Turn the byproducts into animal fodder and biofuel
Zero waste
The issue with using byproducts as animal fodder is that ruminants produce a lot of methane while digesting them. This enteric fermentation in their stomachs accounts for around 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while the entire aviation industry sits at just 2-3%. If we give them more food that is harder to digest, they’ll emit even more methane per animal.
Biofuels make a lot of sense though. After extracting the fuel, the remaining digestate can be used to produce biochar or be put directly on fields as fertilizer, which is nice because synthetic fertilizers account for 1-2% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Another option is to burn the byproducts for heat or electricity in winter during short periods when there’s not enough wind and solar power to cover energy demand.
Slurp up the cow farts for fuel
Isn’t there some cow probiotics that can greatly reduce the farting? I’m sure deploying cow Beano at scale couldn’t possibly have its own set of problems!
I heard about studies that successfully used algae to inhibit methane-producing microbes in the short term, but I couldn’t find any studies that prove its long term efficacy yet. It’ll be interesting to see whether the microbes can adapt to the algae in the long term or not.
IMO lab grown meat is the real future of having sustainable and not completely terrible meat production. No need to care for an animal or their digestive system. Sure, it’ll have its own supply chain, but that is far more dynamic and changeable than an animal’s biology.
For things like steak, I agree. Unfortunately it will take many years to become affordable for the average person, but when it happens, it will be awesome.
For many other categories, plant-based alternatives are already close enough for me. I recently tried the store brand plant based Schnitzel from Lidl (a supermarket/discounter chain here in Germany) and it was surprisingly tasty, given that it doesn’t even cost more than factory farmed meat by now.
There are decent burgers, nuggets, kebab, chicken and salami alternatives around as well. It’s crazy how much the taste, price and availability of these products have improved in the last 10 years alone. I don’t miss real meat by now.
Can we eat the humans, after we fattened them up?
sure, if they consent
Soylent Green
Weird to use a picture of a child predator in an unrelated meme
Stfu. It’s an established meme template
Humans should’ve evolved photosynthesis and just eat the sun
Sun worship is considered the most primitive of religions, and yet that’s where everything comes from. Everything. From food to heat to energy. Even fossil fuels is captured sunlight from the past, and radioactive material for nuclear power is from ancient supernovae. Everything. All praise the Sun!
The sun is also a child of those earlier giant stars. We are several generations down the line (hence why so many elements can be found on Earth).
The sun is more of a very large sibling than a parent.
Correct. Which is a supporting argument that life and intelligence might be a new thing in the universe, that it took a few billion years to just get through a few cycles of birth and death of stars to create the heavier elements needed. We could be one of the first examples.
Doesn’t rule out the Great Filter as still a thing, new life that expands too quickly and uses up resources can still kill itself in the process.
Oh the great filter definitely has legs to it. It HAS to. It’s only logical that any species could wipe themselves out or get wiped out. It would take a species capable of being literal gods (as far as we define them) in order to not be subject to ‘a’ great filter of some type.
Though IMO, I do not think we’re in a young universe for intelligence (as far as humans are “intelligent”, anyways), but a teenaged universe at youngest. Lots of energy and BS still going on, but enough room for intelligence to start cropping up.
I hope the fact the universe will have trillions of years with red dwarf stars and the like still shining away even as the galaxies get further and further apart means that THEN is the time where organized, self-changing structure gets to shine, but… humanity is kinda’ actively demonstrating that a species can be “intelligent” and yet hellbent on self-destruction.
I do tire of explaining to vegans that differences in soil quality mean that crops fit for human consumption cannot be grown everywhere and that making the best use of the land available often involves turning it into food via an intermediary
making the best use of the land
This is probably where we disagree
What do you propose we do with inarable land then?
There are a lot of uses for land that can’t grow food crops. It could be renaturalized for example.
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the current human population cannot be sustained using only food grown on arable land
It absolutely could. Not with the current diet but if there was a shift to less meat then we could substantially reduce the amount of land used in food production.
If we switched to a 100% plant based diet, there would be a strict decrease in the amount of available food. Animals eat things besides food that could have gone to humans. Land that could be used for growing crops is rarely used for raising livestock.
Straight out not the case. lots of animals are on farmable land. Also animals eat lots of our crops eg 80% of the worlds soy. Here’s one (of many possible ones) reference stating that we would only need 25% of the current agricultural land if the world went vegan. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/28/if-everyone-were-vegan-only-a-quarter-of-current-farmland-would-be-needed
Hemp needs to be used for a lot more things since it is a very versatile plant… I can’t imagine living in Louisiana with the horrible ethane cracker plants.
So true (V)
