Red meat has a huge carbon footprint because cattle requires a large amount of land and water.
https://sph.tulane.edu/climate-and-food-environmental-impact-beef-consumption
Demand for steaks and burgers is the primary driver of Deforestation:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/marcel-gomes-interview
If you don’t have a car and rarely eat red meat, you are doing GREAT 🙌🙌 🙌
Sure, you can drink tap water instead of plastic water. You can switch to Tea. You can travel by train. You can use Linux instead of Windows AI’s crap. Those are great ideas. But, don’t drive yourself crazy. If you are only an ordinary citizen, remember that perfect is the enemy of good.
deleted by creator
The idea that we have to grow food for food is ridiculous. Cows turn grass into meat just fine, why do we need to grow corn and soybeans for them
I bet it’s because, like with hogs, we’ve bred them to be so growth optimized they can’t get enough calories from grass anymore.
My partner and I reduced our red meat intake but I don’t think I could stop completely. A steak a few times a year just hits the spot too much. I’m keen for lab grown though.
deleted by creator
Hence the bumper sticker that has been around since the 70s
REAL ENVIRONMENTALIST DONT EAT MEAT
Homesteaders and locally grown meat is a necessary way of life for those living in the country. CAFOs and suburban grillers can burn in hell.
I think it’s also a bit of a thing where most people treat it like a binary.
They either think you have to go full on vegetarian or you eat meat.
When what we should really be encouraging most people to do is cut down on meat. (You’re gonna have a lot less sucess if you ask them to straight up stop).
Fuck your gatekeeping and special pleading
I eat meat and it has very little impact. I hunt.
How dare you ask people to change literally any habit they have! It’s obviously someone else’s responsibility to change!
I enjoy red meat, but I avoid it most of the time because of trying to be healthier. Also guilt from seeing videos of happy cows looking like gigantic dogs.
Fucking shit though I had no idea coffee was so high up the list. I probably should drink less of it anyway, but ouch, that one hurt me way more than the beef.
I was surprised it was that high. I don’t ever drink coffee, so hopefully it offsets some of the meat. We have already reduced our consumption.
because companies pollute much more
This argument drives me crazy. Companies, in this context, are the people. The companies pollute exclusively on behalf of their customers. WE ARE THE COMPANIES.
My big problem is not with individuals ethically trying to do the right thing, or about people trying to convince individuals to be ethical and to do the right thing.
My big problem is the amount of effort in this when it will have only small gains. In today’s society, meaningful gains come from changes in government regulations and policies.
If you want people to stop eating as much red meat, get the government to stop providing subsidies to cattle owners. I have a money-focused relative who owns cattle only because of the subsidies. At least let the price of beef go up to its actual market value. You’d think that would be an easy sell for Republicans who believe in the free market, but they’re the ones who want the subsidy the most.
Of course, then, you can add additional regulations and encourage environmental responsibility.
My single greatest contribution for the climate is not having children.
You forgot number one: By far, the best thing you can do for the climate is not have children.
Operative word you. Individual action was a deliberate red herring constructed by the FF industry propaganda machines half a fucking century ago, because they knew who the actual significant contributors to the problem were.
It’s a manner of perspective, Coca Cola is considered one of the largest polluters on the planet but that’s not because corporate Coca Cola is out there polluting for funsies it’s because they make a product that individuals purchase and then individuals improperly dispose of. Sure no one person can stop Coca Cola from polluting but isn’t the pollution caused by your individual purchase your own responsibility?
No. Coke could make biodegradable packaging and choose not to because number go up. Next question.
And people could not purchase non biodegradable products
Operative word you. Individual action was a deliberate red herring constructed by the FF industry propaganda machines half a fucking century ago, because they knew who the actual significant contributors to the problem were.
I do agree that real change takes political power. You need things like tax breaks for people who use public transit, congestion pricing, taxing airports more, banning ads for SUVs, requiring electronic devices to be repairable, etc… These actions would be far more efficient than any individual action. Sure.
But political power isn’t enough. Look at what just happened in Canada.
Justin Trudeau banned oil tankers off the coast of British Columbia and he tried to ban single use plastics. He faced outraged reactions.
Some angry politicians were publically taunting him on social media and sued his government :
A guy literally campaigned on defending plastics and slashing the (tiny) tax on carbon.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-scrap-plastics-ban-1.7514037
See what happened? The guy was the Prime Minister. He tried some small changes. He faced brutal political backlash. Why? His people weren’t ready.
Change starts with individuals. Only when you reach a critical mass of individuals can you start trying to push for policy changes.
What bother’s me about these sorts of posts is they don’t give people a consumption goal. Blindly telling everyone to consume less isn’t exactly fair. Say, for example, there’s person A who consumes 1 unit of red meat per month, and person B who consumes 100 units of red meat per month. If you say to everyone “consume 1 unit of red meat less per month”, well, now person A consumes 0 units of red meat per month, and person B consumes 99 units of red meat per month. Is that fair? Say, you tell everyone “halve your consumption of red meat per month”, well, now person A consumes 0.5 units of red meat per month, and person B consumes 50 units of red meat per month. Is that fair? Now, say, you tell everyone “you should try to eat at most 2 units of meat per month”, well now person A may happily stay at 1 unit knowing that they’re already below the target maximum, they may choose to decrease of their own accord, or they may feel validated to increase to 2 units of red meat per month, and person B will feel pressured to dramatically, and (importantly, imo) proportionally, reduce their consumption. Blindly saying that everyone should reduce their consumption in such an even manner disproportionately imparts blame, as there are likely those who are much more in need of reduction than others. It may even be that a very small minority of very large consumers are responsible for the majority of the overall consumption, so the “average” person may not even need to change their diet much, if at all, in order to meet a target maximum.
The bulk of your post is probably the reason why consumption goals aren’t given - it’s not going to be the same for everyone.
Anyone who only eats 1 steak per year is unlikely to see a general statement like “reduce your red meat consumption” and think “oh no, I’m eating too much red meat”, because they are likely well aware of how much the average person eats compared to them.
“A sustainable diet leaves room for 2 chicken breasts a week”
(Really, 2 servings of fish / poultry per week. No red meat.)
The average person outside of developing nations vastly outpaces this consumption rate.
The small, single-digit percent of the population that’s vegetarian/vegan, as well as people who are experiencing food insecurity and do not have consistent access to meat are ahead of the curve from a sustainability perspective.
When 95+% of people who have the means to dictate their meal choices do not achieve the target reduction it’s generally safe to say everyone who eats meat needs to cut back.
One or two meals with any meat at all per week, never any red meat at all.
[…] never any red meat at all.
Why not?
To give you a consumption goal 🤷
I’m just curious if said consumption goal is based on any scientific rationale, and, if so, what that rationale is.
Eating less red meat, it’s better for the environment.
Look if you dont want to, that’s fine, but dont overcomplicate it. (You’re at a higher risk of a heart attack bc of all that red meat)
Removed by mod
Let me tell you something, the consumer is to blame.
Nobody needs to orient their life around anything that they don’t choose. For example I willingly gave up my car and picked a job near me so I didn’t have to drive.
There wouldn’t be a market for bottled water if people wouldn’t drink the fucking shit.
This whole cognitive dissonance crap where you get to live a completely hedonistic trash-filled lifestyle, while justifying that you have the right because you’re sad about your earning… I am sick to death of this attitude in people.
Oh and the shitty product that exists? I must consume it, it’s not me for purchasing it and creating a market, it’s them for serving my need & this market.
There wouldn’t be a market for bottled water if water was clean and readily available for free.
The bottled water industry is way worse in Norway than in Spain for example.
Even if you justification added up, you could just go get barrels of water, you don’t need to get individual bottles.
You people actually make me sick with your BS
Most scandinavians don’t buy individual bottles because of the drinking water quality. water is usually available most places. And it’s always free in regular cafes and restaurants in Norway if you ask for it.
It’s solvable if the state does what’s it’s supposed to.
Removed by mod
How about you go fuck yourself?
:)
It’s pretty lame to use the (imperically correct concept) of, no ethical consumption under capitalism to blanket absolve you of willful, informed choices. Humans all eat approx the same amount of calories, but the production of said calories are far from equal. Like you can be mad at the statistics but that doesn’t really change the reality of an unnecessary cultural pratice which massively contributes to climate.
I mean just for your own sake, stop this line of thinking at “I don’t care” instead of looking for a scapegoat to justify you indifference as praxis.
🙄
This is such a colossal cop out. Without question corporations and individual billionaires produce more pollution by several magintuedes of individual people. But even that is a drop in the bucket between the deforestation, the years of transporting food for livestock and the final transportation of end product meat to the world population that can be fed on plant based protein.
Save this line for plastic straws and other frivolous demonization from those in private jets. But don’t use it as a thought terminating cliche aginst the single biggest source of historical human made climate change.
Oh please.
Every food needs to be transported.
Well not if it’s produced and consumed locally but you forget you’re in capitalism where it’s cheaper to get your quinoa from 4000km away, etc.
Also I don’t want to be fed on plant based protein.
The world population can be fed anyway but capitalism says we need to destroy a lot of food to keep the prices down.
And some regions don’t have food bcs it can’t get there or their crops are destroyed by war, again caused by capitalism.
There’s a reason you don’t hear about little Greta anymore, she got wise.
Everyone can parrot the BP carbon footprint garbage all they want, IDC. I have zero guilt
Not having a kid eclipses all of these by orders of magnitude.
I haven’t had hundreds of kids. I’m a climate savior.
As a middle aged dude who is unlikely to have kids at this point, I’m curious about the numbers if you have some some suggested sources to peruse
All you fuckers act like your individual choice to not eat meat or have kids won’t just have another eat up the same resources or have kids in your stead. We need smart people to have ethical kids and we need extreme systematic political change for any real affect whatsoever. Even if the ENTIRE WORLD dropped red meat, while still a good chunk, it’s only 6% of our global annual emissions that we’d save. The top 3 sectors for emissions are energy transportation and general industry which makes up about 75% of global emissions, at about 25% each. The individual choices not mattering as much as political systematic change is huge, and that won’t happen if the Trumpers are having most of the kids and we’re having stupid divisive arguments about what our individual food choices should be.
Emissions are just a piece of it. There’s land use, consequences of this land use, etc, which involve changes in rain patterns, soil acidification, and so forth.
I agree that systemic change is important, too, but 6% of global emissions attributable to a single factor is HUGE. Plus, it’s not one or the other. Changes by individuals supports change at a systemic level.
From a selfish perspective, why should the entire populace be forced to give up small luxuries in their increasingly difficult lives just so that a handful of large corporations don’t have to make any changes?
Why isn’t it that these large corporations should be forced to change, thus removing the need for everyone getting rid of their small luxuries?
Just seems ridiculous that the message is “everyone should give up their creature comforts and live as simply and tediously as possible so that billionaires don’t have to change”.
Just seems ridiculous that the message is “everyone should give up their creature comforts and live as simply and tediously as possible so that billionaires don’t have to change”.
I never said that. On the contrary: All of it will have to change if life on this planet is supposed to remain livable, and it’s gonna involve quite a bit more than giving up red meat. I also think that having broad public support for that change, built on many individuals who choose to implement it, will make it easier to impose the same demands (e.g., through policy) on corporations and the wealthy. Given that billionaires are not exactly known for being selfless, waiting for them to do the right thing seems like a losing strategy to me.
You have anger problems as well as responsibility problems.
Exactly.
People will look at an image like this, read that 80% of deforestation in the Amazon happens for cattle, and go “I’m powerless, Exxon is bad” and continue to not only eat meat 5x a day but also actively try to convince other people that reducing their meat consumption is silly and they might as well keep eating it as much as they want because grocery stores will stock it anyway and Elon Musk rides a jet.
perfect is the enemy of good.
I wish vegans and vegetarians would be a bit more willing to promote this viewpoint. It’s insane how many otherwise normal people will refuse a single meat-free meal for no reason other than identity politics.
Most vegetarians and vegans will be happy about positive changes. They aren’t the loudest ones, however. Similar to feminism, the most radical opinions get much more attention relative to reasonable ones. Especially by those opposed to it.
When I was a meat eater I also saw it as an all-or-nothing choice though, as if I need to fully commit all at once, which was daunting to me. Then I tried to be vegetarian for a week which was surprisingly easy. Then I had a foot in the door, decided to continue, and replaced eggs and milk as well in the following weeks.
Some people might have an easier time replacing single foods, like buying plant-based patties instead of meat ones, or just trying out a few plant-based alternatives, and that’s great too.
I wish vegans and vegetarians would be a bit more willing to promote this viewpoint.
I agree. I think that sometimes people avoid vegan/vegetarian options due to negative perception drawn from some prominent activists in the community (not helped when rage-baiters get more views and coverage).
I honestly think I would have become vegan sooner if there were less ‘hardcore’ vegan activists and more empathetic role models.
I fully support people making the public aware of awful conditions in livestock farms and abattoirs (nonviolently), as well as those who encourage alternative options (e.g. nooch is delicious and I wish I knew about it before I became vegan).
The people that dump red dye/fake blood on people, or block streets, or vandalise businesses, aren’t doing the movement any favours IMO. The same with people who disparage others who are making more ethical choices, but not the ones they have made (e.g. consuming less meat instead of no meat in this case).
Attacking a person’s character doesn’t generally work; people just get defensive.
Yeah let us do the microscopic differences while some industry totally ignores it…
I could devote all my time to recycling, reducing carbon emissions, not driving, voting, not eating red meat, including forcing everyone i know to do the same - and the net result would be an iota of a drop in the ocean of change. i.e. nothing.
As others have said, until there is a global shift on how the world operates and the major oil companies, cruise lines, and airlines all shut down, nothing you or i can do will matter.
Edit: folks still don’t get it. It’s not a matter of apathy, it’s pragmatism. You will never, ever convince enough people to make a significant change relative to the big consumers. You will be dealing with the people who literally pollute and consume out of spite, and/or principle, or ignorance. For every thing you do, someone’s doing the opposite. We failed the planet a long time ago though lack of education and giving too many greedy people power. The world is too large and the snowball is over the hill.
The amount of fuel used by the cruise industry in about 1 minute, on average, is more fuel than you or I or any normal person would consume in their entire lifetime, by a lot. That’s on the low end. They consume 500,000 to 1.5 mil gallons an hour. The average person uses maybe 20 to 50k gallons their entire lives. You’d have to convince millions and millions of people to stop driving completely for 40 years to offset that. Tens of millions probably.
Not gonna happen. That’s just one industry.
Everyone’s not gonna just stop flying. Or stop driving. Or stop eating meat. It’s idealistic and impossible and frankly imaginary, no matter how much it may be necessary.
Why waste your time and energy doing things that will do nothing? Focus your efforts elsewhere. Policy change probably has the best chance of helping. But then I point back to the people actively and purposely thwarting any attempts at curbing consumption, and these people are billionaires etc. And at least in the USA, running the country.
Airlines, cruise lined oil companies are not immutable forces of nature. They have grown to their current size to meet the demand of individuals like you and me who want to buy shit and go places.
If everyone stopped flying, passenger airlines would be out of business and no longer flying planes within a year or two. Same with cruise companies. Oil is used in more things but if everyone switched to EVs or stopped driving oil production would go way down- even more if we cut our plastic usage as well.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking consumers are powerless. In a free market economy they are very powerful- that’s why boycotts can be so effective.
Seriously. Some people here are so happy they’ve found the “perfect” justification for their apathy and inaction.
A quarter of emissions is nothing? Yeah the overwhelming majority is attributable to major oil companies, but you’re just being lazy and fatalistic. But sure, just sit there and wait for a paradigm shift to come save you from yourself I guess. Literally the first two search results I found:
https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-eating-meat-bad-for-the-environment/a-63595148 https://www.c2es.org/content/regulating-transportation-sector-carbon-emissions/
Right but you have to begin somewhere, and being a good example for others certainly helps as well.
I try to change my life such that it doesn’t impact me much while having fairly large effect. For instance I’m basically vegan (still eat meat occasionally, e.g. when it’s otherwise thrown away), I even don’t want to eat meat anymore, the taste just got worse for me over time.
It also has effects on the market, e.g. Meat replacement products are quite affordable and popular.
Yeah, cruise lines opening back up and returning to business as usual after COVID, basically made me stop paying attention to a lot of this individual-targeted climate change stuff. That was a perfect and fairly natural way to end that high pollution luxury oriented industry, but everyone basically said “boomers still like cruising, so fuck the planet”.
If boomers and rich people can continue to pollute at incredible rates, just give me my stupid plastic straw back. At least that way I can drink a full mlikshake before my straw turns into paper mache, while I watch the world burn.
It wouldn’t be nothing and you know that. If you simplify the meat problem to just emissions, sure, it might look small in comparison to cruises, etc. But if you look at it as the multifaceted problem it really is, then reducing consumption will have several effects. Especially, as you exaggerated, if you forced everyone you know to do the same.
The last thing we need is people advocating for these “fuck it” attitudes. Should we really excuse better choices and better directions of behavior and culture just because there’s a “small” effect? I feel like this line of logic can be used to excuse some pretty dark shit.
Your edit makes me wish I could downvote this again. Your flawed logic can be used to excuse a number of ridiculous and fucked up shit. “Folks just don’t get it.” Fuck off with that bullshit.
It’s not apathy it’s pragmatism? But then you rant about how nothing matters.
Better to spend time and energy elsewhere? So you spend time and energy convincing others to be as apathetic and weak as you. So weak you needed to desperately justify your apathy to yourself and to others by editing your comment.
Don’t wanna eat less meat? Go for it dawg. Eat it up. Don’t give a fuck about deforestation? The fucked up conditions animals are raised in? The pollution and everything that comes with it? Just because cruises are wasteful? You do you, big dawg.
But to tell everyone else to not give a fuck either is just some absurd fucked up apathetic shit. It’s not pragmatic. It’s so obvious you lie to yourself. The audacity to say “folks just don’t get it.”
I’m just laughing cause you still don’t get it. Nothing you do will matter. Yes, that’s depressing, and it’s also true. The numbers don’t check out. You can wave it away all you want, nothing you do will matter. Sorry. And yes that should make you angry. But that is what I mean by pragmatism. It’s a waste of time and energy to be angry. To believe you can do something about it. Instead, focus on being happy and making life better for others in ways we can, in the time we have.
Trust me, I get it more than you. I try to live with principles instead of just thinking whether “it’ll matter” and being a coward because billionaires ride jets and rich people take cruises.
You’re “just laughing” and thinking you’re above me, explaining to me your idiocy as if I don’t see how pathetic you actually are.
Nope, you still don’t get it, lol.
We lost.
“I have no principles because people take cruises and I believe nobody else should have principles either.”
I believe it’s all gonna collapse too. That doesn’t mean I cry in the drive thru line waiting for a bacon burger then go on Lemmy and build a facade that I’m enlightened just because I understand the extremely simple fact that humans fucked up the planet. And then “laugh” at people with principles as if having principles means they “don’t get it,” when the modern meat industry, for one, is an absolute horror show that causes so much present harm beyond emissions to not just the animals.
You’re hilariously inconsistent too for someone who “gets it.” In your other comment you’re telling people to focus energy where it matters, but here now you’re saying nothing matters and that “we lost.”
People who “get it” don’t go around telling people that they’re laughing and that they get it.
Maybe resolve your inner conflicts first before you tell people what to do and what not do to, oh enlightened laughing one.
The number of assumptions you make about my “principles” are ridiculous. You are reading way too far into the like 100 words I wrote. You sound super pissed and projecting a lot onto me.
All that garble to tell me no, you still don’t get it.
Ok oh enlightened laughing one
Not loving that the exact source of the data in this graph is not clearly linked in the description.
Not disagreeing that meat is bad for the environment, but I think not having kids is probably way above cutting out meat.
How much less red meat to offset all the private jet that flew to Venice for bezos’ wedding?
