http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU
I'm providing a link to this rather than embedding it because you really need to watch this in HD, even if you have a slow internet connection, it's worth the weight - or better yet download it from a torrent site.
There's also a good talk from the director; Yann Arthus-Bertrand - a French photographer, one of my favourite photographers - at ted;
http://www.ted.com/talks/yann_arthus_be ... angle.html
This is one of the most amazing, inspiring and sad films I think I've ever seen. It's composed almost entirely of aerial shots from around the world and it tells the story of life on Earth and our place in that story. It describes the environmental damage that we're doing and the urgency of the problem. Even if those aren't issues you care about, just watch it for the spectacular footage.
After you've watched it, your actions are your choice.
Home
Watched the first vid from begining to end and it was entertaining enough to keep me interested.
First off, this is an amazingly breathtaking video as far as footage is concerned. I don't think I've seen better.
Second, I can't believe there have been no responses. I can't imagine anyone who has watched the video would not respond in some way so I am assuming no one has taken the time to watch it.
I didn't learn a whole lot that I didn't already know but it did reaffirm some of my personal beliefs. Although I had never heard of the permifrost/methane thing, and I didn't know about the extent of our efforts to combat this change in our environment. So I guess I learned something from it.
If I had it my way, it would be a worldwide requirement for every person to watch this video to help spread awareness. Even though it may already be to late to change the near future, we must continue and increase upon our efforts if we are to avoid total extinction which is what we would evetually be facing.
Everyone, watch this video. The footage is amazing.
First off, this is an amazingly breathtaking video as far as footage is concerned. I don't think I've seen better.
Second, I can't believe there have been no responses. I can't imagine anyone who has watched the video would not respond in some way so I am assuming no one has taken the time to watch it.
I didn't learn a whole lot that I didn't already know but it did reaffirm some of my personal beliefs. Although I had never heard of the permifrost/methane thing, and I didn't know about the extent of our efforts to combat this change in our environment. So I guess I learned something from it.
If I had it my way, it would be a worldwide requirement for every person to watch this video to help spread awareness. Even though it may already be to late to change the near future, we must continue and increase upon our efforts if we are to avoid total extinction which is what we would evetually be facing.
Everyone, watch this video. The footage is amazing.
I like to play.
I want to play good.
Dan Reed
I want to play good.
Dan Reed
Yeah I'm glad people are watching it. It is amazing - especially if you download/buy the HD version.
That's very noble of you. These days I think if it were up to me, I'd just have all the people who don't contribute to the improvement of society or make a significant effort towards sustainability put down and used as fertilizer so that some good can come from their lives.
I find it almost unbelievable that people can see the size of the problem and the consequences that it's already happen, but choose to put their own minor comforts ahead of literally hundreds of thousands of lives (plus the flow on effects impacting on billions of people), let alone the consequences for non human life.
I mean if you look at the specific issues in isolation and think about the morality of the majority of people, it paints a pretty terrible picture. For example approximately 100 people will die in your life time as a consequence of you personally eating meat. The only thing you need to do to save 100 lives is to stop eating meat. Almost everybody who eats meat is choosing their own enjoyment of meat over the lives of a hundred people. If you changed the context to any context where you directly got to see those lives extinguished and still made that choice, you'd be labelled as being as evil as people like Tim McVeigh or Martin Bryant.
How can people;
1. Not take an interest in the problems facing our environment?
2. Not take serious action when they become aware how serious the consequences of actions really are?
Putting your own minor enjoyment ahead of the lives of hundreds of people seems to me to be one of the most immoral actions I can imagine. It's like if you saw a kid drowning in a 1 meter pond of water, but you didn't pull them out because you didn't want to get wet.
If I had it my way, it would be a worldwide requirement for every person to watch this video to help spread awareness. Even though it may already be to late to change the near future, we must continue and increase upon our efforts if we are to avoid total extinction which is what we would evetually be facing.
That's very noble of you. These days I think if it were up to me, I'd just have all the people who don't contribute to the improvement of society or make a significant effort towards sustainability put down and used as fertilizer so that some good can come from their lives.
I find it almost unbelievable that people can see the size of the problem and the consequences that it's already happen, but choose to put their own minor comforts ahead of literally hundreds of thousands of lives (plus the flow on effects impacting on billions of people), let alone the consequences for non human life.
I mean if you look at the specific issues in isolation and think about the morality of the majority of people, it paints a pretty terrible picture. For example approximately 100 people will die in your life time as a consequence of you personally eating meat. The only thing you need to do to save 100 lives is to stop eating meat. Almost everybody who eats meat is choosing their own enjoyment of meat over the lives of a hundred people. If you changed the context to any context where you directly got to see those lives extinguished and still made that choice, you'd be labelled as being as evil as people like Tim McVeigh or Martin Bryant.
How can people;
1. Not take an interest in the problems facing our environment?
2. Not take serious action when they become aware how serious the consequences of actions really are?
Putting your own minor enjoyment ahead of the lives of hundreds of people seems to me to be one of the most immoral actions I can imagine. It's like if you saw a kid drowning in a 1 meter pond of water, but you didn't pull them out because you didn't want to get wet.
That's an aurgument for being a vegitarian I don't think I've heard before and if that is common reasoning among vegatarians I have misunderstood them for a long time. I was under the impresion that they just didn't want to eat or harm a living animal, which I disagree with because I view plants, animals and people as equally alive. Although I have allways agreed that mistreatment of animals is immoral, this is a new way of thinking about the mindset of vegitarians for me.
I'll take your word for it, but to put my lack of understanding to an end. how does a person eating meat translate to the death 100 people per lifetime?
Thanks for the video.
I'll take your word for it, but to put my lack of understanding to an end. how does a person eating meat translate to the death 100 people per lifetime?
Thanks for the video.
I like to play.
I want to play good.
Dan Reed
I want to play good.
Dan Reed
There are lots of reasons why people are vegetarians, and most of them are not particularly logical.
However in all food production processes there are significant greenhouse gas emissions through the burning of fossil fuels for energy in transport, production and processing.
Farming meat requires 2 steps in food production. Producing the food for the animals, and then producing the animals. Farming vegetables has 1 step.
Of course there are particular circumstances where meat production can only have one step, and in these cases can be seen as a lot better for the environment; however even in those cases often (but not always) the yield from a vegetable crop on that land would be much higher than the yield from a meat crop. Animals use most of the energy they get from food for movement and metabolic processes, and only a small amount is actually turned into muscle that we eat. Not only in meat farming is there 2 processes rather than one, but it essentially turns a lot of food into less food through those processes as well.
The other issue is the growing demand for meat, as developing countries, especially India and China strive for standards of living equal to our own. This rise in the demand for meat has caused a rise in demand for land to grow meat and feed crops. Siphoning grain away from human consumption and towards meat production caused a massive food crisis across South East Asia, and marked the first point in decades that the relative number of people with not enough access to food increased rather than decreased (Nearly a million extra people faced food shortages as a direct result).
Rising demand for land is pushing deforestation around the world. Deforestation is one of the two main causes of climate change, along with burning fossil fuels. In both cases we are taking carbon that is outside of the carbon cycle and essentially "locked up" and putting it into the atmosphere.
So generally, eating meat at the moment is making hundreds of thousands of people face starvation and it's significantly contributing to climate change.
Of course that's just one example of an easy thing people can do in their lives to help or hinder the problem. There are many many more easy steps to take, and some harder - but when you consider what's at stake, everything seems easy compared with the alternatives.
However in all food production processes there are significant greenhouse gas emissions through the burning of fossil fuels for energy in transport, production and processing.
Farming meat requires 2 steps in food production. Producing the food for the animals, and then producing the animals. Farming vegetables has 1 step.
Of course there are particular circumstances where meat production can only have one step, and in these cases can be seen as a lot better for the environment; however even in those cases often (but not always) the yield from a vegetable crop on that land would be much higher than the yield from a meat crop. Animals use most of the energy they get from food for movement and metabolic processes, and only a small amount is actually turned into muscle that we eat. Not only in meat farming is there 2 processes rather than one, but it essentially turns a lot of food into less food through those processes as well.
The other issue is the growing demand for meat, as developing countries, especially India and China strive for standards of living equal to our own. This rise in the demand for meat has caused a rise in demand for land to grow meat and feed crops. Siphoning grain away from human consumption and towards meat production caused a massive food crisis across South East Asia, and marked the first point in decades that the relative number of people with not enough access to food increased rather than decreased (Nearly a million extra people faced food shortages as a direct result).
Rising demand for land is pushing deforestation around the world. Deforestation is one of the two main causes of climate change, along with burning fossil fuels. In both cases we are taking carbon that is outside of the carbon cycle and essentially "locked up" and putting it into the atmosphere.
So generally, eating meat at the moment is making hundreds of thousands of people face starvation and it's significantly contributing to climate change.
Of course that's just one example of an easy thing people can do in their lives to help or hinder the problem. There are many many more easy steps to take, and some harder - but when you consider what's at stake, everything seems easy compared with the alternatives.
thanks for posting this video and taking the effort to comment 
It's deeply sad that nowadays the egocentric consciousness is so wide spread. How can one possibly try to reach a person who never took the effort to actually THINK about stuff that doesn't include himself..
It seems an impossible task to change the mess we have created. Creating awareness is a great thing, but unfortunately not enough, because most ppl feel attacked and react out of defense, which is rejection.
From my experience, ppl who lack the ability to empathize and who's biggest concern is themselves, are more likely to consider cutting meat when I confront them with the negative effects meat consumption has on their own body.
And we all know ppl are more likely to save energy because it saves money etc..
What I consider one of the major causes of today's outbalanced world, is this selfcentered thinking.
However, when we know a cause, we're given a tool; approach the egocentric mind with the only thing it's willing to listen to: matters concerning an individual's I, me and myself
It's deeply sad that nowadays the egocentric consciousness is so wide spread. How can one possibly try to reach a person who never took the effort to actually THINK about stuff that doesn't include himself..
It seems an impossible task to change the mess we have created. Creating awareness is a great thing, but unfortunately not enough, because most ppl feel attacked and react out of defense, which is rejection.
From my experience, ppl who lack the ability to empathize and who's biggest concern is themselves, are more likely to consider cutting meat when I confront them with the negative effects meat consumption has on their own body.
And we all know ppl are more likely to save energy because it saves money etc..
What I consider one of the major causes of today's outbalanced world, is this selfcentered thinking.
However, when we know a cause, we're given a tool; approach the egocentric mind with the only thing it's willing to listen to: matters concerning an individual's I, me and myself
Renke ~ shredita
I'd just have all the people who don't contribute to the improvement of society or make a significant effort towards sustainability put down and used as fertilizer so that some good can come from their lives.
This is so funny, I had to point this out. You are all for the death of thousands of people that don't think the same way as you do, yet you are so concerned about the death of thousands of unkown people at the same time. Wouldn't it be great if the guys you would like to use as fertilizer were the ones dying from people eating meat. Unless your concerned of being one of those affected by the people eating meat. That could never be true, because that would mean that you were looking out for your own interest and we all know that is a no no.For example approximately 100 people will die in your life time as a consequence of you personally eating meat. The only thing you need to do to save 100 lives is to stop eating meat.
Also, aren't you some crazy atheist, survival of the fittest type guy. How does sacrificing something of your own interest for the sake of others play into survival of the fittest? You must have stopped evolving at some state huh.
By the way, I haven't seen this video yet, I don't really know if eating meat is really good or bad, and I am not an evolutionist.
Greg Solis
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My comment about turning people in to fertilizer was not something I literally believe. It was merely an expression of my frustration at the large majority of people who put themselves ahead of the rest of the world.PacLoc wrote:I'd just have all the people who don't contribute to the improvement of society or make a significant effort towards sustainability put down and used as fertilizer so that some good can come from their lives.This is so funny, I had to point this out. You are all for the death of thousands of people that don't think the same way as you do, yet you are so concerned about the death of thousands of unkown people at the same time. Wouldn't it be great if the guys you would like to use as fertilizer were the ones dying from people eating meat. Unless your concerned of being one of those affected by the people eating meat. That could never be true, because that would mean that you were looking out for your own interest and we all know that is a no no.For example approximately 100 people will die in your life time as a consequence of you personally eating meat. The only thing you need to do to save 100 lives is to stop eating meat.
I am completely opposed to the killing of any person against their will. I'm sure I've made that clear over my time at modified, but if you haven't read previous posts of mine, then I'm sorry for the confusion.
You have never studied evolution to any great detail and you have no idea what you're talking about. Biological evolution is not a philosophy trying to express how we should behave. Nobody qualified claims that it is. The only people who make such suggestions are either people completely ignorant of evolutionary theory or people deliberately and dishonestly misrepresenting evolutionary theory. Which one are you?Also, aren't you some crazy atheist, survival of the fittest type guy. How does sacrificing something of your own interest for the sake of others play into survival of the fittest? You must have stopped evolving at some state huh.
Given your apparent grasp of evolutionary theory, and probably of reality as well, I'd suggest reading a high school text book or pop science book about evolution or scientific method, rather than watching this video. Maybe just some kind of critical thinking book. Despite the simplicity of the message in this movie, I'm not sure you'll find it particularly useful or informative.By the way, I haven't seen this video yet, I don't really know if eating meat is really good or bad, and I am not an evolutionist.
Since half my subjects at uni this semester are on evolution (evolution in geology and in genetics), I thought it would be helpful to my study and maybe to other people to expand on the subject raised by PacLoc. Also it means I can post on modified and justify it as study 
As I said earlier, "evolution" isn't an attempt to tell people how to behave, it's an attempt to explain the observations of the world. Claiming that it's telling us how to behave is like saying you should jump of cliffs because that's what gravity says happens. If you don't jump of cliffs then you don't believe in gravity. It may not seem immediately apparent but that's how absurd the claim that we should use evolutionary theory as our philosophy is. Of course at the same time, whatever philosophies for our life we adopt, if we include the findings of evolutionary theory and indeed, gravitational theory in them, we'll probably have a more successful philosophy (for example, gravitational theory says that if you jump of a cliff you'll fall down, so we can adapt our philosophy with the information and avoid jumping off cliffs - likewise evolutionary theory suggests that we lost our body hair due to sexual selection, so we can remove excess hair in order to help attract sexual partners if we so choose. Obviously this would only be a part of our sexual attraction strategy).
So evolution is what happens, not what should happen.
"Survival of the fittest" is an interesting term. While it's accurate, and indeed fairly self evident, it's a little confusing. The "fittest" only survive if there is a selection pressure. For example if a pack of wolves is attacking a herd of sheep, it's fairly obvious that they're more likely to eat the slower sheep than the faster sheep. It's surprising that some people apparently doubt "survival of the fittest" given how obvious that example seems.
However it's confusing because it's not the only factor in evolution. In fact "sexual selection" is probably a more dominate evolutionary factor than "fitness." It's fairly common in evolutionary study to even define fitness in terms of how many grandchildren are produced, rather than how fast animals can run, or any other general understanding of fitness.
The fact that life evolves is a very long standing observed fact. It's not "just a theory" at all. There are countless experiments and observations that confirm that life evolves.
The fact that there are natural selection pressures that result in animals with particular attributes being more or less likely to produce grandchildren is also a long standing observed fact with countless experiments and observations to confirm it.
These things aren't really debatable - you can go to any natural environment and many laboratories and test them happening for yourself.
"Evolutionary theory" is the attempt to try and explain why those things happen. For example why is the gender demographics in some species of lizards changing (especially alpine lizards around where I live), and why is this making their population increase? It's an observed fact that these changes are occurring. People can deny "evolution" as much as they like, if they come here and do the observations themselves, it's obviously happening. "Evolutionary theory" tells us what the most likely explanations for this observation are.
It's important not to confuse "evolution" with "natural selection." Evolution is essentially things changing over time (usually especially in respect to biological organisms). "Natural selection" is the main (but not the only) cause of biological organisms changing over time. It's the fact that if a pack of wolves are hunting sheep, they'll probably eat the slowest one, rather than the fastest.
It's important at this time to consider how life replicates. There are two different forms of replication - "mitosis" and "meiosis." In mitosis the DNA in a cell is almost perfectly copied so that the cell can split resulting in two identical cells. The error rate in this process is about 3 errors in 3,000,000,000 - so pretty accurate. In meiosis DNA is essentially split in half and then joined to the DNA of another organism of the opposite gender - ie. when the sperm meets the egg in humans. This is the main driving factor of natural selection and thus evolution.
Meiosis not only has a much higher error rate, but it means that the offspring has a completely unique DNA (or at least a probability of being unique so high that we can assume that it is). This is why when we look at all life forms that have sex, we can always see that their offspring are different. Every single time we observe offspring that are not identical to their parents (and how could that even work?) we see evidence that ultimately supports evolution. There are currently 6 billion people in the world, all of which are genetically different to their parents - that's 6 billion different experiments that show that meiosis leads to physical changes of DNA and thus different offspring.
Thus through meiosis we have variability within a population. That variability means that if we choose a particular trait to look at, say ability to run away from wolves, we'll see different levels - some will be better at that trait than others. Hence the ones that are worst will be more likely to be eaten - natural selection - the ones that survive will be more likely to breed - and eventually you'll have a population where the DNA producing sheep that are better at escaping from wolves will be dominate.
So in summary (I had a little more to write, but I need to go to a lecture), evolution is a verified and observed fact and it's not a philosophy telling us how to behave, it's an explanation of why we do behave the way we do. I hope somebody finds this useful
As I said earlier, "evolution" isn't an attempt to tell people how to behave, it's an attempt to explain the observations of the world. Claiming that it's telling us how to behave is like saying you should jump of cliffs because that's what gravity says happens. If you don't jump of cliffs then you don't believe in gravity. It may not seem immediately apparent but that's how absurd the claim that we should use evolutionary theory as our philosophy is. Of course at the same time, whatever philosophies for our life we adopt, if we include the findings of evolutionary theory and indeed, gravitational theory in them, we'll probably have a more successful philosophy (for example, gravitational theory says that if you jump of a cliff you'll fall down, so we can adapt our philosophy with the information and avoid jumping off cliffs - likewise evolutionary theory suggests that we lost our body hair due to sexual selection, so we can remove excess hair in order to help attract sexual partners if we so choose. Obviously this would only be a part of our sexual attraction strategy).
So evolution is what happens, not what should happen.
"Survival of the fittest" is an interesting term. While it's accurate, and indeed fairly self evident, it's a little confusing. The "fittest" only survive if there is a selection pressure. For example if a pack of wolves is attacking a herd of sheep, it's fairly obvious that they're more likely to eat the slower sheep than the faster sheep. It's surprising that some people apparently doubt "survival of the fittest" given how obvious that example seems.
However it's confusing because it's not the only factor in evolution. In fact "sexual selection" is probably a more dominate evolutionary factor than "fitness." It's fairly common in evolutionary study to even define fitness in terms of how many grandchildren are produced, rather than how fast animals can run, or any other general understanding of fitness.
The fact that life evolves is a very long standing observed fact. It's not "just a theory" at all. There are countless experiments and observations that confirm that life evolves.
The fact that there are natural selection pressures that result in animals with particular attributes being more or less likely to produce grandchildren is also a long standing observed fact with countless experiments and observations to confirm it.
These things aren't really debatable - you can go to any natural environment and many laboratories and test them happening for yourself.
"Evolutionary theory" is the attempt to try and explain why those things happen. For example why is the gender demographics in some species of lizards changing (especially alpine lizards around where I live), and why is this making their population increase? It's an observed fact that these changes are occurring. People can deny "evolution" as much as they like, if they come here and do the observations themselves, it's obviously happening. "Evolutionary theory" tells us what the most likely explanations for this observation are.
It's important not to confuse "evolution" with "natural selection." Evolution is essentially things changing over time (usually especially in respect to biological organisms). "Natural selection" is the main (but not the only) cause of biological organisms changing over time. It's the fact that if a pack of wolves are hunting sheep, they'll probably eat the slowest one, rather than the fastest.
It's important at this time to consider how life replicates. There are two different forms of replication - "mitosis" and "meiosis." In mitosis the DNA in a cell is almost perfectly copied so that the cell can split resulting in two identical cells. The error rate in this process is about 3 errors in 3,000,000,000 - so pretty accurate. In meiosis DNA is essentially split in half and then joined to the DNA of another organism of the opposite gender - ie. when the sperm meets the egg in humans. This is the main driving factor of natural selection and thus evolution.
Meiosis not only has a much higher error rate, but it means that the offspring has a completely unique DNA (or at least a probability of being unique so high that we can assume that it is). This is why when we look at all life forms that have sex, we can always see that their offspring are different. Every single time we observe offspring that are not identical to their parents (and how could that even work?) we see evidence that ultimately supports evolution. There are currently 6 billion people in the world, all of which are genetically different to their parents - that's 6 billion different experiments that show that meiosis leads to physical changes of DNA and thus different offspring.
Thus through meiosis we have variability within a population. That variability means that if we choose a particular trait to look at, say ability to run away from wolves, we'll see different levels - some will be better at that trait than others. Hence the ones that are worst will be more likely to be eaten - natural selection - the ones that survive will be more likely to breed - and eventually you'll have a population where the DNA producing sheep that are better at escaping from wolves will be dominate.
So in summary (I had a little more to write, but I need to go to a lecture), evolution is a verified and observed fact and it's not a philosophy telling us how to behave, it's an explanation of why we do behave the way we do. I hope somebody finds this useful
It's funny how you say that animals had to evolve by natural selection and survival of the fittest. (These characteristics are shown in animal life, but do not necessarilly prove that species change into other species because of it, it is simply an observation) This means that all the species that survive and thrive today were and are greedy, strong, only think about themselves and immediate family, type creatures. This is apperant in nonhuman animal life, but not always in human life.
You say that creatures don't have to act like this anymore, but that really does not follow logic. Your reference to gravity is insane and has nothing to do with evolution. When did a primative ancester of a human decide to change his thoughts of a selfish nature to one of a compassionate of others in the world nature? How could this species have survived, wouldn't it have been weeded out?
Don't get me wrong, I do think the problems in the world are horrible, but to depend on mankind to fix these problems is just a waste of time. I mean you're only on this planet 70 to 80 years anyway, who cares if you die a few years early because some guy likes hamburgers? A physical man will always think that the solution to the worlds problems is just ahead and continue to devote much of his time and attention on attaining that unreachable goal. I was just trying to point out that just because people don't want to get involved with all the causes in the world, doesn't make them bad people that should be used as fertilizer.
One should be able to look at the bigger picture and see that these causes will never make you live as long as you want and prevent the death of your loved ones. Then realize that you don't have to waste your mind and efforts on solving every problem in the world. That option should be there and I just get a little offended when people say that you should do this and do that, don' do this, don't do that. (On a forum about kicking footbags no less)
You say that creatures don't have to act like this anymore, but that really does not follow logic. Your reference to gravity is insane and has nothing to do with evolution. When did a primative ancester of a human decide to change his thoughts of a selfish nature to one of a compassionate of others in the world nature? How could this species have survived, wouldn't it have been weeded out?
Don't get me wrong, I do think the problems in the world are horrible, but to depend on mankind to fix these problems is just a waste of time. I mean you're only on this planet 70 to 80 years anyway, who cares if you die a few years early because some guy likes hamburgers? A physical man will always think that the solution to the worlds problems is just ahead and continue to devote much of his time and attention on attaining that unreachable goal. I was just trying to point out that just because people don't want to get involved with all the causes in the world, doesn't make them bad people that should be used as fertilizer.
One should be able to look at the bigger picture and see that these causes will never make you live as long as you want and prevent the death of your loved ones. Then realize that you don't have to waste your mind and efforts on solving every problem in the world. That option should be there and I just get a little offended when people say that you should do this and do that, don' do this, don't do that. (On a forum about kicking footbags no less)
Greg Solis
That's neither what I said, nor true. I also love the way you've focused just on animals, which make up only 1 of the 5 kingdoms of life, and is the second smallest in terms of total mass of those 5 kingdoms. Does your claim of the characteristics of life that has evolved through natural selection also apply to plants, fungi, monerans or protists?PacLoc wrote:It's funny how you say that animals had to evolve by natural selection and survival of the fittest. (These characteristics are shown in animal life, but do not necessarilly prove that species change into other species because of it, it is simply an observation) This means that all the species that survive and thrive today were and are greedy, strong, only think about themselves and immediate family, type creatures. This is apperant in nonhuman animal life, but not always in human life.
You say that creatures don't have to act like this anymore, but that really does not follow logic. Your reference to gravity is insane and has nothing to do with evolution. When did a primative ancester of a human decide to change his thoughts of a selfish nature to one of a compassionate of others in the world nature? How could this species have survived, wouldn't it have been weeded out?
Of course more importantly, neither evolutionary theory nor our observations support your claims. Indeed if you read over what I said you'll see that "survival of the fittest" is really only defined in biology as the ability to produce grandchildren - not being physically fit. Many traits in animals have evolved from sexual selection, rather than merely survival. Indeed the strongest pressure on animals probably is their ability to breed, rather than merely survive. When we look at the social attributes of animals, animals that are more social (especially when we talk about mammals and birds) are animals that spend the least amount of time having to "survive." In one of my lectures recently it was said that early humans living in food rich environments only had to spend about 15 minutes a day to gather enough food. Another good example is a species of cockatoo found in Australia and Papua New Guinea (I forget the species). The Australian sub species has very plentiful food and has developed complex social behaviour. The Papua New Guinea sub species has to work a lot harder for it's food and is smaller with less complex behaviour.
What you say may stand up with some animals, but certainly as soon as we get to animals that don't have to dedicate a significant time to survival, such as humans, chimpanzees, dolphins, etc. we see completely different selection pressures and your claims are false. If you live in a world where you have plenty of food and few predators there isn't any advantage in being greedy, strong or only thinking about yourself or your immediate advantage.
It's also important to note that evolution is an explanation of what happens, regardless of whether you think it's moral or not. It's not trying to say what should happen, only what does.
Edit; It's interesting to note how easily evolutionary theory can explain this. Yet what is the creationist explanation for why animals with less time devoted to survival have more complex social behaviour? One of the ways of judging scientific theories is to see how well it explains all relevant observations. In this case creationism doesn't offer any explanation for our observations, while evolutionary theory does. As soon as you start at looking at specifics it becomes clear that evolution offers a far greater understanding of biology than creationism. [/edit]
I'd really appreciate it if you read my posts completely, rather than just skimming over them. I'm not a vegetarian because I think I might die young due to other people eating meat, I'm a vegetarian because literally hundreds of thousands of people around the world are starving because of the rising demand for meat and because the impact from climate change will mean that millions more will face food shortages and lots and lots of those people will die. The people most vulnerable are people who live in poor developing countries, not countries like Australia - they are the people who have contributed the least amount to the problem. Within those populations the people most vulnerable are women and children.Don't get me wrong, I do think the problems in the world are horrible, but to depend on mankind to fix these problems is just a waste of time. I mean you're only on this planet 70 to 80 years anyway, who cares if you die a few years early because some guy likes hamburgers?
You may not care that 27,000 children die every day of easily preventable diseases, some of which directly from your actions, but it certainly bothers me that my actions partly result in those children dying. It bothers me a lot, and I try to do as much as I can to not contribute to that problem, or even to relieve it.
Again, that fertilizer comment was not something I literally think. I'm sorry that wasn't clear to you and you thought I was being serious. I'm not sure why you'd think that, given the ridiculousness of my suggestion.A physical man will always think that the solution to the worlds problems is just ahead and continue to devote much of his time and attention on attaining that unreachable goal. I was just trying to point out that just because people don't want to get involved with all the causes in the world, doesn't make them bad people that should be used as fertilizer.
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One should be able to look at the bigger picture and see that these causes will never make you live as long as you want and prevent the death of your loved ones. Then realize that you don't have to waste your mind and efforts on solving every problem in the world. That option should be there and I just get a little offended when people say that you should do this and do that, don' do this, don't do that. (On a forum about kicking footbags no less)[/quote]
That's a terrible defeatist attitude, and lets face it, while some of the problems we're facing have difficult solutions, many don't, and if people only made relatively tiny efforts that would greatly help the problem. For example I am somebody who has always loved meat and if I listed my favourite foods, they'd all contain large amounts of meat. And yet it's really no challenge at all for me to become a vegetarian. If I can do it than I am sure everybody else in the Western world can too.
Imagine that reducing your carbon footprint could stop the holocaust. How low would you be prepared to reduce it in order to save 9 million lives? And yet the deaths due climate change in the developing world are going to be far higher.
And here is an interesting point, going back to your initial post.
You are a Christian and you don't care about the lives of people in the developing world. Given the choice between hundreds of thousands of them dying, or you not being able to enjoy eating meat, you choose to let them die.
I am a "crazy atheist" who donates literally thousands of dollars every year to trying to fix this problems, have changed my diet, have changed a whole bunch of other behaviour, spent 4 years working in a very under paid job trying to help solve these issues, am studying at university specificially to be able to help with these problems - all because I don't want people to be dying because of my actions.
Who do you think appears to have a stronger moral grounding?
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BainbridgeShred
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Let's be honest, what most commercial cows are eating is not something that humans could safely consume. Obviously this still gets to the same issue of a carbon-footprint anyways, but it simply isn't reality that consumable food is being fed to the cow's we eat. 79% of cows are fed sodium bicarbonate and half are running on a mix of yeast, selenium, and magnesium oxide. A lot of cows simply get fed the blood of their murdered family members with a side of chicken feathers. Yum. Makes me want to go wash down a t-bone with a heart of glass of pasteurized (boiled) goodness.Not only in meat farming is there 2 processes rather than one, but it essentially turns a lot of food into less food through those processes as well.
Cows should be fed grass. Grass is plentiful. If cows were allowed to graze grass as is natural for them, we would have cows that didn't give us cancer, and a reduced carbon footprint.
Yeah I don't know the exact details of specifics, but certainly there are some circumstances where meat is harvested sustainably and I don't have much of a problem with eating meat in those circumstances, although there is the indirect impacts of the demand for meat generally (ie. eating sustainable meat pushes up demand for all meat, increasing the amount of total meat produced). While that's a concern, it's a hard concern to worry too much about because then we need to not only know where our meat comes from and how it was produced, but also the specific relationships of meat economics.
I occassionally eat meat - especially when I go to my parents house, because the meat they eat is farmed very nearby and I can see exactly how it's farmed and even talk to the farmer, and I also occassionally eat wild game meat like kangaroo.
I occassionally eat meat - especially when I go to my parents house, because the meat they eat is farmed very nearby and I can see exactly how it's farmed and even talk to the farmer, and I also occassionally eat wild game meat like kangaroo.
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BainbridgeShred
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Eating responsibly husbanded (?) meat is a great thing to do. Not only are you supporting the people who are taking the time and care to give you a safe, healthy product, you're giving your body the lifeblood with which God has provided us to survive. Carbs are great yadda yadda but mankind would not be anywhere with out good old meat. There really is no way around it, vegetarians can never be on average as healthy as us herbivore's who moderate our eating habits.
I've cut a lot of shit out of my diet in the last half year or so, and I feel fucking indestructible. I don't know how highly I can reccomend to people on here how much better you will feel if you make even the slightest effort to improve your diet. I can also not emphasize enough how terribly we are treating our body with trans fats and corn oil and soy bean oil and pasteurized milk and all this other garbage than is POISONING our bodies.
Also, if you have problems with depression or anxiety, 95 fucking percentile of our seratonin is in our gut. If your stomach and intestines are unhealthy, then you're not thinking clearly or being as happy as you could be.
I've cut a lot of shit out of my diet in the last half year or so, and I feel fucking indestructible. I don't know how highly I can reccomend to people on here how much better you will feel if you make even the slightest effort to improve your diet. I can also not emphasize enough how terribly we are treating our body with trans fats and corn oil and soy bean oil and pasteurized milk and all this other garbage than is POISONING our bodies.
Also, if you have problems with depression or anxiety, 95 fucking percentile of our seratonin is in our gut. If your stomach and intestines are unhealthy, then you're not thinking clearly or being as happy as you could be.
I'd love to compare health levels with you Dan.
I agree that eating a small amount of meat is healthier than not eating any at all, but the studies I've seen regarding this show that the difference is almost insignificant. We're talking about a less than a year difference in life expectancies. As an Australian I already have a life expectancy about 3 years more than you, so I still win
I agree that eating a small amount of meat is healthier than not eating any at all, but the studies I've seen regarding this show that the difference is almost insignificant. We're talking about a less than a year difference in life expectancies. As an Australian I already have a life expectancy about 3 years more than you, so I still win
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BainbridgeShred
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What is a health level? Life expectancy is a very bad measurment to go by when determining the overall "health" of individual herbivore's vs omnivore's. Too many variables (And when I say too many...). So what else could you go by? Cholosterol levels? No, that'd be quite silly. Blood pressure? Even sillier. Resting heart rate? Nah. So how did these studies quantify the level of healthiness in the people they studied? Was it simply the age they died at?
I imagine you're probably a fair bit healthier than I am, considering the amount of chemicals I've put into my body over the years; including mucho cigarillo's. Still, I have noticed ZERO effect on my aerobic abilities from all the smoke I've put in my lungs, and have long wondered if RJ Reynold's would sponsor me to run a marathon. Regardless of sponsorship I do plan on running the Seattle marathon in November.
But no, I'm definitely not the picture of omnivoric health. It's hard to tell from your avatar picture but you look quite thin which could be a result of the lack of meat in your diet.
I imagine you're probably a fair bit healthier than I am, considering the amount of chemicals I've put into my body over the years; including mucho cigarillo's. Still, I have noticed ZERO effect on my aerobic abilities from all the smoke I've put in my lungs, and have long wondered if RJ Reynold's would sponsor me to run a marathon. Regardless of sponsorship I do plan on running the Seattle marathon in November.
But no, I'm definitely not the picture of omnivoric health. It's hard to tell from your avatar picture but you look quite thin which could be a result of the lack of meat in your diet.
I've eaten meat most days of my life until Feb this year. My skininess is a result of having a fast matabolism and exercising daily pretty much my entire life, as well as eating a healthy balanced diet. My body mass index is about 22 - which is right in the range of healthy though, although it's been rising lately due to me spending more time doing anerobic exercise lately, especially while I've been injured (and eating more protein etc.) .
But you're absolutely right - "health levels" is a very hard thing to determine and can only really be viewed generally rather than specifically. I was being fairly facetious regarding comparing levels between us - just in response to your comment regarding eating meat being healthier than not eating meat (obviously in moderation).
There are lots of ways that "healthiness" can be qualified. Life expectancy, especially when you discount non health related deaths (and you can even calibrate it based on health affecting behaviours like smoking or exercise), actually is a fairly good indicator especially when you're using literally millions of people as data. Of course it's less meaningful when you're comparing countries like Australia and the US (who have life expectancies of around 81 and 78 respectively) compared to when you're comparing Australia and Zimbabwe - where there is a difference of about 45 years.
But you're absolutely right - "health levels" is a very hard thing to determine and can only really be viewed generally rather than specifically. I was being fairly facetious regarding comparing levels between us - just in response to your comment regarding eating meat being healthier than not eating meat (obviously in moderation).
There are lots of ways that "healthiness" can be qualified. Life expectancy, especially when you discount non health related deaths (and you can even calibrate it based on health affecting behaviours like smoking or exercise), actually is a fairly good indicator especially when you're using literally millions of people as data. Of course it's less meaningful when you're comparing countries like Australia and the US (who have life expectancies of around 81 and 78 respectively) compared to when you're comparing Australia and Zimbabwe - where there is a difference of about 45 years.
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BainbridgeShred
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Alright, but being the strong proponent of evolution that you are, how do you explain away the fact that for 99% of human history meat has been the major staple of nearly every cultures diet. It isn't until approx. 15,000 years ago or so that we started farming grains which have since gone on to replace meat as our main source of sustenance.