COP21: Arnold Schwarzenegger: 'Go part-time vegetarian to protect the planet'

I have seen more than enough people that claim to have no children for the sake of the Environment, only to go and buy pets and treat those like children; retarded children that will never learn to speak, walk in 2 feet, or become productive members of society, demanding constant attention for their natural lifespan, and which will age rapidly and die in their teens, - and have valuable medical resources expended in heroic efforts to futily prolongue their agony for weeks/months. You could claim that the pet dies early and does not produce offspring, but then the pet owner will likely mourn for a few weeks and then go to the pet store and start all over again.

Now the main problem is that if you reduce your CO2 emission by 80% and you and all your offsprings have two kids and each consume at your reduced level, in just two generations, it would been better if you didn't have kids. Two generations after that even at the reduced consumption, you (by having kids) contribute to CO2 emission by a factor of 6 if you have just consumed all the meat and didn't have kids.

Geometric progression is a nasty nasty thing.

Whilst human population can't continue to grow on this planet indefinitely, there's plenty that can be done to push our societies in a direction that works with nature. That should be our focus.

To give one example of how working with nature benefits us all, check out this talk by William McDonough:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoRjz8iTVoo

We sit in font of computers the whole day. The disciplined ones runs when there is no immediate danger or prey. We don't attack or kill people when they make us angry. We don't have sex with everything that has a chance to bear offspring.

When I propose this idea the usual reaction is: "Are you the next Hitler? Do you want to kill everybody? Maybe you should kill yourself first!".

It's proposal not to proliferate ourselves to extinction, no one is proposing any mass genocide. IMHO [0], we are 2-3 generations from catastrophic survival problems (unfathomable problems due to climate change, lack of resources like drinkable water, etc.).

[0] completely pulling this out of my a, though I think it's reasonable scenario with current increasing rate of consuming ourselves to death.

I think that global 1 child policy would be harsh [0], though, for the lack of better term, a 'perfect' medium between 'no child at all' policy and "increase human population until it's destruction" scenario.

In perfect case couple would have up to 1 offspring, thus global medium would be something like 0.9 or 0.8, or even less. Which will reduce global population by half in 50 years.

[0] It's harsh, though would be right thing to do so we will not proliferate and consume ourselves to the point of global destruction.

And all non developed countries will potentially add 3-5 billion to current population [0]

[0] on moderate forecast, IMHO optimistic sharp decline is not possible without very aggressive global intervention to population growth (either from rational human thinking or from ecological catastrophe). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World-Population-1800-210..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates

> I struggle to imagine how the world would be spared demise by invading Tibet and prohibiting the use of yak butter; or banning the cultivation of fish and their superior waste as fertilizer; or exterminating the last remaining nomadic tribe of Africa through prohibiting their practice of non-fatally bleeding their animals for sustenance.

We can talk about invasions in a couple of years. For now, we can be content with reducing meat consumption in our respective home countries. Let's start with getting rid of meat subsidies. Then we can move on to dealing with industrial meat production. Etc etc.

> i.e not all dietary classes are equal and a vast disparity of options may exist between individuals, groups, etc, therefore dietary practices may be circumstantial

Like a third of India is at least vegetarian. Somehow they manage to get by.

When there's a more fundamental change on an ethics basis (i.e. you do a mental switch and stop looking at that stuff as food to be consumed at all), then the changes seem to be more long lasting. Then it stops being "I shouldn't do this" to "I can't do this".

When talking about farming we also need to consider water use, water cleaning, and eutrophication. In some places we even have a harmful effect to biodiversity when previous farm land is reverted back into forests (Sweden is in this situation, where some species that depend on open land is drastically decreasing when animal farms are abandoned and land get grown in). I even know government projects which funded fishers to fish in lakes where eutrophication caused overgrowth of certain fish species that directly threatened extinction of other fish. It is complex system, which is why looking on only greenhouse gases makes for easier for comparing one activity vs an other.

It doesn't help the environment if someone drives 5 extra minutes to reach a vegan lunch restaurant and then 5 min back. We can look at the global scale and say that livestock production may have bigger impact, but it doesn't change the local impact that each person do to the environment here and now. We should look at what each person can do, and that include counting all actions and sorting them from biggest impact to least.

Your statement also further solidifies his/her point.

Everyone does, just not necessarily directly.

Meat eating has consequences that extend beyond those that choose to eat meat. If our choices existed in isolation to the rest of the world, then we could say we didn't impose our view of the world on other people.

I'm not saying you have to stop eating meat, but at least do so with awareness of what happened before the meat arrived on your plate.

The amount of resources necessary to grow meat necessitates the imposition of your view of the world on other people.

I eat meat, too. But it's important to own the consequences of your decisions.

It's actually quite the opposite, it is a compromise that understands that you and many other people do enjoy meat and do not want to give it up completely while still reducing the total consumption across the whole population.

We also know that it doesn't cause many cases of cancer.

This was poorly reported last year with people talking about red meat, cancer, and smoking.

While it's true you don't need any meat, it's not true you can get everything you need from an unsupplimented vegan diet (more accurately, it's incredibly hard).

If you're looking at a vegan diet, consider researching supplements such as for B12. If you're lazy and in the UK, Holland and Barret sell a single tablet supplement designed for a vegan diet (just ignore all of the other bollocks they sell in there)

Soy is a rather poor source of protein (phyto-estrogens, etc). Whey is a waste product of the cheese industry.

(Edit: All things considered, milk is a pretty good source of protein.) The milk cow is the most efficient means of converting the grass on a rocky hillside into human-edible protein (ref: some old book I have somewhere. They're all in boxes). The fat in grass-fed milk is more orange than industrial milk because there is more vitamins A & E (and beta carotene) in the milk than is in cottonseed meal (a waste product of the cotton industry that is commonly fed to dairy cows in a feedlot).

So the world's largest biceps were mostly dairy. Also steroids. Lots of steroids.

Does that matter? Most people will just say "What a hypocrite" and ignore the message. People don't respond well to logic, they respond to emotion. A valid argument that doesn't convince anyone is worthless.