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80 Comments
- ramiro, on 11/09/2009, -5/+37All organic, non GMO, non fat, low carbs, grass-fed food tends to be overpriced.
- Danrax, on 11/10/2009, -1/+33Of course they are asking whats in it for me. That's called survival instinct, many mammals have this including humans. When they stop thinking about themselves that's good brainwashing.
- boogerthecat, on 11/10/2009, -1/+27In capitalism, money talks and ***** walks.
If GREEN provides VALUE, I'll take 10.
If it is just a label that some ***** puts on a product to promote it, forgetaboutit. - SkittlesUSA, on 11/10/2009, -2/+26Nothing wrong with the "What's in it for me?" question.
Self-interest is the most reliable of human motivations. I always find this debate so interesting. I remember in my human geography class watching propaganda films about "Big Farm" and how I should buy "organic," and that video was brought to you by a business that OMGZ sells organic food!
The Green business is just like ANY other business pitch. I hate to break it to you guys, but organic farmers and businesses going green aren't doing so out of the goodness of their hearts- they do it because it is profitable.
"Greenbiz.com" is just like any other business trying to sell their product, only their main commercial pitch is that buying their product will save the world. The whole "green" movement is just a BRILLIANT advertising campaign.
And no, I don't have anything against the Green movement. If you want to spend a little extra for organic food and pay a little bit more for hybrid cars, I fully believe you have the right to do so.
In short, everybody often responds with the question "What's in it for me?" - peestandingup, on 11/10/2009, -0/+17Travel back to mid 2008 when you were getting ass-raped at the pump & get back to me.
- bmad965, on 11/10/2009, -1/+18I would but I can't afford to keep buying new underwear.
- OfoarHeffinsake, on 11/10/2009, -2/+16The main problem as I see it is that the green movement isn't clear on what it's about. Too often it seems to be focused on things like organic foods, something which is arguably worse for the human ecosystem in terms of being a sustainable source of food for the entire world, and for which the alternative (non-organic foods) is not actually a bad thing.
If the green movement were focused more on alternative energy sources and various countermeasures against anthropogenic global warming, maybe more people would get on board since those are two issues that have a clear effect on the rest of the world (despite AGW deniers and their need to ignore the scientific consensus on the matter.)
But the green movement seems irrevocably intertwined with extreme "hippie" type viewpoints: vegan or vegeterianism, PETA, anti-globalism, anti-corporatism, anti-capitalism, organic and "natural" products. And if they want to promote those things that's fine as long as they come right out and say that. Hiding those views under the guise of being "green" and "eco-friendly" is what's really the problem.
If you want to be eco-friendly, support sustainable sources of food and energy, support the reduction of carbon emissions, and support the search for alternative fuel sources. All the rest of that stuff is just superfluous crap. - kinerry, on 11/10/2009, -1/+14exactly what are you talking about?
the planet will die?
what garbage? you can fit 100,000 years worth of trash into a 30 square mile are - OfoarHeffinsake, on 11/10/2009, -3/+13How exactly is any of that stuff "green" in terms of being beneficial to the overall climate of the earth? Eating organic food is entirely useless unless one has an allergy to an ingredient that would otherwise be found in that food.
If anything, genetically modified foods are more eco-friendly, as they allow more to be grown with less land, require less invasive pesticides, and help to feed the poor and hungry all over the world.
Really that's the biggest problem I see with the so-called green movement. Actions certainly need to be taken to counteract anthropogenic global warming, to establish alternative energy sources, and maintain a healthy ecosystem, but none of that has anything to do with whether or not the apple you just ate was made organically.
The green movement tends to blend itself too often with vague ideas of vegeterianism and anti-corporatism. And hey: that's fine if you want to be one of those things, but don't pretend it has anything to do with being eco-friendly. - inactive, on 11/10/2009, -2/+10***** that. That's not the debate in someone's head.
It's more like "Should I buy into this BS the environmentalists are now selling or should I just buy whatever the hell I want? Gee, I'm pretty sure this will have 0% impact on the planet, why even consider it a factor in what product I buy? It's just a marketing scheme." - lurrch1, on 11/10/2009, -1/+7It takes longer to fatten a grass fed cow....
- rocknog, on 11/10/2009, -1/+6My thoughts? I don't question whether green is good for me - obviously, anything that reduces the pollution in the air I breathe or the water I drink is good for me. It's not ***** difficult - obviously I depend on a healthy environment to survive. What I question is whether or not a product labeled "green" actually makes a significant difference.
For example - you have the local vs. organic debate. Do I buy vegetables grown locally or do I buy organic vegetables grown in Argentina? Obviously, run-off containing pesticides and fertilizers is a problem, but is it more of a problem than the pollution that results from burning the fossil fuels required to transport these "organic" vegetables thousands of miles? It's not that I have a problem with going green. It's that I have a problem with going "green," or in other words, simply buying into whatever the label promises with no effort made whatsoever in the fact-checking department. - KingGorilla, on 11/10/2009, -0/+5Once in a while safeway offers organic bananas which are the same price as regular bananas. That's when I choose organic
- jman491, on 11/09/2009, -6/+11The only reason to go out of your way for organic food is Chipotle.
- inactive, on 11/10/2009, -0/+5And then you could just put a couple yards of clay and dirt over it and turn it into a golf course. Or use the methane gas to power a whole city.
They're already doing this *****!
Just tell the hippies you're returning our commercialized products back to mother earth or something. - regeya, on 11/09/2009, -4/+8Well, that's why the overly organic stuff won't take off. Drop those meat subsidies, though, and you'll create new vegetarians by the truckload (if people don't riot first ;-)
- palehorse864, on 11/10/2009, -1/+5It's a good thing people are asking considering that companies are at times cutting out the amount of a product you get for the same price, or cutting features from products, or simply increasing price for the same thing and claiming that it is because they're making the product more green. I can't remember which, but I believe a few products cut their size but not their cost in the interest of being "green". Really they were just finding a way to charge the same for less.
- badqat, on 11/10/2009, -1/+5We're conditioned to always be asking "what's in it for me?"
I myself - I'm no greenie. I do hold the idea that we shouldn't be raping and pillaging our environment with pollution and worse true, but I'm meh on a lot of green things. I'll give 'em a look, though - and if they're the best technology at the best price - then why argue with progress?
Of course, I don't always wonder "what's in it for me", either. Being a parent does that to you, I've found. - AraleNorimaki, on 11/10/2009, -1/+5this equivalent of Bart's homemade clown bed.
- Wrangler76, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3Yeah, except it's like this for them "Hmm, should I break these environmental laws to better feed my family?", while it's like "Should I really get something smaller than a SUV?" for us.
- CapnSlam, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3as if all trash wasn't already terrestrial... mostly organic & non-toxic
man ...get a grip - DarkMatter911, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3Amen brother.
- danielttt, on 11/10/2009, -1/+4C'mon dude...you've got to learn how to panic...First, stop thinking and repeat after me....'WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!'
- inactive, on 11/10/2009, -2/+5Not to mention they are usually smaller, have no nutritional benefit over GE food and they can't sustain a growing population.
Which is exactly why hippies will tell you it will save the planet. - Mazrin, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3"The earth is fine. The people are *****"
-G.C. - tnerb067, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2Organic food is more expensive; however, I believe that lumping low fat and low carb food into the "green" food category is ill-informed.
I think you were including low carb as part of "green" food because it's supposedly healthy. However, the famous Atkins low carb diet asks people to eat high protein foods like red meat. These foods are by no means "green". Animal proteins are an incredibly inefficient means of ingesting calories--one reason that vegans and conscientious eaters avoid them. In America, the great majority of beef cattle are fed an unnatural corn diet, which causes them greater flatulence than normal cattle. Cattle gas contains high amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times more potent than carbon. So, low carb-high protein diets would not be considered "green" at all.
End of lecture. haha - DarkShroud, on 11/10/2009, -1/+3Go screw yourself. I have to find a balance between what's best and what I can afford. Not mention many "green" products & services are scams.
- gadgetlust, on 11/10/2009, -1/+3Check out Jay's comment history. The stupid - it burns!
- caoimhinn, on 11/10/2009, -1/+3This isn't really as simple as people selfishly disregarding a global concern. Consumers often don't have the resources to buy environmentally friendly products, or to live a "green" lifestyle. I will not buy a Prius if it's going to cost me ten thousand dollars more than a Jetta. And I shouldn't be made to feel criminal about that.
If you ask me, it's incumbent upon larger industry to alter their practices before we go pointing the finger at the lowly consumer. - OfoarHeffinsake, on 11/10/2009, -1/+3I say AGW denier the way I say holocaust denier or evolution denier. AGW is happening, and the scientific evidence and consensus is there for you to partake of.
I refuse to call you a skeptic because real skeptics require evidence to make their decisions, and there is more than enough evidence to prove AGW is real. Denying it is not a matter of skepticism, it's a matter of being a denialist.
As an actual skeptic, the only thing to question is what the effect of AGW will have on the world as a whole, not whether or not it's actually occuring in the first place. Al Gore's doomsaying is almost assuredly overblown, but the fact of AGW's occurence is not. - TheCash, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2"If you should die before you wake... HHEHEHEHEHHEHEEEEHEHEHEEHEHEHEHEE."
- fuzzynyanko, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2Going green is harder when the green alternative sucks. Fortunately, this is happening far less
- OfoarHeffinsake, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2I certainly agree that the greenhouse gasses produced by cattle at the very least is a prime cause for concern on a ecological basis, but I have to reiterate my point about the protein sustainability.
While it's certainly possible and maybe even rather trivial for someone in an industrialized nation to get their daily allotment of protein from peanuts and such, the real question is whether it's at all feasible to think that the entire world could get the necessary protein from those sources.
Now I won't pretend to know the answer to that question (as you said, the science on this sort of question is nowhere near as conclusive as on AGW), but it would seem to me that it's probably unlikely.
I suspect that the raising of livestock for meat and the ecological downsides (methane production being the most severe) are the tradeoff that is necessary in order to make sure the entire world is able to be fed.
So while I would say that promoting a global vegeterian diet is almost certainly not feasible, it's certainly possible that working towards that eventually possibility as a means to sustaining the ever-increasing population while also cutting back on the ecological downsides of meat production. It's also certainly possible that promoting a vegeterian lifestyle in those who do have access to it (and can afford it) might have a significant positive effect on the ecosystem. I don't know that for sure, but I'd be interested in seeing more arguments for it.
Either way, global vegeterianism is almost certainly never going to happen. Human beings evolved to eat meat, and while it can certainly be argued that some cultures eat too much of it (or too much of anything in general) I don't think global vegeterianism is the answer to that.
Promoting a more sustainable overall diet is probably the best way to go about things, at least assuming that a diet of mostly fish, vegetables, fruits, and possibly poultry is both sustainable and lacking in any major ecological side-effects.
Finally I'll point out as a side-note that pesticides are always going to be necessary (at least until someone genetically modifies crops to the point where they are totally immune to any and all pests) and that those pesticides can be just as harmful if they are organic. I think I remember reading once that the "artificial" pesticides are actually better for the environment as they are made to break down more easily, whereas the so-called organic pesticides have the tendency to remain.
But since I don't have the source for that, I'll just say that it's a random thing I heard and won't pretend it's an actual fact. What I am sure about though is that pesticides are pesticides, and "green pesticides" is a meaningless idea. - caoimhinn, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2If what you're saying is that companies often charge "convenience fees" for online billing, I'm in complete agreement. It's simply reprehensible.
- Hyperian, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2i heard they feed cow ground up corn instead because they can digest it faster but their stomach is not built for it so there are side effects
- rolf, on 11/10/2009, -1/+3Fast-forward to now when SUV demand is rising --.--
- IllBeBack, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2I agree with you on the evils of corn. That ***** is toxic and should not be fed to cows.
- Jeff901, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2But, why do you want a fat cow when you can get a muscular cow, which is where all the meat is....
Why is meat overpriced? Fatten up the cow....it looks like there is (no real numbers here) 600 lbs of meat, but there was 100 lbs of fat trimmed....the meat plants paid for 600 lbs, but now the consumer pays for the difference. - OfoarHeffinsake, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2Has it ever been shown that an all-vegeterian diet is any more sustainable on a global scale than a more traditional diet?
The feasability of it alone seems pretty questionable to me. While increasing crop production is of course a great idea and a huge part of sustaining the world's food supply, I don't know that being vegeterian necessarily makes that any easier.
Are there enough forms of protein through vegetation to take the place of meat for the entire 6+ billion people on earth? I'm sure a small population of people could survive eating only vegeterian meals, but I doubt the entire world could, and I doubt that those people being vegeterians would be helping by doing so. - CapnSlam, on 11/10/2009, -3/+5Earth would eat you if it could
- Lonandubh, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7upG01-XWbY
- Lonandubh, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1Actually Guns are a delayed gratification; my possession of a gun does nothing for me now, hasn't really for the past 7 years I've had it, but it Does give me the power to defend myself in the future, from a home invader, from the government, who knows.
- TylerDuhrdan, on 11/10/2009, -1/+2Yup, exactly what I think, marketing scheme.
- carbonetc, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1@OfoarHeffinsake
Logistically the diet isn't appropriate for all regions of the world. Veganism certainly isn't unless there's an alternative source of B12 that's universally available. I wouldn't advocate that the whole world should switch, but a larger ratio of vegetarians in the world seems like it'd be a good thing.
As in the global warming debate, there's no shortage of contradictory statistics. The science isn't nearly as conclusive as it is with AGW. Trying to zero in on the real story is very frustrating; the beef lobbies have no qualms with cherry-picking data and neither does PETA. But as far as efficiency goes, meat production seems to have an inherent disadvantage. You need to grow crops to feed a cow, and you don't get all of the nutrients back out of that cow that went into raising it. It's true that cows are often fed the foodstock that's unfit for human consumption and would have been wasted anyway, but the fact that meat production can only get less efficient as we find ways to improve the quality of crop yields isn't a good sign. Very, very good meat production techniques could probably put the process on par with vegetable production, but in the real world many if not most of the meat production facilities won't be up to speed with those techniques. If we're interested in sustainability, why would we take the risk of adopting the food production method which already has the deck stacked against it?
More water is wasted in meat production. The meat producers concede this point; they only argue that less water is wasted than vegetarians claim. And there's the pollution produced by tons and tons of manure, which, again, in a perfect world would be used as fertilizer, but usually it just goes into the rivers and causes all kinds of environmental havoc. And there's the cocktails of antibiotics and such that we inject into the cattle preemptively because the conditions they're in almost guarantee infection and disease. Much of this goes into the rivers through the urine, plus it creates an excellent environment for superbugs to emerge. Pesticides used on crops also end up in the rivers and also create superbugs of a different sort, but I think more people are scared of a new and hard to cure disease jumping to human beings than they are of a very resilient new species of weevil.
The whole protein thing is just one of those myths that will probably be around forever. Getting enough protein even in a vegan diet is pretty trivial, as long as legumes are available.
When you factor in the things that aren't directly related to sustainability like improved health (this is one area where consensus isn't hard to find; Americans eat too much meat) and the ethics of it all, eating meat doesn't seem to have a lot of up-sides. The reason it seems to be so entrenched in western society is a historical and a cultural one, not so much a pragmatic one. - DarkShroud, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1When I can buy a Ford Escape plug-in hybrid I will be able drive on the batteries to most places I need. I can save money on gas my not spending money on gas for 90% of my yearly driving needs.
- ramiro, on 11/14/2009, -0/+1The ethanol subsidy foolishness should then help make organic fed cattle more economically viable.
- carbonetc, on 11/10/2009, -0/+1I'm sure I'll be dugg down all to hell for saying this, but if one is interested in having more sustainable sources of food, vegetarianism is no small step in that direction. And the carbon emission benefits are a bonus. Why take a rather easy and innocuous choice off the table just because the hippies happen to be into it?
- ramiro, on 11/14/2009, -0/+1The green movement is full of organic manure. The bovine kind.
- stompk291, on 11/11/2009, -1/+2now it's not just turning off that light, it's what kind of light you are ALLOWED to have. They are already working towards banning the lightbulb you were using, when the came around last time.
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