Work on improving the efficiency of the Haber-Bosch process used in the production of nitrogen just 1%.
is this realistic? we can reduce dairy consumption right now
That will probably have a stronger impact than removing all milk production and private jets from the planet.
“will”, “probably”. we can reduce emissions right now by switching to plant based products, no need to wait for alternatives pop up when climate change is much worse
it’s a combination of things, reduction of consumption and working on reducing the emissions from production of dairy, since there’s some people that will struggle with switching to plant based alternatives due to intolerances, allergies and stuff
most people can reduce or stop consumption of animal based products and there’s no real excuse not to at least work on making some improvements
Yes, industrial processes are optimized all the time. Sometimes investment is needed: there are nitrogen production factories which were built later and are more efficient than older ones.
we can reduce dairy consumption right now
Yes and no, you can stop consuming dairy on your own; worldwide reduction is quite a different thing to achieve. Not impossible, but definitely not going to happen right now. Milk production has indeed been increasing steadily throughout the years regardless of the higher share of people who became vegan around the world.
I like to eat cheese.
Thus I ask, if I make the effort to not eat cheese and to have other people not eat dairy and this leads to no milk production in the next 15-20 years. Does that actually lead to any measurable difference?
Yes, industrial processes are optimized all the time. Sometimes investment is needed: there are nitrogen production factories which were built later and are more efficient than older ones.
how long will it take to be at plant milk’s level of emissions?
Yes and no, you can stop consuming dairy on your own; worldwide reduction is quite a different thing to achieve. Not impossible, but definitely not going to happen right now. Milk production has indeed been increasing steadily throughout the years regardless of the higher share of people who became vegan around the world.
yeah but if people think their impact doesn’t matter nothing will change. same goes for voting and stuff, people just have to do it. i think the milk production increase depends on the country, i know here a huge chunk of people have switched to oat barista milk for coffee, and i’ve heard we’re the biggest coffee drinkers in the world.
I like to eat cheese.
if cheese is the only dairy product you eat, it’s already great progress. some people might switch out the cheese, some people might switch out the milk, yogurts etc.
Thus I ask, if I make the effort to not eat cheese and to have other people not eat dairy and this leads to no milk production in the next 15-20 years. Does that actually lead to any measurable difference?
yes, reduced dairy consumption is good unless we get the emissions of dairy production in control. if we somehow manage to reduce the emissions, obviously switching back is fine from an environmental perspective at least. though if we switched to plant based alternatives as the whole of humankind, people would probably be reluctant to switch back because the meat and dairy industry is pretty fucked up. that’s kind off topic though so it’s probably safe to leave it at that
Or maybe I’d better focus on doing other things?
you can focus on whatever you want. i’m just saying that making even small changes in a variety of things really does add up, and it makes sense to at least try to work towards more plant based food. u can start with maybe eating a plant based cold cut on your bread once a week. switch your fresh cheese spread with something plant based (some of these are surprisingly good!), switch to oat barista milk for coffee (me and a huge amount of people prefer the taste over dairy milk). stuff like that
if you combine this with taking the train sometimes where it makes sense, shopping at the thrift store, buying used stuff, it does make an impact. one of those on its own obviously doesn’t really change much, but if we all did a bunch of small changes like this, we would be in a better situation. it won’t solve the problem, but it would slow it down so we can work on things like your industrial optimization.
how long will it take to be at plant milk’s level of emissions?
It possibly never have such low emissions as plant based milk production. Regardless, plant production needs nitrogen.
i think the milk production increase depends on the countr
Milk is mostly important in poor countries, since it is a nutritious cheap food.
i know here a huge chunk of people have switched to oat barista milk for coffee
No data here, but I have the impression that coffee production has a greater impact than milk production.
if cheese is the only dairy product you eat
I barely eat any cheese, but I fail to understand how that matters.
yes, reduced dairy consumption is good unless we get the emissions of dairy production in control.
No doubts it’s good. I’m asking how good it is and whether it even matters.
even small changes in a variety of things really does add up
Policy changes matter way more than what individuals can do on their own, even if it was the case that people were to get organized and make such changes on mass.
if you combine this with taking the train sometimes where it makes sense
Agreed, but rather than criticizing people for not taking trains it would be better to find a way to make it easier for people to take a train. If you have free public transport which takes you from your house to wherever you need to go you’re going to take the train. If the railway is one hour away and the train ride is two hours can you really tell someone not to use their car? I don’t have a car because I don’t need one, but plenty people do.
The changes you advise on doing are minor nuisances that rich people in rich countries can afford to make. The effect of such changes is minor. I see the good intentions, but this is hypocritical since those same people are the ones who most pollute.
Milk is mostly important in poor countries, since it is a nutritious cheap food.
absolutely, i’m mostly talking about people in the west because we pollute way more than poor countries. we should lead the way. i think it would be hypocritical to tell poor countries to do changes on their already struggling life if we pollute the shit out of the planet. that being said, a lot of poor countries are great for growing soy and those cultures already make tofu and drink soy milk
No data here, but I have the impression that coffee production has a greater impact than milk production.
depends on how much milk you add i guess. i agree though that coffee is definitely a problem, i used to drink a litre of black coffee a day and now i drink 1-2 cups of tea and i might quit that too, since i don’t really get any kind of effect from tea, at least i don’t really notice it
I barely eat any cheese, but I fail to understand how that matters.
eating cheese and eating plant based dairy replacements is better than eating cheese and a lot of other dairy products
No doubts it’s good. I’m asking how good it is and whether it even matters.
Policy changes matter way more than what individuals can do on their own, even if it was the case that people were to get organized and make such changes on mass.
agreed. lack of policy doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything though, we should do what we reasonably can and try to get better policies. i personally think this needs a completely different political system so it’s not easy
Agreed, but rather than criticizing people for not taking trains it would be better to find a way to make it easier for people to take a train. If you have free public transport which takes you from your house to wherever you need to go you’re going to take the train. If the railway is one hour away and the train ride is two hours can you really tell someone not to use their car? I don’t have a car because I don’t need one, but plenty people do.
agreed, that’s what i advocate for and is exactly why i said “where it makes sense”
The changes you advise on doing are minor nuisances that rich people in rich countries can afford to make. The effect of such changes is minor. I see the good intentions, but this is hypocritical since those same people are the ones who most pollute.
i’m very poor (at least in western standards) and i’ve still implemented some changes. i don’t see how it’s hypocritical though, we are the ones that really should be making changes in our lives and, of course policy. i thought the policy part was something so obvious that i don’t have to mention it
i’m mostly talking about people in the west because we pollute way more than poor countries.
i don’t see how it’s hypocritical though, we are the ones that really should be making changes in our lives and, of course policy.
People in the west pollute a lot more, but not because they consume a lot more milk. The reason why they pollute much more is widespread consumerism. Reducing the amount of milk consumption is pretty much ininfluential. Of course, don’t buy milk just to throw it away.
If you want to do that, fine by me: I appreciate the effort. But don’t fool yourself not drinking milk is making any kind of difference; even if that was a practice which became widespread across your whole nation.
i’m very poor
I don’t know if you’re American. I had people in America telling me they were very poor because they had to rent a full house and couldn’t buy one and were forced to cook at home a couple times a week because they did not earn enough to go to restaurant every day. I come from Europe and I’m in no way poor, but while they described me their lifestyle I was thinking they lived the same way as a doctor would in my country.
People in the west pollute a lot more, but not because they consume a lot more milk. The reason why they pollute much more is widespread consumerism. Reducing the amount of milk consumption is pretty much ininfluential. Of course, don’t buy milk just to throw it away.
like i said, it’s a part of the big picture.
If you want to do that, fine by me: I appreciate the effort. But don’t fool yourself not drinking milk is making any kind of difference; even if that was a practice which became widespread across your whole nation.
like i said, by itself it’s not. combined with other things, it is.
I don’t know if you’re American. I had people in America telling me they were very poor because they had to rent a full house and couldn’t buy one and were forced to cook at home a couple times a week because they did not earn enough to go to restaurant every day. I come from Europe and I’m in no way poor, but while they described me their lifestyle I was thinking they lived the same way as a doctor would in my country.
i’m from finland, i live on minimum benefits and rent a tiny 22.5 sqm apartment in the suburbs.
i cook pretty much everything myself, but sometimes buy cheap ready meals if i don’t have the energy to cook. i only buy off brand food and from the cheapest grocery store. don’t have a car, i walk to the grocery store and take a bus everywhere else. i get fast food and maybe a bar of chocolate or a bag of chips max once a week so i guess there’s that, but i wouldn’t say that makes me middle class lol. i haven’t bought new clothes in like over 1.5 years and wear clothes that don’t really fit me so i cover up with a hoodie.
And yes, that’s more or less what I’d consider middle class; on the lower end of it.
My life is not so different, except I have a full time job and can not afford to rent a full apartment on my own.
One advice I can give for clothes: get a sewing machine or lend one from a friend. I used to buy large 1€ shirts and pants from road markets and just fit them to my size, don’t know about Finland; around here you find quite nice clothes thrown besides trash bins.
I have friends I’d consider poor, even though to be fair around here it’s pretty difficult to find someone who is actually poor.
One of them has a campment set up in the woods 20 minutes from the city center. Clothes are readily available in the trash, food is plentiful even without money. He only needs money for wine and tobacco pretty much.
Work on improving the efficiency of the Haber-Bosch process used in the production of nitrogen just 1%.
That will probably have a stronger impact than removing all milk production and private jets from the planet.
There are places in which it is more efficient to optimize since that optimization will lead to a greater benefit.
Is reducing the production of milk potentially one of these important optimizations?
is this realistic? we can reduce dairy consumption right now
“will”, “probably”. we can reduce emissions right now by switching to plant based products, no need to wait for alternatives pop up when climate change is much worse
it’s a combination of things, reduction of consumption and working on reducing the emissions from production of dairy, since there’s some people that will struggle with switching to plant based alternatives due to intolerances, allergies and stuff
most people can reduce or stop consumption of animal based products and there’s no real excuse not to at least work on making some improvements
Yes, industrial processes are optimized all the time. Sometimes investment is needed: there are nitrogen production factories which were built later and are more efficient than older ones.
Yes and no, you can stop consuming dairy on your own; worldwide reduction is quite a different thing to achieve. Not impossible, but definitely not going to happen right now. Milk production has indeed been increasing steadily throughout the years regardless of the higher share of people who became vegan around the world.
I like to eat cheese.
Thus I ask, if I make the effort to not eat cheese and to have other people not eat dairy and this leads to no milk production in the next 15-20 years. Does that actually lead to any measurable difference?
Or maybe I’d better focus on doing other things?
how long will it take to be at plant milk’s level of emissions?
yeah but if people think their impact doesn’t matter nothing will change. same goes for voting and stuff, people just have to do it. i think the milk production increase depends on the country, i know here a huge chunk of people have switched to oat barista milk for coffee, and i’ve heard we’re the biggest coffee drinkers in the world.
if cheese is the only dairy product you eat, it’s already great progress. some people might switch out the cheese, some people might switch out the milk, yogurts etc.
yes, reduced dairy consumption is good unless we get the emissions of dairy production in control. if we somehow manage to reduce the emissions, obviously switching back is fine from an environmental perspective at least. though if we switched to plant based alternatives as the whole of humankind, people would probably be reluctant to switch back because the meat and dairy industry is pretty fucked up. that’s kind off topic though so it’s probably safe to leave it at that
you can focus on whatever you want. i’m just saying that making even small changes in a variety of things really does add up, and it makes sense to at least try to work towards more plant based food. u can start with maybe eating a plant based cold cut on your bread once a week. switch your fresh cheese spread with something plant based (some of these are surprisingly good!), switch to oat barista milk for coffee (me and a huge amount of people prefer the taste over dairy milk). stuff like that
if you combine this with taking the train sometimes where it makes sense, shopping at the thrift store, buying used stuff, it does make an impact. one of those on its own obviously doesn’t really change much, but if we all did a bunch of small changes like this, we would be in a better situation. it won’t solve the problem, but it would slow it down so we can work on things like your industrial optimization.
It possibly never have such low emissions as plant based milk production. Regardless, plant production needs nitrogen.
Milk is mostly important in poor countries, since it is a nutritious cheap food.
No data here, but I have the impression that coffee production has a greater impact than milk production.
I barely eat any cheese, but I fail to understand how that matters.
No doubts it’s good. I’m asking how good it is and whether it even matters.
Policy changes matter way more than what individuals can do on their own, even if it was the case that people were to get organized and make such changes on mass.
Agreed, but rather than criticizing people for not taking trains it would be better to find a way to make it easier for people to take a train. If you have free public transport which takes you from your house to wherever you need to go you’re going to take the train. If the railway is one hour away and the train ride is two hours can you really tell someone not to use their car? I don’t have a car because I don’t need one, but plenty people do.
The changes you advise on doing are minor nuisances that rich people in rich countries can afford to make. The effect of such changes is minor. I see the good intentions, but this is hypocritical since those same people are the ones who most pollute.
absolutely, i’m mostly talking about people in the west because we pollute way more than poor countries. we should lead the way. i think it would be hypocritical to tell poor countries to do changes on their already struggling life if we pollute the shit out of the planet. that being said, a lot of poor countries are great for growing soy and those cultures already make tofu and drink soy milk
“A single 12 oz black coffee generates about 0.258 kg CO₂e, while a latte’s emissions soar to 0.844 kg CO₂e,”
depends on how much milk you add i guess. i agree though that coffee is definitely a problem, i used to drink a litre of black coffee a day and now i drink 1-2 cups of tea and i might quit that too, since i don’t really get any kind of effect from tea, at least i don’t really notice it
eating cheese and eating plant based dairy replacements is better than eating cheese and a lot of other dairy products
“Worldwide, dairy cattle contribute to approximately 20 % of livestock greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 4 % of total anthropogenic emissions”
agreed. lack of policy doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything though, we should do what we reasonably can and try to get better policies. i personally think this needs a completely different political system so it’s not easy
agreed, that’s what i advocate for and is exactly why i said “where it makes sense”
i’m very poor (at least in western standards) and i’ve still implemented some changes. i don’t see how it’s hypocritical though, we are the ones that really should be making changes in our lives and, of course policy. i thought the policy part was something so obvious that i don’t have to mention it
People in the west pollute a lot more, but not because they consume a lot more milk. The reason why they pollute much more is widespread consumerism. Reducing the amount of milk consumption is pretty much ininfluential. Of course, don’t buy milk just to throw it away.
If you want to do that, fine by me: I appreciate the effort. But don’t fool yourself not drinking milk is making any kind of difference; even if that was a practice which became widespread across your whole nation.
I don’t know if you’re American. I had people in America telling me they were very poor because they had to rent a full house and couldn’t buy one and were forced to cook at home a couple times a week because they did not earn enough to go to restaurant every day. I come from Europe and I’m in no way poor, but while they described me their lifestyle I was thinking they lived the same way as a doctor would in my country.
like i said, it’s a part of the big picture.
like i said, by itself it’s not. combined with other things, it is.
i’m from finland, i live on minimum benefits and rent a tiny 22.5 sqm apartment in the suburbs.
i cook pretty much everything myself, but sometimes buy cheap ready meals if i don’t have the energy to cook. i only buy off brand food and from the cheapest grocery store. don’t have a car, i walk to the grocery store and take a bus everywhere else. i get fast food and maybe a bar of chocolate or a bag of chips max once a week so i guess there’s that, but i wouldn’t say that makes me middle class lol. i haven’t bought new clothes in like over 1.5 years and wear clothes that don’t really fit me so i cover up with a hoodie.
Nice chat.
And yes, that’s more or less what I’d consider middle class; on the lower end of it.
My life is not so different, except I have a full time job and can not afford to rent a full apartment on my own.
One advice I can give for clothes: get a sewing machine or lend one from a friend. I used to buy large 1€ shirts and pants from road markets and just fit them to my size, don’t know about Finland; around here you find quite nice clothes thrown besides trash bins.
I have friends I’d consider poor, even though to be fair around here it’s pretty difficult to find someone who is actually poor.
One of them has a campment set up in the woods 20 minutes from the city center. Clothes are readily available in the trash, food is plentiful even without money. He only needs money for wine and tobacco pretty much.