Way to prove yourself at the bottom of the food chain.

I take solace in the fact that not even 100 years ago someone like you would die from starvation if you chose not to eat meat.
Now you pollute our planet by flying in soy protein based products and fresh vegetables from other countries. Way to leave a carbon footprint, ass.

I’m green and I’m going hunting.
Carbon emissions: zero (I walk out my backdoor into forest)

I would like to throw my two bits in as it were in regards to the morals and animal cruelty issue you bring up. Quite frankly, screw PETA and their misguided ilk. From a purely capitalist/ humanist point of view, where you value something based upon how rare it is, even the smallest blade of grass should be seen as one of the most valuable things in the universe (we that have pilfered so far). Life in any form is valuable. You don’t have to be a cute seal to be important. That aside, is life an end unto itself? If we say yes, and go the PETA root and say we have no right to interfere with existing life, we may as well jump off the proverbial cliff. We have no right to exist at the expense of another life. Or are we a part of nature and how the world turns? Is it ethical to manipulate bacteria to produce vaccinations? That’s fairly easy. How about a tough one: is it ethical to end the life of a fetas to save the life of the mother? Is it your even decision to make, or merely your opinion to offer? The problem I have with PETA is they think they need to save the world from itself, and if they have to, they’ll take my babies away to do it.

Just not a very good idea.

Regards
Dave

My two cents is that going veg is a red herring. The problem, as others have pointed out, is over consumption by a world that is over populated. Cutting out meat might be a more environmentally efficient way to feed people, but so is Soylent Green — in other words, there are much better and more desirable ways to help the environment that get closer to the root of the problem. As a small step, I’d put vegetarianism on par with recycling or getting a more fuel-efficient car. If you can swing it, by all means go ahead. But until we change how we get energy and/or reduce the world’s booming population, the small things won’t end up making too much difference.

As for the moral aspect of animal cruelty, my sense is that obviously animals feel pain, but I would argue that they do not generally suffer in the way we understand it. If you simply define suffering as sustained pain, that’s one thing, but if you mean that they can contemplate a better existence and regret their circumstances and generally feel mental anguish, which is what I mean by suffering, then the evidence points to only a few of the higher mammals approaching such capability. We should obviously err on the side of not torturing apes and dolphins and the like, but chickens?

That’s a base rate fallacy. How can a claim about relative contribution to global warming be made without finding the conspicuously absent quantity of gases released, plugging that into the appropriate equation, and comparing the climate forcing? With no quantity, we could be dealing with micrograms or Teratonnes. It looks like we’re supposed to be afraid because 65% is a big chunk, but the expression 0.65x is meaningless without a value for x. 0.65 * 0.000001 g is hardly intimidating.

Then there’s the issue that the provided figures clearly show the vast majority of methane from agriculture is from fertilizer and manure–a plant-growth booster that has no direct application for animals–and NOT from the animals themselves (20% is the ceiling for that). IE. All the wonderful plant farms are going to be dripping with methane-producing fertilizer. Unless the synthetic stuff is the majority of that 80%, organic plant farms aren’t any better (especially for wet crops, like rice, bean sprouts, and alfalfa).

And what of the fact that only around two-fifths of total anthropogenic methane emissions are in fact from agriculture? Wouldn’t that mean at most 8% of atmospheric methane can be considered, since farm animals produce no more than 20% of up to 40% of the total human contribution to atmospheric concentrations?

And as for their health claims, it pretty much all boils down to denial of benefits from dairy as they’ve tried in vain to vilify dairy products. . .I guess because maybe they can’t quite find good alternative sources of the nutrients in dairy like they have with meat products. This BS really makes me sick. I’m surprised you guys even published this trite. I think I’m going to enjoy some extra meat in response.

Of course, some industrial products, like fancy soy milk from famous brands, are quite expensive; but rice, beans, potatoes, corn, wheat, some soy derivatives, and most leafy vegetables are pretty much affordable. At least, in comparison with meat and dairy food. And Brazil is far from becoming a vegetarian dominant country: unfortunately we have the biggest commercial bovine herd in the world. And even so, I’m sure that in average vegetables are much less expensive.

Thumbs up for Jphn Xu, by the way! It’s always great to see this subject be discussed by atheists, skeptics, etc. , as the main vegetarian community is too much woo woo and for my taste…