If you're interested in adjusting your seafood eating habits towards eating more sustainable seafood, the Monterey Bay Aquarium maintains a guide on which seafood (based on species and location/method of catch) is most sustainable, somewhat sustainable, and not sustainable.
I think the intent is great, but what is the percentage of the population that would utilize such a thing in their daily life? Not trying to be a downer, but I think most people don't have the bandwidth to be carrying around little cards reminding them to buy this/don't buy that, "oh, and is that tuna line-caught or pole-caught?", etc. If eating a certain kind of fish is causing environmental damage, we need regulation as a chokepoint somewhere in the chain, whether it be to stop it from being fished or at least from being sold.
We shit where we eat, and then we get angry at the turds in our cereal bowls. Who put them there? Is this satire?
Yes, fisheries in decline means that, voluntarily or not, we will lose our cedar plank salmon and our sushi-grade tuna. We will instead talk up the pleasures of the sardine, its ennobling humility and its clean taste, but it will be self-delusion covering up an obvious sense of loss, just as celebrating a birthday on Zoom is a pathetic loss no matter how much we try to put a happy face on it.
We are all getting a taste of what it feels to lose things, maybe lose them for good. This is the experience of our parents and grandparents, survivors of war, refugees, people thrown into sudden poverty. It's a common experience around the world, but many of us have forgotten it. It's time to get reacquainted. Families who lose everything in stock market crashes and hurricanes look at the wreckage of their lives and ask, "Is this satire?"
In 40 years, I fully expect to be an out-of-touch antebellum grandma, talking of lost pleasures to people who've never tasted coffee or traveled across the Atlantic, the same way I have never ridden in a phaeton or tasted ortolan.
The post I replied to suggested it is somehow reasonable to majorly inhibit a pleasure of life today so that others can potentially experience the inhibited pleasures in the future. The suggestion is comedic to me - "if you're worried about the decline of fish impacting your sushi eating habits, eat less sushi today so we can eat more sushi tomorrow", is what it reads as. The solution is to make more fish, not to have a segment of the population reduce fish consumption so another population can also consume fish. When the population of a country grows, the agricultural regions don't remain the same size - they grow to accommodate the growth in population. You increase your supply, not ration it out - that's how you end up with an abuse of power.
The birds react to the dark by gorging themselves on grain, usually millet seed, until they double their bulk. Reputedly,[weasel words] Roman Emperors stabbed out ortolans’ eyes in order to make the birds think it was night, making them eat even more. The birds are then thrown into a container of Armagnac, which both drowns and marinates the birds.[13][14]
The bird is roasted for eight minutes and then plucked. The consumer then places the bird feet first into their mouth while holding onto the bird's head. The ortolan is then eaten whole, with or without the head, and the consumer spits out the larger bones.
My father-in-law is a commercial fisherman and very active ecological activist, and becomes livid at the Monterey Bay guide. I don't totally understand why but I think basically he believes it grossly oversimplies commercial seafood chains and in the process hurts producers acting sustainably, and in some cases provides cover for problematic markets before it's too late.
In his case I think this is because the seafood he produces isn't on the guides at all. It's not obscure, just not covered, but he's noticed in using the guides, people tend to avoid products they can't verify as "good". In other cases (in his mind) the guide hurts people working in markets to change the means of production to become more sustainable.
His position is that there's basically no substitute for understanding where your food is coming from. I think he sees the core problem is then disconnect between consumers and production, in that the global production chain has become so financially efficient that sources are completely obscured from purchasers.
I'm not sure I agree with him on everything regarding the guide. The global seafood market is insanely complex, and the guide helps navigate it in at least a simplified way. But I think he's right in a sense that real changes are going to require something more substantial in terms of consumer changes and /or real international regulation and enforcement. There's too much fraud and detachment from actual supply. I don't think fishing is unusual in this regard in the food supply but I do think it's different in that a lot (not all) of it involves wild as opposed to farmed resources.
https://seafood.ocean.org/ is a good international alternative; for example, Ocean Wise logos can be found on many menus in Vancouver and other Canadian cities.
But what winds me up in the UK is how rarely i even have the option of eating sustainably. If i go to a fishmonger, or a decent-sized supermarket, sure. But in a small supermarket, or a pub or a fish and chip shop, it's always the standards: cod, haddock, skate, rock, plaice (and to be honest plaice is a pleasant surprise).
Now, given that rock and skate are endangered, i have to admit i'm a bit confused about how they end up on menus. Are they being imported from other parts of the world where they're legal to fish? Or are they actually other, similar and legal, fish being sold under incorrect but familiar names?
Which sucks, because it is one of the few seafood's that I actually dislike. I don't like certain oily fish, and I don't like calamari other than that I like pretty much every seafood. I spearfish where I live which I like because I can only take what I am going to eat, I don't injure any other fish like pole and net fishing does and everything I take is of legal size. It allows me to be more selective of what I take. I tend to target, hogfish, mangrove / mutton snapper and lionfish as the reproduce fast and are able to withstand the pressure of fishing. While it is legal during certain times, whee I live, to take grouper, tuna and permit, I tend to avoid taking them as they are more susceptible to fishing pressure.
I have spearfished for over 30 years and it is astonishing how much the fish population has declined even in my lifetime.
I personally enjoy calamari, but it definitely doesn't hit the spot for bony fish / shell fish cravings. And it is missing the omega-3's of oily fish. :(
IIRC, to paraphrase the reasoning: "they're overpopulated, their caught in not-too-damaging ways, they're healthy if you don't fry them, and they would totally eat you given the chance."
Not just for checking on the fish you are already eating, but for trying out new seafood. I like to think of it as a very well curated recommendation list.
For instance, Barramundi is a very tasty fish that I discovered via this tool. We eat it regularly now. It also gives you the other names that the fish/seafood is known as, so you can shop around or know what your order is like.
Everyone please stop blaming coral bleaching on climate change. Nitrogen run-off from farming is the main cause. We need to reduce nitrogen enrichment in farming, which will lead to lower yields and lower profits (or, more likely, higher prices). But blaming climate change here is an egregious example of green washing which will prevent or delay resolving the real issue. Stop it. Please.
"Anthropogenic nutrient enrichment is often associated with coral reef decline. Consequently, there is a large consent that increased nutrient influxes in reef waters have negative longterm consequences for corals"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187734351...
"Increased loadings of nitrogen (N) from fertilizers, top soil, sewage, and atmospheric deposition are important drivers of eutrophication in coastal waters globally. Monitoring seawater and macroalgae can reveal long-term changes in N and phosphorus (P) availability and N:P stoichiometry that are critical to understanding the global crisis of coral reef decline"
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00227-019-3538-9
No. Nitrogen pollution has local effects and is an enormous problem in some important fish spawning grounds, but it cannot explain what happened to the Great Barrier Reef in 2018 and again in 2019.
The effects of temperature on corals are getting to be quite well understood now. Globally, marine heat waves are a major problem, alongside pollution and direct reef destruction.
Likewise, ocean acidification is happening as part of "climate change" (carbon pollution) and is another stress for corals.
I agree with your point about N runoff. We need to stop growing maize for biofuels and animal feed and implement megascale riparian planting programmes to limit the damage done by floods. For starters.
These things are not either-or. Overfishing and destructive fishing practices, "development", various kinds of pollution and oxygen depletion ... we're doing it all, and it all affects reefs.
Your sources don't seem to exclude warmer waters as a contributor to bleaching. From your first source "...recent scientific results show that increased nutrient levels can reduce the heat stress tolerance of corals..." So it seems that runoff + heat both contribute to coral bleaching.
I'm not sure we can make this conclusion. Certainly the effect you're mentioning does extreme damage but it is localised. Acidification is nowhere near as localised, therefore whilst it doesn't affect individual areas as strongly it is much more widespread. When looking at the accumulative effects the question of which one is worse is up for debate and non trivial to answer.
I have tried to explain this here, but they don't want to hear it, if it does not put climate change as the #1 reason. My daughter is in coral research, N:P is the poison, heat increases it's potency, without the N:P the heat alone does not bleach the coral. We see coral bleaching in all areas where agricultural sits above the wetlands and the runoff runs into the wetlands and then over the reefs. It's funny how Australia's wetlands and Florida's everglades are so similar, and sitting right above both of them is large sugar farms using tons of fertilizer pumping tons of N:P into the wetlands and then out and over the reef.
With the way the human population is expanding and the rising income of 3rd world nations we are really going to look at a major increase in both genetically engineering food stock to be larger and more nutritious as well as ramping up lab grown meat. Conservation is clearly not going to work as so many nations ignore it anyway and quite often regulations lack teeth due to the fear of killing an industry. Its difficult to ask 3rd world nations to cut back while first world nations have been reaping benefits for so long.
While I wish organically growing food and conservation was the answer, its unfortunately not. Society just wont change to support it. A science fiction style solution is going to be the only way to feed the world.
>A science fiction style solution is going to be the only way to feed the world.
I get what you are saying, I just want to clarify: we can feed everybody now, but mostly with vegetables. But yes, shared resources like ocean fish are under too much pressure right now. I feel as though it will take a major worldwide collapse of the fishing industry before there is better enforcement and treaties.
As a resident of a first world country I stopped eating all seafood about 15 years ago. It seems unethical to support over-fishing if I have plenty of other good food to eat.
I've been wondering lately if cutting out a product is less ethical than buying the ethical version and supporting that market. Relatedly, people often don't eat meat because they oppose unethical treatment of animals. But I imagine farmers who treat animals well are disadvantaged by that strategy- people who care enough to buy their more expensive product opt out of the market entirely.
I really do think people want ethical food products, but with food in particular, it's really a lot to ask of individual consumers. There's a reason we have so many regulations around food quality - it just makes all our lives easier.
I've always thought less-than-ethical food products should be taxed more heavily, and the money should be used to subsidize the more ethical, healthier alternatives. Outright bans on certain product classes can be tremendously distortionary and have unintended side effects, but it's hard to imagine little pigouvian nudges being anything but beneficial to society.
I would be very much in support of a regulation that requires every single product to display the carbon footprint required to produce it and, where applicable, the carbon footprint of using the thing per year.
Doesn't necessarily solve our problem here, but it might help the larger situation and with potentially bipartisan support (economic right positions rely on the consumer being able to make educated choices).
I absolutely agree with a carbon tax and a land tax to push the prices in the right direction. From what I recall, American meat is subsidized by the government, making it cheaper than anywhere else. I expect removing those subsidies would also have the support of anyone not bribed by the meat industry.
All too often, controversial opinions dominate the conversation because they get people talking. I think there's a lot we can do to improve things by working together across political lines.
This is a cherry picked argument, at least in the US, where "factory farms raise 99.9 percent of chickens for meat, 97 percent of laying hens, 99 percent of turkeys, 95 percent of pigs, and 78 percent of cattle" [1].
Besides, even in this ideal farm where the farmer treats the animals perfectly and lets them live long, fulfilling lives, they're still killing the animal at the end of the day. Hard to see how that is "treating [it] well".
I don't think 'cherry-picked' is the right descriptor. My point is that in order for those percentages to change, we need to seek out ethical farming and pay for it.
If you believe that it is unethical to raise livestock with fulfilling lives and then kill them for meat, by all means do not eat meat. I disagree, but I accept that as a valid, reasonable position to hold. I think most people are more concerned with animal cruelty specifically, and also have a lot of difficulty switching to vegetarianism.
You have a point here, yup. Some vegetables are luxury food, and less efficient than cattle. Replacing nature with monocultures is a problem. If we stop eating cattle for that, there is not moral room to keep eating chocolate, for example. Or coffee
>Some vegetables are luxury food, and less efficient than cattle
[Citation needed]
I'll assume you're arguing in good faith, but this argument is a common straw man made by people who are against plant-based diets. In fact, the only case where you have a point is that the worst case for chocolate produces more emissions than the best case for beef [1]. Odds are that if you're eating beef in North America it comes from a factory farm [2], while people who advocate for plant-based diets are often for more sustainable farming practices too, and will try to buy chocolate/coffee/avocados/whatever in sustainable ways.
Finally, the most important point is that it's not an either/or proposition - you can be _both_ for eating less meat, and producing plant products in more sustainable ways.
There are vast areas that are very, very poor for growing anything other than some grasses. These lands will not support growing plant based foods for people. However! They do produce plant based food for cattle. You end up with 0.5-2 acres of this land to feed a cow.
>The vast majority of beef is not grazed on lands incapable of naturally supporting more intensive forms of agriculture.
The vast majority of beef is grazed on lands incapable of supporting at a sustainable price point more value dense forms of agriculture. If those ranchers could sell you boutique sustainable tomatoes they would do so in a heartbeat (or as fast as they can given the fact that it's basically a career switch).
You get crops like soybeans and corn where the land will support that and less value dense crops (like beef and timber) in places it won't. You can grow other products on cattle grazing land but you won't be price competitive with the farmers on better land. The fact that this land is used for beef instead of some other crop is a reflection of how efficiently we use the better land. As vegetable product fillers make their way into lower and lower end beef products (as price, technology and consumer preference allows) the land used to farm beef will likely shrink from the least viable areas (the areas least suited for beef) with demand and/or be pushed out of the most viable areas (the areas most easily suited to other crops) by more value dense plant crops. Obviously there's some serious switching friction otherwise you'd see this play out with every little change in commodities prices.
Sure, everybody reducing their meat consumption to their share of what is produced on marginal land would be the optimum, even better than everybody going 100% meatless. How much of the typical meat consumption of a current-day nonvegetarian would that be? 5% perhaps?
And it wouldn't be the same 5% that we see with "almost vegans" today who argue "less but better" to only eat premium cuts while proudly announcing that they avoid all grinder meat. If you want to eat the steak, don't scoff at the sausage.
Back to grazing marginal lands, yeah, I'd also hate to see the animal species that have accompanied us throughout human history go extinct. But we're very far from that.
Some facts are so well stablished in human knowledge that there is not need to cite it. For example: "Some crops are more productive than other. Point".
We, humans know it since 10.000 years ago. Anybody can see it with their eyes. Not need to repeat what Aristotle would say about it.
Primary and secondary production, is a big fat chapter in any Ecology handbook. Any Plant physiology handbook will explain the differences between CAM and C4 plants
If nobody is trying to produce a natural sized cow sculpture made of vanille beans, there must be a reason.
> So your statement is true because you say that it's common knowledge that it's true?
Not, my statement is true BECAUSE is has been proven extensively and is common knowledge that it's true. There is a difference. There are extensive databases, plots and tables about how many food you can expect to produce from each organism by unit of time and area. Is the basis of a main branch of ecology: Trophic chains and energy.
To say than growing Soy is more efficient than to breed Polar bears is a repeated lie, trying to make simple things that aren't simple. Not. It depends on the ecosystem, context, temperature range, soil, and climate. And is the same with breeding cattle.
If I eat seafood I rob from ocean species, illegal labor, the hungry poor, and the future. Sometimes, farmland represents the same problem, sometimes not. Seafood is an unsolved problem globally. It has no form of ethical consumption.
I don’t believe humans should operate as pure, replicators– doing any action for the chance to continue to exist. Fishing is global and global fishing runs on slave labor. I am doing them a favor. It’s called ethics for a reason. You are presented with 100 things you can eat. Seafood and cocaine are probably the most unethical. Why not skip them?
Not in the short run but in the long run everybody would win. If you lower demand I assume people would find another way of living that would be more sustainable.
I have lessened the demand by myself and five people I was able to convince. It’s a question of ethics. What ethical stands have you taken? How are they helping?
Based on some rough napkin calculations, the caloric efficiency by land of broccoli is about the same as industrial meat.
Optimizing diet for land efficiency probably does not produce healthy diets. You can find strong evidence for this trade-off in the changes of average human health at the advent of agriculture.
> Based on some rough napkin calculations, the caloric efficiency by land of broccoli is about the same as industrial meat.
Not even close. Did you forget to consider the inputs into meat?
If you want to check against someone else's math, here's a paper that claims we can increase global calorie availability by 70% by shifting crops grown for animal feed (40% of crops in USA btw) to crops grown for human consumption: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034...
I did include the inputs, with the assumption of high efficiency feed for industrial meat production, i.e. a feed conversion rate of about 6.
This paper is about shifting animal corn to human corn, not about shifting animal corn to broccoli. Corn produces about 6 times as many calories per hectare as broccoli.
Not this again, why is it always broccoli that gets brought up in this argument? Nobody is eating kgs broccoli per day to get their calories. Compare industrial meat with beans or rice.
The point is that, as a source of calories, many vegetables are about as inefficient by land as industrial meat. Optimizing calories per unit land is an implicit or explicit goal of many of the comments throughout this thread. I think this is a poor optimization target and there are much better arguments against meat consumption that aren't also applicable to broccoli.
I chose broccoli because it is my favorite vegetable and I eat quite a lot of it.
Fair point! it was a bit of knee jerk reaction on my part as a previous thread I'd read on HN about climate an animal agriculture had the exact same broccoli point.
I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted, but yes, as a society if we find that we are over-using resources, we should cut out those foods. We seem to value a human population numbered in the billions. Some foods won’t work for that population.
I don’t really see us worrying about food scarcity any time soon. We still burn the bulk of our corn as gas until that changes I see no issue with calorie shortages
This is a thread about worrying about seafood scarcity already. Not-anytime-soon has arrived on a food-by-food basis. In the case of seafood, it’s an entire food group!
Tbf, seafood is a special category, as most of it can not be farmed (not efficiently, at least), so capturing it from the wild is the easiest, and often only, solution.
You know, it seems silly to me that the choice we seem to make is rather than controlling our population, we choose having worse lives for us and all future generations. Lack of self-control will truly be the end of humanity.
Generally as a nation builds wealth its birthrate slows. We cannot allow a state to control it though as the issue becomes how do you control population size, who gets to have kids and who gets to decide. This is pretty much the be all and end all of government power. Do we force sterilize people? Force abortions? If we fine them then the rich have as many kids as they want. Government mandated population control cannot be the answer.
> While I wish organically growing food and conservation was the answer, its unfortunately not.
I recently had a lengthy discussion with some friends about their support of a solidary organic farm, where you pay a flat fee per month and get a box of whatever they have in that week. It's really hard for most people to understand that things like these are not sustainable and that it's purely a luxury product. Terms like "organic", "no GMO", "local" sound sustainable as you imagine going back to "the good old days", but it's just impossible to feed the world. Even after I quoted some facts about the needed land usage for organic, it was not really possible to convince them, that it's not sustainable.
If anybody has some good articles / studies about sustainable farming for the future, I would love to read them.
I think there are confused definitions for "sustainable."
There's "sustains the land," which is food that can be grown this way indefinitely, which is what most people mean when they say "sustainable agriculture." To be more specific, "meeting society's present food and textile needs, without compromising the ability for current or future generations to meet their needs."
You're saying sustainable as in "can sustain the future diets of 10 billion people."
They don't map 1:1.
TBH I think you're right. "Sustainable agriculture" isn't scalable to 2050 populations.
It absolutely does. Do not bet against agriculture innovation. We have a comfortable head start and plenty in the pipe. The problem isn't exactly a secret. Multiple decade research projects focus on this and only this problem. We'll be okay (and sustainable too boot).
You are right, I was focused on the sustainability to feed all the people with that method. From the comments here it seems I was a bit too pessimistic and that there are some working examples, pretty exciting! Probably have to get back to my friends, after I looked through the material.
The organic movement doesn't have to end with the whole world eating certified organic food to be successful. It can still serve as a standard bearer, leading a charge on a different way to do things- and industrial agriculture can take up some of its best ideas.
There aren't any articles I can point you to, but I live in Portland, Ore., and between here and Vancouver and Camas, WA, there are a number of collectives that are doing exactly this. They don't publicize, it is word of mouth. They primarily focus on raising chickens and pigs, and butchering them for the members. All members participate somehow. Some members host the animals, others who cannot, contribute for feed and vet bills or participate in the slaughter days since it is a lot of work a few times a year.
They are successful but are not capable of replacing 100% of the grocery needs. And vegetables only appear in the summer and can be subject to infestations or random die offs... although there is significant canning that takes place throughout the summer for the winter months. Growing a diverse amount vegetables to support 25-50 people is surprisingly more complex than raising livestock (unless you just want to eat lots of zucchini and squash ;-).
However, there are many well documented small co-ops in Portland that I can refer you to if you want to ask them questions. These are very small farms, and in many cases people buy their shares of well in advance, and some have even become store-fronts rather than pickups.
Here are examples of places within a 15 minute drive of where I live:
When I used to eat meat I would buy half a cow with some friends friends. You could go visit the cow throughout the year:
This place exploded in popularity in the past 7 years. It used to be two guys and you would order chickens months in advance and pick them up a day after the slaughter, now I can just walk into their store and they have a growing staff:
Lastly, Sauvie Island just outside portland has an enormous farm community where half of the year one can purchase all manner of fruits vegetables through multiple farmers market stands.
Again though: it is only for part of the year, year round veggies are damn hard without large industrial apparatus. Unless you like pickled things.
It can be done, but it takes a village. Seriously.
> Surprising to me that year-round veggies is so hard even with modern methods/greenhouses.
You are correct: it is not so hard with modern methods, but none of the small communities I know of (15-50 people) have invested in a greenhouse of sufficient size. And even the local farms here don't have greenhouses, not that I am aware of. That seems odd to me, perhaps I am missing something because that seems unlikely now that I think about it...
Having seen the transformation of Medford/Ashland to MJ and hemp greenhouses I'd think at least some people would be as fanatical about their vegetables/fruits.
Oh, I forgot to mention one other weird thing: this isn't just liberals. There is a frightening large contingency of white supremacists who are into this, and a few showed up at Portland farmers market until they were outed. Regardless of how you feel about having racist nationalists selling next to hippies, self-sufficiency is quite a thing up here.
Hah! No, it's not. I was playing on stereotypes. There is a stereotype that local farmers-markets are for "liberal hippie" people (see: the television sitcom "Portlandia").
Based on my travels to other countries, local farmers markets are simply called "markets" and there is nothing unusual about them. In the USA, small local markets and co-ops are a fringe thing because we are fed almost entirely by industrial farming through vast supply chains that terminate at enormous multi-purpose grocery stores.
I may have a few facts wrong, but this consolidation started after WWII, and local food co-ops were considered liberal operations because it was "liberal hippies" who were opposed to the industrialization of food.
Seeing extremely far right subsets embracing what has generally been considered far left behavior is just amusing.
Maybe this is just me, but I would happily change my diet to be around 50% Soylent or other meal replacement if the cost was cheaper. Currently I eat around 2400 calories a day, with Soylent that costs me $20 a day. I can get Chipotle for ~$15 per day, and between the two Chipotle clearly wins on taste.
From what I can tell meal replacements are often far more environmentally friendly, there might be an environmental win here if the price drops.
Due to COVID, I put most of my food at home in a spreadsheet to track inventory so I could figure out how much I had to buy on each shopping trip to last for a week or two.
At the moment I have 54938 calories of food on hand (not counting tomatoes, lettuce, and onions that I do not track because I only use them as sandwich toppings or for small salads where they contribute negligible calories).
This cost $171.44. That works out to $7.49 for 2400 calories.
Most of this is heat and serve stuff. E.g., there are some mini deep dish pizzas, some frozen breakfast sandwiches (think Sausage McMuffin clones), Hormel "Compleats" entrees, instant rice cups, add water and nuke mashed potatoes, canned soup, and such. Another big group is things for sandwiches: bread, sliced meats, condiments. An assortment of things that don't require any cooking or prep, such as protein bars and potato chips. Finally, ham steaks, liquid egg substitute, and frozen mixed vegetables.
It turns out I'm spending somewhere between 1/2 to 1/3 of what I spent on food pre-COVID. The interesting thing is that it is not a hassle. I always knew I could eat a lot cheaper if I cooked at home, but that also took a lot more time. But for most of what I'm keeping now, cooking is really just putting it in the microwave or in a frying pan for a while. That doesn't really take much time at all.
When COVID is done I will go back to getting take out--but only now and then for variety. I don't think it will ever go back to being my main food source.
I will probably gradually add more things made at home from lower level ingredients, which should bring the cost down some more, and can probably be done without adding much more time.
>It turns out I'm spending somewhere between 1/2 to 1/3 of what I spent on food pre-COVID. The interesting thing is that it is not a hassle. I always knew I could eat a lot cheaper if I cooked at home, but that also took a lot more time. But for most of what I'm keeping now, cooking is really just putting it in the microwave or in a frying pan for a while. That doesn't really take much time at all.
I always cook more than I need and always have leftovers. This is a great way to cut down on the amount of time spent in the kitchen (I care more about the time lost than the money saved). You don't have to immediately eat the leftovers, you can freeze most of it and rotate what you made a week or two ago to keep some variety.
I feel already bad when i order food twice a month.
It even never occurred to me to do takeout all the time. I have already feel guilty when i see all the packaging for take out and regret it at the moment.
The price for Soylent you quoted is for pre-prepared bottles.
You can get the add-water-only version for much cheaper. In fact, you can get a day's worth of calories for about $10 even with better quality formulation competing products such as Huel 3.0 or Plenny Active. You literally scoop the powder into the provided bottle with the provided scoop they give you, fill it with water, shake it up for 30 seconds, and it's ready to drink.
A bit more of a fair comparison just in case anyone reading this is curious on the development of this space.
$10 for a daily subscription to Ensure 2.0? You can eat eggs, slow cooker cuts of meat, seasonal fruit vegetables, rice, beans, flour, salt, yeast.. etc for $10 a day easy. As long as one is not too allergic to washing a few dishes, that is.
Soylent is too expensive. It's a very attractive solution for me but the price point is higher than real food. Soylent needs to be like $1 a meal, with super duper high protein, if it wants to compete with home cooking.
I can make a fine French dining quality 4-6 egg omelette, with a reheated beans and vegetables on the side, for like $2 a plate. A big plate, too.
Yeah, this. A couple years back I shifted my diet around to be more sustainable. I still eat meat, but stick to chicken and pork, and more occasionally rather than every meal. I use sous vide to batch cook and freeze stuff like chicken plus a curry base. Then per meal I can just thaw a portion and spend less than 10 minutes combining it with some fresh produce and final seasoning in a skillet. I costed out one of the thai curries I do this way out of curiosity the other day. Even using some more pricey seasonings like thai basil, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, and decent produce it still comes out below $2 per serving. Id say at this point I'm about 3/4ths of the way to the quality I get at local restaurants.
A basic rice, beans, and green veg meal comes out to less than $0.50, and that's including some pork sausage to flavor the beans. I do gumbo occasionally and it's at about the same price.
If you have the time/space/ability to cook, you can eat quite well shockingly cheap, even in places with relatively high cost of living.
For me the key was to just ban myself from takeout, period, for about a year. It worked. My cooking is good enough now I prefer it to takeout, whereas when I was in my 20s I was a pretty typical tech bro that ate out every single meal.
Key insight for me was learning how to use my freezer. So much stuff freezes well which most people wouldn't consider freezing. For example, I run my own small baked goods business and do a ton of baking. 95% of anything you could buy in a bakery can be frozen and no one can tell the difference. In fact, bakeries already freeze most of what they are selling to people and no one can tell the difference.
I don't expect normal people to make their own puff pastry or cronuts by hand but I really do think everyone should try to bake their own bread at least once a year. Most people don't want to make their own kneaded bread because you have like 15-30 mins active labour plus about four hours waiting time (mixing, kneading, bulk fermentation, proofing, baking, cooling). But you can make three loaves at once, and freeze them. The time and labour involved in making three loaves is very close to making one. But most people would turn their nose up at freezing bread, as though it completely destroys the crumb and ruins it. But most people's instincts are wrong, once again. Bread freezes extremely well.
I was thinking that we really need to teach children how to be poor. Poor people need to cook and be smart about buying and storing their own food, but most people do not know how to do this. We spend so much time teaching children how to find a job in the most shallow way (how to write a resume, etc) but kids need help with knowing what to do when the economy is bad or they just can't find a good job, even if they are trying to. This sort of thing is political suicide because of national pride and this unshakable notion in the mainstream that people are poor because they are lazy or on drugs, their fault basically.
Anyways, I agree with you on all counts. It is shocking when I realized that eating well is actually pretty cheap. If only I learned that at a younger age.
Yeah, I agree about the freezer. One of the things I love about using sous vide for batch cooking is the bags go from the cook to the freezer without being opened. The liquid in the bag acts as a sort of jacket that prevents freezer burn. Based on the science I know there's a texture change, but I'd be surprised if you could spot it in a blind test.
But the other big thing for me is convenience. It takes maybe 10-15 minutes for me to prep say 5 lbs of meat this way, depending how elaborate my marinade/base is. Then you just put it in the sous and ignore it for a couple hours. I can use the sous to thaw a frozen portion very fast with no worries about food safety or overshooting and overcooking. Past that making a plate is just getting the rice cooker going and then again maybe 10 minutes of active time to bring it all together with some fresh produce.
The convenience of all this is what really clinched it for me. At this point it'd take more active time for me to go get takeout.
I've tried bread a couple times, but so far all I've learned is I'm not a great baker. I intend to make another stab at it though.
Bread Baker's Apprentice is a great book which will teach you everything. Peter Reinhart, the author, in general is a great resource for bread making.
You kind of have to embrace the random factor in bread making and develop a feel for it. A cake recipe is a far more mechanical process, just follow the instructions and it will work. Bread is more chaotic for sure (like, maybe it's a very humid day and your flour is heavier with water than usual) but it's not like pulling a slot machine.
My first few loaves were mediocre, some were bad, but after about 5-10 it came together. And now, like I wrote earlier, I make money baking. Anyone can do it, just treat it like a weird little hobby with no pressure at first.
I have the Ken Forkish book. I'm not his biggest fan based on personal interactions, though I'm honest enough to admit he makes amazing bread. But I pretty clearly need to start with something a little more low key.
What about people who enjoy eating? Cheese, meat, vegetables, wine, etc? Let's not forget eating is a pleasurable activity, not only a source of energy and protein.
I don't get the people who jump straight to dystopian goo foods. There's no shortage of culinary traditions that relied on less meat and are actually food. Have they never seen a black bean taco?
I enjoy eating too, I don't think I would ever switch to meal replacements completely. But I would consider switching my default from my own terrible cooking to a meal replacement and eat out for my other meals.
Learn to cook, read some good cookbooks - for example anything by Madhur Jaffery - it really isn't difficult.
The thought of educated people eating crap like Soylent and paying for it, when they could be eating really good food, which completely uneducated people all over the world manage to cook easily, is quite upsetting to me.
People find drugs and alcohol pleasurable as well, but we find good reasons to regulate them because they have externalities for society that we need to control.
I'd be happy to eat Soylent if I wasn't allergic to it. Unfortunately my mom fed me soymilk as a baby and triggered a life-long reaction to soy protein. Too bad... I love tofu, but it does not love me.
One-size fits all meal approaches need to keep in mind that individuals have different needs and restrictions.
Yup. We're already pretty much at capacity in terms of using arable farming land[1]. We need more efficient farming, which means GMOs and advanced farming methods; we don't need less efficient farming like organic and anti-GMO.
>> We need more efficient farming, which means GMOs and advanced farming method
Considering the fact that so much of the farmlands are devoted to producing animal feed -- how about we as a species start eating less meats ? Make meats more expensive all around the world by imposing ... dare I say it .. caps on Carbon emission.
Issue is that we are not going to. Just like we are not going to solve global warming by individuals making better carbon choices or even nations as other nations will just do whatever they want. We are only going to win these battles by creating cheaper better alternatives.
India and China are not going just stop using coal in the middle of their economic expansion. People are just not going to stop eating meat, especially as many 3rd world nations are just reaching the point they can afford it.
Only way we can come out ahead on this is scientifically devised cheaper and better alternatives.
>> India and China are not going just stop using coal in the middle of their economic expansion
Why not ? Both these countries need foreign investments and free trade with the industrialize world. Could the OECD countries not coerce them into capping carbon emissions ? As long as Carbon emission caps are fair -- that means accounting for the fact that the bulk of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere came from the OECD countries.
However, Carbon taxes is a four letter word in North America. Sometime back , I saw a pickup modified to emit black soot -- here in Ontario Canada of all the places.
Yeah but what about YOU? Are YOU going to choose to not eat meat? Or are YOU going to wait to see what everyone ELSE does first? Its a game theory problem.
It is indeed the tragedy of the comments. That's why we need regulations, sanctions etc. This needs to be the number one issue for all international negotiations.
I say that as someone who cut down on 95-99% of meat consumption to reduce my carbon footprint and because I feel terrible for the animals
The issue is that we cannot rely on it to actually be there, and to come in time. I agree that we cannot efficiently regulate our behaviour, but I believe that will be our end eventually, science and engineering marvels not withstanding.
Organic and sustainable methods are more efficient, even without GMOs [1]. It is a myth that GMOs or high-tech is the answer to food production/land scarcity concerns, as simply managing a farm properly can lead to yield increases multiple times over conventional, unsustainable methods (annual tillage, broad spectrum pesticides, etc). This is in part because GMOs that are in wide use are little more than ways to deal with pests or herbicides, which high efficiency sustainable farms deal with much more cost-effectively anyway.
No they aren’t. Organic for the most part is a myth. What they do is either spray with a pesticide that can be classified as organic (often nicotine derived) or create an island of organic surrounded by a conventional buffer. Often both.
>> Organic for the most part is a myth. What they do is either spray with a pesticide that can be classified as organic
That's demonstrably untrue. Many organic methods use no pesticides at all because they use things like row covers or greenhouses which replaces them, or crop-timing to avoid source pests. Look at any farm inspired by Eliot Coleman methods, which can produce crops cost-competitively with conventional agriculture.
We could try harder not to lose or waste food that we produce: FAO estimates that each year, approximately one-third of all food produced for human consumption inthe world is lost or wasted.[1] (Note that this is not just about people throwing away food they bought, though it's a big part of it.)
And at first glance it seems obvious that eating less meat, globally, is going to increase available calories/area; the fact that some areas are viable for livestock but not vegetables notwithstanding. About half of the area used for agriculture is used for livestock, if I read [2] correctly.
Though we could feed many more people with current farming capacity if we ate all the corn we grow ourself instead of feeding it to cows that we eat. Meat production is incredibly inefficient.
If we eventually manage to produce most of our meat demand from lab-grown meat this will likely free up enormous amounts of agriculture capacity.
Hard to say now if it will actually be MORE efficient or environmentally friendly, but initial indications once price parity is achieved would lean to YES. In terms of timeline, reports show at least 5 years before it can hit the grocery stores and that doesn't take into account the regulation. Here is a good resource that shows the process, companies making it, etc. https://cellbasedtech.com/lab-grown-meat
I don't buy it. You're comparing the energy inputs required to support large-scale tissue engineering operations with those needed for grazing cattle on pasture. It's not even close.
If it was just pastures I would agree. But 30-40% of all corn produced in the US (the largest corn producer in the world) is used to feed lifestock [1]. That's a lot of perfectly good farmland that could directly produce food for human consumption.
Even if the lab process takes more energy, as long as producing the growth medium takes up less farmland that is a win towards the goal of having enough farmland to feed the world.
Is this not exactly what you would expect in a free market? All arable farming land will produce whatever crop brings in the best return; no arable land will be left fallow long term.
But just because we are using all of it doesn't mean we need all of it or else starve. Vast quantities of crops are used to produce biofuel, or feed for livestock, or raw materials for other non-food products.
It's worth noting that every time there's been estimations on carrying capacity applied to humans, it's eventually turned out to be wrong.
The reality is that we are not very efficient at agriculture in all of the places where agriculture is practiced. Most carrying capacity models make the assumption that we are at or near peak agricultural output, but this simply isn't true, so the models' predictive powers fall apart.
For an example from another industry, where people have been similarly predicting capacity-related doom since the 80s, look at oil. In the 80s, people thought we were going to run out of oil, because "proven accessible reserves" were dwindling. Between the innovations of low-cost fracking and more effective "proving" tools, this problem evaporated.
The moral of the story is that, where demand is high, capitalistic pressures means that, given enough time, we will always finds a way to open up more supply.
All this to say, be very critical of the assumptions made by whatever models you find, or doomsday claims you may come across. If agriculturalists are not concerned about this, the burden of evidence for us to be concerned should be rather high.
Exactly if Americans spent more resources on food there would be more innovative approaches in this sector. Currently food is too cheap and there is barely any opportunity for innovation.
Sorry, I'd rephrase my original statement a little bit for clarity. I didn't mean at all to say that "nowhere is efficient", which in retrospect is one valid way of interpreting my original statement.
It's not that agriculture isn't hyper-efficient in certain locales. It's that it could be more efficient, if its operators cared to invest in making it so. Until demand rises relative to supply (from supply shortages), there isn't a price pressure to innovate on efficiency. This doesn't stop the "big farms" from innovating, because "big farm crops" are a race-to-the-bottom commodity business. That's why we get more corn, soy beans, whatever every year.
This is all without mentioning the places where agriculture is rather undeveloped, compared to the places you mention (many locales in Africa, central Asia, even the United States and Canada).
Then also make the airlines price seats to pay for externalities. I bet people won't be flying as much if the seat cost $5000 instead of $500 to pay for damage to environment. Don't single out ag. Tech and transportation are just as bad. At least with agriculture, it produces food.
So, I agree with this in theory, but how does this work in practice? To stick with the topic of seafood, it's just out there in the ocean; as long as it exists in fish-able quantities, people will fish and fish until there's none left. Pricing in externalities would be huge for the US, but it would need to happen on a global scale to make a difference.
No, it is not. People just choose not to see the facts. People do not want to know where their food comes from as they suspect it would be not good to know as changing habits is hard and they have lots of other stuff going on to take care of.
But once they have seen movies like "we feed the world" they do care at least a bit.
No, the answer you'll get has an 85% chance of being, to the word, "Oh, I don't think I could ever give up bacon." I know that answer might seem a little far-fetched, but it will happen time and time again.
Facts don't really change anything when they're easy to ignore.
Now, there are people sensitive to a certain kind of insoluble fibre, and if you are you might have some trouble on a vegan diet, but these people are in a minority. Apart from people wanting to avoid FODMAPs (the fibre group in question), the only problem I have heard of from friends becoming vegan is the transitory flatulence from eating beans.
Anecdotally the worst gastrointestinal problems I have ever had was on whatever version of the standard American diet I was served when visiting the states as a 20-something year old. I couldn't shit for 10 days...
> the human population is expanding and the rising income of 3rd world nations
Fortunately, these two tend to cancel out. As a country gets wealthier, its birthrate tends to decline. Some of the most developed countries have shrinking populations.
Yes, but consumption isn't going down. Even if we stabilise at 11 billion people by 2100, which is much too late and arguably already at overshoot mode, consumption will continue rising and increase resource usage, although the population remains about the same.
Those 11 billion people won't use the minimum amount of resources needed to sustain themselves (which is a very low quality of life), but use double or even triple than that.
This is one reason I'm such a fan of fake meat companies like Impossible Foods.
I've tried to go on vegetarian diets before, but I just can't do it. I always feel weak and just generally "not right". I don't eat a ton of meat, but I find it really difficult to abstain 100%.
An Impossible Burger, however, completely satisfies my cravings for meat. It's not just that it tastes like meat, but I feel sated after eating an Impossible or Beyond Burger in a way I just don't feel eating a normal veggie burger.
In 1950 there were 2.5 billion humans, today there are 7.7 billion, but by the end of the century there will only be ~11 billion.
And at that point, most humans alive will be working age or older (approximately ~3.5 working age adults for every U15).
A lack of human population growth will be one of the defining economic issues this century, with a chance at unfortunately solving the issue of rising incomes at the same time.
That might be true, but the caloric consumption of the population is changing. People are transitioning from staple based diets (rice, wheat, etc.) to more complex diets (non native fruits/vegetables, meat). As poor countries gain wealth they want the food to match.
Oh absolutely, I didn’t mean to imply falling growth will neatly solve all the issues they listed so much as continue my one sided feud with our distorted ideas of future population levels.
Should have left out the income quip at the end in hindsight!
The answer is fewer people. I can't see any reason to encourage a rising population, even while I see one has to be careful about encouraging a decreasing population. Nonetheless, engineering for population growth--even if it works--doesn't lead to the best possible world.
The fish feed of today contains far less animal protein than it used to - a lot of the protein now comes from soy.
Salmon farming, for example, can be incredibly efficient - Norwegian salmon farms typically get 1 kg of fish for every 1.15-1.2kg of feed. That's an amazing conversion factor.
That said, there are serious welfare concerns with fish farming. Even in Norway, which has some of the highest standards in the world, sea lice are a huge problem, and the mechanical and chemical treatments used are horrible. Another issue is the welfare of "cleaner fish", which are places in cages to eat lice from salmon - AFAIK there are still no regulations around their welfare, and mortality rates are shocking[0]
Maybe this information is out of date, but these are the issues I was referencing:
Anchovies, sardines and other palm-sized, schooling fish are caught in the ocean and processed into fishmeal and oil to feed to other fishes and crustaceans that are raised in aquatic farms around the world.
Every year, millions of tons of wild fish, like sardines and anchovies, are caught and processed into fishmeal and fish oil, which is used to make feed for farm-raised species.
It's true that a lot of wild catch still goes towards fishmeal; my point was simply that things are improving a lot there, at least for salmon (I presume it's the case for other species too, but I don't know that).
Fish farming isn't easy and doesn't scale well. No idea how well artificial meat is going to scale, but we already know the challenges and costs of farm raised fishes. IIRC, the biggest issue was disease and waste concentration.
While there is a small cushion to "kill" in terms of wealth and conspicuous consumption, before long you're talking about killing people. These industries don't just extract wealth for the 1%. They're also feeding billions of people.
The effect of this is that 500 million pacific islanders will be forced to flee to Southeast Asia as their primary food source dies, which will lead to widespread political instability and possibly war. Not to mention that since 25% of sea life depends on reefs, their death will have catastrophic ripple effects throughout the ocean.
All due to runaway global warming acidifying the ocean with CO2. This was well-understood and warned about decades ago (I learned about it as a kid in the 1980s).
I sure wish a tech billionaire would do something about this. Their inaction on countless fronts, in fact their complacency in undermining progress on environmental causes in global politics, is one of the thousand reasons I got out of tech.
>I sure wish a tech billionaire would do something about this.
I sure wish VOTERS would "do something" about this, where "something" = vote for the party/parties that actually champion or at least acknowledge the importance of dealing with AGW/CO2 increasing vs actively denying and supporting continuing the current anti-free market policies destroying so much future beauty and potential. This should have been so straightforward, we want net neutral CO2 ASAP and then net negative as soon as feasible, so all that's needed is to legislate that emitting a ton of CO2 (or equivalent) is priced at the cost of rapid industrial removal of a ton of CO2+margin. We could just make all our energy usage net neutral in a matter of months/years by finally establishing a Free Market there and then let humanity sort out the best way to reduce the cost of that. But instead it's a mixture of full denial or, even more frustrating, so-called "greens" bitching about other people's luxury energy usage and engaging in worthless moralizing bullshit about $Cause_Of_The_Day (like Ebil Big Tech) rather then just working to deal with the problem as efficiently as possible and focusing moral arguments purely on the harm of AGW.
>Their inaction on countless fronts, in fact their complacency in undermining progress on environmental causes in global politics, is one of the thousand reasons I got out of tech.
I'd say the inaction on countless fronts of people like you who just shove all responsibility off onto nameless godkings rather then actually internalize that democracy means we're responsible as well has been a far bigger threat. Tech has been relatively green, and far more active at green efforts then most industries. It's ludicrous to see you pinning so much on "tech billionaires" vs, say, oil/coal billionaires.
The voters won't be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to solve the problem, once they realize how much it would impact them. They won't be willing to dramatically lower their quality of life to save some Pacific islanders who live thousands of miles away.
One of the biggest problems is that the damage caused by reducing emissions falls disproportionately on the poor voters in developed countries. Look at what caused the yellow jacket protests in France -- a hike in diesel taxes. People are already in a mood to protest economic inequality in a general sense, and fighting climate change will make that inequality worse. It's not going to fly in the current political climate, not even in the EU where people are generally more sympathetic to the climate problem than elsewhere.
The outcome of social unrest caused by unpopular climate policy will be the reversal of that policy. Therefore any attempt to solve climate change that leads to social unrest will be unproductive.
I'm increasingly convinced that geoengineering is the only way to ameliorate the effects of climate change.
I think this is a fair point, but are there perhaps compromises where quality of life doesn't have to go down? Solar panels on homes with government subsidies where fossil fuels are still heavily used for electricity. Investments (BIG ones) in public/metro transportation.
I agree with human psychology being a limiting factor here, but I think there are also ways we can work with it, by saying that life quality doesn't have to go down or can even improve, rather than the current all or nothing approach.
I don't see a way to halt, much less reverse, global climate change without making massive sacrifices to the quality of life people enjoy in developed countries.
We will pay the money it takes to protect our cities from floods and cool our buildings and deal with the other impacts, and people in poor countries will be left to deal with the problem on their own. That's not what should happen, but that's what will happen.
Eh, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but have you talked to some of the voters? Last pre-covid party I was to I had a conversation with a global warming "skeptic". In an attempt to understand better, I listened more than I talked and it is .. illuminating, scary, annoying and a whole lot of other emotions that are difficult to put into words here.
Point is, voting relies heavily on educated populace. I am not certain we have it now. Maybe we need to reconsider kings ( today's billionaires ) and hope they are not into torture..
When you have a bad president you're going to be put through four years of hell - when you have a bad king you're going to be put through four decades of hell. Additionally kingship, no matter how well designed before hand, degenerates into nepotism since part of the assumption with kings is near absolute power. The dreamt of "Philosopher King" will never happen.
Putting the power into few hands is extremely dangerous. I think the ideal situation is pretty close to what we've got now - trust most people to choose the smartest people in the room, then ignore most people and listen to those people. We just need to work on flushing out decades of corruption that seeped into the system.
Power corrupts even the best of the minds, and ultimate power corrupts... ultimately. Those kings would be in danger of ending up as another North Korea - evil dynasties ruling forever.
One big problem is, if you are on top, life can be relatively great even in utter catastrophe, at least when looked through optic of usual sociopath/psychopath that usually end up on top. It can actually help if your goals are perverted enough. No real motivation to fight for the environment.
On other hand, wishing for corruption to be magically removed 'because it would be great and we really need it now' is so naive its painful. We're steadily heading in opposite direction, there is regulatory capture, US foreign policies are run by war equipment manufacturers, and current president is a topic on its own.
To sum it up, we're fucked, our kids are fucked so much more - this hurts pretty badly. Enlightened AI might be solution, but I would expect it wouldn't be done neutral, and anyway that's a pipe dream currently.
I agree - we're in a terrible situation right now... So, how do we solve it and dig our way out of the hole?
I'm not suggesting that we can wish corruption away - I'm not even trying to imply that doing it will be easy. I just think it's the only way to return to sane governance. There are some ways we could increase voter representation like IRV & abolishing the electoral college. Increased representation makes it harder for crooks to stay in power, but even getting that through is a struggle (otherwise we would've done if when we realized it was better than what we have now).
And, in the meantime, we need to work with what we've got.
> We could just make all our energy usage net neutral in a matter of months/years by finally establishing a Free Market there and then let humanity sort out the best way to reduce the cost of that.
You really think that making business tens or hundreds of times more expensive to take part in will just solve the problem, rather than businesses going under and simply not being able to exist anymore? You don't think any other country will capitalize on this, emit all they want, and sell the products we can't make? You think we'll be able to tariff that enough that it makes up for it?
> the cost of rapid industrial removal of a ton of CO2+margin.
It's not like this is actually being done at scale yet. Do we really think gigantic fans and energy-intensive machinery for CO2 capture are going to work? Shouldn't that energy be being used to replace coal / gas / fossil fuel electricity production first and foremost, and battery (/battery-like technologies, like pumping water behind a dam and other potential-energy schemes) rather than burning the energy off?
Doesn't it make more sense to look at ways of improving the reefs, like making artificial reefs with geo-engineering projects, iron fertilization, etc? Don't plants do a better job of capturing carbon? Maybe we should embrace rapidly-growing invasive alpha species like Japanese Knotweed, Kudzu, etc. and just mow it on down and let it regrow? Shouldn't we spend more money on massive-scale tree planting, soil redistribution, and anti-desertification efforts that we actually know how to do at scale, rather than some pie-in-the-sky unproven carbon capture mechanisms that can somehow only be fueled by strangling everyone's productivity to an unreasonable extent?
Sure, but in many cases the politicians who are statistically able to win office are about as likely to do something meaningful (and not just symbolic) about these issues as the tech billionaires are.
can't reply to the sibling but they are not voting "they don't care", they just plain don't care. If you do care but can't pick among the bad choices, you go through the actions and spoil your ballot or where applicable write in your choice. This is a lot of work for nothing beyond showing you care.
Something I heard a long time ago is they basically 'are' voting. The vote is they do not care. I personally think it is a bad position to take, but it is not 'wrong'.
How many people aren't voting because they feel their vote doesn't count. I'm not a US citizen, but my wife is. She usually doesn't vote or only votes because I talk her into it. Her reasoning is that our state will be carried by a democrat anyways. It doesn't matter if they win by 51% or 100%. Between electoral college and first-past-the-post it's no wonder few people vote.
One thing I'd tell your wife is that down ticket races are very important, particularly state legislatures. I know my district will be carried by a dem, but that doesn't mean there aren't distinctions between which dem I want.
What makes you think those non-voters would vote in favor of policies to solve climate change? I bet each one of them would be just as likely to be a climate change skeptic as the Americans who currently vote.
Except it's not so black/white but much more nuanced and gray. Assuming and asserting otherwise is disingenuous and distancing an is part of how trump was elected in the first place.
Climate change and policy around it, due to its economic implications, is complex and hard to do without costing lots of middle class people their life styles.
I sympathize with what you're saying, because I also agree that voters should make informed choices, and never vote for any politician representing the status quo. Unfortunately, the US and rest of the world have to move through a process. Think of it like addiction: we are still in the denial stage. We haven't hit rock bottom yet, but unfortunately when we do, it will be too late. Most species will be extinct and we'll be starving.
That said, I have to disagree with you on where to place blame. The vast majority of us (6 billion at least) are just running the rat race to provide for our families. Let me be explicitly clear about this: a person's responsibility to change the world is at least proportional to the resources available to them.
I just looked, and each part per million of CO2 represents 7.82 gigaton of CO2. So if we conservatively say that the industrial revolution has taken us from 300 ppm to 400 ppm, then that extra 100 ppm represents 782 gigatons of CO2. There are talks of a global $50 carbon tax credit for each ton of CO2 sequestered. So that represents an externality cost on the environment and our health from existing CO2 levels of $39.1 trillion. That's twice the US GDP.
Now, there are pushes to get back to 350 ppm from groups like 350.org. So that would cost something like $20 trillion, roughly the US GDP, or our national debt. In fact, a real argument can be made that the $21 trillion in misplaced funding from the Pentagon audit, the US national debt and CO2 cost to our environment are all connected. We had that money, but the debt was created so that we couldn't put it towards goals like environmentalism. This was all planned, starting before 1980 when Ronald Reagan took office and symbolically got us to start looking backwards by doing things like removing the solar panels from the White House that Jimmy Carter had installed.
Now that we know all this, I don't think that we can settle for anything less than a tech billionaire opening the floodgates on carbon sequestration. We need real solar-powered devices that take excess energy and store it in things like calcium carbonate and graphite. It looks like it currently costs at least $100 to capture 1 ton of CO2 directly from the atmosphere. At 10 cents equivalent for solar power, that's 1000 kwh per ton. That's the amount of electricity a house uses in a month. I'm having trouble finding exact values for these numbers, but these are the orders of magnitude we should be thinking in terms of.
These numbers are so staggering, that there's literally nothing we can do on a personal level to change them. We need powerful people to think beyond quarterly profits and start doing something tangible with their money.
Which is what I would do if I had won the internet lottery.
I mean, academia has been pleading with politicians to do something about global warming for my entire life to no avail.
If we use Hanlon's razor and attribute the rich and powerful's incompetence on this issue to stupidity instead of malice, then forgive me if I don't find that comforting.
Maybe some references help to clear this up. GP apparently did get his geography mixed up.
The term Pacific Islander [1] seems to not include the Philippines and Indonesia, as these islands are generally considered to be part of South East Asia [2]. One logical connection is that the Philippines and Indonesia are tectonically on the Asian crust [3], while the islands to the east are on the oceanic crust.
Thus the original statement of 500 million people fleeing to southeast asia makes geographically no sense, but I guess the intent of the people of Indonesia, Philippines etc. being cut off of seafood remains clear.
The action is placed in 2050 and nothing prevents the actual population to change their numbers in the next years, is just a way to say lottazillions of people
Can’t speak for the parent of your post, so I don’t know if the numbers add up, but population of Indonesia alone is 270 million. And the country is spread out amongst many islands. That’s just one country of many.
I think the more pertinent question is how much of Indonesia's diet depends on the reefs. It seems like the answer is "a lot", though it's hard to get a sense of it as a proportion:
It's not specific to reefs, although they may be hit hardest. Acidification and warming temperatures have much broader impacts on biodiverity. The point people miss is that fighting climate change is actually a fight to extend the amount of time before we have even more significant losses to biodiversity.
I couldn't reply to the other poster (nogabebop23) that was making the point that they don't depend on reefs, but their point is moot because this is a global issue with different impacts at each latitude.
Indonesia and the Philippines pretty universally considered southeast asia and not pacific island nations. They are in-fact the majority of southeast asia, which they are supposedly fleeing to?
Also, they're quite developed countries and to the relatively small extent their food consumption is fish, it comes from trade and commercial fishing, not subsistence fishing, so their food supply will be no more impacted than any other asian country. And even that impact will look more like more seafood coming from fish farms as commercial fishing becomes less viable, as we've seen in China.
There are people, predominantly in the pacific islands proper, who rely on subsistence fishing and the decline of fish stocks will be hugely disruptive for them. It's still a big tragedy, but the number is more like a couple hundred thousand. I don't think it helps the debate to exaggerate by three orders of magnitude.
Hey sorry for the mixup, you're right, I should have said from Southeast Asia. I didn't realize that Indonesia and the Philippines were part of it.
I was trying to make the point that the influx of refugees from Pacific island nations will destabilize regions like Korea and Vietnam which have already seen such terrible conflict. India's going to be underwater, so there's going to be a northward migration of something like 500 million people from there and elsewhere.
The endgame is that those countries will likely be communist and a mix of non-christian religions. So the US seems to be positioning itself as pro-Russia and anti-China in a divide-and-conquer strategy. I think that's shortsighted, because the 21st century won't have 20th century politics. I'd rather see our attention turn towards not screwing over the developing countries that provide our goods and services. We could like, trade with them rather than bomb them. Admittedly, I'm probably misreading this, and also don't want to detract from environmental discussion.
Bill Gates has funded the development of a new nuclear reactor design that is much smaller and safer than current ones and uses the huge current US stockpile of depleted uranium as a fuel source. He was going to build it in China, as the US permitting process is very difficult (impossible?), put that is no longer possible with the current US/China political environment. Environmentalists have been fighting nuclear power since the beginning of the movement and that is what has really caused the continuation of the burning of carbon to fuel the modern world. Due to the environmental groups (and the rest of the media) constant propaganda against nuclear, almost everyone is irrationally fearful of nuclear power plants and therefor building new ones has little chance of getting support, even if the environmental groups see the error of opposing nuclear at this point and change their position.
Many people and groups pushing for changes to combat climate change want to change much more about society than just how much carbon dioxide is emitted. They want to use the fear of climate catastrophe to push other political agendas that the majority of people in the US do not support. If the world had just focused on the fact that rising CO2 would cause ocean acidification, which is a very simple and easy to understand consequence of rising CO2 levels, I think the world could have come together to decide on an acceptable level and make a plan to get to that level. A similar global proposal was done with CFCs when ozone depletion became an issue. Making the issue more scary by saying the world is going to heat up and everyone is going to die, using very complicated climate models, is a lot harder to prove. Many people are not going to be convinced, as we have seen.
While I support nuclear as part of the mix for clean energy, it's very important to understand that nuclear is NOT failing due to "propaganda" alone. The problem is the cost, in particular the capital cost. You see similar costs globally, even in places where environmental opposition to nuclear is basically a non factor like China.
Given current costs (check the Lazard decks) and likely trends, it's pretty possible that nuclear would lose out to renewables + storage + CO2 capture even with a global carbon tax forcing CO2 neutrality.
I also don't think it helps our cause to cast all opposition to nuclear power as ignorant paranoia. While the impact was thankfully minimal, Fukushima should have never happened in the first place. I personally changed my views on how much we can trust governments to properly regulate this infrastructure as a result.
Basically it's left me hoping that some of the more novel new nuclear concepts work out. I'm definitely cheering for NuScale.
Fukushima was built in the early 1970's from an early 1960's design. Nuclear power had barley started to be developed and then all development stopped. Of course there are many reasons for that, but if we had continued to develop new nuclear tech from the 70's till today, imagine how many extremely safe and inexpensive reactor concepts could have been developed.
This is, of course, a long and complicated topic, not very amenable to forum discussion. Maybe it was a good idea that nuclear power was not developed, not because it was physically dangerous, but because giving the human race that much more access to power/energy at that point in history may have had a bad outcome. We may have needed slow down the industrial revolution's exponential advance for a bit.
From what I read the root cause at Fukushima was improper risk assessment resulting in too low of a sea wall and not putting the gensets on piers. At least one engineer understood the mistake but was unable to overcome the bureaucracy to do anything about it.
So while I agree with you about how "new nuclear" could be dramatically safer, I still have concerns about how this stuff is regulated and operated. It's also why I'm in particular gung ho about small reactors, as there even if the risk estimates are messed up, the scale itself alievates many concerns.
Your final point/speculation is an interesting one. I've not heard this perspective before but it does seem plausible to me.
> All due to runaway global warming acidifying the ocean with CO2
Err, what? My understanding is ocean acidification is a contributing factor, but that the primary cause of coral bleaching is the warming directly, not acidification [0].
Warming is the primary cause of coral die offs right now, but acidification will hit a tipping point pretty soon where it becomes nigh on impossible to get calcium ions out of solution. Pretty much anything that lives in the ocean and has a skeleton is in for a rough time - as well as everything that depends on them.
I have little hope that we will reduce emissions in time or in sufficient quantity to save the coral reefs. My remaining hope is that projects like Project Vesta will help reverse ocean acidification https://projectvesta.org/
I would expect ocean acidification would actually get worse, since the effects would mimic the 'Year without a Summer' so people would be releasing more carbon to heat their homes.
We need to start to understand as humankind that we're a pest to other life on this planet, be it animals, plants, naval lifeforms or anything else, us included (maybe except tardigrades, extremophiles and deep-sea creatures).
We need to reduce our numbers, and sustain that. Or embrace Musk's ideas.
Population isn’t the problem, first world consumption and the expansion of the first world are. This isn’t an abstract problem where people in developing countries need to have less children. This is a problem where we need to personally reduce our carbon footprints.
"I sure wish a tech billionaire would do something about this. Their inaction on countless fronts, in fact their complacency in undermining progress on environmental causes in global politics, is one of the thousand reasons I got out of tech."
- Which industries (and organizations) are you still in at this point?
I've come to realize over the course of 20 years pursuing a career in tech, that work itself is the primary impediment standing in the way of ever working on my dreams. Sure, someone can moonlight and try to change the world. But 99 people of out 100 will never even come close. There's nothing more pathetic than a visionary with no access to resources.
Right now I am working with a guy in the solar industry, doing handyman work around his house until we come out of quarantine. It's hard work physically, but I find my mental health has recovered and my motivation and work capacity have never been higher.
I'm basically living the ending of the movie Office Space and searching for spiritual meaning. I donate plasma to make rent, and am looking into apps like Bacon (Uber for hourly jobs) as a way to transition out of obligation-based employment. Work should be a straight-up time-for-money exchange. Taking advantage of our work ethic and patriotism, saddling us to someone else's vision of meaningful work, is one of the great travesties undermining the American Dream. I learned this the hard way moving furniture for 3 years in my early 20s to support my web business because "someone has to do it". No, someone doesn't have to do it. Stand up for yourself and leave if your job stinks. Let the free market adjust wages to what they should be, double or quadruple what they are now. Don't get suckered into indentured servitude.
Soooo you still live in our society? Including using bottled water? Cloth from overseas? Consuming highly processed food?
You are very much dependent.
Whats the difference between me, working in tech, having a good job, great money and being able to put everything i earn in my own land and become independent with something between 40 and 50 versus you? Stoped working, doing small jobs barely making it, not having any money for any sustainable development on your own?
If you are not doing it, everyone else will do.
Either you understand and accept that the world is going to look different in 50 years and you are ready for it with the minimum footprint you need or you go more extreme to try to change something.
And even if you do know that you might not change the world, if you would sacrifice for the society, the money you would earn in tech would allow you, as a single person, to funnel the money from the economy where you want to. You would do more good then tthe other person who is now doing your job and who is just spending and consuming it somehow.
And just to clarify another thing: In tech you are able to go to your boss and work half time and even then you would have more possibilities then in any other job.
I agree with you 1000%. Now let me ask you, are you willing and able to put your life savings towards saving the planet? Will you make a $10,000 or $100,000 donation to groups like 350.org?
I do regret not following my instincts and going all-in on the stock market and Bitcoin, etc though. I had $20,000 in the bank after a lucrative contract when Bitcoin was $10. I've been following AAPL since it was $12 per share after the dot bomb. Conservatively, I'd have at least a bazillion dollars had I simply not listened to everyone who talked me out of investing.
For anyone reading this, if you want to change the world, it's time to pull your money out of your investments and make large anonymous donations to groups with a good track record on the environment (or human rights, or whatever floats your boat). This pump and dump scam that the global elite are doing to inflate the stock market is about to pop. Don't give them your winnings. Pull out now and do something positive with your money.
I would love to and it feels like i'm sitting here waiting for everyone to stand up letting all the shit stay and start changing the world.
I started this by talking to people, changing my lifestyle etc. just to get more and more depressed about this topic.
Politics are not fast enough, there are enough people who really don't care and it doesn't feel anyone is starting it.
Im jumping between "saving the planet together" vs. "buying a small plot of land, building a small house on it, putting solar panels and solar thermy on the roof, buying/building a water reserva, building a storehouse and doing indoor farming and living my life until i'm dead".
My mental image of 'men eat meat' has changed the last 10 years for eating less etc. but then you talk to someone else and its the same simple/stupid talk as usual.
The sentiments you express feel familiar for a lot of people I imagine. I know people where I live in Idaho who are trying to do what you propose - buy a humble home, go solar and get off the grid, grow a garden and have chickens, etc.
Most of them are unsuccessful at achieving full independence, because they still work remotely and buy about the same amount of stuff as anyone else, as you suggested. But they do seem to have achieved a sustainable lifestyle and are happy.
The only one I know who really made it is my friend and old business partner, who has enough apps out that he has finally been making rent for the last couple of years. He lives extremely modestly (I don't think he even has cable TV) but he does still socialize and travel with his girlfriend.
In my own life, I've always had to choose between having money or time, but never both at once. That's the main way that the American Dream has broken down IMHO. We used to have a middle class in the US, with enough income to raise a family and take a vacation each year. Now the bottom half of the population works overtime yet has no net worth, and the top 1% are so obligated to their work that they toil away their lives worrying about when the music's gonna stop. Wealth inequality makes all of us slaves.
As far as eating meat goes, nobody understands that it's so much harder to stop being a vegetarian than to become one. I tried to abstain from meat as much as possible for ethical reasons, but had to start eating it again because my health failed a year and a half ago. I was working out heavily, and I think my body borrowed protein from my organs because I wasn't eating enough. Now I can only eat rice and beans once a week because my gut won't handle any more than that. I take a moment to mourn before each meal of meat, then thank the creator that I have it and consume it almost like a ritual.
So on that note, I guess I've come to terms with being part of a system since I must depend on it now for my very survival. I think I've realized what libertarians come to realize eventually. That going against the wind is great and all, but in the end, the weather wins.
Solar is no savior. VERY few people understand solar and how it works enough to even understand that power output on hot summer days like we're having now is one of the worst environments for PV performance. (PV cell voltage is inversely proportional to temperature because God said so - you make many times more power on a clear, cold day.). Don't forget that cheap Chinese $#!+ solar panels (virtually all you can get, now) only last about 10-15 years, even though PV breakeven is at about 22 yrs out of quality panels 25 year life. We will be waste-deep in toxic solar panel carcasses in another few years, and there is no economical way to recycle them. I joined the solar industry wanting to see it succeed, but it never will, except on islands or similarly remote areas where you have to ship in generator fuel otherwise.
> I sure wish a tech billionaire would do something about this
No need to single out one group of people. We vote for shitty politicians, we give money to shitty corporations, we form tribes of "us vs them", we put more children on this world condemning (putting a human on the planet is worst thing you can do to it in terms of pollution), we don't do our part "because corporations are the biggest polluters" and think that absolves us of any evil. We are inactive. We'd rather shift the blame than do anything. We are complacent. We are all complicit. We are all to blame.
If the world is full of non-evil people, then why aren't they keeping the evil people in check?
"but the mass die-offs we're seeing are because the world's coral reefs will be dead by 2050"
I've argued this point before here but I don't believe that will happen by 2050 at all.
For several reasons, not the least of which is there are fossilized reefs from epochs with much much higher C02 levels (and temperatures) then we will see any time in the near future.
I was in Mexico last year. On the reefs. Diving. They were in good shape with lots of young corals and very little die off. Sunscreen and human activity are a threat.
Not getting into the whole debate on warming (I believe something is happening) but this coral die off claim I do not believe at all. Particularly the 30 years bit.
I mean, the internet is here if you'd like to learn the actual science. This is a topic we understand and have ample empirical evidence on. I'd start by considering that most species were also quite different during the high CO2 era.
And while I'm glad you had fun in Mexico and what you saw there looked healthy, that doesn't somehow erase the bleaching we see on reefs globally. That the coral is dying, rapidly, is not under contention. It's a clearly known fact.
The species may have been different but they were constructed with the same calcium skeletons that are claimed to be much under threat from acid producing C02. Yet they thrived and left fossil remains in environments that were much much much more C02 rich and warmer.
> I sure wish a tech billionaire would do something about this.
I've noticed in tech that a common hope that people in tech hold is that "the billionaires", in their infinite wisdom and generosity, will pull magical solutions out of their hats and save us all. Like you mention later, yeah, right.
> one of the thousand reasons I got out of tech
Not an option I've considered much, but it's almost tempting.
>> that "the billionaires", in their infinite wisdom and generosity, will pull magical solutions out of their hats and save us all. Like you mention later, yeah, right.
I think its more that they have the means. Cant get anything done on a large scale without lots of moolah
Meh people over-estimate the wealth of billionaires. A $1 billionaire can only buy 1000 houses in the bay area for example, and then make something like $6m/yr in rent from it.
If we take all the wealth of the top 100 billionaries and put it towards the US annual budget, it wouldn't fund it for more than a year or two also and then you'd soon be out of billionaires as you go down the list.
Governments are the real 'wealthy' organizations out there.
> Cant get anything done on a large scale without lots of moolah
You can, but it requires collective action. But in order to have collective action, you need to win the propaganda war. I'm not sure that lots of moolah at this point can win the propaganda war against climate denialism.
It might not hurt to try some new approaches instead of just increasing the magnitude of the same message. I don't disagree though, propaganda is the key part of the puzzle that needs solving.
It's because we can no longer rely on our governments to act responsibly or arrive at a solution. We now have to rely on the world's billionaires and their generosity for help.
Bezos can't just "buy" the world a new coral reef - it will require government authority, coordination between specialists, and a lot of collective buy-in by private individuals.
Unfortunately, the US has endured a multi-decade war against the bureaucracies that sparked the Interstate Highway system, the Internet, and countless other achievements.
Then hold our governments responsible. I don’t know why anyone would expect a private citizen, regardless of whether or not he happens to have more than $1 billion, to help with environmental catastrophes. In fact I’d expect them to help the least out of anyone, since they have the resources to simply escape if they face danger or scarcity.
There's no realistic escaping planet Earth. Indeed this is a reason so many wealthy people become philanthropists. When someone truly has enough wealth to be free of any monetary anxiety, their concerns tend towards survival/preservation. Both of self and sometimes of humanity. It's ultinately self serving, in that they recognize that humanity's problems can negatively impact their own situations. Broad economic, societal, and environmental failures are probably the biggest risks to their powerful positions. And some do indeed look to ways to escape planet Earth.
I'm not saying that governments don't need to act, just pointing out that the motivations of the wealthy may not be what you expect.
I have a theory that the highest priority most people with wealth (very reasonably) have is "never be financially insecure again" (propagated to their descendants), and that the more wealth somebody has beyond "sustain a comfortable lifestyle indefinitely off of dividends", the more of their money and mindspace they invest into protecting themselves against the long tail of circumstances that could affect that. Applied on a broad scale, with different value systems and mindsets, this explains both preppers ("Society might collapse, so I should do everything I can to ensure that my needs are met in that circumstance" with a little bit of "here's hoping it happens so I have an excuse to shoot someone" mixed in) and philanthropists ("Society might collapse, or even just fall apart to an extent that degrades my control over the means of production, so I should do as much as possible to keep that from happening").
At the extreme of wealth, an appropriately diversified portfolio takes both options into account. If you have $1 Billion and think there's a .1% chance that society will collapse soon and make your money worthless, you're perfectly justified in spending up to $1million to protect against that contingency.
With today's rampant lobbying and propaganda driven news, that's a bit of a moot point. When critical questions are asked of those in power, they're dismissed as asking nasty questions and saying it's fake news. The propaganda is also created to keep citizens fighting against themselves rather than those in power. It's a losing position from a citizens point of view. Either the politicians have to willfully change things themselves, or you need to play the waiting game until the country deteriorates enough until it sparks revolts like in Belarus.
We no longer rely on our governments not because governments are inherently distrustful but due to a toxic hyper-libertarian philosophy that's been systematically trying to disable our governments and moving power toward the billionaires. The solution isn't to pray "Save us of wise and powerful billionaires" - the solution is to fix the governments.
> All due to runaway global warming acidifying the ocean with CO2.
Doesn't an increase in water temperature release CO2 from the water, because warm water binds less CO2 than warm water? I remember this as one of the many serious effects of accerlating global warming (more CO2 in the atmosphere heats up global temperatures, thereby heats up ocean water, which releases even more CO2).
As CO2 acidifies water shouldn't global warming thus basify the oceans?
Wikipedia about CO2 [1] states that ocean absorbed CO2 from burned fossil fuels. While CO2 from fossil fules is a driver of global warming, the act of global warming itself should actually counteract the acidification of the oceans.
I think increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere more than offsets the decreased solubility of CO2 in the ocean due to temperature rises. We are talking about a couple of degrees increase in surface sea temperatures, versus a much more significant increase in CO2 concentration. Also, we have to worry about increased temperatures releasing reservoirs of CO2. So while the direct action of warming might reduce ocean acidity, the causes of that warming, and the side effects, both increase acidity more than the warming reduces it.
We should be fixing farmed fish. When was the last time people ate wild cow. It's not sustainable for a population to be exploiting wild fish, farm properly and learn to do it quickly. As long as we eat meat, we have to do it in the least intrusive way.
I'm doing a Ph.D. in salmon farming, it's an exciting field for sure. Just to address some common misconceptions:
* The feed used for norwegian salmon is about 70-80% plant based, so the fish is a net producer of marine protein. The majority is soy, and the industry is trying to transition to sustainable feed ingredients such as insects (see Protix) and micro algae for EPA/DHA (See veramaris)
* The indsutry is beginning to transition from traditional net-pen farming to offshore, land-based and into cell-based and plant-based production, thus also getting production closer to market and spread over areas that may be less susceptible to pollution.
I've done a lot of reading on salmon farming over the past 6 months, as the tech consultantancy I work for has been investigating approaches within the industry, primarily in Norway. I look forward to reading your thesis :)
The feed conversion rates that Norway is achieving are, frankly, incredible. But the thing that troubles me the most is welfare. Sea lice remain a huge problem, and the mechanical and chemical treatments that are used hurt, damage and kill fish. There are also a shocking number of accidents that can kill millions if fish at a time - for example, chemical treatments gone wrong, or pens not deep enough so millions die from overheating. Then there is the welfare of cleaner fish, with reports of mortality rates over 40%.
Outside of Norway, I've seen some absolutely horrible cage conditions, with the netting completely fouled and the water thick with waste, and damaged, dead and malformed fish everywhere.
While there has been a lot of investment in offshore farming technology, the capex costs are huge, and it will still be some time before we see success at scale. It also comes with it's own risks - I think it was perhaps Havfarm that recently had an incident where the whole platform tipped to the side.
I also find the recent investments into land-based farming are troubling. For all the problems, at least with sea-based farming the fish live in part of their natural environment and have some semblance of space.
IIRC, for land-based farming to even be viable, they need something like 5x more biomass per cubic metre than sea-based farms. Thousands of fish are packed into a tiny area, and literally swim round in circles all day and night, never seeing anything other than the thousands of other fish that surround them, and if they're lucky the occasional glimpse of the side of the raceway.
How do you feel about welfare of farmed salmon, and in particular land-based farms?
Thank you for your thoughful and interesting reply!
First off, you are absolutely correct in fish welfare being a huge issue. I am in no way condoning the current practices that lead to an average of 20% mortalities in the sea phase in norway, and around 5-10% in regions such as tasmania not affected by sea lice.
Cleaner fish is also a worrying issue with very questionable fish health pactices. Fortunately there are stronger regulations being implemented, that will help remedy some of these issues. One trivial example is that farmers are now required to feed the cleaner fish, whereas they were not before.
I agree that you can absolutely see some horribel looking cages and fish with health issues. The industry explanation is that the percentage that is sick will most likely swim toward the surface and thus give the wrong impression. I say, increase the omega 3 from 1% to 3% and imrpove the quality of the smolt we will surely see benefits.
both offshore and land-based have their issues. net-pen is incredibly efficient and beautiful in its simplicity when it works and the locality is optimal. Salmon will be reared at maximum 25kg/m3, but on land they wanna do 50kg+/m3 to be profitable. They wont do more than 100, as you will see decreasing fish health. For comparison tilapia is known to be farmed at 600kg/m3 in some regions.
Land-based farming will be interesting for sure, and a compeltely new set of issues regarding pathogens and Co2, H2S, NH4 problems. I'm sure they will figure it out. Atlantic Sapphire sure has a lot riding on figuring fish health on land out. Not very promising with the big emergency slaughter the other week.
let me know if you wanna have a chat at some point, always intersting to look at the industry with different eyes.
Are there any viable solutions to the problems with off-shore farming? Last time I checked the ecosystem around you typical Scandinavian salmon farm in the ocean was devestated.
We take extreme care not to flush our own sewers into the sea, yet happily permit salmon farms with the equivalent fertilizing effect of a town of 25000 having all their toilets flush everything out on the shore.
The last years they have hovered around 95% being very good or good. So statistically you are very wrong. But sure there are some localities that have bad conditions, and those should be closed and new localities should be opened for those farmers. Such as offshore localities when the technology is mature. Many smart people are trying to figure that out with strong scientific backing, but the report from havmerden is avaliable to read if you understand norwegian
In norway there are many environmental institutions following the state of the fjords, so I wouldn't be too concerned.
What I am saying is not that that are not following current regulations. I am saying at the current regulations are too weak, which Naturvernforbundet agrees with.
They are _still_ using hydrogen peroxide to combat lice for example, despite it's effect on shrimp and plankton.
I am all for farming fish, but on land in closed systems.
There are lots of different approaches being taken to offshore farming, but few have been tried at scale yet.
One of the concepts is closed-containment farming, where the fish are kept in a sealed enclosure. The fish can be kept below the sea lice level, and all waste can be collected. The downsides are cost, failure modes, and welfare (the fish have less area than open-pen near-shore farms, and will never see sunlight, for example).
One of the biggest issues with the fundamental concept of fish farming is that many of the fish we like to eat are carnivores. So to truly sustainably farm salmon, you would have to farm a bunch of bait fish to use to feed the salmon (in practice I believe the bait fish are usually wild caught). And indirectly you would need to be farming a bunch of algae or seaweed or something to feed the bait fish. Compare that to farming cows or chickens, where you just need to farm a bunch corn to feed them (or if you have enough land available you can make them free range). That extra level of indirection makes farming much more inefficient, which is why essentially all of our domestic animals we use for food are herbivores.
Of course this isn't true of all fish, tilapia being the prime example of a commonly eaten herbivorous fish. And shellfish, being filter feeders, are very easy to farm and actually tend to be beneficial for the surrounding ecosystem.
EDIT: interestingly, according to https://ourworldindata.org/seafood-production in terms of tonnage the amount of wild-caught fish has remained relatively steady since 1990 while the amount of farmed fish has steadily increased and is now more than 50% of our source of fish. There's actually some very interesting data in that link
I'd bet a typical westerner has never eaten wild mammal meat.
I expect the statement in born from the misconception that "game" meat as found in restaurants and for sale is from wild animals, when it is actually farmed.
> I expect the statement in born from the misconception that "game" meat as found in restaurants and for sale is from wild animals, when it is actually farmed.
If we assume that about the bison and venison I have had over the years, it has been at least over a decade for me. Not sure if we farm muskrats.
And our ability to manage wild animals is worse than our ability to farm. It's hugely politically negative to reduce the number's allowed, and there is always pressure for more even when counter to the evidence that it is detrimental.
How many species of fish will go extinct before we figure this out. Fish used to be very common(look at the stories of the colonists coming to North America). Also, people are still eating bluefin tuna, it's endangered.
Some farmed fish (like tilapia) can live on a variety of things, including soy and corn pellets.
Algae, which can be used for many things - human consumption, farmed animal/fish feed and even fuel - can also be farmed sustainably.
I think we urgently need global legislation and enforcement of rules, as well as satellite monitoring to stop overfishing. World leaders need to work together on this.
Marine ecosystems may not come back once collapsed and that would be a huge disaster. I hope there is some kind of self-limiting dynamic here where industrial fishing becomes unprofitable, but we avoid extinctions and total collapse of ecosystems - but I'm not sure that's the case.
Unfortunately the US is not exactly leading on animal welfare, and indeed resists urges to improve. As much as I dislike Trump, this has been the case since long before him.
Federal-level animal welfare standards are lacking. Welfare in the US standards are well below that of Europe. Pigs, for example, still often live their short life in stalls so small they can't even turn around - by comparison, the practice of using these "sow stalls" was banned in the UK before the turn of the century. Additionally, the use of antibiotics and hormones is very high.
We should fix the mental image of having meat/fish every single day.
And the rest of it.
A few month ago we were in a nice restaurant, my wife got a non meat dish and i got a meat dish (i also order non meat dishes it just happend that time)
The waiter told me exactly what meat i had and for my wife he said 'the vegetarian dish'. No its not the vegetarian dish. It has a name and its tasty.
"The orange roughy is notable for its extraordinary lifespan, attaining over 200 years."
"Orange roughy is fished almost exclusively by bottom trawling. This fishing method has been heavily criticized by environmentalists for its destructive nature."
> Of the populations analyzed, 82 per cent were found to be below levels that can produce maximum sustainable yields, due to being caught at rates exceeding what can be regrown. Of these, 87 populations were found to be in the “very bad” category, with biomass levels at less than 20 per cent of what is needed to maximize sustainable fishery catches.
It seems to me that we don't have a clear concept of sustainable commercial fishing looks like (with regards to wild capture). Thankfully, it seems Aquaculture is on the rise to offset increasing demand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishing_industry
Society will never overcome this tragedy of the commons. Only a few will make personal sacrifice for the common good.
Only a market-driven solution will be viable. We need to find sustainable alternatives that are better than the foods they replace. Just like we need electric cars that are better than internal combustion engines.
>Only a few will make personal sacrifice for the common good.
Are you vegetarian? I chose to, only because I want mankind to live on this planet for a long time. That's not a sacrifice, that's a basic choice. I'm not sacrificing stuff when I chose to behave responsibly (e.g driving safely, not stealing my neighbors, paying taxes, etc). Do you think people only pay taxes because they fear the police? Or they don't kill each others only to avoid going to jail? Of course they are abuses on our systems (like any social situation), but if you think most people behave responsibly only to avoid a kind of punishment, then you have a very dark idea of society or you hang out with bad people (that can change).
Yeah, like the GP said.. only a few. And I think you have pretty rosy glasses if you think people pay taxes cause they care about their fellow human...
Try explaining this to BILLIONS of people across India and China who are now for the first time in their family's generations being able to afford and access a diversity of protein-based and vegetarian cuisine (available all the time, in and out of what they used to know as the season of availability).
The point is it will take a regulated solution or some sort of new product that creates a serious incentive to adjust mass behavior.
You are benevolent in these ways. Most people are not. If most people behaved the same way as you, tragedy of the commons and moral hazard would not be real things. But they are real things. A successful policy will take that into account, not just hope for everyone to be benevolent.
> We need to find sustainable alternatives that are better than the foods they replace. Just like we need electric cars that are better than internal combustion engines
That's already happening though. Meat eaters still don't seem to care. I'm a recent vegetarian and the food I eat now tastes better, is often more nutritious, and is easier to make.
The better alternatives are here. Oat milk! Wow! Have you tried it? I knocked vegan cheese forever because it sucked. But you know what? They are starting to make some that is better than some 'real' cheese. Indian food. Baked/BBQ tofu is amazing.
I've had veggie burgers in CA and WA that beat a 'regular' burger by a mile. Try Souley Vegan in Oakland for one. Wowza. Better than any meat burger I've ever had.
Not all vegetarian food is sustainable, I know. But it's better. I'm vegetarian for the taste more than anything really. It's not a sacrifice!
I think a lot meat eaters would be absolutely shocked at how delicious and healthy a lot of vegetarian food is now.
> Only a few will make personal sacrifice for the common good.
??? I didn't make a 'personal sacrifice' to become vegetarian. It's a literal animal sacrifice every meal the other way around! Vegetarian food isn't a sacrifice. What the world needs is to convert more to veggies is to squash the idea that becoming vegetarian means making a sacrifice.
I think this is a cynical attitude. Until 1990, the majority of people driving cars did not wear a seatbelt.
An even better analogy is tobacco use. In the 1950s and 1960s America, you'd hear the same kind of things about cigarettes as you do these days about meat-eating: it's red-blooded, it's manly, it's good for you! Meanwhile the incredibly high impact to health of people and populations was becoming more clear all the time, just like the consumption on meat.
Attitudes, beliefs, and stupid behaviors can and do change over time.
If everyone would just cut down on meat, even avoid it a few days of the week, it would make an enormous positive impact. Same goes for seafood.
From the perspective of someone who eats meat twice a week or so, it's absurd to hear people say they couldn't do it. Yeah, they could.
Of course, with governments subsidizing the hell out of the meat industry those $0.99 McDonalds specials will keep encouraging everyone to eat it 3x/day...
I agree with you completely. However, try telling people you're vegan/vegetarian anywhere outside of the major western cities and you'll understand what I'm talking about. The reactions from complete strangers will absolutely shock you.
You could also not waste too many kW of electricity, which are partly generated by carbon sources. E.g. you could stop using your laptop too frequently, less social media, e.g.
Interesting article that just came out yesterday from Yale University that is right in line with this article how China's commericial fishing fleet is doing a lot of this damage.
I buy canned sardines regularly. I've noticed for the last year that the size of the sardines are increasing, and many that are canned now have eggs. It makes me wonder if pressure is making them age and try to reproduce sooner than before, or if the fishing season is being expanded to meet demand.
I've cut back on buying them as much. I may quit after this.
Where are you buying them ? Some countries call the younger fish "sardines" and older ones of the same species "pilchards", both have been sold for food for a long time. Maybe this is just a change in how they are labelled.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but I would encourage anyone interested in doing good to mostly abstain from animal products altogether. This must not necessarily be carried to extreme veganism but if you have the choice to not use animal products it’s in almost all circumstances better to take it. Plant based products are generally better for our health, our future, and the animals.
When are people going to start acknowledging the elephant in the room: there are too many humans for us all to live western lifestyles, and unless we want our descendants to live vastly poorer lives we need to give serious attention to population control now.
Because there are alternatives to population control, like increasing the sustainability of food and energy sources. After all, the planet now supports twice as many people as it did a few decades ago, and that's basically down to agricultural yield improvements.
Making less humans seems to be morally taboo, no one wants to go there.
1) There are consequences (economic and social) beyond what goes on our plate to "fishermen will go out of business". In many places, especially in underdeveloped areas, fishing is subsistence and the consequences of fisherman having to find alternative livelihoods can be problematic.[1] But even in the developed world, overfishing can have serious economic impact.[2]
2) There is no automatic guarantee that fish populations will recover, or recover quickly enough. While complete extinction is rare[3], some species have come close (several species of whales and sharks, for example) and can take decades to recover. In addition, destructive fishing techniques like bottom trawling can destroy the environment needed for a recovery. There is also some evidence (not, as I understand, conclusive) that in the absence of native fish, especially if their population is depressed for a long time, could allow less desirable species to displace them.[4]
After a true collapse, the local stocks may never recover. The removal of one species may impact the ecosystem so strongly that that species is not able to return. Or the lack of numbers may make breeding so difficult/slow that it could take decades/centuries to return to a "normal".
Usually commercial exploitation becomes unviable before actual extinction occurs, although some species have been hunted to death for sport. You’d typically see this being a bigger problem for highly valued species like tuna where consumers are willing to pay premium prices for the remaining creatures, rather than more commodity species.
The bigger risk extinction wise isn’t that we’ll fish a species to death, it’s that we’ll leave it in such a rough state that any number of random events might finish the species off.
Even worse, another unpredictable aspect can occur within the whole ecosystem, either another dependent species dies as well or something goes out of whack. It's sad to see so many species disappear in such a short timespan.
I'm sure hunters of the Passenger pigeon thought the same too.
Many fish and bird species have shear reprodutive ability as their only defense. In the case of Passenger Pigeons, they had very little defenses against predators, but migrated in huge flocks of hundreds of thousands at a time. No predator could really harm the flock as a whole.
Well, until Humans became too good at hunting anyway. (Also, USA used to be covered in forests. But we cut those trees down to make room for our cities)
As described in 1813 (From Wikipedia):
> The air was literally filled with (passenger) Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse; the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow, and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose.
I recently read this book which suggests that the abundance of passenger pigeons in America was itself a result of human interference with the ecosystem. The general point of the book is that current people have no idea what a natural landscape looked like, and the places we think of as natural or pristine were themselves already severely degraded by prehistoric people.
Well, I never liked naturalism as an argument anyway.
But with that being said: I like Talapia. I like Salmon. I like various fish. They're all quite tasty, and I'd like to keep eating them throughout my life (and possibly let my children have a chance at it too).
For people who liked one food: the passenger pigeon, that opportunity is now gone, because the species has gone entirely extinct. And overhunting of that species is cited as a potential cause for extinction.
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It has nothing to do with naturalism or the state of things. Just from a purely selfish point of view: if you like a certain food source, you have to take care of it, lest it goes extinct and disappears forever.
Lets hope its as simple as that. If they go out of business, then I would think the fish would recover. Maybe the next business will want to be more sustainable?
I'm reminded of the jellyfish problem in Japan. Because of over-fishing, the jellyfish polyps aren't being eaten as they used to. So, enormous jellyfish swarms are being caught by these fisherman instead. I had to laugh at the frustration on their faces, cursing all of these jellyfish that they were catching. It was a problem of their own creation!
The population 82% of species are "below levels that can produce maximum sustainable yields, due to being caught at rates exceeding what can be regrown." Fishermen are already losing money, and the worst going out of business, because the size of the total catch available to all fishermen is already smaller than in the past.
We cultivate all our other food. We don't feed ourselves by walking around the plains of Anatolia and collecting wild wheat. Why should we feed ourselves by dragging hooks through the oceans? The fishing industry is the last vestige of humanity's hunt-and-gather past, and it, too, needs to yield to agriculture. We need better fish farms.
Ian Urbina, investigative reporter, has written a book and published articles describing a fleet of 800 industrial fish boats from china who are illegally poaching catch from North Korea waters ... fallout is a devastating drop in squid partly due to these chinese boats catching squid as they migrate to their spawning grounds ( caught before they breed ) which is extremely short sighted and illegal ... also hundreds of ghost fishing boats from North Korea washing up on Japanese shores with dead crew ... I suggest you read up on Ian Urbina's work
I really wish there was a way to stop all fishing at a commercial level for 10 years. Not that you can’t eat a fish just that if you want that luxury you have to go catch it yourself. I know this will never happen.
Basically no, we would have to decide as a society that your inability to catch your own fish does not outweigh the needs of all of the rest of the people. And this lies the problem in that solution a lot of people would be left without. The person in a wheel chair. The elderly who are not physically able. The person afraid of the sea. And so on. That’s why I also acknowledge it won’t happen. We could highly tax the sale of fish restaurants though and use that for subsidies and fish restoration. We could decide like fossil fuel use that this is important to the future of humanity and even though it would be near impossible we try anyways. Canada and the US could decide to subsidize the fishing industry and ask them to sit idle or offer retraining or something.
There is, but the duration might be longer than 10 years. We grab a bunch of what's endangered, sequence their genomes, construct plans for future repopulation, and be prepared for a future when we're more responsible with these natural resources. The fisheries will exhaust, and demand will shift elsewhere in the short term.
There is no other path to success, as attempting cooperation with those who will fish relentlessly is futile. Preserve what's left today for a future with better humans.
The tragedy of the commons is a great launching point for understanding this problem. Managing fish populations is one of the best examples.
For further reading, I suggest folks check out Elinor Ostrom, an economist who spent time developing regulatory solutions for managing fish populations. She was even able to implement a few!
> ... 87 populations were found to be in the “very bad” category, with biomass levels at less than 20 per cent of what is needed to maximize sustainable fishery catches
The “Tragedy of the Commons” is a straw man fallacy. The commons have historically always been collectively managed by the villagers grazing their animals on it. What you should be complaining about is the tragedy of an unmanaged (or in other words unregulated) commons.
Reading ToTC itself you'll find that this is specifically what Hardin advocates for: Mutual Coercion Mutually Agreed Upon. Unmanaged commons lead to ruin. The question is how to suitably manage them.
250 new humans are born every single minute. This is the biggest issue we are facing. This problem must be solve immediately. Once the population stops growing efficiency measures become effective.
Most of them will have a reasonable footprint on their environment for their lifetime. The actual issue is with all the people who consume as if there were 5 to 10 habitable planets within reach.
For some reasons, those who complain about population growth tend to consume the most.
My favorite version of the guide is the printable version that you can fold up and put in your wallet: https://www.seafoodwatch.org/seafood-recommendations/consume...
Here's the main site where you can search for a fish by name: https://www.seafoodwatch.org/
This is geared towards the USA but I think the guides are at least somewhat useful in other countries.