
Meat industry blamed for largest-ever 'dead zone' in Gulf of Mexico - kafkaesq
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/01/meat-industry-dead-zone-gulf-of-mexico-environment-pollution
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dpflan
I was trying to find a map of the 'dead zone'. Cursory link searching got me
here: [http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/07/Meat-P...](http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-
content/uploads/2017/07/Meat-Pollution-in-America.pdf)

There are some maps showing the run-off situation.

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paulcole
The gap between how much people seem to care about environmental damage and
the actions they take is pretty impressive.

Serious question, if articles like this upset you and you continue to eat
meat, how do you justify it?

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spodek
Prepare to get downvoted.

People can't stand being led to face the stories they tell themselves to sleep
at night when they say one thing and do another. Most would rather blame you
for making them feel guilty for revealing their denial and suppression than
change their behavior to live be the values they claim.

~~~
jorvi
Or rather, there's a certain comfort people won't let go, and rightly so? If
people shouldn't eat meat, should they not:

Use plastics

Use car travel

Use air travel

Use some types of medicine

Use animal products (goodbye dress shoes, tons of food like eggs and pudding
etc.)

etc. etc.

For everyone, at a certain point it becomes too much of an effort to deal
with. They don't have the time, money or both. Who are you to decide where
that line should be drawn?

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cannonedhamster
The following are rebuttals that apply only to Americans but might also be
valid elsewhere.

1\. Plastics can be made biodegradable and from plant sources, and already are
in a wide number of products.

2\. There's already disincentive to waste fuel as it costs more, add to that
an obvious demand for electric cars, I'd say people already are looking to do
this.

3\. Let's be honest there are far more pressing issues with air travel than
the environment.

4\. Yeah, this one sucks, contact lenses too.

5\. There are stylish vegan dress shoes, as well as cheap dress shoes made
without animal products. Both are easy to find. Unless you're vegan there's
nothing wrong with pudding. Jello, gummy bears, and a wide assortment of other
yummies that use gelatin, however, you're out of luck, but you can still do
Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids.

I mean if we're talking about lines being drawn, we're the wealthiest country
in the world, other parts of the world don't have a choice. You're right, of
course, that everyone has their own point where it becomes too much but,
shouldn't we be willing to be a little bit less lazy or stricter on pig
farmers (the predominant producers of the toxicity problem). It's not just
animal rights people and environmentalist this affects, it's causing algal
blooms (Red Tide), killing off fishing industries in the Gulf, hurting the
capacity of a huge natural CO2 sink, and lowering the property values of those
around them. They've taken a communal resource and damaged it for everyone
without recourse. Sounds pretty straightforward to me.

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AstralStorm
With regards to 5, it happens that some of those vegan products are made in an
even more polluting way than am original. How do you discern the bad apples?

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spodek
Let's not forget the consumers paying for the meat and eating it! ... The
industry isn't doing it for charity.

And the governments (and voters) subsidizing them.

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mmagin
I was of the impression that a lot of the fertilizer runoff in the Gulf of
Mexico was actually from lawn irrigation.

