r/Environmentalism • u/Trent1492 • 6d ago
OG-Brian breaks down the lies and the lying liars via the giant oil company’s own internal documents.
/r/climatechange/comments/1x06ago/new_evidence_of_exxons_climate_deception/perl1hj/2
u/OG-Brian 5d ago
I have a lot more info saved than I mentioned in the comment, but I figured that more articles wouldn't be read by any user due to attention span.
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u/haroldthehampster 4h ago
post it wth are you waiting on?
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u/OG-Brian 20m ago
You read all those links I mentioned already and want more? If that's the case I've got a bunch I'll add.
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u/effortDee 6d ago
OG Brian is also anti-vegan and lets not forget kids, animal-agriculture in all its forms is the lead cause of environmental destruction with no other industry coming anywhere near close.
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u/lifeanon269 6d ago
Yikes. Just took a look at their post history. I'll never understand being "anti" vegan. Veganism is an objectively good thing for the environment, so it takes a lot of mental gymnastics for someone to argue against it.
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u/effortDee 3d ago
Told you. They're now going through comments i've made about the environment from months and years ago and replying to them.
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u/lifeanon269 3d ago
I blocked him. Not worth wasting my time continuing to reply to his misinformation.
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u/OG-Brian 5d ago edited 3d ago
ETA: this user Blocked me after misrepresenting some of my comments and farming in general, and claiming they've rebutted my comments (by for example pretending that soy crops would just be replaced with canola/sunflower, if livestock were not fed soybean solids that are left after pressing for soy oil).
What do you think is the topic here?
I formerly believed in pro-vegan myths, it was a disaster for me. I eventually learned that most people aren't compatible with animal-free diets, and I healed a bunch of chronic health issues by eating less plant food. "Mental gymnastics"? I'm sure that I'm causing less harm to animals than you (lower impacts to the environment from pesticides and artificial fertilizers, killing a few large animals for food vs. far greater numbers of smaller animals via pesticides/traps/other means of crop protection, etc.).
How are you obtaining your foods without harming animals? Specifically?
Also, I haven't had a car for about 27 years. I don't fly on airplanes at all, and rarely use train travel. I don't buy unnecessary stuff, I patch clothes rather than buying new mostly, my furniture/computer/phone/etc. were bought used, and I've helped create organizations which advocate for environmental issues (such as one that promotes bicycling and car-free lifestyles). I've chosen to not produce offpsring, it has been a major sticking point in relationships with women some of which might have been otherwise very fulfilling. Can you explain how you're causing less impact than I am? Are you car-free? Child-free? Do you avoid buying new stuff that isn't food? Etc.
It's really offensive that users take potshots at me simply because of their diet religion and totally off-topic. It's no wonder that the term vegan has become synonymous with smug angry asshole.
The more I'm harassed, the more I'm likely to comment against vegan myths. I used to comment much more about pesticides, right-wing myths, pro-nuclear zealots, and other topics but vegans have annoyed me so much that I made it more a focus. Vegans more than any other group hit a trifecta of annoyance for me: smugness, bullying, and misinfo.
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u/lifeanon269 5d ago
Could you virtue signal any harder? I'm not going to get into an online pissing contest with you. I'll applaud anyone making steps to be more sustainable. Less kids, no flying, smaller living, diet, renewables, biking, EVs, etc. That includes applauding you. Everyone can do their part, for sure. Even if you eat meat, the point about veganism being objectively good still stands, since anyone who is vegan would mean that you can continue to consume beef in the way you do with less impact on the environment. You should be advocating for everyone to be vegan if you love eating your beef, but wish to do so with your privileged sustainability. After all, it is simply not possible to feed the world beef sustainably at our global population levels. Expecting 8 billion people to be able to live off large animals simply isn't possible. Land use alone dictates that. So it would seem like you should be advocating that others go vegan where possible so that you can continue your privileged "sustainable" consumption of large animals.
Hayek, M. N., & Garrett, R. D. (2018). Nationwide shift to grass-fed beef requires larger cattle population. Environmental Research Letters, 13(8), 084005. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401
Capper, J. L. (2012). Animals, 2(2), 127-143. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani2020127
Alexander, P., Brown, C., Arneth, A., Dias, C., Finnigan, J., Moran, D., & Rounsevell, M. D. A. (2016). Human appropriation of land for food: The role of diet. Global Environmental Change, 41, 88-98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.09.005
Cassidy, E. S., West, P. C., Gerber, J. S., & Foley, J. A. (2013). Redefining agricultural yields: from tonnes to people nourished per hectare. Environmental Research Letters, 8(3), 034015. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015
The moment you start scaling up beef is the moment it starts looking less like the sustainable beef your yourself enjoys. This is backed by not just independent studies, but studies from within the industry as well.
Also, I'd love to see your citations that show the majority of people can't live on a vegan diet.
There is a whole buttload of irony in your post as you scream about the angry smugness of vegans while coming of with so much anger and smugness yourself while you espouse some much virtue about yourself.
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u/OG-Brian 4d ago edited 4d ago
Could you virtue signal any harder?
Since our conversation began with your heckling of me for not being vegan, this is hilarious. Thank you so much.
I'm not going to get into an online pissing contest with you.
Your defensive response suggests that you're a habitual car user and have other habits that make you definitely more impactful to the environment than I.
...the point about veganism being objectively good still stands...
No, it's an opinion. Objectively, pasture-raised foods are typically grown without pesticides and synthetic fertilizers which are harmful to animals and ecosystems. Yes I know all about impacts of CAFOs, but I don't buy any of those foods at all even when visiting restaurants. Anyway, impacts have been greatly exaggerated. Such as, pretending that every drop of rain falling on pastures or fodder crops is water that's consumed by the industry when nearly all of it goes right to streams and water tables as it would without livestock. Such as, pretending that 80% or whatever ridiculous percentage of soybeans are grown for livestock feed. In reality, soybeans almost entirely are grown for both human and livestock consumption. Since the soy oil that is for human consumption (processed foods products, biofuel, inks, candles, industrial lubes, etc.) comes from the same plants as the bean solids left after pressing for oil which producers of human-consumed foods generally do not want and are mostly fed to livestock (only about 2% is used for human consumption, although soy oil producers would certainly prefer to sell to the human consumption market since it pays better), 100% of the impacts are attributable to the human consumption and 100% to the livestock consumption. You can't grow 80% of one plant for a purpose, the whole plant must be grown. So to get soybeans for either human consumption or livestock consumption requires all the land, all the water, etc. Another typical claim is to pretend that soy crops grown in deforestation areas are grown strictly for livestock when they are not, attributing this deforestation (which may have been primarily for timber profits in the first place) to livestock when demand for "plant-based" animal foods substitutes also drives expansion of the soybeans industry. I commented with a lot of details and citations about soybeans here.
In the real world, the majority by far of foods eaten by livestock are pastures and co-products of growing crops for human consumption that aren't human-edible or for quality reasons (contamination from mold, grown in poor soil, or whatever) aren't wanted by the human consumption market. Also, when I see comparisons of land use for livestock vs. plants-for-humans crops, the comparisons are for calories and protein but humans need much more than these two things from foods. I have not ever seen a land use comparison that factors all nutrition that humans need. A human could have an infinite amount of corn/soy/wheat/rice (the crops typically used for those claims about "trophic level" and raising livestock) and nonetheless starve to death from numerous micronutrient deficiencies.
Yes I know that all humans could not be fed from pasture-raised livestock foods. You need not convince me with a bunch of citations, I'm well aware of that information. There are too many humans! Whatever farming system is used, it will not be unsustainable. There seems an obvious solution for this, not immediately I mean but for the long term. The long-term consequences of relying on plant farming without animals will be severe:
Pesticides Are Killing the World’s Soils
They cause significant harm to earthworms, beetles, ground-nesting bees and thousands of other vital subterranean species
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pesticides-are-killing-the-worlds-soils/Why It’s Time to Stop Punishing Our Soils with Fertilizers
https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-its-time-to-stop-punishing-our-soils-with-fertilizers-and-chemicalsVital soil organisms being harmed by pesticides, study shows
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/04/vital-soil-organisms-being-harmed-by-pesticides-study-shows
Pesticides and Soil Invertebrates: A Hazard Assessment
- review of studies measuring impacts of specific pesticides on specific organisms (arthworms, beetles, springtails and others)
- "The analysis, published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science, systematically reviewed nearly 400 studies of the effects of pesticides on non-target invertebrates that live at least part of their lives in the soil. It covered more than 275 species and 284 pesticides, but excluded any chemicals currently banned in the US."
- study:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2021.643847/fullSoil degradation threatens food supply and scientists are calling for action
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-01/global-soil-degradation-aroura-soil-security-think-tank/104594018
- Professor Alex McBratney of University of Sydney's Institute of Agriculture, along with other scientists globally, has formed Aroura Soil Security Think Tank (SSTT)
- erosion, acidification, contamination including by pesticides and microplastics
- McBratney: "You could actually bring back some animals into our farming systems, perhaps grazing the cover crops which would help with nutrient recycling."
- article mentions estimates of 40 percent of soil currently degraded, in Africa possibly 65 percent, and globally 90 percent by 2050
...if you love eating your beef...
I actually don't like beef. Typically I buy bison/yak/elk/etc.
So it would seem like you should be advocating that others go vegan where possible...
You have been commenting as if I'm a pro-animal-ag activist, when I merely point out bad information as I see it. It's more that I'm against blanketing the planet with pesticides and mono-crops that lack diversity because of the many hazards: it's bad for soil, invites pests which become increasingly resistant to pesticides necessitating more and stronger pesticides, is ideal territory for spreading diseases, and such. These have already been manifesting in the global food system and I can mention hundreds of citations about that.
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u/OG-Brian 4d ago edited 3d ago
(breaking up the comment due to Reddit comment character limit)
Also, I'd love to see your citations that show the majority of people can't live on a vegan diet.
Are you not aware that it usually isn't possible to prove a negative? There are no studies of long-term animal foods abstaining, or at least I could find none when I searched and I cannot ever get any vegan to point out any. I'm sure this is because people do not maintain the restrictions long enough for such a study. Certainly, the Adventists (Loma Linda University, etc.), having ants in their pants about propagandizing against animal foods, would have turned up evidence showing sustainability of animal-free diets by now if they could. In each of their studies which as a cohort of vegans, the vegans entirely or almost entirely began abstaining as adults and none or almost none abstained (again, according to their survey answers) for more than ten years. If the extreme rarity of elderly long-term vegans is any indication, all or nearly all of the vegans in those studies have by now or will eventually return to eating animal foods.
Even many of the world's most committed vegans, such as famous vegan chefs/authors/YouTubers whose lives were oriented to promoting veganism, resorted to eating meat and other animal foods for their health. Vegan chef Alexandra Jamieson said this after she came out as a lapsed vegan because of health issues caused by restricting:
People whose entire business was about veganism messaged privately or sent a text asking to go for a drink and said they’d been eating meat, too.
When a famous vegan begins to refer to themself as "plant-based" rather than "vegan," it's often the case that they're back to eating animal foods. Many will eat meat and continue to say they're "vegan" based on the "as far as is possible and practicable" escape hatch. We cannot know how many "vegans" are regularly eating animal foods and keeping it secret, but being caught at this is one of the most common types of events in vegan-world. Jamieson didn't come out as a meat-eating "vegan" on her own, she was seen eating fish at a restaurant. Almost nobody remains a strict abstainer for all their lives once they start.
A comment by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, vegan chef and author:
I’ve known hundreds, if not thousands, of vegans, and most of them aren’t anymore.
Famous "vegan boxer" David Haye was seen eating a plate of chicken wings (not plant-based fake chicken wings, the restaurant doesn't serve any) at Blakemore Hyde Park Hotel in London in 2022. "Vegan" tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams don't abstain from animal foods either, they say they cheat frequently. Venus, apparently, has such a need for animal foods that she's said she'll steal food off another person's plate. Etc. for many more. I gave more examples of failed famous vegans here.
I commented with citations about health issues found in children raised vegan, here. I commented with several citations about nutritional issues found in vegans, and included some demonstrating slower healing in vegans, here. Note that none of those studied lifetime animal foods abstainers, so I think it is a valid assumption that the issues may be worse in long-term abstainers. It seems typical, in studies that mention data about the length of time subjects have been (claiming that they were) abstaining from animal foods, that the mean length is less than three years with no subject having been abstaining (according to their survey answers) for more than ten years.
...as you scream about the angry smugness...
I haven't done any screaming.
...coming of with so much anger and smugness...
Well I've been harassed here, completely off-topic, by two users simply because I comment to correct bad info on Reddit. If I comment more about veganism than other topics, it's because this is where I find much of the bad info and much bullying of others based on this bad info.
Has anyone ever become vegan because you harassed them about it? When I gave animal-free dieting a try, I made the decision completely on my own without any prompting. When I saw that it was wrecking my health, and after even a vegetarian doctor urged me to return to eating animal foods including meat, I relented and then found the more I ate animal foods the more I was resolving health issues (both long-standing, and the new issues I was creating by eating plant-based). I resolved SIBO after multiple approaches failed by eating more animal foods, it is a very painful condition and infamous for being extremely resistant to treatment. Pardon me for being logical? Pardon me for having concern that problems will happen for others because of dogma? Excuse me, for having as much concern for wildlife as for livestock animals.
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u/lifeanon269 4d ago edited 4d ago
Since our conversation began with your heckling of me for not being vegan, this is hilarious. Thank you so much.
First off, I didn't heckle you for not being vegan. You obviously miscomprehended what I said, as I clearly stated in my original comment that I'll "never understand being anti-vegan." That is extremely different than your claim that I ridiculed you for not being vegan. I don't care if you're vegan, omnivore, carnivore, pescatarian, flexitarian, fruititarian, or any of the many various -arians or -vores out there. I just said I don't understand why someone would be anti-vegan and I stand by that, since as you'll see, many of your claims are either false or misleading.
Your defensive response suggests that you're a habitual car user and have other habits that make you definitely more impactful to the environment than I.
My response isn't defensive. It is pragmatic. I'd prefer to stick with falsifiable discussions online and getting into a pissing match with an online stanger that I know nothing about as to who does more for the environment is something that I'd rather just not do. Don't let me stop you from espousing how virtuous you are though all while you make many ridiculous assumptions about someone you know nothing about online. It only makes you look ridiculous in comparison.
As far as water usage, yes it is absolutely fair to criticize papers that don't account for rainfall water usage with regards to animal agriculture. So it is fair to criticize arguments that don't account for it. But to say that water usage of the animal agriculture industry is greatly overexagerrated when there are plenty of papers that do account for rainfall is a misrepresentation of the available information on this. Grass-fed beef absolutely stands better on the water usage front that industrial beef; that's a fair comparison. It is important to separate water usage into green, blue, and grey in order to get an accurate picture of water usage for all types of agriculture. There are plenty of studies that do this. As shown in the following study that does account for rainfall, it finds that nearly a third of agriculture’s total water footprint relates to animal products, and that any animal product has a larger footprint than crop products of equivalent nutritional value.
Mekonnen & Hoekstra (2012). A global assessment of the water footprint of farm animal products. Ecosystems, 15(3), 401-415. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-011-9517-8
Related study on the crop side:
Mekonnen & Hoekstra (2011). The green, blue and grey water footprint of crops and derived crop products. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 15, 1577-1600. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-15-1577-2011While grass-fed pasture beef is certainly better from a water usage perspective (relying more heavily on green water), with green water, it is more of a land use issue than a water issue. Since green water is mostly dependent upon local rain as a water source, it then mostly reflects the issue of land use. Since you already conceded on the point of land use and pasture beef not being scalable as an option to feed humans, arguing in favor of green water use of pasture beef is ultimately a moot point.
Let's talk about soy beans now, because this is where you really start to push some more misinformation. What you're not understand about the soy crop is the economic value that comes from it. Arguing that both animal agriculture and other human uses of soy beans both equally share 100% of the impacts of the crop grossly misrepresents the facts here. Since this is one of the first things you responded with, I am going to assume this is not the first time you've presented this misinformation in arguments in the past. What you're not understanding here is that 80% of the soy crop's weight is the soy meal and this is where a majority of the economic value of the crop lies. You can't simply attribute 100% of the crops impact to all byproducts of the crop equally. You need to look at where the economic value of that crop comes from and what the economic value of the crop would look like in the absence of demand for any given byproduct. Since 80% of the soy crop's weight is the meal itself that goes toward animal feed, then in the absence of that demand you'd be left with just an oil byproduct from a crop whose yield for that oil is extremely poor in comparison to other oil yielding crops. In otherwords, if animal agriculture went away entirely, then the soy crop that feeds it would simply be used for its oil at that point. Soy then becomes an uneconomical crop choice as an oil-only crop since it is a low yield crop for oil. Thus, the land for that crop would switch to a higher yield oil-crop instead. In that case, you'd either produce far more oil on the same amount of land...or given the same amount of demand for that oil, you could produce the same amount of oil with a different crop on far less land. For example, sunflower and rapeseed oils both produce 50% and 100% more oil per hectare than soy does. If oil then is the only demand from the crop, then there is far less land use needed in the absence of animal agriculture. This is why animal agriculture is the primary driver of soy's land use. Economic weighting is the proper way to divide the impacts of a crop's byproducts. These studies all account for the economic value which is what is important here:
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0216
https://agecon.unl.edu/expected-carbon-intensity-ci-co-products-fed-beef-cattle-nebraska/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13623517/
This misrepresentation of information then trickles down to your other conclusions about the soy crop and its relationship with animal agriculture in your other arguments. So it is no sense digging further in some of your other posts related to this since the main argument rests upon a faulty conclusion to begin with.
As far as your citation about what livestock eat, there are some important caveats to acknowledge here. While grass makes up most of what they eat, this is measured in dry matter mass. That tells you what they eat, but not whether the land could've been used better. Futhermore, the classification that what is fed to livestock as not human-edible is only true because that is what we choose to feed them and many of the crops listed in that classification can and are processed into human edible foods. Soy meal, oilseed cakes, and brans count as non-edible here because the food system chooses to feed them to animals not because they can't be things processed into food for humans. Furthermore, from an absolute value perspective, while 86% of animal food is not human-edible according to their data, that remaining 14% is still an extremely large number considering the sheer massive amounts of animals in the animal agriculture food system worldwide. For example, animal agriculture consumes about 1/3 of all cereals globally. So while 14% seems like a small share from animal agriculture's perspective, in absolute terms as far as how much food actually goes toward animal agriculture, it is a massive amount. So don't let the "majority of food eaten by livestock" values confuse you when the amount of food that it takes to feed the tens of billions of farmed animals every year.
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u/lifeanon269 4d ago edited 4d ago
[...continuation...]
Yes, we're on common ground as to many of the factory farming practices that lead to environmental destruction worldwide. But it seems silly to me that you advocate for only the best of what animal agriculture can provide (all while conceded it can't possibly feed all humans worldwide) while raging upon the scourges of factory farming for plant food production. You can't argue in favor of the best of one source of food production while arguing against the only worst of another. You're not going to find me advocating for factory farming of any kind any more than you. So it seems strange that you'r harping on pesticide use, etc as if I was advocating for it. In other words, you're building a strawman argument I never made, just to tear it down.
The variation in farming practices and their environmental impacts vary quite wildly. So it makes sense, when discussing the impacts of any given food product, that you're making your argument from common ground. Even when accounting for some of the best of farming practices with animal agriculture (pasture raised beef, for example), the environmental impacts are still larger when compared to plant-foods. Let's not forget, a vast majority of that mono-crop culture is for animal agriculture worldwide. 38% of global arable land goes toward feeding livestock. Much of your criticism of mono-culture applies in large part to animal agriculture. As shown in this study, while ruminants convert grass from land unsuitable for crops into human-edible protein, the environmental impacts of that conversion are immense under any production method practiced today.
Let's move to your claim about how most people can't be vegan. I didn't make that claim, you did. You saying you can't prove a negative is a false statement, since your original claim is not a negative. Your claim is a positive and statistical one. Saying "most people can't live on a vegan diet" asserts something specific about the human population, ie. that a majority would develop health problems on a vegan diet. There would therefore be evidence of such a claim in [finite] cohort data to back it up. Evidence against it would be showing that many people are doing just fine on a vegan diet. Since you can't provide that evidence to back up your claim, you can't and shouldn't make that claim. This isn't trying to prove a negative such as no "X" exists anywhere. Therefore, since you made the unfounded claim, the burden of proof is on you here.
The rarity of elderly vegans is simply a cohort effect. Veganism was a small movement even just a couple decades ago. So there are very few people that have been vegan for 40+ years. This does nothing to prove any point you're making based on the inference that because of this small selection size, it must mean that a large number of vegans start eating meat again in old age. This simply has to do with the age skew of the demographics combined with the recency of veganism as a diet/lifestyle. You're misinterpreting data here. Since you have a habit of doing so, I'm beginning to think it is purposeful.
It is silly to get into anecdotes from celebrities on this and it does extremely little for your argument. Again, you're showing your bias. Celebrity anecdotes on lapsed veganism makes news while someone that sticks with veganism goes quitely unnoticed. It is blantant selection bias and silly that you're even including it here. That's about all I'll dedicate to addressing that.
Vegan diets work for many people and the health impacts can be profound, but there certainly should be some careful planning (as with all diets) to ensure all nutrient needs are met. This goes directly counter to your claim that a majority of people can't be vegan and you have no evidence to back that claim up.
But again, this all goes back to my very original claim that I'll never understand being "anti-vegan." I've quite clearly laid out here some of your misinformation and bias on the matter. I have no problem with whatever diet you choose to eat. But it is clear from the breadth of information that we have out there that someone else being vegan is certainly a benefit for the environment and as yourself being someone that enjoys eating large animals in our food system, then it would be more logical for you to be pro-vegan for others since it means you can continue your privileged eating habits as I mentioned earlier. It is just hard for me to understand why someone would spend so much time being "anti-vegan" and posting to anti-vegan subreddits. I wish you the best, but you're not someone that I care to get into prolonged arguments with and I've already spent far too long creating this rebuttal. So I'll leave this as my last response.
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u/OG-Brian 4d ago
Good grief! That's a lot of words to say you didn't understand most of these issues and many of my comments.
I gave examples of cheating and lapsed vegans, because there do not seem to be any large-scale studies of vegan recidivism in peer-reviewed literature. I showed that some of the most dedicated vegans had been secretly eating meat for their health, and I quoted one who said they heard from many others who also were secretly eating meat (owners of vegan-oriented businesses and such). You responded basically "Durr-hurr, anecdotes and cherry-picking" but you didn't show any information about long-term sustained veganism. You claimed for some reason that I made a positive claim, when I said that a negative can't be proven. The claim I made is that there isn't evidence for long-term animal-free diets being sustainable for humans. The lack of existence of this evidence is the negative, I can't cite anything to show there is no such thing. You went on and on about it, as though you've caught me at something, when it's just a comprehension problem on your part. If there was evidence that humans can thrive on animal-free diets, you could mention it instead of talking around the issue with all this rhetoric.
You claimed that without livestock agriculture, canola or sunflower would be grown for seed oil instead. Neither of these is a nitrogen-fixing crop. I wonder if you're aware that soybeans are commonly grown in rotation with corn or another crop that is not nitrogen-fixing, to reduce fertilizer expenses for the farmer. Neither of those alternatives makes dark oil. I wonder if you're aware that most newspapers by far are printed with soy-based ink. Soybeans are also versatile, about soil conditions/climate/etc. There are reasons that farmers might grow soybeans regardless of the livestock feed market.
It's similar with land use: land provides more for us than just growing foods. When livestock are raised on pastures, those pastures can be great habitats for pollinators while industrial plant mono-crops tend contribute to declines of pollinator populations. Without pollinators, food webs and ecosytems are well and thoroughly screwed. To compare land use vs. calories or protein produced demonstrates an extreme lack of awareness about how ecosystems and food systems interrelate.
It is so typical that you'd misrepresent the issues and throw in a lot of links to studies by biased authors (characterizing rainfall as water consumed by the industry when most of it isn't), commenting several times that my comments are "misinformation" I guess because you don't understand nuances of these issues, and then flounce out pretending that you're proven your perspective already:
I wish you the best, but you're not someone that I care to get into prolonged arguments with and I've already spent far too long creating this rebuttal. So I'll leave this as my last response.
If you don't care to discuss a topic, you shouldn't bring it up in the first place. It's because of toxic behaviors such as this that I end up commenting often about vegan bullshit on Reddit.
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u/Trent1492 5d ago
The post's topic is the debunking of lies knowingly told by the fossil fuel industry.
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u/OG-Brian 5d ago edited 2d ago
This user doesn't know anything. I've tried to discuss topics with them multiple times, and in every case they've replied with crazy angry rhetoric and refused to discuss factually.
If they applied themself to learning about foods/nutrition/environment issues half as much as they do to harass me, they could be much better informed.
This post is in r/Environmentalism. That user's hobby apparently (other than harassing users because of their vegan religion) is driving their car to scenic locations for trail-running. I hope it's at least an electric vehicle.
I'm not anti-kids, that's a clumsy and disingenuous way of expressing that I've explained the issue of the planet being overpopulated with humans such that no farming system (regardless of using livestock or not) can be sustainable. I've advocated for voluntarily producing fewer offspring until the planet isn't so crowded by our extremely-high-consumption species. (EDIT: I eventually realized the user may have just been using very poor grammar and referring to the audience as "kids.")
Livestock ag isn't the leading cause of environmental destruction. Globally, most of it is pasture-based and pastures can also be habitat for wild animals as I've seen personally at each of the farms where I've lived. Meanwhile, plant crops grown for human consumption tend to rely on pesticides and artificial fertilizers while violently sanitizing the fields of most wildlife. They tend to be highly mechanized, contributing to fossil fuel pollution.
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u/OG-Brian 3d ago
In the post where I commented that info, this very interesting article brings up new evidence about deception by Exxon (now called ExxonMobil):
New Documents Add to Evidence in Climate Deception Case Against ExxonMobil
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07102026/exxonmobil-climate-deception-new-evidence/
Besides having a lot of useful info itself, the article links this 9-part series about the history of Exxon's research about and denial of anthropogenic climate change. There are also a lot of other articles linked.
I commented here with a lot more info about the climate denial industry. But there's been so much info revealed about this topic, I'd not be able to find it all even if I spent hundreds of hours on it. Probably, information about any major fossil fuel company participating in disinfo can be found by searching the company's name with the text string
climate denial.