Cows: Just an Environmental Disaster
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- čas přidán 29. 04. 2024
- A decade ago, I was feeling pretty pessimistic about climate change. The politics of mitigating global warming just seemed impossible: asking people to make sacrifices, or countries to slow their development, and delay dreams of better, more prosperous lives.
But the world today looks different. The costs of solar and wind power have plummeted. Same for electric batteries. And a new politics is starting to take hold: that maybe we can invest and invent and build our way out of this crisis. But some very hard problems remain. Chief among them? Cows.
Hannah Ritchie is the deputy editor and lead researcher at Our World in Data and the author of “Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet (www.hachettebookgroup.com/tit...) .” She’s pored over the data on this question and has come away more optimistic than many. “It’s just not true that we’ve had these solutions just sitting there ready to build for decades and decades, and we just haven’t done anything,” she told me. “We’re in a fundamentally different position going forward.”
In this conversation, we discuss whether sustainability without sacrifice is truly possible. How much progress have we made so far? What gives her the most hope? And what are the biggest obstacles?
Mentioned:
“What was the death toll from Chernobyl and Fukushima? (ourworldindata.org/what-was-t...) ” by Hannah Ritchie
“Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...) ” by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek
“Future demand for electricity generation materials under different climate mitigation scenarios (www.sciencedirect.com/science...) ” by Seaver Wang, Zeke Hausfather et al.
Book Recommendations:
Factfulness (us.macmillan.com/books/978125...) by Hans Rosling
Possible (profilebooks.com/work/possible/) by Chris Goodall
Range (davidepstein.com/range/) by David Epstein
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast (www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-k...) . Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-... (www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-...) .
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.
An interesting presentation, and I was pleased that the morality question of lives lost and quality of life was briefly pondered.
Do the world a favor, Ezra and NYTimes, and please invite Nate Hagens to present from a wider energy and economic systems lens regarding our many overlapping predicaments. It’s past time for these conversations, and your followers need to hear from a far more diverse collection of experts.
Peak Ezra Klein. Unquestioning materialism coupled to unquestioning guilt, producing the absurdity of banning cows.
I'm not saying they're wrong about beef, I'm saying the chemicals needed to grow high yield cereal crops kill soil, and when manure is used naturally (not through slurry) according to War on Want that desertification can be reversed. I wish fertiliser would be included in discussions of the issues with meat based diets, likewise incomes - who would lose their livelihoods through a rewilding push?
Hannah Ritchie's work looks amazing. I really like her take. Thank you for bringing her on. Watched her Ted Talk and bought her book now. Funny that the NYTimes disasterized the title (Totally misleading title) when one of her main themes is messaging global warming with optimism instead of impending disaster.
Very interesting and good information, especially how our well-intentioned actions may not necessarily result in good outcomes. But I have always wondered why our urban roofs - houses, apartments, offices, warehouses, car parking lots - are not covered with solar cells; in other words mini-power plants everywhere instead of centralized solar power plants with their delivery grids. What do the stats say about this?
Thank you for talking about this!!!!!
the title of this is really offensive to people who actually see cows as beings with lives, like we have lives
30 years ago we were told not to try to invent the way out of climate change, and to instead rely on political and economic process. That was a fundamental error that has been a global disaster.
We have to balance investing in deploying and developing current technologies and inventing new ones.
Do you have some examples of what you mean?
Climate change is a consequence of trying to invent ways to avoid social change and maintain the economic model. Pollution is only one facet of overconsumption. The driver is property, finance, and the inequalities they cause.
15:36 Tipping points.
So glad Ezra has Ritchie on. Her work is amazing and more of my fellow progressives need to read her book before they become paralyzed with fear over climate change
China has serious problems with air pollutions and is being strongly affected by climate change - they took action! Part of their action was also moving manufacturing to other countries and, therefore, giving the carbon emissions a new nationality. I must be clear here: the piece I read is over 10 years old and I don't know how things are now. Also, China has been taking serious actions to reduce both pollution and carbon emission - including building some 20 nuclear power plants. (AFAIK, those nuclear plants aren't readey yet)
Air pollution is caused by energy poverty because to pollute less you neeed to spend energy. Cars, for instance, lost 10% of their horse power after the electrolytic catalizer was installed. Remember when Dan Aykrioid explains to John Belushi why the police car bought on an acution was a great purchase: "and it was manufatured before the electrolytic catalizer!".
Energy richness: you can throw out 10% of your fuel to filter the exhaust pipe gases.
Why there are conspiracy theories about environmentalists? The corn to ethanol and bio-diesel is an expensive exercise that makes things far worse and nothing can be done about it. If cows are to blame for all our problems then the well-being of chickens should not matter much. Moreover, free-range chickens are sold at my local supermarket with only 13% premium over regular ones. Why do we have to invent expensive technologies vs adapting to depopulation that happens on its own? If nothing in environmental movement makes sense, then sure there is some conspiracy there (or maybe just a regular "progressive" stupidity).
Amazing. I will listen to her book.
Cows? Really? If this is really your view, give up cheese,butter,beef,leather now. If you want progress, focus on fazing out fossil fuels, plastics, toxic chemicals, nuclear, and war.
I dont eat beef. I truly dont eat beef just because of climate. I eat pork and chicken and fish.
I always enjoy listening to someone who has a hyper-optimistic perspective.
The conundrum between chicken and beef is strong. Eating chicken hurts chickens. Eating beef hurts future people
And eating neither hurts?
@@ThomasSteves
You're not wrong. We have a desire for meat, and maybe a bit of a nutritional requirement if you can't afford to live a vegetarian lifestyle. But there is definitely a chain of victims every time we eat meat
Use less energy. We will be forced to do that soon. It is better to get ahead of the curve.
I have a question: which mammals produce milk? Yes! No ... haha ... only the females. Cows, btw, are used to produce milk and only milk - they last a long time and produce an important food that even vegetarians consume. Males - castrated males, btw - are the cattle used for meat. So, NYT, check your subconscious sexism and change that title!
Now ... what can we do? We can eat less cattle meat and more pork, for instance - we can even eat other sources of protein regularly like fungi, soy bean, fish ... and save cattle meat for our barbecues!
Nobody ever wants to say NO. 'Can we continue to live with this level of energy usage but with cleaner energy sources?' NO. Do not say YES when the answer is NO.
We need to prepare for a near future with less energy usage now. The efforts to make everyone thing things will keep growing going forward is wrong. We have lived happily with less energy before. We can live happily in the future with less energy.
Enlightening. Thank you.
"Industrial Society and It's Future"
More people in the world eat goat than any other meat
Soy Boy politics.
Corporate change is required to address Climate issues.
nuclear creates toxic waste that lasts forever. as do many chemicals. carbon is nontoxic and good for life. landscapes change and people migrate but we wont be able to avoid these forever toxic solutions.
I don't bother arguing with some people about the science of climate change. Instead I argue we need to get to a 50-50 mix of sustainable and fossil fuels to create more competition in the energy markets and make prices more stable. sticking with fossil fuels just makes a bunch of ceo robber barrons, middle east zealots and russian criminals richer.
Why not instead develop an infrastructure for biofuel made from switchgrass? The net carbon output would be zero (switchgrass would sequester the carbon from the atmosphere that burning the biofuel would produce) and the energy you get can be greater than the energy you use to grow and harvest it.
@@elzoog go for it!!
@@kennj321 "go for it!!"
Wouldn't it be more effective if I promulgate this idea first?
We have the technology on hand to reduce our footprint without impacting our lifestyle: white paint. If your house, your place of work, and your car is white, the surface area gets much more reflective at very little cost. If you ban asphalt or paint it with white epoxy coating or replace it with concrete, the amount of reflection increases.
She never tells the whole story. Never.
Talking about animal rights is nonsense. There is not one single logical reason to care about the sufferings of animals. There are only emotional reasons. Haven't Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins proved that we should always think logically and never let our emotions get in the way of our decision making?
So we're not taking away their hamburgers? Drat. Stalin's dream, deferred yet again.
why eat hamburgers? such plain boring food. way prefer falafel.
@@kennj321 "why eat hamburgers? such plain boring food."
That's fine that you have that opinion. It's just a bad idea to force that opinion on someone else.
@@elzoog I'd like to hear some defense from hamburger eaters on what they like about it?
@@kennj321 As humans, we have evolved to be meat eaters. Also, why do I need to defend my food choices to someone like you?
But steak is SO good...
China became the best country thanks to President xi !
@@brian5001 Producing solar panels.
@@brian5001 everything
@@henghuangxu4261 please don't make more humans, check out Industrial Society and It's Future if you want to understand how the narcissists keep humans being the worst animal. You think you are better and stronger now that your rivers are all poisoned but the other animals know it is not true and now you are just like us. Welcome to the club.