I am still not understanding your point here. You say that there are a lot of places where it is possible to have cattle for meat but not possible to have crops to eat?
I mean I think there are some specific places where only hunting would make sense as a local way of sustaining oneself... but that´s like, in the North Pole or something? o_0
No, MM. First, hunter-gatherers still exist all around the world.
Second, pastoralists who are semi-nomadic and move with large herds of grazing animals are closer to established agricultural civilizations. They subsist off animals, and many native Americans lived for thousands of years this way.
The problem with nomadic cultures who domesticated their chattel was the at times these groups would overgraze a portion of land making it arid. This is not what permaculture advocates practice.
And finally, you're limiting meat-eating to cattle. You're forgetting pigs, chickens, sheep, goats, fish, shellfish, and even insects and reptiles in some areas of the world with their local cuisine.
No moral is universal until it is made universal. How universal do you think women´s rights, non racism and no slavery laws were sometime before?
And no, I am not saying it is as bad, I am saying you are applying the same reasoning: not everyone was okay with abolishing slavery, so it was not an universal moral law at first. This doesn´t mean it isn´t better, or that people fighting for equality were trying to be "self righteous". Sure, they were "pushing their morality" on other people, but who cares? Now women have equal rights, and slavery has been abolished and a lot of goodness of similar cases on other stuff.
I call foul. I simply asked you to stop making your vegetarian morals universal, and now you're injecting the moral argument into the thread when you requested we focus only on the environmental impact.
I have no patience, again, being compared to not only cannibals and to "murderous abortionists", but now to being against women's rights and against the abolition of slavery.
MM, if you want to remain on the environmental impact, then I request you follow your own rules. Otherwise, I refuse to play if I'm being roped into your sly injections of your moral arguments.
But as I said. It is not the time for this. This would only cause something simiar to the alcohol ban. This simply will not make any sense unless people truly understand and feel why, so simple abolishing would do little good.
First, if it is not the time for this, then there is no reason to post it in the thread.
Second, *I* truly understand. Vegetarianism is not for me. It is against my environmental ethics and my commitment to locally raised food, and eventually to creating a closed loop ecosystem on our own plot of land.
I would love to hear specifics. My question was specific.
In which way eating meat is better for the environment than not eating meat?
Well, according to the
Telegraph, if you were to substitute meat for soya and tofu products:
It has often been claimed that avoiding red meat is beneficial to the environment, because it lowers emissions and less land is used to produce alternatives.
But a study by Cranfield University, commissioned by WWF, the environmental group, found a substantial number of meat substitutes such as soy, chickpeas and lentils were more harmful to the environment because they were imported into Britain from overseas.
The study concluded: "A switch from beef and milk to highly refined livestock product analogues such as tofu could actually increase the quantity of arable land needed to supply the UK."
The results showed that the amount of foreign land required to produce the substitute products and the potential destruction of forests to make way for farmland outweighed the negatives of rearing beef and lamb in the UK.
And for a very dry and illuminating read on the plight of industrialized agriculture:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1240832/pdf/ehp0110-000445.pdf
In it, the argument for sustainable agriculture argues for symbiosis of animal, plant, bacteria, insect, mineral, and human in the same ecosystem to provide the best possible scenario of eliminating the soil depletion, the extinction of so many species of animals and plants, and the loss of potable and drinkable water.
We NEED animals as part of our ecosystem, and as a result, we must cull the herd on occasion to maintain the symbiosis of the entire system.
If you wish to find ways of never killing animals for food, for medicinal needs, or for tools and clothing while maintaining this symbiosis, feel free. Nobody is stopping you. Just beware of what happens when that family of animals goes from a family of 4 of that species to a family of 10, to 30, and then you have the problem of either providing water and/or arable pasture for these animals, or you'll have to compete for these resources.
If a family adopted a vegetarian ethic, where no animal is killed, you run into the possibility of overpopulation. I guess you could castrate all the males except for a few to regulate reproduction, but you also then run the risk of losing the offspring to outside predators, to natural disasters, to disease, or even to the parents of the offspring (who sometimes will eat their own chidren if not managed or paddocked properly).
Finally, the focus entirely on atmospheric impact by methane produced by CAFO cows is what I say is shortsighted. Environmental concerns are FAR more complicated and FAR more numerous than what's in the air. Which is why vegetarianism isn't even "one of the best" things you can do for the environment, but isn't even a blip on the radar when it comes to the depletion of fossil fuels and potable water around the world for corporate interests of CAFOS AND outside of agribusiness.
