The point I was trying to get across earlier (again clumsily) is whether food production is the main issue. As everyone knows, CO2 is produced across the sectors (https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data). Unless food is wasted, OR we're overeating, then changing what we eat seems to me to be a disrupting option. I totally agree on cutting down what we eat (especially in the West where obesity is rife - https://www.who.int/gho/ncd/risk_factors/overweight/en/) - where we eat for gluttony's sake. That's across all food types.
BUT the west manufactures to throw away. Now surely, that is where to start. Constantly producing 'stuff' to bin it a day, a month, a week...blah later is just consumerist nonsense. But we all do it. So an instant impact could be achieved by cutting down on what we buy - and at the same time, given that 99% of everything appears to be plastic, it starts to address that issue too. But all things have an impact - and the capitalist system is based on people buying, so obviously reducing what we buy has a direct affect on industry...jobs, economies, political attitudes...
Watch this Christmas - see how much stuff is bought and then binned. I'm not religious or a Christian, but didn't JC say something like 'Give up your wordly goods and follow me'? Christmas epitomises the problem doesn't it? Overeating, over buying of stuff - and I'm just off down the SM to join in the murmuration.
Surely spending is important, there would be a lot of people on the dole queue if people didn’t spend. I can’t understand why people have to spend so much, how do people have waste food, we never have a scrap of food wasted, but can understand that’s there’s a lot of money around and if people want to spend it on rubbish, or throw away food, it’s up to them, I’m sure we all benefit from this.
As mentioned before, the towns folk have no idea how farming works.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
OK - so this thread has morphed from the original critique of a programme on the TV to a general discussion about sustainability and our collective way of trying to mitigate the worst practices with reference to meat production. Firstly, I would suggest, is that we adopt a Punkdoc approach: meat a few days a week, a vegetable based day (or two) and fish in between. Just adapting our diets is not rocket science, and is easily achievable. Farmers in the UK are not compromised, but the long-term benefits are huge. So - how to tackle the problems that are (1) America's gluttony and (2) rainforest degradation? Surely we need cross-party, cross-nation, world-agreements to attack the main issues. Doing nothing is not an option (and by the way I am not an adherent of or a member of Extinction Rebellion. But they have a point).
I am certainly not against us all taking some action to mitigate human kinds depletion of the planet. I am just against the clouding of what purports to be objective scientific discussion with over emotive language. Phrases like "this makes me sick to my stomach" by expressed by LB in that programme are unnecessary. I have said before I have some experience when an ex boss of mine was subjected to trial by TV (a Panorama programme). My old boss and another eminent scientist were made to look at loggerheads when we knew this was not the case. Only recently he told us that when they played the responses shown were sometimes to different questions, but made to look, by artful editing that they were answering the same question. We later found out the producer had a brother directly affected by the issue at hand so what was supposed to be a factual programme was manipulated by the producer to reflect her own bias. I strongly feel this programme was made to show a particular point of view, which clouds an otherwise important issue that it is the industrialisation of food production and farming that is most detrimental. Just as much forest is being cleared to produce soya beans & palm oil as for beef production, neither is right.
So you live a totally basic life without any excesses. OK fine. But that isn't the case for millions of people - and I'm 'poor' but still have excesses. And it's not a case of generalising - as stats are just that - but taking figures that represent what people (on average) do - as in https://www.magnet.co.uk/advice-inspiration/blog/2018/February/food-waste-around-the-world/.
Now, you may be under of the 70+kg of wasted food per person per annum (I like to think I am), BUT, then someone else is in excess of that limit. The point being made (surely) is that the west 'in general' lives in excess. So curbing the excess then stops the need for more drastic action. Does that not make sense?
Then the excess in wasted food - and 'stuff' bought that needed fuel and water to be made IS the issue. BUT I repeat - and it's not something that 1 person can do - if you attack the basics of capitalism by NOT buying (or else what else are you spending your salary on? Holidays, bigger house, bigger car, better education...better(?) food) then the system fails. So the point being is that it is the system that encourages the excess. You see it with the government doing a simple thing like making two car reg dates per year - to encourages sales of new cars as people love having 'new' reg to show off. That is what capitalism is. Most businesses in retail wouldn't survive without those periodic binge sales periods like Christmas - or new car reg dates.
"Just to be clear, I've read the Committee on Climate Change's report
(yes, all of it). It doesn't anywhere suggest that we should all become
vegetarian, not remotely."
Yes, but @Fairygirl the problem is that you are talking rationally, with sense. People who want to blame and condemn and shout are not interested in facts and what is actually written any more than they want to take responsibility for their own actions. It's much easier and distracting to point fingers and bluster about bans and extremism and homeless sheep. I would advocate using the energy it takes to argue to, instead, to consider how we can contribute in practical terms.
Brilliant post @Fire absolutely agree with you. Too many people listening to too much rubbish and thinking they're ‘greenies’ theres only one true greenie and that’s a dead one.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Posts
I can’t understand why people have to spend so much, how do people have waste food, we never have a scrap of food wasted, but can understand that’s there’s a lot of money around and if people want to spend it on rubbish, or throw away food, it’s up to them, I’m sure we all benefit from this.
As mentioned before, the towns folk have no idea how farming works.
Firstly, I would suggest, is that we adopt a Punkdoc approach: meat a few days a week, a vegetable based day (or two) and fish in between.
Just adapting our diets is not rocket science, and is easily achievable. Farmers in the UK are not compromised, but the long-term benefits are huge.
So - how to tackle the problems that are (1) America's gluttony and (2) rainforest degradation?
Surely we need cross-party, cross-nation, world-agreements to attack the main issues. Doing nothing is not an option (and by the way I am not an adherent of or a member of Extinction Rebellion. But they have a point).
I strongly feel this programme was made to show a particular point of view, which clouds an otherwise important issue that it is the industrialisation of food production and farming that is most detrimental. Just as much forest is being cleared to produce soya beans & palm oil as for beef production, neither is right.
Too many people listening to too much rubbish and thinking they're ‘greenies’
theres only one true greenie and that’s a dead one.