The Climate Summit Starts To Crack a Tough Nut: Emissions From Food 90
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: [H]ow do we feed ourselves without further damaging the planet or worsening rising levels of hunger? This year's United Nations climate summit has confronted this question like never before. For the first time there is a broad acknowledgment that the food agenda is aligned with the climate fight across the board," said Ed Davey of the World Resources Institute, who worked with organizers of the summit, known as COP28, on its food agenda. [...] More than two-thirds of the world's countries endorsed an agreement to retool the global food system, though it's vague, lacks concrete targets, and is nonbinding. The United Nations food agency issued a landmark report laying out what it would take to align the global food system with the goal to limit average global temperature rise to manageable levels. The United States and the United Arab Emirates together committed about $17 billion toward agricultural innovations to address climate change. [...]
The F.A.O. road map means doing different things in different countries. In North America, food experts said, it means nudging citizens to eat less meat and dairy, which produce high emissions. In countries of sub-Saharan Africa, it means increasing agricultural productivity. Every country must cut food loss and waste. "We are at this reckoning point where we have to move away from pure awareness raising and actually start changing habits," Yvette Cabrera, a food waste expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said.
Road maps, of course, are only that until someone starts following the directions. In this case, that's up to national governments. That's where the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action comes in. It commits countries to including agricultural emissions in their next round of climate targets, in 2025. It contains no other targets or timelines, nor prescribes any specific policies. So far, 154 countries have signed on. India, which has long been sensitive to any global accords that impact food security, was a holdout. One measure of the coming food fight is that it's unclear whether there's any appetite to include agricultural emissions targets in the main agreement, which is the subject of bitter negotiations at the moment. The latest draft does not include them.
The F.A.O. road map means doing different things in different countries. In North America, food experts said, it means nudging citizens to eat less meat and dairy, which produce high emissions. In countries of sub-Saharan Africa, it means increasing agricultural productivity. Every country must cut food loss and waste. "We are at this reckoning point where we have to move away from pure awareness raising and actually start changing habits," Yvette Cabrera, a food waste expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said.
Road maps, of course, are only that until someone starts following the directions. In this case, that's up to national governments. That's where the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action comes in. It commits countries to including agricultural emissions in their next round of climate targets, in 2025. It contains no other targets or timelines, nor prescribes any specific policies. So far, 154 countries have signed on. India, which has long been sensitive to any global accords that impact food security, was a holdout. One measure of the coming food fight is that it's unclear whether there's any appetite to include agricultural emissions targets in the main agreement, which is the subject of bitter negotiations at the moment. The latest draft does not include them.
Eat the bugz! (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you actually believe that, why are you even here?
Re: Eat the bugz! (Score:2)
France is already innovating and leading the way here. The first step was a bedbug outbreak in Paris, which they refer to as "petit déjeuner au lit".
Re:Eat the bugz! (Score:5, Informative)
What did they dine on at COP28?
Briskets, ribs, Wagyu burgers, and barbecue [washingtonexaminer.com].
Rules for Thee, Not for Me.
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Re:Eat the bugz! (Score:5, Funny)
What did they dine on at COP28?
Briskets, ribs, Wagyu burgers, and barbecue [washingtonexaminer.com].
Rules for Thee, Not for Me.
It's okay, because they need the calories to think big thoughts for us.
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Re:Eat the bugz! (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't think that's what they are saying, I think they are merely pointing out the inherent hypocrisy that the 'ruling class' always tries to push on us, the ruled.
Sure, but that's hardly unique to climate policy.
It's annoying, but I'm hardly motivated to screw up the planet to stick it to a handful of government big wigs.
Re:Eat the bugz! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Eat the bugz! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm against virtue signaling climate cultists selectively indulging their preferred anxieties at the expense of everyone other than themselves. If this is the only solution you offer for whatever problems you choose to care about then fuck you.
Re:Eat the bugz! (Score:4, Informative)
COP28 - Fuck right off please.
If it means fucking with my food. Yes, that's exactly what it means.
You have a much better chance of my ditching my car than fucking with my food.
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I feel sad for them then....
But I don't think human food needs or WANTS will be changing anytime soon....we've largely enjoyed eating about the same way for the most part, for at least 100's - 1000's of years here with more or less "modern man"....
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Re: Eat the bugz! (Score:2, Insightful)
A country sabitaging another country's food supply? An act of war.
A non-state actor? Terrorism.
Domestic government officials? Treason.
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Freeze drying seems unnecessarily energy wasteful.... peasant.
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Are they crispy?
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Yes but lots of little bits get stuck in your teeth.
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But not too crispy?
I'll gladly eat bugs if they are cheaper than whey (Score:2)
I eagerly look forward to affordable
Re:I'll gladly eat bugs if they are cheaper than w (Score:4, Informative)
Err...that's pretty much what makes it GOOD.
At least the intramuscular fat, the marbling that melts into the meat, say on a steak, or a hamburger.
The fat and connective tissues of the "cheaper" cuts of meat, are exactly what makes good, low and slow smoked BBQ some of the best tasting food in the world.
The extremely lean stuff, is bland and tasteless.
And fat is good for you....it's not the poison that old propaganda disguised as medical reports [npr.org] told the public and set society off to the obesity levels we see today...
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Says the person who's never eaten wagyu. The issue is the corn fed part, not the fat part.
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How much steak can I eat for the CO2 emissions of their private jet? What did they dine on at COP28?
C'mon, now, you're being unfair. Obviously, the environment can take a little bit more for the team to support the people who are trying to fix things. I mean, just look at what the summary says they accomplished: "More than two-thirds of the world's countries endorsed an agreement to retool the global food system, though it's vague, lacks concrete targets, and is nonbinding."
Surely, you can't begrudge the massive investment in time, money, and resources to produce something as world-changing as that. /s
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Divided between 8 billion people, your portion is not going to make for a very large steak.
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in years past I'd see pictures of the absolute MOUNTAIN of bison skulls pioneers left behind and feel kind of sick to my stomach; but now that it's 2023 i can see that really they were actually proto-climate warriors doing their part to control methane emissions.
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There are hundreds of thousands of jets every day. The emissions from COP28 aren't even a rounding error.
As a Jerusalem artichoke lover (Score:2)
I can confirm that emissions from food are a real problem.
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Legumes are also much better if you eat them fresh or soaked & cooked from dried. Canned legumes are... well... let's just say best avoided. They vary greatly in quality too. If you can find a good supplier, it makes a big difference.
I think the biggest adjustment for most people is learning how to cook
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Healthy's got nothing to do with it. It's just a shifting of the equilibrium of the bacteria in your stomach and digestive processes.
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A layup (Score:1)
You are welcome.
Oh yay! (Score:3, Insightful)
A chance for these assholes to claim that starving people is "good for them".
Conspiracy theorists FTW... Again (Score:5, Insightful)
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Their biggest problem is that their not our managers or bosses, and without compensating us, they have no right to expect anything from us (and further,
Re:Conspiracy theorists FTW... Again (Score:5, Insightful)
It's getting harder and harder to be a conspiracy theory denier each passing day.
As much as these climate summits suck, it's hard to call it a conspiracy when nothing they agree on ever actually happens. Right there in the summary:
More than two-thirds of the world's countries endorsed an agreement to retool the global food system, though it's vague, lacks concrete targets, and is nonbinding.
Vague, lacks concrete targets, and is nonbinding. It's the holy trifecta of these silly, uber-contradictory conferences.
Re:Conspiracy theorists FTW... Again (Score:5, Interesting)
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Fewer people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fewer people (Score:5, Insightful)
You first.
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You first.
Fair enou ****CARRIER LOST ****
Emissions from food. (Score:2)
Pre- or post- ?
(Yes, it's a fart joke)
eating bugs again (Score:3)
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Personally, I feed the bugs to my chickens.
They love 'em!
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We all unintentionally swallow a few bugs every year. That doesn't mean I want to eat a bowl of Grasshopper Flakes or Fruitfly Loops for breakfast.
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The population is managed, and it's a problem. Pick some countries and search for "Age sex Pyramid 2023 (country name)". Top heavy graphs are bad, and a lot of countries are top heavy. We're going to have a lot of old folks supported by a few younger workers, and that creates unpleasant scarcity problems.
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We definitely need more nurses, but I don't think it's an insurmountable problem. Market economies have a tremendous capacity to shift resources. 100 years ago, almost everybody worked on a farm, now it's single-digit percentages. Social media and ginormous pickup truck less, nurse more. The government has a role in incentivizing that though. We need to start steering people in to the medical field yesterday.
Alex Jones - Journalist (Score:4, Insightful)
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I was always fond of the theory that Jones is a patsy mouthpiece. Feed him a bunch of bullshit, laced with all the things that are true, and no one believes the true things until it's too late to stop them.
Alex Jones lost $1.1bn, but you funded it (Score:2)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/... [reuters.com]
Have the recommended reducing excess populations? (Score:3)
Because that's the next step.
Meanwhile Celebs & Politicians Fly on Private (Score:2)
Make the politicians, celebrities, and dignitaries eat bugs first, before you come at me for my very paltry contribution.
These geniuses that banned nitrogen fertilizer? (Score:3)
I recall near starvation conditions reached when some "geniuses" decided that nitrogen based fertilizers were bad and had them banned. These people will get us all killed trying to save the planet. The planet is fine, it's the people they should be looking out for.
In addition to idiotic bans on nitrogen fertilizers has been controls on NOx emissions of agricultural tractors. Just how much NOx is emitted by agricultural tractors versus these morons taking their jet flights out to some convention they could have held by Skype? Because of this bullshit we have farmers struggling with "right to repair" because now the tractors need extra computers and such to run and meet these very arbitrary goals on NOx emissions. I can understand the desire to keep total NOx emissions to a minimum, and in large population centers that tailpipe emissions can be a health hazard, but do we really need to pick on the people that grow the food we need to live?
It also seems quite silly to be talking about greenhouse gas emissions from food production with much larger emitters being electricity, transportation, and cement. I'd take them far more seriously if they made more mention of nuclear fission energy and synthesized hydrocarbon fuels. They can't even agree that petroleum is bad for global warming. These idiots are worse than the "deniers" because at least those denying any issue of global warming can often be brought on board with measures to clean the air, lower energy costs, and reach greater energy independence. We need nuclear power and synthesized fuels for cleaner air and energy independence, the reductions in greenhouse gases is more of a nice side effect. These people want to put restrictions on food production? That's not going to go well. I guess these morons will be fine because they have money to buy food regardless of the cost, it will just be other people that go hungry.
You want riots? Messing with the food supply is how you get riots.
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In addition to idiotic bans on nitrogen fertilizers has been controls on NOx emissions of agricultural tractors.
Or NOx emissions from anything. Atmospheric NOx is an important part of the nitrogen cycle, Without which, plants will not absorb more CO2. Plant growth is a balance of several nutrients, including fixed nitrogen. Run short of one and they'll stop the uptake of the others.
Since we aren't going to scale up the Haber-Bosch process to the point where we can fertilize the Amazon basin, we had better not mess with other sources. Fortunately, lighting generates far more NOx than humans can hope to.
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Food riots is how you get a revolution.
Misguided road map (Score:1)
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Efforts to reduce plastic are at odds (Score:3)
Efforts to reduce plastic use are at odds of reducing CO2 emissions from food, because food waste itself is the largest CO2 contributor of the entire food supply chain. Anything we do that causes increased food waste is a net loss for the environment - and that includes reducing plastic.
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You are lost my friend. The CO2 released by food waste is CO2 that was already floating about in the atmosphere recently, resulting in neither a net loss or net gain in CO2.
Re: Efforts to reduce plastic are at odds (Score:2)
This is a very ridiculous comment. Do you have any idea how much CO2 is emitted during the production of fertilizer and the growing of crops? It is MASSIVE.
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Hm. I said:
The CO2 released by food waste ...
And you said:
Do you have any idea how much CO2 is emitted during the production of fertilizer and the growing of crops?
I said what I said when you said:
... because food waste itself is the largest ...
If we are to speak rationally, we MUST use words to mean what they mean. We were talking about food waste. What does the production of fertilizer have to do with food waste?
Easy to push useless nonsense... (Score:2)
All the COP hangers-on pushing their nonsense should be laughed back onto their planes.
India,... was a holdout. (Score:1)
Because if you tell Americans to stop raising cows to eat, how will you tell Hindus to stop raising about the same number of cows. Just to wander in the streets.
For Health and Longevity, Eat More Meat (Score:2)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
Worldwide, bivariate correlation analyses revealed that meat intake is positively correlated with life expectancies. This relationship remained significant when influences of caloric intake, urbanization, obesity, education and carbohydrate crops were statistically controlled. Stepwise linear regression selected meat intake, not carbohydrate crops, as one of the significant predictors of life expectancy. In contrast, carbohydrate crops showed weak and negative correlation wi
Correlation causation (Score:2)
Here's a proper controlled study showing veganism is slightly healthier than eating meat.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
The Future is here (Score:3)
Does anyone know of a company working on Soylent Green I can invest in ?
The Godzilla in the room is (Score:2)
none other than China. Until China is pulled up short it will undo any anti-pollution wizardry we can pull out of our hats. One could also likely say the same thing about India and the various African states. China doubles down on this because it admits is various reported figures, particularly economic, are heavily laundered by the government. They have a tofu-dregs economy with tofu-dregs buildings paid for with tofu-dregs banks fueled by a government with tofu-dregs ethics and morals.
Just perhaps we shou
Yeah, how about looking at BIRTH CONTROL. (Score:2)
Come on, has no one thought to maybe cut down on the "Clown Car Syndrome?"
"19 and Counting," WTF is wrong with anyone to think that such a family is normal? Why couldn't mental health authorities intervene on an obviously deranged couple? Hell, WTF for more than 3. The planet can never support unrestricted population growth unless the _only_ activities allowed as a society are planting, harvesting, and distributing food. It doesn't require genius to look around and find examples of what will eventually happ