6 ms·

If you are concerned about climate change, stop eating animals. Governments are slow to act, but switching to a plant based diet is something you can do right n

If you are concerned about climate change, stop eating animals. Governments are slow to act, but switching to a plant based diet is something you can do right now. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

plugger 8y ago
Rice paddy fields also produce a significant amount of methane as well.
- gdubs 8y ago
  Step one: get people to eat less meat. Step two: move farming away from monoculture crops.
- probably_wrong 8y ago
  Your comment helped me put some thoughts in line. Soy is a big reason the loss of biodiversity in my country. People are cutting down trees left and right because soy grows everywhere and pays well. "That's easy", I could say, "just stop planting a single thing". But this doesn't make sense for the farmers, who are asked to give away money to allow (from their POV) rich people to ride more Hummers. So we come with a better answer, "enact and enforce laws protecting native forests", and now we are back where we started, because a problem that we wanted to solve with individual action suddenly requires government intervention. I believe in individual action, as I said in another comment. But I don't think it's an "either/or": we created governments specifically to solve problems like this.
perty2 8y ago
We cant stop a grand solar minimum as we go into a new one called the Eddy Minimum. This book details some of the effects we can likely expect to see. https://wordery.com/the-little-ice-age-brian-fagan-9780465022724?currency=GBP&btrck=V1owQUkvdzJmb0N4NVdXRURUQzFsRHJyYkZzeExlamVZcGJlZGQvNTlvRktJWExyVU5TS252ZGZDNURDRnQzUw&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=ShoppingGB&msclkid=765eb501f9cf1c18ccfeeebb038386cd https://wordery.com/the-little-ice-age-brian-fagan-978046502...
konschubert 8y ago
I don't think a systematic problem like this one can be fixed by individual action.
- cagenut 8y ago
  it absolutely cannot be fixed by individual action alone it also absolutely cannot be fixed without mass waves of individuals acting. its an AND not an OR
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  You need pioneers to show it's possible to have a good life on a small carbon budget. Without that you will never convince the mainstream.
enraged_camel 8y ago
Sorry, but this type of thinking bothers me. The scale of the problem at hand is so enormous that individual action is essentially meaningless.
- cagenut 8y ago
  not sorry, that type of thinking bothers me. the scale of the problem at hand is so enormous that scabs and slackers excuses are essentially meaningless.
- probably_wrong 8y ago
  While I disagree with the OP's point of view, I don't think the type of thinking is wrong. And here's an example why: In Cowboy Bebop, the Japanese animated show, there is a scene with two characters smoking outside. It is clear during the show that they are morally grey at best, and yet they both have a cup with them to catch their cigarette's ashes, even though they are outside on top of an old boat (a sci-fi one). Such a detail is meaningless in the overall scheme of things, but the mentality is what matters: by living in a society where every individual does their best, no matter how meaningless, is how you end up with streets as clean as those of Japan, where everyone carries their garbage with them. Individual action is important to create a societal mindset - if you inspire two people to change their behavior, it scales up.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  individual action is essentially meaningless. Now there's a motto to live by. Isn't that all we have? Individuals acting?
cagenut 8y ago
it is true that 'red' meat alone is the 80/20 tradeoff you can make to reducing the carbon footprint of your diet, just like solving a bottleneck in any other system its important to focus your efforts on the top 1 or 2 things, not the 4th or 5th thing. exactly what things are #1 - 5 for you will vary by country and lifestyle, but assuming a coastal-american/northwestern-european "tech worker" bias, its: #1 children, #2 cars, #3 heating, #4 electric, #5 flying, #6 red meat.
- jlawson 8y ago
  Children should not be on this list. The first reason is baby/bathwater: The reason we care about climate change is for the sake of children; simply denying them existence isn't much of a solution. E.g. You could equally solve homelessness by (humanely and painlessly) killing all the homeless people in their sleep. But more importantly: If the present is any indication, in the future, children of "coastal-American/Northwestern-European tech workers" are going to be the only people with the motivation and ability to address climate change. Subtract them from the equation and think about who is left: Religious nativists (Muslim, Christian, and otherwise), supremacist ideologues and ethnonationalists, and a great mass of impoverished third-worlders too disconnected and ignorant to even use birth control correctly. There is no chance a climate change solution gets sustained without the high-IQ pro-globalist Western elite. Basically if you're reading this you should have as many kids as possible to benefit the planet in the future.
  - MrEldritch 8y ago
    You might want to rephrase your post; implying that everyone who isn't a "coastal-American/NW-European tech worker" must therefore be either: a) Religious nativists, b) Supremacist ideolouges, c) Ethnonationalists, or d)"a great mass of impoverished third-worlders too [...] ignorant to even use birth control correctly" ...is simultaneously pretty offensive, and bafflingly hyperbolic. Alternatively, given that I live in Texas, and am therefore neither a coastal-American nor NW-European tech worker, would you mind telling me which of those four alternative categories I'm in?
    - 8y ago
WA 8y ago
As an individual, you can’t do that much. But if McDonald’s for example were to put veggie patties in their burgers by default and beef only on request, that would actually change something. In addition: if you have ever tried the veggie burger, it’s surprisingly good (the beef is a bit tasteless anyways) and I bet most people wouldn’t notice the difference, especially if McDonald’s pimp their veggie patty a bit more.
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  McDonalds would be out of business and a laughingstock.
  - regularfry 8y ago
    Win-win!
  - ctack 8y ago
    Not a vegetarian and not a McDonald's client, but I'd actually support them if they went all in on something like that.
  - WA 8y ago
    I'd argue this is a matter of marketing. Also, you don't have to go all-in at once. Introduce a special veggie burger, maybe even in a few stores or selected countries only. Gradually, switch more and more burgers to the veggie version. Defaults matter, as they say.
    - rdl 8y ago
      I wonder if they would be better off pricing it at parity, at a premium to beef, or lower? I initially thought “heavily subsidize it, maybe put a huge one on the $1 menu...), but making it a premium option along with their “specialty” burgers might be better. At some point in the future they drop it to parity.
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    There's a vegan fast food chain in Australia called Lord of the Fries. It's basically a vegan McDonalds. It's actually quite popular, even amongst the non-veg population.
Angostura 8y ago
And stop buying dogs.
- hycaria 8y ago
  What's with dogs ? I mean fine but then there are also cats or other pets ? And not buying them doesn't mean they are not there, that's not a sufficient solution. Stray and such, still there and consuming resources.
zaarn 8y ago
I think meat grown in a lab is a more viable alternative and much more promising than having everyone change to a vegan diet.
- gaius 8y ago
  Veggieburgers are one thing but I think I would wait for 10-20 years of other people eating frankenburgers before I’d be willing to switch.
andygates 8y ago
Virtue doesn't scale. But corporate catering does, and one of the big caterers (Sodexo?) is rolling out a whole new set of base menus that are meat-free.
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  I've always maintained that prisons should only serve vegetarian food. Apart from the health and environmental benefits, it would save a lot of money for them as well. A lot of prisons in the world are already smoke free, I see no reason why the privilege of eating meat shouldn't be withheld from them as well. Want to eat meat? Then don't break the law.
vibrato 8y ago
Cows grow on sunshine and inedible to human grasses. Feed them some seaweed and they don’t even spew methane so badly. Per calorie, plant foods are more draining on the planets resources.
- gr__or 8y ago
  You can't expect anyone to believe that without a solid source.
  - basurihn 8y ago
    I wouldn't expect this crowd to believe it even with a solid source.
upofadown 8y ago
That Guardian article switched between the various environmental harms of meat production in a confusing way. Here is what Wikipedia has to say with respect to greenhouse gasses: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production#Greenhouse_gas_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p... From the article: >At a global scale, the FAO has recently estimated that livestock (including poultry) accounts for about 14.5 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions estimated as 100-year CO2 equivalents. >A PNAS model showed that even if animals were completely removed from US agriculture and diets, US GHG emissions would be decreased by 2.6%(or 28% of agricultural GHG emissions). This is because of the need to replace animal manures by fertilizers and to replace also other animal coproducts, and because livestock now use human-inedible food and fiber processing byproducts. So if you live in the US, decreasing meat consumption will help significantly, but people in the US use a heck of a lot of GHG producing energy in other forms: * https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
AndyMcConachie 8y ago
It's not enough to approach this problem as a consumer. It's valiant but it's not going to bring about real change. We need heavy handed regulation of the environment by governments if we wish to actually prevent environmental devastation. Anything less is just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.
- gdubs 8y ago
  “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
>Governments are slow to act If we keep thinking that individual actions is the best thing to do because governments are slow to act, then, government will certainly be slow to act. That's a pretty sad self-fulfilling prophecy. I've stopped using fossil fuel transportation (living in a big, European city I can rely on my feet, my bike and the pretty good subway systems + and trains and EV when traveling). I'm going vegan and get most of my food from community-supported, organic agriculture. My electricity is 100% from renewable (solar, wind and hydro). I don't buy shit anymore and I'm doing my best to reach zero waste (not easy). I'm trying to be positive and inspire people around me (no more criticizing, just showing that many of those small actions are not that hard to do). Yet, things deteriorate pretty fast. We lost 30% of the birds in just a few decades in my country, and worst, 80% of insects. CO2 emissions are rising fast (3+% this year, while the government promised to reduce them). I can think I'm doing my part, and go on with my life. But I can't sleep. The average citizen just don't have the time, peace of mind, or resources, or the required information to act. Telling others to change their habits won't do much. We've got to organize and make big decisions. The small steps won't be enough, that's for sure (cf. https://www.france24.com/en/20180828-france-nicolas-hulot-resigns-environment-minister-macron-loses-green-credentials https://www.france24.com/en/20180828-france-nicolas-hulot-re...)

plugger 8y ago

Rice paddy fields also produce a significant amount of methane as well.

gdubs 8y ago
Step one: get people to eat less meat. Step two: move farming away from monoculture crops.
probably_wrong 8y ago
Your comment helped me put some thoughts in line. Soy is a big reason the loss of biodiversity in my country. People are cutting down trees left and right because soy grows everywhere and pays well. "That's easy", I could say, "just stop planting a single thing". But this doesn't make sense for the farmers, who are asked to give away money to allow (from their POV) rich people to ride more Hummers. So we come with a better answer, "enact and enforce laws protecting native forests", and now we are back where we started, because a problem that we wanted to solve with individual action suddenly requires government intervention. I believe in individual action, as I said in another comment. But I don't think it's an "either/or": we created governments specifically to solve problems like this.

perty2 8y ago

We cant stop a grand solar minimum as we go into a new one called the Eddy Minimum. This book details some of the effects we can likely expect to see. https://wordery.com/the-little-ice-age-brian-fagan-9780465022724?currency=GBP&btrck=V1owQUkvdzJmb0N4NVdXRURUQzFsRHJyYkZzeExlamVZcGJlZGQvNTlvRktJWExyVU5TS252ZGZDNURDRnQzUw&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=ShoppingGB&msclkid=765eb501f9cf1c18ccfeeebb038386cd https://wordery.com/the-little-ice-age-brian-fagan-978046502...

konschubert 8y ago

I don't think a systematic problem like this one can be fixed by individual action.

cagenut 8y ago
it absolutely cannot be fixed by individual action alone it also absolutely cannot be fixed without mass waves of individuals acting. its an AND not an OR
tonyedgecombe 8y ago
You need pioneers to show it's possible to have a good life on a small carbon budget. Without that you will never convince the mainstream.

enraged_camel 8y ago

Sorry, but this type of thinking bothers me. The scale of the problem at hand is so enormous that individual action is essentially meaningless.

cagenut 8y ago
not sorry, that type of thinking bothers me. the scale of the problem at hand is so enormous that scabs and slackers excuses are essentially meaningless.
probably_wrong 8y ago
While I disagree with the OP's point of view, I don't think the type of thinking is wrong. And here's an example why: In Cowboy Bebop, the Japanese animated show, there is a scene with two characters smoking outside. It is clear during the show that they are morally grey at best, and yet they both have a cup with them to catch their cigarette's ashes, even though they are outside on top of an old boat (a sci-fi one). Such a detail is meaningless in the overall scheme of things, but the mentality is what matters: by living in a society where every individual does their best, no matter how meaningless, is how you end up with streets as clean as those of Japan, where everyone carries their garbage with them. Individual action is important to create a societal mindset - if you inspire two people to change their behavior, it scales up.
yesenadam 8y ago
individual action is essentially meaningless. Now there's a motto to live by. Isn't that all we have? Individuals acting?

cagenut 8y ago

it is true that 'red' meat alone is the 80/20 tradeoff you can make to reducing the carbon footprint of your diet, just like solving a bottleneck in any other system its important to focus your efforts on the top 1 or 2 things, not the 4th or 5th thing. exactly what things are #1 - 5 for you will vary by country and lifestyle, but assuming a coastal-american/northwestern-european "tech worker" bias, its: #1 children, #2 cars, #3 heating, #4 electric, #5 flying, #6 red meat.

jlawson 8y ago
Children should not be on this list. The first reason is baby/bathwater: The reason we care about climate change is for the sake of children; simply denying them existence isn't much of a solution. E.g. You could equally solve homelessness by (humanely and painlessly) killing all the homeless people in their sleep. But more importantly: If the present is any indication, in the future, children of "coastal-American/Northwestern-European tech workers" are going to be the only people with the motivation and ability to address climate change. Subtract them from the equation and think about who is left: Religious nativists (Muslim, Christian, and otherwise), supremacist ideologues and ethnonationalists, and a great mass of impoverished third-worlders too disconnected and ignorant to even use birth control correctly. There is no chance a climate change solution gets sustained without the high-IQ pro-globalist Western elite. Basically if you're reading this you should have as many kids as possible to benefit the planet in the future.
- MrEldritch 8y ago
  You might want to rephrase your post; implying that everyone who isn't a "coastal-American/NW-European tech worker" must therefore be either: a) Religious nativists, b) Supremacist ideolouges, c) Ethnonationalists, or d)"a great mass of impoverished third-worlders too [...] ignorant to even use birth control correctly" ...is simultaneously pretty offensive, and bafflingly hyperbolic. Alternatively, given that I live in Texas, and am therefore neither a coastal-American nor NW-European tech worker, would you mind telling me which of those four alternative categories I'm in?
  - 8y ago

WA 8y ago

As an individual, you can’t do that much. But if McDonald’s for example were to put veggie patties in their burgers by default and beef only on request, that would actually change something. In addition: if you have ever tried the veggie burger, it’s surprisingly good (the beef is a bit tasteless anyways) and I bet most people wouldn’t notice the difference, especially if McDonald’s pimp their veggie patty a bit more.

michaelmrose 8y ago
McDonalds would be out of business and a laughingstock.
- regularfry 8y ago
  Win-win!
- ctack 8y ago
  Not a vegetarian and not a McDonald's client, but I'd actually support them if they went all in on something like that.
- WA 8y ago
  I'd argue this is a matter of marketing. Also, you don't have to go all-in at once. Introduce a special veggie burger, maybe even in a few stores or selected countries only. Gradually, switch more and more burgers to the veggie version. Defaults matter, as they say.
  - rdl 8y ago
    I wonder if they would be better off pricing it at parity, at a premium to beef, or lower? I initially thought “heavily subsidize it, maybe put a huge one on the $1 menu...), but making it a premium option along with their “specialty” burgers might be better. At some point in the future they drop it to parity.
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  There's a vegan fast food chain in Australia called Lord of the Fries. It's basically a vegan McDonalds. It's actually quite popular, even amongst the non-veg population.

Angostura 8y ago

And stop buying dogs.

hycaria 8y ago
What's with dogs ? I mean fine but then there are also cats or other pets ? And not buying them doesn't mean they are not there, that's not a sufficient solution. Stray and such, still there and consuming resources.

zaarn 8y ago

I think meat grown in a lab is a more viable alternative and much more promising than having everyone change to a vegan diet.

gaius 8y ago
Veggieburgers are one thing but I think I would wait for 10-20 years of other people eating frankenburgers before I’d be willing to switch.

andygates 8y ago

Virtue doesn't scale. But corporate catering does, and one of the big caterers (Sodexo?) is rolling out a whole new set of base menus that are meat-free.

toomanybeersies 8y ago
I've always maintained that prisons should only serve vegetarian food. Apart from the health and environmental benefits, it would save a lot of money for them as well. A lot of prisons in the world are already smoke free, I see no reason why the privilege of eating meat shouldn't be withheld from them as well. Want to eat meat? Then don't break the law.

vibrato 8y ago

Cows grow on sunshine and inedible to human grasses. Feed them some seaweed and they don’t even spew methane so badly. Per calorie, plant foods are more draining on the planets resources.

gr__or 8y ago
You can't expect anyone to believe that without a solid source.
- basurihn 8y ago
  I wouldn't expect this crowd to believe it even with a solid source.

upofadown 8y ago

That Guardian article switched between the various environmental harms of meat production in a confusing way. Here is what Wikipedia has to say with respect to greenhouse gasses: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production#Greenhouse_gas_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p... From the article: >At a global scale, the FAO has recently estimated that livestock (including poultry) accounts for about 14.5 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions estimated as 100-year CO2 equivalents. >A PNAS model showed that even if animals were completely removed from US agriculture and diets, US GHG emissions would be decreased by 2.6%(or 28% of agricultural GHG emissions). This is because of the need to replace animal manures by fertilizers and to replace also other animal coproducts, and because livestock now use human-inedible food and fiber processing byproducts. So if you live in the US, decreasing meat consumption will help significantly, but people in the US use a heck of a lot of GHG producing energy in other forms: * https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...

AndyMcConachie 8y ago

It's not enough to approach this problem as a consumer. It's valiant but it's not going to bring about real change. We need heavy handed regulation of the environment by governments if we wish to actually prevent environmental devastation. Anything less is just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.

gdubs 8y ago
“Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago

>Governments are slow to act If we keep thinking that individual actions is the best thing to do because governments are slow to act, then, government will certainly be slow to act. That's a pretty sad self-fulfilling prophecy. I've stopped using fossil fuel transportation (living in a big, European city I can rely on my feet, my bike and the pretty good subway systems + and trains and EV when traveling). I'm going vegan and get most of my food from community-supported, organic agriculture. My electricity is 100% from renewable (solar, wind and hydro). I don't buy shit anymore and I'm doing my best to reach zero waste (not easy). I'm trying to be positive and inspire people around me (no more criticizing, just showing that many of those small actions are not that hard to do). Yet, things deteriorate pretty fast. We lost 30% of the birds in just a few decades in my country, and worst, 80% of insects. CO2 emissions are rising fast (3+% this year, while the government promised to reduce them). I can think I'm doing my part, and go on with my life. But I can't sleep. The average citizen just don't have the time, peace of mind, or resources, or the required information to act. Telling others to change their habits won't do much. We've got to organize and make big decisions. The small steps won't be enough, that's for sure (cf. https://www.france24.com/en/20180828-france-nicolas-hulot-resigns-environment-minister-macron-loses-green-credentials https://www.france24.com/en/20180828-france-nicolas-hulot-re...)