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this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
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AI is literally destroying the environment. How the FUCK do so many people not realise this. The data centres use massive amounts of water, their owners refuse to use renewables, they take up space on the power grid so it becomes impossible to build new housing, etc ad nauseum.
My God.
Yeah and so is animal agriculture…
Except you need food to eat, you don't need AI.
You don't need animal products to live, but I don't disagree with your point about food. At least it's actually for people.
AI is only for extracting the last bit of marrow from the bones of workers before making them completely obsolete.
Except you don't need to eat meat, you're just justifying the destruction you like. That's not to say that AI is anything close to as relevant as food, but the point still stands, meat production is destructive to the environment.
Something can be both useful and also destructive. Pretty sure people have done the maths and to approach the levels of efficiency that say meat has you'd be consuming a lot more calories. Similarly actual milk is better than soy milk.
This isn't to diss people that make the choice, but your quality of life will be worse, so yes I count that as those meat products being necessary, in spite of the environmental damage. I think there are better ways to fix that. Diversifying the meat industry, lowering food waste, etc. What seems more interesting at the moment is lab grown meat, since it has all the pros with none of the cons, except cost.
What does meat's "efficiency" have to do with anything related to caloric intake? If I consume 1000 calories of meat or 1000 calories of vegetables, I've still consumed 1000 calories. I can only assume you mean I would have to eat a larger quantity of vegetables get the same amount of calories, and that's not the argument you think it is when people by and large consume too many calories and don't get enough micronutrients as it is.
I'm not even a full vegetarian, but even I know this is just self justification for what you want to do. One of my partners is a vegetarian, and I cut back on like 80-90% of my meat intake and my quality of life (like energy and general physical/mental wellbeing) is the same or better than it was a few years ago.
The only good points you made was about food waste and lab meat, the rest is just cope.
And I'm "pretty sure" that you are talking about what you WISH were true, not what you KNOW is true. Unfortunately, many people in this forum actually know what IS true, and you are so far off the mark, you would be humiliated if you actually grasped it.
I have this feeling the vast majority of lemmy sells their labor to the most evil fucking corporations on the planet.
Why do you think we're all so interested in unions?
We live in an economy engineered to isolate us and make us work building up these empires for crumbs to be able to survive while slowly selling our souls sway. It's depressing.
Animal ag consumes more food than it produces!! JFC people! We grow several times more plants than humanity can possibly eat, and then we refine it through the bodies of vulnerable individuals and murder them. THAT'S NOT FOOD, that atrocity.
Anyone who consumes animals and bitches about AI's water use is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot -- but for whom?
It is food, get off your high horse if you plan on convincing anyone to back you. Topics and opinions are more nuanced than you want and people can't easily get boxed.
Yes I'm aware the food industry is one of the least efficient industries out there. No I don't think pure abolition is realistic or useful, as the products that come out of it can't be replaced, you can adjust your diet to get proteins and such from other places, but beans and nuts are going to rack up your calories a ton compared to meat.
And calling someone a useful idiot is bold while you're taking the pressure off of the ai industry which is not producing something useful for people (unlike meat which in spite of the failings of the industry is still helpful*) to say "but what about this other thing?!". We can deal with both, but one of those is definitely worse than the other and it's the one that we have existed without for thousands of years.
Where are you even getting this?? This is bonkers.
If you are getting enough calories from whole food plants, you are necessarily getting enough protein. If you eat nothing but rice, and you are getting enough calories, you are necessarily getting enough protein. "Protein" is a bullshit marketing angle. You are a victim of marketing.
Plants are nutrient-dense and calorie-poor. This is what you want for health. Animal flesh is exactly the opposite, plus contains things that actually kill you. The more meat a human eats, the younger a human dies and the more major diseases a human experiences. Just google: "meat all cause mortality" and educate yourself A LITTLE TINY BIT.
So if I grind up your children and eat it, they become "just food" and you should get off your high horse. If my industry changes the climate and you burn and freeze, it's "just food" and you should get over yourself. It's like saying, "It's just a joke, brah!" It's a childish attempt to evade responsibility for the consequences of your choices.
The things you are saying are so utterly uninformed, but you're so confidently incorrect. It's maddening. We both know for certain that you have never researched animal ag. Why are you trying to advance arguments when you know you have never researched it? What is motivating this stupid, arrogant behaviour?
The worse one is animal ag, by orders of magnitude!! Fucking do some research. Animal ag produces more climate change effects than ALL TRANSPORTATION ON EARTH COMBINED. Data centers don't even move the needle beside that. It's wildly hypocritical to criticize people's private AI use on the basis of water consumption while you consume animals. If you actually gave a shit about water use, you'd be looking to your own easily changed behaviour first. But this is just a conditioned response founded in ignorance. It's piling on and superstition. As soon as the subject of AI leaves your mind, you stop giving a single shit about water usage.
Username checks out.
We have had neither for more than a few decades. Animal ag as it exists today did not exist when I was born. There is several times more biomass in humans and farmed animals than all the wild land animals combined. This has not been going on for thousands of years, that is utterly uninformed and frankly amazingly unobservant.
You have no idea what you are talking about, but you're soooo confident. It's pointless to continue, you're going to keep making shit up because you are unwilling to process the feelings that come up when you consider that you might be wrong. Which, I am sure you can appreciate, would put blood on your hands.
My hoa forces us to water our lawns in a drought when it’s illegal to.
Celebs have planes and yachts they use on a whim.
The entire internet now uses some form of ai.
So you first. Get offline and go live in the fucking woods.
The HOA can't force you to break the law. If this is actually happening to you, talk to a lawyer!
Lawns take up more water than all the datacenters. Golf courses take up more water. Get a fucking grip. You better not be complaining about water usage with the flesh of vulnerable individuals still stuck between your teeth because animal ag consumes an order of magnitude more water, emits more greenhouse gasses than all transportation combined, and gives NOTHING back but death and destruction.
Animal Ag gives us valuable food. Sure there are better alternatives out there but it literally gives us something we need to live.
And fucking golf?
Oh I'm well in agreement with that one. Huge waste of water for a sport that is almost always reserved for rich people to enjoy.
Keeps Trump away from the "launch nuclear missiles" button.
Animal ag consumes more food than it produces. It is a method for investors to refine cheap, plentiful, safe, and sustainable plant food into a harmful, addictive, expensive luxury product. Many of the costs are hidden from the consumer in the form of subsidies.
Western meat consumption has multiplied several fold in the last couple of generations. There is no "need" to that, there is only "want" and pure addiction.
To say it gives nothing back is simply a lie though. It literally provides one of the most important things people need. Food. Just because it's an inefficient method does not mean it provides nothing.
I'm not sure how you're not getting this. To produce meat, we have to feed animals. To feed a combined biomass that dwarfs all wild land animals on earth, we need to grow food with agriculture. Growing food to feed to animals and then consuming the meat results in a net loss of food as compared to just growing the food. Every step up the food chain represents enormous losses. Animal ag does not produce food. I know that is hard to accept but it's a unescapable thermodynamic reality.
We need food, but animal ag consumes more food than it produces. Grazing and other forms of "resource upcycling" cannot make up the massive difference.
Like I said, if they can fix that problem, then I'm fine with it. The resources it currently consumes is the reason why I kind of detest 4K and 8K AI videos. But I also kind of detest 4K and 8K TVs and monitors. We don't need that many god damn pixels. Unless you're a bird of prey, 4K is a complete waste of electricity.