3 ms·
Meat is a big one, but its the #3 - #5ish big one depending on how you look at things (at an individual westerner vs. other lenses). Roughly in order it goes
by cagenut 9y ago
Meat is a big one, but its the #3 - #5ish big one depending on how you look at things (at an individual westerner vs. other lenses).
Roughly in order it goes
- having more kids than adults (population growth)
- living in a single-family detached home (land use sprawl + hvac inefficiency)
- owning a car
- flying
- eating red meat (particularly beef & lamb)
So yes by all means, eat less red meat, but after you've moved to a multi-unit building and sold your car and stopped going to conferences.
For context, a six ounce ribeye steak is the co2 eqiv (really its methane) of 330g of emitted carbon. That is almost the exact same number of grams it costs to drive an electric vehicle on an average u.s. grid mix 2 miles. Gas burners more like 1 mile.
So ditch the car and enjoy the steak.
- emodendroket 9y agoOh, good news, you can just ditch the car and walk several miles to everywhere you need to go. Again, telling people to just start living like they're Benedictine monks is not a serious solution to the problem.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- TheCoelacanth 9y agoWith better land use patterns you wouldn't need to walk that far. I can walk to dozens of restaurants without going more than half a mile. Even single family house neighborhoods can have a decent selection of restaurants and grocery stores within a short walking distance if we get rid of the stupid zoning rules that strictly segregate residential and commercial uses.
- emodendroket 9y agoEven if that's what the doctor ordered, so to speak, it's hardly a matter of individual initiative.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago> having more kids than adults (population growth) Good news on that point is that the number of children in the world already peaked several years ago. The continuing population growth is now being driven solely by life expectancy increases. Growth in lifespans in developed countries seems to be running out of steam, so once developing countries have caught up we would expect population growth to stop fairly soon afterwards.