Comment by belorn
18 hours ago
Modern agriculture, both animal and non-animal versions, are bad for the environment. Artificial fertilizers, replacing forests with farm land, and drainage of wet lands are all heavily contributing to emissions and water pollution, destroying local ecosystems as well as warming the planet. Artificial fertilizers is particular bad since its production uses fossil fuels, has large amount of accidental green house emissions, and causes eutrofiering to the point of areas like the baltic sea becoming basically dead from loss of oxygen. Runoff from farms are also now the primary cause of ecosystem collapse in fresh water lakes.
The most impactful elements of modern agriculture are entirely animal-based. Full-stop.
You in fact rightfully but incompletely recognize : artificial fertilizers (for giant mono-crop fields of soybeans to feed to cows and pigs [0]), replacing forests (to clear room for soybean fields and pasture for cows and pigs [1][2]), and runoff of these fertilizers and manure into waterways. The parent comment is right - if we want to fix these problems, we must stop killing and eating animals at such an industrial and horrendous scale.
0. https://www.ucs.org/about/news/extent-emissions-created-mass...
1. https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation
2. https://gfw.global/39qbPdC
3. https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
If it was a competition in who did more harm the distinction may be relevant but in terms of saving the environment and turning back the ecosystem back to a sustainable one, the distinction between animal based or non-animal based is mostly irrelevant. Modern agriculture are not sustainable for the environment. The fossil fuels that are pulled from the earth and put on fields are not sustainable, and the amount of run off that goes into the water are destroying ecosystems with no time table if they ever can recover. When different species goes extinct they stay extinct, and the distinction that "well, its not as harmful as animal-based agriculture" will not bring them back. The Baltic Sea an loud warning signal of what happens if we continue to go down this path of modern agriculture.
One of the few areas of sustainable farming is aquaculture like shellfish and seaweed, which could actually be used to reduce the negative effects caused by modern farming. If there were a competition in least amount of harm, those would likely be the winners.
Fields of corn or soybeans will still exist without animal-based agriculture, especially with current demand for biofuels. As long as the land can be farmed to generate revenue, people will farm it. Artificial fertilizers is the primary enabler of this.
No one is saying fields of corn and soybean wouldn't exist, but we would have far less of them without animal agriculture. You are creating a false dichotomy of "sustainable"/"not sustainable" the reality is human societies would be much more sustainable without animal agriculture. More sustainable does in fact result in less extinctions/ecosystem impact and reduced climate change.
Maybe I'm wrong but reading your comment it feels like you are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and you use your conclusion that we will never be sustainable as your excuse to continue to eat animals.
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> in terms of saving the environment and turning back the ecosystem back to a sustainable one, the distinction between animal based or non-animal based is mostly irrelevant
this is simply false - did you follow any of the citations? you’re welcome to find something to support your position but as they say: if it can be asserted without evidence, it can be dismissed without evidence.
> The most impactful elements of modern agriculture are entirely animal-based.
If we step back a bit, the most impactful bit is true human wish for growth.
If we were satisfied with a comfortable stasis, that would be helpful.