bobo0100 wrote:
The guy actually holds vegan goals, he just does not think individual veganism is anything but a symbolic stance against a massive industry. I think he stated later that not consuming animal products is ineffective compared to supporting legislation. I see two ways that this could fail;
[...]
although the "fuck it all" approach would seem reasonable from his perspective wherein veganism has little to no effect on the industry.
I read it, and that part of his argument made me feel sick. He has made a few valid empirical points, but he's philosophically and morally bankrupt. It's as disgusting and immoral as vicarious redemption in Christianity; an excuse to do nothing and be a hypocrite but feel good about yourself anyway.
Who cares about our actual actions? Better sign a
petition instead!
Disgusting.
Of course our actions matter. Small is not nothing. Even minute changes are responded to in the supply chain relatively quickly.
More importantly, to be good moral examples, we should behave in ways that others should model, not try to force the world to behave according to standards that we won't even uphold ourselves.
You also hit the nail on the head with his political approach; politics preceding social change isn't very useful. It goes deeper than that, though.
We should care about politics, but not only is it effective to abstain from harmful consumer actions (he's dead wrong there), but it's an essential prerequisite to model moral behavior personally instead of merely leveraging our wealth to buy our ways out of the responsibility. It's a matter of game theory.
Take this thought experiment:
Bob wants to eat meat, but he's morally troubled. So, instead of going vegan, he convinces Sally to go vegan.
Now Bob's impact on the world is neutralized. Yay Bob!
Sally also wants to eat meat, so she convinces Tom to go vegan instead. Now Sally's impact on the world is neutralized!
Tom, then Julie, then John, the Karen, and so on. They all convince the next person to go vegan in a giant moral Ponzi scheme where the next person's investment pays false dividends on the prior's.
It doesn't work.
He's saying "Don't actually bother being sustainable, just tell other people to be sustainable and you'll be even more moral!"
Fuck him and hypocritical hummer he rode in on.
bobo0100 wrote:I thought this initially and took my time to try and search through some of it. Most of it looks legitimately sourced, although I don't know If that is likely to be biased. The science stuff is always where I get lost.
Some of it looks like it's in the right ballpark.
Sweet fruit isn't particularly useful nutritionally, as I've discussed at length elsewhere. Likewise, rice is of marginal nutritional value, and is associated with some methane production due to field flooding.
Potatoes are nutritious and agriculturally efficient, but apparently storage to prevent mold or sprouting is an energy issue. This is GRID energy, though. So, who knows where that comes from.
Tomatoes can vary massively, depending on how they're grown. Some areas use hothouses to grow them in the winter.
Those may be plausible worst case numbers when comparing them with each other.
Something is very wrong with his animal agriculture vs. plant numbers/scale, though.
Feed conversion ratios for Chicken are around 2:1. A chicken is around 10% composed of "usable" protein.
That's 20kg of feed to 1 kg of protein.
Feed contains about 20% protein.
4 kg feed protein makes 1 kg chicken protein.
This is astoundingly efficient, by whatever vice of twisted breeding and hormone application and constrained living space.
Still, 4:1
Based on simple thermodynamics, chicken should not be capable of yielding the same protein for less than four times the cost of bean or corn protein (which have comparable yields in terms of protein per acre).
Yet beans are listed at 22, and chicken at 25.
Something is seriously amiss with these numbers. Beans are either listed too high, or chicken is listed too low. Maybe a bit of both.
At 167g CO2 per kg grain (
http://soilcrop.agsci.colostate.edu/sce ... roduction/ ) for current production...
The contribution (*40) from corn would only be about 6.7kg CO2 for that amount. The rest being production and transportation costs makes sense.
Where's that number come from for beans?
As I've mentioned before, I don't like how this chart compares kilograms of consumed food:
http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/a-me ... l-impacts/
But in terms of beans, it's listing them at 2, and chicken at 6.9. Adjusting for protein in beans and chicken gives you about 3 for beans. Chicken still has double the CO2 cost, not a narrow margin.
Maybe it was canned beans he was looking at, or he confused wet and dry beans.
I don't have time to check any of this stuff now, unfortunately.
bobo0100 wrote:
unless there where to be things that reduced there other options, as is likely the case with migrant workers. But I'm not going to pretend I Know anything about this topic.
It's kind of irrelevant. Not having any other options, work is better than no work.
He cites dissatisfaction in surveys. Anybody can bitch about his or her job. Those kinds of 'studies' if they can even be called that for lack of any controls, are done with a political agenda.
It really sucks to be in a position with no real prospects, but having a job is better than not.