lots of people talk about economics as though it is science.
lots of people talk about economics as though it is science.
it’s storytelling, not science
“basic economic principles” is handwaving. you’re storytelling, not making a scientific postulate
you already linked poore-nemecek 2018, and I explained some of the problems with the methodology. citing it again doesn’t resolve this
given that beerf cattle can simply graze, that when they do make it to the feedlot they are fed fodder and crop seconds, what metrics do you think can meaningfully inform the “efficiency”?
our food system is so complex and interconnected that it makes no sense to claim any individual food product has a particular impact: each operation must be evaluated individually and improved in its own context.
Laws are made entirely on morals.
this has never been true
the vast majority of make calves are brought to full weight before slaughter.
if I told you that I went to 38,700 farms myself and cataloged exactly how much land it was using, that doesn’t tell you what that land could be used for. it might not be useful for anything except farming. so the bare metric of land use isn’t helpful. and then we consider other footprints: water use, ghg emissions, lca’s.
none of these is able to give you an actual understanding of how the water is used or where the emissions come from or how LCA’s stack up against each other.
My favorite example is cotton: cotton is raised for textiles. it is very thirsty. it takes up some amount of land. The farming of it emits some amount of greenhouse gas. there is also waste product from the production of cotton: cotton seed. Cotton seed is fed to cattle. Even if we take the weight of the cottonseed that is fed to cattle and we take that portion of the crop by weight and we say that some portion of the crop by weight is responsible for a certain amount of water use and land use and greenhouse gas emissions, the truth is that cattle aren’t responsible for that. In fact feeding that cottonseed two cattle is a conservation of resources.
All of these metrics, all of the sources of the material, they all need to be reevaluated in a holistic manner. that doesn’t mean a meta study where you compare LCAs, a metric that itself is not supposed to be transferable between studies. it means actually doing the hard work of figuring out how to make every individual agricultural operation operate at its peak efficiency for the metrics that we want to see improved: water use, emissions, land use, run off, etc.
ideologically opposing animal agriculture is just going to leave a hole in the agricultural space where products had previously been diverted after becoming industrial waste now need to be used or become waste again.
i would not suppose that any single metric can give us meaningful insight.
I would never recommend poore nemecek 2018: every time I dig into the methodology I’m struck at how myopically supposed scientists can attempt to quantify a complex system like modern agriculture into discreet quantifiable metrics and then make recommendations without consideration of the widespread effects. it’s flawed coming and going.
the question is whether turning out agricultural waste into ethanol has less of a negative impact on the environment than feeding it to animals. a claim either way must be substantiated.
one bathtub can’t turn all of the worlds agricultural waste into ethanol. surely you have some kind of data to back up your claims though.
Why on earth did you branch out my comment into three different subsection replies in which you say essentially the same thing?
I considered each response independent, and I’m not a huge fan of editing comments
if we are only talking about animals raised on agricultural waste, i doubt it. do you have any numbers to substantiate that?
your accusation of bad faith is, itself, bad faith.
where did they lie?
I don’t see how this is ever going to happen
same way you dictate what food is made, I suppose
this isn’t proof that animal use of our crop waste is more polluting.
ethanol production definitely requires land
the house can only make $1 per play, and the bettor can make a functionally unlimited amount.
see the martingale strategy. you are basically sticking the house with a martingale strategy in which you get to decide when they bet.