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[JoshuaFH]

Cow farts alone contribute a greater greenhouse effect than all car and truck use...cutting out meat is one of the best things to do.

Bovine flesh is far too delicious to give up. Can't we just hire some science nerds to invent a cow fart-muffler? Or even better, a fart-recycler! We could turn farts into a renewable energy source, then use them to power a new line of cars that we can all buy and feel smug about driving!

Genemod cows to not fart greenhouse gasses.

Watch as meat prices go up as corporations monopolize fartless cows.

Just build big domes for all the cows to live in, and the domes catch all the fart gas and extract the methane from it. You can send my check in the mail.

[Teneb]

Cow farts alone contribute a greater greenhouse effect than all car and truck use...cutting out meat is one of the best things to do.

Bovine flesh is far too delicious to give up. Can't we just hire some science nerds to invent a cow fart-muffler? Or even better, a fart-recycler! We could turn farts into a renewable energy source, then use them to power a new line of cars that we can all buy and feel smug about driving!

Genemod cows to not fart greenhouse gasses.

Watch as meat prices go up as corporations monopolize fartless cows.

Just build big domes for all the cows to live in, and the domes catch all the fart gas and extract the methane from it. You can send my check in the mail.

I am sorry komrad, but this is kommunism. We don't believe in checks.

[RedKing]

In either case, I just want to point out that our food crops and livestock are rather dependent on the current biosphere, and if it's too expensive now to build enough hydroponics to feed ourselves, we shouldn't expect it to be any easier or cheaper when half of humanity is rioting because all the cows are dead.

Correction: It is too expensive to do an overhaul to feed our current population.  Eventually enough of us would die from the riots that our current stocks of hydroponics and what would be built later on would be able to catch up.  And hey look, there's a lot more living space available in the aftermath.

An Essay on the Principle of Population isn't meant to be a how-to manual for wiping out poor people.

[WealthyRadish]

Cow farts alone contribute a greater greenhouse effect than all car and truck use...cutting out meat is one of the best things to do.

Bovine flesh is far too delicious to give up. Can't we just hire some science nerds to invent a cow fart-muffler? Or even better, a fart-recycler! We could turn farts into a renewable energy source, then use them to power a new line of cars that we can all buy and feel smug about driving!

There are some solutions in the works, like adding seaweed and other additives to their diet, but that doesn't do anything about the resources expended on intensive agriculture and other industries to support them. I should also clarify that it isn't just flatulence, it's also belching.


Edit: Looking back at my old notes, the characterization about cattle methane as compared to total passenger transport was incorrect; the comparison I was thinking of was the GHG difference between the average US meat-eater's diet and a no-meat diet, when compared to the effect of other measures like driving less or using public transport.

[Lord Shonus]

Last I looked into those figures, a significant portion of that resource usage was "lower-grade portions of the crops grown for human use", meaning that elimination of livestock would not automatically increase the amount of foodstuffs available for people - a lot of the animal feed I've seen would not merely be unappetizing, but borderline indigestible.


That isn't to say that "livestock is too resource intensive to justify" is not a valid argument, but it isn't as simple as it is often presented. Dialing meat production down to what can be supported with grazing is probably doable without most people noticing the difference - fast food would be badly hurt, but you could "disguise" a lot of the impact by increasing fillers in sausages and ground meat.

[McTraveller]

Be careful when talking about "the 1%". 1% of the US population is over 3 million people.  The top 1% in the world is more people than many countries - some 75 million people.

[Egan_BW]

yeah but saying the 0.1% takes longer

[hector13]

Lab-grown meat is another alternative, albeit one that’s a while off.

[Kagus]

Lab-grown meat is another alternative, albeit one that’s a while off.

Yeah, but then we get into some weird territory with ethics...

Like, I kinda get the sense that free-range bacteria is a bad idea.

[Trekkin]

Like, I kinda get the sense that free-range bacteria is a bad idea.

If it is, it's a bad idea literally covering the planet.

[Egan_BW]

...what's ethically weird about lab meat?

[Hanslanda]

...what's ethically weird about lab meat?

This question.

[JoshuaFH]

...what's ethically weird about lab meat?

This question.

How are you supposed to enjoy meat if you know that nothing suffered to create it?

[Egan_BW]

The blood.

[Kagus]

...what's ethically weird about lab meat?

Because we've established that it's generally only ethical if our meat sources are free-range, and

Like, I kinda get the sense that free-range bacteria is a bad idea.

If it is, it's a bad idea literally covering the planet.

...*shudder*