
Yeah eco-terrorism will really persuade masses about your cause, what a non-smart advice to be polite. I don't claim I have a solution, but above is not one
Hmm, if there was a movement that organized around ending animal ag, and they called for individuals to stop consuming animals, would that not count as working towards systematic change?
Conversely, all your examples also require individuals to make individual choices. Arguably, no systemic change has ever happened without individuals choosing to act.
> Hmm, if there was a movement that organized around ending animal ag, and they called for individuals to stop consuming animals, would that not count as working towards systematic change?
Not really. Not if it's just a propaganda/awareness campaign. It would only matter if anti-industrial agriculturalists were organizing, defined as building resilient social-political structures which could change policy at increasingly large scales.
> Arguably, no systemic change has ever happened without individuals choosing to act.
I don't even think that's arguable except in the case of natural disasters bringing down systems entirely. The individual choices that matter, for the disenfranchised with revolutionary ideas, are the choices and actions that build organizational power. And building power is extremely grueling work when money is neither the goal nor vehicle, so that's why we see so little of it. That's why I'm not currently doing it, for the time being.
My grandfather lived in a time when commercial hunting ceased to be viable and was outlawed --- I worry my children will live in a world where fishing goes the same way, which given the percentage of the world's population which depends on seafood is existential.
A close relative of mine had a bottle of 'shark cartilage' capsules which he proudly presented to me, I must have been around 14-15 years old.
The idea behind them, as he explained, was that since sharks are basically immune to cancer, (which they are not[0]), taking those supplements could therefore help prevent cancer. I remember thinking to myself, this is bullshit.
By that same logic I could pulverise a cheetah, take the resulting 'product', and outrun most living creatures.
By the very same logic pulverising scorpions and consuming supplements made from the powder should give us at least some resistance to ionizing radiation.
What's happening to the oceans is truly awful: overfishing, bycatch, bottom trawling (like strip mining or clear-cutting of the ocean floor), ocean acidification, ocean warming, agricultural runoff leading to algal blooms, noise pollution, and plastic pollution. It would never be tolerated if it was more visible.
It's so big, even 100 years ago it probably seemed impossible for human activity to affect it. But human activity scales while ocean size remains constant.
I get where you're going, but I think you need to go back more like 200 years at least. 100 years ago our impact on whales at least was very clearly evident to anyone remotely paying attention.
> It would never be tolerated if it was more visible.
Idk man, we put up with a lot of horrible stuff up here, too. Not so much because we like it but because nobody who isn't a billionaire (or perhaps heads a powerful but privately owned company) has much say in any of it. Heck, even my city council does whatever the heck the businesses want, no matter how big a crowd shows up at their meetings and says "please no."
(We don't have any ocean, here, but we do have lakes that have been getting more and more polluted for decades because nobody has the backbone to tell folks upstream to keep their fertilizer out of the water, or whatever.)
People are still really viscerally against veganism. Really this isn't even close to the main issues with the animal husbandry industry, including famine in developing countries
It's not cow but how. Modern agriculture methods are very destructive for the environment. The biggest problem isn't even the greenhouse emissions but the way we are destroying the living topsoil by our methods and then trying to fix the problem with fossil fuel based systems - diesel based tilling and fertilisers. Veganism can't solve those problems either. Luckily there is a growing movement of regenerative agriculture which focuses on the soil health and maximing the carbon sequestering to the soil. It also makes much more sense from the financial point of view for the farmer.
Veganism doesn't solve every issue, but it makes them better almost immediately. For the problem you mention, we would need to farm substantially less with Veganism. Feed ratios for cows is around 7:1 when I checked last. So it absolutely is cow.
You're propably correct about the feed ratio but cows eat grasses and hay that aren't consumable by humans. In warm countries that's not a problem, people could grow there crops that humans can eat, but in big parts of world (like here in north where I live) grasses are best thing to grow. Also grasslands are best carbon sink we currently have (https://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/climate/news/grasslands-mo...) and you can't have those without ruminants.
Also it's good to remember how much food we waste each year. We could easily feed the world already now but it doesn't seem to be priority for the people in charge.
That said I'm on a same side with vegans, I don't like the current way we produce food and I'd like to see a big systemic change there. But I think vegans don't take into account how complex problems we are dealing with - nature, agriculture's economics and eating habits and nutritional requirements of humans.
Farming cows on grass is something else (not grasslands) and fertisers are used and imported feed (or finishing feed in many countries). Without looking at the whole system you can't make any judgement.
~55% of New Zealand is being used for sheep and cattle.
We can still farm ruminants on open grasslands where those are appropriate ecosystems, but that will mean cutting meat production by, I don't know, 99.99% or so. Which is fine, it's not healthy to eat a hamburger every day.
> The biggest problem isn't even the greenhouse emissions but the way we are destroying the living topsoil by our methods and then trying to fix the problem with fossil fuel based systems - diesel based tilling and fertilisers.
You're talking about ammonia. This is currently irreplaceable in terms of scaling, certainly it would be impossible to feed 8 billion people without. Just look at how much more land-use "organic" plots require.
There are innovations in the works to synthesize ammonia without fossil fuels, but I don't see a future without fertilizer.
Remember guano? us here had to import a ton of Asian "legal slaves" to harvest it, and most of them died... of course people want to go back to harvesting guano, because that is so "pro earth", let's ignore the human cost of it.
Here's a Forbes article that seems almost enthusiastic about this as a "green" energy source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissacristinamarquez/2020/03/...