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.
No shade on people trying to make sustainable choices, but if the solution to the climate crisis is us trusting everyone to “get with the program” and pick the right choice; while unsustainable alternatives sit right there beside them at lower prices, then we are truly doomed.
What the companies behind these foods and products don’t want to talk about is that to get anywhere we have to target them. It shouldn’t be a controversial standpoint that: (i) all products need to cover their true full environmental and sustainability costs, with the money going back into investments into the environment counteracting the negative impacts; (ii) we need to regulate, regulate, and regulate how companies are allowed to interact with the environment and society, and these limits must apply world-wide. There needs to be careful follow-up on that these rules are followed: with consequences for individuals that take the decisions to break them AND “death sentences” (i.e. complete disbandment) for whole companies that repeatedly oversteps.
We could really use a movement to get more people to try adding beans, peas, and tofu to their grocery list. I wasn’t able to stick to not eating meat, but sticking to eating less meat by adding alternatives to my grocery list turned out to be quite easy.
The trick is to find the right message and tone for the moment. I also think change like this is necessarily incremental. It’s possible that with enough doom-and-gloom around a pending “market correcting event”, that helping everyone reduce grocery bills by eating vegetarian a few nights a week, would be the right message.
I managed to get off of meat by trying out good meat replacements before quitting. But I still consume a lot of cheese especially mozzarella.
I’ve got a special trick where I can make pretty much the entire internet rage at me. Check it out:
I’m vegetarian.
Imagine how being vegan makes you the most horrible pariah. Change of diet was not difficult at all, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the social consequences.
Haha nice!
This chart theoretically demonstrates the validity of vegetarianism if that beef herd line is truly the outlier it appears to be.
Beef is overrated. Pork, poultry, and wild caught shrimp are where it’s at.
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.
And not having any children!
Fun fact, antinatalists are literally insane!
You forgot number one: By far, the best thing you can do for the climate is not have children.
I guess it’s a good thing that the lone star tick is moving north
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Save the planet! Eat Deez Nutz!
Finally, me being gay can actually be useful
This is true, and also not usually well taken by most people, even the ones claiming to be pro environment.
Wait until this thread gets full of people saying that their habits are irrelevant because companies pollute much more - which they do indeed, but that absolutely does not negate the many studies we have that calculate a major impact if we simply dropped red meat.
Which is again quite obvious if you think about the energetic demand of growing food only to feed an animal that then will become food, rather than skipping this step and eating the original food instead.
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.
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 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.
That’s a very reasonable and effective individual strategy.
We don’t need everyone becoming a vegan - but we absolutely do need to stop denying the necessity of reducing meat consumption.
How dare you ask people to change literally any habit they have! It’s obviously someone else’s responsibility to change!
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.
Fuck your gatekeeping and special pleading
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).
I eat meat and it has very little impact. I hunt.
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.
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.
Not disagreeing that meat is bad for the environment, but I think not having kids is probably way above cutting out meat.
My single greatest contribution for the climate is not having children.
Not loving that the exact source of the data in this graph is not clearly linked in the description.
