Proportion Conservation Notice

by John Holbo on October 2, 2018

I opened my latest magnum opus (no link necessary I’m sure!) with a requisite attention conservation notice. But sometimes in life it’s good to maintain a sense of proportion. (I’m not the best at that.)

It’s atrocious that Republicans pretty openly don’t give a damn whether BK did or not or is lying or not or whatever. He’s a good guy, bad guy, either way he’s our guy.

But, for the record, when the planet has boiled, BK will be forgotten. And the official position of the Trump administration is not that it’s not true but – eh, screw it.

“The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it,” said Michael MacCracken, who served as a senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 2002.

Just kind of giving up on life on the planet as we know it, without even trying anything. If the only chance of survival would mean doing something the donors wouldn’t like, better to go out feeling smug about coal country.

{ 67 comments }

1

politicalfootball 10.02.18 at 2:42 am

Just another example of your bias against Trump. I bet you never accused Obama of not caring about global warming.

2

Peter T 10.02.18 at 3:13 am

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).

3

Omega Centauri 10.02.18 at 3:25 am

I think the specific argument is one we’ve seen before. (1) Things are gonna be bad, gives number. (2) A proposed measure all by itself will only mitigate (1) by a small amount, so why do it at all? And since there are so many things we need to do, but any one taken in isolation will have only a small effect, why do any of them at all?

This has been successful in the past at kicking the can, so why abandon a tactic that’s been working so well.

Of course it doesn’t mean they actually admit that (1) is gonna happen either, the mentality is more like “if what those experts say were true..it won’t help to act anyway…so why bother”, with of course the unspoken assumption being “but I have faith it won’t happen anyway!”. [You know because expert is a dirty word, and ALL experts are wrong.]

4

b9n10nt 10.02.18 at 4:03 am

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…

5

b9n10nt 10.02.18 at 4:08 am

@1. Sound the alarms! The ph/kidneystones demon has entered the very soul of politicalfootball! the troll is afoot on the threads! Save the threads!

6

bad Jim 10.02.18 at 4:41 am

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.

7

nastywoman 10.02.18 at 4:44 am

@
”Just another example of your bias against Trump. I bet you never accused Obama of not caring about global warming”.

It’s even worst – when ”the womens” will win the planet will even get ”hotter”!

8

eg 10.02.18 at 5:42 am

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?”

9

floopmeister 10.02.18 at 6:27 am

I think it’s quite simple.

For the (neo)liberal, admitting government action is needed to address climate change is a slippery slope to admitting that there are are other areas (ie poverty) where government action is needed…

Once we start using the machinery of the state to address a (supposed) market failure, then we are on the road to serfdom…

This is the truth that lies behind the joke made about the Greens in Australia (“They are watermelons – green on the outside but inside they are red”).

For the social conservative propensity to denialism, I would again point to Hayek:

Though the liberal certainly does not regard all change as progress, he does regard the advance of knowledge as one of the chief aims of human effort and expects from it the gradual solution of such problems and difficulties as we can hope to solve. Without preferring the new merely because it is new, the liberal is aware that it is of the essence of human achievement that it produces something new; and he is prepared to come to terms with new knowledge, whether he likes its immediate effects or not.

Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it—or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism. I will not deny that scientists as much as others are given to fads and fashions and that we have much reason to be cautious in accepting the conclusions that they draw from their latest theories. But the reasons for our reluctance must themselves be rational and must be kept separate from our regret that the new theories upset our cherished beliefs. I can have little patience with those who oppose, for instance, the theory of evolution or what are called “mechanistic” explanations of the phenomena of life simply because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irreverent or impious to ask certain questions at all. By refusing to face the facts, the conservative only weakens his own position. Frequently the conclusions which rationalist presumption draws from new scientific insights do not at all follow from them. But only by actively taking part in the elaboration of the consequences of new discoveries do we learn whether or not they fit into our world picture and, if so, how. Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge facts.
‘Why I am Not a Conservative’, from The Constitution of Liberty

10

Z 10.02.18 at 8:31 am

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.

11

Lee A. Arnold 10.02.18 at 11:23 am

In the last 4 months, new evidence & reports directly linked to global warming:

More hot temperature records around the globe.
Heatwaves last longer, more widespread, more extreme.
Accelerated glacier melt.
Decreasing food availability in South America and Africa.
Forest fires above the Arctic circle.
Acceleration of melting Arctic sea ice.

Increasing intensity of hurricanes and typhoons.
Antarctic ice loss has increased sea level 1 cm in the last 25 years.
Sea level rise is already costing billion$ more in insurance costs.
Warmer water increases the size of toxic algae booms (“red tide”).
Declines in atmospheric carbon uptake by forest soils.
Nuclear plant shutdowns because water temperature is too high to cool the reactors.
Big Oil in coastal Texas and beachfront homeowners across the US are hoping to tap the federal taxpayer to protect them.

In the last 4 month, new studies & projections:

Global warming will reduce ecosystem services and biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems.
Loss of Arctic ice teleconnects to more hot and dry extremes in the agricultural midlatitudes.
Permafrost melting is accelerating methane release which might double the global warming beyond current predictions.
Study of previous warming periods (the Holocene thermal maximum, the last interglacial, and the mid-Pliocene warm period) shows likelihood of greater warming than current math models predict.
If earth average surface temp ever hits around 80 degrees Fahrenheit the buildup of low clouds may slow heat loss to space and accelerate warming to planet Venus status.

And, yet another study that economists have underestimated costs of climate change due to ignoring the possibility of these and other tipping points.

P.S. I continue to believe that the most immediate problem will be an unpredicted heatwave the destroys midlatitude food crops for a year or two, inciting a civilizational catastrophe.

12

Lee A. Arnold 10.02.18 at 11:40 am

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.

13

ccc 10.02.18 at 1:06 pm

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth

” “A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions.”

How many of the Crooked Timber writers and regular commentators are vegan?

Pro tip: you can eat tasty plant based foods and snark about Trump at the same time.

14

Monte Davis 10.02.18 at 1:11 pm

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?

15

Raven Onthill 10.02.18 at 1:43 pm

People truly can fall in love with death and destruction.

16

Marc 10.02.18 at 2:09 pm

@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.

17

Wild Cat 10.02.18 at 4:22 pm

Personally, one of the greater benefits of human mass extinction would be reduced—or nil—posts from ph.

Bring It On!

18

Salem 10.02.18 at 6:17 pm

@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.

19

Whirrlaway 10.02.18 at 7:01 pm

Local rural infrastructure and community, although sadly neglected, decayed and pillaged could be refurbished. People needn’t starve or die of cholera. Learn to grow vegetables!

The key to maintaining the substantial gains of knowledge that have been bought at such great price is the ability to maintain computer data bases and local and long-distance networks, in the absence of a global supply chain. Not in the present style: much less bandwidth. Low and slow: you can do a lot with 8080’s, which aren’t that hard to fab if you’ve got wafers. If I had a billion dollars for a survivalist project, I’d work on a minimalist facility for pulling boules.

20

Orange Watch 10.02.18 at 7:11 pm

@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.

21

TM 10.02.18 at 8:33 pm

This is a death cult we are dealing with. Never underestimate the psychology of rage that makes many right-wingers indifferent to even their own suffering as long as others are expected to suffer more.

Also, and this point is still lost on too many US liberals (European liberals simply can’t remotely imagine it): never underestimate the crowd of Evangelicals/Christian fascists who literally expect the Apocalypse and don’t give the slightest hoot about the survival of humankind.

22

William S Berry 10.02.18 at 9:03 pm

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

23

Steve 10.02.18 at 11:11 pm

This is a serious topic, with serious implications. The only hope is that the current right-wing attack on climate science is a fad which will pass. That’s not an idle hope, because serious people in industry are well-aware of the problems. Furthermore, there’s a strong strand of environmental awareness in conservative thought. And it’s always worth remembering that Nixon founded the EPA.

Still, as I watch the mess of Brexit and how the conservatives have divorced themselves from reality, business and any sense of the wisdom of staying where you are, I realise I’m being optimistic.

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. (NB I don’t have the answer but I know that ‘evil’ or ‘in the pocket of lobbyists’ really isn’t the answer in the May case, so it’s unlikely to be the answer in the, more important, climate change case.)

24

b9n10nt 10.02.18 at 11:41 pm

@22 yes me too.

25

Cranky Observer 10.03.18 at 12:03 am

= = = Salem 10.02.18 at 6:17 pm:
@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 would be almost like starting a massive, empire damaging pre-war to ensure your nation is in a better position to win the apocalyptic war for the last of the oil.

But no one / no nation would ever do that. Right?

26

b9n10nt 10.03.18 at 12:12 am

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

27

Alan White 10.03.18 at 1:34 am

The nomination should be over:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/02/politics/brett-kavanaugh-letter/index.html

Which today means of course he’ll be confirmed.

My Mom, who only made it to 6th grade when she had to sub for her own dying Mom to raise her sister and cook for her Dad in the Depression, was so right as she repeatedly said to me in her elder years:

“I done lived too long.”

28

eg 10.03.18 at 2:33 am

@14 Monte Davis

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

29

Sebastian H 10.03.18 at 3:59 am

Can we talk about geo engineering yet? ;)

30

John Holbo 10.03.18 at 4:02 am

Isn’t the geoengineering news bad? The volcano effect study didn’t pan out, right? (Can’t remember.)

31

William Berry 10.03.18 at 5:28 am

Steve:

The only hope is that the current right-wing attack on climate science is a fad which will pass

I sincerely hope that is true, but I am coming to believe that denialism is a form of exterminism.

32

ccc 10.03.18 at 7:59 am

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?

33

Z 10.03.18 at 9:46 am

Sebastian H Can we talk about geo engineering yet? ;)

Perhaps this is tongue in cheek, but if not, I’ve never quite understood the enthusiasm for as of now unknown but not unconceivable technical solutions to some of the problems caused by environmental destruction (some, because I’ve never heard of a geoengineering solution for ocean acidification, overexploitation, habitat loss and loss of soil productivity, which are problems at least as serious as rising temperatures – I admit I don’t follow the literature closely at all though), when perfectly well-known general solutions are available as of now.

When people disagree on how to split a cake, I don’t see how waiting for a sharper knife helps.* So why wait for a technical solution to what is obviously a collective and political problem? What we need is the capability to understand the consequences of our collective actions not only on ourselves but on others as well, and that’s where the hearings of Kavanaugh does not suggest optimism.

*The extreme form of this paradox can be found in some defenders of the terraforming of Mars as a solution to environmental problems, which in effect seems to be implying that 1) we are collectively able to make Mars a livable planet but 2) we are not collectively able to make the Earth a livable planet.

34

Lee A. Arnold 10.03.18 at 11:01 am

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.

35

Lee A. Arnold 10.03.18 at 11:09 am

An important thing is to construct a positive image of where we want to go, and to rely less on juxtapositional irony and dystopic fiction.

36

Orange Watch 10.03.18 at 2:12 pm

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.)

37

nastywoman 10.03.18 at 2:36 pm

@36
Very much ”Like”.

38

Trader Joe 10.03.18 at 3:29 pm

+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.

39

ccc 10.03.18 at 3:51 pm

@Orange Watch #36:

Demanding perfection would be to ask you to spend all your time and energy on climate change activism. My argument was merely that you should switch what foods you buy in the supermarket and at restaurants. That is very, very far from demanding perfection.

“I know I personally can’t maintain anything resembling a healthy diet without ovo/lacto.”

What is stopping you, exactly? How much have you tried?

“I’ll also point out that I do not always have the luxury of picking and choosing what I eat.”

Sounds serious. Who is forcing you to eat what you do not want to eat?

“Congrats on the socio-economic freedom you enjoy.”

I’m in the economic bottom 1% in my country. Where are you at?

“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 … Or did I read that wrong?”

Oh, you read me wrong. We’re talking on a political philosophy blog, run mostly by tenured academics, read by a pretty narrow subset of humanity I’d guess. I’m not adressing the general public here. You being here means I hold you to a much higher standard when it comes to understanding arguments and acting on them.

40

Orange Watch 10.04.18 at 12:05 am

…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.

41

Peter T 10.04.18 at 1:05 am

re the first two of Lee Arnold’s four points @ 34

There are plenty of historical examples of societies constructing systems that manage complexity and uncertainty over long-ish periods. The Venetian state, for instance, was well aware that the health of the lagoon depended on the state of the watershed, the maintenance of water flow and so on, and had elaborate mechanisms that forced officials first to learn the intricacies and then gave them power to prevent exploitation that threatened the lagoon. Another example is the English pattern of landowning – entail plus trustees focus on future generations rather than current ownership.

The keys are local control, collegiality, a strong sense of historical continuity, an embedded demand that those in charge defer to knowledge, or even have knowledge, of the relevant systems. How to institute these again after their near-total dissolution is the issue.

42

Marc 10.04.18 at 1:23 am

@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.

43

John Holbo 10.04.18 at 2:12 am

ccc: “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.”

ccc’s moral logic is entirely sound. I have not gone vegetarian but I think I should. I eat less meat than I used to and, for periods, we’ve been pretty vegg-y. One daughter has severe dietary restrictions making it tricky for her to digest enough non-meat protein. (Can’t eat beans.)

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

44

b9n10nt 10.04.18 at 2:37 am

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

#ctovershare.

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John Holbo 10.04.18 at 3:21 am

Our situation is, quite severely, this:

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/low-fodmap-diet

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hix 10.04.18 at 3:34 am

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.

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hix 10.04.18 at 4:22 am

By all means, eat less meat than the average westerner. It will mainly improve personal health – creating a big fat postive externality for the healthcare system. In addition there will be a nice side benefith for co2 output. But whats the point of linking that vegan religion to co2 output?
In theory, there could be some negliable positive impact on co2 output. But the same would be true if one never turns on heating. In theory, both could be done with no negative side effects. At least 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. In reality, the extremes will never work to a positive end.

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nastywoman 10.04.18 at 5:58 am

@
”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?

49

Gareth Wilson 10.04.18 at 6:25 am

My lifestyle choice has eliminated all carbon emissions from about 2 First World consumers, and I’m very disappointed in those of you who haven’t done the same. It’s cheap, easy and reliable.

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b9n10nt 10.04.18 at 6:47 am

human agency is spider silk in a jet stream.

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Orange Watch 10.04.18 at 11:33 am

Trader Joe@38:

Selection bias. You know that evangelical vegans are vegans because they’re not eating animal products at the top of their lungs, but non-evangelical vegans blend in unless you really pay attention or have certain specific food-based interactions. The end result is the vegans you notice are the ones yelling at everyone, and the ones who aren’t yelling are the ones you don’t notice (because for the most part, why would you?)

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Raven Onthill 10.04.18 at 1:37 pm

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!

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Another Nick 10.04.18 at 7:34 pm

Raven Onthill: “Vitamin B12 cannot be gotten from plant sources at all”

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?

hix: “At least 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.”

Our 5 year old and 11 month old daughters have never eaten meat and they’re perfectly healthy. They’re also both well ahead of the curve physically and intellectually. It’s a complete myth children need meat to thrive.

Doctors and health practitioners stopped advising against vegan diets years ago.

JH, I’m not sure if your daughter can eat pasta, but worth remembering it’s a great staple source of protein. Only 25-50% as high as things like eggs or tofu or red lentils, but children will tend to eat more pasta than they will say a plate of lentils, so it works out well…

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Orange Watch 10.05.18 at 12:44 am

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”.

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b9n10nt 10.05.18 at 1:54 am

what a great discussion so far

thx JH

I’m inspired to investigate my diet further.

Also, can I tone police? Won’t do it unless asked, promise.

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Chetan Murthy 10.05.18 at 3:18 am

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.

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floopmeister 10.05.18 at 3:29 am

Is that permissible?

Who are you suggesting should be judging you?

:)

As a lifelong semi-vegetarian (SDA parents) who can’t get beyond my love of fish, eggs and cheese along with tofu and beans, I have to say that the evolution of veganism into a Calvinist purity cult really gives me the<expletive deleted>

Currently working on a piece examining the connections between Vegan and Dominionist Christian attitudes towards the natural world – both place humanity ‘outside’ the natural world (that is, ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’) in a way that is deeply problematic.

The perfect vegan lifestyle is living in a space station and eating Soylent: https://soylent.com/

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Peter T 10.05.18 at 4:58 am

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.

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hix 10.05.18 at 5:02 am

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.

Typically indivualist solution already fail at the individual level of those environmentalists. Striving for perfection and distrusting others at the same time usually means one gets things very wrong. Its just too damn complicated to do on ones own even without the emotional falancies. At a collectivist level, those solutions often become completly absurd, since they neither scale nor reflect the preferences of most other people.

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Another Nick 10.05.18 at 6:35 am

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’.

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Chetan Murthy 10.05.18 at 6:44 am

To add to Another Nick’s comment, there is at least one entire culture composed of millions of people, who don’t eat meat: South Indian culture. There are other cultures where there’s a significant amount of vegetarian and vegan food. But for sure, South Indian cuisine is nearly all vegan, except for clarified butter, which is inessential.

The idea that somehow children in South India grow up stunted somehow from not being fed meat is ….. well, it’s ridiculous. Children do consume milk, but the lactose-intolerance of adults shows that adults don’t need milk either to live robust lives.

I’m not arguing for a South Indian diet (though it’s delicious). Rather, that yeah, we can all eat a lot less meat than we do currently, with no dangers and frankly no hardship.

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ccc 10.05.18 at 11:13 am

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.

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hix 10.05.18 at 1:58 pm

One concrete and particular sad example for an absurd individualist solution: Buying a “green energy” electricty contract in Germany. Those cost about the same as a normal contract right now. The reason is simple: Thanks to the subsidy system the portion of green energy in production is much higher than the consumption share of people who insist on green contracts. Learning that little problem with green contracts , i have seen people argueing in all seriousness that the solution is that one should convince a sufficent number of individuals to make a choice to buy a green contract to actually increase the green share.

64

politicalfootball 10.05.18 at 2:32 pm

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?

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Raven Onthill 10.05.18 at 6:43 pm

B-12 deficiency turns out to be fairly common in India. (I didn’t know before this discussion got me to look it up.)

On the suitability of land for different types of agriculture and animal husbandry, I refer everyone to agriculturalist Sara Taber’s tweetstorm on the matter: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1006363772838170629.html.

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b9n10nt 10.06.18 at 1:27 am

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.

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Chetan Murthy 10.06.18 at 2:00 am

Holey moley. I just realized what these people arguing that “personally reducing meat consumption is pointless (or even wrong)” are sounding like:

Sure, I know that grabbing pussies is wrong, but I’m not going to stop, until there’s a law. A law, you hear me? A law!

I’m not saying that eating meat is like rape. Rather, it’s -obviously- wrong for the planet. -Obviously-. So y’know, if you’re going to do it, man up and admit you’re doing something selfish and short-sighted, eh? And maybe try to cut back as much as you can, in the spirit of “doing selfish/short-sighted things is wrong, so maybe we should do it less often?”

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