Apparently the UK is being punished for Brexit and that’s why the ECHR is being difficult .
More threats to leave the ECHR , what an absolute cesspit this government have become .
Yes, they should follow your advice and pursue a "White Britain" policy, favouring white European migrants over the duskier types from elsewhere
I never said that and I won’t take lectures from a Trump supporter.
Odd that people automatically assume that European migrants would be white, particularly as eg France and Germany take many more ‘dusky’ asylum seekers etc than the UK. Of course they also have existing populations whose origins are North Africa and Turkish. Not sure if they count as dusky on the bigots’ colour chart.
North Africa and Turkey probably count as Caucasian in its broadest sense.
The social challenges it throws up are probably more religious as opposed to racial ones tbh, although the two end up getting conflated.
Indeed, people may choose to tick the white (other) box on the census form in that situation.
Meat tastes too good to be “bad for you” (it may be bad for the planet but that’s a different issue)
I can recall when margarine was sold as the “healthy” alternative to butter. Now we all realise margarine is hideous processed crap and butter is wholesome and fine (in moderation)
But I always knew this because butter tastes good and margarine tastes like weirdly liquidised cockroach
I always liked margarine as its easy to spread and butter isn't.
But I now by spreadable butter, that comes in a tub like marge does. I believe its just butter with extra oils added to make it easy to spread, I don't completely understand it but its much nicer than margarine and easier to spread than solid butter so I'm fine with it.
Most spreadable "butter", like Lurpak's, has some veg oil added to make it... well, more spreadable. But's it's mostly butter, so it tastes more like butter than margarine.
M&S spreadable butter is just carefully selected butter, so it tastes exactly like butter, being exactly butter, but it's not as spreadable as the former category.
Meat tastes too good to be “bad for you” (it may be bad for the planet but that’s a different issue)
I can recall when margarine was sold as the “healthy” alternative to butter. Now we all realise margarine is hideous processed crap and butter is wholesome and fine (in moderation)
But I always knew this because butter tastes good and margarine tastes like weirdly liquidised cockroach
I'm not entirely sure the "tastes good = good for you" equation holds up.
I.e. Coca Cola.
You just need an exquisitely refined palate. No biggie
I do accept there are limitations to the argument but on the whole we have developed mmm/yuk enjoyment/disgust reflexes for a reason. They are nature’s way of telling you what to eat
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Which is amusing, considering the entire EU is red, or over 165g. Every single country, except for the Netherlands which is so small I nearly missed it. And its mainly poorer countries that are not red pretty much.
We should be seeking to raise the planet up to our standards.
Go for a Mediterranean diet. Spain has 275g as an average, we should strive to raise our living standards, and the planets, up to that standard.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
Meat tastes too good to be “bad for you” (it may be bad for the planet but that’s a different issue)
I can recall when margarine was sold as the “healthy” alternative to butter. Now we all realise margarine is hideous processed crap and butter is wholesome and fine (in moderation)
But I always knew this because butter tastes good and margarine tastes like weirdly liquidised cockroach
Most things that taste good do so because we evolved in an environment where those things were scarce but efficient energy stores; so marrows and fats would be good in a setting where you have a small amount rarely. We are no longer in such a scarcity environment - humans have transformed the globe to cater to our needs.
Meat tastes too good to be “bad for you” (it may be bad for the planet but that’s a different issue)
I can recall when margarine was sold as the “healthy” alternative to butter. Now we all realise margarine is hideous processed crap and butter is wholesome and fine (in moderation)
But I always knew this because butter tastes good and margarine tastes like weirdly liquidised cockroach
Butter contains saturated fats and raises your cholesterol.
Many types of margarine used to contain trans-unsaturated ("trans") fats which are bad for you, but most types sold in the "advanced" world today don't.
Something like low-fat olive margarine is fine. It is healthier than butter. So is sunflower margarine. Agreed that butter tastes nicer, but there's a genetic factor in taste and the life expectancy at birth in the palaeolithic was about 33. It's not true that doing everything we fancy does us good.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Meat tastes too good to be “bad for you” (it may be bad for the planet but that’s a different issue)
I can recall when margarine was sold as the “healthy” alternative to butter. Now we all realise margarine is hideous processed crap and butter is wholesome and fine (in moderation)
But I always knew this because butter tastes good and margarine tastes like weirdly liquidised cockroach
I'm not entirely sure the "tastes good = good for you" equation holds up.
I.e. Coca Cola.
It doesn't. To simplify...
What tastes good is partly hardwired: we like sweet and fatty, we don't like bitter. When food is scarce, eating sweet and fatty things is good for you. With modern food plenty, we eat too many sweet and fatty foods and this is bad for you.
But what tastes good is also learnt. To quote Genesis, "I know what I like / And I like what I know". We like what we know and we don't like what we don't know. That's a sensible survival strategy when you're foraging for food in the wild, but makes us unnecessarily picky eaters in the modern world. I don't want to eat a toasted cockroach (as available in parts of the world) because I didn't grow up eating toasted cockroaches, but toasted cockroaches are perfectly good for me or you, and people who are used to them like them.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
Or a healthier diet, like Spain's 275g.
Go Mediterranean. Eat plenty of meat, cheese, olives etc - cut out more of the processed carb crap.
We should seek to raise our living standards and the planets. That means much more meat.
No.10: The man who made a name for himself for a 'plain speaking' style is being bluntly honest about a failure? Who could have seen that coming?
If you know absolutely nothing about the country you govern you put someone like Lee Anderson in a position to speak to it on your behalf.
Anderson is there to do the Prescott role John Prescott fulfilled in the Blair years. Reach parts of the electorate and supporter base the leadership cannot.
We all know about John Prescott's reach...
Whilst it's clear that Anderson has that role, the harder question is whether he is any good at it. Or if it's another bit of uncomprehending cosplay.
He isn't meant to appeal to wets.
He is meant to appeal to the base. He does that far better than most here understand.
Creating a fuss about this issue is like the 350m. It causes wets to support the outcry, and the public to think 'hmmm actually I'm not sure I like the boats arriving either'.
As with Prescott, there is a balance here.
I am sure Anderson chimes with quite a few red wall voters, so I get it in that respect. But he's a liability in Surrey, I suspect, and the Conservatives also have to worry about different types of seat.
With Prescott, Blair was very careful to make clear that, whilst Prescott was within his big tent, Blair remained the ringmaster. He also made sure Prescott, for all his bluff and bluster, was actually pretty moderate and malleable. He didn't try the same trick with Red Ken, or Derek Hatton, or Jeremy Corbyn, who were impossible to tame.
The risk for the Tories with people like Anderson is, firstly, that he isn't very moderate and malleable - he's a zealot. Secondly, with Sunak being quite a passive figure (as you identify), there is a danger Anderson is seen as being in charge, which some may like but is a real problem in more traditional Tory seats.
Tory voters in Surrey as just as likely to agree more with Anderson than the lib-labs; this is something that people who don't knock on doors day in day out find so difficult to understand.
Voters want the impossible.
They want compassion for genuine victims of torture and repression. They want the boats to stop. They want cheap car washes and meals at restaurants. And they want the government to spend less money on things like the immigration service, so they can have lower taxes.
How do you press all those buttons at once? And how do you avoid preaching to the choir?
If two thirds of Tory voters in Surrey agree with Mr Anderson, then that's still not great for them. Because the Conservatives need to be reaching out from beyond their comfort zone.
Meat tastes too good to be “bad for you” (it may be bad for the planet but that’s a different issue)
I can recall when margarine was sold as the “healthy” alternative to butter. Now we all realise margarine is hideous processed crap and butter is wholesome and fine (in moderation)
But I always knew this because butter tastes good and margarine tastes like weirdly liquidised cockroach
I always liked margarine as its easy to spread and butter isn't.
But I now by spreadable butter, that comes in a tub like marge does. I believe its just butter with extra oils added to make it easy to spread, I don't completely understand it but its much nicer than margarine and easier to spread than solid butter so I'm fine with it.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
Again, the citation I provided talks about 90g being too much and aiming it to 70g and other discussion of protein mentions pulses or non-animal sources.
If the issue is about protein consumption - which seems to be the case - that is also not the same as meat. I'm veggie who leans towards vegan (I'll occasionally have cheese and eggs, but maybe once or twice a week), and I'm not saying everyone must be vegan; I'm saying that if the issue is making sure people get the food they need we can do that much more environmentally sustainably (even allowing for some meat occasionally) with the amount we produce now being better redistributed. Would that require some people to eat less meat; yes.
To make sure I am understanding this argument. let me ask this basic question: The air and water in the United States are less polluted now than they were thirty or forty years ago. Significantly.
I assume the same is true of the UK. Or am I wrong, 148grss?
(As bad as air pollution is in China, it does appear to be improving: https://www.iqair.com/us/china At one time, one of the most popular web sites in Beijing was the US embassy's air quality report.)
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
We currently have more than enough food to feed everyone in the world - it is just that some parts of the world eat much more than they need (calorifically) and foods that are much more resource intensive (like rare beefs) and others starve. I'm not arguing for a world where people are only allowed the scientifically necessary amount of food - just one where no one is starving. If we just up food production and consumption that still leaves a highly damaging and inefficient food economy. The same can be said for healthcare and education - resources pointed at the needs of the few at the expense of the many.
If your contention is we should just produce more stuff so more people can have the stuff, I completely disagree, because to produce that much more stuff than we already have under the systems we currently have means increasing the damage to the environment. Whereas, with the systems we already have, we could choose to give poor people more of the existing stuff at the loss of the people who hoard the levers of control over that stuff at the same time as making changes to reduce the negative impact on the environment of stuff accumulation. (I said stuff too many times there).
We have the means to currently do these things - it is the dedication to allowing certain special people to live like gods that creates the circumstances where others live in squalor.
Yes, too many people get their calories from unhealthy means like sugar, rather than healthier proteins like beef.
We need to be in a position where everyone in the planet can consume as much beef and other healthy proteins as they want, without harming the planet and without anyone starving.
To do that, means a much higher level of production than exists today.
Getting all your calories from protein is not a good idea ... for one thing, there is an absolute minimum requirement for glucose (admittedly small, and digestible from various sugars or carbohydrates). Ditto fats and lipids.
I don't know anyone who gets all their calories from protein, nor did I advise you should.
I said too much coming from processed carbs is the problem, and it is.
Its concerning still that "healthy" foods in the supermarket are still typically those advertised as "fat free" when we know now that it isn't fats that make you fat, that some fat is good for you, and almost all of those "fat free" products contain much higher sugar levels.
And people who struggle with their weight wonder why they continue to struggle when they're eating fat free foods and drinking diet soft drinks.
A balanced diet is needed, and that includes a good amount of protein. Which is expensive, and not everyone can afford. We need to develop more as a planet to change that so everyone can afford as much healthy proteins as they want, rather than relying upon cheaper, crappy, processed carbs and sugars instead.
You sdaid 'calories from protein' then added 'like beef' ias a qualifier/example. Not what your reply says.
Sure, meat is more complex than protein - it has fat and some carbohydrate - but that's not the same thing as protein tout court, and you appeared to be preaching crank nonsense. Good that you aren't.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
To make sure I am understanding this argument. let me ask this basic question: The air and water in the United States are less polluted now than they were thirty or forty years ago. Significantly.
I assume the same is true of the UK. Or am I wrong, 148grss?
(As bad as air pollution is in China, it does appear to be improving: https://www.iqair.com/us/china At one time, one of the most popular web sites in Beijing was the US embassy's air quality report.)
That is generally true - it was the outcome of heavily regulating businesses on the kinds of pollutants they could put in the air and water.
These regulations have been under attack in recent years, with the UK now allowing sewage into water ways and SCOTUS rolling back the scope of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.
(They are being held back by Green superstition, especially in Europe. I do my small bit to counter that by avoiding products that advertise that they are free of GMOs. It is disgraceful, for example, for General Mills to appeal to superstition that way.
I assume most of you know that nearly all our foods come from plants and animals that have been genetically modified, the main exception being wild-caught sea food. Teosinte is my favorite example.)
(They are being held back by Green superstition, especially in Europe. I do my small bit to counter that by avoiding products that advertise that they are free of GMOs. It is disgraceful, for example, for General Mills to appeal to superstition that way.
I assume most of you know that nearly all our foods come from plants and animals that have been genetically modified, the main exception being wild-caught sea food. Teosinte is my favorite example.)
Indeed: in the old days, scientists would use nuclear reactors to "encourage" genetic mutations and would then see which worked best.
Meat tastes too good to be “bad for you” (it may be bad for the planet but that’s a different issue)
I can recall when margarine was sold as the “healthy” alternative to butter. Now we all realise margarine is hideous processed crap and butter is wholesome and fine (in moderation)
But I always knew this because butter tastes good and margarine tastes like weirdly liquidised cockroach
I always liked margarine as its easy to spread and butter isn't.
But I now by spreadable butter, that comes in a tub like marge does. I believe its just butter with extra oils added to make it easy to spread, I don't completely understand it but its much nicer than margarine and easier to spread than solid butter so I'm fine with it.
And to think, you could have saved yourself years of margarine simply by investing in a butter dish.
Top tip, worthy of Viz magazine.
Ditto: keep most of your butter in the fridge and only have a quarter chunk or so out in the butter dish at room temperature.
To make sure I am understanding this argument. let me ask this basic question: The air and water in the United States are less polluted now than they were thirty or forty years ago. Significantly.
I assume the same is true of the UK. Or am I wrong, 148grss?
(As bad as air pollution is in China, it does appear to be improving: https://www.iqair.com/us/china At one time, one of the most popular web sites in Beijing was the US embassy's air quality report.)
That is generally true - it was the outcome of heavily regulating businesses on the kinds of pollutants they could put in the air and water.
These regulations have been under attack in recent years, with the UK now allowing sewage into water ways and SCOTUS rolling back the scope of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.
Actually our standards are ever-improving, as they should be.
The UK allows far less sewage into the water ways than it did decades ago, not more.
But don't let facts get in the way of your prejudices.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
(They are being held back by Green superstition, especially in Europe. I do my small bit to counter that by avoiding products that advertise that they are free of GMOs. It is disgraceful, for example, for General Mills to appeal to superstition that way.
I assume most of you know that nearly all our foods come from plants and animals that have been genetically modified, the main exception being wild-caught sea food. Teosinte is my favorite example.)
See, my dislike of GMOs has little to do with the idea of "frankenfood" - I agree that selective breeding is just the slow version of GMO.
The issue is the business practices of the companies behind GMO food - especially in the US. If this is all in the hands of private companies and is treated like private intellectual property (as I'm sure Gates will demand it is, like the vaccine before it) then it will only help people insofar as it makes people a load of money.
A row has erupted among senior Conservatives as a cabinet minister rebuked the party’s deputy chairman for claiming the government had failed to tackle illegal immigration....
"Look Lee, you're not supposed to say it out loud!!"
Whoever made the comparison to John Prescott had a point.
To make sure I am understanding this argument. let me ask this basic question: The air and water in the United States are less polluted now than they were thirty or forty years ago. Significantly.
I assume the same is true of the UK. Or am I wrong, 148grss?
(As bad as air pollution is in China, it does appear to be improving: https://www.iqair.com/us/china At one time, one of the most popular web sites in Beijing was the US embassy's air quality report.)
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
And some of us simply sling some lentils or beans into the soup or curry if we want herbivore-friendly protein.
No.10: The man who made a name for himself for a 'plain speaking' style is being bluntly honest about a failure? Who could have seen that coming?
If you know absolutely nothing about the country you govern you put someone like Lee Anderson in a position to speak to it on your behalf.
Anderson is there to do the Prescott role John Prescott fulfilled in the Blair years. Reach parts of the electorate and supporter base the leadership cannot.
We all know about John Prescott's reach...
Whilst it's clear that Anderson has that role, the harder question is whether he is any good at it. Or if it's another bit of uncomprehending cosplay.
He isn't meant to appeal to wets.
He is meant to appeal to the base. He does that far better than most here understand.
Creating a fuss about this issue is like the 350m. It causes wets to support the outcry, and the public to think 'hmmm actually I'm not sure I like the boats arriving either'.
As with Prescott, there is a balance here.
I am sure Anderson chimes with quite a few red wall voters, so I get it in that respect. But he's a liability in Surrey, I suspect, and the Conservatives also have to worry about different types of seat.
With Prescott, Blair was very careful to make clear that, whilst Prescott was within his big tent, Blair remained the ringmaster. He also made sure Prescott, for all his bluff and bluster, was actually pretty moderate and malleable. He didn't try the same trick with Red Ken, or Derek Hatton, or Jeremy Corbyn, who were impossible to tame.
The risk for the Tories with people like Anderson is, firstly, that he isn't very moderate and malleable - he's a zealot. Secondly, with Sunak being quite a passive figure (as you identify), there is a danger Anderson is seen as being in charge, which some may like but is a real problem in more traditional Tory seats.
Tory voters in Surrey as just as likely to agree more with Anderson than the lib-labs; this is something that people who don't knock on doors day in day out find so difficult to understand.
Voters want the impossible.
They want compassion for genuine victims of torture and repression. They want the boats to stop. They want cheap car washes and meals at restaurants. And they want the government to spend less money on things like the immigration service, so they can have lower taxes.
How do you press all those buttons at once? And how do you avoid preaching to the choir?
If two thirds of Tory voters in Surrey agree with Mr Anderson, then that's still not great for them. Because the Conservatives need to be reaching out from beyond their comfort zone.
Good afternoon
Jenrick suggesting the party will campaign at the next GE to leave the ECHR is as politically suicidal as it gets
Jenrick and others have absolutely no political awareness whatsoever, and hopefully their constituents will put them out of office at GE24
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
A plant-based burger is a plant-based burger. Let's look at the ingredients: Sweetcorn (16%), Red Kidney Beans (15%), Red Peppers (15%), Black Turtle Beans (12%), Caramelised White Onions (10%) [White Onions, Muscovado Sugar, Sunflower Oil], Water, Rapeseed Oil, Pea Protein, Tomato Purée, Rice Flour, Stabilisers (Methyl Cellulose, Sodium Alginate), Chickpea Flour, Coriander, Pea Fibre, Garlic, Red Jalapeno Peppers, Sugar, Spices, Salt, Flavourings, Green Jalapeno Peppers, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Cornflour, Lemon Peel, Habanero Chilli Purée, Herbs, Dextrose
You said, "Vegan food, especially vegan meat alternatives, is all processed carbs." What you presented is not all carbs: there's 17g of protein and fat versus 14g of carbs. What you've presented is some vegetables/pulses mushed together into a burger shape. It's not a vegan meat alternative. A vegan meat alternative would be something like TVP, seitan or tofu.
Sunak has bigger problems than Anderson, personnel wise. Shapps and Cleverly are both far more personable and charismatic.
When he is flailing in the polls and another 1000 Tory councillors have lost, who then will support him?
Who will support him? Shapps and Cleverly for a start.
You have a theory based on concern from the Tory membership/councillor base that Sunak hasn't got what it takes to turn this around.
I get that, but where you run into problems is that enough of the MPs have decided that the Sunak/Hunt approach of trying to avoid further market chaos whilst throwing out a bit of red meat on immigration, ULEZ etc is the only prospect of limiting losses. They've lashed themselves to the mast, the world king across the water is now an ex-MP, and anyone vaguely credible is resigned to sit it out, survive the election, and stand for leader of the opposition (a much better position than taking the poison chalice with weeks left in the term).
So I just don't see the realistic mechanism for you to get what you want this side of an election.
My feeling is the membership are usually 9 months ahead of the MPs on this.
MPs panic close to an election when polls are low. They'll push the button when they realise they're going to lose their seats otherwise.
Quite a few Tory MPs are standing down, quite a few won't in fact lose their seats (in the 1997 massacre only just over half did), and quite a few who are in serious danger will conclude that defenestration with weeks to go makes their prospects worse not better.
Quite apart from that, is who will take on the job in that situation. All the best candidates will sit on their hands until after the election, leaving a choice between maniacs and incredibly pompous, unappealing Sir Bufton Tufton types answering the nation's call at time of crisis.
I see your frustration, but I don't see how it realistically resolves in the way you describe.
Politics happens very slowly, then all at once.
Local donors will start drying up (this is how Tory MP's election campaign funds are secured), numbers of leaflet deliverers will dry up, councillors will be down.
Plus, come October, the 1 year moratorium on VONC within the PCP expires. It could be there are already a good number in; and every by election lost makes the threshold easier to reach.
Firstly, this assumes Sunak will push a General Election it beyond next May (and a further loss of councillors). I know that's a fairly widespread assumption, but I'm not sure. It's not a great round of elections for the Tories and, particularly if he does feel under any pressure, I think he'll chance it.
Secondly, I think enough Tory activists and donors either quite like Sunak or will stick with it come what may. As with the Lib Dems in 2015, on the ground and in local parties of threatened MPs, there is some rallying round. It may well not save seats - it didn't for the Lib Dems in 2015 - but actually in a backs-to-the-wall situation, quite a lot of people fight rather than take flight. Even being very cynical, if you're an ambitious Tory in the seat of an under-threat MP, you help them man the barricades and come out with a lot of credit as well as a vacancy.
Thirdly, there isn't a great deal of evidence of letters being planned or going in. Maybe there are behind the scenes, and maybe people are bring quiet, but there does need to be some noise to get momentum.
Finally, and crucially, a VONC needs to pass by a majority. I know Johnson went having survived a VONC, but that was through a further scandal and mass resignations. That's just not happening with Sunak - he's not likely to be embroiled in a scandal and his cabinet have either bought into his project or decided to wait until after the election as being disloyal isn't a winning formula.
Every Tory leader since Major who has survived a VONC hasn't survived the year....
The year counting from next may, runs in to ragnarok. This is like a dinosaur 65m and 1 years ago agonizing over whether its diet is the one most likely to ensure its longevity.
Secondly, it is beyond bonkers to think that HM might refuse a dissolution following the Lascelles principles. They and the SA and Canada cases referred to by Lascelles were immediately post GE crises, with a real issue as to what happens for the next 5 years, not at the fag end of a government. Apart from that, we have conventions about conventions in our wacky non codified constitution and the convention is not to put HMK in a spot where he has to make a political decision. If the tories start buggering him about (and it would have to be anti sunakite tories asking him to refuse) the punishment doled out by the electorate at GE 24 or 25 won't be KT, it will be end Permian. It would literally destroy the party. No decade in the wilderness and triumphant return under dishface.
To make sure I am understanding this argument. let me ask this basic question: The air and water in the United States are less polluted now than they were thirty or forty years ago. Significantly.
I assume the same is true of the UK. Or am I wrong, 148grss?
(As bad as air pollution is in China, it does appear to be improving: https://www.iqair.com/us/china At one time, one of the most popular web sites in Beijing was the US embassy's air quality report.)
In terms on non CO2? In nearly every way. Apart from an issue with plastics, I think.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
I am happy with that position - that's why I originally said aiming for meat every other day or two/three days a week. That's why I am personally a flexible vegan that will occasionally eat cheese or egg. I have not said in this thread that we should produce no meat; just that with the current meat production we have we could redistribute the meat we have so poorer populations could have more meat in their diets without actually increasing meat production globally.
A friend of mine who doesn't live in the UK told me this morning that he thought asylum seekers should be dumped on a beach in northern France and told to f-off.
Every right-minded and decent person on here should lament this toxic war, almost exclusively being generated by the hard right (in the past the far left have been FAR from blameless).
It will take years and years to repair the damage and we may never do so. Look at the awful state of the US right now, largely courtesy of Trump and co.
It behoves us all to dial down the hatred and rhetoric.
xx
Agreed. I think that relatively few people are now much offended by "fuck" (as a casual read on PB comments illustrates). They are still sympathetic to the more obviously vulnerable refugees, and I'd think that a PPB could reasonably use imagery from children fleeing from conflict zones interposed by "Tories say 'luck off' to them - is that what you want to hear from our Government?". But it's probably best to simply ignore him, in the same way as you'd ignore a drunk in a bus station.
His wording is coarse. Nonetheless it is true that these people are meant to be fleeing for their lives. When they're fleeing for their lives, I don't see how being accommodated on a warm, safe barge with food provided can be considered a particular misfortune.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
You are making the word "processed" do a lot of work.
But anyway vegetarians don't have to get our proteins from processed sources. Easy enough to cook lentils and beans etc.
Does the SNP approve of abusing women? Opponents of the party’s extreme views on transgender rights have long highlighted the poor quality of debate in Scotland, but remarks by a leading SNP politician provide dramatic evidence of a hostile climate towards outspoken women. Mhairi Black, Deputy Leader of the party at Westminster, has dismissed women who disagree with her views on transgender rights as “50-year-old Karens”. …
With honourable exceptions such as Black’s Westminster colleague Joanna Cherry, the SNP’s behaviour has come to resemble that of a religious sect. Either you agree that human beings can change sex, and should be allowed to do so legally even if they have been charged with rape, or you are beyond the pale — a “bad actor”, to quote Black.
A belief in biological sex is now heresy in nationalist circles.
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
I suggest you look up how homo sapiens evolved their bigger heavier brains in the first place, and the diet that contributed to that.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Immigration to solve the labour crisis for low skilled jobs is ultimately a poor solution - low end jobs should be automated.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
How is a vegetarian defined for the purpose of that statistic?
On topic, the guy is clearly manoeuvring himself into an authoritarian-right rentagob. After all, he could yet lose his seat and will need work after.
Sunak ought to suspend him, or at least there should be some kind of consequence. Really, this isn’t how elected people ought to be behaving. But I doubt he will.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
Nevertheless, meat does contain a whole host of valuable micronutrients in their densest and most digestible form. That's why we have eaten a mixed diet for eons. 'Taste-alikes' may have similar macronutrients, eg 'this much protein, this much fat', but that totally overlooks the quality of those proteins and fats, the complement of enzymes and amino acids and minerals that are completely missing from a slab of processed soy that are present in meat in exactly the quantities the human body needs.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
I suggest you look up how homo sapiens evolved their bigger heavier brains in the first place, and the diet that contributed to that.
Biology isn't interested in your ideology.
The process of how an organism evolves does not equate to how that organism needs to live.
To evolve the way we did, humans needed meat.
To live, we don't. Humans have transformed the Earth to such a degree that many of the things we evolved to do are no longer necessary.
For example, I remember being moaned at by university security for climbing in a tree one day on campus when I was a student - with the security guard saying something along the lines of "it ain't natural". To which I replied "why do you think we have thumbs?". We could choose to sleep in trees again, if we wished, but we don't.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
How is a vegetarian defined for the purpose of that statistic?
The dataset will be crucial here.
I suspect overconsumption of meat feeding into obesity, diabetes and heart disease reduces lifespan and alters the statistics, rather than meat per say.
And this won't flag up malnourishment or hip fracture issues that vegans/vegetarians can suffer which might mean they live a lower quality of life for slightly longer.
Again, solution: eat a sensible amount of high quality meat as part of a balanced diet.
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Immigration to solve the labour crisis for low skilled jobs is ultimately a poor solution - low end jobs should be automated.
Fruit picking is for machines, and soon will be.
In a full employment economy, rising wages should lead to the replacement of labour with capital in the medium term.
Machines have been able to wash cars and make coffee for a while now. Leave hand washing of cars to professional detailers, and hand making of coffee to fancy hotel lobby lounges.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
How is a vegetarian defined for the purpose of that statistic?
I'd like to see @Peck's research for that claim. The last time we had a big discussion on this topic the research on the issue showed that overall morbidity in vegetarians and non-vegetarians was the same, which given that vegetarianism tends to be a middle class fad, indicates an advantage to meat eating, all things being equal.
On topic, the guy is clearly manoeuvring himself into an authoritarian-right rentagob. After all, he could yet lose his seat and will need work after.
Sunak ought to suspend him, or at least there should be some kind of consequence. Really, this isn’t how elected people ought to be behaving. But I doubt he will.
If he does get suspended I bet it will more likely be for saying the government has failed than it will be for his go back comments.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Not really sure what the argument is here tbh. Some things eat meat? Yes. Dead animals get consumed by carrion-eaters and/or decompose? Also, yes.
Neither is an argument against humans eating a plant-based diet.
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Immigration to solve the labour crisis for low skilled jobs is ultimately a poor solution - low end jobs should be automated.
Fruit picking is for machines, and soon will be.
In a full employment economy, rising wages should lead to the replacement of labour with capital in the medium term.
Machines have been able to wash cars and make coffee for a while now. Leave hand washing of cars to professional detailers, and hand making of coffee to fancy hotel lobby lounges.
And hand carving wooden spoons is for weird hipsters. Use a machine the way God and Marc Brunel intended.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
Wherever we stand in this tedious and pointless debate, can we at least agree that "beef burger" is an abomination? It is a hamburger, and not because it contains ham.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
How is a vegetarian defined for the purpose of that statistic?
Tend to be a bit suspicious of these things from the old correlation/causation pov.
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Immigration to solve the labour crisis for low skilled jobs is ultimately a poor solution - low end jobs should be automated.
Fruit picking is for machines, and soon will be.
In a full employment economy, rising wages should lead to the replacement of labour with capital in the medium term.
Machines have been able to wash cars and make coffee for a while now. Leave hand washing of cars to professional detailers, and hand making of coffee to fancy hotel lobby lounges.
And hand carving wooden spoons is for weird hipsters. Use a machine the way God and Marc Brunel intended.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Not really sure what the argument is here tbh. Some things eat meat? Yes. Dead animals get consumed by carrion-eaters and/or decompose? Also, yes.
Neither is an argument against humans eating a plant-based diet.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
Is that not just another symptom of capitalist profligacy? You could be using that compost to grow your own fruit and vegetables.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
I suggest you look up how homo sapiens evolved their bigger heavier brains in the first place, and the diet that contributed to that.
Biology isn't interested in your ideology.
The process of how an organism evolves does not equate to how that organism needs to live.
To evolve the way we did, humans needed meat.
To live, we don't. Humans have transformed the Earth to such a degree that many of the things we evolved to do are no longer necessary.
For example, I remember being moaned at by university security for climbing in a tree one day on campus when I was a student - with the security guard saying something along the lines of "it ain't natural". To which I replied "why do you think we have thumbs?". We could choose to sleep in trees again, if we wished, but we don't.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
Is that not just another symptom of capitalist profligacy? You could be using that compost to grow your own fruit and vegetables.
Yes - there are some environmentalists who indeed discuss how sewage systems (whilst obviously necessary for human urban living) take away a significant amount of waste that would otherwise re-join the waste cycle system of fertiliser and such. I also have many friends who have used personal waste in their compost to grow their own fruit and veg; I do not have the right kind of garden infrastructure for lots of personal growing and composting myself.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Immigration to solve the labour crisis for low skilled jobs is ultimately a poor solution - low end jobs should be automated.
Fruit picking is for machines, and soon will be.
There are - nevertheless - a lot of jobs that are hard to do with machines.
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Immigration to solve the labour crisis for low skilled jobs is ultimately a poor solution - low end jobs should be automated.
Fruit picking is for machines, and soon will be.
In a full employment economy, rising wages should lead to the replacement of labour with capital in the medium term.
Machines have been able to wash cars and make coffee for a while now. Leave hand washing of cars to professional detailers, and hand making of coffee to fancy hotel lobby lounges.
And hand carving wooden spoons is for weird hipsters. Use a machine the way God and Marc Brunel intended.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
Source?
"For example, several studies with large sample sizes conducted in Australia18 and the United Kingdom19,20 did not show that meat eating correlated negatively with life expectancy after controlling for health-related elements of lifestyles"
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
Is that not just another symptom of capitalist profligacy? You could be using that compost to grow your own fruit and vegetables.
Yes - there are some environmentalists who indeed discuss how sewage systems (whilst obviously necessary for human urban living) take away a significant amount of waste that would otherwise re-join the waste cycle system of fertiliser and such. I also have many friends who have used personal waste in their compost to grow their own fruit and veg; I do not have the right kind of garden infrastructure for lots of personal growing and composting myself.
I did rather go off that when going with a uni group to the Machynlleth centre and seeing them use urine on the lettuce patch. I didn't eat any salad that weekend. And I learnt too much about parasites in my studies to be happy about doing a No 2.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
I suggest you look up how homo sapiens evolved their bigger heavier brains in the first place, and the diet that contributed to that.
Biology isn't interested in your ideology.
The process of how an organism evolves does not equate to how that organism needs to live.
To evolve the way we did, humans needed meat.
To live, we don't. Humans have transformed the Earth to such a degree that many of the things we evolved to do are no longer necessary.
For example, I remember being moaned at by university security for climbing in a tree one day on campus when I was a student - with the security guard saying something along the lines of "it ain't natural". To which I replied "why do you think we have thumbs?". We could choose to sleep in trees again, if we wished, but we don't.
Why were you climbing the tree?
To sit in it. I was studying psychology at the time, and one of the profs in my first year specialised in eco psych, doing research on the positive impact of spending time in and around nature on people. I have always liked climbing and sitting in trees, and this tree had a relatively low hanging branch that was thick enough to take my weight, so I would often go sit in it, maybe listen to music or do some of my reading in it.
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Immigration to solve the labour crisis for low skilled jobs is ultimately a poor solution - low end jobs should be automated.
Fruit picking is for machines, and soon will be.
In a full employment economy, rising wages should lead to the replacement of labour with capital in the medium term.
Machines have been able to wash cars and make coffee for a while now. Leave hand washing of cars to professional detailers, and hand making of coffee to fancy hotel lobby lounges.
And hand carving wooden spoons is for weird hipsters. Use a machine the way God and Marc Brunel intended.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
I suggest you look up how homo sapiens evolved their bigger heavier brains in the first place, and the diet that contributed to that.
Biology isn't interested in your ideology.
The process of how an organism evolves does not equate to how that organism needs to live.
To evolve the way we did, humans needed meat.
To live, we don't. Humans have transformed the Earth to such a degree that many of the things we evolved to do are no longer necessary.
For example, I remember being moaned at by university security for climbing in a tree one day on campus when I was a student - with the security guard saying something along the lines of "it ain't natural". To which I replied "why do you think we have thumbs?". We could choose to sleep in trees again, if we wished, but we don't.
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
I suggest you look up how homo sapiens evolved their bigger heavier brains in the first place, and the diet that contributed to that.
Biology isn't interested in your ideology.
The process of how an organism evolves does not equate to how that organism needs to live.
To evolve the way we did, humans needed meat.
To live, we don't. Humans have transformed the Earth to such a degree that many of the things we evolved to do are no longer necessary.
For example, I remember being moaned at by university security for climbing in a tree one day on campus when I was a student - with the security guard saying something along the lines of "it ain't natural". To which I replied "why do you think we have thumbs?". We could choose to sleep in trees again, if we wished, but we don't.
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Few big political problems have easy answers. If there were easy answers, they'd have been instituted already... although given this Conservative government, even if there was an easy answer, they'd cock it up somehow...
There are some good answers. Processes should be faster: this is both fairer to applicants and saves us money. The government is spending a lot of money housing and feeding asylum seekers, who it forbids from working, because it is "saving" money by not resourcing the Home Office well enough. Processing speeds have collapsed. Deportations have collapsed.
I think the vast majority of voters do recognise many seeking asylum as being deserving. We should want those people to get a positive decision as quickly as possible, so that they can then get on with re-building their lives and give back to society by working, which also helps integrate them into their new country. This all seems compatible with Conservative values to me.
I think the vast majority of voters recognise many seeking asylum are not deserving. Instead of paying for these people, we should want them to get a negative decision as quickly as possible and then get them deported.
Now, there's a lot of people seeking asylum where opinion may differ as to whether they are deserving, and there's different views over what "as quickly as possible" means with respect to fair processes, but there are some obvious wins here from investing in processing claims.
The movement of people over international borders is addressed better through international cooperation. When we were in the EU, the Dublin regulation allowed for the deportation of people to the EU country where they first claimed asylum. There was a mechanism to address something many voters see as unfair, people travelling through multiple safe countries before getting to the UK. There was also agreement on joint action to reduce, through various ways, the flows into the EU, and joint action on homing those who were in need. We left the EU. The Conservative government didn't within the Brexit agreement or subsequently negotiate anything comparable. This is another obvious approach. Indeed, the one thing this government has successfully done was the negotiation with Albania that greatly reduced the number of Albanians coming over in small boats. More of that is a good idea.
So, there are relatively easy measures that would help. A future non-Tory government has options. This isn't some overwhelmingly difficult challenge.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
I suggest you look up how homo sapiens evolved their bigger heavier brains in the first place, and the diet that contributed to that.
Biology isn't interested in your ideology.
The evolution thing is speculative; another theory is that it's not meat vs not, it's cooked vs raw that made the difference. Chimpanzees and pigs are omnivores and it hasn't done them much good.
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
They don't count as meat, cos they is woke. So no problem. Like beaver is fish for purposes of dinner on Friday according to the RCC (allegedly).
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Immigration to solve the labour crisis for low skilled jobs is ultimately a poor solution - low end jobs should be automated.
Fruit picking is for machines, and soon will be.
In a full employment economy, rising wages should lead to the replacement of labour with capital in the medium term.
Machines have been able to wash cars and make coffee for a while now. Leave hand washing of cars to professional detailers, and hand making of coffee to fancy hotel lobby lounges.
And hand carving wooden spoons is for weird hipsters. Use a machine the way God and Marc Brunel intended.
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Current trends would say that we should introduce wolves to keep the deer down, and you yourself should live on a slab of soy with a side portion of virtue.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
I suggest you look up how homo sapiens evolved their bigger heavier brains in the first place, and the diet that contributed to that.
Biology isn't interested in your ideology.
The process of how an organism evolves does not equate to how that organism needs to live.
To evolve the way we did, humans needed meat.
To live, we don't. Humans have transformed the Earth to such a degree that many of the things we evolved to do are no longer necessary.
For example, I remember being moaned at by university security for climbing in a tree one day on campus when I was a student - with the security guard saying something along the lines of "it ain't natural". To which I replied "why do you think we have thumbs?". We could choose to sleep in trees again, if we wished, but we don't.
Why were you climbing the tree?
To borrow a book from the Librarian, obviously.
I did read a lot of Pratchett in that tree - was lucky enough to do my Masters' dissertation on Discworld!
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Current trends would say that we should introduce wolves to keep the deer down, and you yourself should live on a slab of soy with a side portion of virtue.
As a vegan / veggie - I am perfectly happy with deer hunting in the UK (although would prefer wolves to be reintroduced), I just don't want to eat any of it.
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Immigration to solve the labour crisis for low skilled jobs is ultimately a poor solution - low end jobs should be automated.
Fruit picking is for machines, and soon will be.
In a full employment economy, rising wages should lead to the replacement of labour with capital in the medium term.
Machines have been able to wash cars and make coffee for a while now. Leave hand washing of cars to professional detailers, and hand making of coffee to fancy hotel lobby lounges.
And hand carving wooden spoons is for weird hipsters. Use a machine the way God and Marc Brunel intended.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
Source?
"For example, several studies with large sample sizes conducted in Australia18 and the United Kingdom19,20 did not show that meat eating correlated negatively with life expectancy after controlling for health-related elements of lifestyles"
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Current trends would say that we should introduce wolves to keep the deer down, and you yourself should live on a slab of soy with a side portion of virtue.
As a vegan / veggie - I am perfectly happy with deer hunting in the UK (although would prefer wolves to be reintroduced), I just don't want to eat any of it.
Presumably you feel the deer prefers being pulled to pieces by a pack of wolves as opposed to being shot in the head.
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Immigration to solve the labour crisis for low skilled jobs is ultimately a poor solution - low end jobs should be automated.
Fruit picking is for machines, and soon will be.
In a full employment economy, rising wages should lead to the replacement of labour with capital in the medium term.
Machines have been able to wash cars and make coffee for a while now. Leave hand washing of cars to professional detailers, and hand making of coffee to fancy hotel lobby lounges.
And hand carving wooden spoons is for weird hipsters. Use a machine the way God and Marc Brunel intended.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
I suggest you look up how homo sapiens evolved their bigger heavier brains in the first place, and the diet that contributed to that.
Biology isn't interested in your ideology.
Even if it is correct that diet contributed to heavier brains in an evolutionary sense, that doesn't really make the case that it's a healthy choice for the individual, as ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny.
That's a phrase I've always wanted to use in its proper context, and now I have (well, not exactly, but adequately).
I'm not a vegetarian/vegan myself, by the way. But that's because I enjoy eating meat rather than because I've rationalised it in any deeper sense.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
Source?
"For example, several studies with large sample sizes conducted in Australia18 and the United Kingdom19,20 did not show that meat eating correlated negatively with life expectancy after controlling for health-related elements of lifestyles"
So meat eaters tend to be lazy fat slobs who die early, but if you weed out the lazy fat slobs...
From the same source down in the conclusions
"A study of more than 218,000 adults from over 50 countries around the world suggests that consuming unprocessed meat regularly can reduce the risk of early death and can increase human longevity.73 A recent dietary advice published by Lancet Public Health advocates an increase of dietary meat in order to benefit our heart health and longevity.74 This study also highlights that saturated fat in meat may be cardio protective, as well as, that meat contains many vitamins and the essential amino acids for human health and well-being.73,74"
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Current trends would say that we should introduce wolves to keep the deer down, and you yourself should live on a slab of soy with a side portion of virtue.
As a vegan / veggie - I am perfectly happy with deer hunting in the UK (although would prefer wolves to be reintroduced), I just don't want to eat any of it.
Presumably you feel the deer prefers being pulled to pieces by a pack of wolves as opposed to being shot in the head.
No - I prefer the idea of increasing biodiversity and having our natural fauna / ecosystem restored over what will likely be upper middle class / upper class people going out for hunting trips more often. It doesn’t really matter either way how the deer dies, but the reintroduction of wolves would more likely solve the systemic issue of deer overpopulation due to lack of predation than encouraging more hunting.
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Immigration to solve the labour crisis for low skilled jobs is ultimately a poor solution - low end jobs should be automated.
Fruit picking is for machines, and soon will be.
In a full employment economy, rising wages should lead to the replacement of labour with capital in the medium term.
Machines have been able to wash cars and make coffee for a while now. Leave hand washing of cars to professional detailers, and hand making of coffee to fancy hotel lobby lounges.
And hand carving wooden spoons is for weird hipsters. Use a machine the way God and Marc Brunel intended.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Not really sure what the argument is here tbh. Some things eat meat? Yes. Dead animals get consumed by carrion-eaters and/or decompose? Also, yes.
Neither is an argument against humans eating a plant-based diet.
But is an argument against the more moralistic arguments against eating meat.
We can get by without it, but there's nothing wrong with doing it as a concept, so more efficient, ethical and eco friendly ways of doing it is a good idea, and an easier sell at present than just don't do it.
Edit: I've never met a proselytising vegan however, despite the stereotype.
Comments
M&S spreadable butter is just carefully selected butter, so it tastes exactly like butter, being exactly butter, but it's not as spreadable as the former category.
I do accept there are limitations to the argument but on the whole we have developed mmm/yuk enjoyment/disgust reflexes for a reason. They are nature’s way of telling you what to eat
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bear-grylls-diet-vegan-carnivore-health-2ss8f0v8n
We should be seeking to raise the planet up to our standards.
Go for a Mediterranean diet. Spain has 275g as an average, we should strive to raise our living standards, and the planets, up to that standard.
https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production
They're both more CO2 efficient than cows.
Many types of margarine used to contain trans-unsaturated ("trans") fats which are bad for you, but most types sold in the "advanced" world today don't.
Something like low-fat olive margarine is fine. It is healthier than butter. So is sunflower margarine. Agreed that butter tastes nicer, but there's a genetic factor in taste and the life expectancy at birth in the palaeolithic was about 33. It's not true that doing everything we fancy does us good.
What tastes good is partly hardwired: we like sweet and fatty, we don't like bitter. When food is scarce, eating sweet and fatty things is good for you. With modern food plenty, we eat too many sweet and fatty foods and this is bad for you.
But what tastes good is also learnt. To quote Genesis, "I know what I like / And I like what I know". We like what we know and we don't like what we don't know. That's a sensible survival strategy when you're foraging for food in the wild, but makes us unnecessarily picky eaters in the modern world. I don't want to eat a toasted cockroach (as available in parts of the world) because I didn't grow up eating toasted cockroaches, but toasted cockroaches are perfectly good for me or you, and people who are used to them like them.
Go Mediterranean. Eat plenty of meat, cheese, olives etc - cut out more of the processed carb crap.
We should seek to raise our living standards and the planets. That means much more meat.
They want compassion for genuine victims of torture and repression. They want the boats to stop. They want cheap car washes and meals at restaurants. And they want the government to spend less money on things like the immigration service, so they can have lower taxes.
How do you press all those buttons at once? And how do you avoid preaching to the choir?
If two thirds of Tory voters in Surrey agree with Mr Anderson, then that's still not great for them. Because the Conservatives need to be reaching out from beyond their comfort zone.
If the issue is about protein consumption - which seems to be the case - that is also not the same as meat. I'm veggie who leans towards vegan (I'll occasionally have cheese and eggs, but maybe once or twice a week), and I'm not saying everyone must be vegan; I'm saying that if the issue is making sure people get the food they need we can do that much more environmentally sustainably (even allowing for some meat occasionally) with the amount we produce now being better redistributed. Would that require some people to eat less meat; yes.
I assume the same is true of the UK. Or am I wrong, 148grss?
(As bad as air pollution is in China, it does appear to be improving: https://www.iqair.com/us/china
At one time, one of the most popular web sites in Beijing was the US embassy's air quality report.)
British doctor murdered after taking wrong turn from the airport in Cape Town and getting caught up in a cab drivers' strike
Sure, meat is more complex than protein - it has fat and some carbohydrate - but that's not the same thing as protein tout court, and you appeared to be preaching crank nonsense. Good that you aren't.
Just thought I'd look at first example I could think of, a burger, ASDA own brand for like-for-like comparison.
Per 100 grams
Beef burgers: 13g fat, 5g carb, 20g protein https://groceries.asda.com/product/beef-burgers-bbq/asda-succulent-8-beef-burgers/910002976720
Plant based burgers: 11g fat, 14g carb, 6g protein https://groceries.asda.com/product/vegan-burgers-mince/asda-plant-based-spiced-bean-burgers/1000383162213
Processed carb crap. No thanks.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
These regulations have been under attack in recent years, with the UK now allowing sewage into water ways and SCOTUS rolling back the scope of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.
(They are being held back by Green superstition, especially in Europe. I do my small bit to counter that by avoiding products that advertise that they are free of GMOs. It is disgraceful, for example, for General Mills to appeal to superstition that way.
I assume most of you know that nearly all our foods come from plants and animals that have been genetically modified, the main exception being wild-caught sea food. Teosinte is my favorite example.)
Ditto: keep most of your butter in the fridge and only have a quarter chunk or so out in the butter dish at room temperature.
The UK allows far less sewage into the water ways than it did decades ago, not more.
But don't let facts get in the way of your prejudices.
The issue is the business practices of the companies behind GMO food - especially in the US. If this is all in the hands of private companies and is treated like private intellectual property (as I'm sure Gates will demand it is, like the vaccine before it) then it will only help people insofar as it makes people a load of money.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Jenrick suggesting the party will campaign at the next GE to leave the ECHR is as politically suicidal as it gets
Jenrick and others have absolutely no political awareness whatsoever, and hopefully their constituents will put them out of office at GE24
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/09/uk-could-leave-european-convention-on-human-rights-to-stop-channel-migrant-boats
You said, "Vegan food, especially vegan meat alternatives, is all processed carbs." What you presented is not all carbs: there's 17g of protein and fat versus 14g of carbs. What you've presented is some vegetables/pulses mushed together into a burger shape. It's not a vegan meat alternative. A vegan meat alternative would be something like TVP, seitan or tofu.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4234404/#Comment_4234404
Secondly, it is beyond bonkers to think that HM might refuse a dissolution following the Lascelles principles. They and the SA and Canada cases referred to by Lascelles were immediately post GE crises, with a real issue as to what happens for the next 5 years, not at the fag end of a government. Apart from that, we have conventions about conventions in our wacky non codified constitution and the convention is not to put HMK in a spot where he has to make a political decision. If the tories start buggering him about (and it would have to be anti sunakite tories asking him to refuse) the punishment doled out by the electorate at GE 24 or 25 won't be KT, it will be end Permian. It would literally destroy the party. No decade in the wilderness and triumphant return under dishface.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/08/09/fast-movement-activity-lower-cancer-risk/
So my years-long habit of running -- OK, jogging, now -- up stairs has been good for me? That's a pleasant surprise.)
(Data from the UK was important in reaching these conclusions.)
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
But anyway vegetarians don't have to get our proteins from processed sources. Easy enough to cook lentils and beans etc.
Does the SNP approve of abusing women? Opponents of the party’s extreme views on transgender rights have long highlighted the poor quality of debate in Scotland, but remarks by a leading SNP politician provide dramatic evidence of a hostile climate towards outspoken women. Mhairi Black, Deputy Leader of the party at Westminster, has dismissed women who disagree with her views on transgender rights as “50-year-old Karens”. …
With honourable exceptions such as Black’s Westminster colleague Joanna Cherry, the SNP’s behaviour has come to resemble that of a religious sect. Either you agree that human beings can change sex, and should be allowed to do so legally even if they have been charged with rape, or you are beyond the pale — a “bad actor”, to quote Black.
A belief in biological sex is now heresy in nationalist circles.
https://unherd.com/thepost/why-did-mhairi-black-compare-feminists-to-white-supremacists/
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Biology isn't interested in your ideology.
https://www.ciwf.org.uk/your-food/sustainable-food/#:~:text=Eat less,more protein than they need.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Fruit picking is for machines, and soon will be.
Sunak ought to suspend him, or at least there should be some kind of consequence. Really, this isn’t how elected people ought to be behaving. But I doubt he will.
To evolve the way we did, humans needed meat.
To live, we don't. Humans have transformed the Earth to such a degree that many of the things we evolved to do are no longer necessary.
For example, I remember being moaned at by university security for climbing in a tree one day on campus when I was a student - with the security guard saying something along the lines of "it ain't natural". To which I replied "why do you think we have thumbs?". We could choose to sleep in trees again, if we wished, but we don't.
I suspect overconsumption of meat feeding into obesity, diabetes and heart disease reduces lifespan and alters the statistics, rather than meat per say.
And this won't flag up malnourishment or hip fracture issues that vegans/vegetarians can suffer which might mean they live a lower quality of life for slightly longer.
Again, solution: eat a sensible amount of high quality meat as part of a balanced diet.
Machines have been able to wash cars and make coffee for a while now. Leave hand washing of cars to professional detailers, and hand making of coffee to fancy hotel lobby lounges.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Neither is an argument against humans eating a plant-based diet.
https://barnthespoon.com/courses-books-gifts/spoon-carving-day-class
The extraordinary variety and bounty from across the world. And all the world buying it
Edit: £175 for a day course!! Even if it's 1000-1700. No mention of what is for lunch, either.
Like wiping the bums of crusties.
source https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8881926/
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
There are some good answers. Processes should be faster: this is both fairer to applicants and saves us money. The government is spending a lot of money housing and feeding asylum seekers, who it forbids from working, because it is "saving" money by not resourcing the Home Office well enough. Processing speeds have collapsed. Deportations have collapsed.
I think the vast majority of voters do recognise many seeking asylum as being deserving. We should want those people to get a positive decision as quickly as possible, so that they can then get on with re-building their lives and give back to society by working, which also helps integrate them into their new country. This all seems compatible with Conservative values to me.
I think the vast majority of voters recognise many seeking asylum are not deserving. Instead of paying for these people, we should want them to get a negative decision as quickly as possible and then get them deported.
Now, there's a lot of people seeking asylum where opinion may differ as to whether they are deserving, and there's different views over what "as quickly as possible" means with respect to fair processes, but there are some obvious wins here from investing in processing claims.
The movement of people over international borders is addressed better through international cooperation. When we were in the EU, the Dublin regulation allowed for the deportation of people to the EU country where they first claimed asylum. There was a mechanism to address something many voters see as unfair, people travelling through multiple safe countries before getting to the UK. There was also agreement on joint action to reduce, through various ways, the flows into the EU, and joint action on homing those who were in need. We left the EU. The Conservative government didn't within the Brexit agreement or subsequently negotiate anything comparable. This is another obvious approach. Indeed, the one thing this government has successfully done was the negotiation with Albania that greatly reduced the number of Albanians coming over in small boats. More of that is a good idea.
So, there are relatively easy measures that would help. A future non-Tory government has options. This isn't some overwhelmingly difficult challenge.
https://spoonfest.co.uk
Sales of veggie burgers on the slide, I fear we are headed for a beyond Beyond Meat world.
Government delays full introduction of digital certificates intended to cut paperwork for producers
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/09/blow-to-uk-salmon-industry-as-trial-post-brexit-export-scheme-is-halted
That's a phrase I've always wanted to use in its proper context, and now I have (well, not exactly, but adequately).
I'm not a vegetarian/vegan myself, by the way. But that's because I enjoy eating meat rather than because I've rationalised it in any deeper sense.
Bear Grylls’ diet. It sounds superb
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/fitness/article/bear-grylls-diet-2022
"A study of more than 218,000 adults from over 50 countries around the world suggests that consuming unprocessed meat regularly can reduce the risk of early death and can increase human longevity.73 A recent dietary advice published by Lancet Public Health advocates an increase of dietary meat in order to benefit our heart health and longevity.74 This study also highlights that saturated fat in meat may be cardio protective, as well as, that meat contains many vitamins and the essential amino acids for human health and well-being.73,74"
We can get by without it, but there's nothing wrong with doing it as a concept, so more efficient, ethical and eco friendly ways of doing it is a good idea, and an easier sell at present than just don't do it.
Edit: I've never met a proselytising vegan however, despite the stereotype.