Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

[deleted] t1_jb6hkhp wrote

Reply to comment by BGAL7090 in Global food consumption alone could add nearly 1 °C to warming by 2100. Seventy five percent of this warming is driven by foods that are high sources of methane (ruminant meat, dairy and rice). by Plant__Eater

Milk isn't THAT bad and it's so popular I think I'd leave it alone and focus on other improvements. Sometimes you just have to judge the popularity of something and find an alternative approach.

Soo maybe keep milk subsidies around but get more serious about CO2 extraction so we can tax the corporations and still have decent food.

EVs and solar panels work because they produce a superior outcome, they sell themselves. Making milk expensive without some kind of good subsite is more likely to turn people against climate reform than do much good, imo.

As much of a science and engineering problem climate change may seem like, it's mostly a human behavior problem and that's really what makes it so hard because we have to plan that people will only adapt so far ahead of time and we have to kind of lure them in when trying to prevent disaster because really only actual disaster would motivate them enough to be likely to give up meat and milk.

I think at best we can get them to mildly reduce meat and dairy intake, to be realistic about things. Otherwise you probably get voted out and get anti climate extremists.

At the end of the day reduction of emissions, lifestyle and even population really isn't enough to stop the warming, so you're going to have to use CO2 extraction and probably solar blocking/reflection. This means we should balance some of these changes against their popularity or face the rathe of human behavior.

So we should develop alternatives like we did for power generation or transit BEFORE we drive up food prices without options. Better plant based alternatives or better ways to manage the GHG from the product, but NOT high food prices.

The fastest path to global instability is high food prices, so lets no do that as much as possible please.

−9

BGAL7090 t1_jb6l9qo wrote

Whenever people talk to me about "what can we do about climate change"?

Any amount of "tax the corporations" or "introduce legislature to combat CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions" is met with a collective meh

So I developed a catchier "take all the govt money out of animal husbandry" because it's a snappy way to indicate that there is a lot of tax money already going to those industries - both directly and indirectly - that would barely or inadequately be compensated for by taxing them. A tax would only ever be paid for by the customer anyways, so why create the option of more loopholes that would further exacerbate the wealth disparity if we can just dry up the teat they've been suckling at for decades?

I don't have all (or any of) the answers, I'm just a vegetarian really tired of having to pay more for meals that should cost less simply because it's not a cultural norm yet.

Mods, I'm sorry if this comment isn't sciency enough. If we were good enough at self-policing there wouldn't be any need for you, and thank you for doing the necessary, uncompensated work.

plz don't delete

9

squidbattletanks t1_jb9b4ml wrote

Yessss, nothing is more infuriating than tofu being more expensive that meat and in general that plant-based alternatives are more expensive than animal products!

We need to stop the subsidies to animal products now!

2

Fishermans_Worf t1_jb6xdbm wrote

>Milk isn't THAT bad and it's so popular I think I'd leave it alone and focus on other improvements. Sometimes you just have to judge the popularity of something and find an alternative approach.

Milk only looks terrible because it's compared to beverages with little nutritional value. I don't think it's intentional. People just compare "milk" with "milk" and many people are trained to think "calories=bad" so if they do glance at the nutrition profile it's easy to think "ah—milk=less healthy!"

Of course animal milk takes more energy to produce. There's more energy in it!

When you actually want the nutrition milk offers instead of hydration, it suddenly becomes a whole lot greener. We didn't start drinking milk to mellow out our coffee or quench our thirst, we started drinking it because it's nutritious food.

(Let us also not forget that milk is a local product and transportation of heavy things like unitised liquids over long distances have huge carbon costs.)

−5