A Beef: No, Joe Biden Is Not Going To Take Away Your Burgers
Photo by Photwik via Wikimedia Commons
So earlier today, the Pseudoconservative Insane Clown Twitter Posse erupted with a terrifying claim:
Joe Biden is trying to reduce the beef consumption in America by 90% before 2030.
What a radical and senile tyrant.
— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) April 23, 2021
Joe Biden’s climate plan includes cutting 90% of red meat from our diets by 2030. They want to limit us to about four pounds a year. Why doesn’t Joe stay out of my kitchen?
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) April 24, 2021
Report: Biden’s climate plan would reduce red meat consumption by 90 percent. The Southern states would definitely secede over that.
— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) April 24, 2021
So Biden says we can have four pounds of red meat per year…
My officially response today… pic.twitter.com/dZHEHbRtCT
— Matt Couch (@RealMattCouch) April 24, 2021
You get the picture. So, you may be asking me, your resident scientist, if there is any truth to this claim. Let me see if I can address this in a clear, calm and convincing way. You see…NO GOD DAMMIT WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE HAVE THEY NOT LEARNED TO BE SKEPTICAL OF THIS SORT OF THING I MEAN JEEZUS THE DEMOCRATS ONLY HAVE A TINY SENATE MAJORITY AND THESE NUMBSKULLS THINK THEY’RE GOING TO KILL THE ENTIRE CATTLE INDUSTRY MY GOD HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING OVER THE LAST FOUR-
[sounds of Andrew physically dragging Mike away from the computer while Em warms up an injection of thorazine]
OK, OK. I’m good. No need for the straitjackets.
The claim is, on its face, ridiculous. While the Green New Deal made noises about getting rid of cows, no one took that seriously (it accidentally included in the release notes, which tells you all you need to know about the Green New Deal). The idea that a plan that would kill hundreds of thousands of jobs and destroy entire industries would get past Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema and literally anyone in Congress is silly. It’s not even clear how you would accomplish such a thing within the bounds of the Constitution and our federal system.
But I do think it’s a good illustration of the misinformation machine feeding a lot of Right Wing commentary and basically 90% of Twitter. So, let’s track how this absurd claim found its way into the conservative consciousness.
The genesis of this claim is that Joe Biden this week announced a climate plan. But Biden has a “climate plan” in the same sense that I had a plan for getting into Teresa Andrews’ pants back in high school. He has stated some goals. He’s made some vague gestures about how to achieve those goals. But there is no actual map to achieving those goals, least of all any legislation. He’s basically in the “maybe someone will give me her phone number and I won’t chicken out” stage.
What Biden has done is proclaim a goal of reducing the US’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 (compared to 2005 levels). That’s a tall order but…it’s actually one we’re partway to achieving. US CO2 emissions peaked in 2005 at just over 6 gigatons. By 2019, that was down to 5.2, so we are already a third of the way to achieving Biden’s goal. So how do we get the rest of the way there? He hasn’t said yet.
Given the lack of details, this has sent those who reflexively scream bloody murder over any and all Democrat actions to scrounge around for something his climate plan might be. And the more alarming this strawman can get, the better. The good news — for them, at least — is that there are plenty of strawmen around. Climate change is a complex, multi-faceted problem. There are a thousand plans and a million papers so it’s easy to find something that you can misrepresent in an alarming way. In this case, some climate activists have targeted meat consumption as a necessary part of getting global warming under control. Our own Kate Harveston wrote about it and the overall problem is very real. The meat industry produces enormous amounts of greenhouse gas emissions: from transportation, processing, feed and the emissions of the animals themselves1. Since Joe Biden does not actually have a concrete plan right now, this gives his critics the liberty of claiming that cattle industry emissions are absolutely part of his plan.
Digging deeper, I found that the claim of 90% came from the Daily Mail. I have a strict policy of not linking to that rag, but you can easily Google it. The Daily Mail claims that Biden’s climate plan — which, let me remind you, does not technically exist yet — would force everyone to cut their beef consumption by 90% in addition to mandating expensive electric cars and hiking taxes. They draw these numbers from a variety of places, but the beef claim specifically comes from the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems. The Daily Mail did not link to that study. Here it is. What they claim is that reducing the consumption of animal products by 50% and beef products by 90% would cut greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 2.4 gigatons by 2030. But that’s cumulative. The annual reduction would be more like 300 million tons a year, if I’m reading their analysis correctly.
The Michigan study is not a policy recommendation nor is it a plan for dealing with climate change (as the authors have clarified to the journalists who bothered to call them before shrieking about it on the Twitters). It is simply a projection of what could happen given certain assumptions. As far as I can tell, it’s mostly being used to persuade people to start eating beef substitutes. I’m fine with that. Soyburgers aren’t my thing but if consumers go for them, then let consumers go for them. And it’s certainly a reasonable scientific investigation to see what would happen if the world went vegetarian.
I agree with the activists (and Kate) that we should look into cattle emissions as a source of global warming. But — and this is a critical point here — this does not mean killing an industry that employs 800,000 people and forcing everyone to cut their meat consumption at gunpoint. Even if it were possible to do so, which it is not; even if it were desirable to do so, which it is not; it wouldn’t solve the problem. All that would happen is that other countries would increase their beef production to take over the markets we are currently servicing. And that would make the problem worse because those countries aren’t as environmentally responsible as we are. All you would do by destroying the American beef industry is engage in a game of environmental whack-a-fart. Encouraging people to eat beef substitutes is fine, but I don’t see the entire world agreeing to that and certainly not in the next ten years. Taxing beef might be an option. But all that’s going to do is deprive the poor of an important source of protein.
No, if you want to fix this problem, you’re going to have to fix it technologically. Several recent studies, for example, have indicated that adding seaweed to cattle feed could dramatically cut their methane emissions. Maybe that’s not scalable or we’ll find some reason why it doesn’t work. But that’s the sort of thinking we need if we’re going to reduce emissions from the beef industry.
So, putting the hysterics of Starnes and Boebert and their followers aside, beef isn’t going anywhere. Joe Biden is many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. If and when a climate plan comes out, it probably won’t say anything about the meat industry. And if it does, it will be very milquetoast stuff like investing in research. Of course, by then, the Boeberts of the Twitter world will have moved onto their next manufactured outrage. And their followers will conveniently forget that this one turned out to a big pile of…well…bullshit.
There are a bunch of cat/dog foods that are switching to insect protein instead of their traditional meat by-product ingredients. Unfortunately, this insect-based pet food costs more than the old kind.
They need to solve that problem first.
Then we can talk about how nobody is arguing that you’re going to have to eat bugs.Report
Well, first we have to argue with all the people who aren’t arguing that we’re going to be forced to eat pet food.Report
Hey, I am down with changing my lifestyle in order to help the planet.
I hope you are too.
I’m just not going to start feeding bugs to my cats until it’s cheaper.Report
I once met a faux-beef (i.e., Beyond/Impossible Burgers) enthusiast. I wasn’t entirely sure if he was a true believer or was somehow invested in the tech. Anyway, it was an interesting conversation.
“Is it healthier than beef?”
“It pretty much has the same nutritional values.”
“Does it taste as good as beef?”
“Lots of people can’t tell the difference.”
“What about the costs?”
“It’s only somewhat more expensive.”
“So… it offers no health benefits, no taste benefits, and costs more?”
“But you’re saving the planet! Just think: who would say no to a meat substitute that is indistinguishable from meat but doesn’t harm any animals and helps the planet???”
“But… you just said it isn’t indistinguishable…”
“WE’LL GET THERE!!!”
“Okay, call me when you do.”
My hunch is that, for a while at least, substitutes for the meat we are accustomed to will run into the “Choose 2 out of 3: fast, cheap, good” problem.
And that’s before you consider premium pricing on this stuff.
I’ve had the meat substitutes. If you have a busy enough burger and no one told me it wasn’t beef, I probably wouldn’t notice. But if we’re grilling in the backyard and its meat-and-bun and nonmeat-and-bun, it’s pretty noticeable.
And I’m not a meat snob. I don’t eat a ton of beef and I often opt for a really yummy chipotle black bean veggie burger. So I’m open to meat alternatives. But charging me more for something that is doing a bad job of pretending to be something else is never really going to work on me.Report
This reminds me of several conversations I had with a now ex girlfriend.
Her: aren’t you going to recycle that?
Me: no, I don’t recycle.
Her: But it’s required.
Me: No, it’s mandatory for single family houses not townhouses.
Her: But it’s for the environment.
Me: Rant about how after the commodities market tanked local jurisdictions were taking recycling and dumping it into the landfill because they could no longer sell it on the open market, then a final comment that “i have no kids, why would I give a damn if the planet goes to hell after I’m dead?
Conversation ends. 🙂Report
I’ll give you this – you are definitely consistent about your rugged individualism. The fact that you believe that you owe the society that gives you a ton of benefit nothing but a middle finger is beyond old, but at least its consistent.Report
Frankly, I pay a lot each year to for roads, schools, etc. I use far less than I’m forced to pay for “my share”. Time not working is not paid. I choose my off time activities to maximize benefit to me, not to others. My responsibility is to be a contributing member of society, i.e. work and pay taxes, which I do. You want more from me? Pay me.Report
FWIW, fake meat (like Beyond Meat or Impossible Burger) are slightly more fatty and salty, while having no cholesterol. Depending on your health and diet, it would range from “much healthier for you” to “a wash”.
I happily sub in BM on hamburgers, especially as the cost continues to drop (it’s only about a 10% difference as is).
And on most hamburgers, it really is indistinguishable — at least to me, and that’s a simple cheeseburger with lettuce, onions, and tomato.Report
This convo was years back so I’m sure things have tipped in Faux Meat’s favor.
And that’s a good thing. More options is better. Like I said, I often opt for meat substitutes but personally prefer when they don’t try to be something they ain’t. But everyone’s mileage may vary.
I think part of the issue is Faux Meat hasn’t found a clear area of superiority OTHER THAN being Not Meat and that isn’t enough to move the needle for most folks. If they find that angle though, could be a game changer.Report
Well, it is significantly better for the environment (water use, C02 footprint) than beef burgers. Like a 90% reduction in water use and C02 footprint, which is a lot when summed up over all the burgers America eats a year.
Once cost drops a little more, to being competitive instead of a small premium, I expect to see it more and more as ‘default’ instead of ‘an option’. At least for fast food chains, i can’t think of many where the small taste difference wouldn’t be utterly hidden by their burgers — unless you just ordered meat and bun, in which case I’d say half of America still wouldn’t notice. It’s not like McDonald’s is using prime beef.
Like I said, if a burger place has it I’ll sub it in even though it costs a dollar or two more. A hamburger is never going to be healthy for you, but the drop in cholesterol is nice and frankly i can’t taste the difference — although I do notice the significant increase in fiber.Report
It comes back to what Brandon said about ground beef, down thread. Ground beef is everything that can’t be sold as steak or roast or ribs. If demand for steak and roasts remains stable, but vat meat drives down the demand for ground beef, the cost for ground beef will just hit the floor, unless other markets take up the excess supply.
If vat meat can start replacing low end steaks and roasts, that could alter the market much more fundamentally.Report
A drop in ground beef prices will raise the prices of steaks and roasts.
Which will make trying to lab grow them more economic.
Whether steaks and roasts will get displaced at the same time as ground beef, I don’t know — it depends on what methods labs find that get the price down to “competitive”.
But it’s going to be more economical, in the long run, not to bother with the cow. We’ve bred them for a long time, but they’re not exactly all that efficient at turning feedstock into meat. They waste all sorts of energy on other things like “moving” and “thinking” (insofar as cows think. Latest research indicates that humans aren’t that big an outlier, spending 25% of our energy budget on the brain. So at least 10 to 15% of a cow’s food goes to cow thinking) and inefficiencies in digestion.
And of course methane farts.
I’m still shocked at the price drop in lab beef from 2013 to now (1.2m to 50 bucks a pound. Dang.)Report
Well done.Report
Rare, these days.Report
I’m kind of medium on it to be honest.Report
Medium? Well…Report
I think he marinated the topic too long.Report
Very well done.Report
Comedic timing is a rare talent.Report
This is one of the more baffling parts of the right in this country and where we really suffer as a society. I’d read about the seaweed thing a couple weeks ago and thought to myself this is the kind of thing that, assuming it scales, is going to solve this problem. Maybe it knocks out a big chunk of greenhouse gases and buys us more time to keep figuring out CO2. Even better it requires no lifestyle changes and would be pretty easy for the developed world to subsidize.
So huge breakthrough we can all get behind? Oh wait, we’re talking about this instead.Report
Its like republican politicians and pundits don’t know good business opportunities when they see them any more. Cause kelp farming is an actual thing . . . .Report
How many of us really are arguing about this, though? And are any of them working against seaweed? Show me how a few tweeters messing up the story has impaired the progress.Report
This particularly? I suppose no one is working against it now. But I see no reason the national GOP would start supporting a plan related to the discovery when as best as I can tell they do not support any action on climate change, and many question if it is happening at all.
This topic is a great example of why I find them unsupportable. The Democrats have some good ideas, some awful ideas, and some totally bizarre ideas (or really more like ideological assertions) they place under the rubric of climate change despite no actual relationship to it. The GOP just has no ideas and refuses to address it outside of the weird culture war/negative partisanship channels like this.Report
So we’re talking about this scenario even though it hasn’t happened, because you think it could. Are we really on a higher level than the tweeters cited above?Report
Well I’d hope that the standards for us in our role as commenters on a blog are lower than those for a sitting Congresswoman and influential pundits.
But aside from that my comment was a lament that this is the level of offering we see on the subject from the right. By failing to be solutions oriented we exist in a bad space where every decent D idea is weighed down by the bad ones.Report
I’m sure Pinky believes Haidt has something to say about this.Report
Yeah, Nothing even close to this will ever happen:
Biden ended by EO all new oil and gas leases. Gavin Newson will end fracking in the state by 2024 and eliminate all extraction by 2045.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/climate/biden-climate-executive-orders.html
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/04/23/governor-newsom-takes-action-to-phase-out-oil-extraction-in-california/
That’s a lot of jobs that people will need to be retrained. Yah, how’s that worked in the past hmm? So color me suspicious that in a few years or 10 or so, we’ll be hearing about this again and again.Report
Ending new oil and gas leases doesn’t throw anyone of out of current jobs . . . and California oil and gas production is already trending down as percentage of oil refined in California (https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/californias-petroleum-market/oil-supply-sources-california-refineries). Which means Newsome is just reinforcing the market trends . . . .
But hey, coal will come back any day now . . .Report
It’s absolutely ridiculous to suggest that the government would institute a tax on beef so heavy as to amount to a ban for most people. Ridiculous! The height of conservative anti-government ideation. Why, do you know there have been actual studies linking Republicanism to mental illness? Gosh, this talking makes me thirsty. Let me just take a sip from this straw that’s in my large cup of soda…Report
I think that this would be wildly unpopular with a large enough portion of the Democratic base that they wouldn’t dare do it. Stereotypes aside, only a small minority of Democrats are vegetarians.
The big soda ban was in New York City, and only lasted a year and change.Report
“The big soda ban was in New York City, and only lasted a year and change.”
The big soda ban was something that was laughably impossible, a stupid dream scenario thought up by right-wing scaremongers, more useful as a satirical joke of Republican thinking than anything that might actually happen, and then they went ahead and banned large soda cups.
And whenever someone said it might happen the response was not “well maybe they will but they’ll fix it, probably, eventually” it was “that’ll never happen and you’re a god damn idiot if you think it even could“.Report
The other counter-argument I see is that it doesn’t count, because the courts overturned it before it could kick in.Report
Honestly, the soda ban was pretty embarrassing.Report
It’s like someone held a seminar on Pigovian Taxes, and everyone was suddenly enthralled with the idea…Report
This feels like revisionist history.
The soda ban was real because we had politicians on the record as pursuing it.
Now, because the worst fears of what the soda ban would wrought were not realized, the argument is that folks who said the soda ban *would happen* were dismissed as cranks. But… that never happened.
No one argued that fears of a soda ban were laughably impossible because we know what politicians were pursuing it.Report
Don’t go spoiling people’s fun with facts, Kazzy.Report
“we didn’t fall down the slope all the way” is not quite the king-hell rebuttal to a slippery-slope argument that you seem to imagine.Report
“A large soda ban is coming!”
“Yea, it seems that way.”
“SOON THEY’LL BAN EVERYTHING!”
“I don’t think that seems reasonable”
[large soda ban comes]
[large soda ban goes]
[no other bans follow]
“SEE?!?! YOU WERE WRONG TO DISMISS US WHEN WE SAID THEY WERE PLANNING A LARGE SODA BAN!”Report
You really don’t have anything here other than “nuh-uh“, do you?
(And yes, I know that you thought the soda ban was just racism.)Report
The problem, Kazzy, is not only an inability to comprehend what other people write, but an inability to comprehend what DD himself writes.Report
Please show me where liberals dismissed conservative concerns about a large soda ban as unfounded and denied a large soda ban was in the works.Report
In 2010, a council member proposed banning the use of salt in restaurants. The bill was introduced but it got shot down and Felix Ortiz let it drop, kinda, saying that he was gutted by a loved one recently dying from a heart attack (if I recall correctly).
New York now has a salt warning on the menu next to dishes that have more than 2,300 milligrams of salt.
Now I look at that and think “gosh darn, 2,300 milligrams is a lot of salt!”
So, yeah. That warning makes sense to me.
But I will always remember the council member who floated banning salt in restaurants.Report
If you want me to say that liberals sometimes pursue bad, stupid, and anti-freedom measures with regard to food restrictions, I’ll say it: liberals sometimes pursue bad, stupid, and anti-freedom measures with regard to food restrictions. I’m not arguing that.
But the argument here is:
When we told you that large soda bans were coming, you called us stupid! BUT THEN THE LARGE SODA BANS CAME!!!
But that didn’t happen. We didn’t argue whether or not the large soda bans were coming. We could see in black-and-white they were. Or at least, attempts were being made in that direction. Now, maybe some folks defended large soda bans. I didn’t. I thought it was stupid.
But the claims that our beef being taken away is a fever dream.
No one ever said claims of an impending large soda ban in NYC was a fever dream.Report
Nobody is arguing that they’re going to take your beef away!
But…
You have to admit…
It’d be better for the planet if poor people stopped eating beef.
This twitter exchange captures my thoughts fairly well:
Report
I don’t think we should take anyone’s beer away.Report
Dude, seriously. Read the 18th amendment. It’s *NUTS*.Report
You can have your beef or you can have your beer but you can’t have both.Report
Also, I remember Frank Miller’s “Give Me Liberty”, which proposes a satirical dystopian future America where a white-savior liberal becomes President after a terrorist bombs the insanely right-wing government. This President’s first action is to ban all beef production and consumption (the news in the story refers to “beef addicts”) and his second action is to sent the Army to invade Argentina to kill everyone involved in the beef-production infrastructure.
(At the time Miller wrote this, it was meant as a parody of the 80s idea that we’d send the Army to Colombia to destroy the cocaine industry.)Report
This is just fake news, to distract the sheeple from the real plan by Kamala Harris to outlaw ingesting bleach as a preventative for the flu.
Under the Harris regime, Americans will no longer be allowed to drink or ingest bleach to cleanse their bodies of flu virus. Sources within the regime admit that the plan is to be put into action perhaps as soon as June, so true Constitutional Patriots have only the next few months to stock up and drink as much bleach as possible to keep themselves healthy.
Patriots, spread the word far and wide!Report
The tyranny and oppression of American Patriots begins!
Church Of Holy Bleach Drinking Family Indicted (Again) For Selling Bleach As COVID Cure
https://www.wonkette.com/church-of-holy-bleach-drinking-family-indicted-again-for-selling-bleach-as-covid-cure
Hurry, conservative patriots, drink your bleach now, before the Soros/Biden axis brings down the darkness of the global order!Report
Once more unto the bleach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our Covid dead!Report
The right-wing has become so obsessed with owning the libs and paranoia that they become the embodiment of silliness. It is true that PETA would probably like to make eating meat and using animal products criminal. There are some environmental activists who do not seem to know how bad their rhetoric sounds to ordinary people.* But these groups have no power in the Democratic Party and many of them hate the Democratic Party as much as the Republicans do.
So Biden can say something which should be non-controversial like cutting down on eating meat can have beneficial side effects to the environment and it becomes totally insane.
FWIW, I had a hamburger yesterday and am now writing this from the gulag. By gulag, I mean my living room couch.Report
But, but, but … Haidt!
Or some such!Report
Incorrect Saul. PETA and similar left wing loons hate the Democratic Party far MORE than they hate right wingers or Republicans. Similarly right wing loons used to hate the GOP MORE than they hated the left or Democrats, up until they took over the joint.Report
I meant that Republicans and PETA folks both hate the Democratic Party but you are correct that the far left loony tunes generally hate the Democrats more than they hate the Republicans.Report
Related: former alt-right YouTuber gives us the beef (heh) about right wing disinformation tactics that he previous used: https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1386345247341518848Report
Two comments.
1. Lab grown meat is….surprisingly further along than I thought. I wouldn’t count on it being affordable any time soon, but it’s dropped from 1.2 million a pound to about 50 bucks in what, 7 years? Expect that price to get cheaper over the next couple of years, as there’s big bucks being invested in it. Replacing just the ground beef market would be rather huge.
2. I really want an electric car. But getting one requires me to either empty and rewire my garage (so I can charge it), or build a heavy duty carport and…rewire for it (fuse box likely needs to be replaced. 1960s home — at least I don’t have aluminum wiring). Either way, I’m almost certain to need to pay several thousand dollars in just “home updates” to be able to plug in my car. It’s doable for me, if painful on top of the electric car premium, but I’ve no illusions I’m on the upper half of “middle class”.Report
Replacing just the ground beef market would be rather huge.
Ground beef is basically a byproduct of the more expensive cuts and dairy products, though. As long as people are buying natural steaks, roasts, and dairy products, ground beef will get as cheap as it needs to to compete with lab-grown ground beef.
Of course, it matters on the margin; if competition from lab meat drives down the price of ground beef, then cattle ranching becomes slightly less profitable, other cuts will become slightly more expensive, and cattle populations will slightly decline. But since ground beef is a small part of the overall value of the cow or steer, I wouldn’t expect the effects to be very large.Report
Thing is, lab grown meat isn’t ‘growing’ ground beef, it’s growing a muscle of beef. If they can grow a tenderloin, and the taste is comparable to even a cheap, grocery store butcher filet, then once you get past whatever ick factor a customer might have, you have a solid competitor. Sure, the high end steak houses will still sell pasture raised cow, but you think Denny’s is gonna care if their steak was?Report
My understanding is that it’s much easier to make cultured beef that’s good enough for ground beef than it is to make a plausible steak or roast. I don’t think the technology is at the point where they can grow a big slab of muscle meat.Report
Right now…Report
Hamburgers. We eat a lot of hamburger world wide.
Cheap steaks too, as you note.
Chicken’s another one.
Should be lean meat, reduced antibiotic use, a lot less land/water use…..
Heck, I’m pretty thrilled with Beyond Meat and that’s like a 90% reduction in water use and C02 footprint, and that’s just hamburgers.
Given how good we’re getting with a lot of fun little DNA tools, we might be coming up on a big revolution in how we feed people. Not a moment too soon, really.Report
Hell, we lab grow pork and how much of an impact could that have?Report
Pigs are pretty filthy animals that are awful for the environment, especially in industrial farms.
So…a lot. I mean the run-off from pig farms is just….godawful.Report
Okay, it’s less efficient than a factory farm, but isn’t every southern state from Texas east to the Atlantic begging people to come shoot feral hogs?
So far as I know, Colorado is the only state that has eradicated feral hogs once they were present. They were only in one corner of the state, and it still took what was basically open warfare to get rid of them. No season, no limits, no restrictions on weapons. Plus the state agencies trapped and killed as many as they could.Report
Yep, but here’s the thing about feral hogs.
They, generally, taste awful. That can be fixed — a skilled processor can do some stuff (which makes it more expensive) that fixes that.
But feral hog does not taste anything like what you buy at the store.
In general it’s tougher, MUCH gamier, and frankly if you want to eat it learn to love marinades and a few other tricks.
(Wild hog you get at fine restaurants is only “wild” in the sense it’s not raised in a cage. It’s diet is generally carefully curated and it’s exercise…curtailed…due to lack of needing to forage)
Feral hogs are considered vermin in Texas, so 365 day season on them and no limit, but everyone I know that shoots them just guts and burns them. I think there’s one guy that processes one a year, despite culling them heavily every year.Report
If you are serious – have you looked to see if you can get tax credits?
https://www.chargepoint.com/incentives/federal-charging-incentives/
https://envirocenter.org/ev-charging-tax-credits-explained/Report
Like I said, I either got to clean out my garage and dedicate it to parking the car — or build a carport. I don’t really want a charging point just standing there in open air.
I’m not really super keen on opening the garage door to run a cord out.
So either in the garage, or carport setup.
I mean sure I could put in one of those waterproof ones, but then it’s tearing up concrete on the driveway — we’re a two car household, after all, so it’d have to go in the middle…
Like I said, it’s a big hassle and a not insignificant expense. I believe the cheapest setup was to clear out my garage (problematic as my washer/dryer is in there AND I have a fridge and deep freeze, not sure I can squeeze two cars in even if I 100% rearrange it with JUST cars + fridges + washer/dryer), and then…3-5k for a new fuse box plus whatever it costs to run the wiring for a charge point.
I’m pretty sure I’m stuck on 3-5k for a new fuse box even if I just slap a charge point under the eaves and run cord out into the rain.Report
This is why I think there will be a market for Hydrogen Fuel cells EVs. We will probably have generating capacity, but will the last mile, or the residential panel, support it? Someone like you might be better off getting a HFC car and keeping a pallet of PowerPaste in the garage.Report
Bless your engineering heart… I wouldn’t expect anything less. I don’t think the paper is addressing efficiencies, but just the math necessary for the energy transfers. Efficiencies? To be sure… But the bar isn’t even close. My take away was that something like Nuclear Power would be perfect… no impact to global warming while replacing the micro-biological-generators of every cow.
Which leads to the occam’s razor of this: If we could use Nuclear to replace cows… why not use it simpliciter?Report
Speaking of nuclear! It has been confirmed that heavy water tastes sweet.
So maybe we could use Nuclear to replace dessert?
Report
Hey, our well water is kinda sweet…Report
oops… misthreaded, meant as part of thread below… not regarding Hydrogen.Report
As the paper says, there are trade-offs to be made.
If we are just looking at GWP, then doing something to reduce bovine methane production, or capture it, is probably optimal. Perhaps those big, inflatable buildings with a closed circulation system would allow for methane recovery (just spitballing here)?
The moral argument with regards to eating cows doesn’t entirely fall on deaf ears for me, but if we decide to say, stop raising animals for any kind of food (we only eat meat/eggs/dairy grown in a lab), then domestic livestock are going extinct. Of cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, and goats, I think goats are maybe the only ones we could let return to the wild. Pigs are too dangerous to release (see: wild pig problems in the US), and the rest would be hunted to extinction pretty fast. We’ve largely bred away the characteristics that give them a fighting chance.
So then I have the moral argument of eating tasty animals, or letting them die out. And they really are tasty…Report
Cows would survive in the wild… they’d get meaner and the non-polled genetics would probably win out… but Cows would make it.
Chickens won’t last a season.
Sheep… eh, purely a numbers game vs. predators… I could see it going either way.
Goats will find their way into your house and hide out while you are sleeping… they will be fine.
When the word goes out about the extinction event, Pigs will rise up and take over entire counties. So let’s keep it down for now.Report
1870s long gun technology and skill were sufficient to nearly eradicate the American bison. It was certainly within reach. Cows survive at our sufferance.
Pigs, now… I have always said that the spring when I was 25, and lost that step at softball that never came back? That was when the pig I saw too late got to me a step before I got to the tree. Pigs are a whole lot smarter than cows.Report
Sure, we could take them out… my point is that Cows are extremely hardy and require astonishingly little attention to thrive and reproduce.
If we opened the gates and let them into the wild, I’m comfortable predicting we’ll have their descendants with us 100 yrs from now.Report
My slightly contrarian take here is that there’s work being done under the cover of Global Warming to prepare the ground for a ‘moral’ argument against animal consumption.
I remember eons ago there was a thread here where everyone was asked to state what the one ‘moral’ thing we believe now (at an individual participatory level) will become ‘immoral’ some time in the future. For comity (and because we all know it to be true) no-one was allowed to moot Abortion.
Eating Meat is (IMO) the obvious choice here… and these are the opening moves for framing it in moral terms… in this case, the higher morality of Global Warming – having failed to move our moral intuitions grounded in our appetites (which otherwise reign supreme).
The more interesting science, is around energy consumption… and the full impact of heating water, creating sugars, digesting them, distributing them, fighting the bacteria, etc. that would go into this process. Initial reviews suggest that the costs vis-a-vis Global Warming may be worse… but GW isn’t the point here… it really is the moral argument. And attaching a desired goal, reduced (or no) animal slaughter to a moral imperative that is already accepted by a certain tribe. There’s a chance that our pursuit of this goal requires far more energy than it replaces… sort of like Bitcoin offsetting the gains of solar power.
There are, of course, secondary and tertiary issues like the benefits of pasture, animals in the ecosystem, the unknown unknowns of micro nutrients (good and bad) and how they are delivered via cultured meat. The thing we overlook is that ruminants translate sunlight miraculously via inedible cellulose into energy we consume…
My deeply held contrarian position is that cultured meat is an Energy problem… and the moment we solve for energy, we’ve solved for greenhouse gasses making the matter irrelevant. Unless… the point isn’t really about solving the energy problem or Green House Gasses at all.
In which case… dragging a silly Republican Response (but I repeat myself)… is missing the moral intuition that it signals.Report
Links are broken?Report
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.5b01614Report
I didn’t see any discussion regarding how much the industrial process could improve in the study (although I only skimmed it). We could make an effort to alter the inputs and impacts of the livestock, but I’m betting we’ll find efficiencies in the industrial processes a lot faster.Report
“We could make an effort to alter the inputs and impacts of the livestock, but I’m betting we’ll find efficiencies in the industrial processes a lot faster.”
I said this upthread, but at least 10 to 15% of a cow’s energy budget goes to it’s brain. They also graze a lot, so even more goes to “moving around”. Cows aren’t optimized to turn feedstock into meat, no matter how much we’ve bred them over the centuries.
So we’re not talking 80% “feed to beef” efficiency from cows. I’d be shocked it if was 30%.
That’s without getting into byproducts — cows aren’t as filthy as pigs, but they still produce waste (including lots of methane).Report
Ribeyes go for… what? $14/pound? If they could make Earth-Friendly Steaks for something in the ballpark of that, it’s probably sell. Hell, even with a premium on top of it. It’ll be, like, an additional status marker.Report
Heh, we’ll always have ribeyes. *I’ll* have ribeyes, but they will be out of reach for the regular folks. Hopefully my ribeyes will get better since we won’t be ruining our beef in the feedlots.
My status signal will be both financial and transgressively edgy… my instagram might even feature my enjoyment of raw meat.
Of course, people will tell me there’s no difference in taste… and depending on how I feel and/or the audience, I’ll let them believe it.Report
double link mod situation, if you will.Report
It was in the mid-Twenties, when Boston Dynamics discovered it could encase their robots in lab grown muscle tissue to provide more fluid motion and greater accuracy of grip than simple mechanical devices.
We are unsure of the precise date due to the ensuing chaos, but experts generally agree that somewhere around July 25, 2027 the corporate AI achieved sentience, because those were the first terrified reports of cyborgs invading the factory farms and forming an alliance with the cows, pigs and chickens.
The historical trail gets choppy and unreliable during the period when the world’s humans were rounded up into vast pens for conversion into a universal feed, but we know that it was President Biden who brokered the peace by agreeing to outlaw human consumption of animals and limiting consumption to meat harvested from Republicans who had refused the Covid vaccine.
This is why, children, there is now a fifth face on Mount Rushmore and President-For-Life Harris offers a prayer of thanksgiving each year on his birthday.Report
Good news! Epicurious will stop talking about beef.
Report
Heh, I just saw that… It is! it is a moral argument. We’re just hiding the moral behind Global Warming.Report
Related
Kinda
OK, not really, but it’s funnyReport
That was great!Report
Fractal Cucumbers!Report
This really made me wish I spoke the language.Report
A very good point:
Report
Is this only true with liberal ideas? Just trying to figure out where the Overton Window is supposed to be.Report
Oh, absolutely not! I think that conservatives are going through this too.
I imagine that similar things are going on in other countries that don’t map easily to American concepts of right or left or republican or democrat.
Yep.Report
It’s interesting to note the difference though.
Liberals are afraid that Republicans will actually hang women who get abortions and conduct forcible genital inspections of children.
Conservatives are afraid they will be unable to get a Big Mac, or may be inconvenienced by wearing a mask.
In other words, the liberals fears are not just well founded in reality, but concern actual freedoms and basic human rights.
Conservative’s fears are transparently veiled proxy arguments for the loss of cultural hegemony.Report
“Liberals are afraid that Republicans will actually hang women who get abortions and conduct forcible genital inspections of children.” If only someone did a study to find out if liberals don’t understand conservatives!Report
I think that Conservatives are also afraid of stuff like Liberals abolishing the police, opening the borders, and teaching CRT in schools.Report
That’s…my point exactly.Report
CRT is far too advanced to be taught in K-12, and damn few K-12 teachers would be competent to teach it. Doesn’t mean someone might not try, but the likelihood of it catching on is slim.Report
It’s only happening in a few places.
Besides, I’m sure he’s overstating it.Report
Once again…this illustrates my point about what is really driving their freakout.Report
My argument is not “they should be freaked out” (nor is it “they shouldn’t be freaked out”).
My argument is that you can’t argue “NOBODY IS ARGUING X!” at the same time that someone else is arguing “would it really be so bad if X happened?” and expect people to not assume that X is not on the agenda.
Especially if X is happening and the response is something to the effect of “only bad people would be opposed to X anyway.”Report
There is someone arguing X, for any value of X.
Someone is, right now, arguing that women who want abortions should be hanged, and someone else somewhere is arguing that all nonwhite people should be gassed and burned.
My point is that conservatives aren’t freaked out about those possibilities, but are freaked out by this possibility.
it displays their priorities and fears.Report
My point is that conservatives aren’t freaked out about those possibilities, but are freaked out by this possibility.
I would suggest you change the last word to “actuality”.
And then you could compare the irrationality of people being afraid of hypotheticals to the irrationality of people being afraid of actuals and point out how the actual isn’t doing measurable harm yet but the hypotheticals would result in potentially hundreds or thousands dead.Report
What about that scares you?Report
Nothing about it scares me, particularly.
Well, “abolish the police” strikes me as a particularly stupid branch to crawl out on especially given the recent spike in murders… like, it strikes me as something that will result in another Crime Bill.
I’m a fan of something akin to Open Borders (but we’d need to have a discussion about assimilation versus robust welfare).
As for CRT? Well… I think that making everybody painfully aware of their ethnicity is going to be detrimental on a handful of levels.
But “scary” is not the way that I’d describe my response to those three policies.
(One thing that is odd is that Chip seems to be having the response of “Nobody is arguing that!” and you seem to be having the response of “and what would be so bad about that?” which is… yeah. My point.)Report
I was trying to channel my inner Jaybird by asking a question about issues that many many conservatives seem viscerally scared by. I didn’t ask Pinky because he’d just devolve to Haidt in a sentence or two and that gets us nowhere.
That aside, Chip is right that no one is arguing for those points, but even if they were I want to know why they would be bad outcomes from a conservative perspective.
Given that we know what drives most crime – and thus how to address the majority of it (crimes of passion are not preventable but nearly all other types are) – why do you assume we’d need another 30 year old “Crime Bill” to deal with outcomes? and why is shifting tax revenue from the armed police to addressing those other issues so bad?
Why do you believe we lack both? Why do you believe we need both?
As we have already told you, that’s not what CRT is about. That aside, most non-white in the US ARE painfully aware of their ethnicity, thanks to the systemic nature of the reminders.Report
That aside, Chip is right that no one is arguing for those points, but even if they were I want to know why they would be bad outcomes from a conservative perspective.
Yes!
My original comment was the whole issue of how “I don’t think people have fully grappled with what the collapse of mainstream resistance to fringe ideological demands means for these kinds of defenses going forward.”
Arguing “NOBODY IS ARGUING X!” at the same time as “And what would be so bad about X anyway?” is likely to result in more belief that X is on the agenda somewhere than that it’s not.
And if you have a handful of arguments against X, asking “why are you so afraid about X?” turns the topic from whether X is good or bad to whether Person P needs to go to therapy (or find a better therapist). For my part, I see this as a little bit of pre-poisoning the well.
Given that we know what drives most crime – and thus how to address the majority of it (crimes of passion are not preventable but nearly all other types are) – why do you assume we’d need another 30 year old “Crime Bill” to deal with outcomes?
I’m one of those people who believes that we should end the war on drugs. I think that the war on drugs has introduced a *HUGE* amount of pathologies into the system.
Why do I think we’d need another “Crime Bill”?
I don’t think we’d need another “Crime Bill”.
I *DO*, however, think that another “Crime Bill” would be Something. And if enough people demand that Something Be Done, politicians will, sure enough, do Something.
and why is shifting tax revenue from the armed police to addressing those other issues so bad?
We switched from “abolish the police” to “shifting tax revenue”.
You may not have noticed but I noticed.
Why do you believe we lack both? Why do you believe we need both?
I believe that we have weak versions of both and we’d need a strong version of one.
It has to do with my desire for a high-collaboration society and the need for a high-collaboration society to have a foundation of high-trust.
As we have already told you, that’s not what CRT is about. That aside, most non-white in the US ARE painfully aware of their ethnicity, thanks to the systemic nature of the reminders.
While I appreciate your reminders, I’ve also taken into account the stuff that, for example, Dennis Sanders has said.
I find his stuff more persuasive than your stuff.Report
My point, as I have mentioned quite a few times, is that the things the Right fears are harmless, but threaten their sense of cultural hegemony- things like CRT which just teach Wrongthink on race, or having more brown people immigrate.
Like I asked once before, even in the most awful extreme dystopian vision of a Liberal World, conservatives just can’t muster up anything really bad.
The worst possible end of their slippery slope arguments is that, well, they might have to be nice to a transgender person, or their kids might learn about the Tulsa Massacre, or God forbid, they may one day discover that white people are no longer the dominant majority in America.
This is what underlies virtually every freakout they have- the Starbucks cups, “Happy Holidays”, the meat ban, all of these bizarre fauxrages are really just proxy battles for that one underlying fear.Report
Your definition of “harm” does not include “lowering the trust level of a society”.
Which is all well and good, of course, but it will mean that you don’t understand why people don’t agree with you on things.Report
Mm Hmm.
Liberals. Lowering trust level.
Please elaborate.Report
We’ve gotten into this before.
High-Collaboration Societies, to be sustainable, must operate from a position of High-Trust.
High-Trust has a number of pre-reqs. Among them include stuff like “exceptionally confident that one won’t be ripped off/stabbed in back”.
The addition of multiple cultures into a place means that there will be multiple circles in the Venn Diagram for stuff that counts as “ripped off/stabbed in back”.
Hearing “well, you have to understand, this other person came from a society where their acts wasn’t considered ripping off/stabbing in the back so you shouldn’t feel like they’ve done that to you” is going to result in smaller circles of trust.
An emphasis on “assimilation” means putting an emphasis on what “everybody” considers ripping off/stabbing in the back so that everybody knows where everybody stands and the circle can expand.
Arguing against assimilation while, at the same time, arguing for multiple cultures with different definitions of ripping off/stabbing in back will result in lowering the trust level of the society to the point where only the overlap between the multiple cultures is adhered to.
And a lower-trust society will have lower-collaboration.Report
Nice theory.
Got any examples to share of these other societies that “rip off/ stab in the back”?
Because, looking at the conservative society in America, I can come up with about a dozen examples of violent, low trust primitive societies that should definitely never be allowed into these highly advanced United States of America.
But please, offer your examples so we may learn from them.Report
Got any examples to share of these other societies that “rip off/ stab in the back”?
According to themselves or according to people who are from a different society?
An easy example would be stuff like assumptions about Female Modesty between cultures.
Because, looking at the conservative society in America, I can come up with about a dozen examples of violent, low trust primitive societies that should definitely never be allowed into these highly advanced United States of America.
OH GOOD! I’m glad you agree that these things exist.
Now we can move ahead to whether mixing these cultures with the good ones without attempts to assimilate will result in lower trust.
I think it will.
Do you?Report
I know.
You, and they, are putting up a brave front of “We don’t want those people to come here and change our culture” but you gotta know, on some level, that that stance is impossible.
This is why conservatives are freaking out. Here in Los Angeles on the Pacific Rim I live and work with people of every nationality and religion and cultural background.
And if you walk into any business you will find that a white Christian straight male is the minority. But everyone else is liberal and tolerant of that.
And most horrifying for conservatives- all these groups work and socialize and cooperate in a level of high trust and cooperation.Report
You, and they, are putting up a brave front of “We don’t want those people to come here and change our culture” but you gotta know, on some level, that that stance is impossible.
No. My view was, and remains, “people are a positive good”. I do think that we need to reform how immigration is done on the bureaucratic level, but that’s another argument.
I think that assimilation is a good thing and the way to go (but I say that as someone who sees EPCOT’s World Pavilion as a monoculture rather than multiculture).
Here in Los Angeles on the Pacific Rim I live and work with people of every nationality and religion and cultural background.
I suspect that there’s less of a multiculture than you think. (but, again, I say that as someone who sees EPCOT’s World Pavilion as a monoculture rather than multiculture).Report
“Nobody is saying we don’t want those people to come here and change our culture!”Report
Sure.
Report
I kind of get what Jaybird is getting at here. For a little over ten years, I lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Williamsburg spent most of the late 20th century as Ultra-Orthodox/Puerto Rican neighborhood on a Southside and something of an ethnic White working class neighborhood on the Northside.
Around the 1990s artists poured in from Manhattan. Hipsters and yuppies followed the artists. A lot of the Satmar Hasidim were not to thrilled about the lack of modest dress in the Yuppie and Hipster women. To the extent that they put signs on their stores and businesses requesting modest clothing. The yuppie and hipster woman saw this as a big insult and anti-feminist while the Satmar thought they weren’t respecting the established community. Who is right and who is wrong?
To take this more nation-wide, in certain liberal circles a woman in a Hijab or an Islamic modesty clothing like a burqa is a seen as a sign of tolerance and multiculturalism while Orthodox Jewish modesty clothing is patriarchal and sexist. On the Alameda County Building in Oakland, they have pictures of people from different communities to represent diversity. One of those is a Muslim women in a veil and burqa with two young kids. Somehow I think a Hasidic Jewish women in Jewish modesty clothing with her children would invoke the same feelings. Instead it would be, we must stage raids on Orthodox Jews to liberate their women and LGBT people from the oppressive system.
So what Jay is saying that a lot of liberals believe that multiculturalism is a lot easier than it actual is. What it really involves is people not taking things so seriously and/or some weird tradeoffs like Muslim modesty clothing is good while Jewish modesty clothing and Evangelical Purity balls are bad because reasons.Report
I’m thinking your definition of “really bad” is very different from their definition of “really bad”, and as long as no one is willing to find a common definition, this will remain a problem.Report
I agree, but you can get why I would consider “Being hanged for abortion” to be “really bad”, while “Being forced to be nice to Renee the transwoman in Accounting” is…uh, not so bad.Report
Sure.
But not every conservative wants to hang women who get abortions, then just don’t want abortions to be legal, just like killing a newborn baby isn’t legal.
I can see their point and understand it, without agreeing with their course of action.
Likewise, I can see why people might not want CRT taught or influencing policy decisions like it was on par with the Theory of Gravity.
The whole Trans thing … I don’t get it, but then I don’t get the enviro-lefts freak outs about nuclear power, either, so I guess everyone has some colossally stupid shite they’ve worked themselves into a lather about.Report
The day after Roe is struck down, abortion will result in a prison sentence in about 15 states.
And every conservative…Every. Single. One. is accepting of that.Report
Only for poor people, Chip.
(It’s similar to pricing the climate costs into beef appropriately.)Report
Still not seeing the gallows here, or were they metaphorical?Report
It’s perfectly reasonable to think that at least a couple states might make it a capital offense.
And every single Republican would be accepting of that.
Every one.Report
And every single Republican would be accepting of that.
You can not support this claim without making some rather extreme assumptions.Report
Any such assumptions would be wrong.Report
Imagine Georgia made late term abortion a capital offense.
Would you vote Democratic? How many other Republicans would?Report
If our politics were not effectively Bi-Partisan, you might have a point. But when people only have two choices, distilling whether or not any given person is “OK” with some point on a parties plank can not be determined by their voting.
If Georgia decided to make abortion a capital offense, I’m sure some Georgia R’s would leave the party, and some would decry the decision even as they remained in the party.
The only ones you can condemn are those who publicly support that action.
If that annoys you, perhaps you should lobby for a more parliamentary system, so we can have a wider range of parties.
PS You commit the Fallacy of Illicit Transference a lot. You should really cut that out, it undermines your arguments time and time again.Report
You’re admitting that the pro-death penalty forces would remain firmly in control of the Republican Party.
Which is the point here. There is no “Too Far” for Republicans. Even the ones who make all sorts of noises about moderation and restraint, will still in the end, pull the lever.
Because hanging women for abortion is not a dealbreaker.Report
Damn, Motte and Bailey much?
I admit no such thing. You assume that the only mechanism by which a party can be forced to change a plank is by defection/exit, which is demonstrably not true.
It might be more true if we had more than two viable parties, but given that constraint, you can not paint with that big of a brush. I can’t even engage with your arguments because any point you have is premised on a fallacy.
Also, FYI
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2019/03/20/death-penalty-opponents-gain-unlikely-allies-republicansReport
There is no plausible case that making abortion a capital offense would prompt a change in Republican Party leadership.
They are still supporting those who attempted the violent overthrow of the legitimate government.Report
If New York made trans surgery mandatory, would you vote Republican?Report
If things got that far, voting Republican would be a weak and ineffective form of resistance — if it would do any good at all, which I doubt. More direct methods would seem to be called for.Report
Yes. See how easy that is?Report
But “yes” isn’t really the full answer. The answer is that you don’t envision your party being capable of it, and that anyone setting up that kind of what-fi just isn’t saying anything meaningful.Report
You can accept the legitimacy of the answer or disavow the legitimacy of the question. Your choice.Report
What if it’s a reasonable answer to an absurd question? Can’t I note both?Report
The real answer is that even YOU don’t see the Democrats as being capable of such illiberal behavior.
But the real fear among conservatives is best exemplified by Tucker Carlson braying about the great replacement; Conservatives are terrified about the loss of cultural hegemony and everything else is a proxy shield for it.Report
In this specific case, Chip constructed an example of potential conservative behaviour that was absurd. A person with better understanding of his opposition wouldn’t have said it.Report
Creating criminal penalties or abortions is no longer an absurd abstraction. No state has made it a capitol offense yet. But unlike your trans surgery requirement (which I agree would be absurd behavior), criminalization of abortion is a real thing that must be contended with. Thus his case – which is one step past actual law in the US – is not absurd, nor does it derive from a lack of understanding of Conservatives.
(and yes, the threads get way too complicated past a certain point).Report
Sure, but it’s your question.Report
My question was a mirror image of Chip’s. That was the point.Report
Only in a funhouse.Report
No. Chip’s question was based on a logical extension of existing state laws passed by Republican legislatures and signed into law by Republican governors. Your question is the anthesis of state laws passed by Republican legislatures and either veto’ed (and over ridden) or signed into law by Republican governors. Your question is not anything like his.Report
Do you find you can envision your Party actually doing the things they are doing? Or are us liberals who lack understanding just not saying anything meaningful?Report
(messy thread – my 3:57pm comment was a reply to both you and Chip)Report
So…there’s not enough conservatives warning about catastrophe? Interesting perspective.Report
Such a common liberal play. “Nobody is doing that thing!” (immediately does the thing)Report
I don’t know if anyone remembers movie theatres or “going out to the movies” but the last time I went to one- in 2019, natch, they had a bizarre advert mixed in with the trailers in which beef farmers were telling us how much better they are at raising healthy beef and how important they are for this great land of ours, and well, thanks!
My thought was either there was an outbreak of something, or people are eating enough veggie burger they have to make commercials.
And, ya know, I eat veggie burgers pretty often myself because I find them easier to digest and some of them are pretty tasty these days.
But, when they get to the point they can grow ground beef in a lab and sell it for the same price as the kind that used to walk around, the beef farmers are going to have to make a lot more commercials I imagine.Report
Could just be marketing. Remember ‘Beef: It’s what’s for dinner’?Report
Yeah, it was similar, but weirdly defensive. More like, “we’re getting more sustainable and more healthy every day.” I don’t eat it, so I wanted to ask someone, “So, is everyone getting anthrax from beef now or something?”Report
Then we’ll see a big battle over whether lab-raised beef needs to be labeled as such and whether we can REALLY trust it and what if we all grow third arms?!?!
It’ll be like the GMO-labeling arguments but with the sides reversed. Because of course.Report
Interestingly, at least 1 Fox “News” host has retracted his statements:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/26/politics/fox-john-roberts-red-meat-biden/index.htmlReport
Phew. Wondering if Epicurious will follow-suit.Report
Epicurious cut beef out of new recipes a year ago. It’s just being talked about now.
How many folks were harmed in the last year by Epicurious’s decision?Report
I dunno man, they say they ‘deprecated’ beef content recipes in 2019. But they made very specific announcement yesterday that they are henceforth ending all new beef content. And the reason they cite is Global Warming. But we all know that no one is arguing for it.Report
The same way no one is arguing for banning firearms, the same way no one is arguing to legalize racial discrimination for purposes of imposing quotas, the same way no one is arguing human sexual dimorphism isn’t an objectively observable phenomenon, the same way no one is arguing to abolish the police (until suddenly) and on and on. I’m not even on the Conservative side of all this yet I still feel like my intelligence is being insulted. Constantly.Report
If there is a belief that some thing A is a good, and there’s no limiting principle of government, it’s inevitable that A will be recommended as a government policy.Report
Here’s a fun flashback to a year-and-a-half ago. (We were so young!)Report
Acknowledged: Some folks are and will argue that we should limit, regulate, tax, or outright ban beef production.
We’re getting to a weird place because now I have to ask: Is anyone arguing that no one is arguing that we should ban beef? I mean, everyone knows that PETA exists, right?
The question HERE is whether Biden has any plans to severely cut back beef production.
The clear answer is: No, he does not.
The cycle I’m seeing is:
1.) Someone floats an accusation of some extreme position being seriously and actively sought by the other side.
2.) Someone on the other side, “No one is seriously and actively pursuing that.”
3.) The response is, “WELL LOOK AT THIS LOONEY TUNE RIGHT HERE! YOU LIED WHEN YOU SAID NO ONE IS PURSUING IT! CLEARLY YOU ALL WANT IT!”
Rinse and repeat.
Honestly, it’s stupid.Report
It’s not just the crazies arguing for X, though.
It’s the crazies arguing for X.
It’s the more reasonable people asking “Would X be so bad, really?”
It’s the other people pointing out that opposition to X seems to be founded in some pretty problematic assumptions. Oh, I’m not arguing X! I’m just noticing that anti-X is kind of racist. What motivations would people who base their entire personality on opposing X have, anyway? Why expend so much effort on something pretty meaningless at the end of the day?Report
“It’s the more reasonable people asking “Would X be so bad, really?””
Is anyone here doing that? I haven’t read every comment. And there are a small handful of commenters (including at least one from “my side of the aisle”) who I tend to tune out so it is possible that folks are doing that and I’m missing it.
And I concede it may not be happening here but may be happening elsewhere in places I’m not.
And I have to ask: Does my saying, “I usually have a black bean chipotle veggie burger when the rest of the family is having beef burgers?” put me among the “reason people asking, “Would banning beef be so bad?””Report
Here? No, I don’t think so.
The closest is in the story that was linked to a couple of branches up.
Here’s the line from the middle of the article:
Biden is not arguing X and the people saying that he is arguing X are lying! But, seriously, we need to eat less meat in order to save the planet.
But that’s just Vox.
If we want to argue that Vox doesn’t count, I’d be down with that.Report
Notice here that a general proposition that we should reduce the amount of meat in our diet, is placed on the same level as Big Brother limiting the proles’ ration of beef to 4 ounces.
Its like I keep saying, that in the absence of actual “illiberal liberalism” they need to huff and puff and inflate anodyne policy disputes into existential crises.
Because for them it really is. This like every other fauxtrage, is a proxy cover for their real argument.Report
Would X be so bad, really? You’ve got to admit, opposition to X seems to be founded in some pretty problematic assumptions. Oh, I’m not arguing X! I’m just noticing that anti-X is kind of bad. What motivations would people who base their entire personality on opposing X have, anyway? Why expend so much effort on something pretty meaningless at the end of the day?Report
All excellent questions.Report
For clarity’s sake, are you being humorous or are you conceding Jaybird’s point?Report
I don’t want to take responsibility for getting Jaybird’s point, if there is one. That is often a fraught exercise. But as far as I can tell, whatever his point may be, he has accurately described the logical structure of a certain type of response to claims that X is in the offing. If I had to guess, I’d guess that Jaybird doesn’t particularly like this type of response, but I could be wrong, and, in any event, to each his own. I think, as I said, that the questions are excellent.Report
In an era when people are being banned from going to church, I think we can be allowed a little suspicion. What would be your answer to my earlier question? That is, is there some limiting principle of government that would prevent (“we should reduce the amount of meat in our diet”) from becoming (“Big Brother limiting the proles’ ration of beef to 4 ounces”)?Report
In an era of forcible genital inspections of children, I just don’t have any patience for concern trolling over “limited government”.Report
I can’t tell if you’re joking. If you are, please clarify. If you aren’t, then you’re saying there is no reason for any slippery slope argument to be considered fallacious, including Jaybird’s.
If so, it would explain why you can jump from (“some Republicans think something”) to (“Republicans will make something law”).Report
You mean besides that people wouldn’t stand for it?Report
I don’t entirely disagree. We’d all be best served to continually stare at a huge disclaimer saying ‘TWITTER IS NOT REAL LIFE!!!’ whenever having a discussion like this.
But I also think we’re at a weird point where it’s increasingly hard to see or predict where elite opinion makers will draw lines, or if they even will.Report
” We’d all be best served to continually stare at a huge disclaimer saying ‘TWITTER IS NOT REAL LIFE!!!”
OK boomerReport
You’re off by decades, Zoomer.Report
I get Epicurious emails every day. Never noticed. Don’t care. Not sure why anyone outside of Big Beef should.Report
Cows aren’t the only problem, of course.
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See March’s point about dressing up a moral preference in Climate Change clothes.Report
Welcome, all ye Omegas, Deltas, and Gammas to the Brave New World.Report
Vaguely adjacent:
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There’s a Sci-Fi book out there, “The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet”, where the crew (of the ship the book is about) eat insects.
Insects that are the size of large lobsters.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about crabs and lobsters…Report
Pass the melted butter. I’m listening.Report
And the garlic. Don’t forget the garlic.Report
As someone with a shellfish allergy, I can’t help but think that at least 25% of the team compiling Leviticus 11:9-12 also had one.Report