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://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-beef-industry-fueling-amazon-rainforest-destruction-deforestation/

https://e360.yale.edu/features/marcel-gomes-interview

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-06-02/almost-a-billion-trees-felled-to-feed-appetite-for-brazilian-beef

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.

  • Poxlox@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    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.

    • LanguageIsCool@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      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.

    • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
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      16 days ago

      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.

      • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        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”.

        • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
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          15 days ago

          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.