It is not popular to say this, but if you really want to protect the environment, you should consider not having kids.
Especially if you're doing well because the chances are your kid will grow up and drive for most of his life, fly in planes, obtain lots of stuff that requires CO2 emission in its production, and perhaps even consume meat. If you have multiple kids and they go on to have more kids etc, the environmental effect of having a kid becomes exponentially worse.
This doesn't mean that you don't deserve to be a parent, it is only natural to desire to be one. The closest orphanage will have many kids who are wishing for a warm home every day of the year. There are many impoverished and brilliant kids around the world who will live and die working under horrific conditions.
Now there is an argument to be made about you and your partner's genes being so exceptional that it would be more harmful to the society not to pass them to future generations. I guess it is up to the individual to make that judgement.
Precisely, to say don't have kids to responsible people is kind of eugenics that ensures that only irresponsible people have kids. (Maybe eugenics is a bit too strong of a word, but you get the idea.)
About 12 years ago I proposed during class in school, that to save the planet we must reduce number of people living on Earth significantly and relatively quickly. Well the teacher thought that I was new Hitler (at least at first).
Just like you said, the point is that either people shouldn't have kids at all or have no more than 1. If whole Earth's population would do this, in 30years we will see a sharp fall in the population count. And in 60years it should be reduced by 30% at least [1].
If we will not do this now - our children, or grand children will not thank us.
[0] this is probably against HN ethos, though I couldn't resist
[1] It's completely out of my head, though if the perfect scenario would work - I guess it's a reasonable number.
We need both, to reduce the total number of people AND to reduce the per capita consumption.
I have seen more than enough people that claim to have no children for the sake of the Environment, only to go and buy pets and treat those like children; retarded children that will never learn to speak, walk in 2 feet, or become productive members of society, demanding constant attention for their natural lifespan, and which will age rapidly and die in their teens, - and have valuable medical resources expended in heroic efforts to futily prolongue their agony for weeks/months. You could claim that the pet dies early and does not produce offspring, but then the pet owner will likely mourn for a few weeks and then go to the pet store and start all over again.
We don't need to do anything, the economy is already decreasing population. The dual income family has destroyed big families. It's very difficult financially to have one child and two is about the max families can handle. And dual income is necessary to survive now. Economy is getting harder and harder for everyone. The optimal strategy for families now is to put massive resources into 1 or 2 kids and hope they do ok in this coming automated economy world. Social security is on the path to collapse. It's not a giant savings account like many think. It's designed so current tax income pays for current retired generation. When the millenials retire, the system will collapse due to lower young population. But it's not just social security, the whole economy is designed like this. Population growth was a base assumption that is no longer true.
Third world countries have the 'capacity' to almost double world population (in case of medium growth scenario, hopefully population size will plateau at around 13 billion, I do not think that optimistic rapid decline is possible without rational action of global intervention to reduce population growth [0]), which IMHO sounds catastrophic. Because for next 50-100 years global population will be increasing rapidly and hopefully will stabilise after that, without any prospects of reduction for probably double of that time frame. Even if the population will start to decrease I think it may take at least few ages to reduce population size to what is today.
Europeans are currently doing their best to follow your advice. Their average fertility rate was 1.58 in 2014 with Portugal at 1.2. The world average is around 2.3 which happens to be the rate at which population growth is around zero.
Individual judgement? Do we imagine some couples saying to themselves "We're not up to much genetically-speaking so - we'd better not have any kids"?
> Individual judgement? Do we imagine some couples saying to themselves "We're not up to much genetically-speaking so - we'd better not have any kids"?
I think that global 1 child policy would be harsh [0], though, for the lack of better term, a 'perfect' medium between 'no child at all' policy and "increase human population until it's destruction" scenario.
In perfect case couple would have up to 1 offspring, thus global medium would be something like 0.9 or 0.8, or even less. Which will reduce global population by half in 50 years.
[0] It's harsh, though would be right thing to do so we will not proliferate and consume ourselves to the point of global destruction.
This is wrong, population growth is not a problem anymore. All developed countries have very low fertility rate (even the US when excluding immigration). Japan's demographic crisis is the future for all developed nations.
There's also the argument that wanting to reproduce is a natural human urge, and you're asking people to go against a very key biological instinct.
We haven't done all we can to protect the environment. We haven't even tried that hard. It might be easier to reduce our personal impact to 10% than try to reduce the world's population by the same level.
We already do a lot of things that go against our biological instincts. Which is probably one of the main reasons humans are so successful as a species. We can change ourselves some more, if it will increase the chances of our species' survival.
We sit in font of computers the whole day. The disciplined ones runs when there is no immediate danger or prey. We don't attack or kill people when they make us angry. We don't have sex with everything that has a chance to bear offspring.
But we are doing more and more things going against our biological instincts, especially in the last century; So I don't know if I would qualify the current human a successful species. We are destroying our habitat
Well, I constrained the scope, but CO2 emission is not the only problem about the environment. Most resource are scarce and although I believe in Elon Musk as much as the next techie, we can't just take a leap of faith. Water is scarce, energy is scarce (though we are getting better), but we are growing at an unsustainable rate.
Now the main problem is that if you reduce your CO2 emission by 80% and you and all your offsprings have two kids and each consume at your reduced level, in just two generations, it would been better if you didn't have kids. Two generations after that even at the reduced consumption, you (by having kids) contribute to CO2 emission by a factor of 6 if you have just consumed all the meat and didn't have kids.
It could. If lifespans were so long as to be nearly immortal (which may happen in our lifetimes), then the birth rate that would lead to stable population level would be one per couple. At that rate, a population of N would asymptotically approach 2N.
Absolute immortality isn't a plausible scenario, but it's important to consider that as longevity increases, the reproductive rate that leads to a stable population must go down.
Sure, at the point of signficant life extension we would need to set stricter limits on population size, but we're not quite there yet. Also, whilst there is some overlap, I think it's helpful to think of environmental damage and overpopulation as separate, as we'll have a hard enough time convincing people to change their daily habits without also asking them to give up on the idea on having multiple kids.
Whilst human population can't continue to grow on this planet indefinitely, there's plenty that can be done to push our societies in a direction that works with nature. That should be our focus.
To give one example of how working with nature benefits us all, check out this talk by William McDonough:
I'm going with only replacing myself and my future wife if I end up having children. In other words, have 2 or less children per couple. I believe with ideas such as what Schwarzenegger is suggesting, the current population can be sustained and will thrive without requiring reduction in the future.
This comment is satire right? I thought so at first, then saw that the comment's children are taking it seriously, or even going along with it. Now I'm not sure anymore.
What's with this point of view when questions/solutions/hypotheses like the parent comment suggest?
When I propose this idea the usual reaction is: "Are you the next Hitler? Do you want to kill everybody? Maybe you should kill yourself first!".
It's proposal not to proliferate ourselves to extinction, no one is proposing any mass genocide. IMHO [0], we are 2-3 generations from catastrophic survival problems (unfathomable problems due to climate change, lack of resources like drinkable water, etc.).
[0] completely pulling this out of my a, though I think it's reasonable scenario with current increasing rate of consuming ourselves to death.
Well, that is a nasty thing to say, but my whole point was that a single person's reduced consumption doesn't help as much in the grand scheme of things just because of exponential growth.
It's not meant to be nasty at all. For Camus, that was philosophy concentrated down to a single sentence. Why do we keep on living? Especially if one has decided not to breed? What then, is the point of life?
You can ask any number of people who have chosen not to have kids - or any number of gay people, or people who were born sterile, or have otherwise lost the ability to have kids - this question. For many of them, the answer is "to enjoy it, and to be a positive influence in the lives of others".
Or full time vegan and do more good for the planet. It's good to see people are finally acknowledging the great toll that animal ag takes on the planet.
Yes, this guy used to be a big time meat eater, but he's changing his tune which should be taken as a good thing. Our propensity for vilifying people who turn the corner is baffling to me.
I have several friends who keep chickens. These chickens are never killed, but their eggs are consumed occasionally. These chickens roam freely during daylight, then are corralled into "cages" overnight to prevent wild animals from eating them. What benefit would come of eliminating these chickens? I am neither vegetarian or vegan, but admire both, despite perceiving veganism as the more ideological of the two. I struggle to imagine how the world would be spared demise by invading Tibet and prohibiting the use of yak butter; or banning the cultivation of fish and their superior waste as fertilizer; or exterminating the last remaining nomadic tribe of Africa through prohibiting their practice of non-fatally bleeding their animals for sustenance. If it's a matter of numbers, it is obvious that great benefit would result from the popularity of veganism; but there are also variations in quality and circumstance to consider, i.e. a diet of cellulose might benefit the world and all those not on a cellulose diet, but not necessarily those on the cellulose diet; i.e not all dietary classes are equal and a vast disparity of options may exist between individuals, groups, etc, therefore dietary practices may be circumstantial. The world is large, one person's needs vary from another's, and one group from another's. Might there there be positional benefits to all three diets?
I ask this respectfully, as my unsure self, with no desire for debate, but rather a will for suitable answers.
This is a straw man. The issue is with scaling the luxury of meat. If we really want to we can produce meat cheaply (as we are doing now). However this is the reason we are in this situation.
> I struggle to imagine how the world would be spared demise by invading Tibet and prohibiting the use of yak butter; or banning the cultivation of fish and their superior waste as fertilizer; or exterminating the last remaining nomadic tribe of Africa through prohibiting their practice of non-fatally bleeding their animals for sustenance.
We can talk about invasions in a couple of years. For now, we can be content with reducing meat consumption in our respective home countries. Let's start with getting rid of meat subsidies. Then we can move on to dealing with industrial meat production. Etc etc.
> i.e not all dietary classes are equal and a vast disparity of options may exist between individuals, groups, etc, therefore dietary practices may be circumstantial
Like a third of India is at least vegetarian. Somehow they manage to get by.
I was writing a lengthy response but this is pretty spot on.
What I'll add is I've encountered this dozens of times "what about native peoples?" and honestly, me and most vegans I know don't want to take away native practices. We're not doing outreach to native people either, it's the westernized people which do the most ecological damage, as well a damage to sentient life.
Also, most vegans disagree with backyard chickens because they come from a breeder[1]. It's similar to why you should rescue a dog, not get a pure bred, people like doing things efficiently to maximize return which means not much regard for the chickens or dogs, god awful for the animals themselves.
So, if your friends rescued them, treats them well, and doesn't kill them when their egg laying slows down, I don't think you'll find many vegans up in arms against them. I personally wouldn't eat the eggs of any chickens I rescued, because I don't need them and preventing them from laying eggs gives them a better life as "modern chickens" are bred to produce way too many eggs so are very prone to ovarian cancer.
"...a third of India is at least vegetarian. Somehow they manage to get by."
Yes; as vegetarians - not vegans. Note the parent post I was replying to, which suggested veganism. Strawman, red herrings in olive oil, say what you will, but there are many people who aren't "natives" (reference to other comment by marricks) that might struggle to maintain a healthy vegan diet, especially if they aren't nextdoor to a Wholefoods. That is more my point - not to suggest that we should feast on steak 24/7 "because Natives!". You'll get no argument from me regarding the present state of the meat industry. Big Ag can be and too often is appalling.
@marricks: Not one of the dozens of chickens on either friend's property (including the freely roaming ones no longer producing) have ever died of ovarian cancer. When I posed my questions, I was looking for answers - not irrelevant examples of extremes. The egg industry can be putrid. My friends' arrangement with chickens is certainly not. And I still struggle to see how they are scourging the Earth with their non vegan behavior, breeders or no breeders. Have we truly come to such extremes that owning a chicken and eating an egg is worse for the environment than the daily baubles of our throwaway, planned obsolescence society? Is our aim extreme, or practical? Is a vegan's Volvo better than my chicken, etc? When I do see, I'll accept it, but the question remains open. And again, I have much respect for veganism and vegetarianism. Sprats, scarecrows and fallacies aren't things I wish to use against either.
They are lactovegetarians who have utmost respect for cows. I'm actually 100% ok with this setup, if this is achieved, I'm ok with not going full vegan.
This is basically a bunch of red herrings. Most people are not Tibetan yak farmers or the last of some African tribe. These things are not the common case, and if these approaches ever became the most common way we got those items, it would be effectively the same as everyone going vegan, because AFAIK that couldn't support even a noticeable fraction of our current egg and dairy intake.
As someone that went (slowly) vegan for primarily "green reasons", I've never begrudged others that eat meat (this has always been about my personal carbon footprint, even if it is a drop in the overall bucket) and I've always been willing to make exceptions as I see necessary. (I've never been the strictest vegan in the world.) Especially in situations where I knew exactly where the meat/dairy/eggs were sourced (ie, the farm of a friend of a friend; a "slow food" event; a trustworthy "farm to table" restaurant), I'd make exceptions to eat meat on occasion. I've know not every person feels the same way, but I've certainly seen it respectful to continue to realize as someone that went vegan for primarily green reasons that the problem is not meat, but how we grow/farm/manage/slaughter that meat. My goal has never been to demonize meat, simply to worry about the means to which our civilization is cultivating so much of it.
Another great company is Beyond Meat out of L.A. Over the past few months I've reduced my meat intake by 80-90% (I used to eat a lot of chicken) and their products helped me along the way. And unlike Impossible Foods, you can find this in stores today!
http://beyondmeat.com/store-locator
I think that you're more right, to be honest. I'm a vegetarian myself, but in my current place of living veganism would be the most environmentally friendly. But if I lived elsewhere, maybe a different diet would be more beneficial.
I'm not a vegan or vegetarian either and I've got chickens right now living exactly as you describe (as egg-laying pets, two of them going on 6 years old now). They also cut back on food waste since they'll eat most scraps and generate fertilizer for gardening. Though, dense city conditions would make that less accessible.
I've been full time vegan for two years and converted over night. I also recognize that this method is not for everyone. The "try it out for a few days of the week" approach has worked for a lot of people I have talked to (sorry, no data on this). Taking incremental steps toward long-lasting diet and lifestyle changes is better than adopting drastic changes over night and giving up shortly after.
The other issue I've seen is that people that jump quickly into veganism from climate change reasons alone, is that in those moments of "weakness" later on, they're much more likely to relapse, and go straight back into eating meat.
When there's a more fundamental change on an ethics basis (i.e. you do a mental switch and stop looking at that stuff as food to be consumed at all), then the changes seem to be more long lasting. Then it stops being "I shouldn't do this" to "I can't do this".
>Our propensity for vilifying people who turn the corner is baffling to me.
When it's hypocrisy. He lives in a 11,000 square foot house on 1.1 acres (14215 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades). He owns or use to own a Gulfstream Jet.
I don't want to be lectured to by wealthy people with huge carbon foot prints.
I understand what you are saying, but he has a huge voice though and if he can use it to make a small difference in many lives.. perhaps it will add up to something
Having a few animals is actually good to better use resources. Cows on meadows that have too bad soil to be converted to fields, pigs that eat food waste, ...
There has been quite a few articles about the climate effect of meat eating, but every time it lacks a good comparison towards the older common problems like car emissions. They general do not mention that driving 10 minutes each day, or choosing a vegetarian diet vs meat rich diet for a whole day has the same effect on the environment (from a CO2 perspective).
10 min drive, or a 5 min commute from one place to an other, is something I think most people don't consider as far away. Driving to a vegetarian place for lunch might set back the environment more than a walk to a beef restaurant. We should have a cost table if we want to minimize the environmental impact on this individual level.
> He said it was pointless trying to persuade people to give up things they wanted, like big cars
And this is why I suspect we have seen so many articles trying to address diet instead. Having everyone reducing CO2 a bit is easier than addressing those that do order of magnitude more damage, since there is so much more people who eat than people who own a car.
Rephrasing as a bit as I get your point better. It's easier to change eating habits then buying a new car.
I've seen discussion about cars to veg comparison and not hard numbers or citations. When I did the math myself a couple years back I found the GHG emissions saved by going veg was similar to someone switching from driving an semi-efficient SUV to a Prius. Big change, but not as good as switching to biking. I think 10 miles may be undercutting it.
Also quoting from a similar thread elsewhere, focusing just on GHG emissions is limiting the scope of impact animal ag causes.
> Animal agriculture is a leading cause of deforestation of the amazon[1], species extinction[2] and ocean dead zones[3]. There's so much more than greenhouse gases that going vegan helps with, not even mentioning suffering.
Yes we could look at other effects from animals vs vegetarian, but then all the numbers we use are simplifications. The effect of driving do not consider the drilling, pumping, transporting and refining of oil, only the actually burning of gas.
When talking about farming we also need to consider water use, water cleaning, and eutrophication. In some places we even have a harmful effect to biodiversity when previous farm land is reverted back into forests (Sweden is in this situation, where some species that depend on open land is drastically decreasing when animal farms are abandoned and land get grown in). I even know government projects which funded fishers to fish in lakes where eutrophication caused overgrowth of certain fish species that directly threatened extinction of other fish. It is complex system, which is why looking on only greenhouse gases makes for easier for comparing one activity vs an other.
I think my extra arguments week pretty self explanatory. Species extinction and deforestation of the Amazon most ecologists would agree are bad.
Of course niche cases require niche solutions, but I think considering other huge factors is also important rather than blindly ignoring them to make animal ag look better. As I said, this is the Holocene extinction event, clearly what we're doing needs to change and reduction in land use and species extinction is a good starting point. How we handle reclaimed land is important to consider of course, but honestly seems like a luxury until we get there. Besides saying we should stick to CO2 the main thing I get from your comment is arguing for status quo, which isn't a solution.
My argument, as given above, is that we should have a environment cost table when discussion what action individuals should take to save the environment. Starting by reducing those actions that has highest cost and then go down the list. Status quo it is not, through it is an argument in favor of bikes and remote work rather than diet changes.
Amazon deforestation is clearly a problem, and in the same way that IKEA stopped using wood that they got from that deforestation, so too can other markets that benefit from deforestation. There could be national bans or consumer boycotts of beef produced on cost of amazon forests, which would be a niche solution for a niche case.
This is why I mentioned a cost table. Pick a level for which people should reach and then let them chose which sacrifices they want in order to reach that.
It doesn't help the environment if someone drives 5 extra minutes to reach a vegan lunch restaurant and then 5 min back. We can look at the global scale and say that livestock production may have bigger impact, but it doesn't change the local impact that each person do to the environment here and now. We should look at what each person can do, and that include counting all actions and sorting them from biggest impact to least.
For those who are interested in reducing their animal consumption and need an extra push, I recommend this great talk by Dr. Melanie Joy about carnism, which is the invisible belief system that conditions us to eat certain animals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0VrZPBskpg
He's certainly right about the fact that people are not going to quit all at once -- it's an example of the tragedy of the commons. If someone can figure out how to grow a meat analog in a lab cheaply and efficiently it will probably be one of the most positively impactful technologies ever created.
"Grow meat in a lab" is missing a whole lot of middle steps, technologically.
Fakemeat is getting better every year, and synthetic heme and lab-grown protein promise meaty liquids that can be mixed into the veg-based solids to make even more convincing fakemeat in the future.
We may never get to the true "rib eye steak grown in lab" but there's a lot of middle-ground we can still cover.
Right, but that might be doable with textured vegetable protein with synthetic heme or lab-grown synthetic beef juices to give it that juicy umami flavour. Just the next step beyond what we have today.
As someone slowly converting to vegetarianism, I can say that I won't miss meat much. I actually prefer vegetarian by a long stretch already. I only eat meat now when there aren't good vegetarian options, which is slowly becoming less of a problem as more restaurants become aware of the increasing demand for vegetarian dishes.
It is somewhat self-righteous to claim that since everyone in the world isn't doing what you deem correct, that it is a tragedy of the commons. Any sort of immediate mass change on that level would be likely catastrophic.
The whole point of Schwarzenegger's advice this is that, while you like meat and find it insulting to have someone else's views imposed on you, for many purposes you are the one imposing his own view onto others by eating meat, since that means keeping alive the industry that contributes to 20% or 25% of all carbon emissions in the world. Others may not like that, and will try to convince you and other meat-eaters like myself to stop or reduce meat consumption.
While there is an argument that economic coercion is true coercion, most people think that if you freely choose to provide a service (like farming animals), and freely enter into commercial arrangements concerning the fruits of your labour (selling meat) to others who freely choose to swap money for the things you're selling them, then no imposition has occurred.
The main way to make your argument work I think is by looking at the externalities imposed on everyone, but things become less clear cut then, because nothing we do is entirely free of side effects, and choosing which to restrict legally is not simple and ideally should be done impartially when it is done.
Those externalities are the imposition I was referring to, yes. The costs borne by people who are not getting that delicious ribeye cannot be ignored.
And nothing is free of side effects, of course. Every activity is political activity, every activity is economic activity. You might have noted that I said nothing about "restrict[ing] legally"; your choices (and mine!) have consequences that we must own, and that is a completely separate topic from what should be legislated about.
>"I don't try to impose my view of the world to other people."
Everyone does, just not necessarily directly.
Meat eating has consequences that extend beyond those that choose to eat meat. If our choices existed in isolation to the rest of the world, then we could say we didn't impose our view of the world on other people.
I'm not saying you have to stop eating meat, but at least do so with awareness of what happened before the meat arrived on your plate.
As far as I know, no one's trying to pass a law banning your consumption of steaks. So this might be what's considered a strawman argument.
As for what dictates the consumption and environmental impact, in theory it should be your ability to afford that steak.
The price of beef, however, from calf to cow to transport to butchering to your plate, is so heavily subsidized all along the way--and the externalities like environmental impact mostly unaddressed--that that steak you're getting is the deal of the millenium.
I'd like to see how much that steak would cost if it weren't subsidized, and its pollutant side-effects were properly assessed and taxed. Maybe once a month is all you'd be able to afford.
Suggesting a 'Meatless Monday' (which is the campaign) or that one or two days without meat to reduce your consumption is not imposing your view.
It's actually quite the opposite, it is a compromise that understands that you and many other people do enjoy meat and do not want to give it up completely while still reducing the total consumption across the whole population.
Beef is the worst. Avoid ruminants because of their methane release (cow burps are 25x more potent a ghg than co2). Also look at the feed to weight ratio for animals, cows are like 6:1 whereas chicken is 1.5:1, and chicken don't release substantial methane. Pork is about 4:1. Rabbit is about 3:1 and has a very fast time to cull.
The framing in these things is always wrong. We are not protecting the planet. The planet will be fine. The planet has been fine for a long time. What won't be fine is a certain kind of primate that likes to live in certain places.
This type of response is intentionally obtuse. By 'planet' people mean the planet's ecosystems. By the time humans are in danger, 90%+ of other species will probably be long gone.
> but you chose to interpret that phrase literally.
But when we're dealing with geological timescales I think a literal interpretation may be the right way of looking at it. Would it be sad if 90% of Earth's species died off? Certainly, if there were any humans around to do the mourning. But zooming out a bit, the current die-off isn't anything new. There have been mass extinctions and rapid alterations of climate and atmosphere in the Earth's past too.
Humans originated on this planet and we are a part of the ecosystem. In a way, anything we do to nature is simply one part of nature being wildly out of equilibrium. If we mess it up, it'll mean curtains for us but life itself will march on. In 10-50 million years after we're gone, there will arise lifeforms that are just as interesting and varied as anything we have now. Which, on a geological timescale, really isn't that long (between 0.0025% and 0.0125% of the Earth's age).
I think that promoting environmentalism in terms of it being a means to saving ourselves might be more effective than appeals to "save the rapidly dying $ENDANGERED_SPECIES".
It doesn't matter if that was the reality or not, the cultural narratives that surround environmentalism do have an effect on who takes part, which means overcoming personal prejudice is part of the movement towards a greener future.
Nine of the top ten leading causes of death[1] in the United States can be directly attributed to meat consumption, so there's already a perfectly "selfish" motive to go vegan or vegetarian.
The leader of the Dutch Party for Animals, Marianne Thieme, once arrived somewhere in a Hummer to make a point about meat being worse than car pollution.
Not sure I agree, but it's certainly an interesting point to make. (I don't think she normally drives a Hummer, though. She just loves to make dramatic statements.)
So how many cars does this guy have, and why won't he talk about how much natural resources are used up and pollution created by the mere manufacture of a car/truck/light infantry vehicle?
Saying, "go veg. part time" could be analogues to, "Hey, you need only one car? Own only one car - I'll start!"
You don't need any meat. There's no health benefit from meat you can't get from plants, and plenty of things in meat that are horrible for your health.
I know this isn't the point you were making, but I wanted to take the opportunity to do a PSA.
While it's true you don't need any meat, it's not true you can get everything you need from an unsupplimented vegan diet (more accurately, it's incredibly hard).
If you're looking at a vegan diet, consider researching supplements such as for B12. If you're lazy and in the UK, Holland and Barret sell a single tablet supplement designed for a vegan diet (just ignore all of the other bollocks they sell in there)
Everyone should be conscious of B12 and be supplementing. It's dirt cheap, and crucial to proper brain function. Last time I checked something like 40% of Americans are deficient or borderline deficient but less than 3% are vegan.
Humans don't get B12 from dirty water and trace amounts of dirt on vegetables like we used to thousands of years ago and a lot of people aren't getting enough from the meat they are eating. B12 from meat is usually coming by proxy through the animal because farmers typically supplement the animals with it too.
Iirc, from a land management perspective this is also the most efficient - some land is only good for livestock, not people. So while a vegan diet is a close second for "most efficient use of Earth's bounty" the ideal approach for that is a small amount of animal products.
That said, we don't need meat. There are countless healthy vegans and vegetarians that are living proof of this.
At the age of 70 Arnold has probably consumed more meat than an average sized U.S family will in their lifetime. It's nice that he's changed his tune on meat consumption, but it's come rather late in his life. Arnold has had his fill and then some and now he wants to make the planet better by suggesting others limit their consumption.
Isn't this rather rich coming from a guy who has probably consumed 100 times more animal protein in his ~70 years on earth than the average joe to whom he is now rationing.
Meh. Assume it works and that only a hundred people listen to him...
More, people can learn and advance their thinking. Robbing newcomers of help and assistance is bad. Suggesting better practices is not. Combining this with his other writing lately, I am willing to respect what his intentions seem to be.
Actually, he's right. You do not need to eat animals to get good protein. It's easier to supplement with whey or soy protein. I wouldn't be surprised if his bodybuilding diet involved supplementation since it's much easier to meet macronutrient goals with protein shakes than by eating meat, because you don't have to worry about the fat that comes from the meat.
> It's easier to supplement with whey or soy protein.
Soy is a rather poor source of protein (phyto-estrogens, etc). Whey is a waste product of the cheese industry.
(Edit: All things considered, milk is a pretty good source of protein.) The milk cow is the most efficient means of converting the grass on a rocky hillside into human-edible protein (ref: some old book I have somewhere. They're all in boxes). The fat in grass-fed milk is more orange than industrial milk because there is more vitamins A & E (and beta carotene) in the milk than is in cottonseed meal (a waste product of the cotton industry that is commonly fed to dairy cows in a feedlot).
Soy isoflavones are structurally similar to estrogen, so it was a reasonable hypothesis that they would behave like estrogen in the human body. But this has mostly not been born out by evidence. In particular, it is now clear that soy isoflavones have no measurable impact on male sex hormones.
Isoflavones do have some impact on estrogen receptors (the correct term for this is "selective estrogen receptor modulator"), and indeed this causes some health benefits. But in healthy humans, there is very little reason to think they cause any negative effects.
I think most of the fear mongering about this has come from body builders, who worry that soy will lower their testosterone and sabotage their efforts. This we now know it does not do.
Here in Iowa we grow corn to feed our cows (different, I assume HN-ers could guess, from human-edible sweetcorn). I don't know about the vitamin load. I assume it's probably less-good than that of the random plants on marginal land. On the other hand, we don't have much for rocky hills or crags around here.
In this case, we'd probably be better off using our land to grow a wide variety of nutritious foods besides the corn and soybeans that have become the monoculture here.
>"Soy is a rather poor source of protein (phyto-estrogens, etc)"
Regarding phyto-estrogens, from what I've seen there are positives as well as negatives. What in particular puts you off them?
To anyone reading this who hasn't heard about phyto-estrogens, and thinks of estrogens as a female-only hormone, it should be noted that males have estrogen receptors too, and phyto-estrogens are part of vegetables widely accepted as being healthy, such as carrots, apples, lentils, oats, barley, etc...
There was a myth that was well circulated 10-15? years ago (as soy products were becoming more available in the US) that said soy estrogen would turn men and boys into effeminate pansies and we'd all grow girl boobs.
Most importantly, isoflavones does not have any effect on male sex hormones. That means no effect on your workout, no effect on your drive, and no effect on your reproductive health.
Or at least, no plausible reason for an effect on those things.
In the old days protein shakes hadn't really come into the picture yet. The guys would eat eggs and hamburger patties, drink a lot of milk, your typical low-carb style diet. And they'd carb up on pasta one night a week. Ric Draisin worked out with Arnold in those times and has interesting videos on YouTube discussing their workouts and diets etc
Not especially. Water is more constrained now that it used to be, and there are more people to feed. Anyway it means more coming from him than from some skinny hippie-type, so people are more likely to take it seriously.
You pointed to something which represented a relatively minor cause of population growth in the context of our overall history on this planet. What did you intend to illuminate with your earlier comment?
Relatively minor compared to the industrial revolution, maybe. But it's certainly not minor if you look at the change in world population when Sumeria began.
Just a thought. Obviously I think anyone who goes vegan means well.
I'm not sure I'd call the invention of grain agriculture relatively minor; all human population expansion depends on the availability of grain as a food storage mechanism.
"one person could have flown coach from New York to Japan (and back) 3,408 TIMES with the amount of fuel the Governator used to commute within California."
Who does he think he is lecturing poor people like me about what I ought to be eating for dinner?!
I think most of us here agree that ditching the Gulfstream will do wonders for the environment; but this isn't a pitch for "Arnold is living the best life for the environment."
He is a man who is becoming more conscious of his meat intake and taking steps to reduce that and his footprint.
Can he do better? Of course! Does that negate the validity of the argument that reduction of meat intake is a good idea for the environment? Nope.
The overall point is that we can all take little steps to reduce our footprint and meat is just one of them.
That said, it is quite amazing just how much fuel has he used.
Does that matter? Most people will just say "What a hypocrite" and ignore the message. People don't respond well to logic, they respond to emotion. A valid argument that doesn't convince anyone is worthless.
I'm saying it's a glaringly bad strategy. Buy hey, continue trotting out complete and utter hypocrites to lecture us on what ought to feed our families for dinner.
Especially if you're doing well because the chances are your kid will grow up and drive for most of his life, fly in planes, obtain lots of stuff that requires CO2 emission in its production, and perhaps even consume meat. If you have multiple kids and they go on to have more kids etc, the environmental effect of having a kid becomes exponentially worse.
This doesn't mean that you don't deserve to be a parent, it is only natural to desire to be one. The closest orphanage will have many kids who are wishing for a warm home every day of the year. There are many impoverished and brilliant kids around the world who will live and die working under horrific conditions.
Now there is an argument to be made about you and your partner's genes being so exceptional that it would be more harmful to the society not to pass them to future generations. I guess it is up to the individual to make that judgement.