Just to add to this, Interpol’s Secretary General, Jürgen Stock, warned of this early on in the war [1]:
“We can expect an influx of weapons in Europe and beyond. We should be alarmed and we have to expect these weapons to be trafficked not only to neighbouring countries but to other continents.”
It seems like they aren't worried about it now more after the war.
> Jürgen Stock says once the conflict ends, a wave of guns and heavy arms will flood the international market and he urged Interpol’s member states, especially those supplying weapons, to cooperate on arms tracing.
Seems a bit disingenuous to suggest that the NATO secretary general thinks weapons are being trafficked now when thats not at all what they said.
This article links to another which discusses exactly that [1] — some geological event dammed the Mediterranean from the Atlantic 6 million years ago, after which the sea mostly dried out, then subsequently the entire thing refilled in the space of a couple years in the Zanclean Megaflood (at least, there’s mounting evidence that it happened in one cataclysmic event). First the western Mediterranean filled up to Sicily, then the eastern med, via a 1500m (5000ft) high waterfall!
Independence from fossil fuel use is far from the only factor determining sustainability of our agriculture, though, sadly.
Land use is a huge concern, given we already use half of the world’s habitable land for our agriculture [1], putting immense pressure on ecosystems and biodiversity due to this habitat loss.
Organic agriculture is less intensive, meaning for the same total food production, it must be more extensive — it requires more land [2].
That’s not to say there aren’t very good reasons to shift to organic agriculture. Fertilizer runoff leads to vast ocean dead zones, such as that in the Gulf of Mexico [3]. Further, we have an estimated 60 years of farming left if soil depletion continues at its current pace [4].
If we are to both curtail our land use and switch to regenerative farming methods, we must curtail meat production.
It takes around 100 times as much land to produce 1 calorie of beef or lamb versus plant-based alternatives (similar for the same quantity of protein) [5], such that we could reduce our land use for farming from 4 billion to 1 billion hectares and still feed the whole world on plant-based diets.
I’m not sure if I’ve connected the dots here especially well, but I hope I’ve at least conveyed that sustainability is multi-dimensional, and goes far beyond just getting off fossil fuels — even though that is a vital step.
Besides fossil fuel derived fertilizers used for feed, as sibling commenters have mentioned, you’re neglecting the impact animal agriculture has on forests.
2.1 million hectares (5.2 million acres) of tropical forest is destroyed every year to make way for beef herds [1]. That’s 41% of all tropical deforestation (which is where 95% of the deforestation occurs).
This is a disaster both in terms of the vast stores of carbon being released, and the destruction of habitat in the world’s most precious and biodiverse ecosystems.
As if said impacts are not shared by plant agriculture? Where do you think your vegetables come from? They need vast amount of space to grow, they need to kill animals that would otherwise inhabit the space, they need to spray large quantities of pesticide from above, fertilizer is necessary and fossil fuels are burned in that process, and fossil fuels need to transport the crops.
> 2.1 million hectares (5.2 million acres) of tropical forest is destroyed every year to make way for beef herds [1]. That’s 41% of all tropical deforestation (which is where 95% of the deforestation occurs).
What are the economic incentives to destroy tropical forest? Meat is by no means the only thing that land can be used for, first of all, but there is no requirement that cows be raised on land that was previously tropical forest. Go check out the Great Plains where most of the United States' cows are raised, because you won't find a tropical forest, deforested or not, for thousands of miles. And yet, somehow, meat continues to be produced.
No, I don't want forests to be destroyed, but it's a separate issue. Forests have been destroyed for countless reasons that have nothing to do with meat. Deforestation sucks, but that really isn't a the best reason to conclude that there's a problem with eating meat when deforestation isn't an issue. That is unless you have a problem with the non-forested land that cattle farms occupy, and most people don't because tropical forests are more interesting.
As I have mentioned elsewhere in this thread, if we clean up where we get our energy, these arguments mostly disappear because, regardless of the end product, fossil fuels are currently still being burned. Doesn't matter if you're eating beef or soy.
> As if said impacts are not shared by plant agriculture
Absolutely, and use of pesticides and fossil-fuel-derived fertilizers in crop production and horticulture is also a huge problem.
Fact is though, the same quantities of calories or protein as beef or lamb require vastly more land and energy to produce than plant-based alternatives: roughly 100 times as much [1]. That’s owing both to pastureland and to the fact that half of all the world’s cereal crops are fed to animals.
Granted, livestock raised purely on marginal (i.e. non-arable) pastureland is relatively low impact in terms of carbon emissions. There’s still the factor that carbon dioxide is converted to methane, which in the short-term (that we actually care about) is much more potent in its warming effect.
That model does not represent most animal agriculture, however.
As for tropical deforestation, the United States is one of the chief importers of Brazilian beef [2], so as a country is absolutely implicated in the practice.
You’re right that clearing land for grazing is not the only economic incentive to destroy forest, but equally it cannot be discounted in its contribution to the trend.
> The prevalence of digital technology means that companies like Apple and Google imposing their values is a real problem. And let's be clear, these are often very parochial values.
And sadly, beneath all the headlines about AI sentience, this is what Blake Lemoine was actually trying to draw attention to, and that executives consistently dismiss these kinds of concerns [1].
What of the consequences when these corporate values become embedded in AI that plays an ever greater role in our lives?
It stands to reason that the nuclear lobby is out for its bottom line, but let’s not lose perspective on just how devastatingly deadly fossil fuel combustion is by comparison, killing an estimated 8.7 million people per year [1]. That’s 1 in 5 of all deaths globally.
Our perceptions of risk are massively skewed by the (literally) explosive nature of nuclear disasters compared to this silent holocaust to which we’re shockingly normalized.
From Our World in Data [2]:
> Nuclear energy, for example, results in 99.9% fewer deaths than brown coal; 99.8% fewer than coal; 99.7% fewer than oil; and 97.6% fewer than gas. Wind and solar are just as safe.
That’s per unit of energy generated.
Curiously, while most can likely name Chernobyl and Fukushima (perhaps fewer Windscale and Three Mile Island), what of the Banqiao Dam disaster, which killed an estimated 171,000 people the 1970s?
All that said, extrapolating the lethality of nuclear generation to a world with many more nuclear plants is fraught, precisely because there are so few data points.
There’s no escaping the fact that these are incredibly complex and expensive machines, which can fail in unexpected ways, no matter how scrupulously they’re designed to be passively safe — especially when compared to a solar PV park.
“We can expect an influx of weapons in Europe and beyond. We should be alarmed and we have to expect these weapons to be trafficked not only to neighbouring countries but to other continents.”
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/ukraine-weapon...