Mouse? What is this thing you talk of?

Completely agree! I was being euphemistic so as not to offend any sensitive socialists, of whom there are a few around here.

It has taken New Zealand decades of struggle to rid a few tiny islands of rats. Apparently they just needed to ask Alberta how to do it. Absurd.

Deeply apropos, given the obsession of today’s billionaires with escaping Earth in spaceships.

Breaks community rule #1

– signed, Reichskriminaldirektor (see article for detail)

It’s a paradox. The information revolution, the crumbling of the paper advertising business model, the rise of the pernicious attention economy, it’s all helped ruin the prestige of professional journalism. And yet never has the world needed professional journalists more.

While “we’re fucked” is a bit of a boringly nihilistic take IMHO, and not strictly correct in this case for lots of “us”, it might well be true for those whose food depends on glacier-fed rivers. The hundreds of millions of people in northern India and Bangladesh, for example.

PS: disappointed to see people downvoting the observation that a lot of poor people will suffer from climate change. Jeez. Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing on social media.

Personally I share your take, but you’re not helping the cause by insulting people.

Between what the law says and what actually happens, there is a yawning gulf. It’s the same in basically all jurisdictions where there are animal-welfare laws. The meat industry is powerful and consumers are unrelenting in their clamor for cheap meat. With such incentives, the weakest link is always going to be animals, which by definition have no voice.

This is exactly my mental response to this kind of story. Total hypocrisy. Try to ignore the pushback, cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing.

Dupe post. Please delete one of them.

I was skeptical that this would pass muster as “notable” but it just about does.

Unbearably sad.

on Windows they keep waking up when nobody asks for it

Good to hear.

As a teenager at the time, I remember finding it almost unbelievable that such a thing had just happened in the middle of Europe. Bosnia is right opposite Italy. Not in the 1940s but in the 90s! I still find it mind-boggling. The veneer of civilisation is very thin.

That’s helpful. These estimates do tend to vary a bit depending on assumptions (type of plane or car, what occupancy etc). The 2t I quoted was slightly high. My point was that there’s no other way to emit 1 tonne in 6 hours.

Apart from the methane problem, all livestock farming takes, by definition, a massive amount more land than arable farming to produce the same amount of food. On a stressed planet of 9 billion people, there simply is not enough land to feed everyone with red meat.

First, well done for taking it seriously and doing your bit.

The point of the post (I think) is simply to illustrate that certain actions are much, much more important than others. Anecdotally, there are still plenty of people out there who believe that, say, turning off a couple of (low-energy) lights, or “recycling” a plastic bag, are somehow major good deeds that allow them to kick their feet up and celebrate with a steak. There’s still way too much ignorance about all this, IMO.

In reality (as you seem to understand), some gestures are far more important than others. Ditching red meat (and dairy) really is a big deal. Everyone who claims to care about this problem should at least consider doing it.

This is a nice articulation of nihilism.

The paradox being that the attitude is both justified and… certain to only make the problem worse.

lasts much longer which is important as a single household

This is an often-overlooked argument for veganism. If you plan carefully, you literally don’t need a fridge.