There is a huge amount of cynicism here in the comments. And that is perhaps appropriate for people alive today - as long as the human population grows such problems will as well. We live in a closed system.
But, while the armchair activists bring nothing but despair to this discussion there are others who have worked diligently and with optimism to make a difference for many, many years[1]. So far, they’ve failed. But isn’t it a great YC truism that failure is learning? Those admirable folks (including my grandfather, a secretary of the IWC) will keep rising and trying, and someday may just win.
There are environmental engineers, who have worked for the last thirty years, scientifically developing guidelines and regulations, that are science based, for the many factors affecting our environment.
From water, soil and air pollution, to the toxicology of the chemicals we use, on
the present day harm, and long term harm, of almost every industry in use today.
With this data, political decisions could and should be made, on the use, of our environment, our impact on it, and the allowable levels of future disturbances.
Here in lies the rub. Policy, decided by politics, over rides science almost every day.
But, there is hope. There are numbers to work with, there are regulatory regimes, there is a chance for hope.
We just have to create global agreement systems, and possibly global enforcement systems.
Obviously, is not easy.
But, there is hope!
IWC’s mission: “provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry” — what it actually should be - “do not impact whales in any form”
Love YC, might be wrong, but top 20 founders of the almost 10,000 that have gone through YC created majority on YC’s returns; this count doesn’t even include the 100s of thousands of applicants that never got in. And now have ever to my knowledge come close to changing way 8 billion people behave on a daily basis.
Least for me, I am not an arm chair activist, though unlike most activists, I (now) see activism largely as a waste of time. Not because it randomly makes progress, but because the progress made normally has nothing to do with actual changes to way people reason about the world, and everything about how the feel about the world.
To me, without changing way people reason, everything else feels like it’s not addressing the fundamental problem.
There's cynicism and then there is naive optimism.
The time for the ruling class to be given a pass for their failures is at an end. Funny thing is they are the ones calling for and end to complacency, but strangely enough that does not extend to complacency toward their corruption, incompetence, and greed
The point of the person you're replying to is that celebrating this pretty much falls into the naive optimism category. The Paris accord of 2015 comes to mind: the largest emitter by capita withdrawed within a few years (amongst other things, since few did really follow it fully) and nearly a decade later all predictions look pretty depressing. It was celebrated out of hope, but perhaps people need more concrete results before being happy now.
Right. In 2015, peak coal was behind us. The naive optimists thought "it's all down hill from here". A "global accord" has been reached, so all that's left to do is slap together a few windmills, some solar panels, stop mining coal or drilling oil and gas, and problem solved.
Today, somehow, peak coal is in front of us again and emissions promises have been revealed as flimsy half-truths that are gamed and lied about as part of domestic and international power struggles and political maneuvering, to the absolute shock and surprise of nobody who has paid the slightest attention to the behavior and trustworthiness of politicians and bureaucrats and their corporate masters at any time in the past 50+ years.
Yes and? Absolutely any positive progress be it complete or partial will be exploited for personal gain by someone. That's human nature and it's impossible to stop.
Japan is still whaling for 'scientific research' which is a loophole they put into the law. "Fool me twice, shame on me" is not cynicism, it's experience.
“Show me the money” (evidence of improved sea ecology)
I just don’t care about the latest agreement, good intention, or promise. I don’t care to find out where the loopholes are to make the just a showpiece.
I’m not going to celebrate politicians demonstrating some plan for how things are going to be, I’ll celebrate victories.
Too much these days is just celebrating and condemning appearances instead of actual results.
Someday they will win. The question is how many of us will be around to celebrate the win and in what conditions they will be living. That's the thing we can still influence.
I am not an international diplomat, but my understanding is that international treaties on large issues are usually divided into two types: frameworks and protocols.
Frameworks essentially state "This is something we all want, and here are the boundaries of what we're agreeing to talk about."
Protocols build within existing frameworks and state "We agree to do these specific things in pursuit of the framework's bigger goal."
Rationale presumably being that it's easier to get a bunch of diplomats to agree on general goodness, and then everyone has already bought in when it comes time for the more difficult concrete negotiations.
This is a framework stating something like "Protecting marine life is good."
Precious few details here. Great news, diplomats made an agreement! If this is like every other treaty I've prematurely gotten excited about, those diplomats don't have legislative authority, and each needs to return home to get the treaties ratified by their respective legislatures. And after that, it's up to each member nation to pass and enforce legislation to back that up. And in this case that does mean fighting pirates on the high seas. In 20 years, we'll look back and see that little, no, or most likely, negative progress has been made. But hey, you can ask chatgpt how it feels today. Sigh.
What exactly is the nature of this agreement? This article didn't really go into anything resembling detail.
Offhand, I'd love to be proven wrong (because this is an environmental issue that IMO is far more important and demonstrably real than the other thing) but I cannot imagine that certain countries (who cannot be named) would ever agree to a genuine agreement in this space.
Expect more of these international agreements, at an increasing pace over the next couple of decades. Soon focused not just on international waters but on nations. With the agreements having the color of law in the eyes of voters, but not the force of it, followed by codification in the nations once the water has warmed.
The worlds largest country with largest ship construction capability has the biggest fleet.
PRC distant fleet _underfishes_ per capita, especially relative to JP (3X more than PRC), SKR & ES (7x), TW (30x ~). All with their own subsidies and suspicious behaviours in others EEZs. At end of day, PRC with 1/5 of world population and relatively small EEZ is entitled to fish in international waters. Like emissions, it's the per capita that matters.
Entire PRC overfishing propaganda is US driven narrative to forward deploy coast guards against PRC interests. There's a reason why these articles never headlines with US east asian partners being significantly worst overfishers. In the meantime, no reason PRC fishermen or consumers should take a hit until others cut down to PRC levels.
Per capita doesn't matter in this context, because the earth isn't infinitely expanding resource wise, it's the net removed at any given time that matters.
The enviroment and biosphere will recover / regenerate in some form even if humans destroy everything and drive themselves to extinction. Sustainablity is an anthropocene problem, and just like climate, per capita is the only thing that matters for geopolitics if the world wants to reach an accord. No party is going to accede to less share of global commons, how humans share global resource stocks is downstream of politics.
Article is too light on details to discuss much but for anyone interested in this issue I highly recommend the podcast "The Outlaw Ocean". While it's not solely focused on ecological issues, the general theme is that enforcement of any laws or treaties in international waters is very difficult. Out of 7 episodes at least 2 or 3 are focused on illegal fishing.
I think this is a breakthrough, of sorts, to begin. What will beccomeOFit is a bunch of nations working together to protect a valuable resource we have, our data oCEanss!
:) Prolly would've preferRed if it happened sooner but it is NOww heppenINg.
Hopefully more news is forthcoming as to whats in the treaty and how it might be enforced. The article is basically just a press release saying it happened.
When conservation rules are ignored by 20-25% of the population (because they won't be the only ones) they can easily undo all of the efforts of the rest of the people. If I cut my impact in half they can wipe that out by increasing their impact by 20%.
We don’t need an international accord, we need the top 10 countries to stop pillaging the international waters for their consumption. The top 10, mostly Asian countries consume more seafood than the next 50. And these countries are also the ones that are most likely to fish in the most damaging way possible with no sustainability in mind.
>> mostly Asian countries consume more seafood than the next 50.
This is false. Per capita, aside from Africa and South America, who both eat roughly half the fish per person as the rest, majority of world per person eats same amount of fish. Sure, Asian has more people, but do you really think telling the majority of people they need to eat less fish while everyone else is not told that is going to go over well?
The ocean doesn’t care about per capita. If a billion people eat 50 pounds of fish annually, you still remove 50 billion pounds of fish. A country with a 1 million population eating 100 pounds of fish will still be doing less harm. And before we go into “rights”, just because a country irresponsibly has a larger population, doesn’t mean that country has unilateral rights to destroy the oceans.
Besides the claim Asian countries not eating as much seafood is false. Per capita, China, South Korea, Japan are easily the top consumers, if you exclude small island nations and low population countries. [1] Vietnam and Myanmar would also be in the list, but their consumption is based more on fresh water fisheries and not ocean based.
> just because a country irresponsibly has a larger population
What does this mean? If Japan split into 5 countries, each eating the same amount of fish per capita as now, would that somehow be more responsible?
If by "irresponsibly" you mean they failed to execute sufficiently draconian population control, it's hard to imagine anything more extreme than China's longstanding former One Child Policy - an exemplar of what you'd describe as responsible environmental behavior, right?
Who's more irresponsible? A Chinese family buying fish for 2 children or a Westerner buying twice as much food for themselves as they need?
Your analogies don't wash! Westerners fish legally! How about telling China to fish legally? Here is list of just a few territories, "just" eighty of them, where they have illegally fished: https://www.tibetrightscollective.in/news/new-report-shows-c....
China fishing more aggressively than a lot of other countries - and yes sometimes illegally so - doesn't make his comment wrong.
The only way you can have some sort of international agreement on things in general(outside of fishing) is if its fair to everyone. It's absurd to assume that Europe and the US can just consume as they want and "the rest" need to fish more responsibly. It also disregards that a lot of fish is actually imported from those countries.
This is akin to when in the UK Boris Johnson went to have Covid parties while telling everyone to lock down. Or when Gavin Newsom went to the French Laundry during the height of the pandemic while telling everyone to stay at home.
You lose all credibility and nobody wants to listen to you. There's a reason why "Rules for thee and not for me" is a saying.
In regards to Boris Johnson and Gavin Newsom, IMO that is a straw man argument. You talking hypocrisy and now not about illegal fishing. This is about protecting ocean resources and there is de facto evidence China is not. If the United States and the EU buying illegally caught fish. please post a link so it can be investigated and prevented. As for China, they have overfished their waters and there is de facto evidence that China is depleting populations of over 90 other countries: https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2022/08/03/chinas-efforts-to-r....
I wasn't trying to defend the US laundering their fishing through third world countries. At all. That's the height of hypocrisy. I was angry that the other poster considered it immoral for one country to have more people in it than another country. When obviously that's not something they can control, and shouldn't be blamed for. Per person, this all works out to the fact that humanity is wildly overfishing the oceans. I'm more on your side that the wealthy countries - per person - bear more responsibility for fixing it. But I don't believe it's helpful to blame poorer countries for having too many children.
If the US is importing illegally-caught fish, and then those illegally fishing countries stop illegally fishing, the price of fish will go up. This will reduce consumption in the US. So the US won't continue to consume as they want.
We could attempt to define the "fair" population of a country based on its land area and some other factors. Splitting up a country into parts then wouldn't grant it a larger fair population, since you would split up the area as well. The necessity of doing this is that otherwise, when one country decides to expand its population, every other country has to accept a lower allocation of the world's resources. The difficulty of doing this is that you are inflicting on the residents of a country a lower allocation of those resources on the basis of something they had no control over, namely the country of their birth.
well then, I guess the only fair thing would be to distribute people randomly in equal proportion to every square meter of dry land /s
Please wiki: (1) Mercantilism, (2) Colonialism, (3) Nazism to understand why your plan for equality leads to massive, inhuman levels of suffering. (Let's throw in Malthusianism just as a pivot to draw a circle around).
> And before we go into “rights”, just because a country irresponsibly has a larger population, doesn’t mean that country has unilateral rights to destroy the oceans.
It's not about "rights", it's about actually making things happen. Telling China to consume less fish with the justification "you do the most damage because you have more people" isn't going to cause them to actually regulate it or do anything to curve consumption. It's childish playground behavior, but if the children have nukes, you won't get them to do something they don't agree to.
Right, you can’t negotiate with them. Agree to the terms or sink/confiscate their vessels. China has thousands of vessels currently extracting from the ocean globally; do we wait until they’ve exhausted global marine stocks? Doesn’t sound tenable.
I volunteer you to go fight in a war after we sink/confiscate another country's vessels.
EDIT: You've edited your response a bunch of times from "hell yeah, I'm ready to die in a war" to whatever it is now. So here you go Internet Tough Guy(tm). Have fun, I guess https://www.goarmy.com/how-to-join.html
> And before we go into “rights”, just because a country irresponsibly has a larger population, doesn’t mean that country has unilateral rights to destroy the oceans.
People aren't "irresponsible" for being alive, and nation-states aren't individuals who can exercise the kind of moral responsibility you're alluding to. You seem to be implying that countries like China should have gone even farther than measures like the inhumane and authoritarian One Child Policy.
I don't even have words to that, while a top western nation has multiple states banning birth control rights, they say another country irresponsibly has a large population.
Without any consideration on why a certain social group prefers a certain food, why the demographic has multiplied so huge etc.
The HN crowd seems to be the wrongest place when it comes to discussing politics. People tend to apply their tech thinking and suggest a bugfix without understanding what leads to a particular situation and what repercussions of their bug fixes might be, while having no problems exploiting the same abundant cheap labor to manufacture the latest gadgets, encouraging those countries to build more workforce at cheap rates.
It's inhumane and authoritarian, but I would not be at all surprised if sooner or later other countries will adopt similar measures, maybe not in name but in effect. Think 'child tax' (convenient, because it allows the wealthy to pretend it doesn't exist).
The interesting thing here is that there is a lot of tension between on the one hand a graying population that would like to be supported by the next ones and a massive wall in the form of the number of people that we can sustainably support long term. If we don't find a way to support the existing population without a huge push for more people then eventually we'll hit that wall. And that won't be pretty.
I highly doubt it. We've seen the effect it had in China: impending demographic crisis. And most developed countries have below-replacement-rate fertility.
First, I agree your list is a better source, though India offsets the Asian countries you mentioned.
As for populations being irresponsible, please feel free to explain your reasoning behind this claim, since unless I am missing something, it’s missing from your comment.
Again, if it’s so easy to not do X then getting even small countries that are democratic should be easy; obviously not, in fact, this has nothing to do with countries and everything to do with cultural norms, or the lack there of.
Yeah, agreed. Per-capita and the whole social justice thinking that comes from is the worst thing to happen to environmentalism since they joined forces with the fossil fuel industry to lobby against hydro and nuclear.
The perverse incentives it creates for regimes to increase population and reduce living standards are ridiculous.
> Per-capita and the whole social justice thinking that comes from is the worst thing to happen to environmentalism
I strongly disagree on this. I believe instead that per-capita arguments are helpful because they make environmental hypocrisy painfully obvious.
> The perverse incentives it creates for regimes to increase population and reduce living standards are ridiculous.
My current belief is that this is a complete non-issue, for two reasons:
1) Meaningful population control is hard, expensive, unpopular and comes with a myriad of (problematic) side effects
2) Nations care *very little* about per-capita pollution in the first place
The very idea that e.g. EU/US would ever even entertain the notion of boosting their population for the purpose of improving per-capita CO2 emission numbers seems absolutely ridiculous to me.
> I strongly disagree on this. I believe instead that per-capita arguments are helpful because they make environmental hypocrisy painfully obvious.
What do you think about "world leaders" flying jets to meet at conferences and events to agree that commoners have to reduce emissions, when they could have used a telephone and video camera? In any case, the environment doesn't care who emits what ton of CO2 or what humans might be hypocrites about it.
> 1) Meaningful population control is hard, expensive, unpopular and comes with a myriad of (problematic) side effects
It's hard because of perverse incentives.
> 2) Nations care very little about per-capita pollution in the first place
They care very much about it when arguing why they should be allowed to pollute more.
> The very idea that e.g. EU/US would ever even entertain the notion of boosting their population for the purpose of improving per-capita CO2 emission numbers seems absolutely ridiculous to me.
They're absolutely trying to boost population numbers, they explicitly out and say it.
> What do you think about "world leaders" flying jets to meet at conferences and events to agree that commoners have to reduce emissions, when they could have used a telephone and video camera?
I believe we don't require complete elimination of air traffic to hit climate goals and would be restricting it LAST for government use anyway.
So this might be an indicator of too few incentives against air traffic at the very most.
> In any case, the environment doesn't care who emits what ton of CO2 or what humans might be hypocrites about it.
The environment does not care about where the CO2 is emitted, but WE need to if we want to reduce it effectively.
It is VERY obviously MUCH easier and viable to save 1 ton of CO2 per year for a single American (with a baseline of ~15tons/year) than it is to save 200kg each for 5 Indian rice farmers with a baseline of 2 tons/capita. Because for the rice farmer, that might be "no heating during winter", while for the rich westerner it means "a smaller second car for children/wife instead of another SUV".
As long as EU/US emissions are higher per capita they have absolutely ZERO moral standing to argue for harsher regulations in developing nations, and this is pretty much already clear to everyone involved.
> They're absolutely trying to boost population numbers, they explicitly out and say it.
Pretty much every "western nation" has close to zero or negative population growth pre-immigration. This makes the governments job harder because they have to deal with demographic change (=> pensions) and second order effects (like cultural rifts from compensating immigration). That is already more than enough motivation to keep population growth somewhat up, CO2/capita considerations never even enter the picture.
It is also EXTREMELY doubtful that boosting the population in EU/US would help with CO2/capita numbers in any significant way in the first place, because CO2 emissions mostly correlate with WEALTH much more strongly than population density or somesuch, which governments are typically not in favor of decreasing for highly obvious reasons :P
> I believe we don't require complete elimination of air traffic to hit climate goals and would be restricting it LAST for government use anyway.
So you excuse the hypocrisy because teleconferences would have worked just fine. Interesting.
> As long as EU/US emissions are higher per capita
China has more CO2 per capita than EU, and yet they get concessions in those aforementioned hypocritical accords.
> Pretty much every "western nation" has close to zero or negative population growth pre-immigration. This makes the governments job harder because they have to deal with demographic change (=> pensions) and second order effects (like cultural rifts from compensating immigration). That is already more than enough motivation to keep population growth somewhat up, CO2/capita considerations never even enter the picture.
I don't know what you mean. Boosting population in the highest CO2 emitting societies in the world is not a good thing. They do it because of "the economy", because per-capita does obviously enter the picture. If they were actually interested in the environment, they would let population naturally reduce. It's the easiest thing in the world to reduce consumption by reducing population. You need zero new technology, and no changes to lifestyle, and you can achieve large reductions.
Not only in CO2 emissions but in all other environmental footprint. CO2 might have the limelight now, but there are many other catastrophic environmental problems and resource depletion that our massive global consumption causes which have no real solutions.
That’s why the word sustainable in GPs post is important. There are several suggestions in that article for how to handle the problems caused by poor practices.
I would say your claim and data is what you are accusing of. The real answer is that data shows that even per capita, if you exclude small island nations and low population Nordic countries, per capita consumption is easily the highest in Asia. If you account for total population, which again is highest in Asia, the total consumption of these countries is the highest.
The western world needs to switch to plant-based diets.
We stuff our bellies with 100+kg of meat per capita per year (not counting fish, iirc), we produce a lot of dairy (we started in WW2 and stayed with it), fishing and fish farming is not sustainable at all as well, and the developing world is copying our ways - those people of course want to live like we do, they want to have the same stuff and same quality of life.
There are not enough Earths to sustain all people living this life, no planet B, C, D and E.
There is enough evidence that we drive wild animals to extinction, and animal agriculture / fishing is the culprit, ergo our eating habits are to blame.
No politicians will ever do anything meaningful, when everybody just wants to eat fish several times a week and meat everyday and will stone anybody suggesting otherwise.
No wild mammals? No fish in the sea? Maybe do something ... personally ... while there's time.
West has to make veganism cool and show the world how to save the little that still remains.
I was vegetarian for a while and then vegan for a whole year. I understand where you're coming from but it's simply not healthy for most people to go without any animal products in their diets, especially for growing children and those who cannot consume hight amounts of fiber (crohns disease). Perhaps the tax breaks enjoyed by the beef and dairy industries should be removed, but most sources of animal protein are remarkable environmentally friendly--farmed fishing is far less carbon intensive than almost all plant-based sources of protein[1]. Once you look at the facts of the matter, veganism has more to do with how someone feels about harming animals than actually helping the environment: most vegans still eat a lot of heavily processed foods, drive cars, fly on planes, have most of their food and consumer goods delivered to them via trucking. These are not issues that can be solved on an individual level but systemic and society wide problems that need to be addressed with public policy. No individual(s) are to be blamed. It is a collective, social responsibility.
> Salmon and tuna also ranked high for efficiency, but only when they were wild-caught.
Do they also account for by-catch? Do they account for the fact that 40+% of marine plastics is fishing nets & equipment? https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts
> most vegans still eat a lot of heavily processed foods, drive cars, fly on planes, have most of their food and consumer goods delivered to them via trucking
There are many things wrong with our society. But I don't agree with you here. Plant-based is one of the best things an individual can do the lower his carbon footprint (together with reduction of driving & air travel).
In the end, the food you buy, clothes you wear, even the computer you're using right now, no matter animal based or not, is, as I said, almost certainly shipped to you by some sort of carbon-emitting vehicle, usually one, like a truck, that emits far more carbon than any car you might drive. The industrial processes involved to create these, everything in your life, emit carbon--certainly worse than that, your computer was built with rare earth minerals that were probably extracted with near or actual slave labor. Your existence, on this planet, as a human being, is harmful in some sense to the environment, there is no getting around the fact that you, as an embodied ego, has to cause some level of destruction to the life around you in order to continue living. And there is no getting around the fact that the industrial revolution has radically improved the quality of life around the world for the better, and that nobody, I assume yourself included, as you responded to me on an online forum, would ever abandon all the luxuries it brings. That doesn't mean that we can't improve things as they are. On the contrary, for instance, when you said:
>Plant-based is one of the best things an individual can do the lower his carbon footprint
That only applies to a developed economy. India has some of the worst pollution in the world on account of their backwards agricultural practices, and their population is something like 50% vegetarian, it is only on account of technology that we have been able to feed the large populations of the US and Europe without destroying local environments. When that technology is employed for the benefit of people who work together to improve their conditions, then society flourishes. But technology, scientific and social development are all developed collectively, and they are the only way to improve our environmental conditions--nobody alone, no individual responsibility, as I said, will change what the mass of society will do. If you let individuals alone to do what they like, on the sole condition they eat plant-based diets, I'm sure you will get something a lot closer to what they have in India than anything else.
>> it's simply not healthy for most people to go without any animal products in their diets
> Please cite a neutral source on the matter.
I did.
American Dietetic Association
It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.
NHS UK
A vegetarian or vegan diet can be suitable for everyone, regardless of their age.
British Dietetic Association.
It is possible to follow a well-planned, plant-based, vegan friendly diet that supports healthy living in people of all ages ...
World Health Organisation
For adults, protein from two or more plant groups daily is like to be adequate. For children, however, and especially those aged 6-24 months, each meal should contain wherever possible two complementary sources of plant protein
> In the end, the food you buy, clothes you wear, even the computer
We have to choose our battles.
> That only applies to a developed economy
Yes, I'm talking about western economies. No point talking about Ethiopia, for example. [1]
> we have been able to feed the large populations of the US and Europe without destroying local environments
Have you read about soil degradation [0] or that animal agriculture is leading driver behind tropical deforestation ? What's the point in celebrating of "saving" of local environments, when we're destroying rainforests in the process?
> no individual responsibility, as I said, will change what the mass of society will do
Yesterday I was clever, and wanted to change the world. Today I'm wise, so I'm changing myself. Or something along the lines ... No, one individual can't. But many together can. And that was my point.
Most people with omnivorous diets are pretty far from eating healthy, balanced diets. You expect them to be able to follow "appropriately planned" vegan and vegetarian diets?
In no world would I risk my daughter growing up nutritionally deficient because I didn't get the right supplements or yeast paste or whatever. It's far easier to give her a balanced diet and not worry.
If the plant based meat alternatives ever got around to actually being substantially cheaper than meat, this would likely be mitigated to a large extent.
Beyond Meat's revenue has actually been declining YoY, which was surprising. It turns out people aren't very excited about paying more for an imitation version.
"Plant-based diet" != "Plant based meat". I wish people learned at school how to cook a vegetarian meal. You don't need meat to make something delicious, you don't need meat to get the required amount of protein, it's all bullshit. You get everything you need from non-animal sources.
The average person isn't going to give up the taste of meat. If you want to solve problems, work within the realms of the actual constraints. It's far easier to make plant based meat cheaper than to change the taste preferences of billions of people.
No, the obsession over “meat like” is counterproductive. No “meat” anything. As soon as you make something comparable, no one is going to switch unless it tastes a multi-times better than it’s comparable.
Just make nutritious non-meat food that’s delicious and doesn’t impact global ecosystem.
As a non-meat eater, I have zero desire to eat meat — unless I eat some plant-based meat, which then oddly makes me think meat would taste better, even though idea of eating meat literally makes me sick.
As a non-meat eater where the idea of eating meat literally makes you sick, you're not really qualified to talk about what the rest of us meat-eaters would need to switch to more plants. People would absolutely eat more of it if it tasted just like meat and was the same cost or cheaper.
They won't if it doesn't hit the same craving or is more expensive, as we've seen.
> you're not really qualified to talk about what the rest of us meat-eaters would need to switch to more plants
Don't forget that most of those non-meat eaters were in fact meat eaters before.
> They won't if it doesn't hit the same craving
Stop drinking sugary drinks, and cravings for them will, in time, stop. Stop eating meat and dairy, and those cravings will stop too. It takes maybe few weeks, but after that ... you may even find it repulsive, however alien that thought might seem to you now.
> or is more expensive, as we've seen
It may be, it depends on you and on what you choose to eat. You'd find most vegans in the poorest countries.
There's no reason why vegan diet should be more expensive than animal based one. The variety of available processed foods goes up, and prices are being driven down by increased production and demand.
If you're used to cooking your own meals, you can expect to lower your grocery bill. Beans, lentils, peas, tofu, all that is cheaper than meat. Cheeses and yoghuts are more expensive in my area, but you can make it easily from plant based milks youself (it's not so hard or time expensive).
Thanks, agree with all your points, though at some point unless others are agreeing with me, 100% sure it would feel like I am dead set on my position, which I am not, and happy to reasonably assess any points made by others.
I remember reading that growing meat is one of the most inefficient methods to produce food, in terms of time, energy and money required. I guess making it even less economical is what could drive a natural transition towards more sustainable/efficient sources.
Personally I tried to be vegan I was tired, hungry and depressed.
I love the idea of it though.
I do think we could reduce the amount of meat we eat though.
We try do like 3-4 days / nights of week vegetarian, probably mostly vegan really.
If everyone started something like this and tried to do more of it it might help.
Realistically we just have to many people on Earth, we've also polluted a ruined a lot natural environments.
I believe the most healthy/ethical way to consume meat and fish would be if most people do their own hunting, fishing and farming, smaller scale. The problem is the river near my house is full of toxic pollution so I can't fish there, what do you do?
> tried to be vegan I was tired, hungry and depressed
First I've ate what my vegetarian girlfriend was eating. I too was always hungry, and soon gave up.
Later when I've decided to switch to veganism I've read a lot about it first (as always with anything new). I've started replacing my favourite recipes with their vegan variants. For few weeks I've counted calories and nutrients (there're apps for that) to make sure I'm eating healthy. I've learned to cook and replace meat products with their plant-based versions.
There are many ways how to eat vegan, not all of them are healthy (junk) or wise (raw / fruit only).
> healthy/ethical way to consume meat and fish would be if most people do their own hunting
10000 years ago there were only 5 mil. people on Earth, and they've managed to reduce wild mammals population from 20 mil. tonnes of C to 15 mil. tonnes. Can you imagine doing something similar today, with 8 billion of us?
> the river near my house is full of toxic pollution so I can't fish there, what do you do
Don't eat fish at all, and maybe take up on activism ... complacency won't save us.
There's no scientific reason for you to have been tired, hungry, and depressed unless you introduced foods you were allergic/sensitive to, or you did not eat a balanced complete diet. All essential nutrients can be found in vegan diets, other than B12, if you are not eating fortified foods. You may have had a B12 deficiency, which is extremely cheap and easy to supplement.
It might be worth trying again and seeing a doctor and getting blood work if you feel off.
I simply are not up to speed with what to replace the meat with.
I know there are alternatives out there but knowing them, knowing where to buy them, prep and cook them is the main hurdle.
We could use less meat but I don't think you should take a "moral" argument to this.
There are plenty of cultures around the world for which cuisine plays a big role including being carnivore-based. There are festivals, arts, traditions, culinary heritage, etc.
I believe as said we could eat less meat, but I think taking an argument from a "moral supremacist" sort of stand-point isn't the right solution to get people over to that side.
> here are plenty of cultures around the world for which cuisine plays a big role including being carnivore-based.
You're totally right obviously that there are but also I think we're at a point in the history of humanity where we're informed enough to take the impact of our actions into consideration regardless of how long we've performed those actions.
It's got nothing to do with "copying" developed nations, though. We're simply becoming rich enough to afford it. Eating meat every day used to be prohibitively expensive. That's changed.
It's cheap because we destroy nature in the process, and those externalities are not priced in ... in fact, most of the meat/dairy production is heavily subsidized.
Like who? Inuit, who live where plants don't grow? Historical Mongolians, until cereal crops were introduced to their lands? Nomadic Masai who don't stay around for crops?
Can't think of anyone else, without a similar exceptional reason.
I agree. A good first step would be to figure out how to align the markets with the needs of the ecosystems that support those markets.
It's hard to get excited about going vegan when that can of lentil soup costs the same as a can of beef stew despite one being 10x more energy intensive to create. Are you really reducing demand for meat or are you just making making meat cheaper for everyone else?
You're right that many foods, processed ones, are much more expensive than animal based ones despite them being more energy and land resource intensive.
But most vegan foods are the cheapest ones in the supermaket ... I mean raw rice, beans, lentils, vegetables. If you cook that soup yourself, it won't cost more than a bag of lentils, 1-2 onions, veggie stock, few potatoes, salt, pepper, and 20 minutes in pressure cooker (I've done it today :) Delicious too, and you've got 5l of soup for ... 3 USD?
Massive water usage, lowering river levels drastically. Some don't even reach the ocean anymore (see the Colorado River, from Wikipedia: "Since 1960, the Colorado has typically dried up before reaching the sea, with the exception of a few wet years."). Aquifers are running low (here's some info on that from 20 years ago: https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-103-03/).
Pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.
Massive land use for mono-culture farms, displacing whatever wildlife and native plants were present before the farm. Add more farms and you'll have less wildlife.
Everyone switching to plant-based diet sounds nice, but is really not going to fix much. Unless you can change farming to not be so resource intensive? There are just too many people.
Do you really think that those things you've listed (water, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, displacing wildlife...) are solely a problem for plant farms? I must have misunderstand you.
> Everyone switching to plant-based diet sounds nice, but is really not going to fix much
I’m a bit ignorant on this, but what are the projections for consequences to ecosystems if we just keep eating to extinction?
I ask because your solution seems to just get us to the same place diet wise: having to eat plants now instead of later. You could see why that alone wouldn’t be a motivation.
We already get 63% of protein from plant sources [0]. There is nothing magical in animal protein ... all animal protein comes in fact from plant sources [1].
Sorry, but unless there’s an actual link to the agreement, list of countries bound to it, and significant meaningful timely means of enforcement— this is meaningless.
As far as I’m concerned, all harvesting or harming of wildlife sea or otherwise needs to stop. If a country or individual refuses to agree, should either be a life sentence or act of war. People are unable to handle any rule based systems other than black and white, zero impact.
China, US, Japan, etc - regardless of what they say, will never stop until sea, land, and air no longer has wildlife.
War is irrelevant. No country is going to agree to cease impacting, harvesting, etc wildlife. It’s to hard to monitor, enforce, predict, etc wildlife harvesting.
I am not saying humanity needs to protect wildlife because it is the “nice thing” to do, saying it because I sincerely believe Earth and humanity need’s wildlife to have a habitable planet; anyone is welcome to feel free to explain how this is wrong.
Corporations and ultra wealthy clearly have an over sized impact and influence on the world, but — when it comes to a topic like this, it’s 8 billion people saying, yummie, yummie, F the world; or the people not saying “yummie, yummie” refusing to enforce not impacting wildlife on those who clearly don’t care.
vegan population worldwide is likely close to 0.1% of the world’s population — how exactly are unions going to solve anything? This is a consumption issue by consumers; it’s like saying if you eliminate the drug dealers, it’ll solve a drug epidemic, no it won’t.
who said anything about vegans. unionise in any category. make the corporations think twice when they act. it doesn’t matter about what. politicians won’t, don’t and almost never have brought about lasting change for the whole, not without unions leaning on them
Sorry, read the edits, but you’re ignoring the part where union members are contributing to the problem and have provided no explanation of how or why the union members would become part of the solution.
Happy to try to understand, here’s even link to list of the percentage of workers per country that are union workers, though that’s obviously not a global count of the number of union members worldwide as a percentage of world’s population:
while, yes, you are right, unions do sometimes act against sustainability and the environment in order to protect jobs, they are also much more democratic and therefore much more sensitive to the issues of the people as a whole. when unions are strong, corporations have to be careful how they act. there becomes another factor to consider beyond legality and share price. this creates more accountability, especially when politicians are slow to act. and politicians are always slow to act
> going to agree to cease impacting, harvesting, etc wildlife
There is deep precedent for successful conservation programs. The anarchy of our international system makes this difficult. Filling the seas with toxic byproducts of war isn’t the answer.
Might be wrong, but would be surprised if this worked, given Chinese Navy for example frequently escorts fishing boats, so I assume if sinking ships became common China would just sink any unflagged ships as pirates ghost ships.
Sinking a ship at sea sounds like a decent way to end up killing people by accident, I think targeting them at harbor would be a better play. Sugar in the fuel, that sort of thing.
But it wouldn't so much be about the practicality of the attack, it's just about messaging. All humans are put at risk by irresponsible fishing practices, so people that fish irresponsibly should have to worry about interference from any human--not just whatever agency would pull you over and give you a ticket.
I don’t like to impinge upon the purity of your vision, but this needs to be said. such extreme actions don’t work. you need to boil the frog slowly. I appreciate that this is the argument that an interested party would make, but there’s a reason for that and that’s because it makes sense. in practice, without supreme power—and even then—swift swingeing actions create anger, disobedience, fight, even if the people affected agree with you. some people are simply mistrustful of fast change of any variety: good or bad. small c conservatives in other words. they will kill you, doesn’t matter how right you are
No, that’s not true. Rapid change is possible. Majority of world is only 7 connections part, given enough social pressure, it will stop. Having simple messaging is critical, such as if you eat meat, not talking to you, buying from you, voting for you, etc.
One thing that would be useful though is a super cheap test to check if someone has eaten meat recently.
Awesome! Another accord that can be ignored just like all the others that came before!
I love bureaucracy and diplomacy... They make us look so productive while once in a while real change comes along.
Forgive my pessimism, but I've seen too many international accords that haven't been worth the paper they were printed on (with loads of media coverage and fanfare) during my lifetime.
That’s just mindless contrarianism. There are plenty of successes of international cooperation. Of the top of my head: protection of the arctic and Antarctic, restrictions in the trade of ivory, tropical woods, big-game hunting (and trophies) etc. Lots of fishery agreements, nuclear testing ban, standards for offshore oil drilling, double-hull tankers etc.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg and only wrt the environment. EU and NAFTA are also international agreements that have teeth, as is the Berne convention on copyright (even if you don’t like it). Unicode is the UN in action as is the boat that will pick you up if you happen to get stranded on a deserted island (and have the necessary, and standardized, beacon). If you’re a Mongolian in a Mexican jail or a Mexican in a Mongolian jail, your embassy will be informed and allowed to render legal support, thanks to an international agreement to that effect. If you’re being subjected to cluster munitions, your foe is one of the few people on earth that wouldn’t enjoy a trip to the Netherlands. If you find yourself being extradited to The Hague, the plane you’re traveling on will conform to internationally agreed safety standards. A kilogram, meter, second, or joule is the same as your trading partners‘, thanks ISO, and the T in NATO seems to be some mighty piece of paper, considering how it manages to scare the shirtless man shitless.
Would you instead favor starting a war over this? Because this is reality, accords and treaties are tools of diplomacy and they are binding, you can sue other nations or implement other measures against them as a collective of signatories where without the accord you would act unilaterally and without cause.
I think you, like many, mistakenly assume that there is some law or authority over all nations.
I know it's en vogue on HN to bash the UN/international diplomacy as useless, but it's illogical to expect a lot of smart folks, working hard for enough time, not to produce useful things. And there's a lot of tragedy-of-the-commons problems which the UN is an excellent forum to solve.
All the billions of lobsters dead and mass die off of species around the world the next few years as the planet heats up within the next 7 years is breathtaking.
Atlantic Ocean current is struggling to stay currenting. Honestly looks like the tides around the world will change from the warmer climates .. and now to tack onto this methane is starting to creep up as the #1 reason of planetary changes due to ice melting around the globe.. The world is in a scary estate over the next few years as we make the changes to renewable energy resources. Some are to ignorant to change until we have mass starvation periods in the next few years. Than what?
Exactly. Protecting the largest animals won't matter in a few years when all the corals and microfauna disappear due to ocean warming, triggering devastating chain effects in all ecosystems.
I'm not sure if I've watched too many science documentaries, but the future looks grim from any standpoint. Even if this accord is upheld and protects the largest species, I'm afraid it's too little, too late to stop the environmental catastrophe.
The only thing that might slow things down is if we very aggressively stop burning fossil fuels. This is a political and economic problem that everyone needs to agree on, yet we can't even stop killing each other, so I'm not that hopeful.
Optimistic view: the populace wakes the fuck up and demands that the madness stops, and we introduce carbon taxes.
Pessimistic view: the populace decides that any cut to their consumption and lifestyle is unacceptable and gets behind geo engineering in a big way. Next thing we are pumping new stuff into the atmosphere at one place to shield us from the sun, while at the same time pumping in ever increasing amouts of methane and CO2 thanks to moral hazard.
Left field view: A nuclear war wipes out a large part of the population, and the planet breathes a sight of relief.
Ah yes, fishing, the other environmental disaster which is nearly entirely caused by China, who utterly refuses to change behavior.
At some point the rest of the world will need to take actual actions against China, but it won’t be anytime soon as long as the oligarchs are happy and China has them by the wallets.
As far as I know, overfishing isn't a China-only issue. Japan, Canada, United States, and more all have fishing industries. It's nearly impossible to police overfishing too.
Only China blatantly acts in illegal ways and uses their military to escort fishing vessels that are illegally fishing in other countries territorial waters.
The issue isn’t fishing, the issue is how they fish. China straight up does not care about the environment, or sovereignty, or frankly anything which does not directly help China. They operate in an incredibly selfish way towards the rest of the world.
But, while the armchair activists bring nothing but despair to this discussion there are others who have worked diligently and with optimism to make a difference for many, many years[1]. So far, they’ve failed. But isn’t it a great YC truism that failure is learning? Those admirable folks (including my grandfather, a secretary of the IWC) will keep rising and trying, and someday may just win.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Convention_for...