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Eating meat creates four times more greenhouse gases than being vegan, landmark study finds
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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One meal a week is better. Eating meat daily is pretty bad.
Pretty much where I'm at now. Meat is really just a dinner thing and not every night. Got there mostly out of laziness and being broke
Very true, but vegans are still gonna shit on you for cutting out less that 100% of animal products from your life. Idk how they can be so desperate to be superior to others that they would actively discourage improving your lifestyle just because it could be even better
Vegans don't eat animals for the sake of the animals, because they believe killing them unnecessarily is morally wrong.
Saying you're only going to eat animals once a day is like saying you're going to halve the amount of violent crimes you commit and expecting praise for it.
It depends on wether you're actually concerned about the animals, or about yourself.
If you're concerned about the animals, 100 people reducing by 10% is exactly as good as 10 people reducing by 100%. The difference is, 10 people don't have to feel guilty. But no animal benefits from that.
Those 100 people would still be eating 90% as many animals as they were before. People don't need to eat animals to live, so expecting praise for eating 10% less is pretty funny.
It'd be like a criminal deciding to decrease the amount of crimes he commits by 10% and expecting people to encourage and praise him.
Everything on the planet eats everything else on the planet.
I'm all for sustainable and ethical meat, but killing a cow for beef is not fucking murder, and doing so has the opposite effect you're intending - it just dilutes definition of murder.
Animals are gonna die. We have so many fucking cows, chickens and pigs on this planet only because we're gonna eat them. Most wouldn't be alive anyway if they weren't grown for food.
Maybe try adjusting your expectations to be in line with fucking reality -- my 4 year old still wishes for a unicorn when she blows out my candles but my 7 year old now wishes for things that might or could actually happen. In other words! Grow up.
Your 7 year old probably also wishes for world peace, better stop working for a better world!
Everything on this world dies, therefore it's morally totally fine to artificially create, imprison, and then kill billions for no other reason than taste. Every dog dies, therefore shooting them for fun is morally totally fine!
Appeal to nature, seriously, for your 7 year olds sake, look it up.
I believe that's called the appeal to nature fallacy. Something happening in nature doesn't mean it's morally right. Lions often commit infanticide, but that obviously doesn't make it okay for humans to do.
That would be much better than breeding billions of animals and putting them under the conditions we do, just because people like how they taste.
See, I don't care about the praise or the feeling of purity or whatever. I care about the actual effect in what is arguably the actual concern, in this case greenhouse gas emissions. And for that, it does not matter if many reduce or few abstain.
Sure, and if you could somehow demonstrate that advocating for 100% means those 100 people are definitely, totally not going to change their consumption at all, you'd have an actual point.
I’m killing half as many creatures for my transient pleasure as I was last year.
Oh, why not just stop murdering entirely?
HOW DARE YOU TRY TO SHOVE YOUR BELIEFS DOWN MY THROAT
Sorry, it does not work that way. Each way of doing agriculture kills creatures. There are insects, rodents, snails and birds harmed in any landscaping operation, wether the end product is meat or plant.
All you can do by changing your diet from meat to plant is a gradual change. You kill less and do less harm, which is great. But you still kill and do harm, that's just how these things are.
Maybe a kill-free diet is possible with food synthesized in sterile labs, but the resources for that also have to come from somewhere.
With a vegan diet, less plants need to be harvested, so less insects, rodents, snails, birds would die.
In 2013, University of Minnesota researchers calculated that 67% of crop calories in the U.S. fed animals while 27% fed people.
I know, and that's a great reason for a plant based diet.
But read again to what I replied:
There seems to exist the delusion of kill-free agriculture, when the best we can achieve is to kill less.
We know that we have a Impact on others but shouldn't the goal be to keep it a minimum?
Animal industry is the intentional killing and abusing of animals. Animal feed is the biggest part of crops grown, for those crops all kind of animals are killed on a big scale. Veganism is about reducing the impact, stopping the intentional killing and reducing the unavoidable impact as much as possible. There is no delusion of a "zero impact vegan" it is just a construct for people who want to justify not changing them self.
Yes, completely agreed.
Maybe I misunderstood the person I was initially responding to, but I understood them as exactly that, when they said what I already quoted two times.
It's also not the first time I encountered this attitude. Maybe they don't actually believe what they say, but then my critique is directed at the wording. There is no zero kill diet (although plant based diets are clearly much less harmful than other diets).
Occasionally, some vegans bring up this idea and react very sensitive when confronted with how it's false. Maybe that defensiveness is fueled by cognitive dissonance which we mostly know from the other side.
Maybe they have a hard time to explain the difference between intentional raising, raping and killing versus the death of critters, which meat carries many times more because feed production uses more plants than eating plants directly. But unless you are a monk and care about every step you take and grow your own no impact is delusional. Everything we use has a impact, every metal, every plastic end every car drive. But we can stop the intentional killing. Maybe a "zero murder" philosophy and not a "zero deaths" way.
Yes.
Can we? I mean, agriculture is intentional. The land use alone causes killing or even worse, habitat loss. Yes, vastly more if used for milk or cheese, but I consider this point settled by now.
I'm afraid the only honest option is to not summon "zero". Every diet causes death and suffering, but the amount can vary a lot. Also animals considered pests are killed intentionally.
That is like saying the intention of driving is killing kids on the street because it happens. Is the intention of wearing cloth to slave others? Is the intention of buying meat to kill children?
Animal industry is paying for murder and abuse, there is no way about it. It is what you pay for. That is the deal, your money their lives.
I feel misrepresented. The harm caused by road construction and driving is not intended, but accepted. It's part of the whole package, which is the part which is intended.
I feel we're running in circles. I thought that part was settled, while it was never disputed in the first place. Let's stop here.
Do you think we could say the same if kill a worm by tiling the soil for plants? as not intended but accepted? That is the hole point, it is accepted side effect. But the killing of a cow is the main goal in the animal industry, not a side effect.
With 50% less meat consumed, less plants need to be harvested, so less insects, rodents, snails, birds would die.
Also which is easier to sell to someone currently eating meat with every meal?
True. The difference is between calling it good enough halfway or going as far as possible though. So they do have a point, although I agree that (like in every other group of people) there are some that are a little over enthusiastic and in danger or turning people away instead of encouraging them.
Done, I already intermittent fast and only eat a snack supper snack, and only the supper has meat (95% of the time 5% I might eat leftovers from night before as a snack).
I also buy my beef, pork and eggs from my buddy, who grows them locally. No need to boat my meat from Argentina or new Zealand, or drive it up from the US.
Now quit asking me to do fucking more. I'm done cutting back, spending more etc. This is as far as I need to go.
But also, give cutting it out totally a try, it's probably not as hard as you imagine