The only technology that should be on that list, since using it would enable all the others to thrive: UwU hungry guillotine
Ah yes, Vegan, a group of people that believe they are evolving faster than everyone else, but they are blind by choice to the fact that they are evolving backwards.
Veganism is not technology. Also meat tastes delicious for most of the regular population. Proceeds to nom a chicken
There has been some research to make products that are compatible with veganism e.g. lab-grown meat. The latest technological discovery in the news was ‘meaty rice’
Disclaimer: I also eat meat since I don’t trust my intestines to fully rely on plant-based nutrients. I do, however, think there is merit to how the industrialization of farming has been destroying the environment, especially with the excess of methane from cattle.
I have a better solution to get a meaty taste that is 100% practical and actually being used for millions of years, even before humans existed: Just eat meat.
It’s not necessarily the meaty “taste”. Many people have health complications with their digestive systems (one example I can think of is Celiac’s) that can make it near-impossible to get nutrients from plant-based food. If you can grow meat in the lab, you can get animal-sourced nutrients without hurting animals (for vegans) nor large resources that are typically used for climate-damaging meat industries (for everyone)
Meat tastes delicious to vegans too! It’s just that it’s unconsciouble to purposely destroy the planet just for the taste!
How do you vegans know what meat taste like? You have to eat it to know what it tastes like, but if you eat meat, then are you a vegan?
Not to mention vegans keep saying they don’t like eating meat, and yet you go out of their way to attempt to make food look and taste like “meat”. So do you want to eat meat or not? Pick a lane, vegans.
Oh and humans ain’t gonna save or destroy the planet simply by eating meat. The earth doesn’t need us saving it, it’s the human that will go extinct due to our own actions. The planet will live on way after we’re gone, and new life will appear. The earth was able to survive billions of years before us, it WILL continue to survive looooooong after we go extinct.
I wasn’t born a vegan, most vegans aren’t. I ate meat, and I’ve since stopped eating meat. What an unusual argument to make.
Do you think vegans don’t eat meat because they don’t like the taste, and are trying to convince others that meat tastes bad? Vegans don’t eat meat because of the harm it causes to animals and the planet. If I could have meat without that harm, I would eat it. That’s why I eat food that emulates the taste and texture of meat. It sounds like you don’t understand veganism at all, or are a very lazy troll.
Oh and humans ain’t gonna save or destroy the planet simply by eating meat
No but it’s a bloody good start, and why not do it? I’m not worried about the earth, it will go on. But I’m concerned for the literally millions upon millions of people who’ll die from climate change caused by animal agriculture. I know you’re clearly not concerned about needless animal suffering, but are you not concerned for human suffering either?
So other animal races can eat other animals but the human race, which is also animal in case you didn’t know, cannot eat other animals? Talk about literal interspecies racism.
Animals also rape other animals. We shouldn’t look to animals to check our moral compass. Animals eat other animals out of necessity, in order to survive. We as humans no longer need to do that, and have the mental capacity to choose not to.
If you still choose to kill and eat animals, purely to satisfy your tastebuds, then you are immoral. It’s as simple as that.
Ah yes, raping, an activity that is the perfect comparison to eating meat. And yet everyone doesn’t get arrested for eating meat, the justice system is more corrupted than I thought.
And as a species that has been around for 2.5 million years, we just started eating meat recently and definitely not for the last 2.4 million years. It’s a miracle that we evolved instantly from a bunch of apes eating nothing but plants to omnivores with complex history and advanced technology in just a mere 2 thousand years.
Maybe having a brain the size of an orange ain’t so bad, we definitely should evolve backward to that since we were able to survive for 2.498 million years without meat after all.
I’m not suggesting that rape and the act of killing and eating animals are equivalent. You listed the fact that “animals kill animals, we are animals” as justification for doing so. I posit that, using that logic, “animals rape animals, we are animals” is broken justification for rape.
Also the fact we have been doing something for millions of years is not justification to continue doing so. We’ve indiscriminately murdered people for millions of years, you wouldn’t accept that as justification for murder.
Consumption of meat was certainly beneficial to our ancestors, as protein was hard to reliably attain. Now it isn’t, we have access to all kinds of reliable plant protein.
To now make the conscious choice to kill and eat animals, ONLY for ones pleasure, is immoral.
Plant-based plastic replacements. Everyone fails to create a universal kind but plastic in your shopping bag is different from plastic in a PET bottle.
20 years ago a few key technologies were still missing, like grid storage battery technology. But there are multiple promising ways now. Unfortunately lack of massive funding for research and development and patents means we’ll have to wait another 20 years to produce them really cheaply on the free market. Otherwise it would be unfair to the poor inventor! /s
Veganism isn’t better for the environment than significantly reducing the total amount of consumed meat. Animals play an important, difficult-to-replace role in making agriculture sustainable. Animals can be herded on land that’s difficult to farm on, animals can consume parts of farmed plants that humans cannot, and animals produce products that humans cannot replicate without significantly more work.
Edit: I see a bunch of vegans who aren’t really engaging with the argument. To be clear, anyone who makes statements about how things are right now to try to disprove this is probably arguing in bad faith. I’m not responding to comments anymore because, while it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong, y’all aren’t making any good points.
Furthermore, I’m not anti-vegan, but now I’m tempted to be. So many people I’ve engaged with have displayed all of the worst vegan stereotypes I’ve heard about. I’ve always assumed it was chuds making shit up, but no I just hadn’t met any of the terminally online creeps in the vegan community yet OMFG.
Yes, we need to significantly reduce the amount of consumed meat (maybe not insects, if we consider them meat). A step towards more vegan and vegetarian food would definitely be necessary. Yes, not everyone needs to be vegan. But we need to consume way more vegan and vegetarian food.
Insects are meat. Why are you so keen on eating bugs?
There is a general consensus that insects are not considered equal in terms of animal cruelty like mammals, as they have much smaller and simpler nerve systems.
In regards to ecological imprint insects have a much better feed to food ratio and you can feed them much more things than to grazing animals.
In vegan communities insects are very much extended the same moral considerations as other animals. What you’re advocating is a form of speciesism, which is something better avoided as much as possible.
Anti-specieism is an argument often brought by vegan fascists, arguing that killing humans is no worse than killing mosquitos.
Also the concept of avoiding specieism fails the moment you look into nature. Is the cat that eats a mouse a speciest? Should you let mosquitos bite you and transmit diseases because killing them would be speciest? Are the farmers in Southern Africa that are plagued by locusts speciest for trying to protect their harvest?
Probably you would consider these examples as legitimate. But what about the building of the house you reside in? The production of your electronics, your energy usage…
It is impossible to make a consistent value frame of what is acceptable killing of animals and what isn’t, if you deem an individual fly as equally protectworthy as a sheep or a human.
Vegan fascists? The people who are trying to put an end to the forced captivity, continuous torture, rape, exploitation, commodification, and perpetual holocaust-levels of slaughter of virtually every species of animal that is not human, are fascists?
Here’s the most commonly accepted definition of veganism:
“Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”"
Emphasis added. The vast majority of vegans do not believe that killing a mosquito is exactly equivalent to killing a human, and even of the people who do, it’s intended to imply that all species lives are important, that the mosquito’s life is seen as equally valuable to the human’s. The only reason such a proposition seems abhorrent to you is because you’re looking at the mosquito through the lens of your carnist supremacist mindset, which is to see the mosquito as something worthless and thus conclude that a human’s life is considered by vegans to be equally worthless.
But again, like everyone else vegans take anti-speciesism only as far as is practical. We just do it better. The mosquito bite is easy. If you know mosquitos are around, it’s wise to wear repellent, and take other appropriate precautions depending on your circumstances. Maybe modify your environment if possible to be less of a breeding ground for them, if it’s bad enough. If you’re dealing with a particular mosquito, odds are they have already bitten you, so how is the lethal carnist reaction any more protective against a disease that may have already been transmitted, than simply blowing on the mosquito to get them to fly away?
Locust infestations happen because of shitty agricultural practices. If you’ve got a plot of land that’s full of nothing but copies of one tantalizing crop, then of course it’s going to be an obvious buffet for a vast amount of insects. Are veganic farming or veganic permaculture methods extreme? Or is it more extreme that our most common monocultural methods of farming are causing so much pollution that it’s bringing so many vital pollinators to the brink of extinction?
You make the same erroneous argument that many other carnists make, which is the idea that because vegan values can’t always be practiced perfectly, that somehow automatically means the entire ethical framework is without merit. But that’s obviously nonsensical. To the individual mosquito or mouse, it makes all the difference in their entire little lives, whether they incidentally pestered a vegan or carnist. It’s been estimated that a single vegan living their values results in about 200 fewer livestock animals being slaughtered every year. Is it extreme to live in a way that would end factory farms forever if we all embraced it, or what about the lifestyle that created them in the first place?
Nearly every half-baked gotcha that carnists try to catch vegans in has a common-sense practical answer. The example of predation in wild areas is a point of contention in vegan communities, whether we should intervene or not and ultimately make rather significant changes to the natural world, but presently it doesn’t really matter, because there are so many other obvious abuses that need to end.
Veganism only looks extreme from the deluded perspective of carnism. But in reality going vegan is like becoming sober, and recognizing how disturbing it was to live the way that so many continue to.
Vegan fascists? The people who are trying to put an end to the forced captivity, continu…
Those guys:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/evb4zw/why-so-many-white-supremacists-are-into-veganism
And those guys (German Article):
https://www.belltower.news/vegane-nazis-wie-rechstextreme-mit-ihre-ernaehrung-ideologisieren-91901/
Most of the vegan food we grow is fed to animals, so we can eat them. Feeding and housing animals for food consumption purposes requires 83% of our total farmland, but produces only 18% of our calorific intake.
If the world went vegan, we’d only use 25% of the farm land we currently do, meaning we don’t need to use that “difficult to farm” land.
Unfortunately there is literally no valid argument against veganism. If there were, I wouldn’t be vegan.
Lookup veganic farming, and veganic permaculture. The idea that animal ag has any place in combating global warming is demonstrably false, and was nothing more than a greenwashed hijacking of the other various regenerative agricultural movements. There is no room in neither a just world, or a sustainable one, for the exploitation and consumption of animals.
I don’t really care. Abusing (using) animals for food and work is cruel anyway, if me not doing that because I think it’s wrong is good for the environment, great! If it’s not, fine, but it’s not why I do it.
That’s the thing. Ethics and impact on the environment can be two different things. If you decide to go that way, you’re fine. Do it. However we need animals for stated reasons. We have to eat less meat/generally consume less animal products.
We also need to stop overproducing everything. America makes far too much corn, because/and the industry is heavily subsidized.
The amount of food waste in North America is astounding. Completely unnecessary.
We do that so you can go to the store and actually find food. It’s so we don’t have another famine…has nothing to do with anything else you’re trying to point out.
You have zero idea what you are talking about.
Yea totally, no clue what I’m talking about at all, just own a farm and understand our food economy…but nope no clue.
So you’re telling me the government uses tax payer money to prop up your farm so that… we can actually find the food at the grocery stores?
And then with all that extra corn that you’re producing they have to find a myriad of other uses (like the syrup that making the entire country obese, for one)?
So clearly you’re way more enlightened on the subject since you own a farm, so why don’t you tell the class why subsidizing an unnecessarily oversized industry is a good thing.
Don’t shy away from this. You’re the expert.
Veganism is good for climate, biodiversity, health and animal welfare. We really don’t need to eat animals or animal products to have good meal and live a happy life. The good thing is that humans are omnivores, with a free choice of what to eat. Please choose wisely, not only for your own mental and physical health, but also for others, living now as well as in years to come.
Not everyone can eat a pure vegan diet. We are omnivores. We don’t get to pick, we must eat it all to stay healthy.
Everyone needs nutrients they can digest. The source doesn’t matter under these conditions. Excluding rare medical cases, everyone can get all required nutrients from non-animal sources, ergo everyone can have and live a perfectly healthy life on a vegan diet.
Meat has more than just protein. It has so many micronutrients that your body needs that you would have to take a shit ton of supplements to just come close to it. Sure, you can survive without those micronutrients. But why go through all the trouble?
that you would have to take a shit ton of supplements to just come close to it
If you would’ve taken a dive into healthy vegan diets, you would know that this isn’t true.
But why go through all the trouble?
I thought we already established that in the comments here.
We don’t need animals to consume plants we can’t, because plant food is soooo goddamn more efficient on every metric. We can drastically reduce land, water and energy usage AND still feed way more people with plant foods. We simply do not need to eat animals.
Any form of “sustainable” animal farming I’ve read up on end up being still less resource efficient than plant foods, AND obviously massively reduced output. So we’re truly talking about vegan vs. an ounce of meat a week. That’s not a difference worth defending, considering the other obvious ethical issues.
Finally, why do you feel that it’s important to argue for “99%” veganism? Do you genuinely believe people don’t understand that less is better, but none is best? Do you apply the same argument to other ethical issues, like feminism? Being 99% feminist is a big improvement, but constantly arguing for it in favor of feminism (aka 100%) would obviously look ridiculous. Finally, don’t you realize the humongous difference between “we should abuse animals for our pleasure less” vs. “we shouldn’t do that”? A whole class of racism disappears if we get rid of the association between “animal” and “lesser moral consideration”.
Have fun eating grass, drinking nonpotable water and eating roots and stalks and rotting vegetables…you militant vegans are hilarious.
Yes because calling out the bullshit is a strawman, you might wanna go read your own links lol.
See above.
Yes you really told me, damn…thanks for the discussion you’ve changed my mind.
If you were open for a discussion and for the possibility to change your views, you wouldn’t have used bogus arguments. I just wanted to point those out, as it is probably meaningless to waste my time in a discussion with you anyway.
I already have a second hand and telling people to grow a second hand just feels ableist to those who can’t. /j
“Veganism”
Let’s reign that in just a bit to Vegetarian for now. Incremental steps.
You can totally incrementally step towards veganism. That doesn’t mean that veganism isn’t the correct end goal.
I think Veganism is just silly though. To completely disregard animal husbandry, forgo chickens laying eggs, cows making milk, all the things animals produce just seems like purposefully hindering ourselves when we still haven’t figured out how to feed everyone.
Start by replacing meat so we don’t needlessly slaughter animals, sure, got me there, but I can’t understand veganism as a practical solution to anything. It’ll help climate change, sure, but it won’t significantly impact it enough to solve it and we have better alternatives to doing that.
Veganism can not only help with climate change, but also total land use, species extinction, deforestation, ocean eutrophication, antibiotic resistant bacteria, zoonotic diseases and soil erosion. Also, keep in mind that over 90% of worldwide livestock and 99% in the US are factory farmed. And we still needlessly slaughter egg-laying chickens and dairy cows once they’ve been overworked to the point of no longer being profitable enough to keep alive.
Veganism isn’t inherently better for the environment. You’re looking for sustainable agriculture. End goal would be a hydroponic grow tower, powered by renewables. Perfect growing conditions year round with little to no runoff. Doesn’t work for all crops currently, and takes a ton of power to operate, though.
Veganism IS inherently better for the environment. If everyone went vegan right now, the agricultural industry would use only 25% of the land, and global emissions would reduce by 20-25%.
Not to mention the animals!
Ah, I see I didn’t say the silent part out loud. I didn’t mention animals specifically because meat production is stupidly bad for the environment, so incorrectly assumed that was a given. I was specifically saying veganism isn’t inherently better than a vegetarian diet, not eliminating technical animal by-product like honey. I suppose there isn’t a term for “things that vegans won’t eat because technically an animal by-product, but still not terribly bad for the environment, at least not any worst than growing other vegetables on an induatrial scale”. Think things like cricket flour. Not vegan, but not ecologically bad either.
A vegetarian society would be almost worse for the environment unfortunately. Without grinding up male chickens (unneeded for egg production), and without killing male cows at 1 year for meat (unneeded for milk production), we’d be subject to feeding these animals for their whole life rather than what their carcass can provide at young ages. Plus with specific honey bee populations taking pollen away from local indigenous bees, we could see species wiped out in pursuit of it. It’s best for the environment to just stop eating what comes out of animals, and starting eating what we feed to them instead.
To be fair, a lot of the new technologies people talk about regarding this are some of these things, but improved. For instance, better batteries or solar cells, recent improvement to which has already had a pretty notable impact (for instance, better solar panels making solar energy cheaper, which makes even entities concerned only with profit more likely to adopt it.)
Usually it’s just an excuse to do nothing, hoping for a magical technology that saves us from all our problems
Thorium reactors are the Hyperloop of energy generation!
Only way to stop climate change is to STOP CONSUMING SO MUCH
Best way to stop consuming is to stop having children
mhh. nope.
Best way to reduce consumption is preventing rich people from obscene over consumption. Do you know how many average children could grow up and life a lifetime on the emissions of Tylor Swifts private jet tours? (Arbitrary example, because it has lots of attention right now. Goes for the lifestyle of most rich and super rich people)
What if I told you, on the world stage, “rich person” encompasses most Americans.
What if i told you with renewable energy, public transit mobility, an end to the 9to5 and consume excess hamster wheel, proper recycling and sustainable products everyone could life a good life, many americans even a better life?
The world has enough ressources to sustain a larger human population and give everyone the means to a decent life. It is solely in the way things are done right now, in particular the obscenely rich, that are unsustainable.
IDK how I feel about this argument.
Some people don’t care about having kids, others have an innate desire to do so, a biological contact that yearns for fulfilment.
Maybe it’s a lame appeal to emotion but one of the defining characteristics of life is the ability to reproduce.
If you’re not into kids, it’s pretty easy to say “people should stop having kids”, but that assertion is a bit of a kick in the guts to those that feel that drive.
It’s a bit of a moot point for people in developed countries anyway. As in we can all congratulate ourselves on being enlightened enough to realise that we’re overpopulated, but there’s billions of people having as many children as possible to support them in their retirement.
Unachievable though it may be, I think global universal education, healthcare, and UBI is the solution to over population.
I agree that if you don’t feel the need to have children, it is very easy to argue that its a good move, compared to if you have the biological desire to have them. On the other hand, you can argue that this is what environmental movements are all about. Controlling our desires, in order to avoid exploiting the ecosystem.
If you’re not into kids, it’s pretty easy to say “people should stop having kids”, but that assertion is a bit of a kick in the guts to those that feel that drive
I understand that not everyone can accept not having children, especially if the reason is be to help the climate. On the other hand, we don’t recognize the same “kick in the gut” to someone who feels the need to eat red meat, explore the world or own a big house.
To me, stopping a line of expanding consumerism is a very strong move, as a long term climate action. I can’t compare them to short term actions, but not putting more human in the world, who will keep consuming, and will keep adding even more consumers in the world, feels better to me than turning vegan. I can help the itch, of needing children, by caring for the children in my closest family or even help local organisations setup to match adults to children (a sort of freelance parent/mentor)
Imagine thinking that telling people on the internet to not have kids is an effective strategy against climate change, while downplaying the importance of going vegan. Continuing to be an animal abuser is also more than a kick in the gut to all the animals who are born in extreme captivity, live a life of constant torture and rape, only to be slaughtered (usually in childhood) just so people can satiate their gluttony for a little sensory pleasure and delude themselves into thinking they need to do that because they’ve been trained by unscientific marketing teams into thinking it’s the only way they can get protein.
On the other hand there are a lot of antinatalists in the vegan communities. So if you went vegan, you’d be in good company.
I don’t need to imagine it. I just did it.
I don’t argue that we need to pick one over the other though. Simply that there is no one right way to everybody.
Kudos to you if you do both and even better if you also don’t have a car and drink rain water.
I argue it’s better to stop producing so much.
Don’t blame consumers for consuming what’s placed in front of them. Blame the producers for producing collectively more shit than the entire population will ever need or want.
I blame them both. Neither can do it without the other.
I agree it’s both but they can do it without the other. Remember when all those copies of the ET videogame were dumped in a whole? It’s a weird example but they often create a lot of product that’s never sold. Likewise consumers will be extremely wasteful and fickle. Like how people won’t buy ugly fruits and veggies so instead ugly carrots are cut into baby carrots.
Remember when all those copies of the ET videogame were dumped in a whole?
No but I assume there was never an ET 2?
I promise there’s more corporate waste nobody purched it’s not a stretch.
Of course it is. Corporations don’t throw money away producing things they know people won’t buy.
They do all the time actually. You need more product than you will sell basically always.
No, the only way is to drastically reduce the human population.
That would be a great way to reduce consumption
You forgot, Work from Home.
and reforestation.
I feel that’s nested under veganism since consuming that way would leave far more land to be wild/reforested.
Yeah we already have the technology needed, we have to implement them.
And much of the tech is actually very old. Electric trains are like a century old. So for a lot of things, we have to re-implement technology we foolishly removed.
Oil was just a bad technology path. Gotta get back on the right path.
Our battery tech is not up to par, and chances are, will never be. Need something in replacement. Nuclear, not the same, but good enough.
Nuclear trains and cargo ships might actually be necessary, even. In North America and over oceans, getting the vehicle weights, the weights of cargo and the distances between cities to work under any reasonable system means not just DC but even AC are insufficient in transmission range on land (and of course useless in the middle of an ocean), and companies like Amazon and AliExpress account for a lot of direct climate-disrupting emissions and a good chunk of the wealth letting assholes like Bezos live like kings at everyone else’s detriment.
While nuclear container ships would be very useful for reducing emissions I’m not sure I want to trust shipping companies with nuclear reactors given the track record of ship accidents and noncompliance with environmental regulations. Feels like they’d just dump the nuclear waste into the ocean.
Also piracy would suddenly become a much bigger issue.
Nuclear trains, WTF? There have been electric trains for over a century. In fact most Diesel trains actually have electric motors powering the wheels with a diesel generator powering the electric motors. Instead of having to think about repercussions of what happens when a nuclear powered train derails in a populated area, why not just run some overhead wires over the tracks like people have been doing for a century?
One of the problems with hydrogen is the lack of density means there’s a need for larger fuel tanks. This is less of a problem for cargo ships and trains than it is for most other vehicles. And again less worry of nuclear materials being hauled around population centers or in areas where there’s pirate activity.
“We need new technologies that can be controlled by a megacorporation to make a select few rich, not things that individuals can do or use that can break the hold of existing monopolies”
And thus the shilling for nuclear power began.
Is nuclear a bad option? Only downsides I’ve heard are basically optics problems. Barring facilities that catastrophically failed on top of horrid safety policy negligence, they seem perfectly suited for baseline power production.
Cost, where we get uranium, how to handle the wastes. And it may fail even more if we fail to cool it down (less water due to Earth warming up)
Cost. The reality is nuclear is not just more expensive than every other option, it’s a lot more. I remember seeing something like ten times the cost of solar, per whatever unit of energy
none of these are the solution. Nuclear is the solution.
