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No it isn't, the idea that strict vegan diets would have stoped climate change is just nonsense. Run the numbers. "Strict vegan diets" is the attitude of US act

No it isn't, the idea that strict vegan diets would have stoped climate change is just nonsense. Run the numbers. "Strict vegan diets" is the attitude of US activists telling the developing world that they need to change their behavior before the US activist is willing to accept driving less or adopting dense urban infill housing. "Making money" is the incentive system of society. Technology has now aligned society's incentive systems to promote climate action. People who refused to acknowledge the reality of human society, refused to acknowledge that the profit system exists whether they want it to or not, are responsible for focusing action on ineffective means of change.

Der_Einzige 1mo ago
Significant amounts of the third world are already eating de-facto vegetarian or vegan diets. Many for religious reasons (i.e. in India where the vast majority of people either eat no meat or only chicken/fish), and many others for financial reasons. Strict vegan diets would objectively massively help reduce climate change.
- sajithdilshan 1mo ago
  That is not true, most people in India don’t eat meat because they are too poor to afford it and hence malnourishment.
  - saxenaabhi 1mo ago
    Punjab and Rajasthan have the highest proportion of vegetarians and also rank on the top of male/female height charts. Admittedly it's not fully vegan but still. Indians have long recognized the virtues of a vegetarian diet: both the moral imperative & it's health benefits. That's something everyone should be able to admire.
- tekla 1mo ago
  > in India where the vast majority of people either eat no meat or only chicken/fish That is such a misleading comment. ~80% of people in India consume meat. That "or" is doing some incredibly amounts of borderline lying. https://www.dataforindia.com/meat-consumption/ https://www.dataforindia.com/meat-consumption/
  - Der_Einzige 1mo ago
    They consume far less meat and the specific types are the uniquely least polluting types Chicken/Fish produce an order of magnitude or in some cases two orders of magnitude less pollution than cows do. Trying to gaslight me on this topic even though I'm right on the part that matters. the "or" stands in for the context of the fact that Chicken/fish are an order of magnitude healthier for the planet, and frankly, for individuals.
    - tekla 1mo ago
      > They consume far less meat and the specific types are the uniquely least polluting types Your claim was that 3rd world countries like India "are already eating de-facto vegetarian or vegan diets" which is incorrect. Moving goalposts > Chicken/Fish produce an order of magnitude or in some cases two orders of magnitude less pollution than cows do. Cool, irrelevant because the vast majority in India are neither vegetarian or vegan. > Trying to gaslight me on this topic even though I'm right on the part that matters This is called "being incorrect but trying to move goalposts"
    - throw8393739 1mo ago
      > Chicken/Fish produce an order of magnitude or in some cases two orders of magnitude less pollution than cows do. Cows are not for eating, they are holy animals in India, more like pets. I hope you are not advocating eating dogs in west!
    - senordevnyc 1mo ago
      Not remotely what gaslighting means
    - stackghost 1mo ago
      Veganism would be more popular if vegans weren't so insufferable.
      - partyficial 1mo ago
        the suffering of the animals being killed for your tastebuds outweighs your suffering of the "vegan-high-horse".
- drfloyd51 1mo ago
  Religious and too poor to eat meat. Not exactly selling the idea of “strict vegan diet” to a bunch of people with enough cash for meat and incisors in their jaws. You got any examples of cultures en mass with “strict vegan diets” because lentils taste delicious?
  - tekla 1mo ago
    > The consumption of meat is more common among lower-income groups. Nearly nine out of ten people belonging to the poorest 20% of India's population eat meat, compared to about seven out of ten among the wealthiest 20%.[4] > Religion also plays a role in dietary habits. Nearly all of the Muslim (99%), Christian (99%) and Buddhists/neo-Buddhist (97%) populations eat meat. Among Hindus, a little over three-quarters consume meat, while Jains and Sikhs have the highest share of vegetarians. Only one-quarter of Jains and half of Sikhs have ever eaten meat. https://www.dataforindia.com/meat-consumption/ https://www.dataforindia.com/meat-consumption/
  - vincnetas 1mo ago
    why does it matter why they eat vegan? they just demonstrate that its feasable.
    - zdragnar 1mo ago
      Because the incentive is what drives change. You're not going to convince America or Western Europe to live strict vegan lifestyles if they are adverse to it. Further, as the poor people grow wealthier, they begin to eat more meat unless they have a religious reason (I.e. an incentive) to do so. Converting to a vegan diet alone won't stop human driven climate change. Therefore, the prospect of climate change won't be enough to convince people to give up meat en masse. That drum has been banged on enough for long enough for that to be obvious.
      - TFNA 1mo ago
        It's not even just America or Western Europe. As soon as I saw the OP about switching to total veganism, my first thought was about e.g. the Arabian Peninsula where meat is central to every meal, and indeed going without meat is seen as the behavior of adherents of foreign religions. Anyone familiar with that part of the world knows that any fad of societal veganism would take decades to arise, longer than the time we have to tackle climate change.
mistrial9 1mo ago
who wants a "strict vegan diet" ? I see detractors who want to derail the topic using distasteful, demanding examples..
- epistasis 1mo ago
  The person I'm responding to is the one who brought it up. I live in a very leftist place, and there were always those at climate events demanding "strict vegan diets" however I didn't see these people out in the general world outside of my little leftist bubble, trying to actually get their idea out there. I agree with Michael Mann that what most of the public only encounters this idea of "strict vegan diets is a required climate solutions" by hearing it from climate denialists poisoning the well of climate action. But I also see this idea online, and in meat space in very isolated areas. So the idea of "strict vegan diets" is a real idea on the fringe, but its overall effect on climate action has been to turn people against climate action in the US.
  - chuckadams 1mo ago
    > and in meat space an odd place to be a hotbed of vegan advocacy.
    - epistasis 1mo ago
      Hah! https://terrybisson.com/theyre-made-out-of-meat-2/ https://terrybisson.com/theyre-made-out-of-meat-2/ Many vegans I know were in fact motivated to that choice by realizing that meetings of humans were in fact "meat space."
      - chuckadams 1mo ago
        https://yellow5.com/pokey/archive/index312.html https://yellow5.com/pokey/archive/index312.html MY LUNGS ARE ADAPTING! I'VE INHALED A ROAST
  - mistrial9 1mo ago
    ok - I am impressed that you quote Michael Mann! yes agree there are loudmouths on all sides of this topic. Thank you for the considered reply
charles_f 1mo ago
You're assuming that we keep the same system and that no sacrificing can be made. Technology is seen as the only solution because of the primary assumption that we need to keep growth and late stage capitalism. Degrowth, relocalisation, lower consumption are all solutions that would work better than technology (there are very serious people out there who demonstrated that technology won't replace the energy we need, Jancovici to name just one). Technology is the only option in constant system, but with nothing happening, the system won't remain constant for long, and sacrifices will have to be made, not by choice.
- epistasis 1mo ago
  > You're assuming that we keep the same system and that no sacrificing can be made. No. I am not. I'm saying that unless the incentive system is aligned with our goals, then it's not actually climate action. Technologists succeeded at doing that. People who decided to use non-policy driven political action failed utterly at this. The degrowthers are particularly bad at this, but then all their thinking was muddled and riddled with errors about the reality of the science. Technology makes the system non-constant. Technology is one of the biggest sources of social change.
  - breuleux 1mo ago
    > Technologists succeeded at doing that. Have they? How have they done that? I just want to know what you mean here.
    - epistasis 1mo ago
      I mean this: https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/why-clean-energy-cheap-energy https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/why-clean-energy-... Technology did that. With lots of government subsidies, and in particular with Germany kick starting a ton of solar industrial development. Even in the US, with concerted anti-renewable sentiment at all levels of decision makers in both electric utility leadership and government leadership, new electricity is overwhelmingly carbon-free, because the technologists made it the cheapest: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205 Technologists caused massive social change, by changing the technology. Far more than the people that focused only on culture and changing society through those means.
locknitpicker 1mo ago
> "Making money" is the incentive system of society. Technology has now aligned society's incentive systems to promote climate action. This personal belief is grounded on an assumption that all mankind follows a neoliberal or even libertarian economic model. Back to reality, west Europe is firmly a social democracy where states impose behavior through law, regulation, and policy, which is topped by a federal system that coordinates policies. Countries such as China are totalitarian with a centrally managed economy that's guided by N-year strategic plans.
- epistasis 1mo ago
  My supposed "personal belief" is not normative it is descriptive. Misconstruing this as normative, and attributing it to a political belief, is your cognitive dissonance trying to reconcile where actual climate action is coming from. We must understand the world as it is, if we are to effectively change it to a better state.
  - locknitpicker 1mo ago
    > My supposed "personal belief" is not normative it is descriptive. No, it is a expression of your personal and unsupported beliefs. Asserting that the whole world enforces a libertarian economical system is simply out of touch with reality. I mean, China alone is a totalitarian regimes that still manages it's economy through central planning.
- Avicebron 1mo ago
  > This personal belief is grounded on an assumption that all mankind follows a neoliberal or even libertarian economic model. This personal belief is usually coupled to people who have become wealthy following this belief. So it tracks that they would declare any solution that doesn't allow them to continue their plundering impossible.
- iamnothere 1mo ago
  Much of Western Europe has increasingly adopted neoliberal policies over the years, I would not call it “firmly” social democratic anymore.
hn_throwaway_99 1mo ago
> People who refused to acknowledge the reality of human society, refused to acknowledge that the profit system exists whether they want it to or not, are responsible for focusing action on ineffective means of change. Thank you for writing that, because I think it is the key point. It's very easy to blame "decrepit old men" because that makes it someone else's fault - and I get it, as I think that there are a bunch of decrepit old men that deserve a lot of blame. But democratic societies (and even authoritarian ones that are still somewhat subject to mass unrest) were never going to accept large negative impacts for a consequence that was not immediate and in your face. Like you put it, just go around and ask your average Joe or Jane if they would vote for any candidate who demanded strict vegan diets (or heck, even a lot of the other things on GP's list). You're fooling yourself if you think it's only decrepit old men who don't want that stuff. And regarding GP's comment that "And more people made money sabotaging solar+battery pricing in the US." Yes, there are some people trying to sabotage this to make money for themselves, but it will not take them too long to fail miserably precisely because the economics are not in their favor. Just look at Texas - not exactly a place known for its love of vegan diets, among other things - and solar, wind and now batteries are now a huge portion of the energy mix and growing fast precisely because it's economical.
- kubelsmieci 1mo ago
  That's simply not true. Politicians have always known how to convince young men to go to war and die for them. Nothing is more selfless. So politicians could also convince people to change their lifestyles for the worse to prevent catastrophe.
  - adrianN 1mo ago
    To be fair, often that convincing happened at gunpoint. I would want to live in a society that enforced climate action with weapons. But of course politicians could do a lot more to motivate climate action before guns would be needed.
newyankee 1mo ago
Also while developed countries are affected , developing countries like Bangladesh, India are disproportionately affected, mostly a function of geography and a lot of history (very high population etc.). Honestly once AI becomes powerful enough most of these people will literally be leftovers with nothing left to contribute to the world with civil war precursors you see in other forms today essentially the same symptom of fight for limited resources. The developed countries have so much land, water, resources that they will adapt although inequality within will be an issue and tbh at this point there is never any thought given to the wider world, which if one things about honestly never was.
- throw8393739 1mo ago
  > most of these people will literally be leftovers with nothing left to contribute to the world A lot of people from bangladesh and india are working in Russia. China and Russia are also investing, and building factories there.
- epistasis 1mo ago
  I find almost nothing to agree with here. Renewable energy will power places like Bangladesh towards far greater wealth and prosperity. Aside from the distastefulness of using the term "leftovers" on any group of people, I think its clear that India will become massively more powerful due to their education system, once its further enabled by cheap clean energy and AI. The US is falling into civil war over stupid culture issues as India is rising. The US is dismantling its education system, its research system, to spend it on wasted defense spending (just in the past few days huge amounts of research money from the National Institutes of Health have been funneled over to DoD. Or DoW, whatever). Additionally the US's terrible culture war is resulting in slow adoption of cheap energy, which will further lower the US's global position. There will always be limited resources. If not one, the other. But cheap renewable energy is a great leveler and the US will be leveled far more for its refusal to lead the way with it. India will be hugely ascendant as a massive nation with coordinated, highly educated human resources. Even in the era of AI, perhaps more so, human resources are the ultimate limit on human happiness.
  - 1mo ago
tcfhgj 1mo ago
> Technology has now aligned society's incentive systems to promote climate action. no, it has not
- epistasis 1mo ago
  https://www.irena.org/News/pressreleases/2025/Jul/91-Percent-of-New-Renewable-Projects-Now-Cheaper-Than-Fossil-Fuels-Alternatives https://www.irena.org/News/pressreleases/2025/Jul/91-Percent... https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/why-clean-energy-cheap-energy https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/why-clean-energy-... https://www.lazard.com/news-announcements/lazard-releases-2026-levelized-cost-of-energyplus-report-pr/ https://www.lazard.com/news-announcements/lazard-releases-20...
  - tcfhgj 1mo ago
    1) renewable energy is only a part of climate action, it's not sufficient - renewable energy being cheap alone doesn't help a bit if you don't keep fossil fuel in the ground 2) not technology aligned societies incentive systems, but politics which a) incentivized producing electricity by renewable methods and punishing electricity produced by fossil fuels, which again encouraged research which in return made renewables mostly cheaper than fossil fuels - and we are lucky that the physics aligned with that.
    - epistasis 1mo ago
      Renewable energy and replacing carbon emitting industrial chemistry with carbon neutral processes are the sum entirely of climate action. There might be a tiny bit of nuclear built, but we don't have the capability to build enough to make a dent in the time scale we need to, and nuclear is far more expensive than solar plus batteries, so the profit motive means solar wind and batteries will win. The people that built the technology aligned industrial policy and government incentives to allow them to create the technology, true. But it was technology action that is solving climate change. There are two groups of people opposed to clean energy, one right wing and one left wing, and they were both extremely wrong about the technology, and the path of technology has been crystal clear for decades. It was obvious in the 2000s, based on learning rates, that batteries solar and wind were improving at rates that would solve our climate crisis. The only question I had was if nuclear could play a part, and Vogtle, Summer, Olkiluoto, Flamanville, and Hinkley proved decisively that nuclear would not be a big player. We don't need carbon taxes, those turned out to misalign incentives in weird ways (not all industries are equally sensitive to carbon prices, so applying equal taxes is far less than economically ideal for motivationchanges). Tax credits and guaranteed small purchases turned out to be extremely effective and efficient.
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croes 1mo ago
> "Making money" is the incentive system of society. Then explain voluntary work or all the people risking their lives for other people they don’t even know. Human society existed before money. And nobody said that a vegan diet would have stopped climates change, they said strict vegan diets, ground based mass transit, dense development & re-wilding, energy transition. Just picking one and say that would help is a nasty tactic. It’s like saying you need water, food and sleep to live and you say, nope, water alone doesn’t keep you alive. The reality is, consuming and producing less works but it’s harder then keep going and hope for a technical solution. Same with being overweight, more sports, less food works but doesn’t make fun.
- rrr_oh_man 1mo ago
  > Human society existed before money. That is a very broad claim that can be challenged easily. Maybe it would make more sense to say: "Money is not everything, and pockets of altruism exist"?
  - croes 1mo ago
    You need a society for money so society comes first means there was society before money
    - rrr_oh_man 1mo ago
      https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magazine/monkey-business.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magazine/monkey-business.... Depends on your definition of money and society.
- epistasis 1mo ago
  I push back heartily on anybody bringing up "strict vegan diets" because it is itself a massive straw man, one that mostly promotes inaction and idleness. Michael Mann's 2021 book, and all the interviews around that time, are probably far more effective than I could be at explaining why it's such a bad idea to bring up "strict vegan diets" Making money is not the only incentive system in society, but it is overwhelmingly the one that controls emissions. Another key one is regulations around housing, which require lots of driving, that's been built deep into our entire land use, and can not be changed on the time scale necessary for climate action. Moreover, "making money" is the incentive system in all the world's big carbon emitting economies that controls decisions, from China to the US. Sometimes those incentive systems are based on the costs of technology, sometimes they are based on rules that governments make (e.g. China setting the price for energy capacity markets too high, resulting in buliding lots of coal electricity plants that sit mostly idle...) As somebody who spends almost all of my political effort trying to get ground based mass transit and dense development, I often advocate for them on climate grounds, but only because climate grounds are convincing politically here. They are rounding errors on climate action, in practice, because new development over the course of the next two decades, the crucial two decades of climate cation, will only be a tiny fraction of our built environment. There's only one true method for climate action: stop extracting fossil fuels to run soceity, and change all industrial processes that emit carbon to neutral methods, and make agriculture carbon neutral or ideally carbon negative. Strict vegan diets helps with deforestation in Brazil, for those that get meat from Brazil, for example. But the plains of the US used to be covered with bison, before they were slaughtered and replaced with cattle. We need to look at the overall ecosystem, where everything is going. Talking about "strict vegan diets" when they are not needed is merely a recipe for keeping people from adopting far easier, far more effective, and far more necessary action.
Dumblydorr 1mo ago
It’s one piece of many. They never said it was the only piece. You’re straw-manning this comment. And vegan diets would make a big dent, look up agricultural sector emissions, look up beef emissions and methane from their burps. It’s a major factor after transport and electricity.
- epistasis 1mo ago
  The straw man is claiming that "strict vegan diets" are necessary. People bring up "strict vegan diets" to sabotage climate action. It's a hindrance to achieving the very possible change we need.
  - swed420 1mo ago
    > People bring up "strict vegan diets" to sabotage climate action. They also tend to use polarizing identity politics that vilify all men, or all old people, or all white people, etc, even though most of those groups are suffering with everybody else.
- tyre 1mo ago
  Yes, but there is zero shot at doing this versus energy and transportation. The major limiter of veganism is cultural. People love eating meat. It’s a major source of protein and calories, especially in developing countries. Americans are not going vegan, so it’s kind of silly, in my opinion, to focus on it as a solution. Compare to building nuclear energy or solar / wind + batteries. China, the US, Europe, and India are all well-positioned to do this. The limitation is political will, which is more difficult than it should be, but definitely easier than convincing a critical mass of Americans to go vegan.
  - bix6 1mo ago
    How come veganism is cultural but alternative energy is political? Could one not be the other?
    - adrianN 1mo ago
paimapi 1mo ago
>"Strict vegan diets" is the attitude of US activists telling the developing world that they need to change their behavior https://woods.stanford.edu/news/meats-environmental-impact https://woods.stanford.edu/news/meats-environmental-impact >Livestock production accounts for 14-18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, including 32 percent of methane gas emissions worldwide. 14-18% seems like a fairly significant chunk, no? and what if we just started with not eating beef, all of us, especially the USA? that'd cut down the emissions by quite a large bit I also feel like the idea that technology will save us can only exist if you're fully ignorant of the sheer amount of money poured into lobbying by various industries into deregulation (like, for eg, the beef industry: https://www.ucs.org/about/news/agribusiness-industry-lobbying-exceeds-500-million https://www.ucs.org/about/news/agribusiness-industry-lobbyin... or Taylor Farms https://www.wired.com/story/diarrhea-outbreak-taylor-farms-maga-donations-lobbying/ https://www.wired.com/story/diarrhea-outbreak-taylor-farms-m...) not to mention the abandonment by state energy companies like Georgia Power of their solar/renewable goals and full buy-in to building yet more gas turbines in order to attract hyperscale data centers. I was part of some organizing against this in my city: https://atlpresscollective.com/2025/12/18/public-service-commission-meets-public-backlash-for-georgia-power-expansion/ https://atlpresscollective.com/2025/12/18/public-service-com... just look at the funding for renewable R&D in the past few years - the reason we have the market we do now is that huge spike (thanks, Obama) in 2009 that drove down the cost of manufacturing and drove up conversion efficiency. that much investment into the renewables sector hasn't been the same since, especially now: https://www.theinvadingsea.com/2025/11/05/fossil-fuels-oil-coal-renewable-energy-us-china-european-union-brazil-cop30-climate-change/ https://www.theinvadingsea.com/2025/11/05/fossil-fuels-oil-c...
customguy 1mo ago
> the idea that strict vegan diets would have stoped climate change is just nonsense Yeah, where did you get it from? They said "strict vegan diets, ground based mass transit, dense development & re-wilding, energy transition" Would you also have said "the idea that energy transition and ground based mass transit would have stopped climate change is just nonsense", too? Only to then go on to talk about "the reality of human society", as so often with these top response to the top comment. It's the sophistry two-step.

Der_Einzige 1mo ago

Significant amounts of the third world are already eating de-facto vegetarian or vegan diets. Many for religious reasons (i.e. in India where the vast majority of people either eat no meat or only chicken/fish), and many others for financial reasons. Strict vegan diets would objectively massively help reduce climate change.

sajithdilshan 1mo ago
That is not true, most people in India don’t eat meat because they are too poor to afford it and hence malnourishment.
- saxenaabhi 1mo ago
  Punjab and Rajasthan have the highest proportion of vegetarians and also rank on the top of male/female height charts. Admittedly it's not fully vegan but still. Indians have long recognized the virtues of a vegetarian diet: both the moral imperative & it's health benefits. That's something everyone should be able to admire.
tekla 1mo ago
> in India where the vast majority of people either eat no meat or only chicken/fish That is such a misleading comment. ~80% of people in India consume meat. That "or" is doing some incredibly amounts of borderline lying. https://www.dataforindia.com/meat-consumption/ https://www.dataforindia.com/meat-consumption/
- Der_Einzige 1mo ago
  They consume far less meat and the specific types are the uniquely least polluting types Chicken/Fish produce an order of magnitude or in some cases two orders of magnitude less pollution than cows do. Trying to gaslight me on this topic even though I'm right on the part that matters. the "or" stands in for the context of the fact that Chicken/fish are an order of magnitude healthier for the planet, and frankly, for individuals.
  - tekla 1mo ago
    > They consume far less meat and the specific types are the uniquely least polluting types Your claim was that 3rd world countries like India "are already eating de-facto vegetarian or vegan diets" which is incorrect. Moving goalposts > Chicken/Fish produce an order of magnitude or in some cases two orders of magnitude less pollution than cows do. Cool, irrelevant because the vast majority in India are neither vegetarian or vegan. > Trying to gaslight me on this topic even though I'm right on the part that matters This is called "being incorrect but trying to move goalposts"
  - throw8393739 1mo ago
    > Chicken/Fish produce an order of magnitude or in some cases two orders of magnitude less pollution than cows do. Cows are not for eating, they are holy animals in India, more like pets. I hope you are not advocating eating dogs in west!
  - senordevnyc 1mo ago
    Not remotely what gaslighting means
  - stackghost 1mo ago
    Veganism would be more popular if vegans weren't so insufferable.
    - partyficial 1mo ago
      the suffering of the animals being killed for your tastebuds outweighs your suffering of the "vegan-high-horse".
drfloyd51 1mo ago
Religious and too poor to eat meat. Not exactly selling the idea of “strict vegan diet” to a bunch of people with enough cash for meat and incisors in their jaws. You got any examples of cultures en mass with “strict vegan diets” because lentils taste delicious?
- tekla 1mo ago
  > The consumption of meat is more common among lower-income groups. Nearly nine out of ten people belonging to the poorest 20% of India's population eat meat, compared to about seven out of ten among the wealthiest 20%.[4] > Religion also plays a role in dietary habits. Nearly all of the Muslim (99%), Christian (99%) and Buddhists/neo-Buddhist (97%) populations eat meat. Among Hindus, a little over three-quarters consume meat, while Jains and Sikhs have the highest share of vegetarians. Only one-quarter of Jains and half of Sikhs have ever eaten meat. https://www.dataforindia.com/meat-consumption/ https://www.dataforindia.com/meat-consumption/
- vincnetas 1mo ago
  why does it matter why they eat vegan? they just demonstrate that its feasable.
  - zdragnar 1mo ago
    Because the incentive is what drives change. You're not going to convince America or Western Europe to live strict vegan lifestyles if they are adverse to it. Further, as the poor people grow wealthier, they begin to eat more meat unless they have a religious reason (I.e. an incentive) to do so. Converting to a vegan diet alone won't stop human driven climate change. Therefore, the prospect of climate change won't be enough to convince people to give up meat en masse. That drum has been banged on enough for long enough for that to be obvious.
    - TFNA 1mo ago
      It's not even just America or Western Europe. As soon as I saw the OP about switching to total veganism, my first thought was about e.g. the Arabian Peninsula where meat is central to every meal, and indeed going without meat is seen as the behavior of adherents of foreign religions. Anyone familiar with that part of the world knows that any fad of societal veganism would take decades to arise, longer than the time we have to tackle climate change.

mistrial9 1mo ago

who wants a "strict vegan diet" ? I see detractors who want to derail the topic using distasteful, demanding examples..

epistasis 1mo ago
The person I'm responding to is the one who brought it up. I live in a very leftist place, and there were always those at climate events demanding "strict vegan diets" however I didn't see these people out in the general world outside of my little leftist bubble, trying to actually get their idea out there. I agree with Michael Mann that what most of the public only encounters this idea of "strict vegan diets is a required climate solutions" by hearing it from climate denialists poisoning the well of climate action. But I also see this idea online, and in meat space in very isolated areas. So the idea of "strict vegan diets" is a real idea on the fringe, but its overall effect on climate action has been to turn people against climate action in the US.
- chuckadams 1mo ago
  > and in meat space an odd place to be a hotbed of vegan advocacy.
  - epistasis 1mo ago
    Hah! https://terrybisson.com/theyre-made-out-of-meat-2/ https://terrybisson.com/theyre-made-out-of-meat-2/ Many vegans I know were in fact motivated to that choice by realizing that meetings of humans were in fact "meat space."
    - chuckadams 1mo ago
      https://yellow5.com/pokey/archive/index312.html https://yellow5.com/pokey/archive/index312.html MY LUNGS ARE ADAPTING! I'VE INHALED A ROAST
- mistrial9 1mo ago
  ok - I am impressed that you quote Michael Mann! yes agree there are loudmouths on all sides of this topic. Thank you for the considered reply

charles_f 1mo ago

You're assuming that we keep the same system and that no sacrificing can be made. Technology is seen as the only solution because of the primary assumption that we need to keep growth and late stage capitalism. Degrowth, relocalisation, lower consumption are all solutions that would work better than technology (there are very serious people out there who demonstrated that technology won't replace the energy we need, Jancovici to name just one). Technology is the only option in constant system, but with nothing happening, the system won't remain constant for long, and sacrifices will have to be made, not by choice.

epistasis 1mo ago
> You're assuming that we keep the same system and that no sacrificing can be made. No. I am not. I'm saying that unless the incentive system is aligned with our goals, then it's not actually climate action. Technologists succeeded at doing that. People who decided to use non-policy driven political action failed utterly at this. The degrowthers are particularly bad at this, but then all their thinking was muddled and riddled with errors about the reality of the science. Technology makes the system non-constant. Technology is one of the biggest sources of social change.
- breuleux 1mo ago
  > Technologists succeeded at doing that. Have they? How have they done that? I just want to know what you mean here.
  - epistasis 1mo ago
    I mean this: https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/why-clean-energy-cheap-energy https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/why-clean-energy-... Technology did that. With lots of government subsidies, and in particular with Germany kick starting a ton of solar industrial development. Even in the US, with concerted anti-renewable sentiment at all levels of decision makers in both electric utility leadership and government leadership, new electricity is overwhelmingly carbon-free, because the technologists made it the cheapest: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205 Technologists caused massive social change, by changing the technology. Far more than the people that focused only on culture and changing society through those means.

locknitpicker 1mo ago

> "Making money" is the incentive system of society. Technology has now aligned society's incentive systems to promote climate action. This personal belief is grounded on an assumption that all mankind follows a neoliberal or even libertarian economic model. Back to reality, west Europe is firmly a social democracy where states impose behavior through law, regulation, and policy, which is topped by a federal system that coordinates policies. Countries such as China are totalitarian with a centrally managed economy that's guided by N-year strategic plans.

epistasis 1mo ago
My supposed "personal belief" is not normative it is descriptive. Misconstruing this as normative, and attributing it to a political belief, is your cognitive dissonance trying to reconcile where actual climate action is coming from. We must understand the world as it is, if we are to effectively change it to a better state.
- locknitpicker 1mo ago
  > My supposed "personal belief" is not normative it is descriptive. No, it is a expression of your personal and unsupported beliefs. Asserting that the whole world enforces a libertarian economical system is simply out of touch with reality. I mean, China alone is a totalitarian regimes that still manages it's economy through central planning.
Avicebron 1mo ago
> This personal belief is grounded on an assumption that all mankind follows a neoliberal or even libertarian economic model. This personal belief is usually coupled to people who have become wealthy following this belief. So it tracks that they would declare any solution that doesn't allow them to continue their plundering impossible.
iamnothere 1mo ago
Much of Western Europe has increasingly adopted neoliberal policies over the years, I would not call it “firmly” social democratic anymore.

hn_throwaway_99 1mo ago

> People who refused to acknowledge the reality of human society, refused to acknowledge that the profit system exists whether they want it to or not, are responsible for focusing action on ineffective means of change. Thank you for writing that, because I think it is the key point. It's very easy to blame "decrepit old men" because that makes it someone else's fault - and I get it, as I think that there are a bunch of decrepit old men that deserve a lot of blame. But democratic societies (and even authoritarian ones that are still somewhat subject to mass unrest) were never going to accept large negative impacts for a consequence that was not immediate and in your face. Like you put it, just go around and ask your average Joe or Jane if they would vote for any candidate who demanded strict vegan diets (or heck, even a lot of the other things on GP's list). You're fooling yourself if you think it's only decrepit old men who don't want that stuff. And regarding GP's comment that "And more people made money sabotaging solar+battery pricing in the US." Yes, there are some people trying to sabotage this to make money for themselves, but it will not take them too long to fail miserably precisely because the economics are not in their favor. Just look at Texas - not exactly a place known for its love of vegan diets, among other things - and solar, wind and now batteries are now a huge portion of the energy mix and growing fast precisely because it's economical.

kubelsmieci 1mo ago
That's simply not true. Politicians have always known how to convince young men to go to war and die for them. Nothing is more selfless. So politicians could also convince people to change their lifestyles for the worse to prevent catastrophe.
- adrianN 1mo ago
  To be fair, often that convincing happened at gunpoint. I would want to live in a society that enforced climate action with weapons. But of course politicians could do a lot more to motivate climate action before guns would be needed.

newyankee 1mo ago

Also while developed countries are affected , developing countries like Bangladesh, India are disproportionately affected, mostly a function of geography and a lot of history (very high population etc.). Honestly once AI becomes powerful enough most of these people will literally be leftovers with nothing left to contribute to the world with civil war precursors you see in other forms today essentially the same symptom of fight for limited resources. The developed countries have so much land, water, resources that they will adapt although inequality within will be an issue and tbh at this point there is never any thought given to the wider world, which if one things about honestly never was.

throw8393739 1mo ago
> most of these people will literally be leftovers with nothing left to contribute to the world A lot of people from bangladesh and india are working in Russia. China and Russia are also investing, and building factories there.
epistasis 1mo ago
I find almost nothing to agree with here. Renewable energy will power places like Bangladesh towards far greater wealth and prosperity. Aside from the distastefulness of using the term "leftovers" on any group of people, I think its clear that India will become massively more powerful due to their education system, once its further enabled by cheap clean energy and AI. The US is falling into civil war over stupid culture issues as India is rising. The US is dismantling its education system, its research system, to spend it on wasted defense spending (just in the past few days huge amounts of research money from the National Institutes of Health have been funneled over to DoD. Or DoW, whatever). Additionally the US's terrible culture war is resulting in slow adoption of cheap energy, which will further lower the US's global position. There will always be limited resources. If not one, the other. But cheap renewable energy is a great leveler and the US will be leveled far more for its refusal to lead the way with it. India will be hugely ascendant as a massive nation with coordinated, highly educated human resources. Even in the era of AI, perhaps more so, human resources are the ultimate limit on human happiness.
- 1mo ago

tcfhgj 1mo ago

> Technology has now aligned society's incentive systems to promote climate action. no, it has not

epistasis 1mo ago
https://www.irena.org/News/pressreleases/2025/Jul/91-Percent-of-New-Renewable-Projects-Now-Cheaper-Than-Fossil-Fuels-Alternatives https://www.irena.org/News/pressreleases/2025/Jul/91-Percent... https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/why-clean-energy-cheap-energy https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/why-clean-energy-... https://www.lazard.com/news-announcements/lazard-releases-2026-levelized-cost-of-energyplus-report-pr/ https://www.lazard.com/news-announcements/lazard-releases-20...
- tcfhgj 1mo ago
  1) renewable energy is only a part of climate action, it's not sufficient - renewable energy being cheap alone doesn't help a bit if you don't keep fossil fuel in the ground 2) not technology aligned societies incentive systems, but politics which a) incentivized producing electricity by renewable methods and punishing electricity produced by fossil fuels, which again encouraged research which in return made renewables mostly cheaper than fossil fuels - and we are lucky that the physics aligned with that.
  - epistasis 1mo ago
    Renewable energy and replacing carbon emitting industrial chemistry with carbon neutral processes are the sum entirely of climate action. There might be a tiny bit of nuclear built, but we don't have the capability to build enough to make a dent in the time scale we need to, and nuclear is far more expensive than solar plus batteries, so the profit motive means solar wind and batteries will win. The people that built the technology aligned industrial policy and government incentives to allow them to create the technology, true. But it was technology action that is solving climate change. There are two groups of people opposed to clean energy, one right wing and one left wing, and they were both extremely wrong about the technology, and the path of technology has been crystal clear for decades. It was obvious in the 2000s, based on learning rates, that batteries solar and wind were improving at rates that would solve our climate crisis. The only question I had was if nuclear could play a part, and Vogtle, Summer, Olkiluoto, Flamanville, and Hinkley proved decisively that nuclear would not be a big player. We don't need carbon taxes, those turned out to misalign incentives in weird ways (not all industries are equally sensitive to carbon prices, so applying equal taxes is far less than economically ideal for motivationchanges). Tax credits and guaranteed small purchases turned out to be extremely effective and efficient.

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croes 1mo ago

> "Making money" is the incentive system of society. Then explain voluntary work or all the people risking their lives for other people they don’t even know. Human society existed before money. And nobody said that a vegan diet would have stopped climates change, they said strict vegan diets, ground based mass transit, dense development & re-wilding, energy transition. Just picking one and say that would help is a nasty tactic. It’s like saying you need water, food and sleep to live and you say, nope, water alone doesn’t keep you alive. The reality is, consuming and producing less works but it’s harder then keep going and hope for a technical solution. Same with being overweight, more sports, less food works but doesn’t make fun.

rrr_oh_man 1mo ago
> Human society existed before money. That is a very broad claim that can be challenged easily. Maybe it would make more sense to say: "Money is not everything, and pockets of altruism exist"?
- croes 1mo ago
  You need a society for money so society comes first means there was society before money
  - rrr_oh_man 1mo ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magazine/monkey-business.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magazine/monkey-business.... Depends on your definition of money and society.
epistasis 1mo ago
I push back heartily on anybody bringing up "strict vegan diets" because it is itself a massive straw man, one that mostly promotes inaction and idleness. Michael Mann's 2021 book, and all the interviews around that time, are probably far more effective than I could be at explaining why it's such a bad idea to bring up "strict vegan diets" Making money is not the only incentive system in society, but it is overwhelmingly the one that controls emissions. Another key one is regulations around housing, which require lots of driving, that's been built deep into our entire land use, and can not be changed on the time scale necessary for climate action. Moreover, "making money" is the incentive system in all the world's big carbon emitting economies that controls decisions, from China to the US. Sometimes those incentive systems are based on the costs of technology, sometimes they are based on rules that governments make (e.g. China setting the price for energy capacity markets too high, resulting in buliding lots of coal electricity plants that sit mostly idle...) As somebody who spends almost all of my political effort trying to get ground based mass transit and dense development, I often advocate for them on climate grounds, but only because climate grounds are convincing politically here. They are rounding errors on climate action, in practice, because new development over the course of the next two decades, the crucial two decades of climate cation, will only be a tiny fraction of our built environment. There's only one true method for climate action: stop extracting fossil fuels to run soceity, and change all industrial processes that emit carbon to neutral methods, and make agriculture carbon neutral or ideally carbon negative. Strict vegan diets helps with deforestation in Brazil, for those that get meat from Brazil, for example. But the plains of the US used to be covered with bison, before they were slaughtered and replaced with cattle. We need to look at the overall ecosystem, where everything is going. Talking about "strict vegan diets" when they are not needed is merely a recipe for keeping people from adopting far easier, far more effective, and far more necessary action.

Dumblydorr 1mo ago

It’s one piece of many. They never said it was the only piece. You’re straw-manning this comment. And vegan diets would make a big dent, look up agricultural sector emissions, look up beef emissions and methane from their burps. It’s a major factor after transport and electricity.

epistasis 1mo ago
The straw man is claiming that "strict vegan diets" are necessary. People bring up "strict vegan diets" to sabotage climate action. It's a hindrance to achieving the very possible change we need.
- swed420 1mo ago
  > People bring up "strict vegan diets" to sabotage climate action. They also tend to use polarizing identity politics that vilify all men, or all old people, or all white people, etc, even though most of those groups are suffering with everybody else.
tyre 1mo ago
Yes, but there is zero shot at doing this versus energy and transportation. The major limiter of veganism is cultural. People love eating meat. It’s a major source of protein and calories, especially in developing countries. Americans are not going vegan, so it’s kind of silly, in my opinion, to focus on it as a solution. Compare to building nuclear energy or solar / wind + batteries. China, the US, Europe, and India are all well-positioned to do this. The limitation is political will, which is more difficult than it should be, but definitely easier than convincing a critical mass of Americans to go vegan.
- bix6 1mo ago
  How come veganism is cultural but alternative energy is political? Could one not be the other?
  - adrianN 1mo ago

paimapi 1mo ago

>"Strict vegan diets" is the attitude of US activists telling the developing world that they need to change their behavior https://woods.stanford.edu/news/meats-environmental-impact https://woods.stanford.edu/news/meats-environmental-impact >Livestock production accounts for 14-18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, including 32 percent of methane gas emissions worldwide. 14-18% seems like a fairly significant chunk, no? and what if we just started with not eating beef, all of us, especially the USA? that'd cut down the emissions by quite a large bit I also feel like the idea that technology will save us can only exist if you're fully ignorant of the sheer amount of money poured into lobbying by various industries into deregulation (like, for eg, the beef industry: https://www.ucs.org/about/news/agribusiness-industry-lobbying-exceeds-500-million https://www.ucs.org/about/news/agribusiness-industry-lobbyin... or Taylor Farms https://www.wired.com/story/diarrhea-outbreak-taylor-farms-maga-donations-lobbying/ https://www.wired.com/story/diarrhea-outbreak-taylor-farms-m...) not to mention the abandonment by state energy companies like Georgia Power of their solar/renewable goals and full buy-in to building yet more gas turbines in order to attract hyperscale data centers. I was part of some organizing against this in my city: https://atlpresscollective.com/2025/12/18/public-service-commission-meets-public-backlash-for-georgia-power-expansion/ https://atlpresscollective.com/2025/12/18/public-service-com... just look at the funding for renewable R&D in the past few years - the reason we have the market we do now is that huge spike (thanks, Obama) in 2009 that drove down the cost of manufacturing and drove up conversion efficiency. that much investment into the renewables sector hasn't been the same since, especially now: https://www.theinvadingsea.com/2025/11/05/fossil-fuels-oil-coal-renewable-energy-us-china-european-union-brazil-cop30-climate-change/ https://www.theinvadingsea.com/2025/11/05/fossil-fuels-oil-c...

customguy 1mo ago

> the idea that strict vegan diets would have stoped climate change is just nonsense Yeah, where did you get it from? They said "strict vegan diets, ground based mass transit, dense development & re-wilding, energy transition" Would you also have said "the idea that energy transition and ground based mass transit would have stopped climate change is just nonsense", too? Only to then go on to talk about "the reality of human society", as so often with these top response to the top comment. It's the sophistry two-step.