“We need new technologies that can be controlled by a megacorporation to make a select few rich, not things that individuals can do or use that can break the hold of existing monopolies”
And thus the shilling for nuclear power began.
nuclear is beyond most private corporations. The profit breav-even is too far into the future for all but governments.
Thanks for that thought, I was confused who is arguing so much for nuclear that is not solving anything and is too expensive.
Shilling makes a lot of sense, but never came to me.
And downvotes without explanation, even here. I guess normal people are also under influence.
Is nuclear a bad option? Only downsides I’ve heard are basically optics problems. Barring facilities that catastrophically failed on top of horrid safety policy negligence, they seem perfectly suited for baseline power production.
Cost. The reality is nuclear is not just more expensive than every other option, it’s a lot more. I remember seeing something like ten times the cost of solar, per whatever unit of energy
Yeah we already have the technology needed, we have to implement them.
And much of the tech is actually very old. Electric trains are like a century old. So for a lot of things, we have to re-implement technology we foolishly removed.
Oil was just a bad technology path. Gotta get back on the right path.
Our battery tech is not up to par, and chances are, will never be. Need something in replacement. Nuclear, not the same, but good enough.
Nuclear trains and cargo ships might actually be necessary, even. In North America and over oceans, getting the vehicle weights, the weights of cargo and the distances between cities to work under any reasonable system means not just DC but even AC are insufficient in transmission range on land (and of course useless in the middle of an ocean), and companies like Amazon and AliExpress account for a lot of direct climate-disrupting emissions and a good chunk of the wealth letting assholes like Bezos live like kings at everyone else’s detriment.
While nuclear container ships would be very useful for reducing emissions I’m not sure I want to trust shipping companies with nuclear reactors given the track record of ship accidents and noncompliance with environmental regulations. Feels like they’d just dump the nuclear waste into the ocean.
Also piracy would suddenly become a much bigger issue.
Nuclear trains, WTF? There have been electric trains for over a century. In fact most Diesel trains actually have electric motors powering the wheels with a diesel generator powering the electric motors. Instead of having to think about repercussions of what happens when a nuclear powered train derails in a populated area, why not just run some overhead wires over the tracks like people have been doing for a century?
One of the problems with hydrogen is the lack of density means there’s a need for larger fuel tanks. This is less of a problem for cargo ships and trains than it is for most other vehicles. And again less worry of nuclear materials being hauled around population centers or in areas where there’s pirate activity.
Okay, to be fair, I was assuming the nuclear trains would be doing cross-country freight hauls and never for passenger service.
Upvoted for the hydrogen, you’re probably right about fuel cells being a better option.
The main problem with hydrogen is distribution. You’d have to build pipelines to a lot of train terminals to refuel the trains. So it seems to me running overhead wires for electric trains would be the better options for most cases. Yeah it’s a century old technology there’s nothing sexy about it, but since it’s old tech it’s well tested and will be reliable. The thing with technology is that you usually have to have a transitional phase that’s viable. Many “diesel” trains actually have electric motors that drive the wheels, they just haul around a diesel generator to power those electric motors. So you could use the overhead wires where available and run the diesel generators on parts of the track that don’t have that in place yet while transitioning. Then when there’s complete electric coverage, do away with the diesel generators entirely.
I think hydrogen for ships makes sense because a port could have a hydrogen terminal similar to present day LNG terminals. LNG is transported by ship so hydrogen could also be transported to the terminals similarly. Eventually hydrogen pipelines can be built from there, but pipelines take time to build.
The main problem with electric is also distribution. 95% of all North American heavy rail lines are unelectrified.
I can see taking a risk on hydrogen trains might not pan out, just saying electric is something that draws from the electrical grid (which is at capacity in the Pacific, Texan and Atlantic grids) and there’s no easy/single solution. If only for avoiding pirates by staying far from shore indefinitely, ships should at least have the option to be nuclear but require a US Navy-certified team at the port to inspect it and do needed maintenance/repairs before each time it sets sail.
As for nuclear trains, at the very least you have to admit that it’s not as simple as “just transmit power along the rail line from LA to NY”.
The technology path is fine, the adoption isn’t.
Path: plastics are miracle materials. Lots of great uses for it.
Adoption: mass producing single use throwaway shit everything.
Long term plastic aren’t as big of an issue as one time use plastics are. Wax paper and aluminum containers can both replace consumable bottles for instance.
I don’t know what “second heat” is, but I want a hand pump…
It means buying used rather then buying new. Too much usable shit gets thrown out and nee shit gets made to replace it. That uses fossil fuels to do.
He was making a “Don’t dead open inside” bit where if you read the text wrong it says “second heat” and “hand pump” instead.
“Second heat” sounds like runner’s high for sex.
I was. Wasn’t funny, but I won’t let that stop me!
HEMP
Only way to stop climate change is to STOP CONSUMING SO MUCH
No, the only way is to drastically reduce the human population.
Not all humans cause an equal amount of emissions though.
That would be a great way to reduce consumption
I argue it’s better to stop producing so much.
Don’t blame consumers for consuming what’s placed in front of them. Blame the producers for producing collectively more shit than the entire population will ever need or want.
Err….they definitely aren’t producing more than people want, or at least not enough to matter since they are making loads of money producing things….
I take it you’ve never been to a landfill eh
Not claiming they aren’t producing more than people need just that people seem to want more. There is a sure conversation around the psychology of enticing people to constantly buy buy buy and how lots of products are ‘disposable’ though
So they are definitely producing more than people want? That conflicts with what you previously said.
No they are producing more than people need. People are buying what they want.
And I think people should buy fairphones. It’s a great idea and it needs to be a compelling phone to get more people to buy it.
The problem is that ethics alone as a reason to buy is shit because it’s better to go used ethically.
It’s the reusable grocery bag of phones as long as it’s not comparable to other phones.
I blame them both. Neither can do it without the other.
I agree it’s both but they can do it without the other. Remember when all those copies of the ET videogame were dumped in a whole? It’s a weird example but they often create a lot of product that’s never sold. Likewise consumers will be extremely wasteful and fickle. Like how people won’t buy ugly fruits and veggies so instead ugly carrots are cut into baby carrots.
Remember when all those copies of the ET videogame were dumped in a whole?
No but I assume there was never an ET 2?
I promise there’s more corporate waste nobody purched it’s not a stretch.
Of course it is. Corporations don’t throw money away producing things they know people won’t buy.
They do all the time actually. You need more product than you will sell basically always.
Best way to stop consuming is to stop having children
IDK how I feel about this argument.
Some people don’t care about having kids, others have an innate desire to do so, a biological contact that yearns for fulfilment.
Maybe it’s a lame appeal to emotion but one of the defining characteristics of life is the ability to reproduce.
If you’re not into kids, it’s pretty easy to say “people should stop having kids”, but that assertion is a bit of a kick in the guts to those that feel that drive.
It’s a bit of a moot point for people in developed countries anyway. As in we can all congratulate ourselves on being enlightened enough to realise that we’re overpopulated, but there’s billions of people having as many children as possible to support them in their retirement.
Unachievable though it may be, I think global universal education, healthcare, and UBI is the solution to over population.
I agree that if you don’t feel the need to have children, it is very easy to argue that its a good move, compared to if you have the biological desire to have them. On the other hand, you can argue that this is what environmental movements are all about. Controlling our desires, in order to avoid exploiting the ecosystem.
If you’re not into kids, it’s pretty easy to say “people should stop having kids”, but that assertion is a bit of a kick in the guts to those that feel that drive
I understand that not everyone can accept not having children, especially if the reason is be to help the climate. On the other hand, we don’t recognize the same “kick in the gut” to someone who feels the need to eat red meat, explore the world or own a big house.
To me, stopping a line of expanding consumerism is a very strong move, as a long term climate action. I can’t compare them to short term actions, but not putting more human in the world, who will keep consuming, and will keep adding even more consumers in the world, feels better to me than turning vegan. I can help the itch, of needing children, by caring for the children in my closest family or even help local organisations setup to match adults to children (a sort of freelance parent/mentor)
Imagine thinking that telling people on the internet to not have kids is an effective strategy against climate change, while downplaying the importance of going vegan. Continuing to be an animal abuser is also more than a kick in the gut to all the animals who are born in extreme captivity, live a life of constant torture and rape, only to be slaughtered (usually in childhood) just so people can satiate their gluttony for a little sensory pleasure and delude themselves into thinking they need to do that because they’ve been trained by unscientific marketing teams into thinking it’s the only way they can get protein.
On the other hand there are a lot of antinatalists in the vegan communities. So if you went vegan, you’d be in good company.
I don’t need to imagine it. I just did it.
I don’t argue that we need to pick one over the other though. Simply that there is no one right way to everybody.
Kudos to you if you do both and even better if you also don’t have a car and drink rain water.
mhh. nope.
Best way to reduce consumption is preventing rich people from obscene over consumption. Do you know how many average children could grow up and life a lifetime on the emissions of Tylor Swifts private jet tours? (Arbitrary example, because it has lots of attention right now. Goes for the lifestyle of most rich and super rich people)
What if I told you, on the world stage, “rich person” encompasses most Americans.
For context:
Globally, the richest 10% are those with incomes above about $35,000 (£27,000) a year, and the richest 1% are people earning more than about $100,000.
What if i told you with renewable energy, public transit mobility, an end to the 9to5 and consume excess hamster wheel, proper recycling and sustainable products everyone could life a good life, many americans even a better life?
The world has enough ressources to sustain a larger human population and give everyone the means to a decent life. It is solely in the way things are done right now, in particular the obscenely rich, that are unsustainable.
- sustain a larger human population
No, we are way over budget on people as it is. Sustain means ‘indefinitely under current conditions’.
Can you point me to a dictionary that specifies, that it can only refer to the current conditions?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sustain
It suggest as meanings to maintain, to provide, to encourage… In the meaning of provide and maintain there is no limit to current conditions.
I have laid out the conditions under which the world can sustain such a human population. I find it linguistically wrong to limit it in such a way, that only the current situation is permissable. This is directly contradictorary to any use in relation to future like planning.
E.g. “we plan the building to sustain a 6.5 earthquake” would be wrong under your criteria, as neither the building, nor the earthquake exist at the point of that statement…
A decommodification of housing would be amazing as well.
I blame advertising. We should pass laws that every second ad needs to be designed to reduce the amount of shit people buy and cancel out whatever other ads are playing
Veganism is not technology. Also meat tastes delicious for most of the regular population. Proceeds to nom a chicken
Meat used to taste delicious.
I was raised pescatarian and started eating a little bit of meat in university, it was pretty good. I could definitely understand the hype, meat was pretty delicious. But for me personally, I just don’t get the craving for it. Eventually I just ended up going back to a near vegan diet because it’s what I like to cook, and it’s so cheap. I’m not vegan, but 99% of what I’ve cooked at home in the last 10 years is.
However, I was craving charcoal chicken for like two weeks straight, so the other day my friends and I rode down to the place everyone goes to. We made a proper day of it with our bikes and picnic blankets. The chicken was cooked perfectly, really moist and falling off the bone. The seasoning on the skin was delicious, I can see why that place is so popular.
But the chicken had no flavour of its own.
Taste wise, it could have been anything cooked with the seasoning rub over the charcoal spit. A block of tofu would have had the same flavour.
Texture is the only unique experience, and I’m sure there will be a brand of meat replacement out there that has nailed the texture (but not nailed the taste) so it really isn’t long now until there are viable alternatives. I haven’t really tried many meat replacement products because I’m allergic to potato and e160c and those two ingredients are in a surprising number of vegan packaged proteins.
I was disappointed with my chicken. I thought maybe I’d over sold it in my mind, as my friends confirmed that yup, this is good chicken, I’m being picky. But when I said “it’s just not as good as I remember from uni” and then my friends did a full 180° and agreed that yes, in the last 10 years since I’ve had chicken like this, meat quality has gone downhill, and chicken isn’t good anymore, but what we were eating was good chicken, and that they all still like chicken, even though it’s disgusting by direct comparison.
Now I’m curious how different the quality is between home raised chickens vs store bought chicken meat. Because it’s got to be insane, even if both birds are the same species of heart attacks on legs.
My brother raised chickens and we went to his place for a dinner with one of the chickens he raised. It was probably the best chicken I have ever had. The store chicken barely holds a candle.
Now this was probably over 10 years ago, and I know the farm chickens have “improved” but the improvements are more… for production. Not for quality and taste.
Meat tastes delicious to vegans too! It’s just that it’s unconsciouble to purposely destroy the planet just for the taste!
How do you vegans know what meat taste like? You have to eat it to know what it tastes like, but if you eat meat, then are you a vegan?
Not to mention vegans keep saying they don’t like eating meat, and yet you go out of their way to attempt to make food look and taste like “meat”. So do you want to eat meat or not? Pick a lane, vegans.
Oh and humans ain’t gonna save or destroy the planet simply by eating meat. The earth doesn’t need us saving it, it’s the human that will go extinct due to our own actions. The planet will live on way after we’re gone, and new life will appear. The earth was able to survive billions of years before us, it WILL continue to survive looooooong after we go extinct.
I wasn’t born a vegan, most vegans aren’t. I ate meat, and I’ve since stopped eating meat. What an unusual argument to make.
Do you think vegans don’t eat meat because they don’t like the taste, and are trying to convince others that meat tastes bad? Vegans don’t eat meat because of the harm it causes to animals and the planet. If I could have meat without that harm, I would eat it. That’s why I eat food that emulates the taste and texture of meat. It sounds like you don’t understand veganism at all, or are a very lazy troll.
Oh and humans ain’t gonna save or destroy the planet simply by eating meat
No but it’s a bloody good start, and why not do it? I’m not worried about the earth, it will go on. But I’m concerned for the literally millions upon millions of people who’ll die from climate change caused by animal agriculture. I know you’re clearly not concerned about needless animal suffering, but are you not concerned for human suffering either?
So other animal races can eat other animals but the human race, which is also animal in case you didn’t know, cannot eat other animals? Talk about literal interspecies racism.
Animals also rape other animals. We shouldn’t look to animals to check our moral compass. Animals eat other animals out of necessity, in order to survive. We as humans no longer need to do that, and have the mental capacity to choose not to.
If you still choose to kill and eat animals, purely to satisfy your tastebuds, then you are immoral. It’s as simple as that.
Ah yes, raping, an activity that is the perfect comparison to eating meat. And yet everyone doesn’t get arrested for eating meat, the justice system is more corrupted than I thought.
And as a species that has been around for 2.5 million years, we just started eating meat recently and definitely not for the last 2.4 million years. It’s a miracle that we evolved instantly from a bunch of apes eating nothing but plants to omnivores with complex history and advanced technology in just a mere 2 thousand years.
Maybe having a brain the size of an orange ain’t so bad, we definitely should evolve backward to that since we were able to survive for 2.498 million years without meat after all.
I’m not suggesting that rape and the act of killing and eating animals are equivalent. You listed the fact that “animals kill animals, we are animals” as justification for doing so. I posit that, using that logic, “animals rape animals, we are animals” is broken justification for rape.
Also the fact we have been doing something for millions of years is not justification to continue doing so. We’ve indiscriminately murdered people for millions of years, you wouldn’t accept that as justification for murder.
Consumption of meat was certainly beneficial to our ancestors, as protein was hard to reliably attain. Now it isn’t, we have access to all kinds of reliable plant protein.
To now make the conscious choice to kill and eat animals, ONLY for ones pleasure, is immoral.
There has been some research to make products that are compatible with veganism e.g. lab-grown meat. The latest technological discovery in the news was ‘meaty rice’
Disclaimer: I also eat meat since I don’t trust my intestines to fully rely on plant-based nutrients. I do, however, think there is merit to how the industrialization of farming has been destroying the environment, especially with the excess of methane from cattle.
We should be focusing on making orbital platforms where to keep the cattle so they don’t pollute rather than not focusing on non space stuff. Smh.
I have a better solution to get a meaty taste that is 100% practical and actually being used for millions of years, even before humans existed: Just eat meat.
It’s not necessarily the meaty “taste”. Many people have health complications with their digestive systems (one example I can think of is Celiac’s) that can make it near-impossible to get nutrients from plant-based food. If you can grow meat in the lab, you can get animal-sourced nutrients without hurting animals (for vegans) nor large resources that are typically used for climate-damaging meat industries (for everyone)
I know a medicine for diseases like that and you can get it pretty much everywhere, it’s called “Just eat meat”, it’s been working for millions of years.
nuclear power should definitely be one of those technologies listed
Long-term not viable and lots of hidden costs.
The Problem with nuclear Power is, that there isn’t a guarantee for reasonable pricing. There simply isn’t any experience on how much it really costs to build new power plants.
If you want to take a deeper look into the topic: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/05/what-does-nuclear-power-really-cost/
Can you defend it on economic grounds, rather than outdated talking points used against Greenpeace in the 90s?
You mean like the economically grounded notion of having a survivable environment?
I mean that we have solutions that don’t have it’s history of cost and schedule overruns.
I’d reserve judgement on that until they start building grid level battery storage on a scale an order of magnitude bigger than current setups.
I won’t, because nuclear already proved it can’t do it, so we look elsewhere.
Flow batteries are not that hard to ramp up.
None of these options are “that hard”, but until some storage is built on the multi-gigawatt scale, any conjecture on real build cost is a waste of time.
Why do we need gigawatt grid level storages?
What about decentralized storages, e.g. a battery in your home in conjunction with solar power, or using your car battery? A lot of the arguments against renewable energy comes from demanding the electricity grid to follow the same principals as it did under fossil fuels. But a fully renewable grid can be governed by different principles.
Think in terms of probability, not absolute. I mentioned flow batteries because I think it’s the most promising and developed, but there are several others. If one doesn’t work, ten others are being pursued in parallel. Only one needs to work
In a five year time frame, we’ll probably have at least one. More likely three or four.
Nuclear, in contrast, has trouble pursuing multiple possibilities at once. It’s too expensive. A decade ago, it was the AP1000 design, which was supposed to avoid the purpose-built engineering that bogged down deployments in the past. That was a failure so hard that Westinghouse nearly collapsed permanently. Now it’s SMRs, and given the collapse of the project in Utah, it’s not looking good.
we have solutions that don’t have it’s history of cost and schedule overruns.
Which of those solutions are presently available for large scale implementation, and guarantees baseload coverage with no significant CO2 emissions?
In a sufficiently large grid you will always have wind and in a global grid you’d also reliably have solar as base load.
Furthermore the base load can be reduced significantly with smart sheduling of energy usage.
Finally nuclear is no gurantee of baseload coverage. Nuclear power plants require a lot of water for cooling, like all thermal power plants do. With climate change the reliability of rivers providing enough water and the water being cool enough to not cause an ecological desaster downstream is becoming less and less reliable.
Many nuclear power plants at supposedely stable rivers had to be partially or fully shut down in the last summers. Nuclear power under climate change is not a stability factor. It is a risk factor to the grid.
In a sufficiently large grid you will always have wind and in a global grid you’d also reliably have solar as base load.
Yes, except even with an interconnected European grid we’re still not there. While I can’t speak for how much landmass needs to be covered, we need to expand the capacity of the grid quite a bit. I’m not sure where the bottleneck in Germany is now, but a few years ago Danish wind power couldn’t be exported much further than Hamburg. Since then the Bundesnetzagentur seems to have been handing out expansion permits left and right, but a grid expansion just across the EU sounds like a fever dream.
Furthermore the base load can be reduced significantly with smart sheduling of energy usage.
Sure, and we’re being “motivated” by paying a larger transmission fee during the evening peak in Denmark. But still I haven’t heard of people doing much more than not running their dryer during peak or maybe scheduling their EV’s charging later. For smart grids to actually work we need distributed energy storage. People still need heating during peak. And as I’ve stated elsewhere in this thread, storage is expensive. What I wrote about was almost going off-grid, which is insanely expensive, but storage will still be too expensive for most and impractical for many. So most people will just pay the increased price for the power, and not make the huge investment in storage.
Finally nuclear is no gurantee of baseload coverage. Nuclear power plants require a lot of water for cooling, like all thermal power plants do. With climate change the reliability of rivers providing enough water and the water being cool enough to not cause an ecological desaster downstream is becoming less and less reliable.
Firstly, that depends on the implementation. You mention rivers, and your instance is a “.de”, which explains your argument. But in a country like Denmark we have enough coast to build nuclear power there. Which was what was proposed back the 70s and early 80s.
Secondly, the time when we require the most power generated by power plants is during winter. As you yourself pointed out, the shutdowns occurred during the summer.
Building a huge concrete plant has lots of CO2 emissions. Why wouldn’t you include the construction in the CO2 emissions budget? Also, the waste heat from the plant fucks up a local waterway. It’s required to be on a body of water, and no one is going to want to swim there anymore.
Windmills? You just stick them where there’s wind. They don’t bother anything. Construction is minimal and you can still use the land for something else.
Wind turbines come with their own environmental impact due to construction, among that is CO2. Besides that they are highly visible, to the point where I can’t look at the horizont where I live, in any direction, without seeing a few, but most importantly: they can’t provide baseload coverage.
Wind and solar are nice ideas, but if you want to cover baseload they’re just not up to it.
Please allow me to try to explain with an example. During the months of December and January, it is quite normal to experience several periods of no wind for up to a week in Denmark. During the same period there’s 6 or 7 hours between sunrise and sunset.
Let’s assume that a Danish citizen is average. Avg yearly electricity use is 1.6MWh, and sorry my sources will be mostly in Danish, https://www.bolius.dk/saa-meget-el-vand-og-varme-bruger-en-gennemsnitsfamilie-279. That gives us an avg daily usage of 4.4kWh. During december usage will be 30% above average, as per previous link. That gives us a daily avg usage of 5.7kWh in December.
During this period in 2022, solar accounted for 0.6% of the electricity produced in Denmark, https://www.verdensmaal.org/nyheder/danmark-blandt-eus-tre-solkonger. So at 0.3 kWh out of the 5.7kWh it’s close to insignificant. But let’s subtract that and now we’re at 5.4kWh.
That’s 5.4kWh we need to get from somewhere, the wind turbines are barely rotating. Where do we get it? Assuming a household of 4 people that’s 22kWh daily. That’s where we need powerplants. And personally I prefer nuclear to coal, gas and “carbon neutral” materials like straw and wood, for the CO2, as well as the particulate, emissions. The latter of which, is the cause of about 9mil deaths each year globally, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/feb/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-responsible-1-5-deaths-worldwide.
What about battery storage? Presently there’s one vendor of flow batteries in Denmark, https://www.visblue.com/, and while I can’t post link to a price, I have been quoted 400-500000 DKK, 50-67000€, for a 10kWh solution, by the company that services my wind turbine.
That’s 50k€ for half a day’s worth of electricity storage. Let’s go back to the example of no wind for a week, you’d need to spend 700k€ for each household at that price. And no, we don’t need to have each house have storage installed, and yes, the price will probably be considerably less with different vendors and larger solutions. But it doesn’t change the fact that you need to store at least 7x5.4kWh per Dane in order to not need to get electricity elsewhere.
Larger grids have been argued. I don’t have the stamina to go into detail on that. Suffice it to say, that describing the investment needed, to make that somewhat viable, as astronomical would be playing it down.
None of these things are a solution – they’re measures for extending our status quo and minimizing how fucked we are, but we’re still guaranteed to be fucked.
I already have a second hand and telling people to grow a second hand just feels ableist to those who can’t. /j
“Veganism”
Let’s reign that in just a bit to Vegetarian for now. Incremental steps.
Plus, they forgot nuclear. Oh, and thoughts and prayers
The difference is nuclear is a good solution.
These are all good solutions, for very different problems, admittedly…
Haven’t met the guy that had his problems solved by thoughts and prayers but I guess it’s possible.
That’s where I was being sarcastic, silly.
Obviously nuclear is a good solution and t&p is meaningless
Oh good, sarcasm on the internet is about as easy to detect as carbon monoxide. I need a meter to send off alarms sometimes.
You can totally incrementally step towards veganism. That doesn’t mean that veganism isn’t the correct end goal.
I think Veganism is just silly though. To completely disregard animal husbandry, forgo chickens laying eggs, cows making milk, all the things animals produce just seems like purposefully hindering ourselves when we still haven’t figured out how to feed everyone.
Start by replacing meat so we don’t needlessly slaughter animals, sure, got me there, but I can’t understand veganism as a practical solution to anything. It’ll help climate change, sure, but it won’t significantly impact it enough to solve it and we have better alternatives to doing that.
Veganism can not only help with climate change, but also total land use, species extinction, deforestation, ocean eutrophication, antibiotic resistant bacteria, zoonotic diseases and soil erosion. Also, keep in mind that over 90% of worldwide livestock and 99% in the US are factory farmed. And we still needlessly slaughter egg-laying chickens and dairy cows once they’ve been overworked to the point of no longer being profitable enough to keep alive.
I get your perspective on it and if we had 1:1 alternatives for all these products like we’ve done with Beyond meat or Impossible burger I’d probably be more willing to consider Veganism, but I also think that chicken and cows who can no longer produce should be turned into food. I get that the idea of ending a life short isn’t morally appealing especially when I just pointed to plant based replacements but in the interest of cheaper and more available food I think it would be more harmful to us (in spite of the issues you listed) than it would be beneficial for the climate.
Veganism can work I just don’t think we have any of the development into replacements that we need to commit to that. Butter, yogurt, dairy as a whole is such a massive industry. Eggs for cakes, butter for baked goods, we’d need to replace all of it and figure out how to keep the things we’ve normalized without destabilizing it all.
Those alternatives exist already. Instead of eggs, you can bake with apple sauce, banana, chia, flax or non dairy yogurt and get great results. Oil and margarine serve great in place of butter. You can make cheese sauce from nuts/cashews and nutritional yeast. Also, depending on where you live, there’s a wealth of commercially produced dairy and egg alternatives.
Just this past week I made amazing blueberry lemon muffins with coconut yoghurt and lemon bars with corn starch in place of eggs.
In terms of price, vegan options can be substantially cheaper than animal products, and if we (in the US anyway) started subsiding vegetables instead of meat and dairy, they could be even cheaper.
I’m curious about your stance. You mentioned it’s needless to kill animals for meat, but you also think we should use animals for milk and eggs and then kill them after they’ve become too exhausted to keep producing?
The morality of raising animals to slaughter them in their prime for meat seems bankrupt at best and repugnant to me personally. An animal that has lived it’s life, produced products for us naturally, and has done so humanely I see no problems with whatsoever. If a bird wants to use the hair I cut off my head for their nest, I wouldn’t consider them morally wrong for using what I produce to benefit themselves.
Animals who get too old and are past their prime will stop producing and are near their natural death. They’ve lived their lives, hopefully in humane conditions, but are on the way out. Using them for meat at this point, to me, feels like giving them one final purpose rather than just allowing them to become fertilizer.
I get that doesn’t sound morally pure and it probably isn’t, but I would rather old animals be turned into food than allow humans to go hungry out of pretentious moral aspirations. If we can afford to be moral we should be but if we can’t, we can’t. I won’t lose sleep knowing a family gets to eat because we didn’t allow that animal to either away naturally.
As far as replacements go, that’s genuinely fantastic. I hope we scale that up and don’t let meat farmers lobby to destroy it. Like I said if we can replace products to the degree we don’t suffer by insisting on morality, we should. Full stop.
I think we have fundamentally different outlooks on animal agriculture. It seems like your position is based on the idea that animals used for milk and eggs are treated well, live long natural lives and are killed at the end of their lives when they would have died naturally.
An animal that has lived it’s life,
Animals used for milk and egg production live a small percentage of their potential lifespan. The effects on dairy cows of repeatedly being impregnated, giving birth, producing enormous quantities of milk, and going through the cycle again takes a harsh toll on their bodies. It’s normal for a dairy cow to only endure 4 or 5 cycles of this before they literally cannot physically continue, at which point they’re no longer profitable and are sold for slaughter. Similarly for egg-laying hens, the stress and mineral demand of ovulating multiple times a day means that they rarely live past two years. For the males of these breeds, it’s even worse. Male chickens of the egg-laying breeds are mostly useless to the industry, so they are killed immediately after hatching, usually by way of an industrial macerator or gas chamber. Male calves might live to 8 months to be slaughtered for veal, but if there’s no market for veal they are frequently killed immediately after birth.
produced products for us naturally
Modern egg laying chickens and dairy cows are man-made breeds far removed from their natural wild counterparts. Hens trace their lineage to red jungle fowls, who naturally ovulate at a similar rate to humans, about once a month. Selective breeding has increased this amount to once a day, sometimes even more. The extreme pressure on their reproductive system frequently causes health issues like egg yolk peritonitis, cloacal prolapse, and osteoporosis. Similarly with modern dairy cows, bovine mastitis, udder sores and infections are common due to our selective breeding to maximize milk yields. Even otherwise healthy animals face grueling lives because they’re part of a species that was engineered for one purpose: profit.
has done so humanely
Modern animal agriculture is overwhelmingly inhumane, which is why livestock animals are almost always excluded from animal abuse legislation. Ignoring the above points about how they’ve been selectively bred and are worked to exhaustion, investigations into egg and dairy farms have found absolutely shocking treatment. If you have the stomach for it, they’re worth watching to understand the scope of animal abuse that is commonplace in our society.
There is only one true solution, and that is abolishing the explotation of the planiate and the workers for private profit. Capitalism will kill us all
Lake Karachay has been described as the “most polluted spot on Earth”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_of_Lake_Karachay
Formerly the fourth-largest lake in the world with an area of 68,000 km2 (26,300 sq mi), the Aral Sea began shrinking in the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects.
After the visit to Muynak in 2011, former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the shrinking of the Aral Sea “one of the planet’s worst environmental disasters”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
I’m not saying the Soviets hated lakes, but it’s weird that they fucked up two of them.
China is the only Major Industrialised nation who is activly shrinking their carbon foot print.
I am not going to make any claims that the USSR was perfect, however it was certanly infintly better than what the US was provinding. However the Irrogation plans where to feed individuals and there it is more likely than not that the USSR if it still existed today would have worked on fixing said issue.
As for Lake Karachay, Unfortunatly the organization who made the claim about the lake went bunk about 7 years ago, so I am having issues seeing who their funding sources are, The founder did create a follow up organization who by effect is based in DC and the founder seems to have deep conections to the United States government it does not suprise me that one of the biggest polutions of the Soviet Nuclear program is brought up, but nothing of the US nuclear program is mentioned, IE Bakini Atol.
I also feel inclined to mention that most of the net polution is happening due to the lack of capitalists to want to do anything but maximise short term profits, and scream when anyone does anything to slow that growth, and that the nation doeing the most to decrease emmissions is the PRC.
China is the only one reducing carbon? That’s a pretty weird statement. This is a little put of date, but… https://cdn.climatechangenews.com/files/2017/03/238eb46742db30303bcd33fe9ce65f3d-1.png almost the opposite of what you’re saying. Recently, China does seem to be reducing a bit, but it has shot up by such a huge amount that pointing to them as the best example is pretty weird.
Who said anything about China? They’re not Communist. They’re just state capitalism. Why bring them up unless you think they relate to this conversation about pollution?
The lady doth protest too much.
The Peoples Republic of China is very much Communist, I do not even know what you are talking about with this state capitalist thing. They are a run by and for the working class. I brought them up because you brought up 2 sources about a communist nation that was illegaly desolved and so can no longer make amends for past wrongs, I feel it is only fair to talk about an Actualy Existing Socialist State, however if an argument icluding an AES state is too much protesting from me I feel that proves my point better than anything I could say.
You don’t know what “state capitalism” is, but you’re sure that it doesn’t resemble China?
A state-capitalist country is one where the government controls the economy and essentially acts as a single huge corporation, extracting surplus value from the workforce in order to invest it in further production. This designation applies regardless of the political aims of the state, even if the state is nominally socialist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism
China has a stock market. They are not Communist anymore. They’re barely even Maoist. The official position of the CCP is that Mao was 30% wrong.
“The lady doth protest too much” is a line from Shakespeare.
The phrase is used in everyday speech to indicate doubt of someone’s sincerity, especially regarding the truth of a strong denial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady_doth_protest_too_much,_methinks
The fact that you don’t know either of these things indicates that you don’t actually understand the concepts you are attacking or defending. Read more.
I know what the term is suposed to mean, it is a term without a meaning, I am not an imbicile. Yes there are stock markets in the PRC but if you look at them they are run by and fpr the prolotarate, not as a corperation, anyone who has done a modicum of reseaech into the PRC know this
Also I am a fucking English speaker I knpw the fucking line, I was merly pointing out ot mase no sense in the context you where giving, where in I provide an AES example to cpunter 2 examples given to me of a socialist state who cannot?remedate the conditions they started
Veganism isn’t better for the environment than significantly reducing the total amount of consumed meat. Animals play an important, difficult-to-replace role in making agriculture sustainable. Animals can be herded on land that’s difficult to farm on, animals can consume parts of farmed plants that humans cannot, and animals produce products that humans cannot replicate without significantly more work.
I don’t really care. Abusing (using) animals for food and work is cruel anyway, if me not doing that because I think it’s wrong is good for the environment, great! If it’s not, fine, but it’s not why I do it.
That’s the thing. Ethics and impact on the environment can be two different things. If you decide to go that way, you’re fine. Do it. However we need animals for stated reasons. We have to eat less meat/generally consume less animal products.
No, animal captivity, exploitation, rape, slaughter, and consumption are all things that are very much unnecessary, and are detrimental in many ways.
We also need to stop overproducing everything. America makes far too much corn, because/and the industry is heavily subsidized.
The amount of food waste in North America is astounding. Completely unnecessary.
Yup… I want those subsidies to shift to hemp production. So many far more useful products that will be able to be produced rather than food processors playing hide the corn. It is a drop in replacement for the ethanol in gas since the seeds are 30% oil.
But we don’t produce hemp, and megacorps go… Here’s another ethane cracker plant.
True. That’s the same with everything. As long as it is worth to produce stuff just to throw it away we will damage our planet more and more.
We do that so you can go to the store and actually find food. It’s so we don’t have another famine…has nothing to do with anything else you’re trying to point out.
You have zero idea what you are talking about.
Yea totally, no clue what I’m talking about at all, just own a farm and understand our food economy…but nope no clue.
So you’re telling me the government uses tax payer money to prop up your farm so that… we can actually find the food at the grocery stores?
And then with all that extra corn that you’re producing they have to find a myriad of other uses (like the syrup that making the entire country obese, for one)?
So clearly you’re way more enlightened on the subject since you own a farm, so why don’t you tell the class why subsidizing an unnecessarily oversized industry is a good thing.
Don’t shy away from this. You’re the expert.
I disagree that raising and keeping animals because we want their products is cruel, and I especially disagree that referring to that as abuse is useful.
What standard of cruelty and ethical framework are you using to come to your conclusion?
It may not be cruel in principle, but it is usually cruel in practice. Still, I like the the guiding principle to try to not let minor benefits to myself (e.g. an easier way to a nice meal) go above vital benefits of other creatures.
I was speaking in terms of principles rather than discussing practical reality. Of course cruel practices are common in farming in general and the meat industry in particular; I’m not disputing that.
How is it not cruel?
I’m not watching a vegan shock video.
If you disagree with me, you should be able to put in to words why you believe all instances (real and hypothetical) of keeping animals for the stated reasons should be considered cruel. If what I said is a strawman of your position, then you don’t disagree with what I meant to say.
Ethical emotivism. A framework most people use, although few admit it.
Ethical emotivism isn’t a self-consistent ethical framework. It’s arguably not even an ethics system; it’s a philosophical attitude towards ethics as a field of study.
Lookup veganic farming, and veganic permaculture. The idea that animal ag has any place in combating global warming is demonstrably false, and was nothing more than a greenwashed hijacking of the other various regenerative agricultural movements. There is no room in neither a just world, or a sustainable one, for the exploitation and consumption of animals.
Veganism is good for climate, biodiversity, health and animal welfare. We really don’t need to eat animals or animal products to have good meal and live a happy life. The good thing is that humans are omnivores, with a free choice of what to eat. Please choose wisely, not only for your own mental and physical health, but also for others, living now as well as in years to come.
Not everyone can eat a pure vegan diet. We are omnivores. We don’t get to pick, we must eat it all to stay healthy.
So do it. While some people would argue vefpganism is ideal, the important part is “less meat”, especially less beef. I’d give kudos to anyone who eats one less beef meal per week: chicken is much easier in the environment than beef, or ne less meat meal,
The word Ideal is very generic. Ideal to who? What is ideal? Your health? The climate? Your bowel movement?
Meat contributes a ton of CO2. 15% of global output in just beef alone. Pork and Chicken is better.
Instead of pickering over words we could just acknowledge the underlying facts.
Those who can, and most people in western industrialized countries can, should reduce their meat consumption. For most of them veganism is a viable option, especially as there is easy access to doctors checking as well as supplements if there is difficulties.
There is no intrinsic need for animal protein or fats for a healthy diet.
The reduction of meat or even the total mandatory switch to all vegan diet won’t stop climate change since it’s such a small % in the total carbon footprint compared to our energy needs.
Your tribalism thoughts should be better focused on things like our need for clean energy like nuclear and solar.
I am neither vegan nor vegetarian, nor do i propose a mandatory switch to such diets. I also don’t mind people who primarily eat meat, as they are still traditional herders or hunters like in Central Asia or parts of Africa. But you know what these people don’t do? Fly on vacation twice a year, go on cruises, drive 20.000 km or more a year, consume 5 MWh of electricity per person and year…
The current way of animal farming with the current meat consumption results in about 10-17% of global GHG emissions. That is about the same emissions like all road traffic.
And unlike cars, where you could reduce the emissions effectively by using EVs, you simply cannot change a cow from emititting substantial amounts of methane, and the effects of the land conversion necessary for it’s feed.
Finally the argument, that X source of emission would be irrelevant to target since it is so small on the global scale is the prime whataboutism argument to not adress any emissions. “Oh our country is only making 1% of global emissions, we don’t have to change.” “Oh our industry could cut emissions in half in three years, but what about the other industry?”
People in western countries eat way too much meat. Any reduction to that is good, be it by reducing your meat consumption significantly or by switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet.
Everyone needs nutrients they can digest. The source doesn’t matter under these conditions. Excluding rare medical cases, everyone can get all required nutrients from non-animal sources, ergo everyone can have and live a perfectly healthy life on a vegan diet.
Meat has more than just protein. It has so many micronutrients that your body needs that you would have to take a shit ton of supplements to just come close to it. Sure, you can survive without those micronutrients. But why go through all the trouble?
that you would have to take a shit ton of supplements to just come close to it
If you would’ve taken a dive into healthy vegan diets, you would know that this isn’t true.
But why go through all the trouble?
I thought we already established that in the comments here.
I don’t understand veganism enough to speak about it and don’t care enough to look into it. I’ll take your word for it though.
Meat production is in the single digits in actual global pollution. The problem isn’t our diet. The problem is the fossil fuel industry which contributes to 79+% of the world’s pollution. If I had a light switch that can turn off all meat production, nothing would change. If I did the same for fossil fuels, it would instantly stop climate change.
Focus on who the enemy is here. It’s not us, the people. It’s the fossil fuel industry. Demand change from your government. We need clean energy from things like nuclear, solar, wind and whatever new innovation comes from government investments.
We don’t need animals to consume plants we can’t, because plant food is soooo goddamn more efficient on every metric. We can drastically reduce land, water and energy usage AND still feed way more people with plant foods. We simply do not need to eat animals.
Any form of “sustainable” animal farming I’ve read up on end up being still less resource efficient than plant foods, AND obviously massively reduced output. So we’re truly talking about vegan vs. an ounce of meat a week. That’s not a difference worth defending, considering the other obvious ethical issues.
Finally, why do you feel that it’s important to argue for “99%” veganism? Do you genuinely believe people don’t understand that less is better, but none is best? Do you apply the same argument to other ethical issues, like feminism? Being 99% feminist is a big improvement, but constantly arguing for it in favor of feminism (aka 100%) would obviously look ridiculous. Finally, don’t you realize the humongous difference between “we should abuse animals for our pleasure less” vs. “we shouldn’t do that”? A whole class of racism disappears if we get rid of the association between “animal” and “lesser moral consideration”.
Have fun eating grass, drinking nonpotable water and eating roots and stalks and rotting vegetables…you militant vegans are hilarious.
Yes because calling out the bullshit is a strawman, you might wanna go read your own links lol.
See above.
Yes you really told me, damn…thanks for the discussion you’ve changed my mind.
If you were open for a discussion and for the possibility to change your views, you wouldn’t have used bogus arguments. I just wanted to point those out, as it is probably meaningless to waste my time in a discussion with you anyway.
why do you feel that it’s important to argue for “99%” veganism
This argument relies on false assumptions about my ethics and an incorrect representation of my position. First: I don’t want to reduce meat consumption/production by any specific ammount; I am currently unconvinced that removing domestic animals from food production entirely is maximally efficient, but think it’s clear that the current ammount of meat is unsustainable and thus must be reduced by some ammount that is currently unknown to me. Furthermore, I don’t believe that all living things qualify as “people” for moral considerations. Since I do not believe all living things are people unless proven otherwise, why should I consider all animals as people unless proven otherwise? There are certain animals that I consider to be people and thus give moral consideration equal to humans such as certain species of corvid, dolphins, elephants, and octopi which have demonstrated traits that make me believe they should qualify. In order to convince me, you need to either provide me an alternative definition of a person and demonstrate why it’s superior or to show me that all animals fit into my definition of person.
Edit: forgot to mention your other argument, but simply put it’s also off the mark. While I agree that eating plants directly is more efficient, that doesn’t address the thesis of my argument. So long as there exists circumstances such that we produce plant matter (as a waste product) that an animal can consume and humans do not in quantities sufficient to feed a stock of animals of some size including those animals in food production and feeding them the plant matter is more efficient than throwing away that plant matter. Your argument needs to be more robust.
Most of the vegan food we grow is fed to animals, so we can eat them. Feeding and housing animals for food consumption purposes requires 83% of our total farmland, but produces only 18% of our calorific intake.
If the world went vegan, we’d only use 25% of the farm land we currently do, meaning we don’t need to use that “difficult to farm” land.
Unfortunately there is literally no valid argument against veganism. If there were, I wouldn’t be vegan.
Sir you forget that in China there are pig condos
Yes, we need to significantly reduce the amount of consumed meat (maybe not insects, if we consider them meat). A step towards more vegan and vegetarian food would definitely be necessary. Yes, not everyone needs to be vegan. But we need to consume way more vegan and vegetarian food.
Insects are meat. Why are you so keen on eating bugs?
There is a general consensus that insects are not considered equal in terms of animal cruelty like mammals, as they have much smaller and simpler nerve systems.
In regards to ecological imprint insects have a much better feed to food ratio and you can feed them much more things than to grazing animals.
In vegan communities insects are very much extended the same moral considerations as other animals. What you’re advocating is a form of speciesism, which is something better avoided as much as possible.
Anti-specieism is an argument often brought by vegan fascists, arguing that killing humans is no worse than killing mosquitos.
Also the concept of avoiding specieism fails the moment you look into nature. Is the cat that eats a mouse a speciest? Should you let mosquitos bite you and transmit diseases because killing them would be speciest? Are the farmers in Southern Africa that are plagued by locusts speciest for trying to protect their harvest?
Probably you would consider these examples as legitimate. But what about the building of the house you reside in? The production of your electronics, your energy usage…
It is impossible to make a consistent value frame of what is acceptable killing of animals and what isn’t, if you deem an individual fly as equally protectworthy as a sheep or a human.
Vegan fascists? The people who are trying to put an end to the forced captivity, continuous torture, rape, exploitation, commodification, and perpetual holocaust-levels of slaughter of virtually every species of animal that is not human, are fascists?
Here’s the most commonly accepted definition of veganism:
“Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”"
Emphasis added. The vast majority of vegans do not believe that killing a mosquito is exactly equivalent to killing a human, and even of the people who do, it’s intended to imply that all species lives are important, that the mosquito’s life is seen as equally valuable to the human’s. The only reason such a proposition seems abhorrent to you is because you’re looking at the mosquito through the lens of your carnist supremacist mindset, which is to see the mosquito as something worthless and thus conclude that a human’s life is considered by vegans to be equally worthless.
But again, like everyone else vegans take anti-speciesism only as far as is practical. We just do it better. The mosquito bite is easy. If you know mosquitos are around, it’s wise to wear repellent, and take other appropriate precautions depending on your circumstances. Maybe modify your environment if possible to be less of a breeding ground for them, if it’s bad enough. If you’re dealing with a particular mosquito, odds are they have already bitten you, so how is the lethal carnist reaction any more protective against a disease that may have already been transmitted, than simply blowing on the mosquito to get them to fly away?
Locust infestations happen because of shitty agricultural practices. If you’ve got a plot of land that’s full of nothing but copies of one tantalizing crop, then of course it’s going to be an obvious buffet for a vast amount of insects. Are veganic farming or veganic permaculture methods extreme? Or is it more extreme that our most common monocultural methods of farming are causing so much pollution that it’s bringing so many vital pollinators to the brink of extinction?
You make the same erroneous argument that many other carnists make, which is the idea that because vegan values can’t always be practiced perfectly, that somehow automatically means the entire ethical framework is without merit. But that’s obviously nonsensical. To the individual mosquito or mouse, it makes all the difference in their entire little lives, whether they incidentally pestered a vegan or carnist. It’s been estimated that a single vegan living their values results in about 200 fewer livestock animals being slaughtered every year. Is it extreme to live in a way that would end factory farms forever if we all embraced it, or what about the lifestyle that created them in the first place?
Nearly every half-baked gotcha that carnists try to catch vegans in has a common-sense practical answer. The example of predation in wild areas is a point of contention in vegan communities, whether we should intervene or not and ultimately make rather significant changes to the natural world, but presently it doesn’t really matter, because there are so many other obvious abuses that need to end.
Veganism only looks extreme from the deluded perspective of carnism. But in reality going vegan is like becoming sober, and recognizing how disturbing it was to live the way that so many continue to.
Vegan fascists? The people who are trying to put an end to the forced captivity, continu…
Those guys:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/evb4zw/why-so-many-white-supremacists-are-into-veganism
And those guys (German Article):
https://www.belltower.news/vegane-nazis-wie-rechstextreme-mit-ihre-ernaehrung-ideologisieren-91901/
Well lobster tastes pretty good so I’m pretty hopeful about the land bugs.
I actually don’t like lobster (I prefer the meatless versions) but that’s a fair point.
I’m not keen on eating bugs, most of them just are similar in environmental damage as vegan food. Insects are also already in almost all processed foods because they are small and almost everywhere. They just don’t fall in the same category as what we in the western civilization typically consider meat (as a food).
Good job not listing trees. You had one job OP.
20 years ago a few key technologies were still missing, like grid storage battery technology. But there are multiple promising ways now. Unfortunately lack of massive funding for research and development and patents means we’ll have to wait another 20 years to produce them really cheaply on the free market. Otherwise it would be unfair to the poor inventor! /s
Aren’t flywheel energy storages (invented by James Watt and improved over time) not suitable energy storages for electrical grids?
No, flywheel is not cheap enough and too complicated. Pumped hydro is cheapest, but only available at very few location. Lithium batteries are a waste or misappropriation (lithium should be recycled for mobile use) and there aren’t enough.
The two battery types that seem to work are liquid metal batteries that are made out of dirt cheap and abundant materials (although there might be problems there still), and flow batteries. Kite power also seems to provide more energy for less material costs (no huge foundations and towers needed).
There are also gravity batteries: https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/06/this-disused-mine-in-finland-is-being-turned-into-a-gravity-battery-to-store-renewable-ene
The gravity energy system would be able to store 2MW of power and integrate into the local energy grid. … Scientists from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) found that the world’s abandoned mine shafts could store up to 70TWh of power - roughly the equivalent of global daily electricity consumption.
Also in Finland, but different technology “sand batteries” https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61996520
Finnish researchers have installed the world’s first fully working “sand battery” which can store green power for months at a time.
The developers say this could solve the problem of year-round supply, a major issue for green energy.
Using low-grade sand, the device is charged up with heat made from cheap electricity from solar or wind. The sand stores the heat at around 500C, which can then warm homes in winter when energy is more expensive.
While I think there is still no working production model, Iron Salt Batteries are very promising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_redox_flow_battery
There are different options, not each one is suitable for every place, but seams possible that combination can help us achieve needed reduction in fossil fuel usage when sun is down and no wind.
none of these are the solution. Nuclear is the solution.
How about corporate, political, and economic accountability?
We can throw the transgressors into the nuclear reactor, two mutated birds, one stone, so to speak
For a second I read that as “We can throw the transgenders into the nuclear reactor” and I was like, “Whoa whoa whoa, I think you’re at the wrong part of the internet, friend!”
Who do we throw into the reactor when the majority of people DEMAND something that is only possible with massive destruction of nature, horrendous waste of resources and horrible immoral practices?
If we kill all the “evil” factory farm owners, but still demand cheap meat every day, we’ll end up reinventing that same horrible system.
These are all part of the solution. There is no magic bullet.
There is no solution beyond an immediate return to abject poverty for 99.9% of the population.
The house is burning down around us. All the squirt guns you can muster aren’t going to put the fire out. The only thing left to do is try to survive in a burning house.
Liquid thorium is pretty cool. (Also nuclear but even lesser known.
