I wish more people would get it in their heads that you don't need to give up meat and go completely vegan to have an impact. Even if everyone just cut their red meat intake in half, it would go such a long way towards fixing the environment. But too many people see it as an all-or-nothing situation.
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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I'm a flexitarian myself and I wish more people would just do that, just realise that they're eating too much meat for their health anyway and cut it down to 2 or 3 times a week.
The problem is that I literally do not known what to eat.
I live in a 3rd would country, so my grocery selection is a bit limited compared to what it was when I lived in the states.
I can easily get meat and core vegetables, but I don’t think I can just eat broccoli all week. Especially since a stick of broccoli is not expensive or the same price as meat.
Beans! Including chick peas.
I don't live in a third world country but I live in the former DDR and vegan food is rare as hen's teeth. I'm even having trouble finding beans. Best place to go is Vietnamese shops, they're way more into veg.
I love chick peas! Sadly, for health reasons my wife can’t have them 😂😂
Ultimately with humans it's really time consuming to enact behavioural change. The rate of human behaviour change is slower than the rate of destruction of the planet (also individual human change is going to do diddly squat when McDonald's keeps McDonald'sing and the Kardashians keep travelling in their private jets)
How about this. You don't have to give up allll torturing, raping killing animals, just reduce it.
I hate these headlines. Know what else would be like taking 8 million cars off the road? TAKING 8 MILLION CARS OFF THE ROAD. But instead of talking about transportation alternatives or better land use that reduces car dependence the article focuses on something completely unrelated, as if car use is some kind of immutable constant.
Why not both?
Because muh steak.
Which reminds me, I recently had a fantastic falafel kebab.
It is far easier to reduce meat consumption over reducing car consumption. It is an immutable constant. Hence the constant comparison.
I completely disagree.
Meanwhile, cargo ships burn bunker fuel with impunity.
Stop trying to pin responsibility for global warming on the little people. The rich created this disaster, and the rich are the only ones who can turn it around.
Unfortunately, they'd rather build themselves opulent underground shelters where they'll hang out while the rest of humanity dies.
We're screwed, there's nothing we can do to save ourselves, and we may as well live it up and hope we check out before it gets really ugly.
Whilst generally I agree with you, I disagree with this defeatist mindset when it comes to eating meat.
I think you're underestimating how big an impact the meat industry has on the climate, and you're underestimating the power "regular people" have with regards to eating less.
The meat industry exists because we eat loads of it. If we eat less of it, the meat industry will become smaller as a capitalistic reaction.
And no, I'm not a vegan. I eat meat every day because (and this is not a valid excuse) I'm a bodybuilder and eating loads of chicken every day is an easy way to get protein. That said, I do believe that 200 years from now society will look back at our consumption of real meat as barbaric. Synthesised lab-grown meat will happen eventually, and sadly it'll probably take that for society as a whole to change. Hopefully humanity will survive to see the day!
I think you’re underestimating how big an impact the meat industry has on the climate, and you’re underestimating the power “regular people” have with regards to eating less.
The meat industry exists because we eat loads of it. If we eat less of it, the meat industry will become smaller as a capitalistic reaction.
That would only delay the end of the world, not prevent it. It would be a huge and mostly senseless sacrifice.
Synthesised lab-grown meat will happen eventually
That seems highly unlikely. Synthetic meat was successfully made a decade ago, and then it disappeared from public view without a trace. It appears to have been a PR stunt, not a viable technology.
That defeatist attitude benefits no one except the status quo. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Any positive change is better than none.
What huge sacrifice?
We eat far too much meat, and the huge overconsumption of meat is not only very bad land use, it's very bad for us personally, leading to chronic illnesses in later life.
I'm not vegan, I'm not even a vegetarian, but I've massively reduced meat intake of all kinds (and very very rarely touch red meat these days). I don't even miss it, and I don't count it as a sacrifice. I have discovered all sorts of plant based foods which are to be honest better than meat, so it's a "negative sacrifice" - not only is my health improved, my food is more enjoyable, too.
The expectation to have meat every single meal is frankly ludicrous.
From the article, food production is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emission. And a rich person doesn’t eat that much more than a regular person. Except they probably eat more meat.
So, yeah, reducing the amount of meat you eat can really help!
If it wasn't for rampant consumerism there'd be fewer cargo ships.
“Rampant consumerism” isn't the problem. Lack of meaningful alternatives is the problem. Everything is made overseas, and everyone is too broke to afford locally-made products even if they did exist. Back in the day when computers were made in the USA, for example, you'd easily pay the equivalent of $8000 for one.
So you're saying that you are not willing to pay the price for products made in climate and worker friendly conditions.
Most people aren't and since "the little people" want harmful products, companies produce harmful products.
It is "the little people"'s fault. The corporations would offer climate and worker friendly products, if people bought them.
But the little people choose not to.
I'll go ahead and repeat myself, since you seem to have missed a crucial part of my previous comment:
everyone is too broke to afford locally-made products even if they did exist.
You do realize products somewhere else aren't magically cheaper? That the transport actually adds to the cost?
The reason these products are cheaper is because you rely to abusing others.
And no, abuse of others is not necessary. But yes, you would not be able to live as decadent of a lifestyle if you had to have even close to as little wealth as the people whose poverty you abuse.
Decadent lifestyle? Is that some kind of joke? Who the hell is leading a decadent lifestyle in this economy? I'm lucky to even have a roof over my head, and the streets are crawling with homeless people who were only slightly less lucky!
Direct your complaints to the rich people who created the problem and have the power to solve it. Blaming me for circumstances far outside my control is useless.
Decadent lifestile compared to the people whose products you buy because you "can't afford" to pay people in your own country.
Guess why products produced in your own country cost so much? Because the workers there get paid lots of money (when compared to the rest of the world).
You continue to insist on blaming the systematic impoverishment and exploitation of the working class upon members of that same class, instead of the actual perpetrators. I am forced to assume that this is intentional, and that you are trying to sow division and infighting among the working class.
If my assessment of your intentions is correct, shame on you. If not, you should think long and hard about what you did to create that impression, and what you can do differently in the future.
Either way, this will be the last time I speak to you.
You think I'm "trying to sow division and infighting among the working class"?
Try taking off your tinfoil hat for a while.
And China contributes around 32% toward it too. But China isn't gonna listen and just keep doing their bullshit and ruining lives and the environment.
They are experiencing record heatwaves so it might be getting their attention. Their population is huge so if they become uncomfortable it's a powerful force for change
The CO2 per capita produced in China is significantly less than the CO2 per capita produced in most first world countries.
Even if an average first world person decides to eat no meat at all, they're still gonna cause more CO2 emission than an average chinese person.
This isn't to be blamed on China.
While countries with higher per-capita emissions have work to do, China's raw pollution is absolutely an issue.
Can't say I'm dreading a 'utopia', vegan or otherwise...
Misleading headline right? if one person stopped eating meat it would clearly not be like taking 8 million cars off the road, if everyone on earth stopped eating meat then 8 million cars would be a drop in the ocean. So... the headline means what even you want it to mean.
One line under the headline:
"Having big U.K. meat-eaters cut some of it out of their diet would be like taking 8 million cars off the road,"
Here is the serious headline:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5° and 2°C climate change targets
I was complaining about the headline itself, I understand the content.
Exactly. Getting billions of people to stop eating meat is surely going to be harder than getting 8 million cars off the road.
Exactly
That's really not my point. Climate change is a serious matter and needs to be treated better than by cheap misleading headlines like this.
Article is just focused on the UK. So is more like getting 40million people to reduce their meat consumption (not stop) vs getting 8million UK cars off the road.
They're not saying people should stop eating meat entirely, they're saying people should eat less i.e. swapping a burger with a bean casarole once a week or something. This is not a binary all-or-nothing situation. Every little helps, as they say.
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