Quote:
Originally Posted by Eau Claire
Cows are a strange issue. I understand the burping thing, but they are often talked about as using a lot of water and land, and that I don't understand, at least in the Canadian context. Cows may use, but they don't use up, water. What goes in one end comes out the other. They also don't generally use otherwise useful land. If you can farm a given piece of land you generally do. Farming makes more per acre than ranching, but if you have land that's too dry or not fertile enough to farm you put cows on it and you let them graze. So in fact ranching makes use of land that would otherwise be nonproductive.
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I think the biggest issue is that they consume foods that must be farmed.
And yes burping creates a lot of carbon.
There is literally a billion cows on this planet, all of which are substantially larger than humans.
If we got rid of them tomorrow food prices would crash.
I think the practical solution would be to end subsidies that support cattle and to make passive regulations against their sale.
Something like a cattle quota that would only effect large scale cattle owners.
I don't know enough about it, but my understanding is that half the worlds land is used on cattle, in comparison something like 1/6th is needed for the equivalent mass of chickens as they grow to maturity much much faster. Not to mention the fact that white meat is far superior to red.
Obviously some of that land is useless and I don't think we should get rid of cattle altogether.
It just seems like shrinking cattle consumption is the most logical solution.
Especially if its something like a quota where small farmers( using worthless land) will make more money per cow instead of trying to tax the hell out of it, which will likely benefit those large scale operations.
I'm pro tapping in the low hanging fruit before we "invest" other peoples money into things that might never pay off.
The lowest level of intervention is to get your own consumption down. Driving an electric car is not helping the environment. It's migrating to a superior technology but it is not an example of how to live one's life.
If you believe in this global warming nonsense act as if you do instead of using this as a power game against others.
When it is obvious that the people that care actually act as if they care then maybe and i mean maybe we might start using government powers to coerce and manipulate people.
Until that time this carbon tax, green incentive nonsense is addressing 5 percent of the problem and responsible for 100 percent of the unnecessary tyranny.
I support banning fracking(if it does not hurt previously established industries and it doesn't limit the economic activity of an era, I think coal should be banned full stop, and we should do some modest restrictions on cattle). Otherwise keep government out of it until something makes sense.