All this pussy shit about changing our entire eating schedule to reduce emissions by .01% is fucking dumb. The main problem is western habits and our dumb intake of everything! If the entirety of the US and EU disappeared overnight then emissions would drop by more than 75% even though the West doesn’t even make up 10% of the world population.
All this pussy shit about attacking one of the worst emitting industries on the planet? Ig im a huge pussy because I love fighting climate change
Beef itself isn’t the part that’s emitting. It’s all the transportation and handling and resources the beef needs. You can stop buying beef to lower emissions sure but you can’t replace eating beef with just eating more other shit that might also emit just as much.
Source?
Cattle are the No. 1 agricultural source of greenhouse gases worldwide. Each year, a single cow will belch about 220 pounds of methane. Methane from cattle is shorter lived than carbon dioxide but 28 times more potent in warming the atmosphere
from: https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable
US Army: ** is biggest CO2 polluter in the world **
Media: “You should eat more vegetables to save the planet”
Even funnier to me are vegans that argue with people about how animals are killed and how bad it is for environment to eat meat. While the military kills millions of innocent people for oil and burns a record amount of fossil fuels in the process.
Yeah, somehow I don’t think we are focusing on the right problems.
who are these pro military vegans? are they in the room with us right now?
Well, you can be against fossil wars AND against the exploitation of billions of sentient beings as well. I’m pretty sure most vegans are.
And while you can not stop the US army from murdering children in the middle East, you CAN actually stop paying for slaves to murder our fellow earthlings in an instant. And you’d immediately save two-thirds of land, water, and CO2 emissions with that.
Maybe I’m being too pessimistic, but feels like this is yet another study to add to the mountain of evidence that people will ignore because they’ve deemed the taste of meat worth an impending global calamity. When will the average persons tipping point be? When oceanfront property is available in Tennessee?
Individual people choosing to “do the right thing” is never going to work. It doesn’t matter if any individual chooses the right food, or kind of car, anything else.
Blameing people for not cutting their meat intake, is misplaced.
The government needs to change the market by subsidizing “good” things and taxing “bad” things. That’s the only way to change behavior at scale.
Ok but remember when Republicans made up that Biden was going to “outlaw burgers” with the Green New Deal? And how even the made up idea that the govt would stop subsidizing meat caused half the nation to flip their shit, while the other half went “no don’t be silly, we would never ever touch your precious tendies.”
Appealing to individuals is important because without shifting the public’s perception of meat as it relates to climate change, the government will be too terrified to enact those kind of changes for fear of getting voted out by the angry, barbecue-loving mobs.
Until flexitarians, vegetarians, and vegans (I’m vegan btw, just need everyone to know that) become a sizable enough percentage of the voting population, these systemic changes are never going to even be considered by our leaders. So we should keep pressing the importance of these changes to collectively move ourselves closer to that tipping point.
The government needs to change the market by subsidizing “good” things and taxing “bad” things.
Or at least start by ceasing to fucking subsidize the bad things!
That would be a good first step they could try.
Capitalism is so funny like that. Everything has a price to everyone, you need to find a threshold (tax %) to tip the scale.
You’re completely right because right now in UK meat has FAR MORE subsidies than vegetables and meat alternatives.
Most people alive today will be dead before anything affects them. My parents have that attitude to global warming so fly out on holiday 2-3 times a year.
This change needs to happen from the top to force everyone’s hands, you can’t rely on the goodness of individuals because we’re all selfish fucks
When will the average persons tipping point be?
When its too expensive to buy meat. Its not like this is new either. Here’s meat consumption over the last 100 years in the USA:
It tracks decently with the rise in GDP in the USA:
If you could graph sentient creatures’ collective agony I’m sure that would line up pretty well too
I hope things get better
Here’s an idea, maybe the affluent and ultra rich can stop their decadent luxuries before us peasants give up the few pleasures in life left to us.
You mean eating meat?!
Me, I just like to rape, don’t take that peasure from me. Go for billionaires first!You’re fucking annoying
Why?
Do you truly lack that much awareness? If I didn’t already understand your point you would be the last person to teach me anything. You’re far too aggressive and as an abuse victim myself I don’t appreciate you using rape to make your point. I’m reading discussions and suddenly your comments pop in to completely derail it.
It seems like you’re willfully ignoring their point to attack them on tone. I think the parallel is that both comments are saying something of the form “I enjoy doing something that harms others, therefore it’s justified.”
Did you watch the video? I’d maybe approach with caution if not, because it deals with topics like sexual assault, but it really makes this point clear.
They could at least try to bring their point respectfully, instead of derailing and pushing gore into peoples faces.
We don’t need to tolerate their behaviour, let alone give their argument even an inkling of thought.
This kind of stuff is what gives an otherwise noble goal a bad name. It is counter-productive. I know plenty of people who would start eating more meat just to not be associated with those people.
You ticked some boxes off the Vegan Bullshit Bingo there. Plus I didn’t post gore (even though I could have, milk and meat production are incredibly violent).
It’s a shot film of three people talking, you should watch it.
If you are going to use sexual abuse to make a point you better be concise or the very least be funny. So yah, tone would make sense to comment on as if that was the only thing. You want to lead someone to that video, the way they are going about it is piss poor. You think that video is something new? that i haven’t heard it before, get out of you bubble. If you can’t phrase it as well or better than the video, maybe let the video talk for itself.
ITT: peasants attacking each other instead of the people responsible for gestures broadly all of this
I don’t think peasants are tied to the land so that makes us all serfs which is even lower I believe. But yeah.
Removed by mod
I keep drifting back and forth between whole food plant based and vegetarian for about the past 13 years. I got no beef with meat eaters but I couldn’t imagine putting that into my mouth and the process of masticating it. Although on St Patrick’s Day looking at the corned beef sandwiches took me back in time for a brief moment.
You know what could also limit global heating? If the fucking wealthy stopped flying in their private jets and stopped cruising in their yachts and stopped buying their 3rd house. Focus on the solutions. Subsidize green energy, tax the oil companies, ban private jets, etc. You know, things that would have an actual impact.
The only thing that will really fix the issue is if we stop breeding like rabbits. It doesn’t matter if we reduce the ecological footprint of individuals if we keep growing the population.
You’re wrong! Population growth is not an issue, it’s our western lifestyle, like eating meat and flying in airplanes. Our planet can easily feed 10 billion people healthy food. But not if we don’t quit meat.
We could also reduce our population and keep eating meet and doing other things that make life enjoyable. Besides, who wants to live on a planet that crowded?
How would one reduce earths population?
You know how people have unprotected sex? Stop doing that so much.
I think we should do the extreme opposite of breeding like rabbits to the wealthy instead. Like the polar opposite of creating life.
Except there is a decline in population growth as numbers stop seeing family life as an option because of demographic transition. You do not remain able to reproduce your whole life and as new generations come up to the reproductive age they face a very different life to what it once was such as what the baby boomers were going through (hence the name)
Except there is a decline in population growth
You’re talking second derivative here. It’s still growing, it’s just growing a tiny bit slower than it used to.
That is how decline works, yes.
Yep, sick of being told I’m the problem and should change my way of living when a single private flight dumps more CO2 into the air than my car puts out in half a year, not to mention the fuel usage.
A person in their private jet is selfish and inconsiderate. They believe they are entitled to it and thereby destroy our livelihoods. They should not fly privately just because they can. They should voluntarily stop, and if they don’t, it must be prohibited.
A person who still eats meat is selfish and inconsiderate. They believe they are entitled to it and thereby destroy our livelihoods. They shouldn’t do it just because they can. They should voluntarily stop, and if they don’t understand that, it must be prohibited.
I guess I’ve been a flexitarian since 2016ish. I have a few vegetarian days a week for environmental reasons.
My first goal was to preferably have 2 meaty days a week and leave the rest meat free. After about three years I got to the point where I realised I hadn’t eaten meat in a while. I simply forgot to.
Now I just eat meat when I visit friends and family, or to keep my iron levels in check. It’s surprisingly doable.
You know want would really help? More so then cutting actual food intake?
How about halfing the number of golf courses? Stop using grass and let more natural plants for lawns, stop the use of private planes and also just kill or reduce the Cruise ship industry to a miniscule amount. Plus other shit rich people use that has a disproportionate huge carbon footprint. Find it funny that I never see the news --or rich, holier than thou morons-- pushing for this.
Carbon footprint of food production in the USA is 9% of total. Beef is about 3% of total. So 9 for both beef and crops.
Just the cruise ship industry, for example, is about 3.3% of the world’s total carbon footprint. Let’s kill that. Also private jet use. They can fly Business class, if they are not hypocrites.
Eating meat is not your religion. Why do you feel so offended?
At least for me these articles are a bit annoying since it seems that businesses world wide give a shit about the consequences of their actions but news outlets decided to pin the issue on the consumer.
Don’t get me wrong. I think consumers are at least partially in charge when it comes to decisions about their consuming behavior. And reducing the meat intake is something that is not too hard and can improve the health for some people. But propagating this as the solution to our climate problem and on top not looking into the effect of lower income on nutrition / eating behavior makes me angry. The article just briefly mentions that the government has no success in influencing the prices through taxes.
At least here in Germany meat is so unbelievably cheap that it’s very understandable people got used to eating it on a daily base. And it’s hard to change this without businesses like supermarkets supporting this with price changes (meat up vegetables down) and an increase in minimal income since environmentally friendly food is currently more expensive than “garbage food”.
I mean, to be fair, this isn’t proposed as the solution to climate, but rather part of the solution. Your points about income and meat prices are totally valid, but they’re things that we as citizens can pressure our governments to adopt as part of the encouragement of a reduced meat diet.
Considering every 100 pounds you add to your vehicle you reduce fuel economy by 2%, I wonder how much less CO2 we’d produce if everyone got to a healthy BMI.
I mean, we can do all of those things and reduce our meat intake. They’re not mutually exclusive. How about we encourage people to do everything they can, rather than gate-keeping solutions?
Personal carbon credits would make it very easy to solve all of that.
We need a total shift. All those things are things we should do too. It’s no doubt that rich people produce more emissions.
But you’re just trying to avoid shouldering any responsibility yourself for something were all responsible for.
This is something you can do, right now, to decrease your carbon footprint.
Btw, if you’re living in the west with constant access to Internet, and got a free education…you almost certainly are one of those rich people.
I couldn’t help but think there’s no way luxury cruise ships is 3% of global carbon emissions
Was this your source? https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/maritime-sustainability
I can’t help but notice it says “cruise ships and other maritime vessels” which isn’t cleared up anywhere in the article. You have to remember that if this includes container ships it’s fully expected, we all buy shit from across the world all the time.
This article says the shipping industry is 3%: https://sinay.ai/en/how-much-does-the-shipping-industry-contribute-to-global-co2-emissions/
So either greenmatch is intentionally rage baiting everyone or they both emit 3% each, sus.
I really hate misinformation. It’s very easy to rally and hate on the rich but it would be very funny to me if that 3% you said to “get rid of” means you would have to completey change your consumer habits and not only just affect “the rich”
But yes regardless don’t mistake my comment for defending luxury cruise ships.
Ya know what would also limit it: Actually stopping like the top 5 companies causing like 60% of all pollution.
Just stop doing carbon credits because it’s a literal scam and just shut down any factory that pollutes more than an allowed amount until they get it under control.
These companies are producing products you consume. What would really limit the emissions is reducing the human population to under 1B worldwide.
This has already been debunked elsewhere in the comments
You heard him, @[email protected], it’s been debunked somewhere 🤣
That article doesn’t back up your claim at all. It talks about an industry.
That seems to put the carbon produced on the buyer of a product, not the company that produced the item. It mentions electricity as one and its not like you choose how your electricity is generated. Others being land use and food production which again you can’t control because large corporations do that, not individuals.
If there were no buyers, there would be no producers. It is always on buyers.
And yet it’s easy to stop the production while it’s nearly impossible to stop the consumption.
Lol what?
Is this actually news? Seems old to me, thanks OP though for bringing it up again.
it’s pretty crazy that no one in this thread has mentioned that going vegan would have a larger impact.
I am vegan and I would say that but it would result in a big circle jerk as always of “hurr durr bacon”.
Being vegan would have a much larger impact!
Of course.
But don’t let perfection be the enemy of good.
The term flexitarian is new to me anyway. Happy this concept is getting more press anyway
Well… Raping is wrong, right? Say there is this guy, he doesn’t always rape, just sometimes when he’s in the mood. But not always. Should we applaud this flexi-rapist for doing something aweful a little less?
You’re not technically wrong, but you’ll never convert anyone with your attitude. You’re doing veganism a disservice. Please stop.
Just planting seeds, some like it, some don’t. I’ll be a little less harsh next time.
Eating meat is not inherently wrong, raping is.
Life consumes other life to live. Humans have evolved to eat meat, we are living beings, a part of this planet just like a lion or hawk.
The lives we must take to live, whether they are plant, animal, or both, were not decided by us but by nature. Killing and eating to live is the only moral reason one has to harm another living being. This is not nice, it’s just nature. Does the wild boar chased to it’s death by a tiger not suffer a cruel death? Does that make the tiger evil?
Animal Agriculture and Massive Human Populations
Our modern animal agriculture industry is what’s wrong, it is disgusting and evil and treats conscious beings as objects indifferent to their suffering. But feeding 8 billion people can only be accomplished using an industrial food industry.
The answer is not trying to turn 8 billion people into vegans, that is simply not going to happen. Rather, we should be striving to reduce our numbers and change culture to respect animals and their sacrifice for our food.
One of the more effective ways to do that are to eat like a “flexitarian” and reduce the amount of dependence on the animal agriculture industry. The other key way to reduce animal suffering is not something an individual has control over – to have a human population that is not grotesquely oversized for the environment.
Our species has no entitlement to grow to maximum size and kill other beings to support this unnecessary growth. The Haber-Bosch process effectively caused human eutrophication, an imbalance, and like the overgrown algae causing fish kills in lakes, our numbers are causing the unnecessary death of a great many species in our environment and will lead to ecological failure if not taken care of. The solution to eutrophication in a lake is stop the overflow of nutrients.
While it’s possible in modern times for a person to live on a vegan diet, it’s not a normal, not healthy without significant effort and education, or more moral.
There will never be a time when no humans eat meat. Therefore, we should strive to reduce the suffering required to sustain our own life. Eating flexitarian is a highly practical way to do this. If an individual is willing to sacrifice their health and/or work to gain the knowledge required to be healthy without consuming animals at all (i.e. be vegan) then good for them, but this cannot be expected to occur globally.
There’s one big flaw in your logic; humans don’t need to eat meat. It’s just a cultural thing, tastebuds. So whatever your justifications are they are for pleasure. So all there’s left to say is that I hope that you are entertained by all the unnecessary suffering. The propaganda hit you good!
There are some vitamins we can only get from meats. Something tells me that industrial processes to make those vitamins into pills isn’t exactly helping the planet either.
I’ve seen too many vegan body builders and MMA fighters to believe you can’t get full nutrition from a vegan diet
Is it a diet of organic vegan food without any supplements? Or are they eating nutritionally enriched foods and taking vitamin supplements?
There’s nothing wrong with the latter, and I should hope every vegan does the latter. A vegan diet without any of that will leave you deficient in some nutrients.
There’s one big flaw in your logic; humans don’t need to eat meat
We can survive and with significant effort and education some can even thrive without meat in modern times with B12 supplementation. What you might be able to do as a wealthy American or similar cannot be expected of the rest of the world.
This man was able to be vegan over 1000 years ago while he was blind from the age of 6 due to smallpox and lived to the age of 83. All while he established himself as a renowned poet, writer and philosoph of the arabic world. Granted the B12 levels in soil were much higher back then. But what’s bad about taking a pill a day vs destroying the livelihood of future generations?
You are absolutely wrong, indian people eat a vegetarian diet for centuries with no problems. Asians used to consume no cheese or milk at all and eat very little meat. Our Western lifestyle is doing so much harm to us, to the planet and to our animal cousins. Eating processed meat daily is really bad, just look at our society, we are not healthy at all! We don’t put significant efford in our diet and it really shows.
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There’s a huge difference between a little meat and no meat.
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Pointing at a population known for vegetarian dishes doesn’t prove anything
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Indians are known for having nutritional deficiencies which lead to population wide vision problems.
Eating meat isn’t the problem, human overpopulation is the problem.
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Well rape is illegal, but honestly I see the equivalence, morally. That’s the age old question posed by harm reduction, and I think, answered by it too. And this hardline viewpoint may work on some people, so it’s a good one to bring up.
My take is that it’s got nothing to do with rewarding less bad behaviour, but about reducing the amount of harm in the world. AFAIK there’s no evidence that encouraging someone to be partially vegan actually props up modern horror farming any more than arguing for pure veganism.
Further, I think you can argue for both. Treat one as a gateway to the other.
The fact is we’re unlikely to see animal eating outlawed in our lifetime, so we’ve got to work within the confines of rhetoric, or I guess terrorism.
Yeah I agree. Usually I am more patient and understanding as well, but today I decided to be a little confronting. There is no right way, as long as we do anything at all, I guess.
…my wife eats meat: you know what she eats a heck of a lot less of since moving in with me?..you know what she’d’ve eaten a heck of a lot more of if i weren’t tolerant?..
…don’t make perfect the enemy of good; you’ll do a heck of a lot less good and be surprised when you learn that your perfect isn’t…
I’m vegan a long time now, sometimes I lose my patience because it feels like I’m talking to 8 year olds all the time. Carnism ia real, the fragile meat-egos, the bullshit bingo, the same lame arguments make me loose my patience sometimes. But obviously you have a point.
My partner and I are flexatarians, it’s lovely. The only downside is that it’s hard to not eat carb heavy, which is a bigger issue with vegetarianism and veganism
I love vegetarian restaurants
You may not have discovered TVP yet. You should do so.
I’m not looking to add protein, I’m looking to reduce carbs. They’re in fucking everything. My doc even warned me against fruit (which I admittedly eat a lot of)
I eat pretty much the same, except almost zero carbs because of diabetes. But I’ve been eating like this for decades because my stomach just can’t handle most beef or pork at all (except the sausage) … it sits like a rock in my gut and takes almost a full day to start feeling normal again.
Ever since pandemic, meat has been doing the same to me. Muscle meat in particular, ground meats I’m more ok with.
How do you manage to avoid carbs? It seems like almost everything nonmeat is some form of carb, except for mushrooms, milk, and eggs
I try to keep my carbs under 30 grams per day. Above that I gain weight and feel like crap.
Very VERY limited wheat products like bread, pasta, etc (once per week if that). I used to use konjac noodles as an alternative but they’ve become very expensive.
Zero sugar (I use stevia instead, but it’s an acquired taste).
I make protein shakes with 0% milk, real chocolate powder, collagen protein and stevia. I’ll have 2-3 @ 16oz per day.
I also make my own soda/pop with club soda, lemon and lime juice, and stevia.
Drink about a gallon/4 litres of water per day.
And because of cost I eat a lot of frozen veggies vs fresh … mixed with pasta sauce, melted cheese on top, or made into an omlet of sorts.
Homemade soups are also great, but I currently live in a rooming house so don’t have access to a freezer anymore.
What about vegetables? If you are talking about plant proteins with not a lot of carbs go for TVP or vegan protein powders.
I feel very grateful that I grew up in a non-veg household that still ate tofu. And now I am a tofu fiend.
However, eggs are still far less impactful than beef, so, protein options still exist, not to mention all the nuts and beans out there.
Also, what about vegetables? Though I admit these should be part of a diet no matter what your diet is, so doesn’t really count.
It’s not all carbs in non-meat land, is all I’m saying.
Power to you for whatever works for you though, no judgement.
I’m watching the new climate town video as I see this.
Glad the media is still telling us it is our fault as consumers while industry and governments actively work against us.
Yes eating plants is better for the environment and your body. Yes I try to eat mostly plants and I encourage you all to try it, but Capitalism is what is killing us and eating a salad isnt going to fix it.
Actually, quite the opposite. As long as you buy beef, cattle will continue to be a major driver of climate change. Under capitalism, it only gets produced because you buy it
isn’t it heavily subsidized? I appreciate that you’re using a textbook definition of capitalism but that’s not how anything actually works.
Indeed! I would add to this, we also heavily subsidize corn and wheat production as well. We waste an inordinate amount of what should be prairie land just so we can put up a bunch of beyond inefficient farms so that the rich can continue making money off of what theyve already been profiting off of.
Id also like to remind everyone that this sort of farming killed our prairies. In effect, this puts us at risk of another dust bowl due to the difference in size of root systems between corn/wheat and prairies tall grasses, and exacerbates the climate crisis further as prairies are incredibly efficient at pulling carbon out of our atmosphere.
Worldwide? Not necessarily, no. Most of the growth in beef demand in particular is in developing nations. Subsidies increase access, but they don’t create demand in and of themself
In my country meat is heavily subsided and if was put to market at true price less people would buy it.
They don’t remove them because It would piss off a lot of business to remove the subsidies overnight and many would lose jobs. But I say fuck them, it’ll work out in the long run
Subsidies increase access, but they don’t create demand in and of themself
If something is significantly lowered in price, wouldn’t that affect demand? If not, why would it suddenly work differently?
You should also see how much of the EU budget directly goes to farming. That’s just direct subsidies, there’s also loads of indirect ones.
The article literally says producers, consumers, and government are all part of it.
We’ve gotten to the point that any mention of what an individual can do to reduce their carbon impact is met with “stop blaming us!”
The reality is that we are all responsible and we all have to change, including individuals. You just don’t want to change, you want everyone else to. You are just like the rich person that says they care about global warming, as they turn around and jump on their private jet.
I agree it is all connected.
I guess my complaint is the degree at which we as individuals make an impact vs Corporations and the Government. I could go completely carbon neutral tomorrow. Sustainably farm in the woods and never leave, but that wouldn’t touch the 6 million tons of Methane leaked from Natural Gas infrastructure this year.
Or we could eat like 3 billionaires.
I don’t think 3 billionaires emit in their combined lifetime as much as 100 BILLION farting chicken in a day.
