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guest_
· 5 years ago
· FIRST
Oh man. Well.... here’s where it gets crazy. It’s... everyone’s fault! Vegans, “regular” folk, corporations... Corporations provide goods based on demand. Our habits and attitudes with corporations shape their practices. We CAN lean on corporations to be cleaner and what not- but that means we have to be ready to deal with slower, more expensive products and product cycles. As for “green” and “vegan” and all that? Well... the jury is out and a lot of things people do trying to “help the planet...” actually hurt it too- sometimes worse.
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guest_
· 5 years ago
Things like hybrids and electric cars are well meaning for example- but I cannot state just how bad making and disposing of those batteries and the mining of materials are for the environment. “They use less gas!” “They put out less emissions!” Do they? Or.... does the energy to charge them generally come from fossil fuel usually anyway? So what they do is COST you less on fuel. But- studies show that encloses people to drive more. That ends up using more energy since you’re less likely to be mindful of it as it’s “free” or very cheap to drive. It also means that people tend to use more tires, require more services of chassis and suspension, and wear the roads more. If 90% of cars in earth were exchanged for hybrids or electrics tomorrow it would be disastrous to the environment.
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guest_
· 5 years ago
Veganism is a complex topic- and one is free to do as they like- but as practiced by at least 90% of “vegans”- it is still not an “environmentally friendly” process. The idea it would cut greenhouse emissions greatly from methane and the like is also misleading at best and misses the bigger picture.
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guest_
· 5 years ago
For one thing- as has been seen in the past in the meat market- changing consumer habits to animal products fluctuates market prices and who is incentivized to provide them- but not so much the scale. Leathers popularity has declined greatly in decades but all that’s done has been to decrease the value f leather and generate waste. It isn’t in the interest of many meat producers to bother with the hides. They still mass slaughter cows- they just throw out the leather a lot of the time. Likewise- even if near and leather aren’t popular- many common electronics require large quantities of meat byproducts.
guest_
· 5 years ago
Touch screens, many plastics- even batteries are chemically treated or otherwise made or processed with animal byproducts. As long as those industries are strong- they’ll require mass slaughter of animals even if we throw out the meat and hides etc. even if we don’t use byproducts for things like gelatin and other uses- we just throw it out of it is sold cheaply in markets where they need inexpensive and calorie dense food sources.
guest_
· 5 years ago
What’s more- commercial farming is a MAJOR producer of pollution- especially to water- and the disruption of eco systems. The standard “slash and burn” like in the rainforest follows a pattern- in “organic” farming- forest is burned and covered and the residue fertilized soil for farming. When the soil won’t produce crop “organically” anymore it’s converted to land to graze animal stock. In commercial farming the land is treated with chemical fertilizers until it cannot support crop growth and then converted to animal use. Either way- once they can’t farm it anymore they go raze more land and repeat. This not only destroys forest land and reduces the planets natural ability to filter free house gas- but produces huge amounts of it in the burning etc. then these out of season and “exotic” plants are transported thousands of miles at a great carbon impact.
guest_
· 5 years ago
As CAN theoretically create “vegan substitutes” for such industrial processes- but these “work arounds” while well intentioned tend to require quite a bit of science and chemistry- so we are often left with complex solutions involving chemicals that through their production, use, disposal, and transformation in the processes are themselves environmentally hazardous- and to boot the results are often inferior to the previous ways and thus can require more materials for the same job, or be less long lasting and require more upkeep at a cost to the consumer and environment over the long term.
guest_
· 5 years ago
The biggest factors threatening the environment are “disposable consumerism” and “whimsy.” A need to have it all- on demand, and replace things often with “newer better” versions does more environmental harm in general than a theoretically less “friendly” product which is kept and cared for long term. Electronics for instance- like electric cars- are “green” under a theory that electronic machinery consumes 90% resources on manufacture and 10% over its life vs analog machines which consume far less in their simple manufacture with common elements but use more resources over their life. For example:
guest_
· 5 years ago
A vehicle with no electronics can be created with common ore and items- even garbage. They were building them hundreds of years ago with what technology they had. But it is not nearly as efficient as a vehicle with electronic engine controls or an all electric vehicle. Over 100 years the old mechanical car will use far more energy and far more resources in maintenance. However- the electric vehicle is FAR more resource intense and destructive to create. If we were to keep such an electric vehicle for 50, 100 years then we would see a “pay off” for the cost to make it. But most people keep cars less than 10 years and the majority of cars on the road are under 15 years old in a country like America.
guest_
· 5 years ago
The life span of a phone or laptop etc. with the original purchaser can be a year or three. So long before the device has “paid back” the environmental cost of its construction- it’s already been retired by the original owner. Most battery packs don’t last more than 3-6 years to boot- meaning that the batteries will need replaced before they have paid off their cost in manufacture and disposal. Now many are well meaning- if you bought one of the first consumer hybrid cars- the modern generation is cleaner and overall “better” for the environment- so if we say that the benefit is 2x greater- that intuitively means switching your old hybrid out for one 2x “cleaner” would equal a great boon to the environment as every year you drive it you’ll pollute half as much right?
guest_
· 5 years ago
But... remember the environmental cost of your old one? You’d have to keep the new one long enough to pay the in paid cost of the original AND the new car- and likely long before then newer and even “better” cars will be out and you’ll switch again meaning you might never actually “pay off” the “environmental debt” versus if you had just stuck with an pure fossil fuel vehicle! Now- the more miles you drive the more there’s an actual benefit- so long as those were miles you’d have driven anyway and not additional miles you now drive because of the fuel savings of the vehicle. So for someone averaging less than 10,000 miles a year in driving- it’s likely WORSE for the environment overall to drive a hybrid or electric. Weird.
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Edited 5 years ago
guest_
· 5 years ago
It’s all much more complex than most of us want it to be. We just want to hear we are doing “good” or “bad” and be done with the thinking. It’s not so simple. Changing our habits has effects we can’t really predict that mean often times we see an improvement in one category but we make a disproportionately large negative impact to another we may not be aware of or “see” so it goes unproved until it’s a problem for the next generation.
guest_
· 5 years ago
Simple common sense things can really help the environment. But most require we give something up. A big part of the “green hype” is being told “you can still have all the things you want AND be green.” That’s simply not true. We’ve come to expect things like out of season produce and produce that can’t possibly be grown anywhere near our climate. We’ve come to rely on long distance transport of goods and not having to plan our purchases and the like for “one stop shopping” such as buying from many far away seekers online like through amazon and then saying “well... it all gets shipped on the same truck to me...” which ignores all the other transportation logistics etc of how you got the item.
guest_
· 5 years ago
So no. “Being vegan” won’t “save the planet-“ in fact- it’s more likely the opposite. More likely something like bugs which are nutrient rich and easily workable to “green” production is likely going to be a “green” food source. But regardless- no one thing is so great and most aren’t so bad. There’s a lot of hype and misinformation and most is coming from people who just want to help but aren’t sure how, and companies that just want to make money and know exactly how.
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mcycman
· 5 years ago
Jesus _guest, who are you and why do spend your time crafting elaborate, balanced comments with the length of a newspaper article on fs?
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guest_
· 5 years ago
Just some guy.
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jaharien
· 5 years ago
guest_senpai!
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engineer
· 5 years ago
Ha ha yeah, that’s a great idea! Let’s say tomorrow all corporations stop dumping pollution into to environment and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Well you can forget about the five minute shower because now you are getting no water. You don’t have to worry about going vegan because even vegetables produce pollution in the form of fertilizer runoff. No cars, no electricity, no natural gas to heat your home. But it’s all corporations fault for producing the goods that you consume. “Why don’t they just make the same stuff but without pollution?” If they made less pollution, the cost of everything would increase and middle class people might be able to afford it, but the ones most effected would be the poor. What I hate most about this mentality is the way it conveniently passes the blame to faceless corporations thereby absolving oneself from the harm one is causing.
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