Transcript
A tweet by some news company saying "Your bowl of rice is hurting the climate too." It has a link to an article and a picture of a bowl of rice. It has a quote saying "Should I just die"
Rice is… really really no where near the top of the chain on problematic crops. It’s mostly grown for direct human consumption, unlike corn and soy, and, although quite water intensive (at least for wetland rice cultivation) most of the production is done in areas with the water resources to support it, Yangtze river, peal river, Mekong delta, Ganges river, the lower Mississippi river, ect ect.
Obviously there are some serious issues with conventional rice cultivation, but, in terms of the number of people it supports relative to the over all impact it has… it’s definitely not something the average consumer should be putting at the top of their list to cut out.
The poors should just stop eating so we can keep flying our jets.
Et cetera. I'm the etc. person now.
Thank God the billionaires aren't doing anything wrong.
They're just trying to write words that make you click
Does baiting someone for a click have a name?
"Mainstream journalism"?
Depends if they’re masters at it.
A master click baiter? You are quite the cunning linguist.
You can't exist without something suffering.
Might as well make the sufferer cum
Guys, I'm suffering a lot right now.
OOOOAAAH I'M SUFFERIIIING
Damn, suffering makes a big gooey mess
That is a rather succint and straightforward argument in favour of absurdism vs nhilism.
Love how it says "your bowl of rice" not "the modern farming industry". Gotta blame the individual people, not the companies! (sarcasm)
I mean you're being sarcastic but that's explicitly the point. Turn all the attention to personal consumption choices when the real issue is systemic.
so. on this upsetting piece of doom and gloom i'm going to ask people to bear in mind the following
most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans but by food animals that we then eat
An extra bit of doom: nearly half of the corn (consuming a proportional amount of water, energy, and labour) produced by the USA is not eaten by humans or animals. It's processed into bioethanol (consuming more water and energy) and fed into cars. The process is a net negative of energy, but shutting down or even scaling back the industry would lead to a massive loss of jobs and an economic suicide.
I don't have numbers to show, so feel free to disregard.
Which is a good point to keep in mind when people claim there isn't enough land for solar panels.
Even by extremely optimistic assumptions, bioethanol barely helps. It's entirely a corn farming subsidy combined with oil companies pretending their product can be clean. Here's a rundown:
people claim there isn’t enough land for solar panels
Oh, I have another bone to pick with those people. I know a perfect place for solar panels. Take this satellite photo of a completely random part of Kansas:
The circular irrigation system leaves the corners unused. That's 21% of the square's area, wasted.
(edit) I'm not a civil engineer, and I know that putting solar panels and supporting infrastructure so close to a water spray has its own problems, but that is still way too large an area over all of the arable land in North America to just leave unused.
The circular irrigation system leaves the corners unused. That's 21% of the square's area, wasted.
In places that are densely farmed like this, those corner areas are not necessarily wasted. They are the only places that are not monocultures.
people claim there isn’t enough land for solar panels
Meanwhile, in China.
The process is a net negative of energy
This is misleading, as negative energy balance numbers are oil propaganda at worst, or very outdated at best. The current energy balance is about 3x (clean carbon neutral) energy return on (fossil) energy invested. Source. So per 1 gallon of gas invested, the equivalent energy of 3 gallons of gas is produced in ethanol form.
Ethanol is better for the environment than the gasoline alternative and spreading outdated and misleading numbers about the energy cost to produce it plays right into the propaganda of climate denialism pushed by oil producers.
There are certainly better crops than corn that could be used for ethanol fuel production, but let's not put down imperfect solutions.
First line of the article:
A new analysis by the Renewable Fuels Association found corn ethanol now provides nearly three times the energy used to produce it.
Quick search for "Renewable Fuels Association"...
The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) represents the ethanol industry promoting policies, regulations, and research and development initiatives that will lead to the increased production and use of ethanol fuel. First organized in 1981, RFA serves as a voice of advocacy for the ethanol industry, providing research data and industry analysis to its members, to the public via the media, to the United States Congress, as well as to related federal and state agencies.
RFA's chairman is Neil Koehler of Pacific Ethanol, Inc. and the vice-chairman is Jeanne McCaherty of Guardian Energy, LLC.
The ethanol industry mouthpiece, owned by people who benefit massively from the ethanol industry, says that the ethanol industry is good. Why am I not surprised. Zero credibility.
Besides, there's solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, nuclear power... all of which are cleaner (yes, even nuclear) and less wasteful than bioethanol. EV and battery technology is rapidly improving. The USA is being left in the dust by Chinese and Japanese EV makers.
Sure, they are biased but that doesn't mean the numbers are wrong or misleading. There are other sources that report similar numbers. It makes sense that ethanol producers would have the most accurate data on energy used and energy produced. Kinda like how a baker is gonna know much they bake or a retailer how much they sell. Unless you have a specific criticism with their data, attacking the source is just an ad hominem. EVs are generally better sure (at least with a clean energy source), but clean fuel is better than dirty fossil fuel.
An ad hominem fallacy involves irrelevant attacks on the character of the other party. The source of funding for a study is very relevant. Read up on the tobacco industry’s decades of lying via scientific study for more information.
Bioethanol may provide more energy to the consumer than it requires to produce according to the limited metrics laid out by the producers who are aiming to make it look as viable as possible, but off the top of my head there are still plenty of problems present.
If it still uses fossil fuels, then it is still consuming nonrenewable resources.
They ignore the cost of constant monocropping—corn growth removes nitrogen from the soil and leaves it less fertile for future generations.
They ignore the environmental cost of raising so much cattle and other farm livestock, industries propped up by the fact that there are so many financial incentives for growing corn, like bioethanol tax incentives so you don’t have to worry about grossly overproducing.
They sidestep the question of whether the land would be better used providing food for human consumption or as unimproved land that provides a home for local flora and fauna. Their whole argument is that bioethanol is better than it used to be. Not that it’s good for us.
Obviously the concept of producing three times more energy than it requires is absurd; no process involving energy transfer is even 100% efficient. The additional energy inputs are hidden: energy taken from the sun; land taken from its occupants; water taken from the surrounding regions; nutrients taken from the soil. The costs are likewise hidden: costs to the planet and costs to future generations.
So you would rather burn gasoline than biofuels even though it is worse for the environment? Because that is the alternative for most of existing vehicles on the road. It is better than gasoline, not perfect.
Yes, I agree there are better crops for biofuels than corn and some of subsidies are not well designed and applied.
My argument is that the existing ICE vehicles are still burning fuel and that it is better to burn a cleaner fuel CO2 wise than dirty fossil fuels in them.
Obviously the concept of producing three times more energy than it requires is absurd.
Yes, It's called solar power, plants naturally convert the sunlight to energy like solar panels just not nearly as efficiently. Also, as I put in the original comment the energy inputs being referenced are fossil energy inputs and the energy output is a lot cleaner because it is produced by the plant from the sun. I don't get why people seem thoroughly convinced it is a bad thing to grow plants for fuel instead of burning the harmful fossil fuels that we've known for decades are the cause of global warming.
The costs are likewise hidden: costs to the planet and costs to future generations.
I think you must be talking about fossil fuels here because it is absurd to fearmonger about growing plants. It is the carbon released by burning fossil fuels that is full of hidden costs in the form of future climate change and a less hospitable earth. Replacing a fossil fuel with a more clean, less polluting fuel source is helping to lessen those costs.
Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good, Corn ethanol emits 46% less greenhouse gases than gasoline.
Now it’s not just the ethanol mouthpiece ignoring all of the additional issues that using huge swaths of the planet to monocrop corn causes, it’s you too! My concerns about nitrogen replenishment, destruction of plant and animal habitats, and irresponsible use of limited land were clearly outlined and you refuse to address them because you cannot quantify them. In fact, you try to exclude them as factors and still say that ethanol is better for the planet as if it is a known truth. That’s my exact problem. We can’t quantify bioethanol as being better than x times better than fossil fuels because we can’t quantify exactly how fucked we are if we don’t stop practicing large scale agriculture in this destructive fashion. Or rather, I can’t, and you can’t, and neither of us have found a relevant study, and the pro-destroy the planet for shareholder value firms have far more money to fund studies than do the anti-DTPFSV groups so there’s going to be an imbalance in studies available to be cited.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good—advocate for funding public transit even if it’s less convenient for you personally than owning two cars.
I'm not ignoring the monocrop and other environmental issues, I am instead focusing on the biggest cause of climate change, the burning of fossil fuels and the associated warming from it. Yes, monocrops and destruction of native habitats are an issue, but I can't do anything about that. I am not cutting down rainforest or logging natural forestland or burning prairieland.
We can’t quantify bioethanol as being better than x times better than fossil fuels because we can’t quantify exactly how fucked we are if we don’t stop practicing large scale agriculture in this destructive fashion.
I think both can be quantified to some extent. Maybe not perfectly, but well enough to figure out which is better overall. We can certainly quantify the impacts of already existing production processes like corn bioethanol, sugarcane bioethanol, and gasoline using GHG life cycle analyses. I didn't mean to say that bioethanol is always better than fossil fuel, I am sure there are some plants and production practices that could make it worse somewhere. But in the context of US corn bioethanol as produced today, it emits less greenhouse gases than gasoline per mile driven. See the links I already posted.
I would also guess that at Earth's current population and consumption levels that we need some large scale ag to ensure people don't starve (more than they already are). We can try to adapt it somewhat but it needs to be done carefully to ensure we don't cause more harm. This has happened historically in other countries when they tried to radically change their food production processes and could happen again.
Large-scale ag is harmful especially when huge amounts of natural forestry and habitats are destroyed for crops, but it is a somewhat lesser cause than the fuels being burned and their CO2. Burning fossil fuels is responsible for something like 70%+ of emissions related to climate change.
I don't own two cars, I don't really drive anywhere even. Public transit is not feasible where I am due to low population density. But when I do drive, I can fuel up with a cleaner fuel (as can anyone else in the country). Different circumstances call for different solutions, so please don't be so quick to assume that there is one universal best solution.
It’s also worth pointing out that about half of corn and soy production is not profitable, like, most people growing it are not making a living off it, they’re breaking even at best. Most farmers in the US make the majority of their household income in jobs off of the farm.
Most farm land in the US is not cultivated to generate profit, but to maintain it’s status as “agricultural land” which excepts it from many different types of tax (or at least subjects it to a far lower rate). Making it an untaxed store of wealth. There is a reason that the largest owner of farmland in the US is bill gates. Corn and soy are grown because they are the most “hands off” crops, requiring the least amount of ongoing intervention for something that breaks even.
In all likelihood, if we shut down the ethanol program, very few people would loose their livelihoods, but there would be an economic impact in that more people farming for tax reasons would be taking a loss on that. Many might choose to sell off their lands and move that wealth in to different asset classes, which would have knock on effects.
Also the portion of the corn not converted into ethanol energy is still used as food for livestock, it is called Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles (DDGS) and is a byproduct of the ethanol production which is mostly used as animal feed.
Rice, generally speaking, is not a significant contributor to animal feed, at least the grain isn’t. Most rice is grown for human consumption.
There are plenty of crops that do need to have their cultivation scaled back as they’re mainly being used inefficiently or wastefully, but rice isn’t really high on that list.
Rice agriculture uses a lot of water and also releases methane.
absolutely. in a lot of ways this is like how almond milk is not a sustainable alternative to milk, but a less damaging alternative to milk. rice can be part of a sustainable diet so long as you diversify your diet. our problem as a species is largely that our societies can't help but lean into monocultures.
I remember looking up plant based milk alternatives and being surprised how well almond milk does in environmental impact. I think it was battling oats and soy, and depending on the source, the first/second/third place were changing. Iirc the explanation was that you actually need really little almonds to make a liter of almond milk.
Rice, coconut, cashew etc all had a worse environmental impact, but of course, everything was better than cow's milk.
(Mind you, it might have been that I used a German source for that, I'm going to try to look it up again.)
Yep, and factoring in what foods are grown close to you and are in season is also important. Transporting food around the world is a huge part of the carbon footprint.
No, if you die you can't make people money, so just live and suffer thanks.
Literally the reason why there's a social prohibition on suicide
Well, that and the fact that nobody wants to have to clean up your corpse.
Like, it's littering. Put your trash away responsibly.
Someone is gonna have to do that no matter how you die. Actually, suicide might be the only way to dispose of your own body yourself.
i mean, if we all humans die would be great for environment, but better keep that as plan B 😁
Food uses water to grow, extracting water uses fossil fuels. Don't grow food!
Thanks, I hate it
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