To anyone wondering, no, rice is not hurting the climate. Unlike many water-intense crops, people are not trying to grow rice in the middle of the American desert.
...unless there's a profit to be made. Hype rice into the next superfood and watch people grow it in the desert.
ricemaxxing
5/7
Preach. It's a far cry from almonds lol
I would love to see how this sort of online propaganda goes over in the East Asian part of the world. Or just Eastern part of the world in general.
SHHHH don't give them any ideas
Well it is hurting climate in one way and that's by methane emissions. Growing any crop in standing water is gonna create an anaerobic environment where methane is released. Rice therefore is expected to have larger environmental footprint than other grains because the carbon dioxide emissions should be similar as rice and other grains need similar amounts of fertilizer. Animal agriculture still has a larger share in the methane pie but rice's contribution is not insignificant
Given the number of calories per tonne of methane produced, no, no it's not hurting the climate.
This kinda complain is the same as 'well if we just eliminate humans we'll solve climate change,' like yeah, no shit. But the point is keeping humans alive and rice is uniquely good at just that.
I swear, whenever someone talks about how "humanity" is killing the planet, or "humanity" is evil or something like that, I get so irrationally mad. It's not humanity, it's like less than 1% of people that are bringing this planet down
Is still looks like the world population could use rice as the main source of carbs and it wouldn't be nearly as harmful as cattle.
Rice doesn't have to be grown in flooded paddies, that's just an ancient, chemical-free way to prevent weeds from growing. You could still grow rice the same way you'd grow wheat or corn and it can actually be less work to do it that way. It would, of course, require more reliance on herbicides for weed control, though, which is its own can of worms. The water also allows other means of food production to happen alongside the rice growing, such as raising fish or ducks. I wonder if symbiotic dual-use of the water would offset, or even directly reduce, the relatively higher methane levels that might be generated within the water. Bonus points if you hook up a turbine to the outflow when you go to drain your paddies.
This but unironically.
Every environmental activist out there who spends their afternoons shaming people online for going about their most mundane, domestic activities ("how dare you use a hot cycle for your single load of laundry!?") are actively complicit in enabling and normalizing billionaires' continued ravaging of the earth's resources. It keeps everyone distracted from the actual problem and trapped in an "us vs them" mentality where the public can never collectively unite to turn the heat around on those in power.
I'm not cutting my decompression-after-surviving-another-day-in-dystopia shower short while Musk installs another infinity pool in his Arizona summer home lol, so stop asking.
Ever since data centers have begun consuming staggering amounts of water and electricity while providing unprecedented amounts of pollution/toxic waste/noise/more, I've really given up feeling responsibility for making the world better/cleaner. I'm not going to change my behaviors--I'll still recycle and be careful about energy/water consumption, but the advent of the data center threw a similar "fuck you" as when i discovered how little the recycling of plastic bottles actually makes any impact (and that we were basically sold a glaring lie + promise by major bottlers like coke and pepsi)
"We won't be fooled again" 🥴
Plastic recycling is actually picking up as the economics make more sense.
But its still better to use/buy things in more recyclable containers...
If we can ever get rid of the capitalists, we could switch to compostable containers for most or many goods. They've already been invented; they're just not seen as profitable to implement on a wide scale.
Remember, the 'carbon footprint' metric was invented by British Petroleum's PR team.
And while you're at it, remember that BP was formerly named the Anglo Persian Oil Company, which held a commercial monopoly on the oil extraction of Iran. It was majority owned by the british government and served to funnel the oil wealth back to London. When Iran's then democratically elected government wanted to nationalize the company, the UK and US fomented a coup in 1953 and installed a constitutional monarchy with a dictator Shah that would ally with the west. That's why they have F-4 tomcats, and fun fact, he was the one who commissioned mercedes to create the G-Wagon. Eventually resentment against the government would lead to the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the hostage crisis which would create the conditions that lead to today.
I feel like this particular post has got to be capitalist propaganda
Edit: I meant the one from the Straits Times
I wouldn't call it capitalist propaganda to state the fact that, for example, the top 10% of wealth holders are responsible for TWO THIRDS of global warming caused by carbon emissions, with just the top 1% being responsible for 23%.
If anything, that could be called anti-capitalist propaganda, because it actively targets the wealthiest parasitic class in our society and demonstrates that their excessive consumption, funded by the wealth they extract from people's labor, is responsible for most of our emissions.
Individuals can do things to lessen the impacts their consumption creates on the planet, but it doesn't change the fact that the biggest current source of emissions is the wealthy.
I could buy eco-friendly soap, compostable toothbrush heads, thrift all my clothes, only buy more expensive but advertised-as-repairable devices, carefully cut around small grease stains on cardboard boxes to ensure it's recyclable, and refuse to ever buy a drink at the store and only use a water bottle instead.
Those are all examples of actions that almost certainly would help the climate and environment more than if I wasn't doing them... but if I'm coming back home from a long day at work for a company that sends all its profits to a billionaire who just took a private jet flight to and from lunch on some tropical island somewhere, and I just want to not feel like shit that night, is the most effective strategy really to shame me if I take a warm shower and eat some ice cream out of a non-compostable tub, or is it to concentrate everyone's shame and collective actions onto that billionaire?
Oh, you like eating? That's destroying the climate you bozo. Meanwhile some billionaire is flying their private jet a town over to get a massage.
Maybe, if you're only talking about individual people, but the big polluters are corporations, not people. That's where the focus should be.
Stopping overproduction is what we should focus on.
Mama mama look, it's billionaire eco fascist propaganda. they don't care about the environment, they just want people to starve.
This x100 lol
Rice is bad for the environment, but you can scarf down that two pound grass fed steak without worrying. /S
Until those most capable of reducing their footprint, actually do it, I'm not doing shit. This isn't my problem to fix and I didn't cause it and I'm not sacrificing anything else to fix the rich man's problems. I ain't fighting his wars, I ain't fixing his mistakes, I ain't sacrificing for his future. The rich have more than enough to fix this shit. If they don't then maybe our species isn't meant to survive given we keep producing leaders like them.
There's actually a really interesting story here. Rice production, in addition to deforestation, has been linked to starting global warming about 5000 years ago. While the climate should have been naturally cooling due to decreased insolation, the methane released from the start of intensive rice agriculture and the CO2 from deforestation prevented this. Here's a summary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_anthropocene
P.S. fuck capitalists
The article just says that it was due to the rise of agriculture, not rice in particular.
Edit: and fuck capitalists
My bowl of rice comes from one prefecture over. I'd buy more locally if I could, but I prefer brown rice to white and they locally polish basically everything.
This reminds me of he time I got arrested for peeing in the lake right next to the chemical company dumping waste in via a 26 inch Dia. Pipe.
You peeing is indecent AND pollution. That heavy metal dumping is just pollution /s
I'd rather watch somebody peeing than watch what's coming out of the pipe. Indecent is a judgement call.
Always trying to blame the common person.
Your existence is an inconvenience... but the billionaires also need you! may be the new, corporate version of Original Sin™️, now powered by a.i.™️ on the blockchain!
Am just gonna stick to blaming LLM hosting data centers for hurting the environment. (As of 2026)
No rice, no meat, no tree nuts, only some vegetables. Environmentalist austerity politics really keep the movement down.
Haha I'm killing the planet cause I can only afford to eat brown rice with beans. It's not even the CO2, it's the gigantic turds I'm dropping in the bowl #fibermaxxing
You’re allowed to do something that mildly affects the climate in order to not die.
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