You know how everyone’s saying “This is why we can’t have nice things?”
Here’s a nice thing we can’t have anymore. No one to blame but ourselves.
Happy to see that California is making it unlawful to sell gas cars starting in 2035. That’s a long way away though.
Would be interesting to see impact (relative and absolute) broken down by protein type. From what I recall, beef is far more environmentally damaging than poultry / pork. I love meat and I love beef even more, but am trying to switch consumption to chicken and pork…
I figure the bigger the animal the bigger the problem, but I’m no expert. The article has a breakdown suggesting beef (and milk) are worst, but that could be because so many people eat and drink those things. Probably the same reason that rice is the worst plant-based food.
Probably… Also, I think they are very gassy animals, lol.
Broad categories such as “meat” and “food production” ignores radical differences among farms and ranches. Industrial producers typically have massive fossil-fuel inputs. Sustainable and regenerative farming can be carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative. Switching from factory-farmed meat to factory-made meat substitutes may reduce your carbon footprint (by a negligible amount if you ever take a plane) but it’s usually supporting the same destructive system.
unfortunately, low impact, regenerative farming/ranching raises costs to the point where, given our lack-of-social-safety-net hyper-capitalist system currently in place, food prices become out of reach to large, already underserved groups of people.
Now, we can argue that meat, in general, SHOULD be much more expensive, and people should, consequently, each much less of it. But it’s also true that modern industrial farming has brought us to a point where hunger is, largely, a failure of politics, rather than an actual lack of calories. There’s plenty of FOOD available in the USA for all of its citizens to be adequately fed. But a single parent pulling in minimum wage is going to struggle to provide for 2 kids and pay rent and heat get kids to school and… and… and…
What’s the solution? IMHO, bigger systematic changes than this country is willing to make. National health care to allow employers of lower-wage workers (like, say, RESTAURANTS) to not be on the hook for covering their employees. National school breakfast/lunch policies, and a ROBUST public education system to go along with it, which would mean paying teachers actual meaningful salaries…
like I said, changes we as a nation are clearly unwilling to make. I figure the American Experiment has another 50-100 years max before we break up into Jesusland and Southern Canada.
In the meantime, it seems it would be good if people eat less meat?
By the way, I’m good with a universal income, universal health care, and all the education people want. I think these policies will have no effect on inequality and skid row would end up exactly the same as it is today. But I want to institute these policies — I want to institute everything you want — to prove once and for all that the leftist conception of why some people in society do well and others don’t do well is completely false. And then we can start addressing the real causes of inequality. And if you’re right, even better, problem solved.
Truthfully, I think California has already answered the question. Decades of liberal social policies. Enormous amounts of money spent on public schools for the poorest kids. And the results speak for themselves.
The two primary causes of global warming are human population growth and industrial growth. Eating lower-carbon-footprint food won’t accomplish anything in the long run if it just enables the population to reach and surpass 10 billion or 20 billion or whatever the point is where we exceed the planet’s carrying capacity or end up in a Judge Dredd dystopia.
Liberal social policies like “Three Strikes,” right. California’s spending on public schools has been below the national average since the 70s. It recently went up to #30, woo hoo.
I can see where you’re coming from. Putting a slight twist on what you said, I have my serious doubts as to whether any government can effectively develop UBI, UHC, free education in a way that doesn’t gut our national balance sheet. What I’d love to see is the private sector take on some of that burden… rather than spend billions on building spacecraft to Mars, devote that brainpower and capital to fixing things here.
And @robert that’s crazy re CA education… but now that you mention it, it makes sense. Our kids go to a top CA school district and his class sizes are 35 - 40 kids, which is insane. And every year, we’re expected to contribute $1500 - 2000+ for each kid to help solve the funding issue.
Let me just guess - you don’t have kids yourself ? Sorry to say but so many of your comments are so often not based on facts (particular if we discuss anything society, politics etc) and just on made up stuff it is hard to take you serious in anything.
I agree w/ you. But I would also suggest to all to stop feeding the trollish posts.
No, they’re based on FOX.