I do not understand how cities are blamed when a farm with 2500 dairy cows produces similar waste to a city of 411,000 people.[0] Cow poop is destroying the oceans due to massive amounts of mismanagement or just floods. Just goes to show the unpredictable n-th order effect of allowing the current ways of raising livestock (excluding the, now known for centuries, effect of global pandemics).
Two things. First, if it weren't for cities the demand for that many dairy cows wouldn't exist. Second, that study is just comparing manure production. Cities produce a great deal of other waste that cows don't.
Edit: Yes, just pointing out that people rightly look at cities because they are the driving force so any solution needs to consider that. I don't have a particular solution in mind, but I do hope if one is necessary it optimizes for personal freedom as well as sustainability. I lack the expertise to be specific, but making it economical to capture waste and runoff via tax credits or something might be a possibility. However, I know enough to know this isn't an issue that's going to be solved by me.
Why would that be a solution if you still need to manage manure to grow plants? You would still have runoffs due to similar mismanagement. It's not the management of human wastewater that is an issue with ocean deadzones.
As a joke, I boycotted sugar for nearly 1 year protesting the mismanagement of land and water resources in South Florida by the sugar industry and the environmental destruction they cause. I doubt I changed anything other than my health in noticeable beneficial ways including weight loss and lower blood pressure. Like recent deadly spikes in covid transmission in Louisiana and Florida, people in both states don't care about the death caused by unmanaged agricultural runoff from the sugar industry either. Last year Louisiana was hit by several hurricanes which oxygenated the coastal waters so the dead zone decreased[0]. This is an odd benefit if climate change causes stronger or more frequent storms, although I read somewhere that there is an equilibrium for the maximum intensity and possible frequency for large storms.
I cut out sugar about two years ago. I recently had blood work for a yearly physical (almost 2 years later than it should have been). All my levels (cholesterol, triglycerides, etc.) were significantly better than before.
I've mostly cut out processed sugar, with a few holdouts. It was hard at first to give up sweet tea, but now that I've done it I just found sweet tea tastes weird.
The last (big) holdout I have is with protein bars. I can't seem to find any, let alone any with decent amounts of protein, without sugar or even more sugar alcohols. So right now I stick to a set of pure protein that has only 2g of added sugars and 2g of sugar proteins. All the rest of my sugar is natural (usually from bananas or other fruit), and I still manage to keep it under 30g a day for the most part.
It's made a tremendous difference not only in my health, but also my body shape I've found. I'm still getting the same amount of exercise as I used to, but as the weight falls off it seems to be more fat than muscle. It's also forced me to eat somewhat better, though I still do too much processed stuff (I just check it for sugar first).
I haven't heard of those. I'll look into them and see if any are at my local Kroger. But I'm fixing to move countries so I hope I can find better options there. I know other stuff has less sugar than America (bread was a real pain in the ass to find without sugar!)
I dream of cutting out sugar - but it would ruin most coffees for me! I measure my sugar to coffee ratios in seconds poured. I like my sugar with coffee and cream!
If you are interested in cutting sugar out of your coffee, I would suggest maximizing the quality of your coffee while you adjust. I would recommend trying single origin coffee from Central America. These have fruity and sweet flavors, and are a good place to start with black coffee. It also helps to have some to help explain what you should be tasting.
This is at least how I (accidentally) ended up switching to black coffee. Ymmv.
Likewise. After falling into the coffee rabbit hole in the pandemic, I’ve accidentally discovered coffee does in fact taste good. You don’t need to go as deep as I did with an espresso machine and roasting my own beans, but having freshly roasted beans and a v60 dripper is a cheap, sub-$40 way to get good coffee that is sweet enough on its own that it doesn’t need to be balanced with milk and sugar.
I second this — I love the taste of quality black coffee but the bad stuff really does need help (for me some cream). It can be a huge difference. Also the origin — this is a subjective thing, but I agree with the parent that single origin Central American is ideal by my tastes. Nicaraguan medium-dark roast, freshly roasted and ground. (Freshness is also very important).
You don't need to do all or nothing. Even if you just cut it out everywhere except your coffee you'll already be making a significant and healthy change for the better.
This is very easy to fix. Just taper off over a long period of time. I’ve quit coffee temporarily (reset) many times this way.
I’ll benchmark my current consumption on a scale. Then I’ll make a spreadsheet that reduces it over a period of two weeks gradually, until hitting zero.
You can adjust the duration to a month or whatever you feel comfortable with.
> “This year, we have seen again and again the profound effect that climate change has on our communities — from historic drought in the west to flooding events.“
But this is being caused by agricultural runoff, not carbon emissions. It’s also not clear how I it affects the weather.
Seems “climate change” has become a buzzword for any type of pollution.
What a horrible article. I'm very interested in the details of this phenomenon and the article said basically nothing about it. I'm tired of journalists who hide behind dumbing things down for the reader as an excuse to not actually look into what they're supposedly writing about. If you're going to write an article for the supposed reason of informing the reader it better actually inform the reader.
I have in my Firefox settings selected the option to block all autoplay audio and video, yet this site is able to slip through. Is there anything I can do about this? (Other than manually blocking elements with ublock)
And is there a way to prevent videos from 'following' me as I scroll?
I use the umatrix browser extension and turn off all scripts except for web apps I use like github and this site. Sites look funny, but the truth is 90% of your browsing is probably reading text, and something you're trying to read has no business embedding all this nonsense in it. Try it, use umatrix and turn off JS by default.
0: https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/901V0100.txt?ZyActionD=Z...