The only technology that should be on that list, since using it would enable all the others to thrive: UwU hungry guillotine
It hungers for the blood of the investors
This kind of comment always makes me a little anxious, lol. Technically, I’m one of the investors due to the stock shares in my 401k.
Everyone loves to rail against the billionaires, but in the event of a revolution, I’m afraid that I’d be up against the wall as a mere “thousandaire”.
If you think your 401k makes you one of the investor being discussed, you are very confused. Your 0.000001% of total capital investment puts you very very far down the guillotine line.
Oh, I don’t think I’m being targeted by the rhetoric. What I do worry about is anger at the billionaires being redirected at “all rich people” where the bar for “rich” is merely “owns a house”. Angry mobs have a way of getting out of hand in spite of any logical arguments why you shouldn’t need to worry.
Is it the 401k or the home ownership? Shifting the goal posts is highly suspect that you are in the wrong side of this issue. Those siding with the rich are worthy of the angry mob’s wrath, in my opinion.
Accusing me of “shifting the goalposts” is really shitty. I’m not making some grand political argument here, lol, I’m just vaguely musing about my prospects if we have a “cultural revolution” style upheaval here.
Me, I’m just thinking about people whose fortune is able to change the world, like billionaires because you need a hundred millionares to do what one billionaire can do without effort
The math doesn’t check out.
I wasn’t talking about their capital in its entirety. For a billionaire, a hundred million is just 10% of their wealth whereas it would take a hundred millionaires to achieve that amount of money.
If you want more comparisons, I saw this page a while back: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Sure, and then what? If we keep the systems around that created this situation in the first place, we’ll end up back where we started, just with new rich people.
Just to pick out the example of veganism: If all rich people are dead, but the masses still want cheap meat every single day, they WILL definitely reinvent factory farming, with all it’s horrible environmental and ethical consequences.
We have the technologies. The list goes on and on and on. We just need to employ them instead of waiting further for magical fixes.
Posting and liking memes is great, but real change comes from actions. If you are as concerned as we are about climate change, please consider joining or supporting climate activists near you.
Trains are based. Fight me car stans
Thanks!
I mean, some breakthroughs with large battery tech would be nice to really take advantage of solar and wind.
We’re pretty much there on flow batteries and a few others. The nice thing about grid storage is that kwh per kg is far less important than it is for EVs. That opens up a ton of other options.
Pretty much just need mass production at this point.
Has someone already produced a large-scale long-duration flow battery, like something that can handle a moderate energy grid?
I haven’t been following the tech very closely.
Oh cool, hadn’t heard about this facility. Thanks!
“No not that! I want to do EXACTLY as I did before but YOU do something about it. Can’t you like build a technology to suck the CO2 out of the atmosphere or something?”
Can we trail like monkeys to pick up trash?
“We need new technologies that can be controlled by a megacorporation to make a select few rich, not things that individuals can do or use that can break the hold of existing monopolies”
And thus the shilling for nuclear power began.
nuclear is beyond most private corporations. The profit breav-even is too far into the future for all but governments.
Is nuclear a bad option? Only downsides I’ve heard are basically optics problems. Barring facilities that catastrophically failed on top of horrid safety policy negligence, they seem perfectly suited for baseline power production.
Cost. The reality is nuclear is not just more expensive than every other option, it’s a lot more. I remember seeing something like ten times the cost of solar, per whatever unit of energy
Cost, where we get uranium, how to handle the wastes. And it may fail even more if we fail to cool it down (less water due to Earth warming up)
Thanks for that thought, I was confused who is arguing so much for nuclear that is not solving anything and is too expensive.
Shilling makes a lot of sense, but never came to me.
And downvotes without explanation, even here. I guess normal people are also under influence.
Yeah we already have the technology needed, we have to implement them.
And much of the tech is actually very old. Electric trains are like a century old. So for a lot of things, we have to re-implement technology we foolishly removed.
Oil was just a bad technology path. Gotta get back on the right path.
Our battery tech is not up to par, and chances are, will never be. Need something in replacement. Nuclear, not the same, but good enough.
Nuclear trains and cargo ships might actually be necessary, even. In North America and over oceans, getting the vehicle weights, the weights of cargo and the distances between cities to work under any reasonable system means not just DC but even AC are insufficient in transmission range on land (and of course useless in the middle of an ocean), and companies like Amazon and AliExpress account for a lot of direct climate-disrupting emissions and a good chunk of the wealth letting assholes like Bezos live like kings at everyone else’s detriment.
Nuclear trains, WTF? There have been electric trains for over a century. In fact most Diesel trains actually have electric motors powering the wheels with a diesel generator powering the electric motors. Instead of having to think about repercussions of what happens when a nuclear powered train derails in a populated area, why not just run some overhead wires over the tracks like people have been doing for a century?
One of the problems with hydrogen is the lack of density means there’s a need for larger fuel tanks. This is less of a problem for cargo ships and trains than it is for most other vehicles. And again less worry of nuclear materials being hauled around population centers or in areas where there’s pirate activity.
Okay, to be fair, I was assuming the nuclear trains would be doing cross-country freight hauls and never for passenger service.
Upvoted for the hydrogen, you’re probably right about fuel cells being a better option.
The main problem with hydrogen is distribution. You’d have to build pipelines to a lot of train terminals to refuel the trains. So it seems to me running overhead wires for electric trains would be the better options for most cases. Yeah it’s a century old technology there’s nothing sexy about it, but since it’s old tech it’s well tested and will be reliable. The thing with technology is that you usually have to have a transitional phase that’s viable. Many “diesel” trains actually have electric motors that drive the wheels, they just haul around a diesel generator to power those electric motors. So you could use the overhead wires where available and run the diesel generators on parts of the track that don’t have that in place yet while transitioning. Then when there’s complete electric coverage, do away with the diesel generators entirely.
I think hydrogen for ships makes sense because a port could have a hydrogen terminal similar to present day LNG terminals. LNG is transported by ship so hydrogen could also be transported to the terminals similarly. Eventually hydrogen pipelines can be built from there, but pipelines take time to build.
The main problem with electric is also distribution. 95% of all North American heavy rail lines are unelectrified.
I can see taking a risk on hydrogen trains might not pan out, just saying electric is something that draws from the electrical grid (which is at capacity in the Pacific, Texan and Atlantic grids) and there’s no easy/single solution. If only for avoiding pirates by staying far from shore indefinitely, ships should at least have the option to be nuclear but require a US Navy-certified team at the port to inspect it and do needed maintenance/repairs before each time it sets sail.
As for nuclear trains, at the very least you have to admit that it’s not as simple as “just transmit power along the rail line from LA to NY”.
Everything is going to have issues, but electrifying rail is proven technology and doesn’t require the infrastructure to be 100% complete before it can be used. Building pipelines is far more expensive than power lines and you’d need to have hydrogen distribution across the country before rolling out hydrogen trains. Green hydrogen generation requires electricity too, so there’s no difference in terms of the need for electricity.
There will always be problems with environmental catastrophes from nuclear materials on vehicles so it should be limited to only military naval vessels that need it. Using US naval personnel doesn’t really solve the problem of inspections and maintenance, it’s just shifting responsibility. The Navy would need to train more people to do these inspections and there’s nothing about a Navy that makes that free.
As for nuclear trains, at the very least you have to admit that it’s not as simple as “just transmit power along the rail line from LA to NY”.
There are no simple solutions, but electrified rail is the simplest solution from all available options. Electrified rail is a century old technology and is implemented around the world already. As fun as it may be to come up with outside the box type solutions, we actually already have most of the technology needed to solve global warming, we’re only lacking a willingness to implement it.
While nuclear container ships would be very useful for reducing emissions I’m not sure I want to trust shipping companies with nuclear reactors given the track record of ship accidents and noncompliance with environmental regulations. Feels like they’d just dump the nuclear waste into the ocean.
Also piracy would suddenly become a much bigger issue.
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Clean Fukushima corium first.
Pretty telling that the main counterpoint is referencing the second biggest nuclear disaster in history that made a staggering zero deaths.
Evacuation did almost 2500 deaths.
Evacuation was due to unwarranted panic as clearly stated by the Japanese government itself and the UN. People with your same mentality and irrational fear caused those deaths.
Tepco didn’t told the true so even a model had failed. You cannot rewrite the story it is done. Check the recent studies and numbers about rising cancers.
Cite these studies. Spoiler: they do not exist.
Your statement about zero death was false. Even the last UNSEAR report is in total contradiction with that (248 occurrences with the word “cancer” in the last one). EU large scale studies about nuclear workers can be found here : https://www.bmj.com/content/382/bmj-2022-074520 I can also provide studies specifically for Fukushima concerning thyroides, lung cancer and diabetic links.
There was lemmy in the 60s? /s
But I do agree if we find some way to deal with the nuclear waste nuclear energy would be perfect. I’m really hopeful for fusion research lately.
Nuclear waste is a largely solved issue. The volume of very radioactive waste is quite small, and safely contained with a variety of solutions.
It’s solved if your government gets off its ass about it. Reprocessing waste for reactors is one of the few places where nuclear makes sense. Way better than burying it for thousands of years.
Otherwise, the economics have ran past it. We have solutions without it; we just need to scale the up. There are a few other niches, like cargo ships, where they make sense. For general power use, no.
The issue is not the volume it is the duration.
TBH, nuclear waste is a political problem, not an engineering one. Finns figured it out, no reason other countries couldn’t.
Fusion of course is better (though some small amount of radioactive waste will still be produced due to neutron activation of the materials used in the equipment), but it seems like it’s been 10 years away for the past 60 years. And we really shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good—we need to phase out fossil fuels yesterday and fission is good enough for answering the needs of the industry; solar and wind is good enough for distributed residential power and also a good choice for poorer countries who lack the knowhow or even stability for safe operation of nuclear.
fusion isn’t gonna happen, how did Finland ‘solve’ nuclear waste?
Apparently ‘solved’ means ‘bury it in an underground vault’. Finland buries their nuclear waste. The U.S. had planned to do the same at Yucca Mountain, but political infighting canceled that plan, IIRC.
Fusion is all but guaranteed to work eventually. If a breakthrough was made today that makes it commercialy viable, it would be ten years before we see a reactor putting power on the grid.
It’s not something we want to hang our hopes on. ITER will probably work if nothing else gets there first, but we need to look at other things long before that comes online. There’s no reason to wait and every reason to go full speed on what we have.
ITER that thing is dead already. 1st estimation : 5 billions. Now : 19 billions. And Russians are involved. Delays are so huge that it will be over before to be born.
Veganism isn’t better for the environment than significantly reducing the total amount of consumed meat. Animals play an important, difficult-to-replace role in making agriculture sustainable. Animals can be herded on land that’s difficult to farm on, animals can consume parts of farmed plants that humans cannot, and animals produce products that humans cannot replicate without significantly more work.
Edit: I see a bunch of vegans who aren’t really engaging with the argument. To be clear, anyone who makes statements about how things are right now to try to disprove this is probably arguing in bad faith. I’m not responding to comments anymore because, while it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong, y’all aren’t making any good points.
Furthermore, I’m not anti-vegan, but now I’m tempted to be. So many people I’ve engaged with have displayed all of the worst vegan stereotypes I’ve heard about. I’ve always assumed it was chuds making shit up, but no I just hadn’t met any of the terminally online creeps in the vegan community yet OMFG.
Yes, we need to significantly reduce the amount of consumed meat (maybe not insects, if we consider them meat). A step towards more vegan and vegetarian food would definitely be necessary. Yes, not everyone needs to be vegan. But we need to consume way more vegan and vegetarian food.
Insects are meat. Why are you so keen on eating bugs?
Well lobster tastes pretty good so I’m pretty hopeful about the land bugs.
I actually don’t like lobster (I prefer the meatless versions) but that’s a fair point.
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There is a general consensus that insects are not considered equal in terms of animal cruelty like mammals, as they have much smaller and simpler nerve systems.
In regards to ecological imprint insects have a much better feed to food ratio and you can feed them much more things than to grazing animals.
I agree that insects are generally less ethically significant than mammals, but as far as using English food category words I don’t see how it’s useful to draw a hard distinction between the category of “meat” and the category of “insects who’s bodies can be cooked and eaten”.
The reason I asked the question is that I noticed they made multiple comments about eating insects and I was curious as to the motivations behind their position.
In vegan communities insects are very much extended the same moral considerations as other animals. What you’re advocating is a form of speciesism, which is something better avoided as much as possible.
Anti-specieism is an argument often brought by vegan fascists, arguing that killing humans is no worse than killing mosquitos.
Also the concept of avoiding specieism fails the moment you look into nature. Is the cat that eats a mouse a speciest? Should you let mosquitos bite you and transmit diseases because killing them would be speciest? Are the farmers in Southern Africa that are plagued by locusts speciest for trying to protect their harvest?
Probably you would consider these examples as legitimate. But what about the building of the house you reside in? The production of your electronics, your energy usage…
It is impossible to make a consistent value frame of what is acceptable killing of animals and what isn’t, if you deem an individual fly as equally protectworthy as a sheep or a human.
Vegan fascists? The people who are trying to put an end to the forced captivity, continuous torture, rape, exploitation, commodification, and perpetual holocaust-levels of slaughter of virtually every species of animal that is not human, are fascists?
Here’s the most commonly accepted definition of veganism:
“Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”"
Emphasis added. The vast majority of vegans do not believe that killing a mosquito is exactly equivalent to killing a human, and even of the people who do, it’s intended to imply that all species lives are important, that the mosquito’s life is seen as equally valuable to the human’s. The only reason such a proposition seems abhorrent to you is because you’re looking at the mosquito through the lens of your carnist supremacist mindset, which is to see the mosquito as something worthless and thus conclude that a human’s life is considered by vegans to be equally worthless.
But again, like everyone else vegans take anti-speciesism only as far as is practical. We just do it better. The mosquito bite is easy. If you know mosquitos are around, it’s wise to wear repellent, and take other appropriate precautions depending on your circumstances. Maybe modify your environment if possible to be less of a breeding ground for them, if it’s bad enough. If you’re dealing with a particular mosquito, odds are they have already bitten you, so how is the lethal carnist reaction any more protective against a disease that may have already been transmitted, than simply blowing on the mosquito to get them to fly away?
Locust infestations happen because of shitty agricultural practices. If you’ve got a plot of land that’s full of nothing but copies of one tantalizing crop, then of course it’s going to be an obvious buffet for a vast amount of insects. Are veganic farming or veganic permaculture methods extreme? Or is it more extreme that our most common monocultural methods of farming are causing so much pollution that it’s bringing so many vital pollinators to the brink of extinction?
You make the same erroneous argument that many other carnists make, which is the idea that because vegan values can’t always be practiced perfectly, that somehow automatically means the entire ethical framework is without merit. But that’s obviously nonsensical. To the individual mosquito or mouse, it makes all the difference in their entire little lives, whether they incidentally pestered a vegan or carnist. It’s been estimated that a single vegan living their values results in about 200 fewer livestock animals being slaughtered every year. Is it extreme to live in a way that would end factory farms forever if we all embraced it, or what about the lifestyle that created them in the first place?
Nearly every half-baked gotcha that carnists try to catch vegans in has a common-sense practical answer. The example of predation in wild areas is a point of contention in vegan communities, whether we should intervene or not and ultimately make rather significant changes to the natural world, but presently it doesn’t really matter, because there are so many other obvious abuses that need to end.
Veganism only looks extreme from the deluded perspective of carnism. But in reality going vegan is like becoming sober, and recognizing how disturbing it was to live the way that so many continue to.
Vegan fascists? The people who are trying to put an end to the forced captivity, continu…
Those guys:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/evb4zw/why-so-many-white-supremacists-are-into-veganism
And those guys (German Article):
https://www.belltower.news/vegane-nazis-wie-rechstextreme-mit-ihre-ernaehrung-ideologisieren-91901/
I’m not keen on eating bugs, most of them just are similar in environmental damage as vegan food. Insects are also already in almost all processed foods because they are small and almost everywhere. They just don’t fall in the same category as what we in the western civilization typically consider meat (as a food).
Veganism is good for climate, biodiversity, health and animal welfare. We really don’t need to eat animals or animal products to have good meal and live a happy life. The good thing is that humans are omnivores, with a free choice of what to eat. Please choose wisely, not only for your own mental and physical health, but also for others, living now as well as in years to come.
Not everyone can eat a pure vegan diet. We are omnivores. We don’t get to pick, we must eat it all to stay healthy.
So do it. While some people would argue vefpganism is ideal, the important part is “less meat”, especially less beef. I’d give kudos to anyone who eats one less beef meal per week: chicken is much easier in the environment than beef, or ne less meat meal,
The word Ideal is very generic. Ideal to who? What is ideal? Your health? The climate? Your bowel movement?
Meat contributes a ton of CO2. 15% of global output in just beef alone. Pork and Chicken is better.
Instead of pickering over words we could just acknowledge the underlying facts.
Those who can, and most people in western industrialized countries can, should reduce their meat consumption. For most of them veganism is a viable option, especially as there is easy access to doctors checking as well as supplements if there is difficulties.
There is no intrinsic need for animal protein or fats for a healthy diet.
The reduction of meat or even the total mandatory switch to all vegan diet won’t stop climate change since it’s such a small % in the total carbon footprint compared to our energy needs.
Your tribalism thoughts should be better focused on things like our need for clean energy like nuclear and solar.
I am neither vegan nor vegetarian, nor do i propose a mandatory switch to such diets. I also don’t mind people who primarily eat meat, as they are still traditional herders or hunters like in Central Asia or parts of Africa. But you know what these people don’t do? Fly on vacation twice a year, go on cruises, drive 20.000 km or more a year, consume 5 MWh of electricity per person and year…
The current way of animal farming with the current meat consumption results in about 10-17% of global GHG emissions. That is about the same emissions like all road traffic.
And unlike cars, where you could reduce the emissions effectively by using EVs, you simply cannot change a cow from emititting substantial amounts of methane, and the effects of the land conversion necessary for it’s feed.
Finally the argument, that X source of emission would be irrelevant to target since it is so small on the global scale is the prime whataboutism argument to not adress any emissions. “Oh our country is only making 1% of global emissions, we don’t have to change.” “Oh our industry could cut emissions in half in three years, but what about the other industry?”
People in western countries eat way too much meat. Any reduction to that is good, be it by reducing your meat consumption significantly or by switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet.
Everyone needs nutrients they can digest. The source doesn’t matter under these conditions. Excluding rare medical cases, everyone can get all required nutrients from non-animal sources, ergo everyone can have and live a perfectly healthy life on a vegan diet.
Meat has more than just protein. It has so many micronutrients that your body needs that you would have to take a shit ton of supplements to just come close to it. Sure, you can survive without those micronutrients. But why go through all the trouble?
that you would have to take a shit ton of supplements to just come close to it
If you would’ve taken a dive into healthy vegan diets, you would know that this isn’t true.
But why go through all the trouble?
I thought we already established that in the comments here.
I don’t understand veganism enough to speak about it and don’t care enough to look into it. I’ll take your word for it though.
Meat production is in the single digits in actual global pollution. The problem isn’t our diet. The problem is the fossil fuel industry which contributes to 79+% of the world’s pollution. If I had a light switch that can turn off all meat production, nothing would change. If I did the same for fossil fuels, it would instantly stop climate change.
Focus on who the enemy is here. It’s not us, the people. It’s the fossil fuel industry. Demand change from your government. We need clean energy from things like nuclear, solar, wind and whatever new innovation comes from government investments.
I don’t really care. Abusing (using) animals for food and work is cruel anyway, if me not doing that because I think it’s wrong is good for the environment, great! If it’s not, fine, but it’s not why I do it.
That’s the thing. Ethics and impact on the environment can be two different things. If you decide to go that way, you’re fine. Do it. However we need animals for stated reasons. We have to eat less meat/generally consume less animal products.
No, animal captivity, exploitation, rape, slaughter, and consumption are all things that are very much unnecessary, and are detrimental in many ways.
I disagree that raising and keeping animals because we want their products or labor is cruel, and I especially disagree that referring to that as abuse is useful.
What standard of cruelty and ethical framework are you using to come to your conclusion?
Edit: as stated in my other comment, I don’t believe that it’s cruel in principle; I’m not denying that the industry has cruel practices.
It may not be cruel in principle, but it is usually cruel in practice. Still, I like the the guiding principle to try to not let minor benefits to myself (e.g. an easier way to a nice meal) go above vital benefits of other creatures.
I was speaking in terms of principles rather than discussing practical reality. Of course cruel practices are common in farming in general and the meat industry in particular; I’m not disputing that.
Edit: Why TF am I being downvoted?
How is it not cruel?
I’m not watching a vegan shock video.
If you disagree with me, you should be able to put in to words why you believe all instances (real and hypothetical) of keeping animals for the stated reasons should be considered cruel. If what I said is a strawman of your position, then you don’t disagree with what I meant to say.
It’s because fundamentally you are still commodifying whole living, thinking beings who have their own wills and lives they want to live. We need to reckon with the fact that it is unjust for us humans to think we have any right to declare other species of animals as property.
Ethical emotivism. A framework most people use, although few admit it.
Ethical emotivism isn’t a self-consistent ethical framework. It’s arguably not even an ethics system; it’s a philosophical attitude towards ethics as a field of study.
We don’t need animals to consume plants we can’t, because plant food is soooo goddamn more efficient on every metric. We can drastically reduce land, water and energy usage AND still feed way more people with plant foods. We simply do not need to eat animals.
Any form of “sustainable” animal farming I’ve read up on end up being still less resource efficient than plant foods, AND obviously massively reduced output. So we’re truly talking about vegan vs. an ounce of meat a week. That’s not a difference worth defending, considering the other obvious ethical issues.
Finally, why do you feel that it’s important to argue for “99%” veganism? Do you genuinely believe people don’t understand that less is better, but none is best? Do you apply the same argument to other ethical issues, like feminism? Being 99% feminist is a big improvement, but constantly arguing for it in favor of feminism (aka 100%) would obviously look ridiculous. Finally, don’t you realize the humongous difference between “we should abuse animals for our pleasure less” vs. “we shouldn’t do that”? A whole class of racism disappears if we get rid of the association between “animal” and “lesser moral consideration”.
why do you feel that it’s important to argue for “99%” veganism
This argument relies on false assumptions about my ethics and an incorrect representation of my position. First: I don’t want to reduce meat consumption/production by any specific ammount; I am currently unconvinced that removing domestic animals from food production entirely is maximally efficient, but think it’s clear that the current ammount of meat is unsustainable and thus must be reduced by some ammount that is currently unknown to me. Furthermore, I don’t believe that all living things qualify as “people” for moral considerations. Since I do not believe all living things are people unless proven otherwise, why should I consider all animals as people unless proven otherwise? There are certain animals that I consider to be people and thus give moral consideration equal to humans such as certain species of corvid, dolphins, elephants, and octopi which have demonstrated traits that make me believe they should qualify. In order to convince me, you need to either provide me an alternative definition of a person and demonstrate why it’s superior or to show me that all animals fit into my definition of person.
Edit: forgot to mention your other argument, but simply put it’s also off the mark. While I agree that eating plants directly is more efficient, that doesn’t address the thesis of my argument. So long as there exists circumstances such that we produce plant matter (as a waste product) that an animal can consume and humans do not in quantities sufficient to feed a stock of animals of some size including those animals in food production and feeding them the plant matter is more efficient than throwing away that plant matter. Your argument needs to be more robust.
Have fun eating grass, drinking nonpotable water and eating roots and stalks and rotting vegetables…you militant vegans are hilarious.
Yes because calling out the bullshit is a strawman, you might wanna go read your own links lol.
See above.
Yes you really told me, damn…thanks for the discussion you’ve changed my mind.
If you were open for a discussion and for the possibility to change your views, you wouldn’t have used bogus arguments. I just wanted to point those out, as it is probably meaningless to waste my time in a discussion with you anyway.
Lookup veganic farming, and veganic permaculture. The idea that animal ag has any place in combating global warming is demonstrably false, and was nothing more than a greenwashed hijacking of the other various regenerative agricultural movements. There is no room in neither a just world, or a sustainable one, for the exploitation and consumption of animals.
Sir you forget that in China there are pig condos
Most of the vegan food we grow is fed to animals, so we can eat them. Feeding and housing animals for food consumption purposes requires 83% of our total farmland, but produces only 18% of our calorific intake.
If the world went vegan, we’d only use 25% of the farm land we currently do, meaning we don’t need to use that “difficult to farm” land.
Unfortunately there is literally no valid argument against veganism. If there were, I wouldn’t be vegan.
You forgot, Work from Home.
and reforestation.
I feel that’s nested under veganism since consuming that way would leave far more land to be wild/reforested.
You need to actually plant and manage the forest. Letting fields go to fallow wont be enough. I’m talking about selecting tree species that grow fast and intake carbon at a higher rate then others and then cutting, processing, and replanting in a rotation pattern(so wild life and move from section to section).
Also, many people are vegans because of animal ethics or because it’s trendy, but aren’t really thinking about larger issues. Think of all the celebrities that are vegan, but fly private jets.
I’d like to see effort put into restoring the land back to how it was before our initial interventions. But I do think after that’s done, leaving it alone to allow wild animals to repopulate the area is probably right. That land was doing just fine before we came along.
Also, many people are vegans because of animal ethics or because it’s trendy, but aren’t really thinking about larger issues.
Most vegans would say they’re doing it for animal rights, yes. This doesn’t preclude vegans from caring about the other good reasons for going plant-based. At very least, carrying animal rights further, it makes sense that it would help animal welfare to repair some of the damage we’ve done.
One of the most visible vegans I know of talks about this so it’s definitely on vegan’s minds.
Think of all the celebrities that are vegan, but fly private jets.
Yeah that ain’t me or most vegans bud.
Yeah that ain’t me or most vegans bud.
I was just using them as a high visibility, well known example. No where did I say they represent the majority. Personally, I know many people who actually think plastic recycling works, so they don’t do anything to curb their plastic use. Many, many people take on one or two positive actions and are hyper proud of it. I know someone who’s super proud that his car gets above average mpg, but is constantly accelerating and braking and ruining his mpg. Covid response of people taking half measures and being proud of it.
I already have a second hand and telling people to grow a second hand just feels ableist to those who can’t. /j
20 years ago a few key technologies were still missing, like grid storage battery technology. But there are multiple promising ways now. Unfortunately lack of massive funding for research and development and patents means we’ll have to wait another 20 years to produce them really cheaply on the free market. Otherwise it would be unfair to the poor inventor! /s
Aren’t flywheel energy storages (invented by James Watt and improved over time) not suitable energy storages for electrical grids?
No, flywheel is not cheap enough and too complicated. Pumped hydro is cheapest, but only available at very few location. Lithium batteries are a waste or misappropriation (lithium should be recycled for mobile use) and there aren’t enough.
The two battery types that seem to work are liquid metal batteries that are made out of dirt cheap and abundant materials (although there might be problems there still), and flow batteries. Kite power also seems to provide more energy for less material costs (no huge foundations and towers needed).
There are also gravity batteries: https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/06/this-disused-mine-in-finland-is-being-turned-into-a-gravity-battery-to-store-renewable-ene
The gravity energy system would be able to store 2MW of power and integrate into the local energy grid. … Scientists from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) found that the world’s abandoned mine shafts could store up to 70TWh of power - roughly the equivalent of global daily electricity consumption.
Also in Finland, but different technology “sand batteries” https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61996520
Finnish researchers have installed the world’s first fully working “sand battery” which can store green power for months at a time.
The developers say this could solve the problem of year-round supply, a major issue for green energy.
Using low-grade sand, the device is charged up with heat made from cheap electricity from solar or wind. The sand stores the heat at around 500C, which can then warm homes in winter when energy is more expensive.
While I think there is still no working production model, Iron Salt Batteries are very promising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_redox_flow_battery
There are different options, not each one is suitable for every place, but seams possible that combination can help us achieve needed reduction in fossil fuel usage when sun is down and no wind.
Thanks for the links, sand sounds interesting. I believe gravity batteries outside of pumped hydro just need too much “structure” to store energy and then just have too little capacity. Unfortunately there is sometimes a little bit too much hype about cool ideas that don’t pan out. There is also an idea I think for an electric train / rail cars full of ballast being driven up a rail on a hill and then moving down to release electricity. Just a lot of effort.
And yeah thermal batteries should solve one of the biggest consumers, heating. Lots of possibilities. Molten salt works also. I think if you just use water to store heat for the winter you need about the size of a big Olympic swimming pool under your house. But with wind instead of solar you don’t even need to store that much.
An important thing I believe is that we have nearly unlimited access to energy with solar and wind turbines / kite power. It requires massive production efforts but you can extract so much energy from sunshine that efficiencies of batteries aren’t even that important. Just that you can use cheap and sustainable materials, can recycle them, and can have enough energy density.
So the possibilities are definitely there, but we really neglected to push R&D and massively fund multiple startups for each technology. And we need to suspend patents or drastically shorten their lifespan to like 4 years or so.
The main grid storage tech I’ve heard about recently relies on decade-old Nissan Leaf EV batteries that can be purchased second hand pretty cheaply (in comparison to brand new cells). Pretty neat way to repurpose them IMO.
It’s profitable, so I’m assuming it should be reasonably affordable for utility companies or local municipalities to build and own grid storage facilities in the near future
To be fair, a lot of the new technologies people talk about regarding this are some of these things, but improved. For instance, better batteries or solar cells, recent improvement to which has already had a pretty notable impact (for instance, better solar panels making solar energy cheaper, which makes even entities concerned only with profit more likely to adopt it.)
Usually it’s just an excuse to do nothing, hoping for a magical technology that saves us from all our problems
Thorium reactors are the Hyperloop of energy generation!
nuclear power should definitely be one of those technologies listed
The Problem with nuclear Power is, that there isn’t a guarantee for reasonable pricing. There simply isn’t any experience on how much it really costs to build new power plants.
If you want to take a deeper look into the topic: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/05/what-does-nuclear-power-really-cost/
Long-term not viable and lots of hidden costs.
Can you defend it on economic grounds, rather than outdated talking points used against Greenpeace in the 90s?
You mean like the economically grounded notion of having a survivable environment?
I mean that we have solutions that don’t have it’s history of cost and schedule overruns.
Plant-based plastic replacements. Everyone fails to create a universal kind but plastic in your shopping bag is different from plastic in a PET bottle.
Yeah plastic is next to impossible to recycle because there after so many kinds. We need to fully remove this shit from ALL packaging. I want biodegradable packaging for literally everything, AND hemp based materials for industrial.
HEMP
Im looking forward to the ant pizza from CyberPunk 2077.
No, seriously, I think it might actually taste good if you do it right.
What is that, a pizza for ants?!
🐜🇮🇹🍕🤌
