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[McTraveller]

Just read a brief article about a pilot who decided to become a vegan to help the environment after they saw unsustainable farming practices from the air.

I'm WTFing it because apparently the CO2 impact of 2lbs (1kg) beef is the same as burning 1.5 gallons (6 liters) of gasoline, and they are a pilot.

Beef is by far the "most impactful" meat, so if you eat mostly eggs, fish, poultry, or pork it's even less of a benefit to give up.  Interestingly, a very CO2 equivalent per unit mass food is apparently... butter (I'm skeptical; the website I'm looking at says it's 25 times! more CO2 equivalent than the same mass of milk...)?

Spoiler: reference (click to show/hide)

https://timeforchange.org/eat-less-meat-co2-emission-of-our-food/

[martinuzz]

I wonder how one would calculate the CO2 footprint of 1kg of human meat.. At what age should one kill and butcher a human to have a net positive CO2 effect from the emissions prevented by killing it over the emissions used to grow it?

[LordBaal]

I wonder how one would calculate the CO2 footprint of 1kg of human meat.. At what age should one kill and butcher a human to have a net positive CO2 effect from the emissions prevented by killing it over the emissions used to grow it?

[Iduno]

Baby powder is just ground Talc (a type of rock), how the hell do you fuck it up so badly that you end up making it carcinogenic?

Anti-caking ingredients.

Do they even take smartphones at pawnshops?  I certainly don't see them at thrift stores.  Probably because it's too much trouble (and not-inconsiderable technical know-how) to factory-reset some archaic piece of technology which is practically worthless due to planned obsolescence.

This isn't even anti-Apple, this is all smartphones.  They keep forcing updates that "improve" the UI, non-consensually, and coincidentally they make older phones run slower.  And literally yesterday I've got my mom telling me that her phone is "wearing out" because it's slow to respond.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Corollary:
"Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by profit motive."

I think it's usually Ebay and more modern versions. Or classified ads.

The major carriers will usually send continuous signals to kill the battery of older phones and make them unusable while they're receiving signals. That used to be illegal, but lobbying.

[heydude6]

*snip*

Food production is impactful in general unfortunately. Everyone loves to talk about how much CO2 meat produces, but few people ever compare it to the CO2 production of human-edible veggies. Both numbers are unfortunately very high. Meat is still more of course, but the latter number is what you need to actually be able to gauge how much of a difference you’re making by switching to vegan. Otherwise, you’re overestimating your impact.

[LordBaal]

Aerophonic vertical farming and vat grown meat for the win.

[None]

Just read a brief article about a pilot who decided to become a vegan to help the environment after they saw unsustainable farming practices from the air.

I'm WTFing it because apparently the CO2 impact of 2lbs (1kg) beef is the same as burning 1.5 gallons (6 liters) of gasoline, and they are a pilot.

Beef is by far the "most impactful" meat, so if you eat mostly eggs, fish, poultry, or pork it's even less of a benefit to give up.  Interestingly, a very CO2 equivalent per unit mass food is apparently... butter (I'm skeptical; the website I'm looking at says it's 25 times! more CO2 equivalent than the same mass of milk...)?

Spoiler: reference (click to show/hide)

https://timeforchange.org/eat-less-meat-co2-emission-of-our-food/

Well, yeah- you're not gonna get 5oz of butter out of 5oz of milk, right?

I can burn 1.5 gallons of gasoline just getting to the grocery store and back to buy 2kg of beef. I'm one person going a fraction of the distance a pilot is on any given flight, and relative to the trip, I can cut my footprint in half by not buying the beef. Contextually, I'm thinking primarily of airlines as a matter of mass transit and by that I infer that emissions per person per distance is probably more reasonable than everyone driving everywhere on their lonesome, guzzly as flight is, though I don't know where that's lost by measure of speed (and never mind fighter pilots or the like, Uncle Sam doesn't exactly have the environment in mind). 'Sides, you can't pay rent by eating or choosing not to eat beef, much unlike one's job as a pilot, nor is piloting a sociocultural-environmental movement, much unlike veganism or vegetarianism.

It's probably more worth scrutinizing global supply chains where parts of consumer goods get shipped around the planet on fuel-guzzling cargo ships before getting assembled somewhere else on another side of the planet than turning a quizzical look at a pilot that wants to make an individual choice to reduce his impact on the world.

*snip*

Food production is impactful in general unfortunately. Everyone loves to talk about how much CO2 meat produces, but few people ever compare it to the CO2 production of human-edible veggies. Both numbers are unfortunately very high. Meat is still more of course, but the latter number is what you need to actually be able to gauge how much of a difference you’re making by switching to vegan. Otherwise, you’re overestimating your impact.

That's the other rub- the guilt of environmental impact has largely been shuffled off to ordinary individuals, much like the idea that it's on us to do recycling when so many places across the country don't have an accessible recycling plant, it's cheaper to dump in a landfill, or sell off to another country to recycle or dump unscrupulously while corporations continue to pack and wrap every object with single use plastics.

[McTraveller]

Well, yeah- you're not gonna get 5oz of butter out of 5oz of milk, right?

Did you ever do that activity as a kid where you put heavy cream in a jar and shake it to make butter? There's this thing called conservation of mass, it does take 1oz (mass) of cream to make 1oz (mass) of butter. Plus some shaking energy - I'm not saying butter doesn't take more energy than milk, but I don't think it's a factor of 25.

I can burn 1.5 gallons of gasoline just getting to the grocery store and back to buy 2kg of beef.

You could but you'd deserve the ire of many if you did that. You burn 1.5 gallons of gasoline (maybe? Do you really drive 15-20 miles one way to get groceries?) on a trip to the store and you'd better be buying more than just 4lbm of meat for that trip!

[None]

See, but that's heavy cream, and in the context of the milk fat that becomes cream or butter, there's magnitudes less in raw milk compared to a stick of butter. You're, uh, not losing mass, there's just less of the base component of butter-to-be in milk compared to butter.

And yes, I do drive 15-20 miles one way to get groceries, which is why I only do it once every three weeks and I subsequently make a thrift-shopping trip out of it. I could dip a mile down the road and shop at Wal-Mart, but fuck those guys.

[heydude6]

vat grown meat for the win.

I'm gonna have to drop a harsh truth bomb unfortunately. I found this article a while ago that talks about the many, MANY, problems facing lab grown meat if it wants to be an alternative to factory farms. It paints it pretty grim picture.

It's a long one, but frankly it's one of the best scientific articles I've ever read. Rarely do you see media science go into this much depth.

I think everyone should read it.

That's the other rub- the guilt of environmental impact has largely been shuffled off to ordinary individuals, much like the idea that it's on us to do recycling when so many places across the country don't have an accessible recycling plant, it's cheaper to dump in a landfill, or sell off to another country to recycle or dump unscrupulously while corporations continue to pack and wrap every object with single use plastics.

And that's not even getting into the fact that recycling was literally invented by oil companies to convince people that we didn't have to reduce our plastic consumption.

It's scary to know how much of our environmentalism was created by big oil. According to this Kurzgesagt video, the term "Carbon footprint" was coined by oil companies to make it seem like enviromentalism was a matter of personal choice rather than a matter of policy.

And we just ate all this bullshit up.

It's probably more worth scrutinizing global supply chains where parts of consumer goods get shipped around the planet on fuel-guzzling cargo ships before getting assembled somewhere else on another side of the planet than turning a quizzical look at a pilot that wants to make an individual choice to reduce his impact on the world.

It's crazy to think how easily this problem can be fixed with a carbon tax. In my economics class, my professor always talks about how important it is to "internalize the externality", yet all these free-market capitalists are so eager to ignore the fundamentals of economics when it's a policy they personally don't like.


Anway, that was a lot of stuff. I hope all this can give you guys a glimpse of how deep the environmentalism rabbit hole goes.

[Kagus]

harsh truth bomb

Ah well... But hey, maybe cricket farming will take off?

[McTraveller]

Huh ok I stand corrected; apparently the ratio of milk to cream in a gallon of raw milk is about 25:1.

[LordBaal]

I know is not related. But never before had I been so Olympic ignored by a company as Payoneer right now. I think I hate them.

[KittyTac]

Yep. Veganism has a negligible impact on CO2 especially if not everyone is a vegan. What helps is top-down regulation.

[delphonso]

the term "Carbon footprint" was coined by oil companies to make it seem like enviromentalism was a matter of personal choice rather than a matter of policy.

The impact a single person can make is essentially zero. Policy change is necessary.

However, personal adoption of environmental responsibility may be useful - being educated on how to farm, for instance, will probably become a skill we need if supply chains completely collapse. And if you can do so in a way that preserves the soil, all the better, right? As rough as it is, I'd say for those who want to be environmentally minded, the best thing you could do is learn what to do when our planet becomes much harsher to live on - because that's gonna happen.

Veganism is likely taking the data too far (I know the original post was jesting at a pilot, but I'm already on a rant, so why not). Less meat consumption will decrease your personal contribution to CO2 emissions, sure - eating no meat may raise it above the "less meat" position, though. Protein, for example, is more sustainably farmed through animals than through plants. Soy takes up a lot of space, which means deforestation. Pigs can be grown in much less space and consume plants root, stem, and leaf.

Be a vegan but also eat bacon - save the world. Or just eggs are fine.