YSK that apart from not having a car and voting, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat.
11mon 14d ago by lemmy.world/u/Wulri in youshouldknow
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.
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.
Unfortunately grass-fed production is no solution. It both does not scale or help reduce emissions
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
Not scaling could be a feature and not a bug. It would raise the price of beef and thus lower demand.
To an extent, yes it would likely do that. Though on the other hand running into the maximum capacity limitations would not look pretty. Even countries that have a just bit higher grass-fed production than others have a fair number of issues (and still use plenty of supplemental grain)
For instance, in New Zealand, they use a massive amount of synthetic fertilizer on grasslands to try to make it keep up for dairy production
The large footprint for milk in Canterbury indicates just how far the capacity of the environment has been overshot. To maintain that level of production and have healthy water would require either 12 times more rainfall in the region or a 12-fold reduction in cows.
[…]
The “grass-fed” marketing line overlooks the huge amounts of fossil-fuel-derived fertiliser used to make the extra grass that supports New Zealand’s very high animal stock rates.
Or in the UK and Ireland where grass-fed production leads to deforestation and they still need additional grain on top of it
Most of the UK and Ireland’s grass-fed cows and sheep are on land that might otherwise be temperate rainforest – arable crops tend to prefer drier conditions. However, even if there were no livestock grazing in the rainforest zone – and these areas were threatened by other crops instead – livestock would still pose an indirect threat due to their huge land footprint
[…]
Furthermore, most British grass-fed cows are still fed crops on top of their staple grass
the first time in probably a year i've seen someone explain supply and demand correctly. thank you.
What?!?
It doesn't mean that you must supply me with everything I demand?!?!
A huge aspect of this is ranchers not cycling their land and allowing it to regrow native grasses properly, which does end up running into the land use problem again. But right now we're very unoptimized with land regrowth and there's a huge difference that can be made with just properly handling the land and to stop ranching in literal deserts.
Nope it because politicians need votes from farmers so they continue to give farmers corn subsidies cos they lose votes if they take away the subsidies they where given decades ago.
In Australia most of our beef is grass fed. Not only is it cheaper (when u don't account for the reduced price of subsidised corn) but because much of Australia is so desert like it can only support grass and cattle are the only way to convert that grass to food and profit.
Well, it's not "growing" per se, but we produce fertilizers which are "plant food", so you could say we grow food for our food even for plants.
we need to feed them corn and soybeans because people want lots and lots of meat, and that's the best way to get lots and lots of meat.
that's.. kinda why people advocate for eating less meat, so that there won't be such a powerful incentive to turbomaximize meat yields to meet the huge demand..
why do we need to grow corn and soybeans for them
we don't. but we do grain finish most cattle, because it's faster.
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.
How dare you ask people to change literally any habit they have! It's obviously someone else's responsibility to change!
i find it annoyingly ironic how you’re acting like these people are behaving in some absurd manner when you’re, at the same time, asking an even more absurd thing of humanity by demanding the majority of people concurrently start behaving differently regardless of their privilege or economic status.
i swear to fucking christ every single person banging the individual activism drum in environmentalist circles is some corpo plant or something. do you not understand the vast majority of people who contribute personally to climate change by ignoring these suggested principles don’t really have a choice? sure, it’s john’s fault personally that the only economically viable way he can feed himself in the local food desert is calories from beef…
it isn’t a matter of morals or will - what you are asking or hoping for is functional impossible and has not happened once in human history, ever. even if all people agreed with these ideas and somehow magically got on the individual action horse, it wouldn’t fucking matter. because what makes individual action not work is systemic and has nothing to do with the moral quality of the choices people are making or their personal opinions and has everything to do with harsh economic realities that can’t be whimsically subverted by shaming people for the sins of corporate America.
Lol this is ridiculous.
- Small changes across many people add up. IE meatless Monday has a positive effect even though it's not full abstinence.
- If someone truly can't economically afford to change their eating habits I'm not talking about them. You're extrapolating to them in order to make a bad faith argument against anyone making any positive change. (Though beans and rice is cheaper than beef lol)
- Corporate America, while it can't be controlled exclusively by people's habits, actually is able to be influenced by enough people's spending habits. It has to make money after all.
Have fun completely abdicating your agency and making absurd rants though, I guess
P.S. no one argues that people should make personal changes in lieu of government/business changes. This is another bad faith assertion people make to attempt to abdicate personal responsibility.
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.
We should push for large institutional change, but don't ignore individual change either. Problem is how will you get said governments to act if people aren't also stepping up and they expect backlash to acting? The more people expect it to be cheap and highly consumed, the harder it will be for them to act. Moving people away from meat individually makes it easier. Movements that succeed usually have both individual and institutional change
Institutional change that is achievable at the current moment is smaller. There's been some success with things like changing the defaults to be plant-based (which is good and we should continuing to push for that), but cutting subsides is going to be an uphill battle until a larger number of people change their consumption patterns
I agree that individual change is important, but you have to go about it a certain way. Actually the way OP is phrasing it is pretty good. Let people understand that just eating less red meat is always better.
Because if the messaging is at all confusing, you'll get the kind of result you got during the start of Covid with the masks. It was always true that any amount of masking helped, but when you started to make it complicated, you got a lot of backlash and people completely stopped masking. And of course, with both Covid and red meat, there are people out there incentivized to make things complicated so that people give up. I think it really needs to be dead simple to work.
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.
If it’s any consolation, at least a kilo of coffee is many more servings than a kilo of beef.
it wouldn't be very scientific but it'd be nice to have a graph like this with co2equivalent per serving
Same here. I only eat beef a few times a year as a treat both for health and environmental reasons. But coffee and chocolate so high up the list is more of a killer for me. I definitely enjoy a couple cups per day as well as at least one bite of dark chocolate. Probably should cut back now that I can't claim ignorance.
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.
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).
I eat meat and it has very little impact. I hunt.
Fuck your gatekeeping and special pleading
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.
See, OP is not saying we should "just drop red meat", and this is probably why you get that kind of reactions.
people saying that their habits are irrelevant because companies pollute much more
What people are saying is that their habits are negligible because companies pollute much more.
But sure, try to shame the little guy who might be doing their negligible effort instead of going after the big polluters, that'll help a lot.
I'm one of those people, and I've brought the critical thinking required to prove it.
U see the issue with those studies is that they are calculating methane output from the animals themselves and that's it. It demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of thermodynamics and chemistry. Methane is CH4 and is a product of fermentation (which takes place in the gut of said animals). We know that matter cannot be created or destroyed so this carbon and hydrogen must come from somewhere in the animals diet (in this case grass). Now the grass must get those elements from somewhere and if u did heigh school chemistry u would know that the answer is photosynthesis (6CO2 + 6H2O + Light Energy -> C6H12O6 + 6O2).
So what's happening is grass gets eaten by an animal. Most of that grass passes through unprocessed and is excreted as shit (a carbon sink contributing to the biomatter of the soil). A small fraction of that grass undergoes fermentation and a small fraction of that fermented carbon is byproduct methane. All that carbon originally came form the atmosphere due to photosynthesis. A majority of that atmospheric CO2 is sequestered in the cow shit by contributing to the soil biomatter. That's not even accounting for the additional plants that the cow shit helps to grow which are also carbon sinks.
Now as an Aussie where 99% of our red meat is grass fed that's actually a net carbon negative activity. As for the dumbass yanks feeding livestock corn (due to politicians buying votes with corn subsidies) then u have a problem. But nobody is gonna acknowledge any of this they just gonna spend all day shouting at each other.
The problem is not just the farts, the problem is the absolutely humongous amount of feed and space cattle needs. Most crops grown around the world are used to feed cattle, just like most farmland is used to grow cattle. That's what's polluting, producing so much green house gases, deforesting, etc.
No matter how you turn it, red meat is an environmental catastrophe.
We are talking about carbon here not other environmental impacts. If u wanna talk about other environmental impacts I'm happy to discuss how bad monocrop agriculture is especially the ridiculous amount of pesticides getting into the water and fucking everything up.
Producing feed doesn't make GHG producing feed is the systematised mass application of photosynthesis (turning atmospheric CO2 into sugar). Using more land isn't an environmental problem unless ur doing mass deforestation which is happening in 3rd world nations not the west. So what ur actually saying is that 3rd world nations shouldn't eat red meat cos its causing deforestation but ours is ok because it's not.
Their is the feed and livestock transportation emissions cost and that's about the only good argument u got. Except that problem is an electric vehicle problem not a red meat problem. And if ur gonna use the argument of its an additional carbon cost that u don't pay for just eating plants then why don't u go live in a grass hut cos the additional carbon cost of concrete is unnecessary.
Not to mention that grass fed cattle don't have this problem. So eating grass fed or going hunting also solves the problem.
Where do you think most of the world's red meat is coming from? Brazil is one of the top producers and exporters of red meat, deforestation is ravaging the Amazon.
3rd world countries are not eating red meat, we are. The link between rich countries and meat consumption has been established for a long time now.
Most cattle eat soy, not grass, that's also a myth. Simply because soy is a whole lot cheaper, and a lot more abundant and easier to grow than grass. Also, grass is only slightly better than feed, but it generates more GEG overall because of digestion.
We need soy, so we need monocultures of soy, and that's catastrophic, just like you said.
Transport is actually not that big of a problem with red meat. Land usage and the actual cattle are. They're the top source of GEG emissions from agriculture.
You were talking about thermodynamics earlier. Red meat is incredibly inefficient converting resources to usable calories. 1kg of beef requires 25kg of feed.
You're also using a lot of straw men in your arguments, living in a grass hut instead of a concrete building, or electric vehicles for cattle transportation?
You can enjoy red meat but you can't argue in good faith that it's not completely awful for the environment at pretty much every level.
A few sources to support my claims:
https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/23/americas/brazil-beef-amazon-rainforest-fire-intl/
Just a note before my comment: my reference is the Netherlands, which is struggling with too much cattle and too little land. I can imagine circumstances being different in Australia.
Methane is a worse greenhous gas than CO2 though (28 times more) and just growing more grass, which gets eaten pretty much immediately again, does not necessarily compensate for it. Tackling methane emissions is also a pretty effective short term improvement for global warming, due to it not being nearly as long in the atmosphere as CO2.
But methane is not the only problem with large amounts of cattle. The shit can actually become problematic in for the soil and water due to ammonia. This is a large problem in The Netherlands right now (and sadly we don't have politicians in power willing to make actual changes here). Biodiversity and water quality are going down significantly and a very big contributor is cattle farming.
And let's also not forget that the grass used is for optimizing growing cattle and producing milk (because the farmers get paid like shit). It's not a grass field full of flowers, herbs and other kinds of plants that are good for insect life. They're more or less green deserts.
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.
most people don't want to eat grass or soy cake. letting cows graze, and feeding soycake (the byproduct of soybean oil production) to pigs and poultry is a conservation of resources.
not all land is suitable for crops. letting cattle graze it is fine.
this is a strawman
You can't counter "raising enough cows to supply our current meat demand takes a lot of resources we could be eating instead" with "its okay for them to eat grass :D"
this conversation didn't happen.
Don’t bother with this fucking guy. They’re in every thread about eating less meat arguing that eating meat is best. I’ve already gotten tricked into replying several times in the past.
Don’t feed the trolls.
Good news is that overall arable farmland usage goes down the less meat you eat. Don't need to use all the same land, you have flexibility to move around production
we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
overall arable farmland usage goes down the less meat you eat.
I don't think that has ever happened.
It's worth noting that soybean meal is not a byproduct. When we look at the most common extraction method for soybean oil (using hexane solvents), soybean meal is still the driver of demand
However, soybean meal is the main driving force for soybean oil production due to its significant amount of productivity and revenues
[...]
soybean meal and hulls contribute to over 60% of total revenues, with meal taking the largest portion of over 59% of total revenue
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0926669017305010
This is even more true of other methods like expelling which is still somewhat commonly used
Moreover, soybean meal is the driving force for the whole process [expelling oil from soy] because it provides over 70% of the total revenue for soy processing by expelling
hexane solvents are not the most common method of oil extraction. you have been misinformed.
some studies show soybean oils being as much as half the value of the crop, despite being just 20% of the weight.
If we assume that's the case, half of revenue is still not a byproduct, it's a coproduct. The other half is still pretty relevant to its value and usage. If 50% of your revenue disappears from something, you're going to be making a lot less of it
i think at this point we've devolved into arguing semantics. you're not going to convince me soybean is a viable crop unless you can press it for oil, and i don't think i can convince you it's a viable product unless the meal is fed to livestock. but i hope you have a good night!
What are you talking about? Soy is great. Soy beans, soy curls, tofu, soy milk, soy sauce, miso. All kinds of great soy products.
My single greatest contribution for the climate is not having children.
No offspring club let's goo
Where
Probably the antinatalist sub
Edit: apparently we don't have one
Nah, antinatalism is different.
That's not a place i want to be a part of—it gets fairly toxic.
Yeah it is a bit "nobody deserves to live" typa mood on that subreddit.
You know what would help even more? Eating other people's kids.
And kicking people in the nuts 🤪
Nah you got to start at the source, more efficient, eat the (future-) parents.
I know a few guys and gals that drink straight from the spigot, so to speak.
That’s entire lives of (likely) red meat consumption! I also am never having kids, so I can have my occasional steak without feeling guilt.
Wow! You're a true climate hero!
Here's the perspective that helped me the most with this:
You don't have to quit meat (sorry for the pun) cold turkey.
Even cutting your meat consumption by half can have a significant impact. Start by ordering a vegetarian option instead of meat every once in a while. Experiment and find veggie alternatives you actually like, there are tons of options now. I heard someone refer to this as "microdosing veganism", and it can really help make the change less exhausting.
Over time, you might even notice your tastes start to shift and vegan options become actually enjoyable instead of a "sacrifice".
That's meee! ✋
I still eat meat, but quite little, and quite rarely. There's the odd salami at home, or every few months some ham for carbonara when I get guests over, or something like that. But it's such a small percentage of what I consume now, I feel like I'm effectively vegetarian, anyways.
And yeah for most things I use alternatives because it turns out they're often easier to handle. The Barista This Isn't Milk is nice because it foams more reliably than actual milk and lasts much longer which is important as a single household.
Oh yeah, our house basically gave up on real milk once the alternatives got good. The shelf life alone was a huge driver.
lasts much longer which is important as a single household
This is an often-overlooked argument for veganism. If you plan carefully, you literally don't need a fridge.
what has helped me is just pivoting heavily to chicken, i used to basically just eat beef and pork, so simply eating a different kind of meat helped ease into eating non-meat meals as well.
meat alternatives are of course great, but i also think soybeans (or similar) are very underrated, just raw green soybeans are astoundingly meat-like for being a straight up unprocessed vegetable. Great in salads.
If you only understood the damage you were doing.
Rather, I feel you fully understand the damage you are doing and are probably doing it deliberately
I suspect l’ll regret engaging with this, but… what?
cutting your meat consumption by half can have a significant impact.
i doubt it. many people have done that, and meat production grows year-over-year every year.
Sure, but like ~8 companies produce like 75% of the pollution. Their biggest con was shifting the responsibility to individuals to change their habits instead of forcing them to clean up their factories
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
If everyone got together and did the individual action, it would become significant.
But getting a big percentage of the population to come together and do something is the challenge.
if everyone got together
And this is where it falls apart.
it’s more than a challenge, it’s a fucking fantasy dude lmfao. people don’t wake up everyday and choose to do these things, they do these things out of necessity. even if individual action was effective in stemming climate change (it’s not), you have to acknowledge that people aren’t choosing where and how they get their food. you can’t blame someone for not being willing to sacrifice their own comfort or economic posture for a *checks notes* infinitesimally small, improbable, and uncertain chance that their actions might help the environment, maybe, just a little bit. that’s fucking patently absurd to expect any rational agent to make that choice the way you are advocating.
even in this weird victim-blaming mindset people advocating on this basis have, the corps are still at fault! it’s fucking doublespeak and brainwashing, i swear.
300m cows slaughtered a year at 500lb of beef per cow and 22lb of co2 per lb of beef is 1.65B tons of co2e a year from cows. Global aviation makes up 920m tons of co2 from flying
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.
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
i regard all antinatalism as ecofascism. i'm not asking you to change my mind, i'm letting you know you might be participating in a eugenics campaign.
How is it eugenics if it has nothing to do with a parent’s genetic make up? Like if they said “meat eaters shouldn’t have kids” you could try and make an argument for eugenics but for nobody to have a kid or for everyone equally to have less children how is that eugenics?
- Only a small subset of people who don't have kids are antinatalists.
- Antinatalism is not eugenics.
- Environmentalism is the opposite of fascism, actually. When you stick up for the environment, you're with the good guys.
That's one pair of philosophies that creep me out both ways. Both the anti natalists and pro natalists.
Deciding for yourself is one thing, imposing your choice on others is maddening.
I don't know if the comment quite raises to the level of anti natalist though. Maybe it's grading on a curve of reading some more hard core anti natalists, but that comment felt tame and felt like they wouldn't necessarily object to a couple having one child or even two, being somewhat below the replacement level..
What a fantastically apt username
in, as much as possible, a non-confrontational way, i'd love to hear why you think that.
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.
You forgot number one: By far, the best thing you can do for the climate is not have children.
That's almost certainly the biggest dietary change you can make.
But for overall impact, there's one winner and it's bigger than everything else put together.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children
Capitalism hates this one weird trick.
Ontop of that, factory farming is a lovecraftian horror that floods the universe with terrible agony. And there's very good reason to believe that the suffering of animals is as real and awful as yours or mine.
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.
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.
Do billionaires count as red meat? I am asking for a friend.
YSK you should stop guilting us peasants.
Everyone knows who's to blame.
Tired of this shit.
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.
the graphic you posted comes from this article, which shows it is based on poore-nemecek 2018. i've detailed teh problems with this study in another top-level comment here, but, basically, it's not good science. i feel you're spreading misinformation.
Not loving that the exact source of the data in this graph is not clearly linked in the description.
What about not having children?
or eat the wealthy is a better start
The metric of per kg of product, while entirely fair, can be a bit misleading when it comes to making high impact decisions in your life. The switching to tea example is a good one to criticize because on this chart coffee is quite high up there, but I consume only 15g of coffee a day, compared to probably close to a kg of meat, egg, and dairy. Eliminating coffee would not be a high climate impact decision.
The prevalence of people telling everyone not to have kids in the context of our current culture is weird.
Alt-right: "Hey we're trying to have as many kids as possible so there's more of us, and less of you. Do us a favor and don't have kids."
Evidently a lot of people on the left: "Sounds good dude."
May I propose a reasonable alternative? If you don't want to have kids, cool, don't have kids. If you want to have kids, have the financial and social security to do so responsibly, and a partner who wants the same thing, then have kids (but also go vegan, ride a bike, and raise them to do the same).
Aka, you do you.
How much less red meat to offset all the private jet that flew to Venice for bezos’ wedding?
Roughly true, but you're eliding a very, very problematic activity into "travel": aviation.
Per kilometer, flying is pretty carbon intensive (about the same as driving - basically: the extra efficiency of being packed into a tin can is offset by exponentially higher wind resistance at high speed). The problem is that airplanes allow you to burn up massive distances really quickly.
A single transatlantic flight will blow a 2-ton1-ton hole in your personal carbon footprint. That's 10-20% of an average European's annual footprint - or 100% a very large chunk of a sustainable annual footprint. For anyone who flies more than once a year (i.e. likely a bunch of people here), cutting down on flying is likely to be the single biggest thing you can do for the climate.
People always conveneintly leave out flying. Flying is one of the single worst things you can do.
i feel like flying is something you either do fairly regularly, or you haven't even considered setting foot on a plane for 10 years.
I find it really hard to give up, personally. If I didn’t fly I would basically never see my family.
Tonnes of CO2e, averages:
1.60 a roundtrip transatlantic flight
2.40 one year car use
58.60 one year for every child you have
That's helpful. These estimates do tend to vary a bit depending on assumptions (type of plane or car, what occupancy etc). The 2t I quoted was slightly high. My point was that there's no other way to emit 1 tonne in 6 hours.
True. Though maybe also activism until manufacturers are held accountable for their production methods and clean up costs. I do my share but I'm tired of being told it's on me. It's on corporate greed. Instead of spending on lobbying to avoid any changes to the status quo, they could spend much less coming up with different cleaner methods of production.
It's fundamentally inefficient. The claims of "green" meat production are greenwashing from the industry. The industry would love for you to believe there is a way that they could clean it up. It takes growing tons of crops just for most of that energy to be lost by the creatures moving around, digesting, etc.
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/html
Nor is something like grass-fed production a solution when that has even higher emissions due to higher rates of methane production from cows. It also is even higher land demand
We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates
[…]
If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.
This is a poor argument which will be repeated through out this thread because it doesn't take into account the product.. Meat consumption can not be 'cleaned up' or 'held accountable' unless you are growing or purchasing meat from a direct source. You can change your habit in that sense. But when you purchase a fast food meal or even a Sysco steak at a fine dinning establishment you are supporting the established CAFOs that make the statistics in the post. Not corporate greed.
I get that individuals aren't the problem impact wise but couldn't it be the case that if the majority of people life a more sustainable life it will be easier to create laws that put stop the real poluters bc people are in support of such regulations?! If the majority of people think the existence of billionaires is immoral, it will be easier to tax the rich...
Sure. Imma keep using my jet though.
Veganism is good, necessary even, but more than voting we need to actually overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism. Profit will destroy the planet unless we take control of the reigns from capital.
Not disagreeing that meat is bad for the environment, but I think not having kids is probably way above cutting out meat.
Yeah let us do the microscopic differences while some industry totally ignores it...
Also not having kids. Strange how that one is left out.
You are right of course, but „per kg product“ is not a fair comparison when it comes to how the population is fed. Cheese (3000-4000kcal/kg) vs. milk (500. kcal/kg) is the best example for that.
Meat alternatives are often scored on how environment friendly they are per gram of protein, same with milk alternatives. Though i suppose better per kg of product, you'd still miss important data if you'd only consider proteins.
Cute.
I'd be more interested in adding private and commercial airliners, long-haul trucks and tanker ships to the list for comparison.
i’ve replaced beef in my diet with kangaroo for exactly this reason… it’s not the same, but it’s great in its own right and contains a load of iron. makes cutting beef out much easier
bonus: roo populations have to be managed otherwise in modern australia they tend to multiply uncontrolled and it’s a problem, so it’s either eat the meat or waste it… roo meat isn’t farmed
You can't survive around here (eastern Kentucky) without owning your own car. The nearest Walmart to me is a half hour drive at 60mph and we don't have taxis in any of the towns around me. That's 7 hours of walking, each way. No buses or trains either. The closest store of any kind to me is a Dollar General and is about 2 hours each way if I walk.
Not eating red meat is so fucking easy now. If I can be an old man who went to school uphill in the snow both ways for a second, I dropped meat 20ish years ago in the US deep south, and holy fuck talk about an impossible diet. Even the vegetables had meat in them, and that is not a joke.
This is obviously going to depend on your area and how much of a food desert you’re in, but I’ve never seen so much access to so many kinds of meat replacements in average grocery stores and not just bougie upscale places. Tofu, tempeh, fake meat everything! Which isn’t even a big part of my diet, but I love having the option when I want something new.
Ten years ago I got caught by surprise bacon in frigging Pennsylvania. I'd done the "make a vegetarian meal out of sides" thing while visiting my parents.
The restaurant named all the cheeses in 5-cheese macaroni and cheese but didn't mention that bacon was also mixed in. My mom parent-pressured me to not send it back and I ate it, suffering the gastrointestinal consequences later.
Save the planet! Eat Deez Nutz!
The single best thing you can do for the climate is not existing. The next best thing is not having kids. The lifetime of consumption of a person is out of the equation without that person. Until we figure out how to live sustainably on this earth, overpopulation is a real problem.
Edit: To be clear, I want you to still exist with us in this world. Especially since I don't believe in any kind of afterlife. I'm just stating a tough truth with no clear action statement, besides maybe figuring put how to live truly carbon-neutral. Some things are just a catch-22.
I personally don't eat red meat, and I agree it's worse for climate change, but I've heard the argument that meat from larger animals is more ethical, because to get the same amount of meat from smaller animals means a much larger number of them have to die, and I'm not sure how to weigh that against the climate, assuming that someone isn't going to give up meat entirely.
question, how come beef is so cheap it's it takes so much resources?
if it's just subsidies, then we should get rid of them
I've been the bane of chickens all my life...
Accounting for emissions per kilogram isn't that fair, can we account for emissions per 1000 kilocalorie? Or emissions per protein?
The most important takeaway for the target group:
“If you’re trying to reduce your carbon footprint, eat less beef,” Rose advises. “You don’t have to give it up entirely, but cutting back or making substitutions can make a significant impact.”
Any fewer beef meals you have helps. We're also just talking beef here. If you choose pork, chicken, fish, or even game meat over beef you're helping the climate.
It's also important to consider that not only isn't this about quitting entirely, it's also specifically about beef (or other comparable meat). White meats in particular are still not good for the environment, but already like an order of magnitude better.
It's just that beef in particular - also a type of meat that is frankly not even that good if I'm being honest, we're all just used to considering it the best 🤷 - is absolutely horrible for the environment.
Any fewer beef meals you have helps.
i don't think that's true, if meat production continues to grow.
i don’t think that’s true, if meat production continues to grow.
If people are eating fewer beef meals, where is the beef production growth coming from in your theoretical?
it's not theoretical. plenty of people (claim to) have cut back on beef, but production continues to rise.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-production-tonnes?tab=chart&country=%7EOWID_WRL
Then people haven’t cut back. The production has to go somewhere, they aren’t making money shoveling it off a cliff.
Probably historically poor parts of the population gaining the means to buy more beef, for example in China
it’s not theoretical. plenty of people (claim to) have cut back on beef, but production continues to rise.
Then you skipped the entire first half of my statement where I said "If people are eating fewer beef meals," So sure, if you ignore half of what I said then you can say I am wrong. At that point what are we even talking about?
some people are eating fewer beef meals
some people are eating fewer beef meals
And for those people that eat fewer beef meals that does help. That is unambiguous. We're talking about choices individuals can make for themselves to affect positive change. Those that eat fewer beef meals remove themselves as demand drivers of beef for those beef skipped meals. Were those individuals that would have eaten beef chose to eat beef for those future meals, then demand would be even higher with even higher climate impacts.
Do you disagree?
Were those individuals that would have eaten beef chose to eat beef for those future meals, then demand would be even higher with even higher climate impacts.
first, you can't prove a counterfactual. second there's no reason to believe that meat production could grow any faster.
And for those people that eat fewer beef meals that does help.
there's no reason to believe that. production grows every year, year-over-year.
If you're not willing to concede that a future state of people skipping beef meals does lower demand compared to those same people choosing to eat beef instead, then I don't think we have any basis for continuing to have a discussion.
I couldn't figure out what pedantry you're trying to play at, nor any value for it. The best I could guess is you like dancing around on word play for some reason. That is not an interest of mine. Then I looked at your post history and see this behavior is entirely on-brand for you with your conversations with most folks. Feel free to reply to the void. I'm not interested in your games and won't be interacting with you anymore.
Are bilionairs white meat?
We need significant subsidies invested into vat grown meat. But now Big Ag is getting it banned in every state it can. Texas and Florida have already banned it.
Taking planes, another big CO2 contributor. The sky is full of planes burning fuel.
Yes, that is great on an individual level.
But the best thing to do overall for our environment and climate is supporting protest movements, especially those employing nonviolent civil disobedience. Per pound/dollar/euro, they reduce emissions the most. But if you can, attend events in person.
This should not neglect that we need both individual and system change and they depend on each other. You should reduce your meat consumption and advocate for a world where everyone reduces meat consumption (and even become vegan or at least vegetarian).
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.
For me, this wasn't too hard. Cheese on the other hand..that will be a challenge
Coffee and Dark Chocolate are pretty danced high on the list, too.
Sure, but it's normalized to kgs of product. With two lattes a day, 2kg of coffee lasts me more than 2 months. 2kgs per person of beef would last many households less than a week.
If you were to normalize to average daily consumption, coffee and chocolate would be significantly lower ranked. It's ok to keep some indulgences while focusing on higher impact reductions.
coffee and chocolate can also be had fairtrade, which helps ease the conscience
pro tip: lidl (in sweden at least) sells remarkably cheap fairtrade chocolate
I've got a special trick where I can make pretty much the entire internet rage at me. Check it out:
I'm vegetarian.
Not having kids is a whole order of magnitude more impactful. Or even just having one kid instead of 2 or 3+.
Being alive is bad for the environment.
We rarely eat red meat in our household, but we do have a car. They fucked our local public transportation system so badly we ended up not having a choice 🤷♀️
I thought it was overthrowing oppressive world governments and holding environmentally-damaging businesses accountable for their actions, hm.
When populations are starving to death in 2044, pat yourself on the back for not eating red meat.
For a brief moment reading this, I couldn't remember the last time I ate beef -- but then I remembered the summer sausage in the fridge... which probably has beef in it, so... yesterday. Other than that purchase, I don't know if I've had any other beef this year.
The study found that 12% of Americans consume nearly half of the country's beef
So if we got that particular 1/8th to cut down, we'd be half way there! Just like if we could get the 1% to cut down on [so many things], we'd be in the clear!
So even this instance of personal responsibility is significantly offset by the actions of a few. I'm all for doing what each of us can, but that's fucking hilarious.
I had beef last weekend in the form of my partner's leftover canned Italian wedding soup. I think the prior time was a few months earlier when a takeout order was screwed up and my fish sandwich turned into a cheeseburger.
I try and avoid beef because of the environment and because of cute cow videos. But, if it would go to waste otherwise, I'll go ahead and eat it.
This can easily be solved with a bottle of food colouring. I've compleltly replaced my red meat with blue meat. Problem solved.
It's never about personal responsibility. You can smug about not eating red meat, driving electric or not having children, but it doesn't change the reality: the climate is changing.
Coffee is a big one for me along with cheese. I'm waiting for cheese to get better with vegan alternatives, the last time I tried shredded vegan cheese it melted and tasted like plastic, although that was 3 years ago now, and I am willing to try again.
Coffee is something I think can be helped if people were more picky on what brands they chose from. I do not believe Starbucks is the most sustainable coffee brand, as they trained me when I worked there to believe.
God who could even afford red meat anymore
Unrelated - tagging in Voyager is really handy!
I recommend everyone give it a try, helps you identify, say, people who might be talking a big contrarian game without providing any of their own peer reviewed sources to back themselves up. Very interesting feature.
Luckily I prefer chicken anyway :3
Cheese tho.....
I eat chicken maybe 30 times more often than red meat.
I eat cheese all day every day tho…
Rice and refried beans for me! (my cholesterol is high)
I haven’t eaten red meat in years due to not reacting well to it, glad to see it’s also helping the environment 😄
You might have Lyme disease....
Fortunately it’s not an allergic reaction, mostly just an intolerance but I appreciate your concern :) /gen
What if I eat ostrich and emu instead of beef?
This needs to be normalized by calories. Soymilk and soybean oil shouldn't be that far apart.
Looks slightly off TBH, sources? Nuts being lowest, while Palm oil being quite high. Nuts are efficient, especially when considering caloric value, but I'm pretty sure something like a potato is better per kg. Palm oil AFAIK is a very efficient (most efficient vegetable) oil, might be that the destruction of highly carbon rich forest is factored in there maybe...
This has gotten easier as I’ve gotten older. I just don’t care for beef anymore. I’m not disgusted by it. I just prefer other things anymore.
No the single greatest thing you can do is not having children.
I am a strict humanitarian. I only eat humans.
I thought pork was red meat
Beef and pork is no problem...but cheese and coffee aint goin quietly.
there are remarkably acceptable vegan cheeses these days, i've tried one from i think it was Valio or Oddlygood (which might be the same fucking company anyways iirc) and it's just slightly weird starchy cheese that melts in a strange way.
Just eat plants.
Beef is overrated. Pork, poultry, and wild caught shrimp are where it's at.
I have a motorbike I use infrequently, I eat red meat rarely, and I have no children. I feel like I'm doing my part.
Wrong. The single biggest thing most of us can do to reduce harm to the environment is not have kids. Each human, no matter how responsible, can't help but add to the problems. The mountain of diapers for each baby alone is obscene. Each baby you don't have is a whole ass person that will never add to food or electricity or water demands at all.
Damn I am good.
I do like some meat products but I naturally lean towards a vegeterian diet simply because noddles are love and I dislike preparing meats.
Can we please have a source for the YSK statement you made in the title and the graph?
I have seen data on not having kids being the biggest choice a person can make to prevent future emissions. You also didn't mention flying less often, or not flying when a reasonable alternative exists. What is the relative impact of all of these things compared to dietary changes? Numbers on that would be helpful.
We can reach higher. Join me in end game environmentalism and become a serial killer today.
I guess it's a good thing that the lone star tick is moving north
Mmm, close to 700 comments. Have fun yall.
You should see the carbon footprint of concrete...
Yeah and it doesn't even taste good.
People here need to calm down. This isn't about cutting out red meat entirely from your diets; it's about lowering your consumption of red meats. If you really love eating meat (and I know I do), try replacing some of those with white meats like chicken or fish.
Humans are evolved to be omnivores; eating meat is only natural for us. And yes, corporations and capitalism are the biggest factors in ruining our environment. But like recycling, we can still do our small part by ordering a grilled salmon in lieu of a steak once in a while.
And not having any children!
I stopped eating beef about 4 years ago. It was a great decision. I much prefer pork/poultry anyway.
I wish I could afford red meat...
Back in the 1990s I did a thought experiment using 1990s industrial cost figures and production volumes I found online. Turned out Americans could save the Amazon rainforest by cutting our beef consumption by 10%. I don't have the math on hand but the gist was that if demand for beef in America dropped 10%, so would demand for cattle feed, which was mostly corn. Reducing corn production by that much and devoting the land to hemp cultivation (which would work) would produce enough hemp fiber to replace all the wood pulp being imported from Brazil to make paper. At that time most trees being logged in the Amazon region were being pulped and exported to the US. So boom, demand for Amazon pulp logs drops to zero, rainforest saved!
Admittedly this was simplistic and did not account for pulp producers selling to other countries that may have been competing with the US to buy the pulp. But they would have to compete with whatever other pulp sources those customers already had. Anyway, just the fact that the numbers worked out so well helped me understand how a trend in one area can affect seemingly unrelated areas. Like, I dunno, people buy fewer Barbies and the price of air conditioners goes down. I'm sure some people make a lot of money by figuring out stuff like that.
If you don't have a car and rarely eat red meat
To be fair, only one of these is a choice in many parts of the world.
Am I blind or isn't chicken on that list?
Honest question, why is cheese so high but milk isn’t?
Why is there such a massive difference between beef from "beef herds" compared to "dairy herds"?
You can’t get meat from a cow twice, you can get milk lots of times.
What's the carbon footprint of catoblepas?
Free range, pasture raised… would probably be a lot better if he didn’t use electronics ;p
Reading this I should live like a medieval peasant and only eat potatoes, onions, and root vegetables and drink nothing but beer. I'm kinda down with that.
you get a lot of cups from one kg of coffee
Perfect is the enemy of good only if you WAIT for perfect. I eat minimal meat, get my veggies from a local farm share, have solar panels, an EV that charges only off excess solar production, a heatpump, have re-insulated the attic, ditched the gas range for induction that runs off solar, etc. My footprint is less than anyone around me, but probably still way higher than your average individual living in the global south.
I'm trying to hit net zero and once I hit it, I'll keep going because Canada (where I live) is rich and I want to continue to reduce my footprint (the dream is net negative in my life) because I'm privileged and have the resources to push harder. I make it a game - figure out what's my best opportunity to reduce my footprint, do it, move on to looking for the next thing I can do.
Giving up (most) red meat and patting yourself on the back is severely minimizing what you COULD be doing. I'm a long, long way from perfect, and am exceedingly lucky to have the resources to play this game - but carbon reduction is a way of life, not a checkbox IMO.
First, well done for taking it seriously and doing your bit.
The point of the post (I think) is simply to illustrate that certain actions are much, much more important than others. Anecdotally, there are still plenty of people out there who believe that, say, turning off a couple of (low-energy) lights, or "recycling" a plastic bag, are somehow major good deeds that allow them to kick their feet up and celebrate with a steak. There's still way too much ignorance about all this, IMO.
In reality (as you seem to understand), some gestures are far more important than others. Ditching red meat (and dairy) really is a big deal. Everyone who claims to care about this problem should at least consider doing it.
I would assume a competently executed strategy of eliminating the worst offenders (and/or the managing infrastructure thereof) would probably have more impact, they probably meant legal things though.
For instance, a solo campaign of taking out the biggest data centers would probably work. Difficult though.
How is dark chocolate so high? :o
Really? A greater effect than not having children, or tireless activism against one billionaire until they realise the error of their ways and turn to the light side?
Isn't not having kids more impactful than anything as that's entire person's life of co2 you're not creating.
so how many burgers do I skip to compensate for one of Musk's jet joy rides?
Just looked through our past few menus. We only eat beef once a week by nature it seems.
I agree with the sentiment, but a small percentage of individuals doing this will make no measurable difference. If billionaires and corporations made similar changes that would make a difference.
It really wouldn't. If a corporation reduced their production of for example red meat, another one would simply scale up their production, because the demand of the market would remain unchanged.
Also, there's already more than just a "small percentage" of people who have dropped red meat from their diet. All vegetarians, vegans, pescetarians, and people who eat meat but stopped eating red meat due to the environmental impact add up to several percentage points, which is absolutely measureable and impactful.
If a corporation reduced their production of for example red meat, another one would simply scale up their production
how can you prove this claim?
YSK this is BS. You ain't gonna stop corporate-created climate issues by eating one or two fewer cows. In fact, nothing you can do, will.
EDIT: Wow, lots of corporate troll bots downvoting me for not singing their song. Only the hugely polluting companies can make a difference, not individuals.
No. The SINGLE best think you can do for the planet is not reproduce. Then something about not eating red meat and international travel. But the planet HATES your 5 kid family.
Billionaires have the carbon footprint of 30k families and this bitch here is saying I have to give up my car and my burgers.
What a stupid post to get blocked over.
why milk/cheese and beef dairy are two different charts?
I like to go bottom up. If chocolate and coffee are off the menu, I'm not sure this life is worth continuing.
Eating meat also means lots of animals have to suffer just for yout pleasure. I know people get triggert real fast if you mention how bad eating meat really is. It's like a drug for some people.
what the fuck are they doing to make farmer shrimps worse than pork
Woah, didn't know about cheese (although makes sense), coffee and chocolate.
Why do coffee and chocolate have such an impact?
So only eat beef from dairy herds? And you will half your footprint? Anyone know the rough specifics (Eli5 style) of why that is?
I don't cook red meat out of fear I'll catch something by being a klutz and rubbing my eye or something while prepping food. Anyway—I will happily chow down at a Fuddruckers once in a while when I can bank it.
I like chicken more anyway.
Convenient for me, that is.
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.
I can travel by train? Lol. Nice bubble you must live in.
Nuts are nuts!
I have a steak maybe once a year, usually as a sudden or persistent craving. But other than that it was amazingly easy to convert to poultry for all my regular recipes. Very easy step to make without much thought.
Reducing dairy is my dietary wall.
Not true. The single greatest thing you can do to have a lower carbon footprint is to not have any children.
Cheese? Woah woah woah woah steady on there, mate.
SCOP, it's what's for dinner.
I don't buy it.
In 2008 when the travel industry crashed in the wake of the market crash, and again in 2020 after COVID lockdowns started, we saw significant decreases in pollution.
Meat isn't the problem. Fossil fuels are.
Yeah I avoid red meat
What about ostrich? It’s red meat and much more healthy than beef, but I’m not sure it counts as poultry in this context.
Does the graph include how palm farms are built on precious forest land that has since been burned down? and that the land primarily being burnt is some of the most important land for storing carbon and providing oxygen?
That one guy eating rapeseed oil:
Yeah I've cut down a lot, for health, ethical, and environmental reasons. I've got a perfect model in my family to avoid emulating. Red meat is a rare item in my house and I don't often miss it.
We're so disconnected from our food now, the journey here has been all abstract for me.
Mussles for life
I’m gonna drive my car…because that’s necessary, but I haven’t eaten meat (red, white, blue, whatever) for 20 years, so between that, not adding to the surface population, and not voting for complete jackasses, I think I’ve at least offset the driving.
I heard a similar news report on PBS a couple weeks ago. Aside from the obvious, and already mentioned, don't have kids. Both for the environment, and to not put your kids through the coming bullshit.
how does hunted vs farmed meat compare?
Still going to VOTE! Don’t know why that needed to be in there, next to car and red meat
Looks like the traditional Irish diet of potatoes, root veg, and onions is carbon-friendly af.
Thats crazy!! I do eat it, but not very often. However I do a lot to offset it, but still. Hard to get other foods that make you feel full and get you protein like a good steak though.
The real biggest thing you can do for the environment would be reducing the global human population.
Humans do not produce anything for the environment, the mere existence of humans automatically causes harm to the environment. Humans take from the environment but give nothing useful back. If humans were deleted from the Earth, the environment would not be negatively effected. Even the most "environmentally friendly" human still damages their local environment by being alive.
But you know, killing people is pretty illegal basically everywhere, and extremely unethical in many, many ways. Unethical Pro Tips I guess? Please nobody actually do this.
What else?
As long as we can take the rich with us, let the baby burn 🔥🔥🔥
your tulane link is not exactly good science. it relies on Clark (2019) which itself relies on Poore-Nemecek (2018). Poore & Nemecek built their data by combining LCA studies, a practice which is specifically discouraged by the studies themselves and the guidance on LCA studies generally. we can't really rely on those conclusions at all.
they also rely on Behrens (2017), which shares a problem with poore-nemecek, though a more nuanced one: they myopically distill data from input-output to calculate environmental impacts like water and land use and ghge. this seems reasonable at first blush, but in fact it overlooks the complexity of our agricultural systems. for instance, one of the things farmers feed cattle is cottonseed. cotton is grown for textiles, and the seed is largely waste product. feeding it to cattle is a conservation of resources, and doing so should in no way count against the land, water, and ghge statistics for cattle.
but that's not really here or there, as it turns out, because the thrust of the paper is not "these foods are bad for the environment" or "these foods are good for the environment". the actual claim made in the paper is "there is not actually sufficient data sources available to determine which foods have which impacts".
No thanks.
luckily u didn't suggest to cut the cheese 😅 cheese is life, I can eat less beef but not my cheeeeeese 🙃
Idk, I feel like if you could do something to prevent a mass polluter from polluting further that would do a lot more than giving up meat for yourself.
Doing neither while hinting that other people should do the work sure is revealing of the problem, though.
People on lemmy will really be like 'you believe in individual action? that pales in effectiveness to my strategy, firebombing an oil rig' and then not firebomb an oil rig.
plenty of people have tried that, and the production of beef continues to grow.
Beef production is falling in some countries. For instance in Germany
In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline. And much of that decline took place in the last few years, a time period when grocery sales of plant-based food nearly doubled.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-production-tonnes?tab=chart&country=%7EOWID_WRL
that hasn't stopped the meat industry from growing.
Yes, though that doesn't mean it can't be stopped. That it can be reduced in some countries is a sign we can make progress on it
Much of the global growth is occurring in developing countries right now who often view increased meat consumption as a symbol of wealth and status (in part due to seeing it highly consumed in the west). Changing expectations and consumption in the west can have a ripple effect outward
Suuuuure buddy red-meat is the problem here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMErlqYmgsE
this only holds for industrial red meat. I love it when everything gets lumped together and presented as "evidence". Non-industrial, small scale farming actually can have reverse effect. But we don't talk about avoiding industrial products, because... why? 100mile diet that includes sustainably raised meat (white, red blue - whatever) from local farm will have minimal impact on environment. Shall we talk about avocados in Canada or Almonds? Study lacks nuance and produces flashy headings with no substance.
The statistics probably come from the farms where they keep the animals in one place and they bring their food there. Cattle can be successfully used in land regeneration with the rotational grazing systems. I do agree many eat too much meat, but not anyone does well on a vegan diet. I don’t. I rather eat it moderately and buying quality meat from happy animals.
Meat is a highly dense food source and has lots of essentials elements to human health. And in case of the cows, if they are fed as they should with grass, they transform a not digestible food for humans into a highly digestible one.
People that raise them for their own consumption will not overeat meat probably, because they know how much it takes to raise them well and they have a different kind of respect for the animal than someone buying pieces of meat in a supermarket.
I am very skeptical about statistics like these, because they are not nuanced, as the reality is. It’s like when they said eggs raise cholesterol. What they did not say is that they tested it by giving rabbits(a herbivore) egg yolks. And people then start spreading the misinformation.
Nothing can stop me from eating pork, chicken and dark chocolate
I'm not voluntarily giving up jack shit unless the wealthy who devised and profit off the systems that make carbon footprints matter, are brought to heel. If the wealthy can't be stopped, we're all dead anyways. It's their fucking mess, they can be the ones to sacrifice to fix it. We can all die together, better that than let the people who threaten our extinction be the only ones left to inherit the world.
Jesus. None of this actually matters, the cargo ships dwarf the output of a continent.
Voting is guilt. If you vote for fake ass liberals and their posturing ecology you're no better than a rich guy with a yacht