
Cowspiracy – How the planet is being destroyed by animal agriculture - doktorn
http://cowspiracy.com
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cornholio
Truth be told, if the meat would be produced via the "organic" route, the
destruction would be even higher. Industrial agriculture is a way to obtain
lots of food cheaply, using little land and capital. Sure, you end up with a
bit of fertilizers, hormones and antibiotics in your diet and you might get
the occasional food poisoning, but overall it's the cheapest way to keep the
hungry people of the world fed.

As for 'sustainable' agriculture, the reality is much uglier than the poster
would like you to think. The yields are much lower, think 10x lower, pre-
green revolution levels. This means that the cost is significantly higher -
but also that it much more land and capital intensive. Huge incentives for
deforestation.

Heck, a truly sustainable agriculture would use only bio-fuels which is barely
breaking even energetically, so for each acre of wheat you would need a few
more acres of rapeseed or corn to produce the bio-fuel required.

All in all, you could say that meat consumption is killing the planet. Since
people seem to like meat, the logical conclusion is that we should dissuade
them to eat it via a higher prices. Those higher prices would be the natural
result of producers internalizing the costs of environmental destruction
caused during production, incentivizing the use of sustainable methods.

But if this is what you believe in, then take a political position and be
prepared to fight for it: "We need more expensive meat, and we need it now !".
Don't beat around the bush with the "greedy corporations" conspiracy that are
killing the planet for "profits".

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a_bonobo
A documentary from the "Animals United Movement" which features outspoken junk
science advocates [1]? This is surely fair and balanced and will inform me
without any bias at all.

[1] [http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/10/22/michael-
pol...](http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/10/22/michael-pollan-brags-
about-twisting-facts-to-support-anti-gmo-activism-and-duping-credulous-new-
york-times/)

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snarfy
We would not be any better off if we mowed down all of the forests to plant
vegetables instead.

The problem is overpopulation.

~~~
georgedrummond
However, an acre of land can produce a far greater quantity of vegetables than
meat. An enormous amount of energy is lost in producing meat.

While overpopulation is a problem the way we think about food doesn't help. If
you look at food production in countries with high ovepopulation (like China),
you will see that the diet contains a lot less meat than our western diet.

