[DrCaleb]

peck420 peck420:

The problem is our thought process. Humans do not require 8oz of meat per day. We require protein. Which, our current food production systems (including those evil factory farms) produces far in excess of.

Much of the planet is already vegetarian. Whether it's for religious or economic reasons, many people get their protein from plants, and live quite full and healthy lives because of it.

Japan enjoys a lower rate of prostate and breast cancer than most of the western world. They also have a 5 year longer life expectancy than the US, and 10 years longer than China. This is because of their low consumption of animal proteins.

The China Study is an ongoing study on what happens when foods like meat are introduced into diets. Generally, rates of cancer, diabetes, and obesity rise. The only exception the China Study found was in Milk Whey protein. That actually promoted longer lives, and lower cancer risks!

We don't need meat to survive, and it does reduce our longevity. Once people get past the (I hesitate to say but) brainwashing that we need to eat meat and milk for healthy living, then they open themselves to a whole new delicious world!

[andyt]

Sorry, this is where i part with the greenies. Went vegetarian a few times in my life, always came back to meat. Life may be shorter, but it's better with meat.

[2Cdo]

andyt andyt:

Sorry, this is where i part with the greenies. Went vegetarian a few times in my life, always came back to meat. Life may be shorter, but it's better with meat.

Agreed, plus the fact that humans are designed to be omnivores. I don't eat as much red meat as I used to but there's nothing better than a bbq'ed steak.

[DrCaleb]

2Cdo 2Cdo:

andyt andyt:

Sorry, this is where i part with the greenies. Went vegetarian a few times in my life, always came back to meat. Life may be shorter, but it's better with meat.

Agreed, plus the fact that humans are designed to be omnivores. I don't eat as much red meat as I used to but there's nothing better than a bbq'ed steak.

I eat meat too, I just do it very rarely. I'm thinking salami sandwich from the Italian Center for lunch. It'll be the first meat and cheese I've had in 3 weeks.

[DrCaleb]

I'm also a lot more conscious of where my meat and eggs comes from. I prefer low production farms, specifically the Hutterites. Animals they raise tend to only have one bad day in their lives, otherwise they have pretty happy ones.

[BartSimpson]

2Cdo 2Cdo:

andyt andyt:

Sorry, this is where i part with the greenies. Went vegetarian a few times in my life, always came back to meat. Life may be shorter, but it's better with meat.

Agreed, plus the fact that humans are designed to be omnivores. I don't eat as much red meat as I used to but there's nothing better than a bbq'ed steak.

This. I cut way back on my red meat mostly because the meat isn't as good as it used to be. But when I do splurge for a decent steak there's a butcher in town that charges $26 per pound for 45-day-aged rib eye and that's the one I tend to go for.

Broiled with a little salt and black pepper.

[BeaverFever]

$1:

Not quite right. The planet doesn't need saving, it will still be here when we are long gone.

Yeah, it'll still be here....as a toxic lifeless rock.

$1:

Everyone's a taker though.

Exactly, the way we live today, it's like man's "original sin". It's impossible to not be a taker, we all have blood on our hands so to speak. All I'm asking is that people recognize that.

$1:

Ive never purchased a litre of gas in my life, I've lived in the city in apartments and taken transit, I'm going to eat my steak. Cameron can GFHS in his jet.

The planet isn't being destroyed by David Cameron's jet, or even all of the private jets of all the worlds wealthy elite. It's being destroyed by the system that supports us all, including feedlots. Pointing the finger at other people as a means of self-exoneration doesn't help. I'm not saying don't eat steak; I eat steak. But maybe you'll consider eating it less often and support changes to the factory farming system that does so much damage.

$1:

I said, people are just weapons in the quest for power and the push from forces behind that hippie is just as strong as the push from forces behind the oilfield worker.

Well I don't know if that's true because the force behind the oilfield worker is the oil industry, who wants to increase profits at any cost. What are the forces behind the hippie, trees who want to increase photosynthesis?

$1:

As for being cognizant of being a taker. I am and I'm not ashamed of it unlike that hypocritical section of society who claims they aren't but, when you look closely at their lifestyle discover that they're as destructive in their own way as any beef eating, truck driving, animal hunting, oil guzzling redneck to ever walk the planet. So, until they walk the walk all they're doing is talking the talk which is meaningless.

And for the record I agree with Thanos and andyt. Everyone of us is a "taker" in our own way and in most cases it's only circumstances which dictate how much of a pig we are capable of being.

Yes this is true, but is it still just an excuse to do nothing? It sounds like a dodge. For example, just because the president of MADD in PEI got caught drunk driving doesn't make it ok for PEIers to drink and drive until MADD "walks the walk".

So REGARDLESS of Cameron or anyone else's choices, each of us can choose to either be part of the solution, or part of the problem. Being part of the problem is almost always the cheaper and more convenient option. Pointing fingers at other people's failures or hypocrisy to me just sounds like an excuse to keep being part of the problem or recognize the role we all play in it.

Now do I live some kind of monastic lifestyle of self-imposed deprivation? I don't think so. Do I spend hours travelling to small farms to buy sustainable hamburger for $25 a pound? No. I'm willing to endure a little inconvenience and a little extra cost, but like everyone else, my time and money is finite so I have to make compromises.

But doing the right thing shouldn't require such a sacrifice. Unfortunately, this is the system we built, but it's a system we can change. Why can't I get non-feedlot beef in the grocery store, and for a reasonable price? Not because the laws of physics prevent that from happening, but because the industry just currently isn't set up to deliver it that way. It will come, I think.

Sustainability only became a widespread social concept in the last 10-15 years or so and the people born in this millenium will be the first to fully grow up with it. I suspect that they will approach things very differently than we do as a result. For the rest of us, it seems like it's an old dog, new tricks phenomenon because we didn't really grow up with it. When we grew up, pollution was considered little more than a eyesore and a byproduct of "progress". Environmentalists were nutty left-over hippies who lived in the forest, wore hand-made clothes, and chained themselves to trees. We grew up in the age where "disposable" products - razors, diapers, pens, lighters etc. were celebrated as marvels of convenience. "Disposable" doesn't mean biodegradable or anything, it only means that it costs so little you can throw it in the garbage when you're done without a second thought. We grew up celebrating waste, or at least being blind to it. I don't think the next generation will be the same.

[2Cdo]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

$1:

Not quite right. The planet doesn't need saving, it will still be here when we are long gone.

Yeah, it'll still be here....as a toxic lifeless rock.

Not likely, life of some sort will survive. It's beyond ridiculous to think we can "kill" the planet, we can only kill ourselves.

[BeaverFever]

Well sure, but we'll definitely take of lot of the earth's plant and animal species with us when we go

[andyt]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Well sure, but we'll definitely take of lot of the earth's plant and animal species with us when we go

Well, we've had global warming before, tho maybe not as rapidly. The planet will do just fine if we go. We're not as powerful as we like to think.

[2Cdo]

andyt andyt:

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Well sure, but we'll definitely take of lot of the earth's plant and animal species with us when we go

Well, we've had global warming before, tho maybe not as rapidly. The planet will do just fine if we go. We're not as powerful as we like to think.

Exactly.

[Thanos]

It would be nice though if our final legacy wasn't that we were wildly successful at exterminating most of the other creatures on the planet. There are good human individuals. As a world-spanning collective though? There's about as much inherent good in the overall human mass as there is in an incurable form of cancer or a runaway AIDS epidemic. We have the brain power to stop behaving this way but it's highly unlikely that we'll ever do so, and therein lies the entire tragedy of us as a specie.

[BeaverFever]

Thanos Thanos:

It would be nice though if our final legacy wasn't that we were wildly successful at exterminating most of the other creatures on the planet. There are good human individuals. As a world-spanning collective though? There's about as much inherent good in the overall human mass as there is in an incurable form of cancer or a runaway AIDS epidemic. We have the brain power to stop behaving this way but it's highly unlikely that we'll ever do so, and therein lies the entire tragedy of us as a specie.

Exactly.

[andyt]

As a collective we've so far shown we're no different than yeast. Neither good nor bad, but breeding to the limits of our environment. We'll see if we can really do better than other organisms in this regard.

[Lemmy]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

The planet isn't being destroyed by David Cameron's jet, or even all of the private jets of all the worlds wealthy elite. It's being destroyed by the system that supports us all, including feedlots. Pointing the finger at other people as a means of self-exoneration doesn't help. I'm not saying don't eat steak; I eat steak. But maybe you'll consider eating it less often and support changes to the factory farming system that does so much damage.

$1:

I said, people are just weapons in the quest for power and the push from forces behind that hippie is just as strong as the push from forces behind the oilfield worker.

Well I don't know if that's true because the force behind the oilfield worker is the oil industry, who wants to increase profits at any cost. What are the forces behind the hippie, trees who want to increase photosynthesis?

$1:

As for being cognizant of being a taker. I am and I'm not ashamed of it unlike that hypocritical section of society who claims they aren't but, when you look closely at their lifestyle discover that they're as destructive in their own way as any beef eating, truck driving, animal hunting, oil guzzling redneck to ever walk the planet. So, until they walk the walk all they're doing is talking the talk which is meaningless.

And for the record I agree with Thanos and andyt. Everyone of us is a "taker" in our own way and in most cases it's only circumstances which dictate how much of a pig we are capable of being.

Yes this is true, but is it still just an excuse to do nothing? It sounds like a dodge. For example, just because the president of MADD in PEI got caught drunk driving doesn't make it ok for PEIers to drink and drive until MADD "walks the walk".

So REGARDLESS of Cameron or anyone else's choices, each of us can choose to either be part of the solution, or part of the problem. Being part of the problem is almost always the cheaper and more convenient option. Pointing fingers at other people's failures or hypocrisy to me just sounds like an excuse to keep being part of the problem or recognize the role we all play in it.

Now do I live some kind of monastic lifestyle of self-imposed deprivation? I don't think so. Do I spend hours travelling to small farms to buy sustainable hamburger for $25 a pound? No. I'm willing to endure a little inconvenience and a little extra cost, but like everyone else, my time and money is finite so I have to make compromises.

But doing the right thing shouldn't require such a sacrifice. Unfortunately, this is the system we built, but it's a system we can change. Why can't I get non-feedlot beef in the grocery store, and for a reasonable price? Not because the laws of physics prevent that from happening, but because the industry just currently isn't set up to deliver it that way. It will come, I think.

Sustainability only became a widespread social concept in the last 10-15 years or so and the people born in this millenium will be the first to fully grow up with it. I suspect that they will approach things very differently than we do as a result. For the rest of us, it seems like it's an old dog, new tricks phenomenon because we didn't really grow up with it. When we grew up, pollution was considered little more than a eyesore and a byproduct of "progress". Environmentalists were nutty left-over hippies who lived in the forest, wore hand-made clothes, and chained themselves to trees. We grew up in the age where "disposable" products - razors, diapers, pens, lighters etc. were celebrated as marvels of convenience. "Disposable" doesn't mean biodegradable or anything, it only means that it costs so little you can throw it in the garbage when you're done without a second thought. We grew up celebrating waste, or at least being blind to it. I don't think the next generation will be the same.