Regarding weight changes and redistribution, I wanted to ask if your weight gain and loss happened over long or short periods of time? I’ve read that quick weight loss and the gain will mostly put the fat where it has been previously, so male distribution of fat remains in place. So weight cycling for redistribution purposes requires slower cycles of gain and loss (which seems to track people’s experiences of seeing the changes over years).

edit: I think this is related to “fat memory”:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/fat-cells-retain-a-memory-of-obesity-making-it-hard-to-lose-weight-and-keep-it-off-study-suggests-180985501/

yeah, that’s my takeaway as well

that’s a good suggestion - I edited the OP to make that clarification; I agree that “30% of emissions” is harder to immediately understand than “70% fewer emissions”. We can’t ignore psychology if we are trying to be persuasive.

It’s not clear to me how we should think about the impact of methane gases - on the one hand they have a greater warming effect, but on the other hand they stay in the atmosphere for much less time (12 years) and overall contribute less to global warming than CO2 (which stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years). It actually looks like nitrous oxide is an even bigger source of warming, and fertilizer inefficiencies by growing crops to feed animals is a major source of released N2O, though this is comparing CO2, CH4, and N2O tonne-to-tonne, it might be better to know how each contributes according to the actual amount being emitted …

Either way, it should be abundantly clear that a vegan diet does reduce greenhouse gas emissions of all kinds significantly and is something actionable anyone can do if they want to reduce their footprint (esp. important for Americans and people living in developed countries where over-consumption is real).

Though I personally think individuals deciding to become vegan to solve climate change is like asking individuals to make donations to end poverty - it’s not enough and won’t solve the problem, we need much larger social and structural changes so that by default everyone is making healthy climate choices because it’s the easiest, cheapest, and most preferable option.

For comparison, it’s very hard to live without a car if there is not sufficient public transportation infrastructure. Demanding someone in a car-centric city to live without their car and just take the bus obviously misses the point: we need public transportation infrastructure, the problem isn’t that Bob isn’t willing to hop on a bike and risk his life cycling 10 miles to work every day on a stroad because it’s faster to cycle 10 miles than to wait several hours for the bus.

If Bob wants to do that, power to him - but we should be realistic and recognize we aren’t going to solve climate change this way (nor is it particularly kind or reasonable to Bob, even if his behavior is considered morally exemplary).

absolutely - the study also looked at and compared low, medium, and high meat diets precisely to quantify those differences (and they are significant!)

if you are vegetarian, you shouldn’t have a B12 deficiency if you’re still eating eggs or dairy, though - that’s a bit surprising, I would only expect B12 deficiency in people who eat a non-fortified vegan diet (or similar diet like fruititarian where there is no source of any animal products).

I would maybe talk to a doctor about that 😅

also, proud of you not spiraling into restrictive dieting - that’s very healthy and inspiring

if you are going to estimate what percent of emissions are from animal agriculture vs transportation by looking only at “carbon opportunity cost” of animal agriculture and not doing anything to estimate the equivalent carbon opportunity cost of transportation, doesn’t that create obvious problems for the comparison?

and yes, it is fair to criticize Sailesh for not considering carbon opportunity cost of other sources of greenhouse gases when making claims about animal agriculture being the number one contributor to climate change on that basis, that’s my point

here’s an analogy: what if someone only looked at CO2 emissions from cars and animal agriculture, and ignored methane emissions entirely from animal ag? Wouldn’t you feel that the claim that cars create more emissions on that basis alone leaves out important information? Since methane is a significant greenhouse gas, and large amounts of it are produced by animal ag, to be intellectually honest you would want to measure and compare all significant greenhouse gases from both cars and animal ag to make a real comparison.

My point was just that: you can’t calculate carbon opportunity cost of animal ag and not do anything to calculate something equivalent for other sources of greenhouse gases (like transportation) if you are being intellectually honest and are actually trying to make a comparison.

Considering Sailesh’s past associations with intellectual dishonesty, however, it isn’t surprising to see that here as well.

the problem is that “opportunity cost” is a theoretical savings that isn’t being extended to other kinds of emissions, they aren’t looking at what carbon opportunity costs exist if we sequester carbon in other ways, e.g. an equally implausible alteration as ending all animal agriculture and replacing the land used for animal agriculture with carbon sequestration would be to eliminate cars entirely and to replace parking lots with trees … but they only look at animal agriculture to determine the relative contribution to climate change … it’s not surprising to learn Climate Healers is an organization dedicated to pushing the idea that animal agriculture in the main cause of climate change, and that veganism is the only solution to climate change. These are activists, not scientists.

If a brand new, efficient gasoline car puts out 400 grams of carbon dioxide per mile it is driven, and a high-meat diet puts off 7 grams of carbon dioxide per day, I would imagine that cars contribute much more to carbon emissions than diet.

Current estimates are that about a quarter to a third of greenhouse gases emissions come from food production (including animal agriculture). Climate Healers suggest including other emissions that are not commonly included for good reasons, for example carbon dioxide has a very long atmospheric lifetime of over 100 years, and reducing CO2 emissions will be crucial to preventing climate disaster … bringing up black carbon that has an atmospheric lifespan measured in days is not helping create a more clear picture - it distorts rather than clarifies. I trust the climate scientists’ choice to focus on carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide emissions as the main greenhouse gases of concern when looking at the impact to the climate, especially when you consider that this Climate Healers article is written by the founder, Sailesh Rao, who has no scientific background or education in climate science, and who has acted as producer on several films that have been criticized as sharing misleading or false statements, e.g. he was a producer on What the Health:

Martijn Katan, emeritus professor in nutrition from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, called the film “propaganda”. Katan says What the Health? exaggerates the health risks of meat, eggs and dairy, and dangerously claims veganism prevents or cures many diseases, like cancer or diabetes.

and was a producer of Cowspiracy which made false claims about the contribution of animal agriculture to climate change:

Doug Boucher, reviewing the film for the Union of Concerned Scientists blog, disputed the film’s assertion that 51% of global greenhouse gases are caused by animal agriculture. He described the 51% figure as being sourced from a 2009 Worldwatch Institute report by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang not from a peer-reviewed scientific paper. He claimed to have observed methodological flaws in Goodland and Anhang’s logic, and said that the scientific community formed a consensus that global warming is primarily caused by humanity’s burning of fossil fuels. He stated that the scientific consensus is that livestock contribute 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, far lower than the 51% stated by the film and the source article.

The actual evidence I can find from peer reviewed, scientific sources indicate animal agriculture contributes a minority of the relevant greenhouse emissions we should be concerned about. Emissions aren’t the only environmental impact of animal agriculture, and it’s abundantly clear that veganism is a way to improve the environmental situation (it’s better on every mark: personal health, ethical considerations, lower emissions, less water and land use, lowered species extinctions, etc.).

But this leads me to be puzzled why, given all the evidence that veganism is good for you and good for the planet, someone like Sailesh Rao feels the need to dedicate himself to distorting the truth and exaggerating the impact of animal agriculture on the environment or health … Given his books which betray religious interpretations of the environment and veganism, the motivations for distorting facts are likely personal, and it’s unfortunate because his unwillingness to respect evidence or science undermines his message and paints veganism as an extreme diet that cranks and quacks push.

Veganism is in much better hands with actual medical doctors and climate scientists who have carefully accumulated the evidence that shows the diet is healthier and better for the environment than the alternatives. Science and evidence allows anyone from any faith or creed to accept the truth as true; pushing veganism with falsehoods and distortions from a religious perspective only weakens the movement.

I think I’m confused by your response … the original article says a vegan diet has 70% fewer carbon emissions than a high meat-eater diet (it’s 30% of the meat diet) …

If you have $100 and I have $30, I have 70% fewer dollars than you, I have 30% of what you have. That’s a dramatic reduction, I don’t think the even more dramatic reduction in methane emissions will be any more convincing - to be honest I don’t think any of this data will convince anyone to become vegan, most likely. Changes to diet like that are usually more emotionally motivated than rational.

I couldn’t tell, but it seemed like you were implying that the carbon emissions are only a 30% reduction or something, I’m not sure how else to interpret your seeming belief that this isn’t a significant enough reduction in emissions …

I do think a car is more impactful than a diet in terms of emissions created - an efficient, new gas car will emit 400 g CO2 / mile, which means even a mile of driving will far strip the 7 g daily CO2 emissions from a high meat diet.

Paul and Linda McCartney are famously vegetarian, they are not vegan themselves and they don’t promote veganism … they only promote vegetarianism. Paul McCartney only suggested the conference go vegetarian, which of course doesn’t mean he wouldn’t support them going vegan, but my point was always that his own vegetarianism and advocacy only for vegetarianism is hypocritical.

it’s a cultural problem, food culture is hard to change, even when you have reasons to change

it’s harder for some than others, but the people who find it easy to become vegan are a small minority

rather than being shocked at the hypocrisy (which is admittedly there and is upsetting), I wonder instead what could be done to win more people over to veganism, or what other kinds of actions would move society towards a better set of conditions … a hyper-individualist lens makes it hard to recognize these issues are on a collective and societal level, and it’s more important that we solve those than whether someone was eating meat at a climate protest

pushing for legislation might be more effective than converting more of the minority of people who would become and stay vegan to do so in a society that is effectively hostile and provides little means to do so. Making it easier to be vegan by default is a hard task, though … it’s basically like waiting for the revolution.

just going to lay out the maths to make it easy to follow along:

Carbon Dioxide

vegan CO2 emissions is 2.16 g / day

high meat-eater CO2 emissions is 7.28 g / day

vegan CO2 emissions is 29.67% (2.16/7.28) of high meat-eater CO2 emissions, that is a difference of 70%

this means a vegan diet has 70% fewer CO2 emissions than high meat-eater diets

Methane

vegan CH4 (methane) emissions is 4.39 g / day

high meat-eater CH4 emissions is 65.4 g / day

vegan diet has 6.7% of the methane emissions as high meat-eater (4.39 / 65.4), that is 93.3% less.

Conclusions

I wouldn’t characterize the take away for both a 70% reduction in carbon emissions and a 93% reduction in methane reduction as it’s not enough to merit changing diet - quite the opposite!

For comparison, taking a train instead of a domestic flight would reduce emissions for that journey by 85%, taking a train instead of a car for medium distances saves 80% of emissions, and taking a bicycle instead of a car for shorter distances saves 75% of emissions (source),

When I switched to an electric vehicle, I only saved 56% of emissions compared to driving a brand new gas car (probably saved more since I stopped driving a much older gas car). You can run your own gas emissions calculations here. Based on what I’m reading, electric vehicles tend to reduce emissions between 50 - 70% (part of this is about how much more efficient they are with energy use, being able to reclaim energy during city driving from braking and coasting reduces waste compared to a gas vehicle).

So a vegan diet is maybe comparable to bicycling instead of driving a gas car, better than switching to an electric vehicle.

from the article:

Paul McCartney has urged COP30 to go vegetarian, arguing that serving meat at a climate summit is “like handing out cigarettes at a cancer prevention conference”.

I’m criticizing Paul McCartney for arguing the conference should go vegetarian and not vegan. The cows that make the dairy are treated terribly, are slaughtered well before their natural lifespans, and most important to the context, contribute significantly to the climate problems with methane emissions (just like cows grown for meat do).

Here’s a good breakdown of differences between vegan & vegetarian diets in terms of climate impact: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w

Emissions:

• Vegan:............. CO2: 2.16, CH4: 04.39, N2O: 0.71
• Vegetarian:........ CO2: 3.33, CH4: 20.21, N2O: 0.98
• medium meat-eaters: CO2: 5.34, CH4: 40.88, N20: 1.73
• high meat-eaters:.. CO2: 7.28, CH4: 65.40, N2O: 2.62

So vegans have 30% of the emissions as high-meat-eaters, and the differences between vegans and vegetarians are significant with regards to their emissions.

Also should be noted that there is a big gap between biodiversity impact between vegans and vegetarians, with vegetarian diets causing nearly double the number of species extinctions per day than vegan diets.

Arguing they should serve cheese, eggs, etc. but just not meat is like arguing they should offer smokeless tobacco but not cigarettes at a cancer conference - meat has similar climate issues as dairy, and McCartney seems to either lack knowledge of this, or is aware of his hypocrisy but chooses it as a more moderate position because he’s hoping it will be more persuasive or likely to succeed.

To your point, the conference should probably go vegan just because they should be advocating for that kind of thing even if it won’t solve the fact that 80% of emissions came from just 57 companies. Even if like electric cars, veganism won’t save us from the climate disaster, you would think it would at least be part of their gimmick to show people what actions they can take (short of the guillotine, for the 57 company heads, as a part of a larger revolution that successfully replaces our economic and political system with something more egalitarian and less death-cult-y, though good luck on that; people don’t tend to get stabby until they’ve missed meals, and once they’ve missed meals the basis of a good future civics goes out the window and it’s more about the killing and retribution than about setting up a stable, but better, government).

Like I initially said, despite my criticism, I’m all for McCartney supporting vegetarianism, even if veganism would be better. Vegetarianism is still a massive improvement, especially when you are primarily looking at climate impacts, and it might be more likely to be implemented and supported socially.

I would imagine the flights people take to travel to these conferences also have a significant climate impact, probably more than from the food served at the conference

that said, I’m not sure a conference has to be a perfect representation of the values the conference might hold, especially if the burden in the current society creates restriction … the conference after all is trying to help find ways to alter society so we don’t destroy our world, and I would assume better and greener public transportation is one of those policy positions being advocated - you can’t take a train that isn’t there

though vegan food is more materially achievable than the transportation alternatives, it’s not an insignificant cultural problem as people are not generally on board with the changes to diet, and substitutes (like transportation infrastructure) are not to the point of eliminating that discomfort such that people don’t feel it’s a burden to eat vegan (though in a vegan community this sounds absurd, we all are people who very much decided it’s worth making that change and felt the burden was not too high, but we are not representative of the average person, let alone the average climate scientist or conference-goer, though they probably are more likely to be vegan than the average person off the street).

feels a bit ironic to urge for making the conference vegetarian, if the critique is that animal agriculture is killing the planet and serving animal products sends the wrong message, then continuing to serve just some of them is like advocating for handing out smokeless tobacco products rather than cigarettes at a cancer conference…

yeah, it’s maybe better, but … not by much, right?

I guess vegetarian would be demonstrably better than including meat, but dairy and eggs are produced the same way with similar climate footprints as meat, no?

not to play purity politics, better is still better - just enjoying the irony I guess

China does not allow or recognize same-sex marriages, are jailing gay women for writing erotica online, trans people have to have bottom surgery before they are permitted to update official documents, trans women are forced to notify their family and prove they have no criminal record before being allowed access to HRT, and in 2022 China passed a law preventing buying estrogen or anti-androgens online even with a prescription.

This is all much worse than in the US where most states allow you to update your gender marker on official documents without surgery, HRT can be obtained on the basis of informed consent (and without requirements of disclosing to family or having no criminal record), and LGBT+ people are not being jailed for writing erotica …

The U.S. is indeed dangerous, and you are probably in greater danger of being a victim of stochastic violence in the U.S. than in China, but that is not the only thing that people look at when deciding if a country has better or worse laws, rights, or conditions for LGBT+ people.

edit: btw this isn’t a theoretical problem for me, if China recognized same-sex marriage and had sufficient trans healthcare, I would probably be in China right now - I can’t take refuge there because their laws are anti-LGBT+ and would not permit me a spousal visa to stay in the country because I’m a woman married to a woman.

I’m sorry, I meant my comment mostly in jest (and somewhat bewilderment), I didn’t mean to come across as rude 🤐

If your point is that Americans are in a stronger position to enter a foreign country and stay there by various means like getting sponsored by an employer or on a student visa, that seems clear enough - that’s true even if just on the basis that Americans tend to have more money, assets in US dollars, and potentially better opportunities to get sought-after education in the U.S. that would make them skilled laborers in other parts of the world.

My point was just to clarify that getting that legal basis of staying in the foreign country (which is the point of the asylum claim) is not trivial even if it is easier for Americans relative to other nationalities. There are trans people in detention camps in Europe because they declared asylum and are being prepared for deportation back to the U.S. - not everyone is a skilled laborer or eligible to be a student (let alone successful in pursuing those opportunities).

And most of the trans population does not have passports, let alone the financial means to leave the country. Fleeing the country is a solution for a privileged minority. Most of us can’t even leave the oppressive states we live in and move to more progressive states with laws that protect trans folks.

Also, the U.S. is still one of the best places in the world to be trans - we have better access to trans healthcare and rights than most of the rest of the world, and even the rest of the West. The situation is deteriorating (as it is in most of the rest of the world), but they did not even succeed in passing a trans athlete ban through Congress, let alone criminalization of being trans or revocation of care. Nothing like the laws that were on the books in the 1970s that outright banned “cross-dressing” have been passed or enforced.

love Max Ernst, and this is such a great interpretation of the work!

Here’s a piece of artwork that resonated with my experience of gender:

Here’s a transcript of the blurb:

Reflecting on societal expectations to be a nurturing and protective mother, Louise Bourgeois described Nature Study as a self-portrait that explores themes of alienation, family, gender, identity, and maternity. The multi-breasted, headless creature pays homage to a number of ancient guardian deities including Cybele, the mother-goddess who symbolizes fertility in Phrygian and later Greco-Roman ancient mythology.

Bourgeois produced the figure in a variety of different media, including bronze, marble, porcelain, rubber, and wax. Among Bourgeois’s most iconic works, Nature Study emphasizes evolution, metamorphosis, and hybrid ways of being that blur animal and human, male and female – concerns central to her sculptural production.

For me it conveyed aspects of being dehumanized and animalistic which relates to the way I experience my gender as making me monstrous or sub-human; the sculpture obviously has elements evoking both male and female sexes, but overall feels female. Just struck me as deeply relatable.

> making false claims that Americans can go anywhere and stay

> thinking trans people would be seeking asylum in Russia

> account is new

you sure you’re not some kind of bot?

this, I hate using GUIs - they’re slow and inconvenient in so many ways

also, terminal commands can be thrown in a script to easily automate or schedule tasks, unlike all that manual clicking in a GUI

s

the American passport allows for easy initial entry, but doesn’t guarantee permanent residence, asylum cases are to permit people to stay legally in the country longer than the (short) initial period allowed for tourism …