• Optional@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    My family: We should save the planet!

    Me: great, let’s all eat less meat!

    My family: . . . No

    • jjjalljs
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      1 month ago

      This one bugs me so much. Like I’m not even aiming for full veganism. Just… less meat.

      No.

      “But I like it!” Irrelevant to the problem.

      “Other people are worse”. Irrelevant to the problem unless you want to go start doing vigilante justice.

      • exanime@lemmy.today
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        1 month ago

        “Other people are worse”. Irrelevant to the problem unless you want to go start doing vigilante justice.

        I wouldn’t say irrelevant to the problem… Most of the stuff we as individuals can do, amount to trying to put out a tire fire by clapping… Even millions of us won’t make almost any difference, specially when you have 10 assholes who, instead of clapping are actively pouring gas on the fire

        I’m 100% on board with the clapping… But I’m not kidding myselft that we are going to save ourselves until we eliminate the firebugs

        • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz
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          1 month ago

          Hm. I would be interested to learn why, exactly. If it has terrible methodology, why is it constantly referenced and why hasn’t a better one been done since then?
          Or is there a better one that nobody just uses?
          And how should the data look, because most of every other source I can find also agrees that beef is the worst (or possibly on the second spot after lamb) as it comes to CO2 per kg.

          • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 month ago

            the sources on that paper are labyrinthine, but i recall pulling up the water use for cattle out of it, and they attributed all of the water used in the production of all the food given to cattle to the production of the cattle, which might make sense if you don’t think about it for even a few seconds more. we know that there are things that we grow that we use, and then discard other parts. maybe crop “seconds”; that is things that we grew thinking we would eat it but we pulled it to early or too late or mashed it up pretty bad during harvest or whatever. we are actually conserving water use by feeding these things to cattle, but it isn’t credited to cattle, it’s counted against their total water use.

            that was just the water use for california dairy cattle. if even 10% of the study is done this sloppily, how much do you trust that study?

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Greenpeace: we should save the planet!

      Me: great, let’s build nuclear power so we can shut down fossile fuels

      Greenpeace: …No

      • jabjoe@feddit.uk
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        1 month ago

        Too late. Somewhere so sunny can get a lot of solor quickly. Building nuclear power plants takes time and releases a lot of CO2. Batteries and solor now now. Cheapest power too.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Only too late because Greenpeace stopped it for decades. Hope you have a plan for your solar waste. Cheapest because you just let China throw it away for you.

          • jabjoe@feddit.uk
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            1 month ago

            Cheapest because the fuel is for free. Waste plan should be recycling.

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Go ahead and show me your solar recycling plant. I want to see it. Must have a carbon footprint lower than nuclear or you lose.

              • jabjoe@feddit.uk
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                1 month ago

                It’s a new area, but there are companies : https://www.recyclesolar.co.uk/

                Life cycle comparing isn’t as simple as your thinking: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421506002758 Happy to look if you have a unbiased source for life cycle emissions comparison.

                But costs and time is a no brainer: https://www.energysage.com/about-clean-energy/nuclear-energy/solar-vs-nuclear/

                You as also don’t want to be burning coal for a decade while you build a nuclear power plant. Then it’s expensive to run compared to solar too. The CO2 costs of waiting for nuclear should be included for nuclear too.

                • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  I know it’s a new area. I am involved with it. Now show me the one that has a lower carbon footprint today. Including batteries btw no cheating

                  • jabjoe@feddit.uk
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                    1 month ago

                    That’s part of the issue with nuclear, it’s not today. It’s a decade to do, power coal in the mean time, pouring concrete which also cause a load of CO2. When it’s finally running, it’s clean, but expensive. In the mean time you could have solar running 8 years and it is cheaper to power and install. Nuclear is going to struggle to compete. Until fusion, but even that, if it ever comes, might not be cheap enough compared. Cheap, fast and clean wins.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Those nuclear power plants won’t come online for a decade at least. It’s better to spend the money on renewables and storage.

        • SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          And if we started building them a decade ago we would have them now. We need to start building them now, because it’s only gonna be worse in 10 years.

          • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            By then it will be too late, especially considering the extra CO2 that building them will create with no electricity provided at all

            • SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              That is hilariously naive. The world is gonna keep turning either way. People aren’t just gonna suddenly all up and disappear. And the climate isn’t like a thing where you reach a certain point and you just give up. We can lessen how bad things will be. Making nuclear now is the right choice, so that in 10 years we can cut as many polluting forms of energy as we can.

              • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                I’d rather spend $10 billion on renewables that would start coming online almost immediately than lock that money up in a plant that won’t start recouping the carbon debt from its construction in a decade.

            • Aux@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Yet another reason to invest most resources into nuclear worldwide.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Greenpeace advocated for this back in the 1970s and that’s why we have an enormous wind and solar industry today. The Greenpeace lobby was just too damned powerful.

          • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            The reason we didn’t build any reactors after the 1970s is a combination of nuclear disarmament and slow return on investment, not Greenpeace. If Greenpeace had that much power they would have been able to shut down the oil and gas industry, too.

    • SpermHowitzer@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Well, according to kissmyOSfeddit, we don’t even need to eat less meat. We can sous-vide it on the sidewalk now! Sounds like a serious win-win to me.

      • EinfachUnersetzlich@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        It’s the raising of the animals before they’re slaughtered that’s the problem, not the cooking after they’re dead.

    • egeres@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I have decreased my meat consumption to about a third than it used to be in recent years. I’m not qualified to do an in-depth study about all the ramifications of the CO2 emissions, but agriculture being just about 11.2% of all emissions sounds like eating less cow won’t cut it to “save ourselves”

      I have a hunch that shit will hit the fan and there will be a massive reduction in CO2 emissions because of a supply chain failure. Third world countries produce the vast majority of “low manufacturing complexity” products, which will be made even more unsustainable if those regions become a scorched earth. That, coupled with a lesser incentive to travel due to an adverse climatic situation, and a trend in population decrease due to an overall quality of life degradation, will really be the reason why we will reduce emissions, simply because things stop working and become unsustainable

      Either way, I don’t think it’s possible to really predict the future and even less so in such a complex society where technology might be a game changer all of the sudden, so my opinion is not really that valid. Even educated estimates using proper statistics/data cannot guess the implications of new wars, AI, new scientific breakthroughs etc