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Since the graphic is showing ballooning land use for agriculture:
- “If the world adopted a plant-based diet, we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares”.
- According to a very robust meta-analysis by Poore & Nemecek (2018) (full access via ResearchGate): “it takes 50 to 100 times as much land to produce a kilocalorie of beef or lamb versus plant-based alternatives.” (quote by OurWorldInData)
- Also per Poore & Nemecek (quote by BBC News): “Producing a glass of dairy milk every day for a year requires 650 sq m (7,000 sq ft) of land, […] more than 10 times as much as the same amount of oat milk”
- Animal agriculture’s extensive land use is creating a “carbon opportunity cost” by not allowing reforestation, per Hayek et al. 2020.
- Per the linked study: “Animal agriculture across all continents and income categories represents a profound trade-off [emphasis mine] when compared with potential GHG mitigation.”
People who resort to “not every type of land can support plant-based agriculture” simply fail to realize the enormous difference in scale.
I could keep going, but I instead recommend reading the two linked studies and/or the OurWorldInData article which uses them among others as sources. I’ve never bothered to compile land use sources, so I apologize this isn’t more thorough. Needless to say, however, the effects are catastrophic.
I recommend everyone read poore nemecek and their lca sources
Just in my lifetime the amount of bugs has dropped so drastically and alarmingly. It is truly troubling.
I remember during this time of year not but 12-15 years ago, and my windshield getting absolutely covered in bugs during my commute that stopping at a gas station to clean off your windshield with the squeegee was a routine thing you did at least once a day.
Today though? I can’t even remember the last time I actually had to stop at a gas station to clean the bugs off my windshield and I live out in the countryside surrounded by farms and bayous. Ya know, where you expect there to be all kinds of bugs.
I’ve read the argument that part of that is better vehicle aerodynamics.
But that shouldn’t detract from the reality that insect biomass has drastically declined.Good point. I forgot to think about how aerodynamics improvements would affect insect flight paths with the wind pressure flowing around the car.
Except the fuckers who drink our blood
Republicans?
The tetm is shifting baseline syndrome
This is the boiling the frog analogy. We’ve been sleepwalking into disaster.
I used to work in my grandfather’s farm in rural Mexico when I was a kid and it was nice seeing all the wildlife. There were giant metallic green beetles, natural water springs cheerily bubbled across dirt roads, wild tamarind trees offered free fruit, and tadpoles swam in whatever puddles would form after some rain. Thirty years later, the dirt roads have been paved over, the frogs are gone, the natural springs were drained, and large swaths of ugly brick walled properties have destroyed the land and scenery around it.
It’s devastating to see the natural beauty we once coexisted with disappear to create a suburban hell scape.
This is inaccurate because that farmland would all be scraped clean and have a few thousand McMansions on it by now.
