You Should Know

This is true, and also not usually well taken by most people, even the ones claiming to be pro environment.

Wait until this thread gets full of people saying that their habits are irrelevant because companies pollute much more - which they do indeed, but that absolutely does not negate the many studies we have that calculate a major impact if we simply dropped red meat.

Which is again quite obvious 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.

My single greatest contribution for the climate is not having children.

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".

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.

Not having a kid eclipses all of these by orders of magnitude.

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.

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.

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

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Capitalism hates this one weird trick.

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.

YSK you should stop guilting us peasants.
Everyone knows who's to blame.
Tired of this shit.

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-ton hole in your personal carbon footprint. That's 10-20% of an average European's annual footprint - or 100% of a sustainable 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.

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.

How much less red meat to offset all the private jet that flew to Venice for bezos’ wedding?

What about not having children?

Sure. Imma keep using my jet though.

Do billionaires count as red meat? I am asking for a friend.

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.

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.

Also not having kids. Strange how that one is left out.

Yeah let us do the microscopic differences while some industry totally ignores it...

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...

Also it's morally the right thing to do if you have the 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.

Not loving that the exact source of the data in this graph is not clearly linked in the description.