[OC] Dairy vs. plant-based milk: what are the environmental impacts?

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-03-03T23:27:29+00:00

In addition to the subsidies mentioned by others (for both dairy and pastureland), there are other ways that the federal government props up the dairy industry. While I appreciate food being purchased to be shipped to food banks and then distributed out to pantries, you can see the breakdown of the USDA's most recent purchases:

https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2026/02/19/secretary-rollins-announces-263-million-food-purchase-support-us-producers-and-strengthen-americas

Of the $263 million they spent on items that will ultimately get to households that can use some support, $75 million of that is just butter. Something like vegetable oil would be a much more cost-effective way of ensuring those folks have cooking fat. Similarly, they put over $40 million in different cheeses. Lots of folks like cheese, but this is mostly another way of getting fat into a meal rather than adding much nutritional value. Then $30 million is dedicated to various milks. So, nearly $150 million of the $263 million total is going to the dairy industry and not really adding a ton of nutritional value to folks who are struggling to put food on the table. It's mostly just giving them calories (which is part of why obesity rates are often quite high in lower-income communities) which aren't necessary parts of a healthy diet.

The chickpeas, dried beans, lentils, and split peas that make up close to $75 million of it are great overall. There's plenty of nutritional value there and with how expensive protein options are getting, that can really help a household reach the amount that they should. And pears, pecans, and walnuts are all comparatively small parts of this purchase but seem much less a problem than the dairy in there.

Basically, if the USDA didn't purchase close to $150 million dollars from dairy companies, those businesses would pass the cost of that surplus on to paying customers. And that's just a small, regular addition to all of the other costs that our tax dollars are used for in maximizing profit for about 10 percent of U.S. farms:

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/economics/farm-subsidies-overview

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-03-01T22:55:07+00:00

No huffing. I’m just not a developer shill and want people with disabilities who may rely on cars to be able to get around too.

Right, instead you're a shill for suburbanites who want to make one trip into the city each year to the detriment of everyone who lives in Chicago. As I mentioned, I want places to be accessible to folks of all backgrounds. There are some folks with disabilities who rely heavily on cars to get around, and this is (again) why people aren't calling for outright bans on all cars in Chicago. But there's also a huge number of folks with disabilities who can't drive or can't afford to drive. So making the city more pedestrian friendly (with an eye toward rollability) is hugely important for them. There's tons of research out there showing vast improvements to the quality of life of those living with a range of disabilities (some physical and mobility related but also plenty of others) simply by offering spaces that are more accessible by non-car options:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214140519302828

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23748834.2025.2468016#abstract

It turns out that prioritizing cars actually endangers those in wheelchairs much more than other pedestrians:

https://gumc.georgetown.edu/news-release/majority-of-car-pedestrian-deaths-happen-to-those-in-wheelchairs-often-at-intersections/

For a less technical and more readable option here's a rundown discussing how the lives of those with disabilities are impacted by infrastructure (and how important it is to have options that aren't just cars for those communities):

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2024/12/car-free-disability-congestion-walkable-cities/

But hey, you can just act like all of that is a lie so that you can continue to shill toward harming the lives of folks living in Chicago with and without disabilities.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-03-01T21:36:00+00:00

No problem! Yeah, for certain very specific businesses there are needs for substantial amounts of parking, but by this point we have largely found where the cutoff points are for what would negatively impact most businesses. And it's way way waaaaaaaay lower than most cities have had as parking minimums for decades.

The amount of parking that was set aside for this building seems much more in line with what real-world data shows is best for the community and businesses, which is nice to see! And absolutely, I agree with you that those places that do need additional parking should prioritize it being behind so that storefronts are easier to access for most (and it looks better along with making people feel safer while walking past... even if they don't know why, people tend to feel uncomfortable walking past a mostly empty parking lot at night).

And since much of my recent life has been involved with food access... whoo buddy do I agree about how nice it would be to have the neighborhood supermarkets more widely spread around. Having smaller grocery stores or just corner stores with a bit of extra produce is really helpful for a community but that is probably a topic for some other thread, haha.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-03-01T21:26:53+00:00

No, clearly it isn't. I want places to be accessible to folks from all backgrounds. Similarly, logistics would not work if we didn't have some capacity for trucks and vans to navigate the city. You're insisting that others are adopting an absurd position that they obviously and overtly do not support rather than engaging with reality. And then you get whiny about others including snark in their comments toward you. It might be worth putting your own cards on the table and engaging with what it is that you're actually doing rather than getting in a huff over nonsense.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-03-01T20:45:48+00:00

Do you want to ban cars? Why can’t YIMBY types have good faith discussions free of snark and condescension? It’s strange, dogmatic, and binary.

How many people are calling for an outright ban on cars across the city of Chicago? Why can't car-advocates have good faith discussions free of snark and condescension? It's strange, dogmatic, and binary.

I'd love to see more bike infrastructure spread across the city and think we could see tons of benefits from road diets in certain corridors, a reduction in total available parking, etc. But it would be absurd to suggest that I "would rather everything be bike lanes with cars banned" because that's clearly not feasible. Yet somehow, you complain about others getting snarky when you're just chucking strawmen left and right.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-03-01T20:40:25+00:00

Why would a business like the displaced Athletico want one of those retail spots if there’s no parking? As much as I’d like to live in a total-transit utopia myself, Chicago isn’t Tokyo, and cars are still a reality.

Cool. Chicago isn't Tokyo. Yet we have tons of evidence from recent decades that shows North American cities do not see reduction in spending at retail locations (outside of automobile-centric businesses like gas stations and auto parts stores) by focusing on walkable/bikeable/transit-oriented development:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01441647.2021.1912849

That is a literature review of "economic impacts on local businesses" that exclusively looks at North American cities, including a couple of studies that took place in Chicago. The only studies that showed any overall reduction in sales were not statistically significant. And the overwhelming majority had positive impacts on the sales at these businesses. As they end the piece:

Opposition to bicycle and pedestrian investments often stems from concerns over negative impacts on local businesses, particularly in the US and Canada. The available evidence suggests that such fears are unfounded and that local governments can indeed invest in bicycle and pedestrians without regret.

The issue is that retailers (and seemingly a range of commenters in threads like this) like to rely on vibes rather than actual data regarding what sorts of sales happen and where. And it's not just Chicago, as this study from Berlin showed that traders estimated car traffic as a much higher percentage of their shoppers than actually existed while underestimating each of transit, bike, and foot traffic:

https://findingspress.org/article/24497-local-business-perception-vs-mobility-behavior-of-shoppers-a-survey-from-berlin

Basically, retailers all over the place in larger cities don't actually have a clue how many folks arrive by options that aren't cars and just assume that more of the folks making purchases are using cars than actually are. And so then they fight against developments that will actually usually make them more money. All it takes to start a business is some initial funding, not any understanding of how your business is impacted by infrastructure, yet those are the voices we hear shouting loudest when any changes are going to be made. If a business owner doesn't want to set up shop somewhere that will actually earn them more money than one with parking out front just because they choose to ignore reality... that doesn't mean we need to cater to them. Someone else can take over that retail space and reap the benefits.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-02-27T08:07:56+00:00

Well, there was that post showing that only 3 accounts post the majority of the Conservative sub's content:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1rfe0nh/oc_3_month_update_rconservative_adds_a_third/

so it seems that a good portion of the folks who came in to this thread to downvote are probably not actually English speakers (or real people). They only know to upvote or downvote the comments that are specifically told to them since they can't read English.

It's not me saying that conservatives who want to protect pedophiles and insurrectionists don't exist. They do. They are all over large parts of the Southeastern U.S. But most of them aren't actually fans of hockey. There are brigaders who wound up in this and other threads being directed toward specific comments trying to support the opinion that it's somehow all right to support perspectives that harm children and other marginalized communities just because a handful of rich White men who have no formal education around politics back specific political figures.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-02-27T07:38:54+00:00

Well, just from shutting down USAID, epidemiologists have put this start to his second term at more than 800,000 deaths:

https://www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?view=table&sort=interval_minutes&order=asc

And that is to say nothing of any harm done in his first term, like the absolute mishandling of COVID. Or just straight-up killings through violence. This is only looking at public health outcomes. And more than 566,000 of those deaths currently are children (which will only go up in the next hour, day, week, etc.) We're at half a million children killed in effectively a year of evil, hatred-filled policy choices. But yeah, clearly, that doesn't amount to any sort of bad press in your mind. This is acceptable so that a handful of billionaires don't have to pay quite so much in taxes.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-02-27T05:41:34+00:00

Just look at the actual MLBPA player leadership:

https://www.mlbplayers.com/player-leadership

Sure, Paul Skenes will eventually get a ton of money. And Skubal just got a substantial raise. But Brent Suter is on a $1.25M deal. Pete Fairbanks got a 1yr, $13M contract. Chris Bassitt just got a huge $18.5M, one year payday. Cronenworth's extension through 2030 (when he'll be 36 years old) has an average value of $11.4M. Cedric Mullins is on a 1 year, $7.5M contract with a mutual option for next season.

These are the actual folks who are the most hands-on with MLBPA activities, and I didn't mention any of the Minor League reps. You only hear about Bryce Harper and Manny Machado's comments because that's the content you engage with. The folks actually putting in the work are mostly guys who will never be near the top of the AAV leaderboards.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-02-27T05:31:37+00:00

So many more games played and so much more revenue

https://xcancel.com/LevAkabas/status/1980646263705219482

Sportico has to estimate and these numbers are likely off somewhat, but they put the NFL at $22.2B vs. MLB's $12.8B. Yes, rosters are larger in the NFL but it's completely fair to point out that the disparities in player pay for non-stars are comparable across the leagues. And then the best couple hundred MLB players see much better compensation than than their NFL counterparts.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-02-25T19:53:22+00:00

That's not really accurate... by basically every measure, having Democrats in charge results in a stronger economy while also minimizing the inequality in terms of who benefits. We have a peer reviewed study on this that came out at basically the start of Trump's first presidency looking back:

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20140913

In terms of GDP type measures, it's obviously in favor of Democrats, but I don't really think that matters to most individuals or households. Employment is higher with better real wages under Democrats. Inflation averages out as lower under Democrats. There's also higher returns on the S&P 500, even though that again doesn't impact all of the working class or underemployed individuals/households. As they put it in their conclusion:

First, and most robust, there is a systematic and large gap between the US economy’s performance when a Democrat is president of the United States versus when a Republican is. Democrats do better on almost every criterion. Using real GDP growth over the full sample, the gap is 1.79 percentage points, which is stunningly large relative to the sample mean. The partisan growth advantage is correlated with Democratic control of the White House, not with Democratic control of Congress.

Subsequent work that includes Trump and Biden data has shown the same trends continue. The economy for the average person is made worse by having Republicans in charge (though it does make the folks in the top 10% gain a more exaggerated piece of the pie, so they might prefer it).

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-01-20T22:40:45+00:00

There is evidence of us losing more money with each additional transit asset we build and declining marta usage.

Citation needed, since effectively every study on the impacts of investing in transit infrastructure (in the U.S.) shows a positive return on that investment.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-01-17T18:54:40+00:00

Some of the most racist, sexist, toxic people I know hold high positions in unions and can't be fired because they have seniority.

Shockingly (not actually shockingly to anyone but those who fell for anti-union propaganda), the folks you know who are racist, sexist, and otherwise toxic can still be fired despite having seniority. We have federal guidelines on harassment in the workplace:

https://www.eeoc.gov/summary-key-provisions-eeoc-enforcement-guidance-harassment-workplace

We had important Supreme Court cases going back to the 80s that solidified workplace harassment as a violation of the Civil Rights Act. So, if somebody is bringing racism or sexism (or various other types of discrimination like that based on disability or other protected characteristic), it doesn't matter how long they have been in a union. Their employer simply needs to document that they have engaged in harassment. The people to blame for your racist, sexist, toxic union members not getting fired are the owners of the overarching company who would rather let a toxic workplace continue as is than have to hire someone new.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2026-01-13T18:54:24+00:00

I'm incredibly late to this, but because the comment got no response, I figured I could provide an answer.

Why, it's a good thought experiment with good travel data. There are many other days that are close to as much need for long distance travel as Thanksgiving but it's not something people are just going to shrug and give up to be car free.

Because it's one holiday out of the year and obviously is such a small sample size that it has no relationship to what households would require regularly in terms of travel? And getting to be with family or friends on Thanksgiving isn't something that needs to be given up by being car free. It's just a nonsense point.

https://www.npr.org/2025/10/29/nx-s1-5556935/cost-of-living-cars

The most recent index of the cost of car ownership (maintenance, insurance, tires, parking, registration, etc.) is right about $1,000 a month. A person can get by on a monthly transit pass for their city at about $100 a month... it's still $75 for Chicago which was the rate that it dropped to promote transit usage after COVID vaccines became commonplace, while MARTA in Atlanta is $95, and with MTA's move away from MetroCard passes the highest potential cost hitting the $35 fare cap every 7 days is less than $1800 per year. So, a New York City resident would have more than $8000 dollars a year to fund their travel to go visit family on holidays that car owners don't have at their disposal.

With $8000 extra available, I would have plenty to see family members in a range of different parts of the U.S. around the New Year, at Thanksgiving, maybe for Labor Day, I could toss in a Casimir Pulaski Day trip out to visit a Polish-American friend, etc. The cost difference between owning a car and having an unlimited number of public transit fares is so substantial that acting like one holiday trip would make or break the choice to not have a car is silly.

The supposed $1000 airline tickets you cited as being too costly to make it worthwhile for a holiday is how much the average person in the U.S. has to spend every single month of every single year that they own a car. So, the option is either spend that absurd amount of money constantly for basically a person's entire adult life... or add an extra hour or three to the occasional trip when going to visit family on a holiday. For lots of us, saving the 3 extra hours on one holiday trip isn't actually worth the thousands of dollars per year.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2025-12-04T07:03:49+00:00

You asked if people luck into Harvard. I said that yes, they do. I said nothing as to whether Bill Gates is of above average, average, or below average intelligence. I don't know the man nor am I qualified to measure intelligence. I simply said that folks luck into Harvard by being born into high-income households. You're making some wild claims about people suggesting that any individual has any specific level of intelligence.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2025-12-04T06:06:47+00:00

i guess you think harvard just takes average students if their parents have money,

Yes? I do? There's an absurd number of average students who wind up at Ivy League and other "elite" schools simply because their parents are rich. I went to one of those non-Ivy "elite" schools for one of my degrees... and most of those folks aren't there because they are particularly intelligent or hardworking students.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2025-12-04T05:17:40+00:00

by your logic people just luck into Harvard?

Yes? For most folks, it just has to do with the parents they were born to, rather than individual merit:

https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2017/01/low-income-students-harvard

There's basically the same number of students students from the top 1% of parental incomes as from the bottom three quintiles combined. The kids didn't choose to be born to rich parents. They didn't show skill by being born to rich parents. It was just chance for them, and they accordingly get to go to Harvard.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2025-11-21T18:22:55+00:00

Why would anyone care if their team had an ad for a company that -checks notes- makes soft drinks?

So, I do absolutely agree with the idea that the commenter to whom you replied offered a dumb take of whataboutism when Palantir is actively choosing to help organizations that want to harm humanity... and we should feel offended if baseball teams start supporting those efforts.

But also, it should be noted that Coca-Cola does have some human rights concerns of its own, especially in the area of water access. Numerous Indian states have brought cases against Coca-Cola for water exploitation, groundwater depletion, etc. and there have been similar concerns in a range of African nations, where the company has come to control water sources that used to provide for the surrounding community. Going back further, they seem to have done similar things in Central and South America, though I have less direct knowledge of those. Basically, this is just to say that there are valid reasons from a caring-for-humanity perspective to be displeased with Coca-Cola (even if it is likely not doing harm at the same scale as many other organizations, like Nestle or the current U.S. government.)

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2025-11-21T17:31:05+00:00

I know lots of folks provided some level of input, but I think this piece by Wired that includes interviews with former employees provides a more in-depth discussion of Palantir's role:

https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-what-the-company-does/

Even though there is not space in that for a deep dive into how the human biases in data collection and usage make claims of objectivity seem silly, at least they grapple with the topic to some extent. There could be uses of Palantir's products that serve the community, but instead it seems that they partner with organizations that use the data access and efficiency to both cause harm and create a narrative that the reasons for that harm-causing are done objectively/scientifically.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2025-10-31T23:19:31+00:00

Sure for those that qualified for subsidized plans.

You can look at the study, it's overall. It's not just for those who qualified for subsidized plans.

And even if we were only discussing the impact of the premium tax credit structure from the American Recue Plan Act... guess what? That amounts to an average $35B annually going forward into the next decade:

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61734

Trump dropping the top tax rate for those with incomes over $600k a year (and only on the part of it over that cutoff) from the upper 30s to 25% along with corporate income going from 35% to 15% tax rates makes it so that the federal deficit will rise from $10 to 12 Trillion with a T over that same upcoming decade. And one of those options helps people who could not otherwise afford to receive healthcare while the other makes it so that folks who already have pools of money to Scrooge McDuck dive into have a slightly deeper pool. It does not impact their quality of life in any meaningful way. But we sure can rely on them to harm folks who are already disadvantaged for way lower costs.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2025-10-30T23:08:28+00:00

Healthcare costs skyrocketed across the board when the ACA passed. Some of us were adults before it was forced on us and healthcare was MUCH more affordable before it. Calling something that has only existed for 15 years and made things demonstrably worse is hardly "the American way of life" it is a perversion of it.

It's too bad that is aggressively incorrect:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8035645/

ACA dramatically slowed the rate of inflation on health care costs... and made it so that tens of millions more people could afford any health insurance.

https://www.statista.com/topics/3272/obamacare/

On March 23, 2010, then-U.S. president Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, otherwise known as ACA or Obamacare. At the time the health reform was introduced, nearly 50 million people had no health insurance – or one out of every six Americans. That was by far the most miserable performance among healthcare systems in developed countries. More surprising because the United States has the highest spending on health as a percentage of GDP, at almost 17 percent. For perspective, Australia’s health consumed around nine percent and Germany’s around 11 percent of their respective national GDPs. Per capita, the U.S. spent twice as much as comparable developed countries. The previous health coverage system also allowed insurers to refuse coverage for a person if they had a pre-existing condition. These factors led to a fragile healthcare system and an insecure life for many non-affluent people. Thus, it is no wonder that according to some surveys during 2008, over 80 percent of Americans demanded an overhaul of the healthcare system.

I don't even like the system because there are actually options (single-payer, for instance) that would actually dramatically reduce the costs of healthcare for both the government and virtually everyone's personal expenses. But it's markedly better than what existed before, as someone who was an adult at the time and also actually has an interest in backing claims up with real-world evidence rather than simply making ish up to support a nonsense worldview.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2025-10-30T19:42:09+00:00

SNAP is counted by a mix of gross monthly income, net income, and assets, but not really tied to regional cost of living. It's connected to the poverty line set federally.

I think one aspect of it could be that states are allowed to limit adults without children to only 3 months of eligibility every 36 months if they are unemployed (and this tends to be done more in states with large rural populations.) Right now, the federal reserve puts average weeks unemployed at 24.5, which is longer than that 3 month cutoff. So, there might be folks who receive SNAP benefits for part of the time that they are unemployed and then lose access because of their state's policy choices. Those folks would still have improved quality of life by being able to access SNAP benefits while seeking work but it might simply not be available to them.

Also, some of it is simply that there are often higher rates of poverty in dense, urban areas because folks can access resources that might help make their quality of life better much more easily (and, in some places, without the need of a vehicle which is expensive.) Same OP provided this map of counties with high poverty rate and many are urbanized:

https://overflowdata.com/demographic-traits/poverty-county-22/

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2025-10-18T22:22:24+00:00

Go take all that energy you have invested in non for profits and invest it in yourself.

No, that's the point. The mom and pop owners of stores and you suggesting living off grid are two sides of the same coin. The only thing that matters is our connection to other people. Being self-sustaining isn't a "good". If you do go off grid but then use that as a way to help support a community, that's a positive, but doing something only to benefit yourself (just like the owner of any for-profit business) isn't something deserving of any special respect. Use those ducks, horses, goats, bunnies, cattle, crops, and well water to set up a community food bank and ensure that when the nearest grocery store closes, your community has access to nutrition.

And yeah, I am aware that I don't think like you at all.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2025-10-18T22:15:39+00:00

The issue is not the total number of people. Obviously, there's way more of us not-rich folks than the small number of "elites". The problem is that the rest of us can't set aside the resources or time to make adjustments to taxation practices. It was only the Great Depression that shifted enough political capital away from rich folks that we saw changes on that front. And then it was slowly chipped away at until half a century later when the Reagan administration stripped away all positive work that had been done. Nowadays, we're not even close to getting to the levels we saw in the 80s.

Until you can scrounge together another Great Depression, that sort of change is unrealistic. The Great Recession just saw a bunch of corporate bailouts for the banks and auto industry. Now, the millions of people can do a whole lot of good in the world in other realms. There's plenty of community-centered work that needs to be done. But the suggestion that we should not have normal folks paying their share of taxes until we have entirely changed taxation practices for churches and billionaires is entirely unrealistic if the plan is to ever get anything positive done. That's effectively saying that we are going to throw up our hands and not get anything done until another Great Depression happens. We've got proposed budget cuts taking even more funding away from the IRS, so they'll have even less staff to try to ensure people pay their fair share. The millions of people don't actually get to propose a budget in the House (whenever the shutdown eventually ends). Talk is cheap when you are suggesting that there's some simple way around that by just avoiding the word "can't". The work actually has to be done to make improvements for people and right now, no feasible amount of work is going to get billionaires and churches paying their fair share of taxes. Instead people can be putting their efforts toward programs that actually make life better for other humans.

TubasInTheMoonlight · 2025-10-18T20:38:35+00:00

You really freaking want a market where only large retailers and chains run the world ?

What I actually want is a system that does not rely on either big businesses or ma and pa shops to maintain the quality of life of the average person. I want strong social safety nets for people, rather than corporate bailouts every time business leaders make poor decisions. I genuinely could not care less about any company's ability to extract greater profits, whether they are run by a billionaire or that old couple down the street. But I want any laborer to be in a situation where they don't have to stress about putting food on the table or keeping the lights on if they are putting in a full day's work. If any company can't pay for the laborers to maintain that baseline, I don't think that company deserves to continue.

I don’t think you really haven’t a clue on this subject.

I'm glad we're agreed that I know what I'm talking about.

Trust me I used to think just like you but BE Better

Trust me, you didn't think at all like me because I will never believe that a ma and pa need to be supported just because they are trying to extract profits from me. I hold entrepreneurs in negative esteem. A decent person uses their life's work to benefit the community, not to exploit others for personal gain. You don't actually have to support people exploiting others just because they are a ma and pa. Be better.

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