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An online space for the vegans of Lemmy.

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We take for granted that if you engage in this community, you understand that veganism is about the animals. You either are vegan for the animals, or you are not (this is not to say that discussions about climate/environment/health are not allowed, of course)
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Concerned about resource usage of AI? Stop eating beef NOW. (crazypeople.online)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by hamid@crazypeople.online to c/vegan@lemmy.ml

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To feed your food preferences:

AI: ~560–800 Billion Liters Annual usage

Beef: ~4,387 Trillion Liters (for feed alone)

AI: Minimal land use

Beef: 44% of global habitable land

AI: ~20,400 tons CO2 (per large model)

Beef: ~14.5% of all global emissions

AI: Electronic waste, local heat islands

Beef: Methane, manure runoff, "dead zones"

A single quarter-pound beef burger requires between 40 and 70 gallons of surface/groundwater

A heavy AI user (50 queries/day for a year) consumes roughly 14 to 48 gallons of water annually

Beef driven industrial agriculture is the #1 driver of global deforestation. In the Amazon, cattle ranching is responsible for at least 75% of forest loss. This is causing ecological collapse.

All this to torture cows. Fucking stop it. Stop it NOW.

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[–] Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online 5 points 6 days ago

I want people to stop assuming that simplified framing of a complex issue is the whole story.

Volume of water is an easy metric for people to understand. When people talk about wasting water they might mean literally moving water out of its water shed, like groundwater wells being pumped dry or they might also be thinking of the massive amounts of energy required to move and potentially treat that water and the (heat, nutrient) pollution the used water carries.

These impacts are not universal and which ones apply in which locations, and the impact they have will vary widely. So volume of water is an easy way to make it easier to understand and 'smooth' out the variations.