usernamesAreTricky

@ usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml

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152
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255
Joined

3 yr. ago

5mo ago

YSK that apart from not having a car and voting, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat.
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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 5mo ago
Good news is that overall arable farmland usage goes down the less meat you eat. Don't need to use all the same land, you have flexibility to move around production
we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1713820115

5mo ago

YSK that apart from not having a car and voting, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat.

Yes, though that doesn't mean it can't be stopped. That it can be reduced in some countries is a sign we can make progress on it

Much of the global growth is occurring in developing countries right now who often view increased meat consumption as a symbol of wealth and status (in part due to seeing it highly consumed in the west). Changing expectations and consumption in the west can have a ripple effect outward

5mo ago

YSK that apart from not having a car and voting, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat.

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 5mo ago

To an extent, yes it would likely do that. Though on the other hand running into the maximum capacity limitations would not look pretty. Even countries that have a just bit higher grass-fed production than others have a fair number of issues (and still use plenty of supplemental grain)

For instance, in New Zealand, they use a massive amount of synthetic fertilizer on grasslands to try to make it keep up for dairy production

The large footprint for milk in Canterbury indicates just how far the capacity of the environment has been overshot. To maintain that level of production and have healthy water would require either 12 times more rainfall in the region or a 12-fold reduction in cows.
[…]
The “grass-fed” marketing line overlooks the huge amounts of fossil-fuel-derived fertiliser used to make the extra grass that supports New Zealand’s very high animal stock rates.

https://theconversation.com/11-000-litres-of-water-to-make-one-litre-of-milk-new-questions-about-the-freshwater-impact-of-nz-dairy-farming-183806

Or in the UK and Ireland where grass-fed production leads to deforestation and they still need additional grain on top of it

Most of the UK and Ireland’s grass-fed cows and sheep are on land that might otherwise be temperate rainforest – arable crops tend to prefer drier conditions. However, even if there were no livestock grazing in the rainforest zone – and these areas were threatened by other crops instead – livestock would still pose an indirect threat due to their huge land footprint
[…]
Furthermore, most British grass-fed cows are still fed crops on top of their staple grass

https://theconversation.com/livestock-grazing-is-preventing-the-return-of-rainforests-to-the-uk-and-ireland-198014

5mo ago

YSK that apart from not having a car and voting, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat.

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 5mo ago

We should push for large institutional change, but don't ignore individual change either. Problem is how will you get said governments to act if people aren't also stepping up and they expect backlash to acting? The more people expect it to be cheap and highly consumed, the harder it will be for them to act. Moving people away from meat individually makes it easier. Movements that succeed usually have both individual and institutional change

Institutional change that is achievable at the current moment is smaller. There's been some success with things like changing the defaults to be plant-based (which is good and we should continuing to push for that), but cutting subsides is going to be an uphill battle until a larger number of people change their consumption patterns

5mo ago

YSK that apart from not having a car and voting, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat.

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 5mo ago

Beef production is falling in some countries. For instance in Germany

In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline. And much of that decline took place in the last few years, a time period when grocery sales of plant-based food nearly doubled.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23273338/germany-less-meat-plant-based-vegan-vegetarian-flexitarian

5mo ago

YSK that apart from not having a car and voting, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat.

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 5mo ago

Unfortunately grass-fed production is no solution. It both does not scale or help reduce emissions

We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401

5mo ago

YSK that apart from not having a car and voting, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat.

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 5mo ago

It's fundamentally inefficient. The claims of "green" meat production are greenwashing from the industry. The industry would love for you to believe there is a way that they could clean it up. It takes growing tons of crops just for most of that energy to be lost by the creatures moving around, digesting, etc.

Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html

Nor is something like grass-fed production a solution when that has even higher emissions due to higher rates of methane production from cows. It also is even higher land demand

We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401

5mo ago

Will Universal Healthcare ever get 60 votes in the Senate?

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 5mo ago

If the filibuster is removed, it is also possible to get through with 50+VP as tie breaker or 51. The filibuster being removed is not as unlikely as you may think since Republicans right now are getting closer and closer towards defacto removing the filibuster. There currently are narrow ways around the filibuster (reconsideration is one big one) that are supposed to have a bunch of limitations, but they are testing the waters in ignoring violations of those limitations. The senate parliamentarian is the one who makes rulings about if something violates their clauses, but their opinion can be ignored by a strict majority via the "nuclear option"

A month ago, Republicans used the nuclear option to ignore the senate parliamentarian ruling that the Congressional Review Act would not allow them to skip the filibuster to remove California's EPA waivers (see here).

As I write this Republicans are currently trying to play another different a different trick about some of the stuff in the Big Beautiful Bill. Dems have been challenging a bunch of provisions and getting the parliamentarian to most of the time rule they are in violation of the Byrd rule. But they are also trying to challenge the whole bill as violating the Byrd rule's limit that a bill passed via reconsecration cannot increase the deficit over a ten-year period. Republicans are playing an accounting trick to claim it doesn't. They know the parliamentarian is unlikely to agree with them, so they are currently trying to prevent dems from even being able to ask the parliamentarian about it

6mo ago

Permanently Deleted

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 6mo ago

I think you are equating those with disruptive. Peaceful doesn't necessarily mean non-disruptive. Peaceful and disruptive protests can certainly still make people in power sweat

Strikes are peaceful and disruptive

Shutting down freeways can be peaceful and disruptive

Boycotts are peaceful and can be disruptive

Sit-ins are peaceful and can be disruptive

etc.

Not that 3.5% is necessarily an iron-clad guarantee

6mo ago

Revealed: More than 24,000 factory farms have opened across Europe

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 6mo ago

It's far more global than people think. Here's global estimates in 2019

We estimate that over 90% of farmed animals globally are living in factory farms at present. This includes an estimated 74% of farmed land animals (vertebrates only) and virtually all farmed fish.[1] However, there is substantial uncertainty in these figures given the land animal estimates’ heavy reliance on information from Worldwatch Institute with unclear methodology[2] and limited data on fish farming.

https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/global-animal-farming-estimates

8mo ago

Why are there no large demonstrations in the USA against Donald Trump's policies?

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 8mo ago

There are also Tesla protests growing in Europe (and Canada, and more)! Musk's influence threatens more than just the US, so we must all step up. The Tesla Takedown protest movement started in the US, but it's now becoming international. Here's a map of the latest ones in Europe

Here's the site with that info along with a guide on how to plan one around you if you don't see one

https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown

8mo ago

Why are there no large demonstrations in the USA against Donald Trump's policies?

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 8mo ago

There have been tons of protests and there have been some pretty widespread ones outside of Tesla this weekend. The media is just hardly covering it making them seem way smaller than they are

Here's a map of recent Tesla Takedown protests alone

https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown

Here's just a handful of photos from yesterday

Most people within the US aren't aware these protests are happening either. There are also broader nationwide protests planned on April 5th as part of the 50501 movement. This will be the 4th nationwide 50501 protest

8mo ago

Easy peasy

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 8mo ago

You could use to make that URL an inline code block and thus not clickable. like this to look like this

8mo ago

Easy peasy

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 8mo ago

9mo ago

Why aren't there mass protests in the USA?

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 9mo ago

Glad to hear my posts are going noticed. Indeed, there are lot more than you might think. I'll repost one of my long comments with details about protests here. Wrote this five days ago so mentally subtract 5 days from all the times

They are being suppressed in media coverage, but there are people protesting. Media coverage paints a false picture that no one in the US is fighting back

Here's one from today [meaning five days ago] with 1000 people in Boise, Idaho

Here's a super incomplete timeline with just a handful of the nationwide protests. I'm missing a lot, I'm just showing your the photos I had from recent memory

8 days ago there were national protest for science funding cuts. Here's the main one in DC

11 days ago there were nationwide protests in all 50 US state capitols + DC + Many cities within those states. This was part of the 50501 movement

Portland, Oregon

Monroe, Wisconsin

San Fransisco, California

Albany, New York

Raleigh, North Carolina

Richmond, Virginia

Austin, Texas

Protests Outside Fox News in New York City

16 days ago there were large protest in the Iowa Statehouse

19 days ago, a protest in Cherry Hill, New Jersy outside Tesla Showroom as part of a nationwide movement protesting Telsas. There have been tons more than just this one and these happen basically every day

21 days ago, large protests in DC for Ukraine aid

And so on. There's a lot more going on than just this

9mo ago

Permanently Deleted

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 9mo ago

Nice! There's a bunch of vegan communities on lemmy to check out too

Both for general info and also things like recipes

[email protected]

9mo ago

MFW he effing did X again 🫨

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 9mo ago

https://www.teslatakedown.com/

Make the share prices fall further

9mo ago

The Democrats theatre

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 9mo ago

They are doing a lot of these things, the media is just barely covering it. Here's that coverage brought up higher. Could they and should they do more, absolutely and do put directed pressure them to do more, but let's not pretend they are doing nothing. That just creates defeatism instead of the energy we need to keep the pressure up

Handful of the lawsuits that you probably didn't hear about:

Democratic AGs win preliminary injunction against DOGE access to Treasury payment systems

Gov. Josh Shapiro Says Over $2 Billion of Federal Funding Is Unfrozen for Pennsylvania (following PA's lawsuit)

20 Dem AGs sue over Trump efforts to fire probationary employees

Democratic AGs sue over cancellation of teacher grants

More than a dozen state attorneys general file lawsuit challenging Musk and DOGE's authority

Democratic attorneys general sue to block Trump's attempt to end birthright citizenship

Democratic National Committee Files Lawsuit Against Trump

And so many more. There are an insane number of lawsuits going on right now

In delay tactics, they could do more, but they have now starting using them. It's more than zero that's for sure. Keep the pressure up here for them to do more. Call your reps to deny unanimous consent more often - it's starting to get through a bit. Here's a few examples

Senate Democrats Hold Floor In All-Night Protest of Trump’s OMB Nominee (they held it for the maximum 30 hours)

Scoop: Senate Dems delay Tulsi Gabbard nomination (were able to do so because of some procedural stuff with how she filed her clearance)

Senate Democrats delay Kash Patel committee vote

In terms of protests, they are also speaking and rallying at them with again limited coverage. Here's a few

Democrats Protest Outside USAID Headquarters as Trump Seeks to Dismantle Agency

Democrats and protesters rally outside treasury department to protest Elon Musk’s access to sensitive information – as it happened

Dems protesting outside the department of education, trying to get in and denied entry

Dems protesting outside of the EPA

And so on

9mo ago

Rule

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usernamesAreTricky @lemmy.ml 9mo ago

Considering even industry certifications aren't always followed, I'd have to imagine ones without are even less likely to be followed. Even if they are, they're almost certainly still doing stuff like Chick culling :(