Eating the rich is by far the most eco-friendly approach as it can dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Jeff bezos probably tastes like drywall and hooker spit.
Compost them first then you can eat the rich while also being vegan = Billions and billions of carbons.
Hooker spit. Lol. Imagine Jeff Bezos paying you hundreds of thousands to spit on him while trying to hide the fact that, you would gladly do it for free.
plus it’s the only place in their house
I vehemently disagree with this statement.
We need to compost the rich and use that as a soil amendment to grow heirloom vegetables.
One Elon musk can feed a family for a year.
One farm fertilized with musk mulch can feed a city block!
Ok, are actively working on this? Is your work on it so horrendously demanding of all your attention of every single day, that you couldn’t ALSO go vegan, or vegetarian, or just eat less meat? Eat the rich is just a fun day dream and a lazy excuse to not do what you can (like going vegan).
Eating the rich would also vastly reduce racism, sexism, classism, and worker exploitation. Can I therefore ignore my negligible personal impact, and keep being racist, sexist, classist, and buy only the cheapest clothes crafted by the most exploited third world toddlers?
You sound like you are fun at parties. This was obviously a joke. Also, Why can’t we do both?
Removed by mod
Found the ecofascist.
Spoken like a true conservative, I agree with you, we also need to reduce tax for the rich and raise the retirement age to at least 97 years otherwise the economy will crumble.
Yeah, twisting everything into class conflit babble is the balanced way to think.
Yes, it is!
This crucially important caveat they snuck in there:
“Prof Scarborough said: “Cherry-picking data on high-impact, plant-based food or low-impact meat can obscure the clear relationship between animal-based foods and the environment.”
…which is an interesting way of saying that lines get blurry depending on the type of meat diet people had and/or the quantity vs the type of plant-based diet people had.
Takeaway from the article shouldn’t be meat=bad and vegan=good - the takeaway should be that meat can be an environmentally responsible part of a reasonable diet if done right and that it’s also possible for vegan diets to be more environmentally irresponsible.
That’s both absolutely true and a massive distraction from the point. An environmentally friendly diet that includes meat is going to involve sustainable hunting not factory farming. In comparison an environmentally friendly vegan diet is staples of meat replacements and not trying to get fancy with it. It’s shit like beans instead of meat, tofu and tempeh when you feel fancy. It means rejecting substitutes that are too environmentally costly such as agave nectar as a sweetener (you should probably use beet or cane based sweetener instead).
So in short eat vegan like a poor vegan not like a rich person who thinks veganism is trendy
deleted by creator
“So in short eat vegan like a poor vegan not like a rich person who thinks veganism is trendy”
But in the context of this conversation, wouldn’t eating like a poor vegan rely heavily on buying products that also have a heavy impact on the environment?
You would have to buy cheaper products which come from mass produced farms that use TONS and TONS of water! And generate TONS and TONS of carbon emissions during production of those products.
To be vegan AND
advocate for conservation(you can advocate for something no matter your own behavior. That’s the wrong word to use) to claim that your lifestyle is better for the environment than your non-vegan counterparts, you have to have money.I ain’t never heard of a gram of black beans with more co2 emissions than a gram of beef
If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives? The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.
[…]
Plant-based protein sources – tofu, beans, peas and nuts – have the lowest carbon footprint. This is certainly true when you compare average emissions. But it’s still true when you compare the extremes: there’s not much overlap in emissions between the worst producers of plant proteins, and the best producers of meat and dairy.
https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
deleted by creator
The real takeaway should be that the Independent is complete garbage
So nice to read a sensible comment in a sea of crazy talk.
Yes, I think it’s vital to avoid thinking in absolutes over carbon footprints if we are to make real progress. We can argue endlessly over the “necessity” of consuming meat, but that becomes a distraction. Many things are not “necessary”, but most people are not realistically going to live in caves wearing carbon neutral hair shirts.
We need to continue increasing transparency on the impact of different animal products, so consumers can make informed choices. While also accepting they may not always be perfect.
The only way to stop people from eating meat is to make a vegan food that tastes better than a bacon cheeseburger.
yes. when you look at charts and such. Someone who exclusively ate meat for some reason who moved to chicken would have a greater impact than someone who exclusively ate chicken and went vegan. Sheep did not show up so well either so im guessing ruminants in general are not going to be so hot. Anyway I would encourage folk to keep it in mind and do what they can. I realize go vegan results in many. Well eff it all then but man just avoiding beef is big impact.
Someone who exclusively ate meat for some reason who moved to chicken would have a greater impact than someone who exclusively ate chicken and went vegan.
But that first person could have an even bigger environmental impact by becoming Vegan instead of only eating chicken.
Or an even bigger impact by having fewer children.
This is true, however, not realistic in some parts of the world. For instance, in the United States, Republicans have waged a war on bodily autonomy, which includes the Roe v. Wade ruling and states creating departments to hunt down citizens who go out of state to have abortions. There are also countries where sex education is not prohibited. So, take these things into consideration while thinking about potential solutions. That being said, you are right, and you can do something about it by voting, if you are able to, wherever you live.
You’d have a bigger impact by convincing 30% of the population to only have chicken, vs convincing 15% to go vegan.
Sure, and if we could only do one, we should choose accordingly. We can do both, simultanously. Exactly like how we don’t have to choose between eating less meat and driving less cars.
yes but if you actually convince someone who eats just chicken to go vegan it will have less of an effect if you actually convince a big red meat eater to limit to chicken.
Do you remember a source for that info? Or at least suggestions? I’m interested to read into it, but I’m not really sure what to even google for that
Our World in Data has a decent article about it: https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
This and the article seem like a great breakdown, thank you very much. I would have guessed chocolate would be somewhere in the middle, and I’ve never really thought about cheese in this context at all. I was surprised to see both of them so high up there.
This would suggest my sweet tooth is my biggest problem, at least, since beef is too expensive to be a common occurrence anyway
Yeah I barely eat beef anymore, mostly chicken. I don’t want to give up on eating animals, especially since I’m trying to get into shape right now and it would be hard to eat healthy and get enough protein to build up muscle mass.
Do whatever you want but just so you know Arnold Schwarzenegger is a vegetarian now. It’s much less difficult than people think to get enough protein to bulk up without meat unless you’re doing hardcore body building. Beans and rice is a high protein dinner. Peanut butter is amazing for bulking.
80% vegan. He still eats fish, eggs and chicken. https://www.insider.com/how-arnold-schwarzenegger-gets-protein-on-mostly-vegan-diet-2023-6
I know and if everything goes as planned soon my dietary needs will change that this is a thing I will greatly reconsider. As of now I still have some fat reserves so I try to avoid too many carbs or fat. My theory is that I’m still capable to gain muscles while maintaining a small deficit as I have enough reserves to feed my muscles before my body decides it’d rather burn protein for energy. At the end of summer I’ll go back to focus on weight loss until I’m forced to bulk because I won’t be as much outside for weather and daylight reasons. I’ll rethink my relationship with animal products at those points.
I keep half a dozen of my own chickens in my backyard…which means about half my daily protein intake comes from eggs (which is a great source, btw). And my chickens free-range in my backyard and largely take care of and feed themselves (supplemented with chicken feed but they get most of their daily intake from the bugs/plants in the yard). I still do eat meat almost daily, but the quantities are a lot less than what I was doing a decade ago, and beef is less than a once-a-week thing for me. Like you, I’m trying to get back in shape and watching macronutrients (like protein) very carefully and trying to hit certain daily minimum numbers.
A couple of people have spoken to me before about wanting to cut back on, or completely cut meat from their diets, but didn’t know where to start. If anyone reading this feels the same way, here’s some fairly basic recipies that I usually recommend (Bosh’s tofu curry is straight up one of the best currys i’ve ever had - even my non-vegan family members love it)
Written:
- ‘Butter’ Tofu Curry (Written Recipe)
- Lentil Soup (Written Recipe)
- Caribbean Stew (Written Recipe)
- Sweet Potato & Cauliflower Curry Pies (Written Recipe)
- Afghan Kidney Bean Curry (Written Recipe)
Videos:
- 5 Minute Vegan Pasta Sauces (YT / Invidious)
- Ultimate Vegan Chilli (YT / Invidious)
- Enchiladas Verdes (YT / Invidious)
- Ultimate Plant-Based Fried Chicken (YT / Invidious)
- Mac & Cheez (YT / Invidious)
- Wicked Lasagna (YT / Invidious)
- Smash Tacos (YT / Invidious)
Tofu is also super versatile and is pretty climate-friendly. there’s a bazillion different ways to do tofu, but simply seasoning and pan frying some extra/super firm tofu (like you do with chicken) with some peppers and onions, for fajitas, is an easy way to introduce yourself. Here’s a little guide for tofu newbies: A Guide to Cooking Tofu for Beginners - The Kitchn. If you wanna level up your tofu game with some marinades here’s six.
Lentils and beans are also super planet friendly, super cheap, and super versatile! You’ll be able to find recipies all over that are based around lentils and beans so feel free to do a quick internet search.
Sorry for the huge, intimidating wall of text! I do hope someone interested in cutting back on meat found this useful though :)
Tax meat, subsidize healthy meat alternatives.
In this thread: Shit loads of people who will say they care about the climate crisis on one day, then say they don’t care about the 18.5% of global carbon emissions that the meat industry causes the next day because they can’t get over the decade worth of anti-veganism jokes and memes that they’ve constantly repeated uncritically.
Individual habits MUST be changed to solve this part of the problem, there is literally no way around that. Getting triggered and writing screeds because you’ve spent decades getting caught up in hate over food choices won’t stop the planet burning.
Thank God for trees. Amirite?
I upvoted because this message still didn’t reach everyone, but I guess it’s just that people are in denial… like, isn’t this obvious? And weren’t there already dozens of studies proving it?
deleted by creator
I eat meat myself. But I reduced a lot my consumption, most people in Western countries consume far too much, even for their own health. We should consume less and better, chosing meat from sustainable farming instead of cheap meat from pastures where there should be the Amazon…
Humans evolved to eat animals.
humans also evolved to die from cholera before the age of 3 what’s your point
B12 is an essential vitamin whose primary source is meat and dairy
so add b12 to foods, or take b12 supplements
I am child free
not having children because you never wanted children isn’t an argument unless you avoided having them specifically for the climate
you’re allowed to eat meat, but can we please stop with all the limp-wristed excuses for why it’s actually morally justifiable and just own it?
You can do more than one thing to help the climate.
Sure, humans evolved to eat meat. Let’s just assume that’s correct, and you have the right interpretation of it.
But that doesn’t mean we have to.
Humans didn’t evolve to type things on a cell phone, yet here we are.
We’re omnivores which means we can thrive with or without meat, B12 is simple to supplement.
people ate meat for MILLIONS OF YEARS with negligible global warming effect from the animals
vegans going start blaming the Assyrianz for inventing husbandry before blaming Exxon Mobile BP
like dude pick your battles
deleted by creator
So if we just stop subsidizing it so ridiculously it should go way down to sustainable levels then right?
Certainly if we also stop indirect subsidies like the failure to internalize externalities. Include the climate damage caused in the price tag, and people will love a veggy curry instead.
I am a vegan bro I hate meet Because I don’t like the taste. I hate vegans trying to turn a food PREFERENCE into a snobbery high horse thing. dude eating Factory Farm Veggies is just as bad if not worse (see Monsanto)
Maybe Boop A Pipeline if you are truly morally superior
deleted by creator
your right I’m sorry
deleted by creator
Veganism is not a food preference, you are not vegan.
Veganism is a stance to avoid harming non-human animals.
Removed by mod
dude people will never change because you tell them too if yall actually cared you would talk about the end of factory farms (which also incudes Veggies) the corruption Comes from the system itself. you are absolutely naive if you thing a a capitalist run Vegan Diet Enforced by Law would Help the environment
mate the cut down the rainforest to grow all kinds of food. growing Veggies with Monsanto juice literally gave millions of people cancer 🙄
Removed by mod
You have no idea of the scale we are dealing with.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba7357
Vegans still care about the ban of oil and many other topics like zero waste, it is not exclusive.
Due to the current infrastructure not everyone can just stop using fossile fuel based transport, but we all can go vegan. So yes, we pick battles, those we can win now and we still fight against what we cant change as individuals.
the whole world can choosd to be a Catholic mate. and it would be a good thing
thats what you sound like. a fascist. People have the RIGHT to choose what they eat
I’ll go completely meat free when the super rich go private jet free.
Well, if everyone thinks like that nobody does anything ever… even the richest of the rich can say “it’s not because of me”, because it really isn’t. This is a man made disaster, but not by any single man. Some contribute more, others less, but the idea that only the rich polute is complete bonkers.
I think that’s the point. People don’t want to change, so they say: “I’ll change when they’ll change.” Knowing full well that it is a deadlocked situation.
Other people doing bad things doesn’t justify you doing bad things.
Agreed, but it’s too easy to come after plebs like me and my eating habits when comparably private air flight is responsible for orders of magnitude more co2.
Me turning down my heating or eating less bacon is not going to have the kind of impact that big corporations, government, and super wealthy could have if they curbed their destructive habits.
private air flight is responsible for orders of magnitude more co2.
Aviation worldwide creates 2% of man made GHG, food production 25% and could be reduced by 75% with a plant based diet.
How do we hold evil corporations accountable if not refusing to give them our money?
We can do better in our own lives while advocating for bigger change.
Can’t we all just agree 8 billion people is silly? Think about how much of it is just completely redundant. The main focus really should be massive population reduction.
Edit: Also, no, I don’t mean killing off anyone, just reducing birth rates will do fine. We know even just a simple high school education reduces birth rates.
That is a lie.
deleted by creator
“study finds eating meat is bad”
no sh*t
Well that’s no surprise. Raising animals for meat is horribly inefficient compared to plants.
We should keep their brain, dick and balls so we can clone the billionaires (adult sized from the clone-0-matic) then before they wake up, we upload their mind, and we fuck them with their own dick! Hey if you collect enough you could open up an only fans Page!
I was just talking about this idea with a friend. We decided it would be political suicide in the US for anyone to suggest eating less meat.
People would literally rather see the world burn than give up their chicken nuggets.
I’m not even hardcore vegetarian. I looked at the situation and agreed it’s hard to ethically justify eating meat. So I started eating less. I’m down to pretty much just “sometimes I get a pizza slice with a meat topping if there’s nothing good without meat”. Maybe I’ll cut that out too one day.
deleted by creator
Done, I already intermittent fast and only eat a snack supper snack, and only the supper has meat (95% of the time 5% I might eat leftovers from night before as a snack).
I also buy my beef, pork and eggs from my buddy, who grows them locally. No need to boat my meat from Argentina or new Zealand, or drive it up from the US.
Now quit asking me to do fucking more. I’m done cutting back, spending more etc. This is as far as I need to go.
deleted by creator
Pretty much where I’m at now. Meat is really just a dinner thing and not every night. Got there mostly out of laziness and being broke
One meal a week is better. Eating meat daily is pretty bad.
deleted by creator
Very true, but vegans are still gonna shit on you for cutting out less that 100% of animal products from your life. Idk how they can be so desperate to be superior to others that they would actively discourage improving your lifestyle just because it could be even better
I’m killing half as many creatures for my transient pleasure as I was last year.
Oh, why not just stop murdering entirely?
HOW DARE YOU TRY TO SHOVE YOUR BELIEFS DOWN MY THROAT
I’m killing half as many creatures for my transient pleasure as I was last year.
Oh, why not just stop murdering entirely?
Sorry, it does not work that way. Each way of doing agriculture kills creatures. There are insects, rodents, snails and birds harmed in any landscaping operation, wether the end product is meat or plant.
All you can do by changing your diet from meat to plant is a gradual change. You kill less and do less harm, which is great. But you still kill and do harm, that’s just how these things are.
Maybe a kill-free diet is possible with food synthesized in sterile labs, but the resources for that also have to come from somewhere.
With a vegan diet, less plants need to be harvested, so less insects, rodents, snails, birds would die.
With 50% less meat consumed, less plants need to be harvested, so less insects, rodents, snails, birds would die.
Also which is easier to sell to someone currently eating meat with every meal?
I know, and that’s a great reason for a plant based diet.
But read again to what I replied:
I’m killing half as many creatures for my transient pleasure as I was last year.
Oh, why not just stop murdering entirely?
There seems to exist the delusion of kill-free agriculture, when the best we can achieve is to kill less.
We know that we have a Impact on others but shouldn’t the goal be to keep it a minimum?
Animal industry is the intentional killing and abusing of animals. Animal feed is the biggest part of crops grown, for those crops all kind of animals are killed on a big scale. Veganism is about reducing the impact, stopping the intentional killing and reducing the unavoidable impact as much as possible. There is no delusion of a “zero impact vegan” it is just a construct for people who want to justify not changing them self.
We know that we have a Impact on others but shouldn’t the goal be to keep it a minimum?
Yes, completely agreed.
There is no delusion of a “zero impact vegan”
Maybe I misunderstood the person I was initially responding to, but I understood them as exactly that, when they said what I already quoted two times.
It’s also not the first time I encountered this attitude. Maybe they don’t actually believe what they say, but then my critique is directed at the wording. There is no zero kill diet (although plant based diets are clearly much less harmful than other diets).
Occasionally, some vegans bring up this idea and react very sensitive when confronted with how it’s false. Maybe that defensiveness is fueled by cognitive dissonance which we mostly know from the other side.
All you can do by changing your diet from meat to plant is a gradual change. You kill less and do less harm, which is great. But you still kill and do harm, that’s just how these things are.
True. The difference is between calling it good enough halfway or going as far as possible though. So they do have a point, although I agree that (like in every other group of people) there are some that are a little over enthusiastic and in danger or turning people away instead of encouraging them.
Vegans don’t eat animals for the sake of the animals, because they believe killing them unnecessarily is morally wrong.
Saying you’re only going to eat animals once a day is like saying you’re going to halve the amount of violent crimes you commit and expecting praise for it.
It depends on wether you’re actually concerned about the animals, or about yourself.
If you’re concerned about the animals, 100 people reducing by 10% is exactly as good as 10 people reducing by 100%. The difference is, 10 people don’t have to feel guilty. But no animal benefits from that.
Those 100 people would still be eating 90% as many animals as they were before. People don’t need to eat animals to live, so expecting praise for eating 10% less is pretty funny.
It’d be like a criminal deciding to decrease the amount of crimes he commits by 10% and expecting people to encourage and praise him.
Everything on the planet eats everything else on the planet.
I’m all for sustainable and ethical meat, but killing a cow for beef is not fucking murder, and doing so has the opposite effect you’re intending - it just dilutes definition of murder.
Animals are gonna die. We have so many fucking cows, chickens and pigs on this planet only because we’re gonna eat them. Most wouldn’t be alive anyway if they weren’t grown for food.
Maybe try adjusting your expectations to be in line with fucking reality – my 4 year old still wishes for a unicorn when she blows out my candles but my 7 year old now wishes for things that might or could actually happen. In other words! Grow up.
Everything on the planet eats everything else on the planet.
I believe that’s called the appeal to nature fallacy. Something happening in nature doesn’t mean it’s morally right. Lions often commit infanticide, but that obviously doesn’t make it okay for humans to do.
Most wouldn’t be alive anyway if they weren’t grown for food.
That would be much better than breeding billions of animals and putting them under the conditions we do, just because people like how they taste.
Your 7 year old probably also wishes for world peace, better stop working for a better world!
Everything on this world dies, therefore it’s morally totally fine to artificially create, imprison, and then kill billions for no other reason than taste. Every dog dies, therefore shooting them for fun is morally totally fine!
Appeal to nature, seriously, for your 7 year olds sake, look it up.
See, I don’t care about the praise or the feeling of purity or whatever. I care about the actual effect in what is arguably the actual concern, in this case greenhouse gas emissions. And for that, it does not matter if many reduce or few abstain.
Sure, and if you could somehow demonstrate that advocating for 100% means those 100 people are definitely, totally not going to change their consumption at all, you’d have an actual point.
But also, give cutting it out totally a try, it’s probably not as hard as you imagine
deleted by creator
