Generative AI and the artist discussion is such a distraction from AI’s military and police applications or its role in automating hiring discrimination.
I do not agree with veganism as a moral standard. If it is your personal moral stance, that is fine. If you think humans eating meat is inherently immoral, I don’t want to deal with you, you’re hopeless. Vegan ideology behaves more like a sect of evangelical Christianity than a dietary choice.
Veganism is better for the environment, but claiming that it's a morally superior choice ignores cultural and economic factors that make people eat animal products.
It is not inherently better for the environment. That is the thing. When you begin trying to explain that local, sustainably sourced animal protein is better for the environment than imported plant proteins that are farmed 3,500 miles away using slave labor, they start tuning you out. Down is better for the environment than polyester stuffing, leather is better for the environment than pleather. We should work on making animal agricultural practices more sustainable instead of trying to shame everyone into eating plant products that are also farmed unethically and unsustainably.
Ok so I actually did the math on the first statement (local animal protein is better for the environment than imported plant based proteins).
I will be making a comparison between animal derived proteins (beef, poultry, and eggs) and plant based proteins (tofu and pulses)
First, I looked up the CO2-equivalents (CO2e)* emitted by producing 1kg of each protein source (Source), which yields the following results:
Beef: 498.9 kg CO2e
Poultry: 57 kg CO2e
Eggs: 42.1 kg CO2e
Tofu: 19.8 kg CO2e
Pulses: 8.4 kg CO2e
So we can see that plant-based proteins emit fewer greenhouse gasses than animal derived proteins.
Next, I looked at how transportation affects these numbers. I made the assumption that (1) no transportation is needed for the animal proteins and (2) the plant proteins are shipped from the other side of the world (so 20.000km). Shipping a kg of protein by freight ship at this distance emits about 0.6kg of CO2 equivalents (source)**.
So adding it up yields the following numbers***:
Beef: 498.9 kg CO2e + 0 kg CO2e from shipping = 498,9 kg CO2e
Poultry: 57 kg CO2e + 0 kg CO2e from shipping = 57 kg CO2e
Eggs: 42.1 kg CO2e + 0 kg CO2e from shipping = 42.1 kg CO2e
Tofu: 19.8 kg CO2e + 0.6 kg CO2e from shipping = 20.4 kg CO2e
Pulses: 8.4 kg CO2e + 0.6 kg CO2e from shipping = 9 kg CO2e
So even if we produce animal proteins locally and we ship all of our plant-based proteins halfway across the world, plant proteins are still far more environmentally friendly than animal proteins.
In other words, we can produce 55kg of pulse proteins, ship them 20.000km away and have the same environmental impact as producing 1kg of beef locally.
This is not even accounting for land use, water use, nitrate pollution, phosphate pollution etc., all of which have very real environmental impacts, and all of which are more present in the production of animal proteins****.
*CO2 equivalents is a way to combine the impact of all greenhouse gasses into a single number. So not just CO2, but also gasses like methane and nitrous oxide. Methane is about 30 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2, so 1kg of methane = 30 kg CO2 equivalents. The large amounts of methane produced by cows explains the high climate impact of beef relative to other meats.
**The calculations on this site are made assuming a 2kg parcel, so twice the weight I'm assuming my protein parcel to be. Considering how negligible the shipping emissions are compared to the production emissions, I did not bother to adjust these numbers.
***Overland shipping at this distance yields about 4.2 kg C02e. This is more than shipping by sea, but still fairly negligible compared to the CO2e emissions generated at the production stage.
****I've worked on this comment for like an hour now and I'm too lazy to look up sources for this statement. I hope I have been thorough enough in the rest of my comment to convince you that I am not pulling this out of my ass. Feel free to look it up yourself as well. I will be happy to correct this statement if you hit me with a source that proves me wrong.
i actually did the maths here, and slavery is still worse than sheep farming on every imaginable metric. And imaging a world where ONLY pulses are farmed, not rice or grains or let alone the more nitrate and fertiliser dependent crops, till doesn't make slavery and the exploitation of the global south to provide cheap crops sustainable or justifiable.
This is one of the problems with people who are not vegan: y'all think this is diet-based, and just something that people do to feel morally superior. When it is ACTUALLY about animal rights and this simple yet UNCOMFORTABLE question: why do humans feel entitled to other animals?
That's the point of veganism, not diet but a philosophy.
DO NOT PIRATE ANYTHING. NOT SHOWS/MOVIES. NOT GAMES OR SAFER GAMES. AND CERTAINLY NOT BOOKS. AND DO NOT DOWNLOAD YOUTUBE VIDEOS. AND NEVER EVER EVER WATCH MUSICALS WITHOUT GOING TO THEM AND DONT USE ADBLOCKERS/OTHER ADBLOCKER TO AVOID ADS AND VIRUSES PIRATING IS VERY HARMFUL TO THE CORPORATIONS WHO WORKS VERY HARD TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF PEOPLE AND THEIR MONEY. ANYONE WHO PIRATES IS BAD. BAD PIRATING. EVIL. OH AND THIS
OHHH NOO WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THIS INFORMATION WAS RELEASED TO THE WIDER PUBLIC????? ALL THOSE EVIL INNOCENT CORPORATIONS WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO STEAL PEOPLE'S MONEYYYYY
Washington Allston “Helena and Hermia” (1810), Giovanni Battista Gaulli “Justice, Peace, and Truth” (1672), Frank Skipworth “A Roman Holiday” (1889), Simeon Solomon “Sappho and Erinna” (1864), Tadeusz Styka “Dark and Fair” (1908), Hans Zatzka “Two Fairies Embracing” (1930s), Unknown “Boarding School Friends” (1837), Jean-Frédéric Schall “The Hug” (1800)
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