Re: What aspects of today's society will we be ashamed of in sixty years?
Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 9:33 pm
what if humans killed 2 birds with 1 stone by eating their children tho
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so recycling, veganism, and energy saving lightbulbs are all lies? brute knew it.
No, they're not wrong. They're just totally inadequate. Recall the quote Ego posted above from the other thread. There are some things some of us know but don't say out loud because the resulting conversation is unpossible. I suspect wise men decided that change is better by starting with small steps instead of explaining the enormity of what is actually required because most people would just give up already. At least that's the strategy also used in weight loss, financial planning, etc.
Clearly, the potential savings from reduced reproduction are huge compared to the savings that can be achieved by changes in lifestyle. For example, a woman in the United States who adopted the six non-reproductive changes in Table 3 would save about 486 tons of CO2 emissions during her lifetime, but, if she were to have two children, this would eventually add nearly 40 times that amount of CO2 (18,882 t) to the earth’s atmosphere.
This is not to say that lifestyle changes are unimportant; in fact, they are essential, since immediate reductions in emissions worldwide are needed to limit the damaging effects of climate change that are already being documented (Kerr, 2007; Moriarty and Honnery, 2008). The amplifying effect of an individual’s reproduction documented here implies that such lifestyle changes must propagate through future generations in order to be fully effective, and that enormous future benefits can be gained by immediate changes in reproductive behavior.
Deer? They are a convenient distraction. In the US we're talking about beef cattle, chicken, pigs and turkeys that would not have existed if not for the meat/dairy/egg industries. If they did not exist, their suffering would not exist.
Certainly we should be aware that our actions can have many intended and unintended consequences, and we should consider these when implementing policy. I'm not an ethical consequentialist, so I'm not very much into trying to determine whether shooting some deer vs letting some starve is going to be better or worse from the deers' perspective in order to decide what should be done. I am much more about letting the deer and nature sort that out for themselves--a policy of non-interference. For what it's worth, I also extend this policy to interference in a positive regard: I don't think that we should feed the ducks. Some vegans would argue that this too indicates a lack of compassion in me. It might be said of them that they would ideally turn the entire world into a giant zoo (preferably of the petting variety). We needn't wonder how they would feed the lions, a significant number of vegans are enamored by domesticated cats and make feeding them the sole exception to their principles. Perhaps they should lose their vegan cards.7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2017 10:16 amCompassion focused at a distance can become problematic. Thoughtful people who have experience with producing food need to be brought into the discussion in order to avoid unintended consequences of well meant policies or practices. For instance, absent hunting or predation, deer in my region will most likely die from starvation or automobile strike. So, if a soybean farmer built a fence, the decision to build that fence would directly starve some deer in order to feed some humans.
I could see this as a possibility.. but maybe not in sixty years (more like 160). Even then, it could be less shame and more "it was a different world back then."
Back to where we started. If we were to eat tofu rather than feeding the soybeans to meat producing animals then we'd need 97% less farmland.7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 12, 2017 8:46 pm@Ego
There is virtually no place left on Earth where wildlife is not managed by humans. Raccoons and deer ate approximately 2-5% of corn and soybean crops in the Midwest last year. Deer love soybeans. Raccoons love sweet corn. Soybean farmers have been pushing hard for extended hunting season and permits.
Each child: +58.6