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Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 18:30:29 -0500 (EST)
To: Nate Clark <ntclark &AElig eecs.umich.edu>
cc: Robert Felty <robfelty &AElig umich.edu>, improvetheworld &AElig umich.edu
From: Nathan Binkert <nate &AElig binkert.org>
Subject: Re: more reasons to be vegetarian

> The text of this article is about how mass farming of meat is bad for the 
> environment, not that eating meat is bad for the environment. If eating meat 
> alone was bad for the environment, then eradicating all carnivores would 
> solve our global warming problem, no?

I think you're exactly right.  The essential problem with all of this 
stuff is that environmental costs are rarely paid for directly by the 
people doing the damage.  If people and companies actually had to pay to 
offset the environmental cost of their waste/destruction, then it would be 
in everyone's best interest to improve their own environmental impact.  I 
bet that if farmers had to actually pay to fix the damage they did, the 
damage per pound of meat produced would go way down.  Farmers have little 
incentive to do better.

This argument goes way beyond the environment.  One could argue that this 
is the problem with healthcare in this country (and others).  Since the 
consumers of healthcare don't directly see the costs of healthcare (we 
generally make co-payments and the insurance companies end up dictating 
the costs and the standards of care), consumers have little power to force 
healthcare to improve.  This is also exactly why there are so many bugs in 
software.  If there is a software flaw in Windows, consumers don't really 
have any recourse.  Changing software is not an option for most, and they 
can't get money out of the companies for their flaws.  Imagine if 
microsoft had to refund 10 cents to each person that owned a copy of 
windows for every exploitable flaw found.  I bet they'd fix their bugs 
pretty quickly.

   (the other) Nate