Proportion Conservation Notice

They’re not giving up on life on this planet. Life it tough. It survived the Permian Extinction, the end-Jurassic asteroid/volcanism and a few other like episodes. It may not even mean the end of humans – we too are pretty tough. It would mean the end of complex societies. I doubt they have thought that through – the rich are the top of the pyramid and, when the pyramid collapses, they go. Usually in an orgy of dog-eat-dog violence but sometimes in a “my income vanished when the peasants stopped paying the rent” kind of way. The smug belief that riches will save you is likely to be valid only for a very short time.

It may be, of course, that the collapse happens sufficiently slowly to avoid the worst – the disruptions induce a feedback (less demand, less supply). I am really glad my son is a craftsman rather than a banker (I’d love him either way, but his chances are much better).

Since we’re being appropriately cosmic…

Industrial civilization as a planetary resource curse, this alluring hack that seems to solve everything, until it sinks in (or craters in) that we’ve actually not gone much of anywhere.

It was always “we prosper as one or are immiserated as many”. But them fossil fuels, they sure did allow for a brief, reckless spasm of prosperity, biologically speaking. Even produced nice show and called it “liberal democracy”. That was kinda interesting.

We almost got wise, too. Came real close to passing through one of them Great Filters. Plenty to be proud of…gay marriage, medecins sans frontieres, that carbon tax they passed in 2073.

We saw that Hope was neither conditional on circumstances nor any sort of promise for the future.

Think a long time from now we’ll even have a few more cracks at it before we see the writing on the wall, send off the AIs to colonize next worlds.

It’s tempting to be bitter about what could’ve been. But, ya know, we’re social primates. Analog hard drives. Our 1s and zeros are fear and desire. Nothing to be ashamed of, really…

Why the right has gone to war with science over climate change? Even the major oil companies have stopped lying about it, because continuing to do so would put their profits at risk. The Department of Defense acknowledges climate change, considering it a “risk multiplier”, and one might expect that a faction which adulates and identifies itself with the military would follow suit, but it doesn’t.

Opposition to environmentalism seems to have become reflexive, at least in the U.S. National monuments ought to be turned into mines or harvested for timber, even though few jobs would be created and the wealth thus extracted would find few pockets. The purpose seems to be to infuriate the liberal oppressors.

Over and over they complain that wind turbines kill two hundred thousand birds a year. The president has said it; my nephew has said it; it was in a recent op-ed in my local paper. It goes unmentioned that two hundred million are killed in collisions with vehicles, six hundred million die smashing into windows, and 2.4 billion are killed by feral cats. They don’t give a damn about birds; it’s just an attempt to turn the tables on the tree-huggers and thereby feel superior.

The Republican (and their fellow travelers here in Canada, where they besmirch the name Conservative in several variants) attitude towards the earth was foretold by Earle Birney way back in 1973 with “what’s so big about green?”

But, for the record, when the planet has boiled, BK will be forgotten

Not at all in fact, since the very same psychological and cognitive bias that produce BK also produce our inability to collectively act to prevent catastrophic environmental destruction, even though the fact it is happening and worsening is common knowledge (in both the usual and technical sense). Either we fix inequalities, or we are trapped in a particular mode of thinking in which the perspective of others is inconceivable to us, and when that happens, BK gets confirmed and it is impossible to prevent the destruction of the biosphere, even though it would be relatively easy to do so.

So BK will be remembered, even (or especially) when our children get to see what 4°C means.

That should read, “…an unpredicted heatwave that destroys midlatitude food crops…” So far as I can find, the only studies of the effects of global warming on agriculture have concerned crop species’ tolerance of the smooth warming in the climate math models. I can’t find any studies on agricultural sustainability under the likely effects of sudden heatwaves, droughts, & rainfall inundations. (This is rather similar in to the economists’ meek costing of climate change.) Also I cannot find any evidence of food reserves being stored by government to meet such a catastrophe.

Lee @12: Since before Game 0f Thrones came to TV, I’ve been bitching about a central world-building flaw in the books: we’re told that winter is coming, that winters can last many (Earth) years, and that the maesters anticipate an especially severe one. Never mind the White Walkers — do we see anyone filling caverns with potatoes and pickled cabbage for a decade? or concentrating on alliances with southern realms that may still support agriculture? or recalling the Great Harvest Truce instituted long ago by King Cogito Facepalm of the Andals? No, everyone’s marching around burning farmsteads.

It’s hard to believe in a culture so obstinately short-sighted that it hasn’t come to terms with this central feature of its environment.

…isn’t it?

@13: A central fallacy here is the idea that, somehow, our individual consumer choices are the problem. The problem in my view is structural and the answer is better policies and incentives.

@14: If, in the bloody anarchy of GoT, you spend your time peacefully storing supplies for the winter, do you:
1) enjoy your surplus in the hard times, or
2) present an especially attractive target for the marauding raiders?

It makes perfect sense that no-one is accumulating a surplus, the incentives are wrong. Yes, it would be mutually beneficial if the participants could co-ordinate to store food for the hard times – but if they could do that, they could co-ordinate to end the civil war, fight the white walkers, get rid of the Lannisters, etc etc.

@13:

Given how deeply entrenched and tied to social status meat consumption is in many cultures, veganism is an unrealistic large-scale goal in the short or even medium term. We’d be better off aiming for reducing meat consumption than eliminating it – or redirecting meat consumption from the worst kinds like beef to less destructive ones (shifting it to cultured meat would be ideal, but the technology isn’t quite there yet). I’d rather see 50% of the population cut their consumption by 33% than 5% cut it by 100% – that’s also more likely to have a wide-spread and lasting impact. I say all the above as someone who is vegetarian (but not vegan; I definitely can be accused of engaging in pragmatic compromise) for ethical reasons.

Well, I was wrong once before so I might be again, but I’m pretty sure that “politicalfootball” was being ironic.

@22 yes me too.

Steve @23:

“Forget idiots like Trump, and ask yourself why not-obviously-crazy people like May can support a crazy policy… once we understand that, we are in a better place to understand how to pull the levers in climate change.”

The upper classes must be leveled: high taxes, egalitarian social institutions…If you want the leaders to lead with reason, then all passionate routes to status -financial, military/diplomatic- must have a roadblock, a “detour” in the form of confiscatory taxation and social opprobrium. Out of sheer boredom, whoever is on top will coordinate and legislate rational attempted solutions.

Probably not gonna happen, but that’s the ballgame

@14 Monte Davis

Perhaps the running around slaughtering one another is a systematic population reduction strategy at the species level?

Tally so far: one dairy consuming vegetarian and a whole lot of silence.

Orange Watch #20: “Given how deeply entrenched and tied to social status meat consumption is in many cultures, veganism is an unrealistic large-scale goal in the short or even medium term.”

Sexism is deeply entrenched. Violence is deeply entrenched. Neither of those facts make it right for an individual to today choose an act that is violently sexist when they have better options.

So why then think it right for the individuals here to today choose to contribute to climate change harm through animal product consumption when they have better options?

“I’d rather see 50% of the population cut their consumption by 33% than 5% cut it by 100%”

I’d rather see 100% of the population cut their consumption by 100%. But the fact that some portion of the population will predictably try to resist such a 100% cut doesn’t justify you, who are capable of thinking through and controlling your behaviour, in not making a 100% in your own individual actions. You can eat plant based while you encourage the resistant general public to make a 33% cut.

Similarly I’d rather see 50% of the population cut their sexism by 33% than 5% cut it by 100% but I wouldn’t be impressed if a person tried to turn that concession into a justification for them catcalling someone on the street.

“I say all the above as someone who is vegetarian (but not vegan; I definitely can be accused of engaging in pragmatic compromise) for ethical reasons.”

Pragmatic compromise – what a wonderfully sounding phrase for choosing to harm unnecessarily!

Marc #16: “The problem in my view is structural and the answer is better policies and incentives.”

How much bigger incentives do you need to bribe yourself to choose to not participate in unnecessary harming?

Monte Davis #14: “It’s hard to believe in a culture so obstinately short-sighted that it hasn’t come to terms with this central feature of its environment.”

People like to find single reasons but I think that there are four very separate causes of this.

1. Climate is a complex system. Complex systems are difficult to learn about. Complex systems never allow precise predictions, so the science is statistical.

2. Imprecise predictions and statistics allows personal uncertainty. Uncertainty is a major factor in personal risk assessment: about jobs, about the future, about what to do next. Under conditions of uncertain risk most people revert to the opinions of their friends. You revert to what your friends believe; the things you hear most often; the old ways that have always worked to pull us through before; etc. This is group-motivated cognition and political tribalism.

3. The system of production and distribution gives the greatest immediate financial rewards to very short-term thinking, in an automatic mechanical way — and if you don’t go along with it, you go hungry.

4. There are rich people engaged in short-term thinking who are willing to buy politicians and produce propaganda to reward themselves further.

I think we have to work on these all at once, and now we are all in a social process of developing some new sort of synthetic thinking and synthetic action.

ccc@32:
If you’re wondering why only one person responded to you, well… just look at your response in turn. It’s not that hard to understand. You’re the very embodiment of the perfect being the enemy of the good.

I know I personally can’t maintain anything resembling a healthy diet without ovo/lacto. I have trouble doing so with ovo/lacto. I am aware this is not an admirable quality, but would it be better if I said “well, I’m not gonna succeed at being vegan, so I might as well eat beef three times a day”? I’ll also point out that I do not always have the luxury of picking and choosing what I eat. You do? Congrats on the socio-economic freedom you enjoy. Not all of us have that; for me, vegetarianism is a middleground that I can consistently maintain in diverse circumstances. But don’t let that stop you from attacking someone sympathetic to your viewpoint for moral impurity.

That latter part also points to why I’m extremely skeptical of your claim that you’re willing to encourage the general public to reduce their consumption rather than eliminate it. By your example here, as soon as someone has made their first concession, they’re no longer part of the general public and thus should be attacked for failing to continue to strive to follow your example. Or did I read that wrong?

Cultural change is hard, and people resist it. You want them to try to change? Set smaller, realizable goals, and encourage them for meeting them. Don’t demand they change 100% immediately and attack them for doing anything less. Gradual change is better than no change at all, but you seem to think otherwise. It’s not all or nothing. Reducing cruelty and environmental impact is better than ignoring and encouraging it. I try to influence those around me to reduce their consumption by example as well as words, and I have some success. If I took your tack and instead demanded those around me stop wholesale and immediately, I would be ignored at best, and have no one around me at worse. Moral purity feels good – especially the part where you get to judge everyone for failing to meet the high standard you set – but it’s not productive unless your underlying goal is to scold and lecture. I’d rather see change than feel superior, thank you very much.

(I do like the part where you try to make all social issues the same, though. That was a nice touch. Was fighting for woman’s suffrage pointless, immoral, and ethically treasonous because it did not seek to immediately bring about perfect equality? Different movements are at different stages, and when a movement is nascent, you need to be either naive or willfully self-sabotaging to demand immediate full-scale adoption of your agenda from everyone. And for all you claim to accept the idea of gradual change, your comments evince an intolerance for half-measures.)

+1 orange watch

Pardon the digression, but why do so many vegans feel the need to evangelize their food choice?

As a group they tend to be a liberal and open minded bunch so if I said I wanted to legally marry my gay partner in a druidic ceremony while smoking a joint – they’d likely say way to go – you do you. But if I added that I was having cheeseburgers and milkshakes at the related reception – the pitchforks would be out in no time.

Geez – Like many I strive to eat a balanced and healthy diet which includes some meat, some dairy and other animal products. My goal is not to destroy the planet in doing so, its to eat things I enjoy and take care of own health. If you are purer than I, so be it – you do you.

…so you’re arguing in bad faith. Got it.

Look, you’ve chosen to draw your line one place and pat yourself on the back for your purity. But there’s always more you could be doing. Do you have pets? Do you take pills containing gelatin? Do you eat mechanically tilled vegetables? Do you eat tilled vegetables, full stop? Root vegetables? Do you buy products from corporations that utilize animal products? Do you pay taxes to a gov’t that subsidizes livestock industries? Do you buy products from corporations that pay taxes to gov’ts that subsidize livestock industries? (Somehow, I doubt you’re a freegan…) Et cetera, ad infinitum. You’re playing a game here, and while the performance you’re putting on pivots on pretending that a collective-action problem is an individual-action problem, that’s not the point of the game. The point of the game is for you to lecture Those People with seething self-righteous fury. You’re not going to persuade anyone to bow to your demands by telling them how evil they are for not doing it, but it’ll sure feel good to tell off Those People, won’t it? And meanwhile, a number of power plants are burning fuel to move your ones and zeros from where you are to everywhere else so the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad People get put in their place, but nothing else changes.

@39: You apparently missed my point, so I’ll try again. If the goal is climate change (and not religious evangelism), then the problem is one of collective action. This means that we need to pool our efforts together, through the political system, to induce meaningful change. There are structural things to change – how we generate our electricity; how our living and working spaces are arranged (how far we live from where we work; can we take mass transit; how easy is it to get to shopping); diet is only one piece of a large puzzle.

By contrast, individual action has a negligible impact. It’s a convenient tool for right-wingers to attack liberals with (ha, ha – if you care about climate change, why are you flying in a plane! Driving a car!) More to the point, there are many ways that people can reduce their carbon footprint – e.g. someone who minimizes their use of a car is having a bigger impact than someone who doesn’t eat meat.

The diet argument is utterly unpersuasive because it’s usually driven by a quasi-religious conviction that isn’t open to discussion. And I reject the premise that veganism is morally superior to eating meat in any way.

Leguminous seeds make me very gassy even w beano (galactosidase enzyme)

#ctovershare.

It´s hard to find a distinction between the vegan religion and any other religious extremist. One point where this gets obvious is when the food absolutly needs to be bought at an upmarket bio food store (i know two welfare receipants who do so ….).
Note that discount stores have way better logistics and way more energy saving store layouts as well as being closer to just about everones home = less co2. The same goes for conventional agriculture, it also tends to be more co2 efficient than bio one.

@
”Everyone should be vegetarian, if not vegan. Not being one is morally weak, if not impermissible”.

Trying hard – and most of the time succeeding -(in being a vegetarian) – but then this new Vietnamese restaurant opened and at the opening I became ”morally weak’ – but I confessed -(even I’m not catholic) – and I promised to make it up by NOT driving a car for the next whole month –

Is that permissible?

human agency is spider silk in a jet stream.

The original article on which that Guardian piece is based lumps methane and CO2 emissions together, which is a dubious practice. Methane has a half-life in the atmosphere of seven years while CO2 persists for the indefinite future in sea and air. The major greenhouse risk from methane is from quick release of large quantities as, for instance, if a substantial amount of methane clathrates melt. The major biological source of methane is wetlands. Ruminant animals are significant in the data, but so is rice farming. https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch7s7-4-1.html

Vegan diets present an increased risk of iron-deficiency anemia, especially to women who menstruate; the bioavailability of iron from plant sources is poor. Vitamin B12 cannot be gotten from plant sources at all. https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002465.htm

Growing edible plants takes a lot of water; in dry places diets are meat-heavy. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1006363772838170629.html

Most people want at least some meat in their diets. This is apparently instinctive; our nearest biological relatives are cursorial hunters.

All that said, it is also the case that we have too much land under cultivation, and eat too much meat. There are, simply, too many of us for the world unless we are willing to live lives of privation.

Now please take this giant red herring and throw it back into the ocean!

Another Nick@53:

No, but it’s also trivial and inexpensive to produce through bacterial fermentation, which you can take as a supplement or fortify foods with eg. most soy-based sausages are supplemented with Iron and B12. Whoever told you it requires a meat-source?

I’ve heard this one a lot online – it’s pretty much a standard bullet point for carnivore evangelists when they’re trying to convince an audience that not eating meat is necessarily unhealthy and/or “denying nature”.

I eat more meat than I should. Most of it chicken and some turkey. No fish. And I should cut back. I spent 3+ yr as a nearly-complete vegan (well, +yogurt) and it was no biggie at all. I cooked South Indian food, beans, and Asian tofu dishes.

And I did all this for my health, not for Mother Nature. Yes, there are people who have dietary restrictions that force them to eat meat. Most of us (like me) eat meat b/c we like it. We could eat less. And frankly, with so many cuisines that use little-to-no meat, and are delicious, it’s not much of a burden.

I should start cooking again. So I can stop eating so much chicken & turkey. Thank you, John, for reminding me.

re meat, surely the environmental issue is less about individual diet choices than in understanding and working with the land? Large parts of the world are unsuited to agriculture, and adapted to the presence of large grazing animals and their attendant predators. Since we have a low tolerance for lions, wolves, hyenas and dingos, and have replaced the native species with cattle, we have to manage within that framework. Which means meat unless we are to leave the carcasses to rot.

Also, nothing against vegetarianism, but the largely vegetarian cultures have hardly been kinder to the environment that the meat-eating ones.

Orange Watch, yep it’s well past its use by date (no pun intended).

Climate change means less pasturable land for meat production. With world population continuing to increase for the next 60-80 years, people might want to think about getting used to diets with less meat now. Raven Onthill is definitely correct on that.

To the extent these are structural issues not ‘personal ethics and lifestyle’ issues, government sponsored television/youtube education campaigns would be cheap and effective in helping to reduce the stigma.

Which is slowly evolving out of 21C culture anyway. The 20C was the era of ‘meat for everybody, every day and all the time, we’re all kings now in our own backyards’.

Orange Watch & Trader Joe & Marc & hix:

“embodiment of the perfect being the enemy of the good … attacking … moral impurity … attacked … demanded … Moral purity … judge everyone … your underlying goal is to scold and lecture … feel superior … try to make all social issues the same … naive or willfully self-sabotaging … your agenda … intolerance … evangelize … pitchforks … purer … arguing in bad faith … pat yourself on the back for your purity … playing a game … pretending … lecture … seething self-righteous fury … telling them how evil they are … religious evangelism … quasi-religious conviction … tool for right-wingers to attack liberals … vegan religion … religious extremist … absolutly needs to be bought at an upmarket bio food store … creating a big fat postive externality for the healthcare system … vegan religion … yelling at everyone … giant red herring … Striving for perfection and distrusting others … emotional falancies … completly absurd”

Wow!

To repeat, the argument here is to for climate change reasons switch the foods you buy in the supermarket and at restaurants.

@Marc #42: “the problem is one of collective action. This means that we need to pool our efforts together, through the political system”

Political solutions to collective action problems require actions by politicians voted in by a majority of individual citizens. There is this slogan “be the change you want to see in the world”. I think collective action problems are more tractable the more individuals internalize that slogan into their lives – considering arguments, improving actions, learning to modify habits, pushing for change in themselves and others in the everyday. In contrast, individuals who internalizes the “my individual meat eating/car commuting/airplane vacation doesn’t matter even if I have other options because collective action problem” slogan are less likely to, come election day, vote for radical climate change policy.

@Orange Watch #40: “But there’s always more you could be doing.”
@Marc #42: “there are many ways that people can reduce their carbon footprint”

Yes, and the good news is that you and me can act on them too, while we eat a plant based burger. Let me know how you’ve changed your actions and habits for the better along those other causal paths and I’ll follow in your footsteps.

@hix #47: “if we ignore the case of young children not getting any meat – since in that case negative healpth impacts are sure no matter how careful one does at.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704/

“It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.”

@John Holbo #43:
Right, like with most habit changes it can require many attempts. One great development is that there are so many handy support resources available today. It is Veganuary all year round https://veganuary.com/ .

FODMAP health issues are terrible. I’ve talked to one vegan who was trying to navigate through a version of that but it sounded very, very difficult. I hope one side-effect of the many new plant based products coming out will be increased diversification of high quality plant protein sources that might help those sensitive to the traditional plant protein sources. Some recent plant meats use oats, pea, lentils and koji/fungus for example.

It cant be repeatet often enough that the extreme individualistic problem solving approach of many environmentalists (veganism is probably the most prominent subset) is a major obstacle to actually solving the problem.

This seems over-simple to me, in that it doesn’t take into account how individualistic action drives collective action. Al Gore, who surely understands the collective nature of the necessary solution, drives a hybrid car and buys carbon offsets when he flies, and he calls on individuals to conserve energy.

People who support public action strengthen their case by taking personal action. Here’s a bit of dialog from Catch-22, Yossarian talking to Danby:

“From now on I’m thinking only of me.”

Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: “But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way.”

“Then,” said Yossarian, “I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn’t I?”

Denigrating individual action is another way of encouraging the race to the bottom. After all, even on a broader scale, what good does it do in the long run to take climate action in the US unless China also does so?

politicalfootball @64:

“People who support public action strengthen their case by taking personal action” and by encouraging others to do so in a manner that demonstrates unconditional solidarity and respect.