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Desrtopa comments on Pay other people to go vegetarian for you? - Less Wrong Discussion

12 Post author: jkaufman 12 April 2013 01:56AM

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Comment author: Desrtopa 12 April 2013 11:12:14PM 4 points [-]

Even humanely farmed meat has far more ecological impact per calorie (in terms of fertilizer runoff, loss of arable land, aquifer depletion, fossil fuels, etc.) than a vegetarian diet. Unsurprising when you consider that every calorie of farmed meat requires about an order of magnitude more calories of agriculture to support it.

Comment author: aelephant 13 April 2013 10:39:35PM 2 points [-]

At least 1 of your negative impacts is false. Have you seen this TED talk? It seems that grazing cattle can actually restore deserts into grasslands, when for decades it was believed only the opposite could happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI

Comment author: Desrtopa 14 April 2013 12:26:41AM 4 points [-]

It's possible to raise cattle in this way, but that doesn't mean that if you buy beef, any of it will be raised in that way. If you buy cattle that's grazing at all, you're paying extra for it. It's not possible to satisfy more than a fraction of current demand with ecologically friendly grazing. It's not grazing I'm referring to which is resulting in desertification, but monoculture agriculture which is used to support the livestock.

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 13 April 2013 11:15:27PM 1 point [-]

Emphasis on the word can, I doubt that the majority of cattle are farmed in a more resource-efficient way than the plant-based alternatives. The video certainly doesn't establish that.