Trying to have a serious conversation on here is like trying to find another single in a Japanese lift line

What exactly do you expect, sat up there looking down from your pretentious high-horse?

I offset my flight in May from Oz to Japan through Greenfleet. I paid about 40 bucks and they organized some cubs or girl guides to plant a dozen mixed-species native trees on degraded saline ex-farmland for me, thus re-building habitat for struggling native fauna, removing my CO2 from the atmosphere (over the life of the planting) and increasing awareness of the issue in the community.

And you say 'screw that'? Yeah, real nasty conspiracy...

Well, even though i think Tubs is mixing up issues, i am a little wary about 'carbon offsetting' schemes.

If you are reading this Tubs, it means you pay for someone else to work on a project to get rid of a certain amount of carbon dioxide, to 'offset' extremely polluting activities, like flying an a plane.

And i agree with Tubs, it is a little sketchy, because there is not much guarantee that the trees will live long enough to sink the required amount of carbon that you claim to be paying for. They have to live at least 30 or 50 years to do thiat.

Thats why i advocate living in a way that pollutes less to begin with. And seeing as how food is something we consume every day, many times a day, it is a good place to look at what is efficient and what is wasteful. And meat is pretty much the most energy-intensive food out there.

Which is the whole point of this tread, to make people aware of the problems associated with meat production and advocate eating less of it.

An excellent book, which is far from being an arguement for vegetarianism, is "The Omnivore's Dilemma". Brilliant book, and i reccomend everyone read it to get an idea of how f-ed up food production is.

All you will end up doing is forcing farmers to plant corn into crappy fields for ethanol. Going only vegan isn't going to work. The ocean is dying as well so why eat fish?

I don't see the logic Fatty. How does a reduction in meat consumption = increase in ethonol production?

And no, you are right, ONLY going vegan, or ONLY doing one thing like driving a hybrid is not going to work. It has to be plural. It has to encopass everything. I am just asking people to look at one specific area, as it tends to be a touchy subject.

And you answered your own last comment. Vegans don't eat fish, partly because of that exact reason.

I depends on your Vegan. I know plenty that eat fish. It is economics which you arent factoring into your theory. Farmings biggest bread winner at the moment is corn. IF you are a farmer being forced out the meat industry what would you plant. I sure as heck would plant corn. The soy bean price has risen because farmers are moving to corn. corn production is increasing to produce mostly fuel not food.

http://www.progressivefarmer.com/tabid/1212/Default.aspx

A good read on where farming is going. better to grow your own food at the moment. If you are growing your own food then your carbon foot print is lower than a person depending on food to be imported to the city. You are coming up with a very simple answer that really has a big domino effect.

I for one hardly use a car besides for work. That will change next year.
I try to burn dead wood for firewood and wood stoves
I dont eat much fish. if you cut out lunch I eat it 10 times a year.
I eat 4 plates of meat per week and 3 veg meals.
I dont liter
I grow my own food for 4+ months of the year. I was eating zucchinis everyday for 2 months... (yummy)
I make and freeze my own tomatoes and Im enjoying my sun pickles everyday after work.

Just do what you can. I'm glad you are doing what you are.

Oh, and by the way, just to be nitpicky, there are no "fish-eating" vegans, that is a contradiction in terms.

Vegan, by definition, means zero animal products, including honey and leather. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism

Vegetarian is used for all types of people, inclding lacto-ovo vegetarians (will eat dairy and egg), and pesco-vegetarians, who eat fish.


As for the economics arguement, it is null. If there was ever a mass movement to vegetarianism for environmental reasons, i can't see how the same people would just ignore the environmental problems of ethanol, because it is essentially the same problem, an inefficient use of resources.

Charging an activity as economically meaningless because it preserves resources that others will waste is a straw-man arguement.

But because such a mass-movement is a fantasy anyway, trying to think about the economic problems that might arise is also fantasy.

i admire oyuki kigan's passion to "make things better".
sadly i dont have much knowledge about environmental threats
and im guessing it is more complex than i think.

read this correlation of "order and disorder" many years ago.
establishing order in one place tends to seem solving some problems (especially in a city)
but we are actually establishing disorder in somewhere else at the same time.

for example,
lets say i dont like pegions on my balcony. (i do not like them in fact..)
and so i buy some powerful spray to get rid of them.
but those pegions that used to annoy me will be annoying someone else.
and then i end up having problems with crows.
something like that, it just moves.
(sorry my example is not so good, never be good at explaining thing..)

not sure if eating less meat is the most effective and efficient way for us,
but i do get ur message that we need to talk and think about this because it is not only governments thing, nor environment conservation groups,
but its ours, each individuals, how we think about and do things even if its small, and at least be aware of this fact and be curious.
fish, animals, human, tiny creatures, furry creatures, trees, flowers, and our mother nature,
we dont act selfish so that we could co-exist.

but again, my view is it is not that simple so i need to know more about this and want to read some entropy book once again lol.
this thread got me thinking so thanks.
and also for organizing that event, making ads, and so on.

We try to do our bit, with the house and the car and that, so our energy use is really low. We've got two kids though, so maybe that trumps all the rest.

Its terrible the way that most meat is "made" these days. In those feedlots with all the hormones and antibiotics and the runoff going into rivers. I suppose we must eat some of it, but it can't be healthy.

As for the global warming aspect, I think simply just substituting pork or chicken for beef makes a big difference, both in terms of the feed required per bodyweight and the methane one. The difference is something like 4kg of feed per kilo instead of 8kg of feed. We make our own bacon and its much tastier than any beef you can buy in the shop.

Then they are not Vegan or even vegetarian if they eat fish.

Thatis what they refer to themselves as

then they don't know what 'vegan' means. School 'em, Fatty!

thanks Ewok, i'm blushing.

But i don't see it so much as "making things better" as i do "not f*cking with things in the first place".

A vegan is someone who avoids using or consuming animal products. While vegetarians avoid flesh foods, vegans also avoid dairy and eggs, as well as fur, leather, wool, and cosmetics or chemical products tested on animals.

So you can advise you're so called vegans what it really means.

Oh dear...


Now the UN are in on the conspiracy, as reported by The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/07/food.foodanddrink

Those UN boys are always right....

I had a great big juicy steak last night. Medium. Fantastic sauce. One of the best ever.

MEAT!

Shit,
Six months later and this is still on the front page.
Remember that time at the SJ party when Oyuki wouldnt stop rambling on about this? I still have that photo from when he got all heated and had to sit down.

That pic is dated. I'm on some next-level stuff here

but seriously, is that the best you can do? Talk shit about me, a lifeless geek who sits at a desk all day?

Or do you actually have an intelligent rebuttal to the meat eating issue?